The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a militant group based in Pakistan's tribal agencies, has suffered a series of major battlefield setbacks over the past year. But despite the loss of several senior leaders and a key media operative since 2011, the group remains one of the most militarily capable and media savvy militant outfits operating in the region.  It maintains working relationships with a number of other Sunni militant groups active in the region including al-Qaeda Central, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Afghan Taliban.  The IMU has particularly close ties to the TTP, with whom it has launched joint military operations against Pakistani military targets inside Pakistan, as well ISAF and Afghan government targets in Afghanistan.  In April, an estimated 150 IMU and TTP fighters launched a successful attack on Bannu Prison in northwestern Pakistan, freeing nearly 400 prisoners, including Adnan Rashid, who was convicted in 2008 of involvement in an assassination plot against then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. Rashid was subsequently featured in videos released by the IMU and TTP.

Tahir Yuldashev, the group's co-founder, took over as the IMU's leader in 2001 following the killing of fellow co-founder Jama Namangani during their retreat from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to South Waziristan. Yuldashev used his charisma as a preacher to rebuild the IMU's cadre of fighters, which had been hit heavily in fighting with the Northern Alliance and U.S. military forces in the autumn of 2001. Under his leadership the IMU turned its attention toward targeting the Pakistani and Afghan governments, as well as U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The group also continued to issue statements about events in Central Asia such as brutal attacks on Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan by gangs of Kyrgyz youth in 2010.

Yuldashev forged close relations with Baitullah Mehsud, the founder of the TTP, and his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, who took over the position of the TTP's amir in 2009 after his predecessor was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Yuldashev also oversaw the expansion of the IMU's membership base from Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz to multiple other nationalities and ethnicities, including Uyghurs, Turkmen, Turks, Afghans, Pashtun and non-Pashtun Pakistanis, Arabs, Chinese, Chechens, Germans, Norwegians, and Russians. A number of the IMU's senior leaders and ideologues have been non-Uzbeks, including its former Kyrgyz military commander, Abbas Mansur, and its Pakistani guiding religious authority (mufti), Abu Zarr Azzam.  A number of the IMU's senior media operatives in its Jundullah (God's Soldiers) Studio, including the German brothers Yassin and Mounir Chouka, are also non-Uzbeks. 

Wounded in an August 2009 U.S. drone missile strike, Yuldashev later died of his wounds.  His death was formally announced by the IMU in August 2010 when it released a eulogy video for him, Banner of Jihad.  In the video, Yuldashev's successor, Abu Usman Adil, was named.  Adil maintained the IMU's close relations with the TTP, meeting with senior TTP leaders, including Hakimullah Mehsud, and local Pashtun tribal supporters, such as tribal chief Noor al-Islam, on numerous occasions.  Hakimullah and other TTP leaders and members are featured frequently in IMU videos including the 3-part series Glad Tidings from Pakistan.  Qari Hussein Mehsud, the TTP's feared ideological trainer of "martyrdom seekers" (fida‘iyin), was first shown in extensive video footage in the second installment of this series.  In early August, an IMU statement reported that Adil was killed in a U.S. drone strike.  He was succeeded by Usman Ghazi, another senior IMU leader. 

The IMU's talented military commander, Abbas Mansur, was killed last year alongside Abdul Aziz Ukasha, a key IMU media operative and insurgent "journalist," in a U.S. drone strike.  Their killings were announced in a December 2011 statement from the group along with the deaths of 85 other IMU fighters that year. And during 2010, the IMU reported that 52 of its members were killed. High battlefield losses have taken a toll on the IMU's membership, which is believed to have once numbered several thousand.  Some estimates put the group's remaining fighting force at only a few hundred. 

Mansur, who joined Namangani to fight in Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s when he was either 16 or 19 years old (IMU sources have given both ages), rose through the IMU's ranks to become its chief military commander, a position to which he was appointed by Yuldashev shortly before the latter was mortally wounded.  Mansur exhibited great courage on the battlefield and was chosen to undergo special training for bodyguards, eventually becoming a bodyguard to Namangani in Afghanistan.  After Namangani was killed, Mansur became a bodyguard and then a close aid to Yuldashev.  Known for his battlefield prowess, Mansur participated in hundreds of military operations according to IMU media, in which he was frequently shown leading military operations against Pakistani army and Frontier Corps bases and convoys.

