Muharram 1430 A.H.
A tribute to Imam-e-Aali Muqaam Imam Hussain (A.S.)
Salam-e-Aakhir
By Shafqat Amant Ali
Read more...
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
The Taliban atrocities against innocent people in Pakistan and the Israeli massacre of innocent Palestinians. What is the difference?
What do ordinary Pakistanis think?
Ghost of TK says:
The number of Dead in Buner reaches 41.
2 squadrons of F-16 killed 200
1 suicide bomber killed 41
Our condemnations of Israeli actions do ring a bit hollow when we completely overlook the heinous crimes being committed in the name of “Islam” right on our soil.
Mr. Munafiq, head of Jamat “Islami” (Qazi Hussain Ahmed) brushed off the Buner attack yesterday by saying …”oh THAT was only personal rivalry.”
So, now, the blessed jihad factories are producing GPS’s ..ie; “General Purpose Suiciders”… DON”T BLAME ISLAM for it…
We’re like the United States, we just innovate, and then people make their own factories.
India has the NANO and the Space Mission to the Moon, We have the fvcking Jihadi Jacket!
....
netengr Says:
.....
we_are_nuts Says:
I do want to point out that i used to defend the Palestinian cause ad nauseum but have changed my mind given the recent situation in Pakistan. If Pakistanis need to do anything for the Palestinians, it is pray. For more than that, Pakistan needs to be at least as strong as Iran INTERNALLY before going out on any adventures.
Pakistani ‘awam’ should also note that it was our great Islami sipha-e-salar General Zia-ul-Haq that went and killed hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians. So if his bakhiajat are here on this forum speweing hate and violence, for the sake of your leader, if you can’t do what he did, just don’t do anything….
...
gditpp Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Inalillah e wa in alehay rajayoon
World is in the midst of Clash of the Rightist: Zionists, Hindutva preachers, Evalenglical Christian fundamentalisits and Muslim religious fanatics.
Rather than becoming the fooder of a misadeventure, we have to put our house in order and prepare and equip ourselves before taking on others.
We need to stop following the foot steps of militants like Syed Ismael, Mehdi Sudani, Akhwan and its offspring Hammas, Jamaat and its off spring Taleban and the Alqaeda and start following in the foot steps of reformers and modernist like Sir Syed, Jinnah, Mahatir and Bhutto.
...
Awais Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hamas, LeT, Taliban, Jaish-e-mohammad, Hizbollah, Spiah-e-sahabah, Ikhwan, Jammat-e-Islami, all the different faces of a coin.
Israelis has used this strategy {of Violence} for years it hasn’t worked.
Palestinians has use this strategy {of Violence} for years its hasn’t worked.
So i think they need to change that.
there MUST be someone who could STOP both Isreali terrorists and terrorists of Hammas.
...
netengr Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Why people do not have the same reaction when taliban or muslim groups kill thousand of people .the same day we have bomb blast in bannu where more then 50 innocent muslims killed by militant .In saudi arabia there is special dua for the destroy of jews .I still cant understand that the life or the human or muslim should be equal .the “zulm ” is either by muslims or jews etc should have the same reaction by muslims
...
Awais Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
yes i agree with netengr
none of these, who are supporting the Hammas and their acts, reacted the same way when a succide bomber killed 180-220 people in Karachi in Oct 2007.
they didn’t gave same reaction when Suicide Mujaheddin killed people at Mariot, Bombay, Wah Cannt, Peshawer or Twin Towers.
‘Zulm’ is ‘zulm’ no matter done by Jews, Christians or faithful Muslims.
...
Ghost Of TK Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@netengr: Why do you hate Islam? Do you not know that the blessed attackers in Bannu were mujahids who are fighting against the Kuffur of the Pakistani State?
So what if 50 people were killed? They are also collateral shaheed. Also do you not see that the Bannu attack shook the foundations of the Zulm-o-Istibdaad of the Zionist Agent Pakistani Regime? Fully 2 motorcycles (100cc each) were destroyed in this Ghazva.
Don’t be on the wrong side of history! Blow yourself up Today! Offer ends this century. Some conditions apply.
...
Asif Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Why don’t people condemn all the innocent killings around the world? Selective condemning of innocent killings will not tone down terrorism.
