The Pakistan Army keeps the Balochistan Insurgency going

The Baloch nationalist parties, from across all of the ethnicities there, called for a general strike on 18 February across the province. Balochistan went on strike against Pakistan's election results in the provine.

Pakistan's political leadership needs to quickly stand up a coalition government

Pakistan's political leadership has a chance to re-calibrate the state and enforce civilian supremacy if they unite. The overwhelming turnout of the Pakistani voter has handed the civilian leadership of the country a historic chance to push back against the generals. 

The election of 2024 was supposed to happen in 2023. After Imran Khan's government was removed in a vote of no confidence in 2002, after the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) along with some smaller parties joined together in the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) to oust Imran's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. The PDM saw the chance to take control of the government and they did, with former three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's brother Shahbaz Sharif becoming the new Premier of Pakistan after Imran Khan. This guy was and is, a crazy extremist and he lived up to the reputation he had gathered as the manic Chief Minister of Pakistan's largest province, Punjab. He spent a week complaining about blasphemy against Islam in Sweden (a statement would have been enough) while causing back breaking inflation in Pakistan by implementing an IMF plan that saw oil prices double along with the cost of everything else in the country. Shahbaz was notorious during his stints as Chief Minister of Punjab for having terrorists from Islamic extremist groups killed extra-judicially by the Punjab police. This guy was (and is) nuts. Maybe all of this is why when his family's party went to the polls on Thursday, the entire country just seemed to kick his brother's party in the teeth.

Source: Al Jazeera.

The Imran Khan government was called a hybrid regime because it was brought into power by the Army. Hopes that the PDM government of Shahbaz Sharif would prove itself as a re-assertion of some actual democracy were dashed when it became clear that the extra-judicial disappearances and tortures would continue. This hybridity was enforced by Shahbaz's strange and maniacal behaviour along with his and his party and allies willingness to be used as a cover by the Pakistan Army to institute un-popular structural adjustments by the IMF and the World Bank that doubled prices in the second half of 2022 and through 2023. The floods in August 2022 made things worse. The consequences of all this was felt in the spring of 2023 when Imran Khan and his party suicide bombed the constitutional structre of Pakistan by rioting across the country and attacking Army bases when now ex-PM Imran Khan was faced with his first arrest. This stupid Pakistani reboot of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol gave the Army carte blanche to start not just arresting, but kidnapping and torturing members of Imran Khan's party, disappearing them into military dungeons and doing this especially to the leadership of the party. Once the PTI attacked Pakistan Army bases (frankly, more like rioted at their entrances) the military used this to declare open season on the PTI, treated the whole party as a threat to the Pakistan Army and dismantled the above-ground manifestations of the party. This lead to multiple arrests of the leadership and countless cases against Imran Khan. The PDM went along with this madcap and extra-constitutional response by the army and cemented itself as a second manifestation of a hybrid regime.

When Shahbaz Sharif stepped down in August 2023 for the interim government to hold elections, instead of a normal campaign period, we were confronted by the third manifestation of a hybrid regime. This got bad very quickly, it's still around like a bad STD and it tried to pretend it was a real government. The "interim government" delayed the elections by another three months, instead of holding the vote by August as it was constitutionally required. This bending of the constitution, along with the lack of provincial government that Khyeber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have suffered from for a year have left the country in a severe case of a sort of constitutional drift. That interim government was stuffed with clowns from the puppet government the Pakistan Army had created to run Balochistan through a fake party in 2018, as they strong-armed Imran Khan into the centre. They ran Pakistan as disastrously for six months as they had Balochistan for five years. The economy nose-dived, terrorism rose and they tried to ethnically cleanse Afghan refugees from Pakistan to pressure the Afghan Taliban and in lieu of actually having a counter-terrorism plan where one part of the government doesn't go chasing terrorists while another part of the Pakistan Army is propping up fundamentalists. The arrests and pre-poll rigging against the PTI's members and leaders continued while the media continued to be pushed against the wall and enforced disappearances and torture continued to be used as instruments of policy and governance. PTI election candidates would turn up to register and they would be arrested. The most insane and egregious part of this pre-poll rigging, that will be discussed in history book, is how PTI candidates were denied a single unified symbol (for example the PPP has an arrow and the PML-N has a tiger). While every PPP or PML-N candidate across the country has an arrow or a tiger next to their name, the PTI was effectively de-registered as a party and if it's candidates hadn't been tortured or bribed to jump ship to another party, the remaining candidates of the PTI were forced to run as "indpendents" with their own separate symbols across every single constituency. So rather than vote for a cricket bat, these "independents" (effectively PTI) ran with strange symbols like pans, beds, ceiling fans, drums, etc. 

