NGOs of the mind

SHIV VISVANATHAN

The NGO as an expression of voluntarism is a Janus-faced entity and it is this double-edged nature that puts it in a perpetual state of suspicion. The recent Intelligence Bureau report on NGOs against development has to be reread as a part of a new text of suspicion

Jairam Ramesh, the former Union Minister of Environment, once playfully, in fact factiously, commented that the word ‘Intelligence Bureau’ (IB) is an oxymoron. He was warning us that often, instead of collecting information, the IB projects the current fears of the state. It plays out the current politics of anxiety about security and development. What intrigues one is that such suspicion now acquires numeracy. The IB estimates non-governmental organisation (NGO) resistance as negatively impacting GDP by two to three per cent. Seen as a mirror inversion of a Human Development Report, the report becomes surreal. One wonders what the IB will estimate as the price of a dead myth or an extinct waterfall. One is not asking for the source of the estimate or its methodology but the idea itself conveys a false sense of objectivity about the acts of intelligence gathering.

One must also recognise that the NGO as an expression of voluntarism is a Janus-faced entity. At one level, it acts as an extension counter of the state, engaging in acts of humanitarian and social work. At another level, it is a political and cognitive entity challenging development paradigms and arguing issues of governance and democracy. This double-edged nature of the NGO puts it in a perpetual state of suspicion. Yet, we have to recognise that civic epistemologies and civil society creativity are crucial for democracy.

Text of suspicion

The recent IB report has to be reread as a part of a new text of suspicion. It combines issues of environment and defence, internal and external security, and security and sustainability to create a new monster, a threat called “NGOs against development.” The report focusses more on the initiation and delay of projects rather than the suffering caused by these projects through acts of displacement. Development is a benign act of the sovereign state. The NGO and social movements are seen as over-obsessed with acts of suffering. In that sense, it is an upstream rather than a downstream critique of the NGO. The delay becomes the act of sedition and it is these delays that contribute negatively to GDP.

The NGO is then read as a surrogate ploy for the alien or outsider. Behind each NGO is a foreign national or a grant-giving agency. The foreign hand, once legendary in the era of the Cold War, now returns not as CIA but as grant-giving agency. The language of human rights becomes a veneer for a new opposition to the state and serves as a cover for such disruptive activity. In fact, anti-development becomes the label for a network of conspiracies between the local NGO and foreign agencies to keep India in a state of underdevelopment.

Before one responds to the details of the report, one must confess that NGOs are not angelic groups. Many have become institutions which have turned seriatim protest into a career. One creates a trajectory from Bhopal to Narmada to GM foods oblivious of one’s last battles. Many of these groups have advocated transparency and responsibility but failed to apply it to themselves. If the report is a demand for self-reflexivity, one can sympathise with it, but when it clubs NGOs into one bundle and treats them as seditious, it threatens civil society as a space of freedom, dissent and creativity. Once one realises that development has created more refugees than the wars we have fought, one senses that development is more problematic than the IB report can imagine it to be.

‘Anti-development’ label

The report creates anti-development as problematic and especially turns Greenpeace into a monster. One must admit that it is easy to caricature Greenpeace. The organisation’s style is theatric, which often upsets the stuffed-shirt state, used to a sense of dignity. But Greenpeace raises critical issues, confronts the silences of development with a melodramatic, even overstated, eloquence, which is effective and attention-grabbing. It is seen as people-centric rather than government-centric and this focus is regarded as unpardonable. Because it amplifies marginal voices, it is seen as disruptive and yet as a critic said, “If Greenpeace did not exist it would have been invented. It is an early warning system on development and peace issues.” But the real sore point is not the Greenpeace style but the set of issues Greenpeace and other NGOs have raised.

The fourfold resistance of NGOs focusses on nuclear energy, coal-fired plants, genetically modified organisms (GMO) and anti-extractive activities in the northeast. All four are seen as attempts to protect livelihoods, local freedom and obtain fairness. The IB argues that because of this, India has become vulnerable in international forums, unable to voice its usual pieties of peace and development.

The report observes that international agencies earlier used “caste discrimination, human rights and big dams as items to discredit India.” These same forums have graduated to new embarrassments around growth retarding campaigns such as the anti-bauxite, anti-coal, anti-nuclear, anti-GM issues. It is their style and focus that make them so devastating. The IB reads each NGO as a pressure group which creates a specific scenario. It sets an agenda, creates debates in the media, lobbies diplomats and governments generally seeking to create a network of embarrassments. The keywords used are camouflage words, their democratic content hiding a malign intent, a strategy of disruption and delay, restricting development in key sectors. Each NGO is backed by foreign funds, each infiltrates a local group, commandeers a local issue to embarrass and delay the development projects of the regime.

These arguments seem reasonable, the scenario believable till one examines the array of people cited. It is the roll call of the best and brightest in the country. They include S.P. Udayakumar, Suman Sahai, Kavita Kuruganti, Admiral Ramdas, Paranjoy GuhaThakurta, Aruna Rodrigues, Surendra Gadekar. Because they criticise the development project in its specificities, they do not become anti-national. In fact this report should become an early warning system for civil society to gear itself for battles. Whether it is the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is clear that development without jitters is a priority. Dissent becomes an activity frowned upon. In fact, one must recognise there is an NGO in all of us. One must also recognise that the well-being of the nation requires that the demand of the nation not be confused with the imperatives of the nation-state. Nations can allow for diversity, while nation-states seek uniformity and official diktats.

