Clashes are raging at a military base in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif after Taliban insurgents assaulted the facility Friday afternoon, said Afghan officials and insurgents.

Dawlat Waziri, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, has confirmed to local reporters the death of at least one solider in the attack in the capital of relatively peaceful Balkh province. He said several other soldiers have been wounded and Afghan commando forces are battling the attackers to end the siege.

Witnesses told VOA the assailants arrived at the military facility on board two Afghan army vehicles. Afghan media quoted witnesses as saying the attack left at least 10 security personnel dead. But several hours after the siege began, Afghan officials have provided little information to reporters.

The Taliban took credit for the violence, saying a group of its fighters with explosives strapped to their bodies staged the coordinated raid.

Local media reported Taliban assailants targeted officers and soldiers of the Afghan National Army as they were leaving a mosque after offering Friday prayers.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the attack began with a suicide car bombing, making way for other assailants to enter the 209 Shaheen Corp military headquarters.

The Afghan military base houses thousands of forces that are regularly engaged in anti-Taliban operations in troubled northern regions of the country.

Ekram Shinwari in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
…

After a racially and religiously-charged election that resulted in a runoff, Jakarta finally has a new governor and Indonesia is facing the reality that political Islam has entered the public discourse in a way unprecedented in modern Indonesian politics.

Anies Baswedan, a university rector and former minister of education and culture, handily beat Chinese-Christian Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who became acting governor after his boss, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, won the 2014 presidential election.

Ahok was widely popular until September 2016, when he quoted the Quran at a campaign speech in the Thousand Islands fishing region, and Islamist hardliners seized upon a video clip of it to charge him with blasphemy. The formerly fringe group known as the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) organized two enormous protests in Jakarta, where they called for Ahok to be jailed and even killed.

Incredibly, their demonstrations pushed the national police to charge him with blasphemy in November, which means he was on trial while campaigning for re-election.

The case would have created a political quandary had Ahok won the race; could he, for instance, govern from jail? That’s no longer in question, but the final verdict won’t be delivered for another few weeks. Judges are expected to show leniency given his loss, and this week, the prosecution floated a light sentence of two years probation, without jail time. The FPI, however, is still lobbying for the maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Political Islam normalized

Although 87 percent of Indonesians are Muslim, its government is formally secular and its constitution protects six religions, giving no special status to Islam (as in neighboring Malaysia).

Baswedan, formerly known as a centrist moderate, allied with the FPI and religious hardliners throughout his campaign. When Baswedan won on Wednesday, he explicitly praised Islamic clerics (ulama) and teachers (kyai), and his campaign leader, Mardani Ali Sera, praised FPI and its incendiary leader, Habib Rizieq, as important “pillars of this victory.”

“People were intimidated [throughout this campaign] with propaganda of ‘Bela Islam,’ ‘Hell vs. Heaven’, and ‘Us vs Them,’” said Alissa Wahid, a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest moderate Muslim organization. “And threats of becoming outcasts in their immediate kampung,” or neighborhood, said Wahid. “Muslims who voted for Ahok felt they would attract social stigma.”

Wahid said this was a bad omen for the 2019 presidential election, when Jokowi will run for re-election. Ahok’s loss is seen as a hit for Jokowi, as the pair led Jakarta together and remain close. Baswedan’s victory is also being celebrated by Jokowi’s 2014 presidential opponent, Prabowo Subianto.

Recent links have emerged about a loose coalition of anti-Ahok and anti-Jokowi forces, including Prabowo; Fadli Zon, vice speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives; billionaire Hary Tanoe; and the Indonesian military.

Unique candidate

That said, Ahok’s loss did not merely fall along sectarian lines. Plenty of Jakartans had grievances with Ahok’s pugnacious governing style, like the thousands of poor people who were evicted from their homes to make room for redevelopment. These citizens, from seaside neighborhoods like Pasar Ikan and Luar Batang, enthusiastically joined the FPI rallies last fall and fervently campaigned against Ahok in recent months.

In Rumah Susun, a low-income apartment where Ahok forcibly relocated hundreds of poor East Jakarta residents, Baswedan won 93 percent of the vote.

Political analyst Philips J. Vermonte, writing in the Jakarta Post, also explained how Ahok’s electability was never secure even before the blasphemy case, because his favorability rating never rose above 50 percent, even as his performance ratings were high.

And although racism became regrettably and unprecedentedly public this year, anti-Chinese sentiment is not new in Indonesia. Even during Jokowi’s gubernatorial campaign, groups like FPI made racially charged attacks on Ahok.

The difference is that they didn’t stick at the time, but perhaps that’s because their ticket was headlined by a Javanese Muslim. Ahok has never faced a true election in Jakarta — he comes from the small province of Bangka-Belitung — and he likely always faced steep odds.

Ian Wilson, a Murdoch University researcher who has worked extensively on urban poverty in Jakarta, thinks both candidates ignored economic inequality, which left the field open for sectarian baiting.

“Despite the seeming differences between the Ahok and Anies camps, reproduced over and over in commentary as one between ‘pluralism’ vs ‘sectarianism,’ the coalitions surrounding each of the two candidates consists of the one percent; some of the richest people in the country, all of whom have benefited significantly from the same economic conditions that have left millions of Indonesians in or near poverty,” Wilson told VOA.

