KARACHI: As international leaders gather in Chicago to discuss the future of their mission in Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents have dropped a clear hint that they are ready for a negotiated settlement of the decade-long war.

But at the same time, they have asked Nato states to pull out from the country or else “they will be erased along with their terror”.

“The Islamic Emirate has left all military and political doors open. It wants to secure the rights of the Afghan nation through all possible ways,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement emailed to The Express Tribune on Sunday.

The statement denounced the United States for dilly-dallying on its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and accused Washington of insincerity in its efforts for peace dialogue.

“The Islamic Emirate views the invaders’ claims of finding a political solution as meaningless until they come out of their fluctuating unstable state,” he added.

In March, the Taliban called off talks with US officials in Qatar after accusing the US of reneging on its promises’. Though the Taliban did not list the ‘promises’, media reports claimed that the Taliban had demanded the release of some of their senior cadres from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

The Taliban statement also welcomed as ‘grounded on realities’ the newly elected French President Francois Hollande’s announcment that his country would pull out its troops from Afghanistan by the year-end. It called upon other Nato states to follow suit and stop serving ‘America’s political interests’ in Afghanistan.

The statement cited a survey conducted in April by CBS News and New York Times which shows that 69% of Americans want their troops out of Afghanistan. It pointed out that war fatigue was on the rise in Nato states.

The United States and its allies had invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 terror attacks after the ultra-orthodox Taliban regime refused to hand over al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in connection with the attacks.

The Taliban statement, citing the Central Intelligence Agency, said that all but at least 50 al Qaeda operatives have fled Afghanistan. Still, the US is reluctant to pull out its troops from the country, which shows that they wanted to colonise it, it added.

Earlier this month, US President barack Obama signed a strategic partnership agreement with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai – which by Taliban interpretation is permission for permanent US military presence in Afghanistan. The statement also held out an assurance to the international community that they would not allow their soil to be used by anyone as a springboard for terror attacks anywhere in the world.

“The Islamic Emirate once again declares that it holds no agenda of harming anyone nor will it let anyone harm other countries from the soil of Afghanistan,” it added.

The statement also accused Nato forces of blatant rights violations, killing innocent civilians in night raids and indiscriminate bombing raids, torturing Afghan prisoners in secret cells at their military bases, and raising mercenaries to malign the Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2012.

KARACHI: In his last interview to any Pakistani media outlet before his death, the slain Afghan peace negotiator Maulvi Arsala Rahmani exuded optimism over the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the Afghan imbroglio.

“We, in our individual capacity and collectively, have opened up new channels of communication with some senior Taliban leaders,” Rahmani had told The Express Tribune in a telephone interview just over a week ago.

“I expect a positive outcome of these new contacts,” the soft-spoken Rahmani said while refusing to divulge details. Between 1996 and 2001 Rahmani served as the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister but defected to Hamid Karzai after the Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces in 2001.

Last month the Taliban called off peace negotiations with US officials in the Arabian Gulf state of Qatar after accusing the United States of not “fulfilling its promises”.

For the better part of the negotiations process, the Taliban had denied contacts with the Afghan high peace council, saying they would not talk to the ‘powerless’ negotiators of the ‘puppet president’.

“We will have to win over the Taliban, they’re sons of the soil, we cannot simply ignore them,” said Rabbani, who had strong contacts with the Taliban despite his defection. “We have had enough bloodshed – war is not a solution to our problems,” he said.

The Express Tribune had spoken to Rahmani several times for his views on the Afghan peace process. Rahmani believed that all of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan, must be taken on board in finding a solution to the Afghan problem. “Undeniably, Pakistan can play an important role in restoring peace in Afghanistan,” he had said.

The slain peacemaker claimed that some Muslim states, especially wealthy sheikhs from Arabian countries, were financing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. “Apart from affluent Arab sheikhs, narco-dollars, extortion from Nato contractors and kidnapping for ransom are other sources of funding for the Taliban,” he said. He believed that unlike the ‘jihad’ against Soviet Red Army, the Taliban insurgency was spread over the entire country. “In south, in east and even in north, they’re fighting on several fronts simultaneously. And for this they need more money and men,” he said, hinting that the Taliban have an unending source of funding and could fight a long war.

Rahmani had also sought to quash the impression that the Taliban insurgency was driven by the country’s Pashtun population only. “Though the Taliban are overwhelmingly Pashtun, they also have fighters from other ethnic groups, like Uzbeks, Tajiks and even Hazaras,” he said.

Analysts believe that since Rahmani had a soft corner for the Taliban, it’s unlikely that the ultraorthodox militia could have killed the septuagenarian peace interlocutor.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2012.

