Month: March 2024

Islamabad — Pakistan’s government announced Thursday that it will set up a special commission to investigate allegations the military-run spy agency has been subjecting federal judges to intimidation, torture and other abuses to secure favorable judicial rulings in political cases.

The charges were listed in a letter written by six of eight members of the Islamabad High Court and sent this week to the Supreme Judicial Council, which governs Pakistan’s judiciary under the leadership of the country’s chief justice, Qazi Faez Isa.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a news conference that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will discuss the letter at a Cabinet meeting on Friday before formally appointing a commission of inquiry to investigate the accusations.

Tarar said that Sharif made the decision after a Thursday meeting with Chief Justice Isa at the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

“This [letter] is an extremely grave matter, and it should be dealt with very seriously,” the minister stated.

Dated March 25, the letter accused the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of meddling in judicial proceedings “to seek a certain outcome.” An army general runs the spy agency, which is notorious for allegedly orchestrating the making or breaking of elected governments at the behest of Pakistan’s powerful military.

“We believe it is imperative to inquire into and determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives who report to the executive branch, to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters,” the judges wrote.

The document highlighted several instances of attempted coercion and intimidation by ISI officers “to influence the outcome of cases related to jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. In one of the cases, ISI operatives intimidated “friends and relatives” of two judges who had refused to hear a state-instituted case against Khan for lacking merit.

“One of the judges had to be admitted to a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” the letter said.

It recounted the abduction of a “brother-in-law” of the Islamabad high court judge by alleged ISI operatives. It added that the abductee “was administered electric shocks” and “tortured into making false allegations” on camera against the judge.

Khan, the cricket hero-turned-prime minister, was ousted from power in April 2021 through an opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence. Khan denounced the move as orchestrated by the military, allegations the institution rejected.

The military ruled Pakistan for more than three decades through coups against elected governments since the country gained independence in 1947.

Former prime ministers, including Khan and Sharif’s elder brother, Nawaz Sharif, have publicly accused army generals of interference in national politics in violation of the constitution.

“We want it to be thoroughly investigated because we had also been its victim,” said Tarar, a senior member of Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League, or PML-N, party.

Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party swiftly rejected the government-proposed commission and demanded that the Supreme Court take up the matter.

“Senior judges incriminating officials working under the government of spying on their private life to pivot away for getting court decisions against former Prime Minister Imran Khan or any other politician, is actually a charge sheet against the government itself,” a PTI statement said.

“Therefore, the formation of an inquiry commission by the incumbent government is nothing but a deflection to avoid a contentious situation,” it said.

The Pakistani military denies it interferes in national politics, but its former chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, acknowledged in a nationally televised speech just days before his retirement in November 2022 that his institution had been meddling in politics for the past 70 years.

In the lead-up to Pakistan’s parliamentary elections last month, the military was constantly accused of influencing judicial proceedings and cracking down on Khan’s party to keep him in jail over controversial convictions.

Eventually, the 71-year-old politician was barred from running in the February 8 vote, and PTI candidates were restricted from winning the majority despite representing the most popular party, according to public surveys.

Khan has been in jail since last August and faces close to 200 lawsuits and prosecutions, ranging from terrorism, sedition, and corruption to murder. He rejects the charges as politically motivated, saying the Pakistani military has orchestrated them to punish him for directly challenging its largely unquestioned powers.
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NEW DELHI — An Indian court extended the custody of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until April 1 on Thursday in a graft case related to the national capital territory’s liquor policy, local media said. 

India’s financial crime-fighting agency arrested Kejriwal last week in connection with corruption allegations related to the city’s liquor policy and he was remanded to its custody until Thursday, weeks before India begins voting in general elections on April 19.  

Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) says the case is fabricated and politically motivated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party deny political interference and say law enforcement agencies are doing their job.  

All the main leaders of AAP were already imprisoned in the case before Kejriwal was arrested.  

Terming his arrest a “political conspiracy”, Kejriwal, 55, told reporters outside court on Thursday that “the public will respond to this”. Speaking in court later, he said the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has arrested him, aims to crush AAP. 

ED lawyers told the court that they needed Kejriwal in custody for another seven days as he was “deliberately not cooperating” and needed to be interrogated further.  

Kejriwal’s arrest has sparked protests in the national capital and the nearby northern state of Punjab, which is also governed by AAP, over the last few days.  

Dozens of AAP supporters were detained on Tuesday as they attempted to march to Modi’s residence to demand his release. Some AAP workers protesting and distributing leaflets to commuters outside a busy metro station in central Delhi were also detained on Thursday.  

“This is the time when we campaign (for elections), our leaders are being put in prison, arrested … they (federal government) are stopping us from campaigning, (but) nobody can stop us from winning,” a protester told news agency ANI.  

A joint rally of the ‘INDIA’ alliance, consisting of more than two dozen political parties including AAP, is planned in the capital on Sunday to protest against the arrest.  

