Afghanistan's ex-spy chief has risked sparking another war of words by making a series of allegations against Pakistan.

Amrullah Saleh, former director of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), on March 12 accused Pakistan of treating Afghanistan as a "sub-nation."

"Pakistan has monopolized the right to have all sorts of foreign relations itself and when it comes to Afghanistan, they want to create limitations for us; treating us not as a nation, but as a sub-nation, as to whom we should talk to or who should be our allies," Saleh said.

Speaking on the television program "Sarhad Ke Us Paar," co-hosted by Pakistan's Express News TV and Afghanistan's Tolo News TV, Saleh also accused Islamabad of taking money in exchange for its recent release of dozens of Taliban prisoners in its custody. He said Pakistan had even offered to mediate between the Afghan government and the Taliban leadership "for the right price."

"Pakistan is no longer denying to having harbored the Taliban leadership, and its government is now putting a high price tag on the Taliban and saying if you pay the price we are going to push these guys for reconciliation and we know what the price tag is," he said.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry has vehemently rejected Saleh's allegations, insisting that it did not take money from Kabul or offer to be a mediator.

"Pakistan encourages an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue and is committed to it," a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Express News.

Saleh, who was head of the NDS between 2004 and 2010, resigned after an attack on a high-profile peace conference. He was a close associate of former anti-Taliban Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Masud and served as his liaison with the CIA in the late 1990s.

On the program, he also accused Pakistan of trying to dominate Afghanistan through proxies, a reference to the Taliban and other militant groups fighting against Kabul. He said that despite Islamabad's pledges to support the peace process with the Taliban, Pakistan did not want a functioning state in Afghanistan.

"The best way for us to make progress is for [Pakistan] to respect Afghanistan as a dignified nation, not as your backyard," Saleh said. "For as long as you're trying to dominate us through proxies it will backfire because we have gained massive soft power and Afghans are ready to stand up and rise as a nation."

Saleh also suggested that if Pakistan continued its policies toward Afghanistan there could be a possibility of war between the two neighbors.

"When Pakistan gives itself the right to fragment my nation along ethnic lines and harbor antistate elements on the soil of Pakistan to hurt us as a nation, there may come a time when we won't be possessing the policy of coming to you softly and begging you to have mercy on us. As a sovereign country, Afghanistan also has the right to reciprocate," Saleh warned.

His comments come after another Afghan ex-spy chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, on March 3 accused Pakistan's notorious intelligence service, Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), of covertly supporting the Taliban and other extremist groups working against the government in Afghanistan.

In an unprecedented step, Nabil called for the United Nations to place the ISI on its global list of terrorist groups. "A terrorist is blacklisted, but the person who provides them with safe havens is not blacklisted," Nabil said.

Nabil, who is deputy chairman of Afghanistan's National Security Council, also said Pakistan should not be allowed to participate in negotiations to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban.

Afghanistan's current spy chief, Asadullah Khalid, is still recovering in a U.S. hospital after he survived a suicide attack on December 6, 2012. The assailant reportedly pretended to be a "messenger of peace from the Taliban" before detonating explosives at a government guesthouse used by the NDS.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the time said the assassination plot "came from Pakistan." Karzai said that although the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack, he believed it originated in the Pakistani city of Quetta, where the Taliban's leadership is believed to be based.

Although Karzai never implicated Islamabad, Pakistan did issue a strong rejection that it was involved.

Recent accusations of Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan have struck a chord with ordinary Afghans, many of whom harbor resentment towards their eastern neighbor and accuse it of orchestrating the violence in the country.

-- Frud Bezhan

Comments on suicide bombers, which may or may not have been made by the head of the All-Pakistan Ulema Council, have been making waves in Afghanistan.

Tolo News, a private Afghan TV station, quoted Tahir Ashrafi, who heads the influential body of clerics, as saying that “suicide attacks are permitted in Afghanistan as long as American forces are present in the country.” Tolo News also quoted Ashrafi as saying: "Palestine is occupied by Israel, Kashmir by India, and Afghanistan by the U.S. So if the Muslims don't have the atomic bomb, they should sacrifice their lives for God.”

