The so-called ‘Quetta shura’

The US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W Patterson, has told the Washington Post that “the United States has now turned its focus to Quetta”, claiming that the area has now become a major Taliban base from where “Mullah Omar and his commanders plan and launch cross-border strikes into Afghanistan”. The US-NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A McChrystal, has also raised the matter of the “Quetta shura” as a major command centre for the Taliban bombings and attacks inside Afghanistan in his initial assessment to US President Barack Obama. As if to complete the message, a newspaper in London has hinted that the US could be making ready for drone attacks in Balochistan too.
The military spokesman in Pakistan says there are no Taliban in Balochistan. DG-ISPR Major-General Athar Abbas also says that the names given to Pakistan by Afghanistan under the so-called rubric “Quetta shura” are of Taliban commanders that have mostly been taken out while some are in Afghanistan: “Six to 10 of them have been killed, two are in Afghanistan, and two are insignificant. When people call Mullah Omar the mayor of Quetta it is incorrect”.
Pakistan has always denied the presence of Mullah Umar and his council of warriors in Quetta. The allegations have mostly come from western journalists claiming eyewitness accounts. That of course raises the question of how journalists can be privy to such goings-on even as in the same WP report US officials admit the lack of any credible intelligence on their part. Of course, the area is awash with about 400,000 Afghan Taliban who have been domiciled there since the Soviets walked into that country. These people indulge in smuggling, euphemistically referred to as cross-border trade. Surely, they could not be the “Quetta shura”. The problem is that the city has been a natural “fall-back city” for the Taliban because of its proximity to Kandahar. Even the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, lived in Quetta for many years till his father was killed by Mullah Umar here.
Western accounts regularly allege that Pakistan may not be forthcoming on the Afghan Taliban because it differentiates them from the Pakistani Taliban who make trouble inside Pakistan. This leads to the US “deduction” that since the Afghan Taliban are old clients of Pakistan and are not making trouble here, the “Quetta shura” might enjoy exemption from attack, thus indirectly committing Pakistan to backing the Afghan Taliban in their war against the US-NATO forces in Afghanistan. These accounts also flow from information contained in author Ahmed Rashid’s book Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism is being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (2008) who notes that Quetta was host to the Taliban till 2006.
The fact is that Quetta is not a city that Pakistan can boast of controlling effectively, leave alone the rest of Balochistan. A VIP of the Quetta government can get killed in front of the assembly building in broad daylight. There is trouble in the province because of Baloch separatists who are supported by hostile intelligence agencies. The political consensus even among the elected members of the assembly (and there is a PPP-led government in the province) is that there should be no new cantonments built in the province, there should be no paramilitary force like the Frontier Constabulary and no police.
Balochistan was in fact the first territory in Pakistan to become like Afghanistan with hardly any writ of the state there. And that is over 40 percent of Pakistan’s total territory. But there was a time when Quetta at least was orderly, mainly because of presence there of Pakistan’s prestigious Command and Staff College. Now the army keeps strictly out of the city and the police is regularly targeted by terrorists. Also targeted are the Hazaras, a part of the old Afghan exodus, ghettoised in the city.
Pakistan cannot give the go-ahead to US drones. Even if a joint strategy is drawn up for their use, it is going to be very difficult for Pakistan to allow attacks on cities. Neither will it be easy for Pakistan to clean up Quetta. Every time Pakistan has tried to control the border, Afghanistan has objected to it. We have had to remove the biometric system at Chaman because of such objections. Similarly, Kabul has objected to Pakistan sending back the Afghans to their own country. The US must keep all of these factors into mind before embarking on a policy based on journalistic accounts with obvious slants. g

Interior ministry “modernising” madrassas?
The Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, says he has
met with all the federations of the different religious seminaries and made them agree that a system of “modern education” should be implemented among them and that in return “degrees of these madrassas would be recognised in all the educational institutions”. He had earlier met representatives of Tanzim-ul-Madaris Ahle Sunnat, Wifaq-ul-Madaris Arabia, Wifaq-ul-Madaris Al-Salafia, Wifaq-ul-Madaris Shia and Rabita Al-Madaris.
From what he has revealed, the seminaries have apparently agreed to “modern education” because they want their degrees recognised by the state education boards in the provinces. What he has gained is the consent of the clergy to register themselves with the Inter-Madaris Board. Those without registration will not to be allowed to function (sic!). He said as many as 15,000 Madaris had registered themselves with the government while 5,000 others would soon be registered under the agreement.
The madrassa clergy has been demanding that their top students too be called up by the chief ministers and honoured publicly just like the top students of the secular schools. The new development must have come in the wake of the fate of the suicide-bombers in recent times and the targeting of the dissenting clerics by the Taliban. It was the success of jihad and “foreign funding” that had made the seminaries so rebellious in Pakistan. Is the tide turning?
We don’t know if an interior minister will succeed where the government has failed in the past. What has failed in Pakistan is the state-run school sector. The new Education Policy actually relies heavily on religion and opens the door to 25,000 graduates of the madrassas without “modern education”. So far it appears that the opinion against the private sector “English-medium” schools might help certain sections of society turn away from modern education in the direction of the madrassa. *