I was too young to understand the intricacies of his stories but I enjoyed what I read and craved for more. Back then, Manto wasn’t available in the small town of Haripur where I lived. A friend introduced me to a schoolteacher, a bibliophile who had a modest collection of Manto in his personal library.

“Why do you want to read Manto, he’s a ribald, lewd writer,” he quipped. “This is exactly why I want to read him,” I replied, almost impulsively.  He smiled and agreed to lend me Manto’s books. Thus began my journey to explore Manto. The more I read, the deeper my love for him became.

Manto was a nonconformist, an unorthodox and ruthlessly bold writer. He didn’t believe in the so-called literary norms of ‘decency’ and ‘civility’ set by didactic writers of his time. For him, truth is truth. No matter how bitter and despicable the reality, Manto never dilutes the truth. Like a muckraker, he pokes his nose into the muck, rakes it, and then holds it up to the reader – in all its profound ugliness and twisted beauty. “If you don’t know your society, read my stories. If you find a defect, it’s the defect of your society, not my stories,” he says.

Manto wrote on socially taboo topics like sex, incest and prostitution, which earned him the wrath of contemporary traditionalists, conservatives and even progressives. For some of his ‘lewd’ and ‘obscene’ stories he had to face lawsuits – among them were great stories such as Thanda Gosht, Bu, Khol Do, Dhuan and Kali Shalwar.

But it is to miss the point to simply say that Manto wrote about sex. He wrote about the sexual debauchery of men and the sexual exploitation of women; about our patriarchal society where women are often treated as a ‘sex toy’, not a human being. Unlike many, I don’t compare Manto with DH Lawrence, because Manto is not lustful, even though he explicitly writes about the female anatomy. He’s more like Guy de Maupassant, who sees the throbbing heart, not the sensuous body, of the prostitute.

Manto blames the ‘diseased mind’ for reading ‘ribaldry’ into his stories. If a sex maniac derives morbid gratification from Venus De Milo, should we blame Alexandros of Antioch for chiselling such a ‘graphic’ sculpture? No, certainly not.

For contemporary literary pundits, Manto was also unacceptable because he wrote ‘indecent’ language. “They [the critics] criticise me when my characters verbally abuse one another – but why don’t they criticise their society instead where hundreds of thousands of profanities are hurled on the streets, every day,” he wonders.

I also love Manto because he was honest. He was an unflinchingly true writer who believed in calling a spade a spade. Sketch-writing was introduced as a genre in Urdu literature much earlier, but Manto created his own peculiar tell-all style. He didn’t write only the good qualities of his characters. “In my bathroom, everyone is naked. I don’t clothe them because it’s the tailor’s job,” he writes.

Manto’s sketches, which he initially wrote for the Lahore-based Daily Afaq newspaper, were later collected and published as Ganjay Farishtay. Manto wasn’t a hypocrite. He minced no words while writing about his dead friends. “I curse a thousand times a so-called civilised society where a man’s character is cleansed of all its ills and tagged as ‘May-God-Bless Him’,” Manto wrote in Ganjay Farishtay. Manto wrote sketches of filmstars Ashok Kumar, Shyam, Noor Jahan, literary figures such as Meera Ji, Agha Hashar and Ismat Chughtai and some politicians. “I have no camera that could have washed smallpox marks off the face of Agha Hashar or change obscenities uttered by him in his flowery style.”

Before embarking on his literary career, Manto had read Russian, French and English masters like Chekhov, Gorky, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant and Oscar Wilde and translated some of their works into Urdu. Surprisingly enough, despite his love for revolutionaries, Manto was not a Marxist ideologue. He was a humanist who was pained to see social injustices, economic disparities and exploitation of the underprivileged. He hated the obscurantist clergy and parasitic elites alike.

Although Manto had migrated to Pakistan after 1947, he couldn’t understand the rationale of partitioning a land along religious lines. His stories of bloodshed and cross-border migration, such as Teetwaal Ka Kutta and Toba Tek Singh, made him unpopular with ‘patriotic’ Pakistanis. To this day he remains a shadowy figure on the official literary lists of Pakistan: our school curricula, our national awards, our drawing room conversations.

Manto was acknowledged as a creative genius even by his detractors. And he knew this, which is perhaps why he wanted these words to mark his grave: “Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short story writing. Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is the greater short story writer: he or God.”

Manto’s family feared his self-written epitaph would attract the unwanted attention of the ignorantly religious, so on his grave one finds a Ghalib couplet. He faced censorship all his life and even now has chunks of his stories taken out by the authorities. But as we mark his centenary year, I can say this with the instant certainty I felt as a young man in Haripur: the words and stories of Saadat Hasan Manto will outlive us all.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2012.