But in a subsequent interview with RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan, Ashrafi said: “This is baseless and the liar’s place is at the bottom of hell.” In another interview with the Pajwak News Agency Ashrafi said: “I’ve never supported suicide attacks that cause civilian casualties in Afghanistan.”

Misquoted or not, Ashrafi’s remarks have generated plenty of reaction in Afghanistan.

On March 2, at a joint press conference with visiting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that the alleged remarks showed that “practical steps are not being taken in Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.” Rasmussen himself also “strongly condemned” such remarks, adding that “nothing can justify terrorist attacks.”

According to the Afghan news site KhaamaPress, the national security adviser to President Karzai, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, said on March 2 that Ashrafi’s alleged comments highlighted the “mainstream violence that threatens the peaceful lives of the Afghan people.”

Spanta's deputy, Rahmatullah Nabil, told Radio Free Afghanistan on March 3 that Ashrafi’s remarks were thought to be the stance of the Pakistani government. He also called on the international community to blacklist organizations backing terrorist groups -- a reference to Pakistan’s intelligence network.

The condemnations have gone beyond the Afghan government.

The Wakht News Agency reported that the head of the Afghanistan Civil Society Network, Sayed Naser Mosawi, condemned the remarks, saying that they could further damage relations between the two countries. “I believe this is not the assertion of a religious scholar, but a conspiracy plotted by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), seeking its own interests in fueling violence and suicide attacks in Afghanistan,” he said.

Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of backing Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Islamabad, however, rejects these accusations as baseless.

The controversy over Ashrafi’s remarks comes after Pakistan’s Ulema Council recently said it would not participate in a joint meeting in March in Kabul, which is geared toward peace building. Afghan and Pakistani leaders agreed during a trilateral summit in London in February to convene the meeting.

However, according to reports, prominent Pakistani cleric Mufti Abu Huraira Mohiuddin said in a letter addressed to the Afghan ulema that they were not willing to denounce the activities of the Taliban nor “would they issue a fatwa against them.”

Ashrafi also told Radio Free Afghanistan that they would not take part in the conference “because it lacked a clear agenda.”

-- Mustafa Sarwar

The Taliban has dissociated itself; the Pakistan Army has extended its condolences; and government functionaries, politicians, and civil-society representatives have offered condolences as "unidentified" armed men took the life of another journalist in Pakistan's perilous tribal areas on February 27.

Malik Mumtaz, who was reporting from Miranshah, North Waziristan, for Pakistan's "The News International" and Geo television, was gunned down while on his way home from a funeral in a nearby village.

He thus became the 11th tribal journalist killed in armed attacks or bomb blasts since February 7, 2005.

[Police in Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan Province reported a 12th death on March 2, saying attackers on a motorcycle had shot dead local journalist Mahmud Afridi. Senior police officer Ahmed Shah Lango said Afridi was killed on March 1 as he walked to a press club in the town of Kalat, some 150 kilometers south of the provincial capital, Quetta. Lango said Afridi worked for the local Intikhab newspaper and was president of the Kalat press club. His friend and colleague Nowroz Mengal told Radio Mashaal that it did not appear that Afridi had ever received any threats. No one has claimed the responsibility of his killing.]

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has described Pakistan as "one of the deadliest nations in the world for the press," where "the government is unwilling to confront the problem."

According to CPJ, as many as 51 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 1992 but the government has failed to arrest and punish their killers.

Apart from the abduction and execution of "Wall Street Journal" reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 in Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, the killings of tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan, Asia Online correspondent Saleem Shahzad, and Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar are all examples of the government's inability to hold accountable those responsible for journalist slayings.

GRAPHIC: Tribal journalists killed in Pakistan since 2005: 
Before his bullet-riddled body was found handcuffed in North Waziristan on June 16, 2006, tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan was kidnapped and kept in captivity for several weeks.