The interim "government" also spent half of its six months, not announcing an election date with the day of the vote being subject to a vicious rumour mongering campaign that alleged it would be delayed. The result was confusion and an election campaign that did not get off the ground until one month before the voting started. But then people voted on 8 February and it created the crisis we are expriencing now.

Suddenly, a 100 "independents" have been elected to parliament, by an angered PTI voter base that coordinated voting across mobile phones and the internet and a bunch of, dare I say it, Pakistani swing voters, who didn't want their democracy taken away by the generals.

Polling staff count ballots after voting ends in Hyderabad. Source: BBC

At this stage, with the PML-N coming in second and the PPP third, when no one party has reached a majority so a coalition will have to be formed. The serious advice that's coming in is telling the PML-N and PPP to sort of go ahead with, frankly, in some sense the now successful Army plan to have the PML-N in government by creating a coalition. This coalition needs to grow the economy, keep the army of its back and try to work for some kind of civilian supremacy. The hybridity of Pakistan's system has to be exorcised in one way or another. Frankly, I would prefer immediate civilian supremacy.

The messing with Pakistan's politics since 2017, especially the imposition of what have now been three back to back hybrid regimes has lead Pakistan to a social, political, economic and security disaster. All that's left is military disaster (and you can make a case that's happened in Balochistan) and you can basically make a case for full state failure at that point. The path out of this is a coalition that focuses on growing the economy and fixing Pakistan's economic problems. The voters were the heroes on 8 February and provided the people in power a way out by showing up and demonstrating a full democracy is what they care about, with a nearly 50% participation rate in the country that now has the fifth largest population in the world (our demographic explosion is a discussion for a different day).

To anyone who is sarcastic about Pakistan holding elections, I would remind them that tens of millions of people voted to try and make their voice heard in government. Frankly, considering the history of Pakistani democracy, the very act of holding these elections was important, has moved us forward and structurally changed politics inside Pakistan.

Source: Al Jazeera.

If anyone wants to talk about an extreme military option for the Pakistan Army to reassert power over the country, there is the example of Burma and Sudan to contemplate, where the state (and army) is falling apart in the face of a pro-democracy insurgency and where the state already broke up after mass oppression over a decade ago, the elite haven't learnt a lesson and are going to go break something further again. The Pakistan Army still has all its cards and just be keeping quiet it can keep them. Despite being in the same region (and sharing a former part of Pakistan with it) the Pakistan Army should also know when it's lost and not proceed with the Burma Progression.

Frankly, the Pakistan Army and especially its high command has demonstrated gross incompetence. General Bajwa created project Imran Khan and it blew up in his face. He was encouraged to do this from abroad, especially from European countries, but launching Imran Khan was a domestic Pakistan Army initiative to try and carve space away from the political parties that had signed the charter of democracy. Then when it blew up, the current leadership under General Asim Munir collaborated with a second hybrid regime and created a third one, while intensifying the oppression experienced in Balochistan and spreading it to the rest of the country. That has now blown up in their face.

The Pakistan Army and its stooges in the interim government spent a year making a mockery of democracy and now with warnings poring in from the world's foreign offices, it has had a mockery made of itself and Pakistan.

