Pakistan Conflict Monitor

Govt Risks IMF Aid Money

Pakistan Risks IMF's $1.2bn, Asia Times Online, 9 March 2010

EXCERPT: "Islamabad's tardiness in naming a finance minister to succeed Shaukat Tarin, who resigned on February 23 to pursue his own business interests, may delay the release of US$1.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), part of a bailout package agree in November 2008. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have failed to agree on the appointment of Tarin's replacement despite a warning from the finance ministry that the absence of a minister with the right credentials could delay the release of the IMF funds, according to Business Recorder. [...]  Islamabad had to turn to the IMF for a $7.6 billion emergency loan package in November 2008 to meet its international obligations amid a widening current account deficit, which reached $15.6 billion that year. The IMF increased its loan to $11.2 billion in 2009. The government's economic situation has since deteriorated. External debts and liabilities are now $55.68 billion, or one-third of GDP, up from $46.16 billion, or 27.6% of GDP, in June 2008, according to the central bank. [...] The government's cash woes are being exacerbated by delays in reimbursements from the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) for expenditures incurred in the country's fight against terrorism. Islamabad has received only $897 million of its $1.4 billion claim to the CSF for 2008 spending. [...] The CSF appears to have become another lever for the Americans to press Pakistan in a relationship fraught with mutual suspicion, said a recent Dawn editorial. [...] Higher spending on security is failing to improve the country's attraction to overseas investors."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Development: Going beyond band-aid solutions [op-ed], Daily Times, 9 March 2010
Pakistan on path of economic recovery: IMF, Daily Times, 18 February 2010

Related posts:
Coalition support fund rejects Pakistan's claims for $400 million, 3 March 2010
IMF approves $1.2 billion in aid, 23 December 2009

The Open City: Social Networks and Violence in Karachi

The Open City: Social Networks and Violence in Karachi [pdf], The London School of Economics // Crisis States Research Centre, March 2010

EXCERPT: "The very features of Pakistani society that are represented so prominently in Karachi - ethnic and sectarian heterogeneity, political fragmentation, economic disparity, demographic pressures, steady erosion of the state's institutional capacity and the footprint of international conflict - are the ones that challenge the stability of the nation state.  From being the national political pulse, the city withdrew into its own violent politics in the 1980s - development that paralleled a wider process of political disarticulation in Pakistan.  This paper provides a perspective on institutional breakdown, using political violence as an index. The analysis of conflict and violence in Karachi presented here focuses on the processes that made Karachi an open city - openness to migration and informality.  The informalisation of public provisioning, which was often aided and abetted by state organisations, was premised on the legitimisation of private non-state arrangements for contract enforcement, and the strengthening of social networks based on kinship, ethnicity and sectarian identity.  Qualitative accounts of the histories of land use in six very different types of localities are interpreted using this approach, which offers an understanding of breakdown as well as recovery and the prospect of political negotiation."

Read the full paper [pdf].

Related articles:
200 lives lost to targeted killings in over one year, DAWN, 8 February 2010
Mix of politics and crime, DAWN, 17 January 2010

Related academic articles and reports:
Urban safety and poverty in Asia and the Pacific [pdf], United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2009
Tactical cities: Negotiating violence in Karachi, Pakistan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology // Department of Comparative Media Studies, 2008. Master's thesis.
Cities, terrorism and urban wars of 21st century [pdf], The London School of Economics // Crisis States Research Centre, February 2007

Related posts:
Karachi grinds to a halt amidst fatal attacks, political turmoil, 8 February 2010
Karachi bomb blasts kill Shiite worshipers, 5 February 2010
Targeted killings, ethnic violence plague Karachi, 25 January 2010
Karachi seen as key to Pakistan's future, 22 January 2010
Anti-terrorism act invoked after 256 target killings, 5 January 2010