For years, I thought I was eternally condemned to the graveyard shift for journalists.

My primary mission during this blacker-than-night shift was to help put together the outer and national pages and monitor fresh news developments until the edition was put to bed.

In all my years in journalism, I worked the graveyard shift, except for my unsuccessful escapades at broadcast. My longest stint at The News, six-plus years, was a killer. Literally.

Think of six-plus years in a perennially understaffed newsroom where greying reticent copyeditors did nothing, but slice off streams of verbiage. A sombre, cheerless, lifeless newsroom – as if caught in a time warp. It sapped my energy, my zest for life. Still I never thought of jumping ship, not because there were no options. In fact, I became addicted to that life.

But then the turning-point came: Migraine – a severe one! My neurosurgeon advised me to de-stress and change my lifestyle. I said, “I can’t.” And came his blunt reply, “Then quit the job, or else it’ll get worse.”

Frightened at the prospect, I resigned and gratefully accepted a standing offer from DawnNews, and found some respite – an exhilarating, enlivening, and throbbing-with-life newsroom – in sharp contrast to my previous experience. And no graveyard shift, at least not for me.

I thought my future was broadcast journalism, that too at DawnNews. But despite oodles of enthusiasm, commitment and hard work, the channel couldn’t take off. Perhaps, a 24/7 news channel, catering to a microscopic Anglophone viewership wasn’t feasible after all.

Subsequently I accepted a lucrative offer from Samaa TV. It didn’t take me long to realise my mistake. My six-month stint at Samaa was, in one word, a nightmare.

Then one day I got a phone call – a call that landed me in print journalism again. I joined The Express Tribune while it was still in the embryonic stage. On my first day, what took me by surprise was a young, inexperienced team, though a couple of grey heads were there. Even the National Desk, the lead desk of a newspaper, the one that demands the most commitment and competence, was staffed by under-30s.

Frankly, I was sceptical. And I was wrong.

The team was young and inexperienced, but every member of it was energetic, enterprising and ambitious.

And The Express Tribune did take off. Today, ET is two years old. And in a short span, it has emerged as an iconoclast, shattering many myths, proving many critics wrong, setting new trends, and creating a niche for itself. It’s a waft of fresh air in Pakistan’s orthodox English journalism.

For me, working here is fun – more so, because there is no ‘graveyard shift’ at The Express Tribune. And my head feels so much better now.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2012.

KARACHI: Just as political efforts to stabilise Afghanistan gather pace, the Quetta-based Taliban have started to show signs of flexibility towards dialogue, according to the head of a provincial Afghan peace council.

“From what I’ve heard from Afghan tribal elders who have met former Taliban commanders ‘in their individual capacity’, they’re willing to talk peace,” said Haji Ata Muhammad Ahmadi, chairman of the provincial peace council in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

“They (Taliban) are also fed up with fighting – nobody can fight for ever,” Ahmadi told The Express Tribune by phone from Kandahar. However, he clarified that the Kandahar peace council, in its official capacity, hasn’t sent any delegation to engage the Quetta Shura in talks. “But yes, some Afghan tribal elders have individually travelled to Quetta and met with former Taliban commanders,” Ahmadi said.

Afghan and US officials have long believed that the Taliban hierarchy – known as the Quetta Shura – is based in Quetta from where it is directing the insurgency in Afghanistan. Pakistan, however, denies the existence of the shura.

Though Ahmadi’s senior colleague in Kabul sought to play down the Kandahar initiative, he shared Ahmadi’s optimism. “Let’s not play up this development,” said Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, senior member of the Afghan High Peace Council.

“But yes, I’m hopeful about a final political settlement of the Afghan war,” he told The Express Tribune by phone. “The Taliban will have to sit across the table with Afghans to resolve this issue.”

Last week foreign media reported Afghan officials had been meeting for “some time” with mid-level Taliban commanders in Quetta. “In the last 10 days, our peace council delegation has gone to Quetta three times in twos and threes,” Atta Muhammad was quoted as saying on
Feb 22.

The Taliban have rejected the report.

Some Afghan factions, especially those who were part of the Northern Alliance, have time and again voiced concerns over giving the Taliban any role in a post-war Afghanistan.

But Ahmadi claimed that nobody was opposed to peace talks with the Taliban. “They’re sons of the Afghan soil. They cannot be ignored in the final settlement,” he said.

Ahmadi also welcomed Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent appeal to Afghan insurgent groups to shun violence and work for stabilising their war-torn country. “We welcome this move. And we expect Pakistan will match its words with deeds,” Ahmadi said.