Ukasha, a young Uzbek from Tashkent, was a member of the IMU for six years and fought in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He was an active member of Jundullah Studio and hosted and narrated the video series What's Happening in the Tribal Areas, which is currently in its tenth installment.  In the series, he took viewers around Pakistan's tribal regions, from the gun markets of Pashtun towns to the inside of teaching circles by Yuldashev and the ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr "jihad school" for the children of IMU members.  In addition, Ukasha also worked as a video editor.  He was replaced by another young IMU media operative, Isamudeen, who eulogized both Mansur and Ukasha in the ninth installment of What's Happening in the Tribal Areas and said that he was tasked with continuing the series and the media role of Ukasha by Adil.

The IMU has been survived its many losses in part through the charisma of its chief juridical voice, Abu Zarr Azzam, a Pakistani of Burmese descent who is also known as Abu Zarr al-Burmi (the Burmese) and Abu Zarr al-Pakistani. Claiming to be a former teacher at Jami‘at Faruqiya, an Islamic university in Karachi, where he taught the TTP's Qari Hussein, Abu Zarr has been featured frequently in IMU video and audio productions. Close to both the IMU and TTP leaderships, Abu Zarr speaks fluent Urdu, Arabic, Burmese, Pashto, and Uzbek. He has stated that the goal of the IMU and other "mujahideen" in the region is to eventually retake all of the region's lands that were previously ruled by Muslims, which are currently the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bhutan in a military expedition called "Ghazwat-ul-Hind," roughly translating to the "military expedition of the Indian subcontinent."  Abu Zarr has also declared the Pakistani government and members of the military and police who attack the "mujahideen" in the service of the U.S. to be apostates who may be killed. 

Despite suffering significant battlefield losses in its leadership, media department, and rank-and-file fighting force, the IMU has proven itself resilient.  It continues to work alongside other regional militant movements, particularly the TTP, which has allowed it to continue to project significant military force in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It continues to also be actively engaged in targeting the Pakistani military with the TTP. Jundullah Studio consistently produces high-quality videos that play an integral role in the IMU's multi-layered media operations, which also include the publication of audio and written statements, and newsletters in Uzbek, Russian, Persian, Arabic, German, Burmese, Urdu, and Pashto. With an eye on ensuring its survival beyond the current generation of members, the group has also invested significant time and material resources in raising the next generation of IMU fighters, particularly the children of current members, who are taught military tactics, how to use firearms and other weaponry, and to value self-sacrifice and martyrdom. In spite of its losses, the IMU remains active both inside Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal agencies.  

Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies modern Muslim socio-political movements, contemporary jihadi movements, Shi'ite Islam, and Islamist visual cultures. He blogs at Views from the Occident and Al-Wasat.

The Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) signed by President Obama and President Karzai in the dead of night in Kabul on May 2^nd, and the recently concluded Chicago Summit, have sent an important message that the international community is not abandoning Afghanistan, and that Afghanistan's stability and security remain a key objective of the United States and its NATO allies. The Chicago summit has ratified crucial details of the security strategy to meet these objectives. But the last decade in Afghanistan has shown that security strategies in the absence of political strategies do not translate into peace and stability. The international community's political strategy has always been muddled or murky at best, or missing altogether. But politics is happening in Afghanistan, providing new opportunities even as international troops withdraw. After Chicago, there is an urgent need to ensure that a strategy for the upcoming political transition in Afghanistan, and in particular the 2014 presidential election, receives similar policy attention as has been devoted to the security transition and the SPA.