After protests from journalist associations in and outside Pakistan, a judicial commission was formed to investigate his death. However, that commission's report never saw the light of day, and it's unclear why. Khan's kidnappers and killers remain "unidentified."

Geo TV's Babar was shot dead in Karachi on January 13, 2011. Geo TV officials claim that witnesses in Babar's murder case were killed one by one by "unidentified" armed men, while prosecutors and police officers investigating the case have received anonymous threats. The case remains stalled two years after the slaying.

Asia Online's Shahzad was kidnapped in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on May 30, 2011, and his bruised body was found a day later in the town of Mandi Bahauddin, in Punjab Province.

After countrywide protests from journalists, the government formed a judicial commission to investigate the Shahzad case. The commission's findings, released six months later, were heavily criticized as overly vague. One paragraph of the report states: "Despite extensive efforts by the commission, it was unable to identify the culprits due to a lack of significant evidence."

Now comes the task of investigating the killing of Mumtaz and arresting the culprits, as promised by the Pakistani authorities in their statements of condemnation.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman denied responsibility for the murder and condemned the killing, and the Pakistan Army also expressed condolences.

In the majority of targeted killings or kidnappings of journalists, fingers are raised at both nonstate and state actors -- meaning militants and the Pakistani security agencies, respectively. In North Waziristan, the two parties holding what is arguably the greatest sway are the security agencies and the various Taliban groups. Who is responsible, if neither of those two?

Seasoned Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi, commenting during his evening show "Aapas Ki Baat" on Geo TV on February 27, suggested the killers want to communicate the message that those in the media should be careful (when reporting on sensitive issues). But on the more basic question of who the killers are, Sethi -- whose program is known for bold predictions of political developments -- remained silent.

As is often the case, the next few days will see protests by journalists across Pakistan at the killing, as well as promises from Pakistani officials about bringing the culprits to justice. But the key question will remain unresolved until the culprits are actually identified and brought to justice.

Unfortunately, just as when unidentified perpetrators kidnapped and killed Shahzad nearly two years ago, it bears repeating that while Mumtaz is the latest on the list of slain Pakistani journalists he certainly won't be the last.

He calls himself Sheikh-ul-Islam and gets his supporters to swear allegiance to him on the Koran, but he hates to be called "maulana," a term regularly used to refer to religious scholars in Pakistan.

He promises to bring true democracy to Pakistan even though critics claim he does not bat an eyelid when seeking the help of undemocratic forces to overthrow the elected government.

He claims to be a pro-democracy revolutionary, but he did not appear to mind supporting a military dictator in 2002.

He wants "true, pure, and honest" democracy but has so far been unwilling to disclose the source of the huge amounts of money he has spent on mammoth gatherings, a long protest march, and a camp to accommodate demonstrators.

He wants to uphold the cause of the nation but seems reluctant to risk surrendering dual citizenship for the sake of Pakistan and its people.

He wants to dissolve the widely supported Election Commission and dismiss the election commissioner, Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim, but he has not yet proposed any alternative person to head the country’s top electoral body.

He wants honest, patriotic, clean, and true Muslims to rule Pakistan, but he still has not named anyone who he believes meets these criteria.

He boasted of assembling 4 million people in Islamabad for a demonstration but ended up with an estimated 50,000 instead.

He travels in a bullet-proof car while his followers brave the terrorist threat on the roads. He sleeps in a bomb-proof container, whereas his supporters have been spending chilly winter nights under an open sky.

He is intent on bringing revolution nonetheless. He talks of justice and equality. He abhors corruption and dishonesty and promises to ensure social justice for all and sundry by virtue of a "true democratic" system.

Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, the religious scholar known for his 600-page fatwa (religious decree) condemning terrorism in 2010, has become a household name in Pakistan. He is particularly well known among those who watch the country's 24-hour private television channels and frequent social-media networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Many of his statements are also music to the ears of Westerners and Europeans who have lost hope for Pakistan after failed efforts to persuade the country’s security establishment to break its alleged ties with militants, and who fear a Taliban and Al-Qaeda takeover with each new terrorist attack in the country.

Moreover, many of those same people believe that an English-speaking mullah who dislikes being addressed as "maulana" could represent a true blend of Islam and democracy, which would sit well with Pakistan's religious milieu and Western standards of modernization.  


Although people around the world watched TV coverage of Qadri and some 50,000 supporters holding a protest rally in Islamabad on January 15 and closely followed his subsequent speech and deadline for government talks, they failed to note that Pakistan's population of 180 million (minus 50,000) supports various parties and leaders from the 200 or so political groupings that exist in this highly diverse society.

There are also many Pakistanis who are suspicious of Qadri's show of power. This is particularly apparent among electronic media and scores of leading commentators, analysts, researchers, journalists, and news anchors.

Basing their arguments on past experience, there are many well-informed Pakistanis who believe Qadri is backed by the country’s strong security establishment.

And they may have good reasons for believing this. The country’s main intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is widely believed to have distributed huge sums of money among politicians to buy their loyalty and bring a government of their liking to power in 1988. Some critics are also convinced that the results of all elections held throughout the 1990s and up until 2002 were manipulated in one way or another so as to humble those questioning the army's role in politics and elevate those who wanted to stay in its good books.

Religious leaders, such as those from the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-Fazal political parties, also view U.S. support for Qadri as akin to the U.S., Israeli, and Indian nexus that they perceive to be involved in virtually all incidents of terrorism in Pakistan.

And what do the Pakistani people think of Qadri? Despite all the corruption, inefficiency, inflation, the energy crisis, and lawlessness, many from the middle and educated classes do not want another military takeover.

One potentially positive outcome of Qadri's rise to prominence is the fact that many of the country's opposition politicians set aside past differences and gathered at the Raiwand residence of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif in Lahore on January 16. They subsequently released a joint statement saying that elections must be held in a timely manner without any interference from undemocratic forces.

There are some who see this development as a sign that Pakistani politics is becoming more mature, which could act as a buffer against undue interference and the early dissolution of representative assemblies. As Sharif put it: "The failure of the government can’t be construed as the failure of democracy."

With parliamentary elections now just a few months away, opposition leaders have also advised Qadri and his supporters to wait until election day to push their agenda by trying their luck at the polls.

-- Daud Khattak

In October, militants attacked a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Pakistan's Swat Valley for speaking out against their medieval practice of locking girls and women in the four walls of their houses.

The near-fatal shooting was met with nearly universal revulsion. In an unprecedented display of resentment, Pakistanis excoriated the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, and stood behind young child activist Malala Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, an education and peace activist.

This past week, a similar response has emerged from Pakistan's civil society and intelligentsia following attacks on polio-eradication teams in Peshawar and Karachi that claimed nine lives -- six women and three men.

The level of public anger has been such that virtually no one -- not even Taliban sympathizers and apologists or the so-called anti-American groups that include Jamat-e-Islami, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI), Difa-e-Pakistan Council, or the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) of Malana Fazlur Rahman -- dared to publicly challenge the outrage. (They did, however, stop short of naming the Taliban and instead issued a general condemnation of the gory incidents).

On December 20, 30 religious scholars of the Sunni Ittehad Council, a group comprising Sunni religious leaders, condemned the attacks on the polio workers and issued a fatwa emphasizing that administering polio drops and vaccines is not un-Islamic.

The head of Pakistan's Ulema Council, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, on the other hand, requested that all affiliated religious seminaries and mosques in their Friday sermons condemn the attacks and highlight the importance of a healthy life in light of the teachings of Islam.

"We've raised our voice both in [the] Rimsha Masih and Malala Yousafzai cases and once again we are leading the protest against attacks on polio workers. This barbarity [in the name of Islam] is no more acceptable and this voice will now ring from each and every mosque and madrasah," Maulana Ashrafi told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on December 21.

