Taliban, sharia good for Pakistan, but governance will be bad as usual

[bennedose]

The Taliban really should be India's allies. They have killed more Pakistani army men than India since 1999. They mean well for Pakistan. I mean - what is wrong with having the Quran as constitution and sharia as the civil and penal code? I cannot understand why the Pakistani army is ganging up with America and trying to "flatten" the Taliban. Simply because the Taliban want sharia?

I doubt if it will happen, but a Taliban government will be good for Pakistan. The country is full of pious Muslims (except for a few English speaking RAPE class elite who can all emigrate to Australia or Canada. Pakistanis are shocked by the depravity of modernity and believe in solid principles of family where the roles of men and women are defined.

The Pakistani government, whether run by the army or by civilians has been phenomenally bad since 1947. Pakistani social parameters like birth rate, population growth, literacy, nutrition and the war against polio are all heading in the wrong direction. The Pakistani government does not control 60% of its territory. Hardly 2% pay income tax and Pakistan is dependent upon aid to survive. Even electricity needs to come from India and I heard that Indians are stealing the electricity from the water before the water flows to Pakistan. The rotten kafirs. May a pox be upon them. The Pakistan army has been better than the civilians because the civilians only had to run the country - and they failed. The Pakistan army had to fail to run the country and lose many wars - so they had double the job to fail in. And they failed with more honor and dignity than the civilians. But fail is fail, double or single, military or civilian. And they have failed to establish sharia - the most fundamental requirement of Pakistaniyat.

But Pakistan is a big country. The distance from Waziristan to Karachi is 900 km, and running such a big country requires money. At least governments up until now could beg their 3.5 friends, USA, KSA, Japan and Poodlestan for money. But if a Taliban government comes to power, will these 3.5 give them money? Pakistanis are a strong people. Tall, handsome and gay. Quran and sharia are more than enough for a nation to be powerful and I am sure they will figure out new avenues for begging.

Whichever way you look at it, we live in interesting times.

 

[bennedose]

Re: Taliban, sharia good for Pakistan, but governance will be bad as u

Not sure why this guy is complaining - he claims that there is more than one version of sharia


Life under Taliban - DAWN.COM

Life under Taliban
Irfan Husain

Published 2014-02-22 07:26:16

IT would appear that the Taliban are broadcasting on a radio frequency most Pakistanis are not tuned into. And yet their message is loud and clear: our version of the Sharia, or else.

But the rose-tinted vision of an earthly heaven has little to do with reality. As we know from Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban, it is hardly the model of governance most of us would like to live under.

Despite the latest Taliban atrocity — and one merges into the next in a red mist — Nawaz Sharif is bent on sacrificing any number of Pakistanis to make sure Punjab is not targeted.

And sure enough, despite numerous terrorist killings in Karachi, Fata and Peshawar, the prime minister's home base has not been hit recently. When there was an attack in Rawalpindi, the army and air force retaliated quickly, killing dozens of suspected terrorists in North Waziristan.

So, given our current trajectory towards abject surrender, we need to start thinking of what our country would look like when it is ruled by the Taliban. Sure, the process might begin by 'only' conceding the tribal areas, but it would take a moron to think it would stop there. From their secure base, the militants would want to extend their reach deeper into Pakistan, much as they did when they were handed Swat on a platter.

Given the steely determination shown by our foe, and the dithering and lack of spine they have encountered in successive governments, the imposition of the Taliban version of the Sharia is now on the cards. What would this mean in reality?

In a recent interview, the Taliban spokesman has already declared that their candidate for the post of emir of the Islamic Emirate of Pakistan is Maulana Fazlullah. As he showed us when he was running Swat, he has no misguided notions of human rights to stay his hand while dispensing his brand of swift justice. So expect much blood in public squares, and public floggings to entertain us.

The TTP has already indicated its future educational policy by shooting Malala Yousafzai for insisting on her right to study. They have blown up hundreds of schools and colleges across the tribal areas and KP province.

