[R-G] AFGHANISTAN: Uneasy Over Pakistan's Emergency

[Anthony Fenton]

AFGHANISTAN:  Uneasy Over Pakistan's Emergency
By IPS Correspondents*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40102

KABUL, Nov 17 (IPS) - A wary Afghanistan has been closely following  
events across the border in Pakistan where President Gen. Pervez  
Musharraf clamped an emergency on Nov. 3 citing rising militancy and  
"interference" by the judiciary.

For two weeks, a defiant opposition has protested the clamp down on  
civil liberties and the abrogation of the Constitution. Hundreds of  
lawyers, civil society activists and journalists have been detained  
by military intelligence, and the orders for the arrests are "coming  
right from the top", according to Pakistan media reports.

A ban on public gatherings means that those who participate risk  
being detained and beaten up.

On Wednesday, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, an outspoken  
critic of Musharraf, was arrested on the campus of Punjab University  
in Lahore where he was addressing a student protest. Ex-prime  
minister Benazir Bhutto who threatened a ‘long march to Islamabad’ on  
Nov. 13 was put under house arrest for a week.

Pakistan’s widely-watched, independent, Urdu-language news channels  
are off the air. The ban also extends to all Afghan channel telecasts  
from Pakistan. Gag orders have been lifted only on the English- 
language media, both print and TV, which do not threaten the  
authorities since they reach only a tiny elite.

The government has amended the Army Act of 1952 to allow military  
courts to try civilians. With Musharraf both the president and army  
chief, there are fears that the country may be under ‘martial law’  
once again.

Turmoil in Pakistan has a direct impact on Afghanistan, Faruq  
Meranai, member of Parliament from Nangarhar province told the  
independent, Kabul-based newspaper Erada. "We are afraid that if the  
Pakistan military once again take power, they will interfere in our  
domestic affairs," he said bluntly.

Islamabad has had a hand in this country’s affairs since the Soviet  
occupation in 1979. Then military dictator Zia-ul-Haq joined on the  
side of the United States in its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet  
Union over Afghanistan.

Through the 1980s, Pakistan was a conduit for arms and ammunition to  
mujahiddin factions who first fought against the Soviets and then the  
communist regime in Kabul before turning their massive firepower on  
each other.

The feuding factions who turned Afghanistan into a bloody battlefield  
were ousted in 1997 by the Taliban or student warriors who came over  
the Hindu Kush from madrasas or religious schools that sprouted along  
the Pakistan border with backing of the country’s shadowy Inter  
Services Intelligence (ISI).

According to Sibghatullah Mojadedi, speaker of the upper house of  
Parliament, the ISI which has gone beyond the control of Pakistani  
governments, is "the main enemy of the people of Afghanistan". He was  
interviewed in the Hasht-e Sobh daily, Nov. 8.

When U.S. troops marched into Afghanistan in the so-called "war on  
terror" after the 9/11 bombings, the Taliban which refused to hand  
over al-Qaeda leaders, fled across the porous border with Pakistan to  
sanctuaries in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in  
end-2001.

Over the past two years, the Taliban have regrouped to challenge the  
Hamid Karzai government in southern Afghanistan, while militancy has  
engulfed both sides of the border, admitted Abdul Khaliq Hosaini,  
second secretary in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga or lower house,  
speaking to Erada newspaper on Nov. 6.

In a bid to secure peace, Musharraf signed a controversial pact with  
pro-Taliban groups in FATA, enabling them to run a parallel  
government. But the violence has continued unabated, and spread to  
new areas like Swat, in neighbouring North Western Frontier Province  
(NWFP).

The army is launching a major offensive in the picturesque Swat  
valley against pro-Taliban cleric Mullah Fazlullah whose men have  
overrun most towns and villages in the valley. On Wednesday, 33  
militants and two army soldiers were killed in the nearly daily air  
and gun battles.

Pakistan-watchers here view the escalating military action with  
scepticism. Most believe that until the support networks that feed  
the cross-border insurgency are not crushed, the arrests and gun  
battles will not make the slightest difference in restoring law and  
order along the conflict-scarred frontier.

The insurgency continues unabated in Afghanistan and it appears that  
the emergency in Pakistan will only embolden the Taliban and their  
allies to continue to consolidate their power in the tribal and  
border areas. Instability in Pakistan means instability for Afghanistan.

Moreover, according to Afghan journalist Rohullah Yaqubi, militancy  
in Pakistan has a direct bearing on the economic plight of people in  
Afghanistan. Most of what is sold in shops in Afghanistan is either  
smuggled or brought over land from Pakistan. Food prices have shot up  
alarmingly in recent months.

Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbil acknowledged that recent events  
in Pakistan have had a negative impact, Pajhwok Afghan News (PAN), an  
independent news agency reported. That view was echoed by Sultan  
Ahmad Baheen, spokesman for the foreign ministry, who said  
Afghanistan was apprehensive of the volatile situation across the  
border.

(*Reporting for this contributed by The Killid Group and Pajhwok  
Afghan News)

(END/2007)