“Pakistan has always helped Afghanistan in its hour of need. Our destinies are interlinked. We expect Pakistan will also play its role in stabilising Afghanistan,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 29^th, 2012.

The Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) – the group led by former warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar – welcomed the initiative and even offered to lend its support to what it said was a “vindication of its principled stand”.

“We’ve been saying all along that all stakeholders in the Afghan imbroglio should sit together, discuss the issue threadbare, and come up with a viable solution without foreign interference,” the group’s political whip Dr Ghairat Baheer told The Express Tribune.

Asked if the Hizb-e-Islami would declare a ceasefire following the Pakistan leader’s appeal, Baheer said, “Once the Afghans agree on a full package, a ceasefire will automatically come into force.”

However, he cautioned that an intra-Afghan dialogue would not take place until the US-led Nato forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

Unless peace returns to Afghanistan, the Hizb leader said, it is not possible to guarantee peace in Pakistan. “The interests of Pakistan and Afghanistan are inter-woven. Our destiny is common,” he added.

The Taliban, on the other hand, reacted cautiously to the move. Their spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told The Express Tribune that the Taliban leadership would discuss the matter and issue a formal reaction.

Afghan Ambassador Omar Daudzai said the Pakistani leader’s move was ‘positive’ but he challenged him to take ‘practical steps’.

“Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and President Hamid Karzai had agreed in their recent telephone conversation to launch such appeals,” Daudzai told The Express Tribune by phone from Kabul.

“We hope that all sides in Afghanistan will come up with a positive response to the Pakistani prime minister’s appeal,” he added.

The Afghan High Peace Council – a body formed by President Karzai to talk to the Taliban – has also welcomed the move. Echoing Daudzai’s remarks, a senior member of the peace council said, “This is a positive step, but Pakistan should take practical steps to help resolve the Afghan crisis.”

“This is important because it’s the first time an elected prime minister of Pakistan has come out to make such an appeal,” Maulvi Arsala Rahmani told The Express Tribune by phone from Kabul.

Rahmani, who was the education minister in the Taliban regime before 2001, believes that Pakistan could make the Taliban come to the negotiating table. “Personally, I believe the Qatar initiative was not possible without Pakistan’s help,” Rahmani said.

In December last year, the Taliban confirmed that it had decided to open a liaison office in the Qatari capital of Doha to explore the possibility of talks with the Americans.

However, Rahmani said that the Qatar talks were not for the final settlement of the Afghan issue. “For a political settlement of the Afghan issue, the Taliban would have to talk to the Afghans,” he said.

Rahmani was upbeat about the Taliban entering the intra-Afghan dialogue at some stage. “They (the Taliban) are Afghans. And in their midst, they have Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras and Pashtuns. They’re sons of the soil. They would have to sit across the table with their countrymen to resolve this issue,” he added.

Afghan analysts say Gilani’s appeal is a “welcome shift” in Pakistan’s policy. “It appears that Islamabad has finally realised the futility of its flawed Afghan policy,” Kamal Sadaat, a Kabul-based security analyst, told The Express Tribune by phone.

“Without a stable Afghanistan, you cannot have peace in Pakistan,” Sadat said. “And the policy of supporting one particular armed group in Afghanistan will not benefit Pakistan.”

(Read: The many faces of Afghan peace)

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th, 2012.

Our cabbie pulled up at the mouth of Bab-e-Khyber — the much photographed gateway to the Khyber Agency — which is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan. A small bazaar is abuzz with activity, with vendors hawking their wares, creaking lorries lumbering past and tribesmen strolling about. Some are shopping, while most are just loitering.

A journalist friend, Amirzada — himself an Afridi tribesman from Khyber agency’s Jamrud subdivision — gets down and walks briskly towards a heavily-fortified checkpoint of the Khyber Khasadar Force to seek official permission for the risky 30-kilometre drive through the Khyber Pass. Tall, sturdy recruits of the tribal police unit dressed in dark-grey uniforms with Kalashnikov assault rifles slung on their shoulders, give our car the once over before letting us pass.

With the Bab-e-Khyber looming in the background I disembark quickly, eager to try my hand at photography. Since my childhood I have been seeing this monument, touted as a symbol of the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa), on television but this is the first time I’ve ever actually laid eyes upon it.

The Bab-e-Khyber, or the Khyber Gate, was built in 1964 at the mouth of the fabled Khyber Pass, where the Jamrud Fort is also located. The pass itself is a witness to history, and has seen countless invaders and great warriors enter the rich lands of subcontinent to seek their fortunes and build empires. A notable few, like Chandragupta Maurya have also gone the other way, into Afghanistan.