That is to say, in Indonesia, like many other places in the world, economic populism is enmeshed with resurgent identity politics. Jakarta just joined the list of regions wracked by exhausting elections, whose winners have a rather long road ahead.
…

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday announced its decision on corruption allegations against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif based on the “Panama Papers” leaks. Both the petitioners and the defendants hailed the decision as supporting their position. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem has filed this report from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
…

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence will arrive in Australia later Friday for a visit that is expected to focus on regional security and trade. 

The vice president is considered by Australian officials to be a “calm and measured” presence in President Donald Trump’s administration. He has been on a tour of Asia to reassure allies of Washington’s commitment to the region under Trump’s leadership. In Australia, Pence will be among friends.

Trade is top of mind

Business discussions are expected to be a key part of his visit, including how to remove remaining trade barriers between Australia and the United States, which is the biggest foreign investor in Australia. Two-way trade is worth more than $41 billion.

Professor Fariborz Moshirian is the director of the Institute of Global Finance at the University of New South Wales Business School in Sydney.

“Australia and the U.S. have (a) very close business relationship,” Moshirian said. “They have got (a) free trade agreement between the two countries and naturally one of the key points that could be raised is how to enhance free trade between these two countries as well as in the region.”

Reviving parts of TPP

Trump’s decision to scrap the world’s biggest trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, was met with dismay in Australia, one of a dozen countries that signed the agreement last year.

Trump said the deal was a job-killing disaster, and Moshirian says officials in Canberra hope parts of the TPP can be revived without the United States.

“That has been very disappointing from Australia’s point of view,” Moshirian said. “But at the same time, Australia, and to some extent maybe Japan and even Mexico, are now trying to continue, if you like, dialogue about TPP in the absence of the U.S. So we have to really wait and see.”

Tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, as well as territorial disputes in the South China Sea, also will likely be discussed during the vice president’s three-day visit to Australia.

Canberra and Washington have a solid military alliance dating back to the early 1950s, and successive Australian leaders have asserted the relationship is the foundation for their nation’s security.
…

Indonesia and the United States agreed Friday to find ways to reduce barriers to U.S. companies operating in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, visiting U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Jakarta’s investment chief said.

The Trump administration has put Indonesia on a list of 16 countries whose trade surpluses with the United States will be put under review. A series of disputes between Indonesia and American firms has also ruffled ties.

“We will work with President Jokowi to reduce barriers to trade and investments and to create a truly level playing field where all our businesses have equal opportunity and market access,” Pence said. Jokowi is the nickname of Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo.

“The president and I spoke about that very candidly and very respectfully,” Pence told a roundtable discussion with business executives in Jakarta before flying to Australia on the last leg of his 10-day Asia-Pacific tour.

Indonesia barriers

Indonesia’s investments barriers include a lack of intellectual property protection, insufficient transparency with regulations and requiring local content for manufactured goods sold in the Indonesian market, Pence said.

Indonesia’s Investment Coordinating Board chief Tom Lembong said Widodo agreed “we still have too many regulations, too many barriers to trade, and these are bad for local and international industries.”

“I’m optimistic because President Jokowi and President Trump are both lifelong business people, and I think they are very focused on the practical issues that hinder business and investment,” Lembong told Reuters. “I feel that the Trump administration and the Jokowi administration are on the same wavelength.”

Lembong said Indonesia needs both investment and imports from the United States, “especially productivity-enhancing products and services. You need imports to boost exports.”

$10 billion in agreements

Neither side disclosed any discussions about the disputes Indonesia has had with American companies of late.

Over the past six months, Indonesia has wrestled with mining giant Freeport McMoRan, demanding the company divest 51 percent of its shares in its Papua-based gold and copper mine, and has demanded that Google Inc. settle unpaid taxes and fines of more than $400 million. Jakarta also scrubbed JP Morgan from its list of primary bond dealers after what was deemed a negative research report.

Pence did, however, witness the signing of more than $10 billion in memoranda of understanding with U.S. companies in Indonesia Friday.

Among the 11 agreements were ones by Exxon Mobil to sell liquefied natural gas to Pertamina, Lockheed Martin to provide upgrades to the Indonesian Air Force’s F-16s, and General Electric to develop electrical infrastructure in Indonesia.

“We think there are opportunities to clear open the way for American companies to participate more greatly in Indonesia,” Pence said, adding the agreements would “draw our nations closer together and benefit both our people.”

Counterterrorism cooperation

Pence said in opening remarks to the roundtable that an attack in central Paris is the latest reminder terrorism can strike anywhere at anytime, and the United States would not relent in its efforts to end terrorism.

“The people of Indonesia can be confident in the wake of this latest attack: We will not relent in our effort to end terrorism and the threat it presents to both of our peoples,” Pence said.

A French policeman was shot dead and three other people were wounded in central Paris Thursday night in an attack carried out days before presidential elections and quickly claimed by the Islamic State militant group.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, has itself been hit by a series of deadly attacks in the past 15 years, led by militants affiliated with al Qaeda and more recently by Islamic State.

Pence said Washington would continue working with Indonesia to combat terrorism. On Thursday, Pence toured the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Southeast Asia’s largest, and said Indonesia’s moderate form of Islam should serve as an example to other nations.

Indonesia has expressed concern about the Trump administration’s proposal to bar entry to citizens of some predominantly Muslim nations. That plan, however, remains stalled in courts.

Pence on Thursday announced Trump would visit Southeast Asia in November for an annual series of regional summits. They include the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Vietnam and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in the Philippines.
…