Al-Qaeda Arrest Marks Military Shift, US Doubts Remain

Pakistan Delivers But Doubts Remain, Asia Times Online, 8 March 2010

EXCERPT: "Pakistan has once again come up with a big fish for the United States with the arrest in the southern port city of a senior al-Qaeda operative. Although there is some confusion as to the identity of the man, the arrest again underscores the importance of Pakistan in the US's struggle in Afghanistan. [...] By Monday morning, security agencies clarified that the arrested person is indeed Abu Yahya Azzam, who is of Arab origin. The claims could not be independently verified. The regime of former president Pervez Musharraf was adept at producing key al-Qaeda figures at critical junctures with the US. Islamabad, that is, the military, is doing the same now. On the one hand it wants to win US backing for an extension to the term of army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, who is set to retire this year. Kiani is very popular with the US military establishment. The military also wants to ensure that it gets a central role in the end game in Afghanistan, in particular in any negotiations with the Taliban. For its part, Washington wants to keep Pakistan subservient to Washington's policies. [...] Washington will most certainly be delighted with this string of arrests, but it still treats anything that happens in Pakistan with some caution, as it did in Musharraf’s time in the years after Pakistan joined the 'war on terror' in 2001. United States special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke said in an interview with the Financial Times following the arrest of Baradar that he was not convinced that Pakistan had decisively turned against the Afghan Taliban."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Pakistan: American al-Qaida suspect nabbed, The Associated Press, 8 March 2010
Analysis: New dimensions of counter-terrorism, Daily Times, 7 March 2010

Related posts:
Homegrown Taliban ignite shift in military policy, 5 March 2010
Taking on the Taliban, 2 March 2010
Taliban "routed" in raids on border camps, 1 March 2010
Lahore high court blocks extradition, 26 February 2010
The Afghan Taliban's top leaders, 23 February 2010

Homegrown Taliban Ignite Shift in Military Policy

 The New Face of the Pakistani Army, The Guardian, 4 March 2010

EXCERPT: "Pakistan's army, the bedrock of an otherwise fragile state, may not be the most progressive institution. But recent developments suggest that military leaders realise it needs to change, even if key concerns remain. No issue puts Pakistan under the international spotlight more than its relationship with Islamist militancy. [...] At the heart of the debate is Pakistan's army, an at once nebulous yet strangely cohesive collective that has been blamed for playing a double game that has irked foreign allies and domestic hardliners alike. Those fears have led the army to some significant conclusions. At a press conference with foreign journalists last month, the usually media-shy army chief Pervez Kayani noted that a 'Talibanised' society at home or in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan's interests. Those remarks have been backed with action. In the last two years, Pakistan's security forces have at last met a homegrown Taliban insurgency with significant force and skill. Their counterinsurgency capacity has increased from virtual non-existence in 2004, when a new insurgency later to be called the Pakistan Taliban started to force the state to reach humiliating ceasefire agreements in the tribal areas. Now there is a major military presence in each of the country's seven tribal areas, while Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan and Bajaur have been captured. Most significant of all, Pakistan has finally cracked down on the senior Afghan Taliban leadership sheltering in its territory."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Pakistan army: The struggle within [op-ed], The Hindu, 6 March 2010
Taliban call Pak army "impure force", The Times of India, 5 March 2010
Holbrooke "agnostic" over Pak's sudden change of policy against Taliban, One India, 5 March 2010
US sees Pakistan "strategic shift" in war on Taliban, AFP, 26 February 2010

Related posts:
Military "biggest obstacle" to reconciliation with Taliban, 9 February 2010
The Pakistan military's adaptation to counter-insurgency in 2009, 27 January 2010
Govt, military wary of US overtures, 25 January 2010
Pakistan's military balks at Obama's Afghan surge, 20 January 2010
The Pakistan military: Change and continuity, 16 October 2009

Quetta: Between Four Regions and Two Conflicts

Buffer Zone, Colonial Enclave or Urban Hub? Quetta: Between Four Regions and Two Wars [pdf], Crisis States Research Centre // London School of Economics, 28 February 2010

EXCERPT: "Quetta straddles four significant historical regions and plays a role in two major armed conflicts - the war in Afghanistan, and the Baloch nationalist insurgency in Pakistan. The city itself has remained relatively peaceful, though a closer look reveals the ways in which the two wars have encroached upon urban life. Quetta is an international border post as well as an internal buffer zone between major ethnic groups. It is a colonial enclave that was originally populated for the purposes of subduing its expansive tribal hinterland. The city is also an urban hub where possibilities of modern political development have been imagined and pursued, and one which bears potential for the appropriation and disbursal of massive economic rents... The colliding and overlapping interests of the Pakistan central state, its military and political elites, provincial patrons, Baloch and Pashtun ethnic nationalists, settlers, Afghan migrants, and Islamic clerics have shaped Quetta's contributions to state-building in Balochistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Whether it is the border/buffer zone, colonial enclave or urban hub that prevails depends on the balance of power between and alignments within these various elites."