The Pass itself is 16 kilometres north of Peshawar, towards the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Starting from the foothills of the Suleiman Range at Jamrud, it gradually rises to an elevation of 1,066 metres above sea level.

Driving through the Khyber Pass is a test of one’s motoring skills. Your car literally needs to have lizard’s feet to climb the steep, blackened mountains.

Since Pakistani law does not apply in the tribal regions, roadside signboards appear every few kilometres, warning motorists against straying off the main road called the Pak-Afghan Highway. The message is clear: stray off the straight and narrow at your own risk.

As soon as we enter Jamrud, Amirzada points to a double-storeyed mansion by the roadside. “This is the house of local politician Haji Iqtidar Shah,” he says while gesturing towards the structure. An Afridi tribesman like Amirzada himself, Shah had defied the Lashkar-i-Islam, a powerful extremist group based in the neighbouring Bara subdivision, thus inviting their wrath.

“In 2008, Lashkar fighters attacked the house with heavy weapons,” recalls Amirzada. “I was covering the incident from the rooftop of my office building in the Karkhano Market. The fighting continued the whole night, and at dawn, paramilitary troops finally came to the rescue of Shah and his embattled men.”

Ever since, the Lashkar has mounted sporadic attacks on Shah and his men to avenge their humiliation. Yet Shah still remains defiant.

We quickly drive past Shah’s abode and our car sputters along on the narrow, craggy road as rugged scenery glides past the window. Occasionally the car is forced to pull up at the side of the road to allow another vehicle coming from the opposite direction to pass, as the road is too narrow to allow two cars to pass simultaneously.  I spot paramilitary checkpoints perched atop every mountain, menacingly overlooking the highway. The blistering June sun reddens the dark-grey rocks and, every now and then, peeps through the crevices.

Suddenly, I feel a visible change in the weather and scenery. On the right side of the highway, a stream swishes past, squeezing its way through the mountains. A group of young picnickers is swimming in the water which appears is cool and refreshing. I look at Amirzada quizzically. “We’ve entered Landikotal, the third subdivision of the Khyber agency,” he explains. “While the rest of Khyber agency sizzles in summer, the weather in Landikotal remains pleasant.” Clearly, the picknickers would agree if we were to stop and ask them.

After driving a few kilometres, Amirzada points to a sprawling fort-like mansion. “This is the palace of international drug baron Haji Ayub Afridi,” he tells me in hushed tones. To me, the 100-room palace looks like it would be better placed in ‘A Thousand and One Nights’. Only this isn’t the Baghdad of Harun-Al Rashid but Landikotal.

Afridi was a key player in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In collaboration with the CIA, he funnelled hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless weapons to the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Red Army.

But trafficking heroin was his real job, and Afridi used his new-found influence to move Afghan opium to secret laboratories in the tribal regions. Nor was he content to remain underground. In 1990, he was elected as a member of the National Assembly, but was subsequently arrested several times and even served a jail term in the United States.

In March 2006, the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) seized Afridi’s palace, along with his other properties, following an injunction from the Supreme Court.  A signboard at the main entrance to the palace reads: “Visitors not allowed.” The cabbie slows down to allow me to take snapshots of the mansion which, Amirzada says, used to attract visitors in droves when it was open to the public. “You know, the palace has a mini-zoo and the cutlery in its kitchen is made of gold,” he tells me. It seems crime does in fact pay, if only for a while.

As we move past the grandiose manor, Amirzada draws my attention to a small roadside mosque shaded by huge trees. “This is Ali Masjid,” says Amirzada “Legends have it that Hazrat Ali (RA), the fourth caliph and cousin of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had built this mosque when he visited this place”. He also shows me a huge boulder precariously suspended on a cliff, which carries the marks of a hand believed to be that of Hazrat Ali (RA) himself. The area, which is the narrowest point of the Khyber Pass, has been named after the mosque as Ali Masjid.

Overlooking the mosque is Ali Masjid Fort, which offers a panoramic view of this strategic sector of the pass. A small cemetery is also situated nearby where British soldiers, who fell in the battle of Ali Masjid during the Second Anglo-Afghan war, are buried. A true graveyard of Empires, I think to myself as we drive on.

Between Ali Masjid and Landikotal, there is a roadside mound with a Buddhist stupa on top. Called the Sphola stupa, the structure dates back to the 2nd to the 5th century AD, during the reign of the Kushan dynasty. A newly constructed paramilitary checkpoint blocks the façade of the stupa, which consists of a dome resting on a three-tiered square base. The mound on which the stupa stands, is riddled with small caves — an indication that it has been dug into repeatedly. “Some 20 to 25 years ago, local tribesmen dug these caves in the hope of finding riches they believed were buried underneath,” Amirzada explains. “And they found a treasure trove of Buddha figurines, clay-made utensils and gold and copper coins.”