The problem is that Pakistan and especially the Pakistan Army never loses an opportunity to lose an opportunity. However the generals are now working in a more restricted landscape and they need to be further turfed out of policy making. If nothing else, the voters have shown they want this. 

Late Evening at the Karachi Police Office versus the TTP

There was a terrorist attack yesterday at the central Karachi Police Office (KPO) close to downtown Karachi. This was not a police station but rather a central office for senior members of the Karachi police, that was stormed at 7:10 pm by a group of terrorists from the Pakistani Taliban. They took over the building and held people who were still in the offices, hostage. This set off a three hour plus stand-off and storming off the building to take it back from the three terrorists who attacked it.

The police running across Shahrah-e-Faisal to the KPO from the Finance and Trace Centre side of the road

I was deeply shocked that the TTP would choose such an obvious hard target to assault with only gunmen (armed with bombs and grenades, but still) but thankfully they couldn't pull off a car bombing like they did a decade ago on a police HQ further in towards downtown Karachi. The KPO office is also shocking because I am incredibly familiar with that place's lay out. It is opposite Gora Qabristan (the Christian graveyard) which is a historic landmark in Karachi, well known to commuters, and the interchange the KPO is on at the intersection of Shahrah-e-Faisal (Karachi's main thoroughfare that leads directly to the airport) and Korangi road (which leads across the Malir river to the sprawling Korangi peninsula and its industrial area). There is security in all four directions around the KPO and within minutes of the firing and explosions, police and the paramilitary rangers began converging on the scene. The terrorists probably chose the location for maximum shock and because since the Pakistan Super League is happening, to implicitly threaten this large cricket event because the cricketers (Pakistani and foreign players) have to travel along Shahrah-e-Faisal.

You can see the KPO building in the beginning of this video (Sidenote - I get to use the red circle now!)

The return of the Pakistani Taliban

Writing about violence in Karachi really makes me feel cheap - like I'm competing for eyeball space with the maila creeps at ARY or some shitty nationalistic blog or Facebook group or Twitter account called Pak-Patriot-$tr0nG. I'm over a decade removed from the Pakistani blog scene but hey the TTP are back no thanks to the Afghan Taliban taking over that country and letting those bastards loose, and the online astro-turf ultra-nationalist types won't admit that Pakistani policy lead to this Pakistani disaster. That however, is my general stance. 90% of what goes wrong in Pakistan is because of the failure of Pakistani policy, and the resurgence of the Pakistani Taliban is because of the Imran Khan/Pakistan Army hybrid regime's policy of helping the Afghan Taliban foist themselves on to that country. Pakistan deserves at least a fifth or a quarter of the reason why the Afghan Taliban took over.

The previous Afghan government had jailed so many of the Pakistani Taliban who had ran to that country and the Afghan Taliban let them loose. Then the Imran Khan/Pakistan Army combine decided to resettle the TTP people down in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa/ex-FATA districts where they were from/had terrorised (!) to the effect you would expect. The bombings and shootings and assassinations that have been going on since last Novemeber, when the Pakistani Taliban called off their "ceasefire the day that Army Chief General Bajwa, the nexus of the previous Imran Khan hybrid regime retired. So we have been facing this campaign of terrorist attacks for three months, which have crescendoed every month with the Bannu army jail uprising by TTP prisoners in December, the Peshawar bombing of the police mosque that killed over a hundred people, 90% of them policemen, 20 days ago, and now this attack on a nerve centre of the Karachi police's command, which was and is intended as a spectacular demonstration of the TTP's reach and capacity. There is certainly reach and capacity, but thankfully not the rat-a-tat consistency of dozens dead, which we saw over a decade ago.