Be subjective wen you define something universal, have the courage & ability to condemn all such acts, whether they are done thru missiles or thru eploding oneself.
Wat is brainwashing? its drilling of brains with selective info. So just decide by yourself the extent to which various people are brainwashed, geographically, ethnicaly, religously…
Everyone on earth is being brainwashed by someone for something good or bad depending on the objective of the brainwasher AND the severiest is wen certain groups of people stop condemning certain innocent killings.
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Just to complete the picture here,
35 shaheed in Buner
2 killed in Waziristan
14 afghan kids among the 16 killed in Afghanistan
I dont know whether to add them to the toll in palestine,s casualties or subtract them from. However, i thought it necessary to be mentioned them as well….. they were humans and muslims as well, though somewhat cheap, as i have read express newspaper and there the headline was 200 palestinians shaheed but when they will write about the Buner’s casualties tomorrow i doubt they would call them shaheed. Let’s see ………
...
lofty Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
What on earth is wrong with Hamas. If they do not have the capability to fight Israel why are they getting innocent muslims killed. Quran is very clear, if Jihad is undertaken by the muslim state, the balance of power between the muslim state and transgressing enemy must not be less than 1:2. In other words, if the balance of power between the two is such that the Muslims have less than half the material power as compared to that of their enemies, then they should avoid aggression and in place of that they should work to improve their power structure to the level of at least half that of their enemies.
...
netengr Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
people killed by militant in bajor,wana,sawat ,etc are far more then people killed in Palestine. but not jihadi mulla condemn ,people got killed in Karachi between 1986 to 1992 are 10 times more then people killed in Philistine .
Casualty figures for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the OCHAoPt[123]
(numbers in brackets represent casualties under the age of 18)
Year Deaths
Palestinians Israelis
2005 216 (52) 48 (6)
2006 678 (127) 25 (2)
2007 396 (43) 13 (0)
Total 1290(222) 86 (8)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-Palestinian_conflict
116 suicide bombings in Pakistan since 2002 ,Thousand of people killed by so called islamic jihadis and taliban .thousand of people killed by saddam ,iran -iraq war .million got killed by fighting between mujahideen in afghanistan .
1290 people killed in Philistine since 2005 and each incident become big in pakistan where in pakistan people got killed every day and people support the militant and defending them ,
...
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
-Israel Killed 1500 Palestinian muslims in last three years
-Hammas Killed 300 Israelis jews in last three years
-Osama bin ladin killed 10000 Mulims ,
Hikmat yaar killed thousands mulims .
Mulla Umer killed thousand innocent mulims
bush killed thousands muslims .
Taliban Killed thousands of innocent muslims ,
Baitullah mehsoud is the mass murmurer of innocent muslims
Million muslims killed in afghanistan fighting between so called mujahideen .
Zulm is zulm ,Qatl is Qatal ,either bu jews muslims or any one ,
...
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Pakistani muslims killed by taliban has no worth in muslim world .
...
FahadAfridi Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
All those super duper muslims accusing me of not caring about Muslims, do YOU care about hundreds of Muslims killed by ISI backed Taliban? Have you spoken out against your terror army? You don’t care about pukhtun lives, so why should I loose sleep over the lives of arabs? Let your arab shiekhas take care of them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear
Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants
By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 17 mins ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.
The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive….
...
Read more...
Ghost of TK says:
The number of Dead in Buner reaches 41.
2 squadrons of F-16 killed 200
1 suicide bomber killed 41
Our condemnations of Israeli actions do ring a bit hollow when we completely overlook the heinous crimes being committed in the name of “Islam” right on our soil.
Mr. Munafiq, head of Jamat “Islami” (Qazi Hussain Ahmed) brushed off the Buner attack yesterday by saying …”oh THAT was only personal rivalry.”
So, now, the blessed jihad factories are producing GPS’s ..ie; “General Purpose Suiciders”… DON”T BLAME ISLAM for it…
We’re like the United States, we just innovate, and then people make their own factories.
India has the NANO and the Space Mission to the Moon, We have the fvcking Jihadi Jacket!