The political authorities intervened to get the excavation stopped, but a decade later, another man decided to try his luck. “A local driver sold his truck, bought equipment and started digging the mound,” Amirzada says as he ties in vain to recall the man’s name. “He spent all the money on excavation and became bankrupt — but found nothing,” the journalist adds with a snigger. “Ever since then, nobody has dared to try his luck.”

At several places, I spotted railway tracks, bridges and tunnels— some crumbled, others crumbling. This is what is left of the colonial-era Khyber Steam Safari — the dream train journey from Jamrud to Landikotal. Pulled by two vintage steam locomotives built in the 1920s, the train took passengers through the breathtaking mountainous terrain. The 42-kilometre route consisted of 34 tunnels and 92 bridges and culverts.

The train stopped chugging in 2005 and the route that was once described as ‘a journey into time and history’ is now, for lack of a better term, history. “The railway authorities cite different reasons for the suspension of the service,” quips Amirzada. “If one is to believe them, the service was suspended after the apocalyptic earthquake of 2005 destroyed most of the track.”

At a sharp bend of the road, a military convoy appears out of nowhere and troops brandishing LMGs scream at us to halt. Amirzada almost robotically elbows the driver to stop. “They’ve every reason to be cautious. They’ve been attacked by militants several times in the region,” he says. Our car pulls up and so do a large number of trucks, lorries and cars behind us. We move forward after the convoy disappears at another bend of the road.

Soon I spot an imposing red-brick building, partly camouflaged by trees and vegetation. Before I ask about it, Amirzada quickly says, “This is Shagai Fort. It was built in the 1920s by the British but now it’s manned by our military and paramilitary troops.”

The fort also served as headquarters for the Khyber Rifles — the traditional guardians of the Khyber Pass. “Usually, trilateral flag meetings among Pakistan, Nato and Afghan military officials are held in this fort,” Amirzada adds.

While driving past the Ali Masjid village, Amirzada points to warehouses on the periphery and says, “Smuggled goods are stored here before they are taken to the Karkhano Market in Peshawar.”

Under an agreement, Pakistan allows transit to goods shipped from the Karachi seaport to Afghanistan. But most consignments never reach their destination. They are smuggled back to Pakistan by Khyber Agency-based Pakistani and Afghan smugglers, causing billions of rupees of losses in evaded import duties.

“The smugglers hire local tribesmen and young Afghan children to piggyback the goods to the Karkhano Market,” Amirzada explains. “The children get Rs200 to Rs400 for each shipment.”

In the beginning of the Landikotal bazaar, my companion shows me a small roadside mosque. “Tamachay Mullah, the head of the Abdullah Azaam Brigade — which is responsible for attacking Nato supplies en route to Afghanistan — was once a prayer leader here,” he says. Tamachay Mullah is a commander of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan for Khyber agency. He also shows me an abandoned roadside terminal. “Here Nato supply vehicles used to park — but some time back Tamachay Mullah’s men came here in the dead of the night and slew the three guards. It has been abandoned ever since.”

The Landikotal Bazaar is the last major town before the Pak-Afghan border at Torkham. Though a fairly big bazaar, there’s no clamour or cacophony here. The serenity is only occasionally broken by honking vehicles lumbering towards Torkham.

A group of local journalists, with whom Amirzada had coordinated before we left Peshawar, were waiting for us at the Landikotal press club. It’s a modest two-room facility on the first floor of a dingy building where local journalists socialise. The land may be inhospitable, but the people are anything but. They treated me a sumptuous lunch — consisting of Landikotal’s famous chicken karahi and naan — followed by dessert and tea.

We sat down to discuss the situation in the tribal areas in general, and the Khyber agency in particular. Soon more journalists joined in, but despite their enthusiasm, they were reluctant to speak freely on militancy. Their reluctance was understandable — given the threats they’re facing from militants and the number of their colleagues who have been killed.

At dusk we set about our journey back to Peshawar.  The 30-kilometre drive in the Khyber Pass, a silent witness to countless events in the history of this region, is an unforgettable experience. Driving in the lap of lofty, rugged mountains, I felt dwarfed not only by the towering mountains, but also by the memory of those near-legendary figures who trod these paths in centuries past. For a day, I was lucky enough to walk in their footsteps.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 22^nd, 2012.