Ethics of intervention, memory

The activists listed link the ethics of invention and the ethics of memory. Tradition and change are linked not through sentimentality but through ideas of livelihood and empowerment. It is not only a rights discourse, it is a battle for survival arguing that the development discourse cannot be indifferent to voice, livelihoods and its roots in community. Riding roughshod over democracy is not a criteria of development. Delay is not the only criteria of evaluation. Time as plurality, history, myth, an ethic of memory, as a guarantee against obsolescence and triage are also relevant criteria. Delay speaks the language of growth without an articulate idea of responsibility and it is on this point that the IB report errs in its witch-hunt against “anti-development”. The politics of delay needs an aetiology, a discourse on causes. Delay is an intermediate stage in the development process. Delay comes because the government fails to talk to people about the location of a project, its implication for livelihoods and life in a locality. When people discover that the black box of national interest has trumped local empowerment they have to resort to politics desperately. What is often dismissed as sedition is mainly a crisis of empowerment, a failure of dialogue. A development that begins with diktats is bound to be delayed. The presence of a foreign hand often becomes a pretext for ignoring local voice and local issues.

The IB report emphasises that these NGOs are a threat to the national, economic security of India. But their understanding of security is restricted. It has no sense of seed security, or forest cover, no sense of trusteeship of the future. What is seen as sedition is often an attempt to combine an ecological sense of sustainability with a classical idea of security. In fact the IB’s sense of security allows for paranoia but not pluralism. A critical response has to deconstruct the categories of its official discourse, the 19th century suspicions that it stirs, and still show that civil society is adding a life-giving content to these categories. Suffering and sensitivity to suffering have to be a part of such measures and these the NGOs manage to do. The other issue the NGOs attempt to raise is the debate around choice of technologies and this the nation-state and its experts resent. A refusal to debate options for the future threatens the future and such stubbornness bordering on illiteracy cannot be conflated with security.

NGO transparency

To create the climate for such a debate, the NGOs have to spring clean their bureaucracies, show that foreign grants do not colour local issues. Second, they have to account for grants and any sub-grants they might make. The trajectory must be transparent to prevent suspicions clouding a crucial debate. Third, they have to demonstrate to the rest of the society that beyond protest, they are seeking to create new epistemologies of knowledge which adds to the quality of livelihood and thus reveal that obsolescence and displacement are not inevitable for the margins. One has to see this report as an anticipation of things to come, a symptom of a society that has become sceptical of some NGO battles. Dissent in these circumstances is going to demand both a heroic inventiveness and a quiet patience.

In reading such a document one has to be careful of labelling it a Modi ploy. It is as much a Manmohan Singh complaint. He was fed up with NGOs opposing nuclear energy. The politics of regimes might be different but their paranoias are the same — security being threatened by local groups. Both would love a discourse which subsumes sustainability under security. Moreover, suspicion and paranoia need a scapegoat. The funder abroad as invisible hand, the Greenpeace as the more visible hand become easy candidates. One cannot deny that foreign groups might help stir the political pot. Their behaviour often warrants suspicion. The challenge before these NGOs is to create a public space where three things are clear. First, they have to create systems of audit which are both rule bound, time bound and transparent. Foreign funds are not cornucopia to be showered on all and sundry like confetti. Second, one has to communicate the vitality and the life-giving nature of the issues. It cannot be left to the experts and the bureaucrats of the state. Third, one needs an ethic of responsibility which includes professionalism as ascetic lifestyle, a precision of articulation which carries greater conviction. The battle of competing rhetoric will not do. It is a challenge to create a public space around the silences of the state and include the margins of the nation. One needs a space which allows for dissent and debate, which is both cathartic and constructive and which incorporates the future as a constituency. It is not defensiveness that we need but a confidence to experiment, to debate, to create alternatives, The state could be afraid of the foreign hand but what states often found even more alien is the process of empowerment, the attempt to create a different democracy.

The IB report is right in emphasising the critical nature of the four issues. But what is equally critical is the synergy of democracy that NGOs need to create around these issues. Each struggle has to be a fable for the future. To do less would make the report more real and true over time. Civil society has to make sure that this IB report does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/ngos-of-the-mind/article6160464.ece?homepage=true

Mosul maelstrom: ISIS and the turning point of American adventurism in Middle East

Sonia Mansour Robaey is a neuroscientist who teaches Philosophy and Ethics. She tweets on the Levant at @les_politiques and on Ethics and Philosophy at @SoniaMRobaey

In Mosul, a perfect storm gathered last week, produced by decades of American adventurism in the ‘greater Middle East’.

The American wars, including the ‘War on Terror’, were cat-and-mouse games that did not produce a final confrontation with Takfiri groups, but rather multiple confrontations, which have deferred or delayed both the domestic goals of these groups and their destructive power abroad, while ratcheting up their number and the resentment they carry against the West and its regional allies.