The Afghan Taliban do not have the capacity (I think) to help the Pakistani Taliban mount a successful campaign to overthrow the Pakistan government. They don't have the breadth of resources the Pakistan government (or actually Army) offered them to reciprocate in the same way that the Pakistani Taliban want them to do for them. And the Afghan Taliban want to help the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Talibanise Pakistan. The best they can do right now is offer TTP terrorists a bolthole and a place to store their weapons caches and a place to organise eye-catching terrorist attacks from, like we saw yesterday and in Peshawar. Imran Khan and his regime's supporters should always be reminded that they helped cause this. Meanwhile, the police and spies of Pakistan should hunt down the Pakistani Taliban inside this country. There is no need to roll artillery or tanks, because (I think) at this stage the Pakistani Taliban do not control territory inside Pakistan. If there is any information to the contrary, well, get in touch with me through the comments.

Yesterday's attack was disturbing, but it's not like the Pakistani state doesn't have the capacity to confront it. However due to the Pakistan Army's decision to overthrow the previous Afghan government and to try and bend democracy inside this country into a one-party hybrid regime (and Imran Khan and his people's decision to be the vehicle for with this madness) innocent people are going to continue to die in further terrorist attacks by the TTP, because they have safe boltholes in Afghanistan.

The pattern of terrorist attacks in Karachi the last few years

Since the last PML-N government in 2018, which unleashed the Pakistan Rangers and police on militants in Karachi to end the violence of the post-Musharraf era, the nature of terrorist attacks has changed in this city. Mass casualty attacks with dozens of victims are a little harder to organise due to increased police presence and the Pakistan Rangers (who are corrupt but do flood the zone) being here. Increased coordination via the Chief Minister Sindh has had since 2015, Murad Ali Shah has also helped the security situation. His relative youth and active demeanour compared to his predecessor have been to the province's and his political advantage.

What we see now are spectacular gun and bomb attacks, like the Baloch militants who attacked the Chinese consulate in November 2018, the other attack they committed in June 2020 on the Karachi Stock Exchange, the bombing in Saddar last year by Sindhi nationalists and their campaign of terror and attacks against ethnic Chinese Pakistanis who work as traditional dentists. Guns, grenades even suicide jackets - but no cars filled to the brim with explosives - are what has been used to commit terrorist attacks in Karachi over the last half decade, unlike what used to happen 8 to 15 years ago. I can't guarantee it will stay that way.

Video from inside the KPO allegedly during the firefight with the terrorists

Back at the KPO

So the Karachi Police Office was taken back within three and a half hours by a combination of Karachi police and Pakistan Rangers with two policemen, a ranger and a civilian killed. Along with these four innocents, the three terrorists were killed, so the casualties for this terrorist attack were seven dead. You can fudge the numbers and only count the non-terrorists dead, but seven dead, even including the suicidal attackers, is a serious number killed.

To their credit at least, police and rangers immediately ran from every direction at the KPO building, especially since it was located at such a ridiculously central location and surrounded the building. The terrorists didn't even last the night, but they got the attention they wanted. However this should spur the crypto-fascist neo-Islamist weirdos who run this country's government to stop giving the TTP any space. Doing that is a fool's errand and will get Pakistanis killed. Which frankly some of the people in our government don't mind, but people in and outside this country will ask questions and that'll make those reactionaries look bad.

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Didn't we have a bunch of terrorist attacks? Shahbaz Sharif needs to call parliament and stop waiting on the PTI

The first sentence of this headline was originally written on 31 July 2020 during the hybrid regime/premiership of Imran Khan. It is being rescued and repurposed for current events.

Pakistan has faced a spate of terrorist attacks since last November when the Pakistan Army chief who held up the previous hybrid regime stepped down and the Pakistani Taliban restarted their campaign against this country. After the horrible bombing in Peshawar that killed a 101 people, 90% of them policemen on 30 January, the PML-N government wanted to call an all party conference.

