Asia-Pacific, Headlines

AFGHANISTAN: Uneasy Over Pakistan’s Emergency

IPS Correspondents*

KABUL, Nov 17 2007 (IPS) - A wary Afghanistan has been closely following events across the border in Pakistan where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf clamped an emergency on Nov. 3 citing rising militancy and “interference” by the judiciary.

For two weeks, a defiant opposition has protested the clamp down on civil liberties and the abrogation of the Constitution. Hundreds of lawyers, civil society activists and journalists have been detained by military intelligence, and the orders for the arrests are “coming right from the top”, according to Pakistan media reports.

A ban on public gatherings means that those who participate risk being detained and beaten up.

On Wednesday, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, an outspoken critic of Musharraf, was arrested on the campus of Punjab University in Lahore where he was addressing a student protest. Ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto who threatened a ‘long march to Islamabad’ on Nov. 13 was put under house arrest for a week.

Pakistan’s widely-watched, independent, Urdu-language news channels are off the air. The ban also extends to all Afghan channel telecasts from Pakistan. Gag orders have been lifted only on the English-language media, both print and TV, which do not threaten the authorities since they reach only a tiny elite.

The government has amended the Army Act of 1952 to allow military courts to try civilians. With Musharraf both the president and army chief, there are fears that the country may be under ‘martial law’ once again.


Turmoil in Pakistan has a direct impact on Afghanistan, Faruq Meranai, member of Parliament from Nangarhar province told the independent, Kabul-based newspaper Erada. “We are afraid that if the Pakistan military once again take power, they will interfere in our domestic affairs,” he said bluntly.

Islamabad has had a hand in this country’s affairs since the Soviet occupation in 1979. Then military dictator Zia-ul-Haq joined on the side of the United States in its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union over Afghanistan.

Through the 1980s, Pakistan was a conduit for arms and ammunition to mujahiddin factions who first fought against the Soviets and then the communist regime in Kabul before turning their massive firepower on each other.

The feuding factions who turned Afghanistan into a bloody battlefield were ousted in 1997 by the Taliban or student warriors who came over the Hindu Kush from madrasas or religious schools that sprouted along the Pakistan border with backing of the country’s shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

According to Sibghatullah Mojadedi, speaker of the upper house of Parliament, the ISI which has gone beyond the control of Pakistani governments, is “the main enemy of the people of Afghanistan”. He was interviewed in the Hasht-e Sobh daily, Nov. 8.

When U.S. troops marched into Afghanistan in the so-called “war on terror” after the 9/11 bombings, the Taliban which refused to hand over al-Qaeda leaders, fled across the porous border with Pakistan to sanctuaries in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in end-2001.

Over the past two years, the Taliban have regrouped to challenge the Hamid Karzai government in southern Afghanistan, while militancy has engulfed both sides of the border, admitted Abdul Khaliq Hosaini, second secretary in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga or lower house, speaking to Erada newspaper on Nov. 6.

In a bid to secure peace, Musharraf signed a controversial pact with pro-Taliban groups in FATA, enabling them to run a parallel government. But the violence has continued unabated, and spread to new areas like Swat, in neighbouring North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).

The army is launching a major offensive in the picturesque Swat valley against pro-Taliban cleric Mullah Fazlullah whose men have overrun most towns and villages in the valley. On Wednesday, 33 militants and two army soldiers were killed in the nearly daily air and gun battles.

Pakistan-watchers here view the escalating military action with scepticism. Most believe that until the support networks that feed the cross-border insurgency are not crushed, the arrests and gun battles will not make the slightest difference in restoring law and order along the conflict-scarred frontier.

The insurgency continues unabated in Afghanistan and it appears that the emergency in Pakistan will only embolden the Taliban and their allies to continue to consolidate their power in the tribal and border areas. Instability in Pakistan means instability for Afghanistan.

Moreover, according to Afghan journalist Rohullah Yaqubi, militancy in Pakistan has a direct bearing on the economic plight of people in Afghanistan. Most of what is sold in shops in Afghanistan is either smuggled or brought over land from Pakistan. Food prices have shot up alarmingly in recent months.

Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbil acknowledged that recent events in Pakistan have had a negative impact, Pajhwok Afghan News (PAN), an independent news agency reported. That view was echoed by Sultan Ahmad Baheen, spokesman for the foreign ministry, who said Afghanistan was apprehensive of the volatile situation across the border.

(*Reporting for this contributed by The Killid Group and Pajhwok Afghan News)

 
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