What happened in Mosul, after what happened in Syria, threatens the pluralistic essence of Iraq and the Levant, and promises us another decade of unrest and terror in the region and abroad, if not addressed cooperatively on the international level, and in a responsible manner.

There is a story in the Babylonian Talmud, retold by Somerset Maugham in 1933, which my father liked to tell me when I was a child, about a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market to buy provisions. Back from the market, the servant told his master that a woman in the crowd, who seemed to be Death, gestured threateningly at him. He asked his master to lend him a horse to flee to Samarra. The merchant lent his horse and went down to the marketplace where he saw the woman. He asked her why she had made a threatening gesture at his servant. ‘That was not a threatening gesture,’ the woman said, ‘I was only surprised to see your servant in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.’

By all accounts, the appointment that was given by ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and greater Syria) in Mosul to Iraq, the region and the world, seems to have taken everybody by surprise, but it was bound to happen.

An image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. (AFP Photo)

No surprise

For decades now, the US and its regional allies, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, has been playing cat and mouse with Islamist extremists trying to harness their destructive power, without yielding to this power, and for years, it has succeeded, exception made of 9/11. The post-9/11 War on Terror was supposed to be the end of this game with terror, but it wasn’t.

The same game is being played again, this time in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East, thanks to two events: the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq and the 2011 toppling of regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, along with the three-year-old failed attempt at regime change in Syria – which came to be called the ‘Arab Spring’.

These two sets of events have introduced power vacuum, weakened the central authority of these states and their security apparatuses, attracting many Islamist extremist groups. However, what’s different this time in the new appointment with these groups is their proliferation and power of mobilization based on humiliation, and religious and class resentment in the face of power shift and power loss. This complex reality is acknowledged in the West only as the one-dimensional religious sectarianism viewed through the history of religious wars in the West.

The appointment given by extremist groups in Mosul to Iraq, the region and the world, will not only be more deadly than 9/11, and will not only topple regimes, but it will signal the death of pluralistic societies in the Middle East and the Levant, inaugurating a new era of barbarism and a new phase of persecution of religious minorities, whoever they are, wherever they are.

This may seem benign to Westerners because, contrary to the threat felt from these extremists with 9/11, the end of religious pluralism in the Levant is, after all, far from their shores. But it will be a mistake to think that, in an interconnected, multicultural, multiracial world, the end of religious pluralism in the Levant will have no impact in the West.

The West will not be able to escape the fallout of the appointment given to the Middle East and the Levant by Islamist extremist groups in a city known for its millenary old pluralism. Obama may hesitate, the public in West may be wary of wars, the war in Iraq may be conveniently portrayed as a Sunni-Shia war, but if no firm action is taken against these groups – not the cat-and-mouse game we have seen so far – there will be an appointment for the West with these groups again.

An image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them. (AFP Photo)

War on Terror: An appointment always deferred

ISIS originated in Iraq in the wake of the American-led invasion based on the lie that Iraq had a ‘relationship’ with Al-Qaeda. Its new name was acquired only recently after assuming a new role fighting for regime change in Syria. ISIS terror operations in Iraq were led by a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who waged a savage sectarian campaign against Iraqis in the name of Al-Qaeda, but ended up on bad terms with the terror group as his actions turned Iraqi Sunnis against Al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was defeated and killed in 2006. The group fighting with Zarqawi suffered many setbacks before merging with other small insurgent groups – including former officers from the disbanded Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein – continuing terror operations in an Iraq that had never ceased to bleed since the American-led invasion.

Led now by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was liberated by the US in 2009 after five years of detention in camp Bucca in Iraq, ISIS found a new opportunity in the Syrian ‘revolution’, and territorial aims.

In Syria, ISIS gained strength, followers, and greater coverage form the traditional and the new media, being Western liberals or conservatives from the Arab Gulf, willing to bet their sympathies on any group challenging the rule of President Bashar Assad. In Syria, ISIS also came to lay its hands on revenues from oil refineries and seems to have achieved financial success by attracting private donations and logistic support for a ‘cause’ dear to West, Gulf leaders, Saudi affiliated Sunni groups in Lebanon, and Turkey.

ISIS terror operations in Syria and Iraq shifted in intensity, during late 2013, early 2014, to Iraq, due to the advances of the Syrian Arab army. It is then logical that ISIS, an organization with a structured leadership and a long-term vision, turned to Iraq to break the deadlock in which it found itself in Syria. Iraq was ripe for an ISIS breakthrough, with a weak central government, a weak leader, a political climate poisoned by sectarianism, and a known operational field, thanks to its own dormant cells helped by former officers from Saddam’s disbanded army.

Syria did not make ISIS, as some allege, it was rather the US invasion of Iraq that made ISIS, and the Syrian ‘revolution’ gave it a sympathetic platform.

The ISIS war chest is estimated at somewhere between $400 million and $2 billion now; most gained during the Mosul takeover with the looting of the central bank, although sources in the US say these figures are exaggerated. ISIS has been already known for its mafia style, racketeering and imposing local taxes on the population, with harsh punishments for those who refuse to pay (see also ISIS inc).

Mosul’s proximity to Kurdish territory, which evades Baghdad’s control and sells its oil on the black market, or to countries willing to defy Baghdad, will make business easy for ISIS. In the wake of Mosul’s takeover, many speculated about a Kurdish-ISIS conspiracy, but this is only logical since Kurds and ISIS, despite differing views, both plan to sell Iraq’s oil, unencumbered by a central authority.