....
netengr Says:
.....
we_are_nuts Says:
I do want to point out that i used to defend the Palestinian cause ad nauseum but have changed my mind given the recent situation in Pakistan. If Pakistanis need to do anything for the Palestinians, it is pray. For more than that, Pakistan needs to be at least as strong as Iran INTERNALLY before going out on any adventures.
Pakistani ‘awam’ should also note that it was our great Islami sipha-e-salar General Zia-ul-Haq that went and killed hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians. So if his bakhiajat are here on this forum speweing hate and violence, for the sake of your leader, if you can’t do what he did, just don’t do anything….
...
gditpp Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Inalillah e wa in alehay rajayoon
World is in the midst of Clash of the Rightist: Zionists, Hindutva preachers, Evalenglical Christian fundamentalisits and Muslim religious fanatics.
Rather than becoming the fooder of a misadeventure, we have to put our house in order and prepare and equip ourselves before taking on others.
We need to stop following the foot steps of militants like Syed Ismael, Mehdi Sudani, Akhwan and its offspring Hammas, Jamaat and its off spring Taleban and the Alqaeda and start following in the foot steps of reformers and modernist like Sir Syed, Jinnah, Mahatir and Bhutto.
...
Awais Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hamas, LeT, Taliban, Jaish-e-mohammad, Hizbollah, Spiah-e-sahabah, Ikhwan, Jammat-e-Islami, all the different faces of a coin.
Israelis has used this strategy {of Violence} for years it hasn’t worked.
Palestinians has use this strategy {of Violence} for years its hasn’t worked.
So i think they need to change that.
there MUST be someone who could STOP both Isreali terrorists and terrorists of Hammas.
...
netengr Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Why people do not have the same reaction when taliban or muslim groups kill thousand of people .the same day we have bomb blast in bannu where more then 50 innocent muslims killed by militant .In saudi arabia there is special dua for the destroy of jews .I still cant understand that the life or the human or muslim should be equal .the “zulm ” is either by muslims or jews etc should have the same reaction by muslims
...
Awais Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
yes i agree with netengr
none of these, who are supporting the Hammas and their acts, reacted the same way when a succide bomber killed 180-220 people in Karachi in Oct 2007.
they didn’t gave same reaction when Suicide Mujaheddin killed people at Mariot, Bombay, Wah Cannt, Peshawer or Twin Towers.
‘Zulm’ is ‘zulm’ no matter done by Jews, Christians or faithful Muslims.
...
Ghost Of TK Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@netengr: Why do you hate Islam? Do you not know that the blessed attackers in Bannu were mujahids who are fighting against the Kuffur of the Pakistani State?
So what if 50 people were killed? They are also collateral shaheed. Also do you not see that the Bannu attack shook the foundations of the Zulm-o-Istibdaad of the Zionist Agent Pakistani Regime? Fully 2 motorcycles (100cc each) were destroyed in this Ghazva.
Don’t be on the wrong side of history! Blow yourself up Today! Offer ends this century. Some conditions apply.
...
Asif Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Why don’t people condemn all the innocent killings around the world? Selective condemning of innocent killings will not tone down terrorism.
Be subjective wen you define something universal, have the courage & ability to condemn all such acts, whether they are done thru missiles or thru eploding oneself.
Wat is brainwashing? its drilling of brains with selective info. So just decide by yourself the extent to which various people are brainwashed, geographically, ethnicaly, religously…
Everyone on earth is being brainwashed by someone for something good or bad depending on the objective of the brainwasher AND the severiest is wen certain groups of people stop condemning certain innocent killings.
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Just to complete the picture here,
35 shaheed in Buner
2 killed in Waziristan
14 afghan kids among the 16 killed in Afghanistan
I dont know whether to add them to the toll in palestine,s casualties or subtract them from. However, i thought it necessary to be mentioned them as well….. they were humans and muslims as well, though somewhat cheap, as i have read express newspaper and there the headline was 200 palestinians shaheed but when they will write about the Buner’s casualties tomorrow i doubt they would call them shaheed. Let’s see ………
...
lofty Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
What on earth is wrong with Hamas. If they do not have the capability to fight Israel why are they getting innocent muslims killed. Quran is very clear, if Jihad is undertaken by the muslim state, the balance of power between the muslim state and transgressing enemy must not be less than 1:2. In other words, if the balance of power between the two is such that the Muslims have less than half the material power as compared to that of their enemies, then they should avoid aggression and in place of that they should work to improve their power structure to the level of at least half that of their enemies.