We've just returned from a few weeks in Afghanistan, where we perceived both a new and energized spirit of politicking for the 2014 presidential elections, as well as baldly stated fears of a return to civil war. For many we interviewed, the two are inextricably linked - a massively flawed election in 2014, or a failure to hold an election at all, could easily result in a destabilizing situation where there is no legitimate civilian control, and security forces could break down and begin competing for power along ethnic and factional lines. If so, the tens of billions of dollars devoted to building the Afghan security forces, under the assumption that they would come under civilian control, could amount instead to an investment in a more ruthless and costly civil conflict that further destabilizes Afghanistan and its neighbors. Given this huge risk, not only for Afghans but also for core U.S. national security interests in the region, it is imperative to rectify the major imbalance between the time and effort devoted to planning the security transition vs. the political transition - especially given that the fate of both are so deeply intertwined.

In Kabul, the political transition discussions we had often boiled down to one question: what will Karzai do? He has repeatedly stated publicly that he will not be president after 2014. But there are few examples in Afghan history of orderly and peaceful transitions of power, and many Afghans refuse to take President Karzai at his word. If it is true, as Thomas Jefferson is reported to have said, that "information is the currency of democracy", then rumor is the currency of Afghan democracy (some might say, more simply, that currency is the currency of Afghan democracy). Karzai's statements have been dismissed by many Afghans with a raft of conspiracy theories on how he will extend his power. These range from the Constitutional (declaring a state of emergency-though this could only last two months before it would need to be ratified by the parliament), to the coercive (convening a rigged loya jirga to change the constitution), to the too-clever-by-half (resigning with his two vice-presidents before his term is up and running a few months later on the ground that he had not completed two terms).

President Karzai's recent proposal to hold elections in 2013, ostensibly to take advantage of the larger number of international troops, only fueled the suspicions of those who refuse to believe that he will respect the Afghan Constitution. At the same time, many of those we spoke to say that Karzai recognizes that any attempt to subvert the Constitution will lead to demonstrations in Kabul. One political figure said that the regime can only fall as a result of unrest in Kabul, not insurgency in the provinces. The one thing that would bring rioting to Kabul's streets, he argued, would be an attempt to hold onto power unconstitutionally, and that Karzai is aware of this and would not risk it.

If President Karzai does give up power constitutionally, there are several plausible scenarios. The first would be for the political elite, including Karzai and major opposition figures, to settle on a single candidate. An elite consensus along these lines would turn the election into a sort of referendum, and minimize the probability that electoral fraud would be as destabilizing as it was in 2009. The second scenario is that Karzai backs a candidate who many opposition figures find unacceptable, but a broad-based opposition coalition is able to agree on a single rival candidate. In the event of a hotly contested race that this scenario could result in, the quality of the election would play a crucial role in ensuring a legitimate transfer of power. A third scenario would be for Karzai to back a candidate while the opposition is unable to unite. This could allow Karzai to perpetuate his hold on power through the election of a political proxy-many in Kabul called this the "Putin-Medvedev scenario".

What happens next depends as much on the opposition as on President Karzai. At crucial moments, opposition figures have lost their nerve, preferring to be co-opted by the palace rather than face the real risks of confronting the existing power structure. Even now, the opposition is divided between those who claim that Karzai has become so powerful that he-or any candidate he backs-is invincible, and those who claim that he is intrinsically weak but that the international community's deference has made him artificially strong. The opposition appears to be waiting for signals-from Karzai that he will allow a fair election (for example, by setting an election date soon and by ensuring the appointment of independent election commissioners), and from the international community that they will insist on it. The danger of on-going ambiguity about the commitment to support and hold credible elections is that Afghan political figures will not take the required risks to participate constructively in the consensus-building process. It would not be surprising if Karzai tested the nerve of his opposition, in the hopes that it collapses under the test. It has worked in the past.

Nonetheless, there are encouraging signs of political activity aimed at the presidential election. Candidates and parties are organizing, opposition parties are making specific demands for electoral reforms, and a process to reform the election legislation has begun.