So where do Pakistanis stand?

A vast majority of observers appear to believe that the reactions of Pakistani civil society, the intelligentsia, the media, and the religious right are a harbinger of change.

The unity shown by Pakistanis following the attacks on polio staff and child activist Malala are reminiscent of the mammoth gatherings and rallies once staged by Kashmir-focused religious parties to highlight Pakistan enmity toward India. A shift, as it were, away from jihadists and in favor of peace.

"Of course, this is pointing to the change and shift from the Taliban narrative," writer and analyst Khadim Hussain told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. Hussain suggests that support for the jihadist agendas of right-wing parties by previous governments coupled with deliberate efforts to influence school curricula deepened the roots of radicalism and extremism in the society.

Many Pakistanis see their country at a crossroad and expect incidents like the recent attacks on polio workers and Malala to eventually catapult the Pakistani security establishment into drastic and decisive action against the Taliban.

"The solution, as always, is to eliminate the Taliban so that their narrative, too, is destroyed," writes Pakistan's leading English-language newspaper "The Express Tribune" in a December 19 editorial.

But it is important to remember that similar expectations were expressed and suggestions forwarded following the attack on Malala, who remains in a U.K. hospital. Although Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani pointed in recent statements to landmark changes in Islamabad's policies toward, India, Afghanistan, and the Taliban, there don't appear to have been any practical steps taken in that direction.

Many of those so appalled by the attacks on the polio workers and on Malala must be hoping that the current media war is just a first step -- one that is followed by determined action.

-- Daud Khattak

It is perhaps unsurprising that Pakistani politicians, after daylong deliberations on November 28, reached a unanimous decision that cats should be thrown out of the country's marshy politics. Same for radishes, carrots, okras, bananas, and the much-despised lotas, or ewers.

Implications did not extend to the proverbial "greater national interest," as is the case with so many decisions in Pakistan. Rather it was a matter of mutual personal and party interests. And so the decision came quickly.

The election commission says there are 216 registered political parties in Pakistan, while there are so far just 171 electoral symbols available. Many independent candidates will need their own symbols.

Symbols are used in elections in many countries to help illiterate voters distinguish among parties or even individual candidates. Such images, used for years in Pakistan, accompany campaign materials and must appear alongside the names of the respective individuals or groups on the ballots.

General elections are expected in April or May, and some parties have objected to the presence of certain symbols on the ballot.

The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), the country's second-largest party and an early favorite ahead of the contest, has objected to the assignment of a cat as the symbol for any party or independent candidate. The PML-N's own symbol is a lion, and some party leaders are of the view that the resemblance between the cat and the lion might adversely affect their showing. Illiterate voters who frequently pay special attention to kinship, clans, feudalism, or khanism, their argument goes, might cast votes for the wrong cat.

Another, arguably more serious, case is that of the book. That was the symbol of the six-party religious alliance Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in the 2002 general elections. But since that religious alliance disintegrated in 2007, the book was assigned to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party for the 2008 polls.

Both in 2002 and again in 2008, leaders of nonreligious parties complained that their religious rivals were presenting the book as a Koran to attract voters in the name of Islam. So they have filed an objection with the Election Commission of Pakistan this time to remove it from the list.

There have been suggestions that the book should appear unfolded, with English letters on its pages. That would presumably prevent religious parties from propagating their election symbol as holy because, opponents suggest, even the illiterate in Pakistan know very well that the language of the Koran is Arabic and not English.

So what's left for the hard-line Jamat-e-Islami party? Since it boycotted the 2008 general elections, the image of the book was assigned to its erstwhile coalition partner, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. Looking for a similarly desirable symbol, Jamat-e-Islami's leaders have applied with the election commission to be represented by a set of scales.

