Pakistani Taliban

Two UK-based specialists on terrorism in Pakistan use empirical evidence to document and analyze the Pakistani Taliban's (Tehrik-e-Taliban) practice of targeting spaces of public interaction for terrorism intended to suppress expressions of public unity and restrict venues for open discussion. In tracing the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan, the authors review the country's history of state and civil society formation , its relations with Afghanistan, and U.S. and Western policy in the region. The authors present timely information and insights that enhance understanding of the recent surge in terrorist attacks on civilians in Pakistan and its ties to the eastward spread of conflict from neighboring Afghanistan. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F520, F540, O180, Z000. 3 figures, 1 table, 83 references.

In its magazine, Sunnat-e Khola, Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) called upon women to rise because the 'Time of Martyrdom has come'. This research addresses questions surrounding how women are framed in jihadi rhetoric and what roles they play within these frames. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analysed sixty-eight jihadi magazines by Islamic State (ISIS), TTP, Al Qaeda, and Taliban, generating 3,417 codes which were further sorted into relevant contextual categories. These data were analysed through the lenses of social movement framing theory, which highlight the nuances and fine-grain differences among the aforementioned jihadi extremist groups in how women are depicted and how women's agency within these groups is constructed. A significant finding of this paper is that Al Qaeda and ISIS often show opposite trends in how they depict women within diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framings. Furthermore, while the TTP has a higher proclivity to follow similar patterns to ISIS, the Taliban shares more similarities with Al Qaeda than any other group. For example, both ISIS and TTP are more likely than the Taliban and Al Qaeda to encourage women to do hijra and join jihad.

Sam Harris, in his book The Moral Landscape, argues that “science can determine human values.” Against this view, I argue that while secular moral philosophy can certainly help us to determine our values, science—at least as that word is commonly understood—must play a subservient role. To the extent that science can “determine” what we ought to do, it is only by providing us with empirical information, which can then be slotted into a chain of deductive (moral) reasoning. The premises of such reasoning, however, can in no way be derived from the scientific method: they come, instead, from philosophy—and common sense.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are interlocked into numerous connections ranging from geographical proximity, ethnic religious commonalities to historical experiences. But no harmony of interests or shared strategic considerations for the region and the world as well could take place. From the outset Pakistan aspired to have friendly relations with Afghanistan. Since 1947 Afghanistan had been supporting Pakhtun separatists due to its denial of legality of the Durand line.To meet the challenges emanating from Afghan governments’ hostilities, a shift in Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan occurred when in the 1970s, it created links with a number of Afghan Islamists opposition leaders. In 1980s, these links fully matured with a new dimension to force a communist super power Soviet Union for its retreat from the backyard of Pakistan. Since then Pakistan has actively remained engaged with Afghan affairs. This study analyzes various phases and perspectives on Pakistan’s Policy towards a strategically important country, with which Pakistan’s peace and stability are divinely bound due to its geographical vicinity, racial, ethnic and religious intricacies.

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein has been most popularly interpreted as a lesson in the unintended consequences of actions. It is not surprising therefore that Shelly's Frankenstein finds its way into the vocabulary of political scientists describing volatile situations in terms of 'creating Frankensteins one could not control'. In the novel, the monstrosity that comes to be known as 'Frankenstein' is the creation of Victor Frankenstein the doctor, a product of his promethean dreams of demonstrating his control over his natural environment and thus, his mastery in science and by extension his legitimacy as a scientist. The unintended consequences of Victor's experiment become of course an entity (Frankenstein the monster) that comes not only to challenge Victor's assumptions of control, but also comes to destroy all that Victor holds dear. At a critical juncture, not even appeasement suffices as the monster attains a gravitational force that ultimately destroys all.