The international community, however, has greeted this activity with extreme caution. The common talking point of senior U.S. government officials is that elections in Afghanistan are a sovereign matter. Opposition figures listen to this in dismay, arguing that the sovereignty the internationals are protecting is not Afghanistan's, but Karzai's and the corrupt and predatory political mafias with strong links to the palace. A true respect for Afghan sovereignty, they argue, would require the promotion of a level political playing field. They have a point: it is curious at least that the presence of 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, and the provision of assistance worth about the equivalent of the country's GDP, is somehow not an infringement on sovereignty, while pressure to hold fair elections in accordance with the Afghan Constitution is perceived to be too intrusive and risky. The greater risk is that such misplaced sensitivities that are often interpreted by Afghans as lukewarm international support for democratic elections, and/or undue skepticism that credible elections can be held, will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are, however, good reasons for international caution. Government and opposition figures alike noted that the international community's legitimacy on elections was undermined in 2009 by the perception that the late U.S. State Department Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, backed individual candidates against Karzai rather than supporting the process. President Karzai has used this to frighten the international community away from its legitimate concerns about the process, whereas the key lesson from 2009 should be to forcefully support the process but not individual candidates. Furthermore, a fundamental difference between the 2009 and 2014 presidential elections, which should reduce some of the sensitivities regarding international support for the process, is that Karzai has publically stated on numerous occasions that in accordance with the Constitution he will not be contesting the next election.

The U.S. government was particularly cautious about antagonizing Karzai, including by raising election-related issues, during the long and drawn-out process of negotiating the SPA. Many Afghans expressed concern that this caution will continue during the negotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement, which must be completed in the next 12 months, giving Karzai at least another year of tranquility on electoral matters. The U.N., which took positions in both the 2009 and 2010 elections that angered Karzai, is similarly reticent, and in public at least echoes the "sovereign process" talking point.

Given this reticence to date, the widely reported meeting President Obama had with President Karzai on the sidelines of the Chicago Summit, during which issues of electoral reform and planning for the 2014 elections were raised and discussed, are a very encouraging sign that the U.S. will now be prioritizing the political transition and supporting and advocating more publically for credible elections in 2014. While international support for elections must be done sensitively and respectfully, too quiet and soft of an approach would be a big mistake. The majority of Afghans who respect the Constitution and want a democratic future for their country need to be assured that the international community led by the U.S. is committed to doing everything possible to ensure relatively free and fair elections. The stakes of the 2014 election are very high, and the future stability of Afghanistan - ultimately the core strategic interest of the U.S. - is likely to depend on the perception of the election's legitimacy. While the challenges to holding credible elections in 2014 are undoubtedly great, and the risks considerable, the much greater risk is to continue to pay scant attention to the political transition, and to pin hopes on a stable and secure Afghanistan solely on the abilities of the Afghan National Security Forces. One need not look far in the region to see the negative consequences for peace and stability, not to mention democracy, of relatively strong security institutions and very weak civilian institutions.

For better or for worse, the international community has inherited a partial responsibility for ensuring that the next elections play the role of consensus-building and state legitimation that would be the most likely way to save the country from civil war. The international community can fulfill this responsibility by doing the following:

• Make it clear that future assistance will depend on a credible electoral process in 2014. The Tokyo conference in July provides an opportunity to underline this message. It should anyway be clear to the Afghan government that the global financial situation is such that many countries are simply looking for excuses to reduce their aid to Afghanistan. Deeply flawed elections or no elections would inevitably lead to much sharper reductions in aid.
• Provide reassurances that the necessary international logistic and security assets required to hold elections will be in place in 2014.
• Avoid the tempting diplomatic game of identifying potential candidates, and instead support electoral processes to help create a level playing field and allow Afghans to form their own coalitions and freely support their favored candidates.
• Support civil society, media, women's and youth groups, to continue to discuss how to improve Afghan elections. Civic and voter education in the past has been insufficient. There is time to correct this. The more knowledgeable the electorate, the harder it is to rig elections, and the greater the popular expectation for elections, the more costly would be any decision to cancel them.
• Avoid the temptation to fall for quick-fixes-like accelerated elections in 2013. Patience and discretion are required, but there should be no lack of conviction in the need for a level playing field.

Given the recent history of Afghan elections, it may seem implausible to bet on Afghan democracy as a means of solving Afghanistan's deep-rooted problems, but almost everyone we spoke to were clear that it was the only bet to make. Democratic processes might not succeed, but everything else will surely fail without them.