Without the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, ISIS would not have existed in Iraq and resurrected in Syria, and without Gulf Arab countries’ and West’s push for regime change in Syria, ISIS would not be claiming its throne in Mosul. But “Sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one.” ISIS territorial ambitions are fantasies. Not one pious Sunni Muslim, let alone any Muslim, outside the fanatics who are fighting with ISIS, wishes to live by their rules.

Since the early 1990s, Al-Qaeda and other Takfiri groups, militarily strengthened by the anti-Soviet War in Afghanistan, trained and radicalized with Saudi-Gulf money & American complicity, have been serving the interventionist unilateral foreign policy of the United States and its allies acting as facilitators of armed intervention in countries they view as theirs to subdue to their brand of Islam.

From Afghanistan to Nigeria and in-between, these groups have either reacted to US interventions or pro-actively preceded US penetration in new territory by causing a deep enough crisis resulting in US intervention. A recent example is the US late penetration of sub-Saharan Africa, achieved through these two modes of action and reaction resulting in the presence of these groups where there is American presence, being on the military or security levels. The cat-and-mouse game the US plays with these groups follows two main objectives, which have not changed for decades: Israel’s security and the West’s own energy security. ISIS is no exception.

An image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them (AFP Photo / HO)

Feeding the politics of resentment

The religious extremism of Takiri groups is a project born out of resentment; it is not a resistance movement, neither a revolutionary one. It is bound to fail. The politics of resentment often ignores reality, is moved by a set of negative collective emotions pertaining to loss of power, experience of humiliation, and desire for vengeance. Its project for the future is often to withdraw, return to a previous state. It thrives on anxiety and disenchantment with the world.

In the case of ISIS and other Takfiri groups, these factors pervade the religious, spiritual and political lives of individuals from different nationalities. This is what makes these groups dangerous to any society they live in.

At its source, Takfiri ideology was born in Egypt where it thrived in a context of endemic poverty and oppression as an alternative to the emergence of a secular state as a process of decolonization. Takfiri ideology not only distrusted colonial powers, but also the process of decolonization as a march toward separation between the religious, the spiritual, and the state.

From Egypt, the Takfiri ideology spread to Saudi Arabia who tried, and succeeded, in harnessing the discontent of these groups persecuted by Egypt’s governments and used it against nascent Arab secular regimes. But in Saudi Arabia, Takfiri ideology gained traction among part of the elite who felt ostracized and alienated by the Saudi monarchy. Before gaining prominence on the world stage, the first attempts of these groups at implementing their political objectives were made in Egypt and in Saudi Arabiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_Seizure.

Sayyed Qutb allegedly made an attempt to assassinate President Gamal Abdel Nasser and was sentenced to death. Later, Islamist extremists succeeded in killing his successor, President Anwar Sadat.

Since then, either they were manipulated to fight in many conflicts where their resentment could find an operational terrain or they were fought in a manner feeding resentment, through illegal invasions, illegal detentions, and humiliations. America’s War on terror in the wake of 9/11 did not address the root cause of Takfiri ideology, it worked mainly on validating the way Takfiris view the world and the West.

This is what I call a War on Terror that is deferred. After each battle, along with or against America, these groups have returned to fight their governments at home, always better armed and better trained. Groups who fought in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan initiated the Algerian civil war.

Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) riding in a captured vehicle left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. (AFP Photo)

The tragedy of 9/11 can be seen as a reaction to Gulf countries’ willingness to surrender more sovereignty to American troops in the form of permanent US bases, in exchange for more protection, after the first Gulf War. The takeover of the Syrian ‘revolution’ by ISIS, and its offshoot Al-Nusra Front, is the direct result of the 2003 American led invasion of Iraq, which unsettled the power equation in the whole region. And the current (though supposedly finished) Iraq War, with the takeover of Mosul and the direct threat to the integrity of Iraq is, the direct result of the war Western and Gulf countries are waging on the Syrian regime with the help of these groups.

The resentment of these groups, carefully cultivated over the years, is now joined by the resentment of Iraq’s Sunni cadres after their exile from a long held throne. Many have questioned the unnatural alliance between ISIS and former Saddamists, but it is not to be seen as unnatural if we consider that both ISIS and former Saddamists share a strong resentment against Shia and other sects as a motivation, for the exile of Sunnis from power.

Saddam’s regime never achieved the kind of secularism and inclusion fostered by the Syrian Baath because it relied heavily on brutal sectarian politics, and its former cadres are moved by strong sectarian politics against other sects, mainly the Shia. It is madness to accuse Nouri al-Maliki of sectarianism when the Sunni insurgency, which never abated since power has been taken from them in Iraq, has killed mainly Shias.

As ISIS descends now on Mosul and other cities in Iraq, including Samarra, a perfect storm is gathering. Its outcome is certain to produce only atrocities and wars for years. And as ISIS descends on Mosul, and Samarra, and Baghdad, there will be no escape this time for the US and its regional allies, who have been playing cat and mouse with these groups for over three decades now, but to look into the eye of the storm and act responsibly, to own the monster they have created.