The US strategy lacked that burning fire to beat the enemy. While US strategists rightly saw China as consolidating Pakistan as its western corridor to Gulf oil and mineral resources of West Asia their support to secessionists in Pakistani Balochistan was weak and instead of strengthening Baloch nationalism has actually weakened Baloch secessionism. Similarly US attempts to destabilize Pakistans Northern Area also lack serious strategic resolve. The US 2008 plan to establish civilian supremacy in Pakistan was also a strategic failure and has destabilized Pakistan rather than stabilizing Pakistans civil military equilibrium. The US strategists lacked the long term vision to create new states which could have stabilized the region which they had destabilized i.e Iraq and Afghanistan.Thus Iraq was shamelessly abandoned to become a haven of terrorism , whereas Iraqs division into Kurd , Sunni and Shia regions would have stabilized it and restrained and checked Iranian ambitions. Similarly US failure to divide Afghanistan will again go a long way to destabilize the whole region with a new Afghan Civil war. US failure to utilize its unique central position in Afghanistan to deal with Iran was also a failure and the US leaves the region greatly destabilized than it was on eve of October 2001. The report card for the US strategists is FAIL and FAIL in both Afghanistan and Iraq while in case of Pakistan again it was a grand failure. The US as it leaves the region in 2014 , leaves it with a feather in its cap of having created greater instability than was the case in 2001.

Pakistan faced severe challenges of violent extremism and terrorism after US invasion of Afghanistan. The successive governments pursued both political and military means to bring an end to this problem but to no avail. The war against terrorism was highly unpopular among the people and it was the main cause of failure to combat terrorism. In 2013, the newly formed government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to give peace a chance after a decision of an All Parties Conference (APC). Consequently, the dialogue process, through the committee members nominated by the government and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), ensued that kindled the hope of peace and stability in the country. However, the process was crippled after a few months and government launched a military operation against TTP and other militant outfits in the country. The paper explores the factors that lead the government to start peace talks with TTP and analyzes the challenges that dialogue process faced and ultimately caused its failure. Finally, it highlights the benefits, particularly the national consensus to combat terrorism that dialogue process produced despite its failure to bring peace in the country.

Pakistan's religious leaders, ulama, have been put under significant strain in relation to how to deal with questions about the political tensions and violence over the past decade flowing from the Taliban's role in the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The effects of this fraught environment on religious authority can be seen through the way that religious leaders have issued contradictory and opaque fatawa (non-binding, but highly influential, legal opinions). This article particularly considers the way that different fatwa-giving religious groups, such as Deobandis, Brevalis, and Ahl-i-Hadith, have dealt with these problems. The violence, which has struck the heart of Pakistan civil society, has led to a confusing array of fatawa from these religious elites. These opinions have sought to categorize violence as either legitimate or to be condemned. This article, therefore, shows how these fatawa and the conflicting positions they took have compromised religious authority in contemporary Pakistan.

The Pakistan military claimed at the beginning of June that it had achieved success in its all-out assault on Taliban insurgents after driving more than two million people from the Swat Valley and other areas of the north west of the country. The assault followed the breakdown of an agreement reached in February between the government and Sufi Mohammad, leader of one of the Islamist groups, for Swat's legal code to be based on Nizam-e-Adl—an attempt to mix constitutional rules with the local interpretation of sharia law. The agreement was meant to bring an end to fighting between the Pakistan army and the Swat Taliban, led by Sufi Muhammad's son in law, Maulana Fazullah. The military onslaught happened after pressure from the US, which worried about the implications an agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban would have for its operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere in Pakistan. But the assault found favour with most liberal and " civil society " opinion, and much of the left, even if this was sometimes mixed with horror at the effects on civilians. Articles in the Pakistani press habitually refer to the " barbarity " of " terrorist " rule in Swat. This feeling was given a sharp edge by a mobile phone video supposedly showing a 17 year old woman receiving 30 whippings for " illicit " relations with a man—although other reports claim that the video was fraudulent and that the woman has denied she was whipped. 1 Whatever the truth of the matter, the video played a role in leading much of the left internationally to take a similar approach to the Pakistani liberals, treating the Pakistan Taliban as if it were as much a foreign force in Swat as the Pakistan army or the US army in Afghanistan. Yet there is strong evidence of a class element to the conflict. The New York Times could report in April, " The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants…the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organised peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops. " The Karachi newspaper The News has carried a debate which, according to one far left contributor, " has pitted those who claim that the situation in Swat is a reflection of longstanding class inequities against those who refute this notion of 'class war'; while the former suggest that the 'Taliban' has generated support amongst the subordinate classes, the latter argue that the 'Taliban' has imposed itself in the area on the basis of brute force ". 2 One of the articles prompting the debate, reprinted in edited form here, came from Sartaj Khan of the International Socialists of Pakistan.