Part 1: John Mohammed - Story from Swat

"There is only one John Mohammed - unique."

When I learn that John Mohammed Butt has spent most of the past 40 years living amongst the Pashtoon tribes, who inhabit the hinterland between Afghanistan and Pakistan where he is regarded as a native Pashtoon and revered as an Islamic scholar, I can't help but sit up and learn more.

Until recently, home for John Mohammed was a tiny village in the Swat Valley. He arrived in Swat in 1969, he says, as a young hippy and stayed. When his fellow hippies grew up and went home to become accountants and lawyers, John remained - becoming fluent in Pashto and studying Islam.

He laughs. "When people call me an ageing ex-hippy, I always reply that I am ageing maybe, but I'm certainly not ex. I'm still a hippy."

But John's world changed in the late 1980s, with the arrival of militants, who came to the border areas from all over the world to fight the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. His beloved Swat, once a popular tourist destination, was also unable to escape downwards spiral into battles between the Pakistani military, the Taliban and the people.

"I saw the rural, religious Pashtun way of life I had come to love so much being diluted, contaminated and poisoned" he says.

Read more here and in the next posting.

Source: BBC

The Great Game

The 'Great Game' (covering the period between 1813-1907) was the historic rivalry between Russia and Britain over influence in Central Asia, including Persia and Afghanistan.

For a while there were less aggressive policies by the Imperial Powers, however following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second phase of rivalry between the Soviet and British influence ensued in Afghanistan.

Fast forward to the present. Today Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the US of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan. He said the US had "created terrorists and now say they are fighting them", as he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

Hamid Karzai, on the surface remain US-friendly. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, also in Kabul today, has too accused Iran of a "double game" by stating that they were giving the Taliban low-level support.

Meanwhile Pakistan continues with it's double policy of support/fight the Taliban.

The Great Game(s) continue.

700 Innocent Civilians in 2009

Ahmed Rashid, Lahore-based, journalist writing for the BBC:
Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: Pakistan

In 2010, Pakistan faces a triple crisis:

• Acute political instability - President Asif Ali Zardari may be forced to resign, which could trigger long-term political unrest
  
• An ever-worsening economic crisis that is creating vast armies of jobless youth who are being attracted to the message of extremism
• The army's success rate in dealing with its own indigenous Taliban problem

The latter has been partially successful, but consider the figures reported by the Dawn Media Group:

Peshawar: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians. According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent people also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities. The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day.

Ahmed Rashid continues:
Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: Afghanistan

The Pakistan military, which effectively controls policy towards India and Afghanistan, shows no signs of giving up on the sanctuaries that the Afghan Taliban have acquired in Pakistan. US success in Afghanistan is unlikely without eliminating these sanctuaries or forcing the Afghan Taliban leadership into talks with Kabul.

For the moment the army is hedging its bets with the Afghan Taliban, as it is fearful about a potential power vacuum in Afghanistan once the Americans start to leave in 2011. Other neighbouring countries - India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian republics - may start thinking along the same lines and prepare their own Afghan proxies to oppose the Afghan Taliban, which could result in a return to a brutal civil war similar to that of the 1990s.

Is History about to repeat itself?