The Taliban have also made it clear that under them, education will only be imparted through madressahs. It doesn't take a genius to figure out where this path will take us.

Interest is anathema to the Taliban, so they will refuse to pay any on the billions of dollars of loans we have taken. Our creditors will then block all further loans, triggering a foreign exchange crisis. Imports will come to a standstill, and industry will grind to a halt.

Our foreign relations will be based on who is a good Muslim and who is not. Thus, the military, now dressed in shalwar kameez with ankles showing, will be told to prepare an invasion of India. As Taliban cheerleaders like Zaid Hamid have been urging, we should aim to plant the banner of Islam on the ramparts of Delhi Fort. Good luck with that.

Women, of course, would be told to stay at home. The millions employed across the country would lose their jobs overnight. They would only be able to emerge in full burqa when accompanies by a mahram, or close male relative. They could not be treated by a male doctor, and any display of skin would be punished with an immediate public flogging by a Talib, much as they did in Afghanistan when it was under their control.

Pakistan is already a pariah in the community of nations, thanks to its tolerance of extremist terrorism, and its export of militancy. Imagine the doors that will be finally and firmly barred to all bearers of green Pakistani passports. And if we think the world will accept the nightmare scenario of our nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the TTP, we need to think again.

For years, there has been endless chatter in our TV studios about the Americans wishing to neutralise our nuclear facilities. This is guaranteed to happen should the Taliban take over. I'm sure this would not be a bloodless campaign, but I don't think the rest of the world will shed too many tears.

The minorities might as well pack their bags and apply for asylum to whichever country will accept them. Non-Muslims, or to be more specific, non-Sunnis, are already treated like second-class citizens.

The Taliban have given the Kalash an ultimatum: convert or we kill you. It's only a matter of time before churches, temples and other places of worship are shut forever.

Me? I'll just grow a beard and order above-the-ankle, Taliban-style shalwars.

[email protected]

 

[kseeker]

Re: Taliban, sharia good for Pakistan, but governance will be bad as u

Here's an article which I came across in the similar context

Good Taliban, Bad Taliban: Pakistan's Double Game and the US War on Terror

Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]

The start of 2013 brought a fresh upsurge of US drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, killing between twenty-three and forty-four people. Since 2008, when President George W. Bush ordered increased strikes on "militants" and associated "infrastructure targets" in these areas, killings have been a constant occurrence. President Barack Obama not only continued this policy, but escalated it dramatically. Of the 360 total strikes documented by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 308 have occurred since Obama took office. It is no surprise, then, that individual drone strikes no longer cause much of a stir in the international press, except when "high-value targets" are reported—or rumored—to be killed. Other killings, if reported at all, mention some unfortunate "military aged males."

The drone strike on 2 January was one of the widely publicized variety because it reportedly killed Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader who had survived three previous attempts on his life, two by CIA drones and one by a suicide bomber. The last of these was attributed by many either to the Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) or Uzbek militants long established in the region. Nazir's men had frequently clashed with both groups.

Nazir, tolerated and supported by the Pakistani military, had acquired the widely reported moniker of a "good" talib, in large part for evicting Uzbek militants from his South Waziristan stronghold and refusing to carry out attacks inside Pakistan. His death by drone is but the latest example of the wildly different priorities of Pakistan and the US.

Pakistan has winnowed the violently anti-state TTP from other militants who do not pose an immediate threat to the state, and has supported groups like the Haqqani Network, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Consequently, many commentators opine that Pakistan is playing a "double game": conducting military operations against groups it considers a threat while protecting its own militant proxies. One can find this ubiquitous phrase dotting mainstream media reports and op-eds on the US-Pakistani relationship. In some instances this line devolves into lurid tales of Pakistan as "an ally from hell."