The PTI, the previous government, did not respond and kept attacking the current PML-N government in the face of the horrific bombing that had happened and the calls for unity against the Pakistani Taliban. Imran Khan, the PTI’s leader’s, pro-Taliban rhetoric has been well known at this time, along with his unwavering characterisation of the PML-N which runs Pakistan now as thieves. Whatever. The Taliban are murderers. Basic morality would dictate uniting against murderers. But no. The PTI would not climb off its high horse over the mere issue of a 101 charred and crushed corpses of policemen in Peshawar. So here we are. There is no direction to Pakistan’s attempt to counter the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) campaign against it. The PTI would also not cooperate, because its actions, in welcoming the overthrow of the previous Afghan government next door, that had imprisoned the TTP members who had been captured in Afghanistan, and were now freed by the Taliban, to the crazy idea in which it resettled (!) those TTP members in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts they had previously terrorised, had also contributed to the problem of the TTP’s resurgence.

In the face of the PTI’s intransigience, I think it is time that the PML-N government of Shahbaz Sharif make a move that strengthens democracy, rather than privatising it among an alliance of parties, and calls a session of parliament to discuss the issue of terrorism, the TTP’s resurgence and how to counter it. It would definitely be more democratic, clear the air as everyone gets to have their say and would be more within the ambit of the constitution than an “All Parties Conference.” There's something about not having this debate in parliament that strikes me as anti-democratic. I know also that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is essentially a far-right man and strengthening democracy is never front and centre with his plans, but in the face of the pointlessness of engaging with those who ignore or make excuses for the Taliban like the PTI and its leader, and the resurgence of the TTP, we are left with no choice but to have parliament debate how to deal with these terrorists.

And hey – Ali Wazir’s free and he will get to have his say! I’m up for it.

Ali Wazir, MNA from South Waziristan and Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leader, has been released from Karachi prison. PHOTO: TWITTER/@mjdawar

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Pakistani views on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban

The world is surprised, and now even memeing, about the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the outside country most responsible for this (unless you count America and the stupidity of its occupation strategies as the most responsible) there have been broadly three camps on this. The majority feeling was one of awkwardness, trepidation and a calling of the equivalent of councils of war. In the Army Chief’s staff rooms, in the Prime Minister’s and Chief Ministers and political party heads’ secretariats and across media stations in Pakistan, the national security and Afghanistan experts were on display and they were giving their council to their respective audiences on what was happening with the fall of Kabul and what it meant.

 
A smaller minority was one that was sometimes part of this but also openly condemning the takeover of the Taliban. Honourable mention should go to the Women’s Democratic Front for openly condemning the takeover of Afghanistan and various branches of Pakistan’s new-on-the-scene Aurat March (Women’s March) parroted their view. Frankly, I am very happy for the Aurat Marchers to get an explicit foreign policy – that would be cool. The PPP, as far as I can tell did not explicitly condemn the Taliban takeover in Kabul and as far as I know, no Pashtun nationalist formation did either, although if the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement did, I am waiting for their views.

 

The official Pakistan government view, of the foreign ministry, the part allegedly controlled by Imran Khan says that they will not stick their neck out as an individual country and will only recognise Taliban control of Afghanistan if a group of countries, likely Russia, China and Iran, all simultaneously recognise the Taliban's control of Kabul. I used the word alleged, because the foreign ministry takes its marching orders from the Pakistan Army's General Hear Quarters, Imran Khan is fine with that, and so the foreign ministry's views are the Army and establishment's views.

 
Lastly, I have to mention the Taliban supporters. From heads of religious groups, to Taliban and ’80’s Afghan Mujahideen fanboys in the Pakistani media, this was, I feel, an even smaller group, restricted by age, that was openly hailing the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. It really was/is a sight to behold to see men in the media, of or beyond retirement age, hailing the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban – a sick joke. My guess is younger fans of the Taliban were either intelligently hiding, or more likely taking part in either jihadi ops or doing propaganda or harassment for the Taliban. So the pro-Taliban crowd inside Pakistan might be quieter than its portrayed – a bit like Italy after it switched ides in WWII to join the Allies against Germany.