Unfortunately, this is not what the US administration has signaled since the beginning of this crisis. Obama, who to his credit opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, finds himself with no clear policy on Iraq, and I’m not sure, even with the best intentions, that he understands the gravity of the situation. His two speeches until now indicate a mix of caution and laissez-faire that has marked his approach to foreign policy. But this is no time for nuances and carefully studied caution.

The absence of a coordinated campaign with other powers that have influence in the region – namely Iran and Russia - against ISIS makes the current situation even more alarming. If ISIS is to consolidate its presence in Mosul and beyond, no country will escape the chaos created by this storm.

The author thanks Ivor Crotty for editing this article and another one for RT on Syria, which can be found here

http://rt.com/op-edge/169364-isis-american-wars-mosul/

Pakistan sitting on a time bomb of youth radicalization

Jhinuk Chowdhury is a former journalist based in India and is currently working as an independent writer. Jhinuk can be reached at jhinuk.cchowdhury@gmail.com

One of the world’s youngest countries, with more than half of its population below 25 years of age, and the world’s 9th largest English speaking nation, has a growing middle class and steadily rising domestic demand.

That’s Pakistan for you – one of Asia’s most strategically located nations, a gateway to northern India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and western China.

What many might be expecting to read further is perhaps about a flood of FDIs (foreign direct investments) with the world’s largest MNCs pouring in to tap into the country’s working age population.

Instead, what we do have for you is a pool of youth comprising about 36 million between 15-24 years and 58 million individuals below 15 embracing a more radical, religion-driven worldview which, experts say, is tacitly espousing the cause of jihadists and the Taliban.

In a survey conducted by the British Council of 5,271 people between the ages of 18 and 29 from across Pakistan prior to last year’s poll, only 29 percent felt that democracy was the best political system; while 38 advocated Sharia law for Pakistan.

The worrying part is that the imposition of Sharia is also one of the main demands of Pakistan’s deadliest terrorist group in Pakistani - the Taliban or TTP (earlier known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan).

As Madiha Afzal, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland & Non-Resident Fellow, Brookings Institution, says, “There is definitely a high degree of religiosity in Pakistan, and it is also correct that many Pakistanis will approve of the imposition of Sharia law if asked - they see it as a basis of good governance and fair principles. Pakistan's constitution already incorporates many Islamic principles as it is an Islamic republic. But there is not a complete overlap between religiosity and radicalization, although an intersection of religiously-motivated radicalized youth certainly exists.”

In a survey on Pakistani internet users released by Bytes For All - Pakistan, an advocacy organization, regarding online hate speech in Pakistan, 92 percent say they have come across hate speech online, and close to half of the respondent indicate they had been targeted for their religious beliefs.

Here is a sample of one of the hate speeches: “Pakistani media is an agent of CIA and RAW, Shariat ya Shahadat (Shariah or Martydom), Maslak-e-Deoband (Cult of Deoband) and Shias are unbelievers.”

While there is resentment towards the violence carried out by the religious extremist groups, there certainly seems to be a quiet resonance to the ideology.

Men are reflected in a side mirror of a vehicle (L) as they attend an evening mass prayer session called "tarawih" to mark the holy fasting month of Ramadan, along a road in Karachi June 29, 2014 (Reuters / Akhtar Soomro)

Narratives

Religion is a very important component of identity for a Pakistani – where you should be guided by certain principles, which expect you to put values higher than individual aspiration or assertion. Compared to this, democracy that upholds people’s will above caste, creed or religion is a newer idea.

Ironically there’s no example demonstrated to the youth of what democracy can do. Employment is what they care about most. In Pakistan one out of every ten unemployed. The previous government doesn’t seem to credit any phenomenal change with regard to bringing down joblessness. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its report predicts Pakistan’s unemployment rate, which was 5.17 percent last year, will remain at 5.29 percent for the next five years primarily due to political unrest.

The country’s educational system remains highly segmented based on socio-economic classes producing inequality in the standards of the talent pool. The madressah or the Islamic seminaries of Pakistan, attended by children from the poorest section of society – constituting the large portion of the youth – focus mostly on religious subjects.

Urdu-medium/vernacular public education accommodates students from the lower to middle economic class, who constitute 60 percent of school-age children. The quality of education is below average here.

Finally, there are the high quality private sector English speaking schools that children of the elites go to, where objectivity and creative thinking are emphasized. These schools keep the entry bar so high that it is affordable and accessible only to the higher layer of the socio economic strata.

As young Pakistanis come out into the job market, they are faced with a public sector that has largely closed fresh recruitment and a private sector – which no doubt has seen tremendous growth with telecoms considered to be the fastest growing sectpr in the world – has set the standard so high that it is impossible for public school students with a poorer education to expect admission.

As the growth stops at a certain smaller layer of the society, the larger part develops resentment against globalization and modernization because they do not see any benefit trickling down to them. This frustration finds solace in radical even extreme ideologies, which are sometimes even present in the education system. For instance, the nation’s unaltered text books – largely reoriented during the 80s – which project Pakistan to be under ‘threat from Hindu India and the anti-Islamic West.’ So there’s a cause they can stand up for and there’s a platform to voice their resentment.