Of course, scales are widely regarded as a symbol of justice, and Pakistan is no exception. That's why the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI), or Justice Party, of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan also wants its symbol to be a set of scales. Khan's electoral symbol was previously a cricket bat.

Khan's Tehrik-e-Insaaf party and Jamat-e-Islami are both known for their dharnas (sit-ins) and marches to register their displeasure. So neither can be ruled out once a decision on the symbol is made.

That brings us to the most despised symbol, the lota, or vessel. In olden days, lotas were made of clay and used mostly in mosques for ablutions. With modernity creeping into religious places, however, the clay lotas have largely been replaced with metal or plastic pitchers. Although hand and electrical pumps have now considerably reduced the use of lotas for ablutions in urban areas, they are still widely used in village purification rituals.

One might assume that as an instrument of a sacred rite, the lota might be the choice of conservative parties. But the opposite is in fact the case. No one knows precisely how or when the lota entered Pakistan's political lexicon or why it became so despised, but it has become synonymous with opportunistic politicians who change political stripes for personal gain.

WATCH: A spirited discussion of the pejorative meaning of "lota" in modern Pakistani politics (in Urdu):


So the image of the lota was removed from the list of electoral symbols (although scores of politicians sitting in or outside parliament have shifted loyalties and will continue to do so in future without so much as batting an eyelid).

But what about okra, banana, radish, and carrot? Election commission spokesman Altaf Ahmad told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that "those names were just comical." Without going into detail, he said candidates and political parties had refused to accept those symbols whenever they were assigned in the past.

Maybe he's right. So the question is: Why were those symbols included on the list again to begin with? Maybe for the same reason that the cat is being extirpated and the appearance of the book is being changed. Maybe not enough proper consideration and planning went into the process.

-- Daud Khattak

In the latest twist in the controversy over naming Afghan streets after national heroes, the governor of Afghanistan's western Herat Province, Daud Shah Saba, has said that Afghan law stipulates that streets can only be named after people who died at least 50 years ago.

But municipal officials in Herat say the city is unlikely to change the names of two major thoroughfares in the city, which are named after mujahedin commander Ahmad Shah Masud and Mirwais Sadiq, a former civil aviation minister and son of Herati strongman Ismail Khan.

Masud was killed in 2001, Sadiq in 2004.

Afghan officials, as well as the public, are sharply divided over the issue of naming streets and institutions after former anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban leaders or their allies. Supporters see such steps as honoring the service and sacrifice of these figures. Opponents consider the bestowing of such honors as inciting further hatred and division among Afghans, some of whom see these jihadi figures as symbols of the suffering that Afghans endured during the civil war in the 1990s.

In August, a scandal erupted when provincial officials in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif requested that authorities in Kabul determine whether a street in the city should be named after a group of Iranian diplomats killed there in 1998. The provincial council was forced to ask for formal approval after Afghan media and politicians criticized the council for naming a city street the Martyrs of the Consulate of the Islamic Republic of Iran without approval from Kabul.

A more serious controversy erupted in September when Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree renaming Kabul Education University after former President Burhannudin Rabbani, who was killed by a suspected Taliban suicide bomber in 2011.

More than two weeks of peaceful demonstrations by students protesting the name change turned violent in early October when supporters of the move clashed with protesters. Most of the supporters were said to be from outside the university.

The scuffles forced the government to settle on a compromise solution. The former Afghan president's name will not be put on the diplomas of graduating students. The school, however, will be called the Kabul Education University of Rabbani. Like many controversies in Afghanistan, the issue is far from resolved but will likely be pushed onto the backburner by fresh crises.

Afghanistan clearly needs a uniform address system. Although the size of Afghan towns and cities has mushroomed over the past decade, streets, buildings, and houses have no organized numbering system. Finding a house or a shop in a city as large as Kabul often means endless roaming in warrens of similar-looking streets. Many Afghans will tell you to look for a tree or the color of their door or use proximity to a famous mosque when they're giving directions.

-- Abubakar Siddique