The issue has also drawn international attention with the U.S. and Germany calling for a “fair” and “impartial” trial in the case, causing New Delhi to tell Washington and Berlin that India’s legal processes are based on an independent judiciary and that they should stay away from its internal affairs. 
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ISLAMABAD — Two and a half years into their reign, the Afghan Taliban have cemented their ultra-conservative rule across the war-torn country but have yet to turn their fighting force into a traditional military. 

VOA spoke to analysts who say the former insurgent force does not need to pattern itself after a standard military to effectively counter a mounting security threat from an Islamic State affiliate and tackle growing tensions with neighboring Pakistan. 

According to an annual analysis of global militaries by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Afghan Taliban have 150,000 active fighters. Military chief Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat told Reuters last year that the regime plans to increase the force by another 50,000, but he did not specify the time frame for doing so. 

Since coming to power, the Taliban’s de facto government has not publicly released a defense budget. To formalize their defense forces, they have created three battalions under Special Forces and eight infantry corps.  

The military has a variety of armored vehicles, towed artillery, three light aircraft and 14 helicopters, including U.S.-made Black Hawks that it seized after the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) fell apart amid the chaotic withdrawal of international forces in 2021.  

The Taliban also have a few Russian attack helicopters from ANDSF. 

Capability 

Although U.S. forces left nearly $7 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan, experts assess the Taliban’s ability to operate some of the sophisticated machinery as limited. 

“Without maintenance contracts [and] materials from foreign suppliers who originally equipped the ANDSF, though, it is unlikely they can really use a lot of materials at scale,” Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA. 

Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, told VOA that the Taliban face challenges in training their forces similar to those the ANDSF faced.  

“They are still dealing with a largely uneducated population that has to be taught sometimes basic competencies of soldiering,” said Weinstein, a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan in 2012.   

Insurgency mode 

Analysts say despite establishing its rule after the end of the 20-year U.S.-led war, the Afghan Taliban are still in insurgency mode. 

“It allowed individual units to, sort of at the tactical level, operate in a semiautonomous way,” said Weinstein, adding that the former insurgents still have “cohesion and decent command and control over their fighters.” 

“The biggest strength of the Taliban is their popularity,” said Graeme Smith, a senior consultant at the International Crisis Group.   

Smith, who worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan between 2015 and 2018, said Taliban forces should not be analyzed like a traditional military, as their numbers change based on local needs. 

“During the years of U.S. [and] NATO troop presence, unpublished NATO studies concluded that the vast majority of Taliban fought within 1 kilometer of their own homes. That is to say, locals were going out and shooting at NATO troops, and then going home for lunch and having a home-cooked meal, and then going back out again in the afternoon and shooting some more NATO troops,” Smith explained. 

The easy availability of fighters and places to hide, Smith said, give Taliban forces a significant advantage. 

Security threats 

While the Afghan Taliban have effectively crushed armed resistance, Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS-K or ISKP, poses a significant internal security threat. 

“It’s an insurgency which is both malignant and persistent, and it poses an ideological challenge to the Taliban,” said Mir. 

The Taliban have killed senior IS-K commanders, eliminated the group’s cells and kept them from holding territory inside Afghanistan. 

“So, that’s a testament to the competence of the Taliban security forces,” Weinstein said. “They seem to have good intelligence on ISKP leaders and where the ISKP cells are located, and they seem to be effective in keeping them at bay,” he added. 

Externally, the Taliban’s Afghanistan faces a threat from Pakistan — the only neighbor Kabul has a border dispute with. Pakistan’s military has conducted strikes twice inside Afghan territory against alleged hideouts since the Taliban returned to power — once in April 2022, and this year on March 18.  

Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of giving a haven to anti-Pakistan militants, a charge the de facto rulers reject.  

Kabul retaliated to this month’s strike by targeting several Pakistani military posts along the border. In a statement condemning Pakistan’s action, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid warned of “very bad consequences, which will be out of Pakistan’s control,” if Pakistan launches more cross-border attacks. 

Fighting Pakistan 

Experts VOA spoke to agree that the Taliban do not have the firepower to take on one of the world’s largest, nuclear-armed militaries — but say that Kabul can engage in unconventional tactics against Pakistan. 

“They can push back by even doing less to rein in the TTP [Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan] or perhaps, giving the TTP carte blanche to engage in even greater attacks [inside Pakistan],” Weinstein said, adding that the Taliban see the TTP as an “insurance policy against the Pakistani state.” 

Allowing cross-border terrorism would “certainly raise a lot of international concern,” Mir warned. 

As tensions grow between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Smith said Kabul could also scuttle important regional projects. One such project, he said, is the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project, popularly known as CASA-1000, which will bring electricity from Central Asia via Afghanistan to energy-hungry Pakistan. 

The Afghan Taliban could also hinder the land route Pakistan uses for trade with Central Asia, experts say. 

A Pakistani Ministry of Commerce delegation met with Afghan counterparts this week in Kabul as bilateral trade drops amid frequent border skirmishes and closures. 

Experts agree the chances of the Afghan Taliban getting into a conventional war with a neighbor are slim — but caution the de facto rulers of Afghanistan have a formidable doctrine of asymmetric warfare involving suicide bombers and contingents of locals willing to drop shovels and grab guns when called upon.
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