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General Bajwa, please retire

This blog was previously published on 28 November 2019 and is being re-published, like many recovered blogposts, over here.

There has been a crisis of governance in Pakistan over the last few days as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) controlled government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has abandoned all its governance reponsibilities to try and get General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) an extension of three more years.

Now he is about to begin a period as Army Chief, beyond his entitlement. Unlike calling for his firing, like I did the last time a COAS got an extension, I will take a more measured approach to what should be done here. Let's look at the era that General Bajwa inhabited as the leader of Pakistan's 550,000 man army.

Since General Bajwa came to power in late November 2016, (coincidentially, after Donald Trump secured a victory in the 2016 US elections, distracting the US from political developments across the world) he has presided over, in the words of former columnist Cyril Almeida, "the greatest rollback of civil liberties, political rights and media freedom in a generation."

More dissident parts of the media came under active surveillance, Pakistani Facebook bloggers were picked up with accusations of first blasphemy, then switching to allegations of personal corruption, and the PML-N's political activists (and those of other non military allied political formations) were pursued and locked up with a vengeance throughout 2017.

The Prime Minister at that time, Nawaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), was under a serious cloud of scandal from his relation to the Pakistan section of the Panama Paper leaks. This had emboldened the reactionary right wing under Imran Khan and his PTI party as well as other the reactionary segments of the political opposition, the media, and much of the army which was not happy with him due to his consolidating position as Prime Minister and pursued a whisper campaign against him as a tainted friend of Pakistan's rival, India.

This all came to a head with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's removal from power in July 2017 and his succession by the hapless Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as Pakistan's new Prime Minister.

This win for the military and reactionary nationalist segments of the state are consolidated by the months long crisis that happens in Pakistan at the hands of the extremists of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasollullah (TLYRA) .

Abbasi's months old government is then hounded by sit-ins in the capital by the sectarian extremists of the TLYRA who created such an air of fanaticism that a PML-N minister, Ahsan Iqbal was shot at and nearly died.

With the government on the ropes, the country went into an election in 2018 that was charged with mounting repression of the media by the state, of the political government's party members or their allied groups coming under mounting threats and oppression and a society that was being repressed by anti-blasphemy paranoia, turbo charged by roaming fanatics who claimed to be partisans of the Prophet of Islam, in an anti-Ahmedi sort of way that cut into the PML-N's own anti-Ahmedi, pro-blasphemy votebank.

So the election of July 2018 happens and the margin of difference between the PTI and the PML-N is the approximately 4 million votes half of which go to the TLYRA's political formation, the TLP. Clearly, Imran Khan's two decades of political demonisation of the not very above board PML-N and PPP has paid off and now Mr Imran Khan is Pakistan's Prime Minister.

The banned cover of Sohail Warraich's 2010 book “Yay Company Nahi Chalay Gi” (This Company Will Not Run) all copies of which were confiscated from its publisher in Lahore.

As his governance begins, the abysmal and darkly comic performance of his government at the federal centre of Pakistan lay bare the Prime Minister's incompetence and ignorance of governance. There is a balance of payment crisis and the government mis-judges India's mood as friendly, when the newly re-elected Narendra Modi government clamps down on Kashmir instead of opening up with it's fellow religio-nationalist reactionaries across the border. Active moves to suppress the opposition and the media continue from 2018 into 2019. It is small wonder that this political government has been called a hybrid regime and seen as being hand-in-glove with the Pakistan Army.

All this time, General Bajwa stood in the background, the shady shogun of a reactionary nationalist, allegedly democratic dispensation. Unlike previous Army Chiefs this century, such as Generals Raheel Sharif, Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Pervez Musharraf, there is very little critique published in regards to him.

Since I've read very few printed critiques of General Bajwa I had only a basic frame with which to describe him. It made writing this blog feel a little strange. Like flexing a numb hand.