Read the full article [pdf].

Related articles:
Strike paralyzes Balochistan, The Nation, 4 March 2010
Call for rehabilitating Bugti tribesmen, DAWN, 1 March 2010

Related posts:
Security concerns challenge development in Balochistan, 2 March 2010
Following strike, police in Quetta back on duty but without weapons, 1 February 2010
The Quetta Shura Taliban in southern Afghanistan, 12 January 2010
The Taliban Quetta Shura: Fact or fiction?, 18 November 2009

Religion, Politics and Governance in Pakistan

Religion, Politics and Governance in Pakistan [pdf], Lahore University of Management Science // Religions and Development Research Programme, 2009

EXCERPT: "This report presents the findings of a study of Islam in Paksitan that aimed at understanding and evaluating the relationships between Muslim organizations and activity in the formulation of development policy. The question at the heart of the inquiry is whether religion can play the role of a driver for change in terms of pro-poor policy and practice. The study analyses the nature and direction of the latent force and dynamism of the Islamic establishment, especially in its organizational setting, both in government and in opposition. It shows that the state in Pakistan has typically pursued a policy of exploiting the functional uses of Islam as a source of legitimacy in the absence of, or in combination with, a mass mandate. In so doing, it has played on the turf of Islamic groups by seeking to control the production and spread of the religious message, co-opting the ulema and managing religious affairs, ranging from levying Islamic taxes to the management of shrines, policies towards madrasas and a role in sectarian conflict."

Read the full article [pdf].

Related articles:
Do we need more religion? [op-ed], The News International, 25 April 2009
Islamic stronghold goes secular, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 February 2008

Related reports:
Awaiting a breakthrough: Cyclical issues of governance in Pakistan [pdf], Pakistan Security Research Unit, 8 August 2007

Related posts:
Pakistan likely to become more Islamist, anti-US: Report, 12 January 2010
Battered Pakistan turns to clerics, 8 December 2009
2009 Department of State report on religious freedoms in Pakistan, 16 November 2009

Government Averts Judicial Confrontation

Pakistan Government Averts Judicial Confrontation, Reuters India, 17 February 2010

EXCERPT: "Pakistan's government averted a potentially destabilising dispute with the judiciary on Wednesday, withdrawing orders from the president appointing two judges that the Supreme Court had opposed.  Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the decision to withdraw the order, which Zardari issued on Saturday and the Supreme Court blocked hours later, had dispelled political tension. Pakistan has a history of disputes between the executive and the judiciary sparking political turmoil. Gilani, speaking to reporters after meeting Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, said the withdrawal of the orders and their replacement with new ones would boost stability. 'This is in the best interests of Pakistan... and all the political forces in the country and that would strengthen and stabilise the system,' Gilani said."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Executive, judiciary "break the ice", Daily Times, 17 February 2010
Gilani plays down crisis, says every wrong has a remedy, DAWN, 15 February 2010

Related reports:
Destroying legality: Pakistan's crackdown on lawyers and judges, Human Rights Watch via the Human Security Gateway, 20 December 2007

Related posts:
President and top court spar over judges, 16 February 2010
Zardari re-emerges, but likely to face legal battle, 21 January 2010
Amnesty upheaval leading to "slow-burning disarray"?, 22 December 2009
Zardari under pressure to resign following court ruling, 17 December 2009
Is Pakistan’s internal war spinning out of control?, 12 November 2009

Pakistanis Engulfed by Conspiracy Theories

Pakistanis See a Vast US Conspiracy Against Them, TIME, 16 February 2010

EXCERPT: "From the Pakistani army barracks to the roadside chai stands along the Indus River where truckers gulp down cups of muddy tea, anti-Americanism is roiling across the country. It is whipped up by the often sensationalist, ratings-hungry Pakistani TV news talk shows — think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services. Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors)... The conditions for a perfect storm of anti-U.S. feeling have risen, according to Samina Ahmed, director for the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. 'What we're seeing is a nexus between an irresponsible media, the mullahs and the military, which is using anti-Americanism to beat a weak civilian government on the head,' she says."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Radical Islamist leader stirs passion in Pakistan, Toronto Star, 16 February 2010
Fazl sees conspiracies for secular Pakistan, GEO TV, 18 January 2010
Conspiracy theories "stamped in DNA" of Pakistanis, NPR, 24 December 2009
The conspiracy web [op-ed], DAWN, 26 November 2009