Scott Smith is the Deputy Director for Afghan Programs, and Andrew Wilder the Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan Programs, at the United States Institute of Peace. The views reflected here are their own.

Friendly fire: A man wearing an Afghan army uniform and another wearing civilian clothes killed two NATO troops in southern Kandahar on Thursday, the latest in a string of attacks on international troops by Afghans believed to be members of the security forces (AP, AFP, Reuters, WSJ, CNN, BBC, Guardian, NYT). The attack came just hours after NATO allowed its personnel to return to work at Afghan ministries, following their evacuation in response to the killing of two U.S. servicemen inside the Interior Ministry in Kabul.

The special representative for the U.N. secretary general in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, echoed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's calls on Thursday for "disciplinary action" to be taken against the U.S. troops responsible for the burning of Qurans that sparked widespread protests in Afghanistan last week (Reuters). Three different investigations into the incident have been launched, one by the U.S. military that could result in legal action, as well as an Afghan inquiry, and a joint Afghan-American inquiry (NYT).

NATO commander Gen. John Allen said Wednesday that the protests over the Quran burnings were a "setback," but "it doesn't push the relationship back," as President Barack Obama told ABC News that he is "confident" the United States will be able to adhere to its withdrawal plan (BBC, AFP). And NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Karzai on Wednesday to speed up the signing of a strategic partnership agreement with the United States, because it would have a "good impact" on a conference on Afghanistan to be held in Chicago in May (AFP).

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday in testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that Pakistan would face serious consequences if it were to go ahead with a natural gas pipeline deal with Iran (WSJ, ET, Dawn, ET). Clinton also said that Pakistan has "no basis" on which to continue detaining Dr. Shakil Afridi, who allegedly helped the CIA with a plan to use a vaccination drive to get access to Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad before the al-Qaeda leader was killed in May of last year (AP).

Pakistani military jets bombed militant hideouts in Kurram and Orakzai Agencies on Thursday, killing 18 suspected militants (ET, Dawn). Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Wednesday that the perpetrators of Tuesday's massacre of 18 Shi'a Muslims had been tracked down and would soon be shown to the public (Dawn). And the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry scolded the country's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and Military Intelligence on Thursday, saying they had failed to provide legal justification for their year-long detention of eleven civilians (ET). Chaudhry also called the intelligence agencies "arsonists" because they had "set Balochistan on fire" with their methods in the restive southern province.

Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency sent a formal request to Interpol on Wednesday for an arrest warrant to be issued for former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is accused of failing to prevent the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto (Dawn, ET). A Pakistani-born Guantánamo Bay detainee, Majid Khan, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to being a courier for al-Qaeda and training to carry out suicide attacks, becoming the first high-value detainee to accept a plea deal, which guarantees Khan a lighter sentence in exchange for his testimony against other terrorist suspects (AP, BBC, NYT, ET, AJE, CNN, Reuters, Post).   

Five current and former Pakistani field hockey players have defied international regulations to travel to India for the World Series Hockey tournament (ET). The tournament, which has a grand prize of $3 million, is not sanctioned by the International Hockey Federation because it is sponsored by the rogue Indian Hockey Federation, instead of the officially recognized Hockey India.

-- Jennifer Rowland

In this month's issue of FHM India, an international men's magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn't wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, "ISI," for Pakistani's secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The cover headline: "Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!" 

Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: "India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo." And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan's media and in its living rooms.[[Break]]

In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman's body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI -- something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan's loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo's location on Malik's body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen's statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a "veritable arm" of the ISI. 

All the while, the ISI works in the cloak of darkness. In 2002, when I was trying to find my kidnapped Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl, I met an ISI officer in my living room in Karachi who acknowledged his employer, but introduced himself as "Major." "Major what?" I asked. "Major Major," he said. Nice. Really helpful.

***

To scholars on Pakistan, the ISI tattoo is emblematic of an important new civil discourse occurring in Pakistan over issues that were formerly taboo, such as the role of the ISI in society. Hassan Abbas, the author of Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America's War on Terror, about growing militancy in Pakistan, said new media freedoms are eliciting rich debate in the country on deep, contested issues "such as the role of religion in society and the interference of the military in political arena." He adds, "These issues are being openly debated in Pakistan, and that is, overall, a healthy development."

Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India's own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. "In India, you say, 'The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,' They blame all of their problems on ISI," says Sharma.

Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don't laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. "The problem," he says, "is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?" Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. "We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony," he says.

As a media image, the Malik photo was a genius expression of a real counterculture movement taking root in Pakistan, taking a dig at the secretive "Major Major" culture of the ISI, by literally exposing the agency -- and by extension, the government -- to the light of day, if just in a simple tattoo. (Malik says that the photo was altered, and both Malik and FHM are engaged in a legal battle over the issue.)

While a Pakistani newspaper said the country "yawns"at the Malik photo, it chronicled columns, commentaries and jokes circulating in the nation, including one that goes like this: "Her arm says ISI but the picture is RAW," a reference to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.

But this isn't just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the "ghairat brigade," or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan's honor against enemies -- perceived and imagined -- the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad "without honor," or more aptly the "shameless brigade." 

To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, "I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan's problems are the result of someone else's meddling."

Malik and her generation in Pakistani society illustrate a deeper battle that is playing out in Pakistan and Muslim communities on issues of honor, or ghairat, and shame, called sharam. Flagging this evolution, the acerbic Pakistani columnist Nadeem Paracha wrote earlier this year, "Goodbye ghairat."

With a sense of wit, irony and humor, the beghairat brigade offers the nation an opportunity to expunge itself of the corrosive relationship with traditional honor-shame culture, by challenging the warped sense of honor and dishonor that has defined much of the country's ethos on issues from corruption to nuclear non-proliferation, "honor killings" of women and men, homegrown militant networks, and the ISI. And the beghairat's work is rooted in Pakistani tradition with sardonic 20^th century writers such as Saadat Hasan Manto, the author of the must-read book, Letters to Uncle Sam, and a favorite of Malik's.

The Pakistani military's public relations office reportedly sent a text message to local journalists from the Pakistani grousing that the photo was "the height of humiliation for Pakistan, done by a Pakistani on Indian soil." In a Pakistani socialists' listserv, one Pakistani writer, giving the ISI acronym new meaning, wrote, tongue-in-cheek,"Is this part of a grand conspiracy to implicate the great International Soldiers of Islam (ISI) in a controversy by the enemies of Islam...." If so, he joked, "every soldier of Islam would be eyeing to be part of the investigation team."

What is ironic is that while there have been calls to revoke Malik's Pakistani citizenship (rejected, fortunately, by the courts), there are some less-than-exemplary characters who have been lauded in the country by the "ghairat brigade." For instance, Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, is considered a victim by many in Pakistan, despite having confessed to the crime for which he has been imprisoned, the attempted murder of a number of innocents.

Then there is A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who signed a confession in 2004 that he gave nuclear secrets to the North Koreans, Iran and Libya, in violation of international nonproliferation agreements; he was pardoned, and today he is a hero in the country. Years ago, Pakistanis took to the streets when American agents caught and extradited Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani who shot and killed CIA employees in 1993 as they sat in their cars at a traffic light in Langley, Va. And, then, lest we forget, there is the serious homegrown militancy problem of a Punjabi Taliban and a Pakistani Taliban that includes tens of thousands of militant soldiers, based on many estimates, freely living in the country without much harassment.

Finally, there is Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani MIT graduate known as "Lady al-Qaeda." She was convicted last year in a U.S. court for attempting to shoot a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, but, in a country where the average income is about $450 a year, the government of Pakistan allocated some $2 million for her defense, and Pakistanis in the "Free Aafia" movement march regularly on the streets. 

Deborah Scroggins, a journalist and author of the provocative forthcoming book, Wanted Women: Faith, Lies and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui, says, "If Aafia Siddiqui is Pakistan's 'daughter of the nation,' Veena Malik is her perfect alter ego. The 'ghairat brigade' holds up Aafia as the symbol of Pakistan victimized by the West. Veena mocks their pretentions to purity and challenges their obsession with sex."