A boy drinks rose syrup as he breaks his fast with others, on the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, at a mosque in Peshawar June 29, 2014

What’s the example they are witnessing from their neighbors? Though considered a reasonably successful democratic system, India is still struggling with stagnating employment rates and slowing economic growth. Added to that there are incidents like Godhra, which many look at as a case where the world’s largest democracy is still not completely above religion.

The West – the so-called custodians of democracy and human rights haven’t really walked the talk. The unmanned aerial drone strikes from the US has killed between 1,953 and 3,279 Pakistanis since 2004 of whom between 18 percent and 23 percent were civilians.

So talk about human rights and democracy falls flat in front of this marginalized set of the population who agree to carry out bombings for just $17 or sell out their voting card for a mere $5.

On the other hand, there’s enough narration from the other side. Right from forums of interaction at religious seminaries to publications and electronic media narrating their causes and the reason they exist.

Publications of the Pakistani Taliban, Balochistan’s separatists, Pakistani and Kashmir-based jihadi groups are easily available at news stalls. According to a study, the number of militant publications in 2013 in Pakistan had exceeded 50, and most of these publications have a minimum circulation of 2,000 to 6,000 per week.

Madressahs not only tacitly support, with their radical religious publications, but also support groups like TTP in their execution of terrorist attacks. During terror attacks in leading Pakistani cities like Islamabad and Rawalpindi, these religious seminaries have been used for lodging and sheltering.

These are even acting as sources of recruitment for the extremist groups, where students in standards [class] IXth and Xth get trained for Jihad.

The TTP launched its website that hosts videos, a magazine, and its leaders’ interviews and statements, apart from hate speech targeted at the security forces and government, or even images of houses allegedly bombed by the army.
It even went on to set up a Facebook page a couple of years back, which incidentally had 270 likes. The page was later removed by Facebook.

Sikh pilgrims attend a prayer session inside the compound of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's mausoleum in Lahore June 29, 2014 (Reuters / Mohsin Raza)

Ideological alienation

A large portion of the urban upper middle class is also espousing to the more radical, conformist view of religion and way of life. Many have increasingly embraced the doctrines of groups like Hizbut Tahrir and Al Huda.

Al Huda mainly targets upper class women, projecting itself as a means to “bring them back to their religious roots” drawing women towards a more conservative way of life.

Hizbut Tahrir on the other hand, according to this article on Dawn, has been striving to create a niche among the influential elite as part of its top-down approach to realize its objective of introducing a caliphate in the country.

As Afzal points out, “There is also a significant segment who are quite religious and have biased views of their own since the elite schools alone are not good enough to counter other narratives in society, and conservative family backgrounds also play a big role.”

This according to experts is creating a group that is ideologically secluded and even alienated from the larger reality of progress and modernization – a void clearly identified by the religious extremist groups.

A crescent moon is seen over a mosque after sunset in Karachi June 29, 2014 (Reuters / Akhtar Soomro)

Silencing

Those who want to look forward and have the mettle to speak their minds are increasingly vilified. The case of the Pakistan based music band, Laal, is a good example. The band, whose Facebook page commands 400,000 likes, have often spoken out against the Taliban or commented on government moves.

One such comment on the peace talks with the TTP on its page goes like this: “Dear negotiations committee. One cannot solve extremism by accepting the Talibanization of Pakistan,” and “Don't bow to the Taliban just because they are violent and aggressive. Fight them.” The page was blocked and was opened for access only after attracting huge criticism.

Earlier this year, Raza Rumi, renowned Pakistani TV anchor and journalist, who is vocal in his criticism of the Taliban and sectarian groups, was attacked. As Afzal points out, “The liberal elite does play a role in arguing against existing narratives in the country, but they get crowded out, especially in the face of terrorist threats.”

Pakistan, a nation that has given the world intellectuals like Dr. Abdus Salam the Noble Laureate in Physics, can certainly do better.

The country, already home to over 600 MNCs including Standard Chartered, Barclays, GSK, Toni and Guy, Debenhams and Unilever, is awash with opportunities. It was ranked 110th by the World Bank in its Ease of Doing Business Index,which is higher than Argentina, Brazil and India.

It’s just about opening up to the wider world and embracing its positives. As Afzal concludes, “In my view there is need for thorough rethinking of the way Pakistanis think and are educated - by having them engage in critical and analytical learning and discussions, which will eventually lead to less radicalization and biased thinking.”

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Obama snubs MI5, sends CIA to investigate threat of radical Islam in UK

As radical Islam spreads through the United Kingdom, US President Barack Obama has sent a special CIA unit to interrogate senior British security experts. The move is seen as a snub of Britain’s MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies.

Up to 450 radical Islamic men from Great Britain have flocked to the battlefields in Syria and Iraq, joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Lahoor Talabani, director of counter terrorism for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told Sky News in mid-June. A British Labour MP, Kahlid Mahmood, told the Sun that up to 1,500 UK militants are fighting in Syria. Talabani’s comments echoed those of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said that 65 people have been arrested in the past 18 months for jihadist activities related to Syria. UK authorities have launched a campaign to encourage Muslim women to inform on relatives they suspect of planning to travel to the war-torn countries where ISIS holds large swaths of land.