What undergirds accusations of this double game is the fanciful imperial assumption that Pakistan's policies should be strictly aligned with US objectives in the region, without contemplating the consequences of such an alignment for Pakistan. Also absent from these grievance-laden narratives is a proper accounting of the already close alignment of Pakistani policies with US interests, despite overwhelming domestic opposition.

Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari, bargaining with US vice president Joe Biden in the first days of the Obama administration, said "You know this country is awash with anti-Americanism, and they're going to hate me for being an American stooge. You have to give me economic resources so that I can win over the people." [1] His fear of being seen as an American stooge was not misplaced; if anything, it was too limited. CIA drone strikes and Pakistani military operations in FATA, heavily subsidized by the US and partly undertaken in response to US pressure, have delegitimized the Pakistani state in the eyes of many who see the government fighting America's war.

Nothing has spurred militancy in Pakistan more than the US war in Afghanistan and its subsequent spread to Pakistan. Kashmir-oriented militant groups like Jaish-e-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba all faced internal splits after the Pakistan government's decision to support the US war in Afghanistan. Many members of these groups argue that Pakistan became "a puppet of the Americans" and a legitimate target for jihad. [2] An organization like the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammad (TNSM), which initially emerged in 1994 to redress the legal vacuum in Swat by implementing shari'a, responded to the US invasion of Afghanistan by sending some 7,000 volunteers to fight alongside the Afghan Taliban. The group would later join the TTP's fight against the Pakistani state, clamoring to implement shari'a in all of Pakistan.

Punjab-based sectarian outfits like the Sipah-e-Sahaba-Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi also have grown closer to the TTP. As the Economist belatedly noted: "The [sectarian] violence [in 2012] has been notable not just for its scale, but for what lies beneath it: a growing alliance between established anti-Shia militant groups and the Pakistani Taliban, Sunni extremists who have spun out of the army's control, allied with al-Qaeda, and are determined to attack the Pakistani state." [3] Ahmed Rashid also wrote of Punjabi militants' growing conviction that "the Pakistan Army was the lackey of the Americans and an enemy of Islam, so now God ordained them to overthrow Pakistan's state through an Islamic revolution." [4]

The TTP itself was only formally established in late 2007 as a result of the Afghanistan war's fallout in FATA. A report published by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center in 2011 acknowledges that US drone warfare and Pakistani military operations inside the tribal areas played "central roles" in the creation of TTP and its violence against targets in Pakistan.

Those stubbornly fixated on narratives of Pakistan's double game conveniently elide the devastating effects the US war in Afghanistan has had on Pakistan, quite separately from Pakistan's support of militant groups. To be sure, Pakistan's strategy of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, its policy of using militant groups to wage a proxy war in Kashmir, and the nexus of political parties and sectarian groups in the country all remain serious issues. But those who believe or suggest that the solution lies in further alignment of Pakistani policies to US interests are blind or ignorant to all relevant history. In fact, the first step toward any sustainable solution to the problem of militancy in Pakistan must involve a complete disavowal of the US "war on terror."

It is in this context that the inveterate discussion of Pakistan's "double game" appears to be what it really is: a complaint that Pakistani policies are insufficiently subordinated to US interests. The killing of Maulvi Nazir in a drone strike, regardless of any consideration about the potential consequences in Pakistan, is in keeping with past US policies—ostensibly aimed at eliminating militants—that have exacerbated the threat of militancy in the country. It is all the more ironic given the now desperate US search for its own "good" Taliban in Afghanistan in order to restart peace talks before its much vaunted "withdrawal" in 2014—one that may still leave 6,000 to 20,000 US troops in the country. Pakistanis, on the other hand, would be left to cope with the aftermath of America's long war.

______________________________

[1] Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2010), 63.

[2] Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 110-112, 122-123, 177-179. Jason Burke, The 9/11 Wars (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2011), 395-400

[3] Imtiaz Gul, The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan's Lawless Frontier (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009), 38-9, 126.

[4] Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2012), 52-3.