However, watching events this week, an old quote from General Musharraf's decade-long dictatorship came to mind: the graveyards are full of indispensible men.

Imran Khan's government granted General Bajwa an extension in August 2019. However, when it was challenged this week in the Supreme Court, the retiring Chief Justice decided to take up the petition on a suo motu basis and simply questioned the legality of the extension. When it came up that the extension had no basis in the law, the reactionary nationalist PTI moved to quickly change the law. This lead to the situation we are in now, where the decision to extend an Army Chief's tenure has now been kicked into parliament.

For one military bureaucrat, the Army Chief, the entire federal machinery of Pakistan has ground to a halt to shamelessly grant him an extension as the chief. This is embarrassing for this country.

The PTI government will remain a shambolic mess. And if General Qamar Javed Bajwa extends his tenure, then his name will be etched with this slow moving disaster. However, the General remains a military man, and there is an honourable way for him to write his name in this country's history. In my retelling of the PML-N government's fall and the PTI government's rise General Bajwa only remains a grey eminence. If he takes this extension and decides to continue to be the military support beam for this chaos Imran Khan and his acolytes call governance, then his name will be forever attached to this disaster.

There is an honourable way out of this, an easy opportunity to still take the ride into the sunset, that General Bajwa's age and bureaucratic convention entitle him to. Retire. Take the way out. Leave this overgrown teenager who you have foisted on this country, grow up and take the responsibility that he has been howling for.

And don't be the fall guy for an institute that you served but harboured the snakes who tried to have you condemned for sectarian reasons. I did not mention this earlier, but I think it bears mentioning that the Ahmadi sect is considered heretical by a dangerously large number of Pakistanis who consider themselves devout. When General Bajwa became Chief of the Army in November 2016 he was dogged by rumours of either being an Ahmedi or being related to them, in a country that is dangerous for Ahmedis. This is dangerous in Pakistan, and the vectors of this sectarian rumour mongering was alleged to be from the army or the more anti-Ahmedi parts of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party. This was a poisonous start to what should have been a relatively smooth transition of power from the tough-against-terrorism General Raheel Sharif to a successor who would be leading an army in a relatively less violent Pakistan.

Now however General Bajwa is powerful. But he will not be so forever. The PTI, can falter. And as a man explicitly soon tied to this party and his votebank for a further three years, General Bajwa will be dragged from a grey eminence into an exposed support beam for this government. Bajwa can contemplate the position of General Kayani, and how he became inextricably linked to the disasters of President Zardari's government, how much of a cleanser it felt when in 2013, General Raheel Sharif, brother to one martyr, nephew to another, bought a fully martial bearing on an army that had to fight the Taliban in North Waziristan and chase them out of the rest of the country. General Bajwa can also remember what a sheepish figure the retired Kayani looked like in his sherwani at one of the military parades held under General Raheel.  Pakistan can do without all this neo-Shogunism. Being an Islamic shogunate is tiresome for a country and a people.

If this is not enough, General Bajwa can contemplate the snakes, the poisonous snakes in civil politics and in his own army. And then he can think about a future where these creeps aren't his problem. Simultaneously, General Bajwa doesn't have to end up like Kayani. There's still time. General sahab can still buy the ticket, take the ride and GTFO from the disaster that is Pakistani politics. The rest of us still have to live here.

Please retire.

