Why is Pakistan and the rest of the world losing war against Islamism?

One of the biggest challenges faced by Pakistan and the world at the moment is Islamist militancy.

However the overwhelming majority of the general public and a significant number of policy-makers are clueless about the nature of the conflict. The reasons are many including: a general lack of interest, inability to analyse rationally, narratives based on conspiracy theories, political correctness, the tendency to follow fashionable dominant narratives, state-sponsored propaganda narratives, as well as sectarian, political and other ideological biases.

Natrually, there can be no solution when the problem is misunderstood.

In the coming days, I intend to start a series to explore the undercurrents - particularly the theological and strategic aspects driving Islamist militancy and sectarian conflict.

‪#‎AlQaeda‬ ‪#‎Taliban‬ ‪#‎IS‬ ‪#‎Pakistan‬ ‪#‎Syria‬ ‪#‎Iraq‬ ‪#‎Terrorism‬ ‪#‎PolicyFailure‬

Watch this space...

Foreign militants seeking ‘safe passage’

By Hasan Abdullah

MIRAMSHAH: As the government team prepares for another meeting with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), many of the foreign militants based in and around North Waziristan feel they are facing an uncertain future and are not only seeking assurances from their hosts but are also weighing options for moving out to others places, like Afghanistan and Syria, to continue their ‘jihad’.

This emerged during a series of interviews conducted by this corespondent with scores of foreign militants, mainly around North Waziristan, on getting exclusive access to various groups and to some of the most wanted fugitives in the country.

The Consortium Of Terror

By Hasan Abdullah

Despite hundreds of attacks and the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis, there is still a great deal of confusion about the number, nature and end goals of the militant organisations operating in Pakistan. For some, they remain figments of a fevered imagination. To others they are proxies of foreign powers.

This belief has not come out of the blue. It is part of an obscurantist narrative the state itself created and propagated. The problem with this narrative is that while it may have delegitimised some jihadi groups within public ranks, it is counter productive in the long run for a number of reasons. First of all, it fails to address the very ideology that promotes militancy and hence the state’s failure to present an effective counter-ideology.

Taliban’s change of heart on polio vaccination

By Hasan Abdullah

KUNAR: Apparently on feeling growing pressure from the sympathisers of those affected by the crippling polio disease, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has officially distanced itself from some of the recent attacks on polio vaccinators in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi, saying it has nothing to do with these killings.

But at the same time there are some senior members in the organisation who have not ruled out the possibility of involvement of some “hard-liners” or “overzealous” members for such violent actions against the polio workers.