Pakistan Election Violence Reverberates in New York

By Jehangir Khattak
The story was originally published in the voicesofny.org 

Supporters of ANP protesting in front of the UN headquarters. (Photo by Jehangir Khattak via Voice of NY)

Jamal Khan drove 45 miles from his home in White Plains, N.Y., to 46th Street and First Avenue in front of United Nations headquarters in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, on April 26. He wanted to add his voice to the condemnation expressed by more than two dozen supporters of Awami National Party (ANP), who had gathered to protest bomb attacks on its candidates ahead of May 11 landmark elections in Pakistan.

Khan, who runs a fried chicken business and has been in the U.S. since 1991, shouted slogans in unison with his comrades. “We want peace”; “Stop killing Pashtuns”; “Stop terrorism” and “Stop target killing ANP candidates” were some of the demands that reverberated against a background of  traffic and nearby construction noise. The protesters were referring to Taliban violence against the ANP’s predominantly Pashtun (also spelled “Pakhtoon”) leadership.

ANP is a Pakistani political party with a support base in the country’s mostly Pashtun northwest. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has announced plans to target three major secular parties — the ANP, the Pakistan People’s Party, to which President Asif Ali Zardari belongs, and the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement. Around 60 people have died in bomb attacks on ANP, PPP and MQM campaign workers and leaders across Pakistan since the beginning of April.

The Al-Qaeda-affiliated TTP, an umbrella group of over two dozen Taliban outfits, is based in the North Waziristan region of the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) corridor along Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan. It is blamed for the scores of terrorist attacks that have claimed the lives of over 40,000 Pakistanis since 2004.

The protesters converged in front of the UN in response to a call from the U.S. chapter of the ANP. Unlike Khan, the majority of the participants had travelled from Brooklyn’s Coney Island Avenue, of ‘Little Pakistan’ fame. Almost all major Pakistani political parties maintain their presence in the United States mostly as non-profits. Some of these non-profits often raise campaign funds for their parent parties in Pakistan.

“Stop the killing of ANP leadership and innocent Pakhtoons in the Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan,” said Taj Akber Khan, organizer of the protest who is also president of the U.S. chapter of ANP, reading from a resolution over a megaphone. The interim government, said Taj, should provide a peaceful environment for holding free and fair elections by taking action against those committing “these evil acts.”

“We want to bring to the attention of the international community the organized violence against secular parties in Pakistan,” Taj told party supporters. The UN, he demanded, should press Pakistan’s interim government to create a conducive atmosphere for campaigning.

“Right now, electioneering is just taking place in Punjab (Pakistan’s most populous province) but candidates in the other three provinces (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and parts of Sindh) cannot reach their electorate,” he said, fearing that fair elections might become a distant reality under such conditions. ANP says it has lost over 700 of its leaders and supporters over the past few years in attacks by extremists.

The protesters raised slogans against terrorism. (Photo by Jehangir Khattak)

The small but noisy protest in front of UN headquarters received big coverage in Pakistan’s mainstream television channels, since it coincided with a powerful bomb explosion in the country’s southern port city of Karachi. Eleven ANP supporters were killed and 50 injured when a bomb exploded near a small campaign gathering for the ANP candidate for the Sindh province’s legislature, of which Karachi is the capital. The Taliban instantly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Taliban attacks are a new phenomenon in Karachi, which has seen political, sectarian, ethnic, militant and criminal violence for the past many years. According to a report by the United States Institute of Peace, the violence has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 2008.  The Taliban violence has induced old political rivals – the MQM and ANP – to join hands against a common enemy. The two parties have rivaled each other for years to win political space in the port city.

Just hours after the protest in Turtle Bay, Taj Akbar joined local leaders and supporters of the MQM at a restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, to condemn the attacks. Pakistan Club, USA, a Queens-based community organization, hosted the event.

Pakistan Club USA members and supporters of MQM at the event to condemn election violence. (Photo by Mohsin Zaheer)

“When candidates cannot run their election campaigns freely, how can the elections be fair?” Anees Siddiqui, of the MQM, asked a small audience at the Kabab King restaurant located at 73^rd Street and Broadway in Jackson Heights. The event’s host, Raees Warsi, shared Siddiqui’s sentiments.

Extremists dictating election results?

The Taliban do not believe in a secular democratic system, claiming Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and thus their brand of Sharia should be the supreme law of the land there. The Taliban explained on April 29that it was targeting the three parties because of their secular ideology and support for military operations against the group.

But not everyone sees this as the sole reason for their latest bloody campaign against pro-democracy political parties.

Arif Ansar, the founding CEO and chief analyst at Washington DC-based think tank PoliTact, believes the violence is connected to wider trends in the Middle East.  “The liberal space is continually shrinking and nationalist and conservative forces are resurgent in the Middle East, as they have been in Pakistan,” he told Voices of NY in response to an email query. “There are different reasons for this, but one of them is the war on terror. It may also be linked to the dysfunction of the liberal autocrats that triggered the Arab Spring.”