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30 days? That's an excuse to run consulate shredders — Kabul’s government won’t last the week

I started yesterday with a news article about how US intelligence said that the Taliban could take Kabul in 90 days. After the previous week had been filled with over half a dozen Afghan provincial capitals falling, it became clear that the Taliban were deploying all their strength across the country to capture as much territory and control as they could before US forces pulled out before the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

While the news of those northern cities falling had been bad, and it was felt that the Taliban were likely trying to prevent a replay of the 1990's Afghan civil war when the north fought them for five years, 12th August got progressively grim. It started to seem that the Taliban were not just going to put a knife to the Afghan government's throat (and northern escape routes) by taking Tajik and Uzbek cities, but rather box Kabul in. This became clear when not just small towns but larger Afghan cities were put on the chopping block by the Taliban's offensive. There is a wave of anti-Shia mobilisation across the region and I suspect that it also might have something to do with the expanded, multi-ethnic Taliban mobilisation in the north of Afghanistan. As these provinces border the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, and ISIS school-shooter sectarianism has had salience in many places where Muslims were previously considered un-radicalised or nominally secular, I suspect Taliban lines might not be a bad place for Central Asian, Afghan or even Pakistani potential ISIS recruits to flee.

As news of more fighting came in, the reports of Herat and Kandahar in the north-west and south of the country respectively, being surrounded and attacked threw whatever strategic calculus the great powers thought they had in Afghanistan, into the bin.

The updates from panicked civilians about the Taliban attacks killed whatever illusions about America having a semi-peaceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, or Pakistan smoothly sliding a re-furbished Taliban into power in Kabul, might have been harboured by the countries that have sponsored destructive wars in that nation since the eighties. The distressed calls, postings, video reports of Afghan citizens, especially educated women trapped in these cities, came flooding out. No one was crying but everyone was deadly serious. 

Simultaneously, clips of refugees flooding out of captured cities, camps of the displaced going up in Kabul and where the government stood were broadcast. Among the wretched sights was the Afghan military vehicles zooming out of cities and from among people they were supposed to defend were broadcast as afternoon turned to evening, and then night fell.

The west, south and north of Afghanistan are out of that government's hand. Kabul is boxed in. If you look at the map above, it's sitting in the open jaws of Taliban controlled territory.

The BBC generally has the best maps, and frankly the best and most accurate, un-sentimental coverage on the rout in Afghanistan of the Kabul government. Hey, I guess after four disastrous wars into a country, they end up knowing their stuff. The second best coverage is by Al Jazeera, which also sobered up once it stopped sourcing its maps from neo-conservative American outfits, and ditched a sort of mawkish patronising tone for the Afghans.

As for America's intelligence reports, which we started Thursday with - they have achieved the typical notoriety of stupidity that American intelligence reports are known for. By nightfall, the American bureaucrats had, in typical CYA fashion, re-assessed their estimate down to 30 days. That feels optimistic.

Yup. The business groups have already started removing equipment and personnel.

— Nutellastaan 😷 (@Nutellastaan) August 12, 2021

As reports come in of Afghan business interests trying to wrap up and send their equipment, personnel and capital out of the country, and the various state and private banks withdrawing funds to forward abroad, it becomes clear that the Kabul government, especially the career of one President Ashraf Ghani, is very over. At least at the prospect of anything beyond 2021.

30 days. According to a close friend with extensive links in Afghan govt. Apparently they are all set.

— Nutellastaan 😷 (@Nutellastaan) August 12, 2021

What happens to the rest of the Kabul government is anyone's guess. I don't know if the Taliban have much to worry about "holding" their territory if part of their offensive was contacting Afghan defence forces commanders and asking them to stop fighting/withdraw or switch sides. A government counter-offensive seems highly unlikely, especially with the hollow, broken Afghan Army that has been described. If the Taliban went in for the kill against the government, then they would win and also be saddled with a lot of prisoners, many extremely high value ones as well as seas of refugees and an isolated country. I suspect they might be willing to live with that. 

“This means losing your houses, your dreams, your goals, your ambition... everything.”

Pashtana Durrani, executive director of an NGO for girls' education speaks to @krishgm from Kandahar in Afghanistan, a city under siege by the Taliban. pic.twitter.com/j6qUPzDkP3

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) August 12, 2021

How soon will the end happen? The fall of Kabul, the closing of the Taliban's jaws on what is left of Afghanistan's government, that is now in the Taliban's hands.

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