Last week, the UK banned a radical group called Need4khilafah for incitement to terrorism, the Daily Mail reported. A leading hate preacher for the group, Abu Waleed, was linked to the “brainwashing” of three Welsh jihadists fighting in Iraq and Syria. Two of those young men, 20-year-olds Reyaad Khan and Nasser Muthana, have appeared in an ISIS recruitment video. Khan trained for holy war by practicing mixed martial arts at a gym in Cardiff, Wales.

British security forces have been “forced to admit they are struggling to keep track of the estimated 500 Britons who have travelled to the Middle East to fight alongside” ISIS, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

Since the US normally relies on information from MI5 and MI6 for intelligence within the UK, it is unusual for the CIA to send a team to investigate the country’s closest ally. Their primary goal is to establish the “stability” of the relationship between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Britain.

“The US is worried about the British situation. They fear there might be a knock-on effect for them,” Professor Anthony Glees, of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, said to the Daily Mail. “The throat-cutting between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq and Syria has not yet spread to the UK, but it is a real threat. It is conceivable you could see Shia ‘hit squads’ in Britain targeting Sunnis preparing to go out to the conflict zones to fight.”

“The Americans regard the UK as a disaster because of our lax stance on immigration which has allowed this militancy to take hold,” Glees added. “Frankly, they would not be doing their jobs properly if it did not do this – forming an objective view of the situation outside of the reports they get from MI5 and their officers at the US Embassy in London.”

As US concerns over radicalization of the UK’s Muslims and over foreign fighters returning to Europe from Syria and Iraq deepens, the US is discussing an increase in security measures at airports within America and abroad, ABC News reported. The Obama administration is focused on a new generation of bombs that terrorists in Syria could smuggle onto commercial flights.

“[This threat] is different and more disturbing than past aviation plots," one source told ABC News. Intelligence agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, have been debating their options for months, and top-level officials met at the White House last week to discuss the issue.

The battle-hardened foreign jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq pose a threat to Western nations because they will be able to enter the countries without visas on European passports.

"We've seen Europeans who are sympathetic to their cause traveling into Syria and now may travel into Iraq, getting battle-hardened. Then they come back," Obama told NBC News in an interview broadcast Sunday.

According to the Daily Mail, the Obama administration has become “increasingly anxious” about “strong links” between American and British radicals, and the potential for American Muslims to follow the lead of their UK counterparts in fighting alongside ISIS. The CIA feels British efforts to provide a reliable assessment of the threat posed by and identify the members of radicalized Western Muslims have been inadequate, sources from the American spy agency told the Daily Mail.

http://rt.com/usa/169508-cia-radical-islam-spread-britain/

All but four nations are subject to NSA surveillance – new Snowden leak

Previously undisclosed files leaked to the media by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden now show that the United States National Security Agency has been authorized to spy on persons in all but four countries.

The Washington Post published on Monday official documents provided by Mr. Snowden that shows new proof concerning the extent of the NSA’s vast surveillance apparatus.

One of the documents—a file marked “top secret” from 2010 and approved by the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—shows that the NSA has been authorized to conduct surveillance on 193 foreign government, as well as various factions and organizations around the world, including the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information from individuals ‘concerning’ all but four countries on Earth, according to top-secret documents,” journalists Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman wrote for the Post.

The reporters write that the NSA’s ability to target the communications of foreign persons and parties is “far more elastic” than previously known, and that documents suggest the agency can acquire conversations that may not involve an intelligence target directly, but concern that individual or entity to a certain degree by relying on provisions contained within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Unless, of course, that person of interest is a citizen of one of the ‘Five Eyes’ nations that, together with the US, are involved in a global surveillance partnership of sorts.

According to the Post, the NSA’s computers automatically filter out phone calls from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand that would otherwise be collected using FISA. Even those nations, however, aren’t entirely sparred.

Nakashima and Gellman go on to acknowledge that the list contains 28 sovereign territories, including the British Virgin Islands, where the NSA reportedly still does permit intelligence gathering filtering out those country codes would otherwise slow the system down.

One former senior defense official who spoke to the journalists on condition of anonymity said that the broad authority is allowed so that the US government is able to assess any developing situations around the world at the drop of a hat.

“It’s not impossible to imagine a humanitarian crisis in a country that’s friendly to the United States, where the military might be expected on a moment’s notice to go in and evacuate all Americans,” the official said. “If that certification did not list the country,” the source suggested, then the NSA could not gather intelligence under the FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the interception of such communications.

“These documents show both the potential scope of the government’s surveillance activities and the exceedingly modest role the court plays in overseeing them,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Post.

http://rt.com/usa/169500-snowden-nsa-eyes-intercept/

Post-sanctions Iran: The next China?

As Tehran and world powers inch closer to a final nuclear agreement, Iran is poised to become a major emerging power.