A Taliban confirmation that they’re ready to open a “liaison office” overseas, possibly in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, has boosted the prospects of a negotiated settlement to end the bloodletting in Afghanistan. But who will the Taliban be talking to, if at all — the Afghans or the Americans? A careful study of the December 3 statement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the shadowy Taliban government, revealed that they accept only two “principal parties” to the conflict: the Taliban and the United States and its Western allies. Essentially, this means that the insurgents don’t accept the administration of President Hamid Karzai as being party to the conflict and want to bypass Kabul and pursue direct dialogue with the US because they are, “per se, not America’s enemy”.

This became abundantly clear from another ‘policy-post’ on the Taliban’s Voice of Jihad website, titled “Karzai’s un-national and pro-warlords acts”. In the penultimate part of the long anti-Karzai rant, the author says: “The masquerading Karazai and his coterie of warlords and their nefarious anti-state plans have been unmasked. Now, it’s difficult for him to dupe the Afghans and the international community with his hackneyed tactics. And this renders him disqualified to play any role, whatsoever, in resolving the Afghan conflict.”

Though the contours of a possible peace dialogue haven’t shaped up yet, one thing is clear: The Karzai administration wasn’t privy to the backchannel meetings that led to the Taliban announcement. When Karzai got wind of this parallel secretive plan, it was already too late. Notwithstanding he tried, unsuccessfully though, to assert his authority by insisting that a Taliban ‘political office’ be set up in Saudi Arabia or Turkey, if not Kabul. However, he relented, unwillingly though. The “Qatar address” for the Taliban, he said, is not a bad idea as long as the Afghans drive the consequential peace process. But, it appears as though his call went unheeded. And this is why his reaction to the Taliban’s announcement was ambiguous. He gave his blessings to the initiative but stopped short of disowning it: “We support the proposed talks between the US and the insurgents” to stop the war.

Notwithstanding this scepticism in Kabul, it is a significant step for the American-led coalition, which wants a negotiated settlement to a long-drawn, unpopular and costly war. They’re unlikely to squander this opportunity in favour of their increasingly unpopular protégé in Kabul. Until December 2, the Taliban were trumpeting victory and reviled the idea of pursuing peace talks with “foreign boots still on their soil”. If they aren’t using negotiation as a ruse, which I’m sure they aren’t, then what made the Taliban change their mind will transpire once the talks formally begin. For now, they’re reluctant to say more than what their December 3 statement contains.

Whatever the fate of this initiative or outcome of resulting talks, the Taliban have apparently outsmarted and outmanoeuvred the Hamid Karzai administration by engaging the US in direct dialogue. Clearly, this is a setback for Mr Karzai and his allies who wanted to be in the driving seat of any peace process in Afghanistan. How much of a setback it turns out to be, is something that time will only tell.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2012.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name that the militia prefers to be identified by, confirmed on Tuesday that it has reached an ‘initial agreement’ to open a ‘political office’ overseas, possibly in the Gulf state of Qatar, for peace dialogue.

“We’re now prepared to have a political office outside (Afghanistan) for negotiations with the Afghans (read: Afghan government). And as part of this we have reached an initial agreement with relevant sides, including Qatar,” said Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid in a Pashto-language statement emailed to The Express Tribune on Tuesday.

It’s the first time the militia, which was ousted from power in 2001, has raised the prospect of a negotiated settlement to the decade-long insurgency in Afghanistan. But Mujahid sought to downplay the shift in their policy vis-à-vis peace talks.

“We’ve been consistently saying that the United States will never achieve its goal of militarily subjugating the Afghans,” he said and added that the ‘Islamic Emirate’ believes in a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Though the statement didn’t say that US officials would also be part of peace talks, it at least confirmed the “United States and its Western allies as a party in the Afghan conflict.” The drawdown of foreign forces is already under way and Western nations plan to pull out all their troops from Afghanistan by 2014. Mujahid insisted that the Afghan nation should be allowed to form an Islamic state of their own choosing – a ‘state that doesn’t harm anyone.’

He also called for the release of their prisoners from an infamous US detention centre. “The Islamic Emirate has also asked for the release of its prisoners from Guantanamo Bay,” he said.

Media reports said earlier that the US is considering the transfer of several high-profile Taliban prisoners into the Afghan government custody.

The Taliban statement rejected some media reports that negotiations with the US had begun, but The Express Tribune has learnt that discussions have been ongoing in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Tayyeb Agha, a close aide to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, and some senior Taliban leaders are said to be leading these talks which also involve the Haqqani network.

Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesperson for Afghan spy agency, National Directorate of Security, refused to comment on the latest development saying that only the Afghan foreign ministry was authorised to speak on the matter.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Janan Masozai wasn’t available for comment. President Hamid Karzai had earlier welcomed the move to open a ‘Taliban liaison office in Doha’ – though Saudi Arabia and Turkey were his preferred choices. Karzai however warned that no foreign power could get involved in the process without his government’s consent.

Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of Karzai’s High Peace Council welcomed the Taliban’s decision.  “It’s a gesture of good faith. It is important for the Taliban to negotiate with the international community, especially with the US and we welcome their decision to set up a political office,” Rahmani said.

In a parallel negotiation with the second major insurgents group, representatives of Gulbudin Hekmatyar, the powerful warlord and head of Hezb-e-Islami, met with President Karzai and US embassy officials in Kabul on Sunday.

Presidential spokesperson Aimal Faizi confirmed to the media that a Hezb delegation, led by its in charge of political affairs Dr Ghairat Baheer, met with Karzai “in a good atmosphere, and the results were good”.

Other members of the delegation were: Qutbuddin Hilal, member of Hezb’s central executive committee, and Mehmood Salah, head of the cultural and information section of the group.

Hezb spokesperson Haroon Zarghoon told The Express Tribune that the delegation travelled to Kabul on the invitation of Afghan and the US officials. Zarghon also said that his group was ready to hold dialogue with Kabul “even though we know that the real authority (for talks) rests with the United States.”

A palace official confirmed that the delegation also met with US officials following the meeting with President Karzai. “They met with Nato commander General Alan Jones and US Ambassador in Kabul Ryan C Crocker,” the official said, requesting his name not be mentioned in the report. Zarghoon, however, neither confirmed nor denied the meeting with US officials.

(Read: Seeking clarity within confusion)

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2012.

The Shia and Sunni tribesmen of the Kurram tribal agency are euphoric. The arterial Thall-Parachinar highway has reopened — quietly though, after a long, painful hiatus. Peace or at least a semblance of it, has returned to Kurram after four, long bloody years. If one is to believe an official tally, fighting in Kurram has taken nearly 1,100 lives since 2007 — though unofficial figures are believed to be far higher.

Paradoxically, the Taliban share the credit for this ‘achievement’. A tug of war between dwindling supplies of money and foot soldiers and successive military operations has weakened the dreaded Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and apparently sapped its appetite for fighting, at least in Kurram. Once TTP commander in Kurram, Fazal Saeed Haqqani and his men have gone into hibernation in Uchat Kallay, the home town of Haqqani in the Sunni-dominated Central Kurram.

In June 2011, Haqqani defected to form his own group — retaining the first two alphabets of the TTP and adding the suffix ‘Islami’ to it. However, little has been heard of his Tehreek-e-Taliban Islami since. Other TTP commanders, such as Mullah Toofan, Hafiz Daulat and Tariq Afridi, have also gone into hiding, like their boss, Hakimullah Mehsud, who has been isolated (apparently) by his once-trusted lieutenants.

Elders from both Shia and Sunni tribes agree the sectarian discord in Kurram was stoked and exploited by the Taliban, who initially used the strategic region as an ideal transit into Afghanistan where they were fighting alongside their Afghan namesakes against the US-led Nato forces. “They’re to blame for our suffering,” says Haji Ghulab Hussain Turi, a Shia tribal elder who is now settled in Peshawar. After a long wait, Turi and his family managed to travel to Parachinar last month. For him, driving on the Thall-Parachinar highway after a long time was an “experience begging description”.

Ostensibly, it was a truce agreed by the two communities in October this year at a jirga in Parachinar that led to the reopening of the highway. But surprisingly, in the past, a slew of major peace deals, the most recent one in Murree in 2008, failed to do that. Tribal elders also credit the ‘superior strategy’ of political agent Shahab Ali who, instead of going for one composite deal, pursued a step-by-step approach, brokering a series of peace agreements at the town and city levels to give the local population ownership of the deals. But let’s not forget the military, which mounted a successful targeted operation code-named ‘Koh-i-Safaid’, in July 2011, to flush out the Taliban who had fled similar offensives in South Waziristan, Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions to seek refuge in Kurram.

But, I believe, that for this hard-won peace to last, a series of follow-up measures need to be put in place. First, thousands of families — both Shia and Sunni — displaced by years of bloodletting, should be repatriated to their homes. Second, necessary steps should be taken to bridge the trust deficit between the two communities. Third, petty tribal disputes should be settled because these, very often, balloon into bloody conflicts and assume sectarian colour. Fourth, the military squeeze should be sustained to check resurgence and regrouping of the TTP. And last, but not the least, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Kurram should be plugged to stop the infiltration of foreign troublemakers into the region.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2012.