Scroggins lays out the contrast that is symbolic of the divide that has engulfed Pakistan: Born in 1972, Siddiqui comes from the rigid, puritantical, Deobandi interpretation of Islam, and came of age during the 1980s, when jihad was celebrated in Pakistan as the source of the great defeat over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. "She's revered by the 'ghairat brigade' because although she went to the U.S. to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, she never 'went over to the other side,' so to speak" Scroggins adds. "She never stopped raising money for jihad. She continued to view the U.S. as the enemy of Pakistan and of Muslims. When she was captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan's right-wing pundits and politicians rushed to accuse the country's democratically elected government of selling her to the U.S. in exchange for money, even though there was no evidence that the government had anything to do with it."  

Born in 1984, "Veena is a symbol of another Pakistan, one that has existed since the founding of the state, but that we've seen less and less of with the rise of Islamization," says Scroggins. "It's an irreverrant, mocking, creative, secular Pakistan -- the voice of writers and poets like Ahmed Faiz," a biting 20th century intellectual. "Unfortunately it tends to be confined to the upper classes and is very much under threat these days," she says. 

Both Malik and Siddiqui "broke the rules about the way Pakistani women are supposed to behave," Scroggins says. Siddiqui was divorced from her doctor husband and remarried a younger man, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, another 9/11 facilitator. Her activities endangered her children; she was caught shooting at a U.S. soldier. "But she is forgiven for all of that because Pakistanis believe she did it for Pakistan and Islam," says Scroggins. "It's assumed that Veena, on the other hand, is only having her nude picture taken for money. And that's the way the ‘ghairat brigade' always portrays the motives of Pakistan's secularists."  

Aisha Chowdhry, a 24-year-old Pakistani-American journalist who produced a documentary, "Inside the Tinder Box," about Pakistan, says the Malik cover, whether nude as it appeared or topless, as Malik insists the photo was originally, "should not come as a surprise" to those watching the counterculture movement in Pakistan. "Art always has been a way for Pakistanis to showcase how they feel," she says. "Today, there are songs criticizing the government, paintings depicting terrorism in Pakistan, and now a racy photo of one of the country's most famous models with an ISI tattoo."

Chowdhry says, "In a country where journalists get killed if they dare to investigate sensitive issues, music videos and plays are one of the few ways to connect the young generation with what is going on in their country, and maybe even make a positive change someday."

In a piece on al-Jazeera before the Malik controversy, Syed Ali Abbas Zaida, founder of the Pakistan Youth Alliance, asked, "Can the youth of Pakistan inspire change and turn into pro-active citizens who agree to disagree peacefully?" The next month, the aptly-named band "Beghairat Brigade," uploaded its catchy new tune, "Aalu Anday" (or "Eggs and Potatoes"), calling out the politicians and military for their ineptitude in running the country. 

Pakistani singer Ali Azmat just put out a new song, "Bomb Phata," ("Bomb Exploded"), that chronicles the major actors that play a part in Pakistan's instability, from President Asif Ali Zardari to army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. It speaks to the daily worries about electricity and food shortages that vex Pakistanis while bombs explode in Lahore, Karachi, and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

And people regularly slam the government's inability to contain the domestic terrorism that is striking the country. This year, Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi won a prestigious award for his art installation, "Blessings upon the land of my love," describing his work as showing "the bloody aftermath of a bombing."

Malik's photo is a little more subtle, but in its nuance, it's likely to become an iconic symbol of a moment when one Pakistani decided to, quite literally and shamelessly, strip bare the truth of how institutions in Pakistan, are focused on the wrong priorities. "My dear patriots, there are far graver issues than this which need your serious consideration," wrote Pakistani economist and writer Raza Habib Raja, after the photo spread earned the rancor of the honor brigade. "The biggest issue is perhaps your screwed up mind set which gets riled up on these trivialities while completely ignoring much serious problems like rising extremism, sectarian killings and massive inequality."

Raja concluded: "...I loved that ISI tattoo. Now that was really liberating and bold!!!"

Asra Q. Nomani, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She teaches journalism at Georgetown University.