Related posts:
Pakistan likely to become more Islamist, anti-US: Report, 12 January 2010
XE/Blackwater's secret war in Pakistan, 24 November 2009
US-induced privatization of security in Pakistan, 20 November 2009

Civil Service Needs Urgent Repair: Report

Reforming Pakistan's Civil Service, International Crisis Group, 16 February 2010

EXCERPT: "If Pakistan’s deteriorating civil service is not urgently repaired, public disillusionment and resentment could be used by the military to justify another spell of authoritarian rule. Reforming Pakistan’s Civil Service, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the structure and functioning of Pakistan’s civil bureaucracy. It identifies critical flaws as well as measures to make it more accountable and able to provide essential public services. Military rule has left behind a demoralised and inefficient bureaucracy that was used to ensure regime survival. Low salaries, insecure tenure, obsolete accountability mechanisms and political interference have spawned widespread corruption and impunity. If the flaws of an unreformed bureaucracy are not urgently addressed, the government risks losing public support. 'Public perception is that the country’s 2.4 million civil servants are widely unresponsive and corrupt, while bureaucratic procedures are cumbersome and exploitative', says Samina Ahmed, Crisis Group’s South Asia Project Director. 'Bureaucratic dysfunction and low capacity undermine governance, providing opportunities to the military to subvert the democratic transition and to extremists to destabilise the state'."

Read the full news release.
Read the full report.

Related articles:
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics launched, DAWN, 16 February 2010
Rule of law and civil service, DAWN, 24 January 2010
Promotion in bureaucracy challenged in Supreme Court, DAWN, 30 September 2009
What's the problem with Pakistan?, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 31 March 2009
The minds of civil servants [op-ed], The News International, 26 February 2009

Related posts:
President and top court spar over judges, 15 February 2010
Public dismayed by crisis of governance, 18 January 2010
The challenges of Pakistani governance, 13 January 2010
Pakistan slips five places in Transparency International corruption index, 18 November 2009
Challenges of Pakistan's governance system, 26 October 2009

President and Top Court Spar Over Judges

Pakistan's President and Top Court Spar Over Judges, The Wall Street Journal, 14 February 2010

EXCERPT: "Political tension heightened in Pakistan after the Supreme Court struck down the appointment of two senior judges by the president. The dispute could further destabilize the Muslim nation amid a critical battle against Islamic militants.  The latest confrontation between President Asif Ali Zardari and the court was triggered late Saturday when the court blocked his order issued hours earlier appointing a new Supreme Court judge and a new chief of the Lahore High Court. The court declared the president's move unconstitutional. Rival groups staged demonstrations supporting and opposing the court ruling in different parts of the country Sunday, an indication of the nation's growing political polarization. Lawyers' bodies have called nationwide protests on Monday to show solidarity with the court. 'We will not allow the government to trample the constitution,' Qazi Anwar, the president of the Pakistan Bar Council, said Sunday. Pakistan's constitution says the president must consult with the Supreme Court over the appointment of judges, and Mr. Zardari ordered the appointments against the recommendation of the chief justice. Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan's information minister, said the president did consult the chief justice before ordering the appointments."

Read the full story.

Related articles:
Pakistani lawyers' strike over court appointment crisis, BBC News, 15 February 2010
Zardari biggest threat to democracy, says Nawaz, Daily Times, 15 February 2010
Resolution against president's appointment of judges, DAWN, 15 February 2010
Pakistan plays down judicial row, Al Jazeera, 14 February 2010
Top judge suspends president's judicial appointment in Pakistan, The New York Times, 13 February 2010

Related posts:
Zardari re-emerges, but likely to face legal battle, 21 January 2010
Amnesty upheaval leading to "slow-burning disarray"?, 22 December 2009
Zardari under pressure to resign following court ruling, 17 December 2009
Pakistan slips five places in Transparency International Corruption Index, 18 November 2009