Ansar fears that the violence could have far-reaching domestic, regional and international implications. “It can decisively shift the balance in favor of conservative, nationalist and religious elements in the elections. These forces were already resurgent due to factors such as war on terror and the failure of secular parties to govern and deliver.”

Ansar believes that if the conservatives or religious elements come into power as a result of this shift, they will exert influence on the reconciliation process in Afghanistan and the direction of Pakistan’s relations with India and the U.S.

Many in Pakistan and the community here in the U.S. fear that the upsurge in violence could delay the elections. But Arif Ansar doubts there will be a delay. “Barring some major tragedy, like assassination of a major political leader, there is little chance of this happening,” he says, adding that even the murder of Benazir Bhutto failed to stop the 2008 elections. He says the international community also wants these elections on time “irrespective of how imperfect they may be.”

The impact of violence on the election results makes many Pakistanis nervous, including Khan, who is a native of Swat valley in the country’s mountainous northwest, an area which was liberated from the Taliban in 2009 after a military operation.

“I don’t think elections will be fair. The militants are sidelining the Pashtuns from the national mainstream,” he said, while blaming the country’s security establishment for failing to provide adequate protection to the election candidates.  Explaining the urgency that drove him to join the small protest, leaving his business to his employees, Khan said: “The stakes are higher than the profits from a day’s business.”

Saving elections from ‘ill-actions’

By Jehangir Khattak

An edited version of this article first appeared in The Express Tribune.

Election ferver in Rawalpindi Pakistan. (Photo by Olaf Kellerhoff via Flickr)

As electioneering heats up, politics has shifted to high gear of rhetoric. All political parties have completed the ritual of unveiling largely ambitious manifestos. With few exceptions, these manifestos give semblance of half-baked utopian visions and hazy roadmaps. But politicians are promoting them to the points of fantasy.

One problem with most of these manifestos is their almost identical recipes for national issues. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32^nd US president once said: “An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod.” Politicians selling these manifestos are trying to prove wrong the tested philosophy of Roosevelt. And to their advantage, media, intelligentsia and voters are not raising too many questions about the practicability of these programs.

This disdain has failed to generate the kind of issue-based debate that shapes up election results in Western democracies. In the West, elections are the name of competing programs, ideas and ideologies. In 2000 presidential elections, the promise of reforming social security contributed to George W. Bush's victory. Economic pundits for long have predicted insolvency of social security system after 2030. Bush's program despite being controversial won the voters’ confidence and helped him reach the White House.

In 2008, voters were looking for a leader to pull the US out of its history's most expensive wars that were contributing to its economic crisis. This time Barack Obama was the man of moment. Obama believed that Bush's policy of “either with us or against us” had isolated the US internationally. His bloody and expensive wars needed to be ended responsibly and American troops brought back home. Americans elected Bush and Obama at difficult moments in their history after being convinced that their roadmaps to extending the American century would work. 

The wheel of democracy moved in opposite direction in Pakistan. The PPP ascended to power on sympathy vote after Benazir Bhutto's assassination. It was not elected on its program but on its political rhetoric -- remember "democracy is the best revenge" mantra?  

The PPP lived up to its promise, promoting a strange combination of corrupt political culture and creditable constitutional reforms. It made history by completing its term but left behind a complicated baggage of economic mess and lawlessness. Its rule left deep imprints of statesmanly decisions of NFC Award, renaming NWFP as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18th Amendment to thuggishly handling the economy and governance. It piled up the largest ever domestic and international debt in a single term in Pakistan's history. Under its watch, the Pakistani state shrank within its geography. 

Pakistan is caught up in expensive and bloody fight against terrorism and extremism, a failing economy, crippling energy crisis and a tattering state structure at the end of its rule. These daunting challenges cannot be met with sexy manifestos and catchy slogans.

Thomas Edison once said that visions without execution are mere hallucinations. And rightly so, these manifestos seem like hallucinations when judged on the track record of the parties touting them. The biggest losers on this plank of judgment are parties of the erstwhile ruling coalition and the leading winners could be the untested PTI, PML (N) with comparatively better governance record and smaller religious and nationalist parties.

Lack of clarity in thought and action on voters mind on polling day thus could make or break a new Pakistan’s promise. Voters can save these elections from becoming “ill-actions” by making the parties realize that their vote is no longer available on rosy promises but clear visions and solid roadmaps to salvation.

The election results will hold credence only if all political players have been afforded an even playing field. The security threats to left-leaning secular PPP, ANP and MQM are bad omens. If extremists succeed in paralyzing election campaigns of these parties, which they largely have especially in case of ANP, it will make the electoral exercise meaningless, leaving the field open for only right-leaning parties. The caretakers and the establishment must create an environment that denies terrorists the space to dictate the results and make mockery of the ballot through their bullets.

The writer is a Senior Editor at http://www.voicesofny.org. He tweets @JehangirKhattak