Richard Javad Heydarian Richard Javad Heydarian is a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author of "How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings" The lightning advance of the group now calling itself the Islamic Caliphate (formerly known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) throughout the north and eastern portions of Iraq has rattled governments across the region and beyond. For the first time in recent memory, there is the possibility that a terrorist group could end up controlling the geographical heart of the Middle East, home to one of the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves. Quite paradoxically, such a worrying prospect has pushed Tehran and Washington closer to each other, as the two powers contemplate a modus vivendi to contain the menace and aid the flailing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki-led government in Baghdad, which has been criticised for its lack of inclusive governance and increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Given their shared strategic concern over the rapid proliferation of violent groups such as the Islamic Caliphate, there is a growing conversation about the possibility of a tactical alliance between the West and Iran - paving the way for a fundamental reconfiguration in the regional balance of power. Above all, however, the greater issue at hand is the gradual re-emergence of Iran, currently among the world's 20 largest economies, as a serious international power, after years of geopolitical isolation and bitter ideological competition with the West. And it is the combination of pragmatism and resilience that underpins Iran's increasingly successful bid for (retaking) a pride of place among the world's leading nations. Beyond Deng and Gorbachev After his landslide victory in mid-2013, when tens of millions of Iranians unequivocally voted for greater pragmatism and moderation in the country's domestic and foreign policies, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani assembled one of the most capable governments in Iranian history. In fact, his cabinet boasts more American PhDs than the White House. Today, Rouhani oversees a highly professional, technocratic government, with an intimate understanding of not only international affairs, but also the US political system and its vagaries. A year into office, the Rouhani administration has not only addressed pressing macroeconomic issues, particularly an explosive inflation and a collapsing domestic currency, but it has also managed to sustaina series of high-stakes negotiations with world powers to resolve a decade-long crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. Obviously, critics at home and abroad have sought to derail the Rouhani administration's efforts to negotiate a permanent settlement of the Iranian nuclear crisis with Western powers, especially Washington. A year into his office, the Rouhani administration has not only addressed pressing macroeconomic issues, particularly an explosive inflation and a collapsing domestic currency, but it has also managed to sustain a series of high-stakes negotiations with the world powers to resolve a decade-long crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. There is a high possibility that the ongoing negotiations will be extended beyond the July deadline, as Iran and world powers enter the final stages of negotiating a long-term nuclear agreement, which would theoretically allow Tehran to retain a measure of domestic enrichment capability in return for an end to Western sanctions against Iran's financial and hydrocarbon sectors. Nonetheless, one can't deny that for the first time in decades, there is a real possibility of more normalised relations between Tehran and the West, potentially sparking a huge influx of Western investment and technology into the country. As the current head of the Iranian government, President Rouhani has managed to carefully navigate Iran's multi-polar domestic power structure. Emphasising regime stability and preservation, he has convinced leading conservatives to support his often contentious diplomatic overtures towards the West. Meanwhile, he managed to attract the support of leading pragmatists and reformists by constantly emphasising his advocacy for greater socio-political freedom, economic revival, and political engagement with the wider world. In many ways, Rouhani represents one of the most consequential pragmatists in the opening decades of the 21st century. Far from emulating the Soviet Union's President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose political reforms precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China's Deng Xiaoping, who constantly pushed for economic liberalisation at the expense of political freedom, Rouhani is laying the foundations of an Iran that is economically dynamic, politically vibrant, and geopolitically powerful.      The lion awakens Long dismissed as one of the weakest teams in this year's World Cup, the Iranian football team, also known as Team Melli, had to overcome a pernicious combination of financial difficulties and administrative nightmares to prepare for the likes of Argentina. Due to Western sanctions, which prevented Tehran from collecting funds from international sponsors, Iran could barely organise a decent preparatory campaign ahead of the World Cup tournament. But against all odds, they eventually managed to win the respect of millions of fans across the world, cementing Team Melli's reputation as one of the most powerful Asian teams in recent history. One could argue that initial misperceptions vis-a-vis Team Melli somehow mirror the broader misunderstanding of Iran as a country, and its achievements in recent decades. The West has long sought to dismiss Iran as a rogue nation, with limited human capital and underdeveloped technological and scientific capabilities. Given Iran's dependence on hydrocarbon exports, Western powers sought to change Iran's strategic by imposing restrictions on Iran's ability to conduct international trade and finance its domestic development. Without a question, the sanctions have been devastating, severely undermining Iran's macroeconomic conditions as well as its access to basic necessities such as food and medicine. But a combination of resilience and increasing pragmatism has allowed Iran to not only emerge as a sporting powerhouse, especially in Asia, but, more importantly, as one of the most dynamic countries in the developing world. Today, Iran stands among leading countries in cutting-edge sciences such as stem cell research and nanotechnology. As the Middle East's leading scientific power, Iran has managed to attain growing self-sufficiency in terms of space and nuclear technology, while leading Iranian universities have been producing among the best engineers in the world. After decades of rural development and pro-active developmental policies, Iran is among the leading Asian countries in terms of human development index, while boasting among the largest steel and automobile manufacturing bases in the developing world. Overall, the main strength of the Rouhani administration is its profound realisation of the necessity to launch a creative diplomatic approach to remove artificial political constraints, which have prevented the full flowering of the immense potential of the Iranian people and the efficient utilisation of the country's immense hydrocarbon wealth. As we inch closer to a post-sanctions Iran, we shouldn't be surprised to hear more leading global financial institutions describing the country as one of the most promising economies of the 21st century - and perhaps the next China. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/post-sanctions-iran-next-china-201463083025942167.html