...
netengr Says:
December 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
people killed by militant in bajor,wana,sawat ,etc are far more then people killed in Palestine. but not jihadi mulla condemn ,people got killed in Karachi between 1986 to 1992 are 10 times more then people killed in Philistine .
Casualty figures for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the OCHAoPt[123]
(numbers in brackets represent casualties under the age of 18)
Year Deaths
Palestinians Israelis
2005 216 (52) 48 (6)
2006 678 (127) 25 (2)
2007 396 (43) 13 (0)
Total 1290(222) 86 (8)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-Palestinian_conflict
116 suicide bombings in Pakistan since 2002 ,Thousand of people killed by so called islamic jihadis and taliban .thousand of people killed by saddam ,iran -iraq war .million got killed by fighting between mujahideen in afghanistan .
1290 people killed in Philistine since 2005 and each incident become big in pakistan where in pakistan people got killed every day and people support the militant and defending them ,
...
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
-Israel Killed 1500 Palestinian muslims in last three years
-Hammas Killed 300 Israelis jews in last three years
-Osama bin ladin killed 10000 Mulims ,
Hikmat yaar killed thousands mulims .
Mulla Umer killed thousand innocent mulims
bush killed thousands muslims .
Taliban Killed thousands of innocent muslims ,
Baitullah mehsoud is the mass murmurer of innocent muslims
Million muslims killed in afghanistan fighting between so called mujahideen .
Zulm is zulm ,Qatl is Qatal ,either bu jews muslims or any one ,
...
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Pakistani muslims killed by taliban has no worth in muslim world .
...
FahadAfridi Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
All those super duper muslims accusing me of not caring about Muslims, do YOU care about hundreds of Muslims killed by ISI backed Taliban? Have you spoken out against your terror army? You don’t care about pukhtun lives, so why should I loose sleep over the lives of arabs? Let your arab shiekhas take care of them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear
Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants
By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 17 mins ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.
The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive….
...
Read more...
![[col11.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0dIyjOefyU56izUHrCeAPuphhHnJ4mjZTIs0VWZiMPJ9uUce1ZVS7pZv3vUKj2WwWcEzyk-Pvvzfpw8V5k1ms9X-Vx4kVQZUrW9hx42V9nCzjX8d6RzbE-g0GhLxQYa2aU7xeYDwKAM/s1600/col11.gif)
Plight of women in Swat: Where are all the international and national human rights organisations and women rights groups?
Plight of women in Swat
By Khurshid Khan
THE current situation in Swat is such that any sign of peace in the valley has been washed away. The people are living through the most miserable phase of its history. No doubt, the valley has witnessed invasions, turbulence and chaos from the time of Alexander’s invasion in 327 BC to the formation of Swat state in 1917.
However, at least in living memory the present chaos engendered by militancy has no parallel. It has adversely affected the physical and cultural environment, the economy, tourism, trade, governance and social life in the valley.
Unfortunately, in all this, women have been the worst sufferers. The militants’ obscurant version of Islam begins and ends with womenfolk. According to their belief, women are the source of all sins. A cleric while delivering the Friday sermon in Marghazar village was heard telling his flock, “My fellow Muslims, listen! The prices of daily commodities are rising because women abandon their homes and loiter about in the markets.”
In fact, the Fazlullah-led militants have announced a complete ban on female education from Jan 15, 2008 on FM radio. Some days ago, they announced that no government or private educational institution would be allowed to enrol girls and that all schools and colleges should stop educating them by Jan 15. Schools found violating this ban would be blown up. Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan somewhat modified the announcement saying that schools would remain closed until an Islamic curriculum was devised for imparting education to girls.
Parents and students have lost hope of schools reopening in this volatile atmosphere. The militants have usually been seen to follow up on their words and, despite the army’s presence, there have been no signs of the restoration of peace and harmony.
The militants have bombed or torched more than 100 girls’ schools and colleges to forcibly stop 80,000 girls from going to school in the district. There were 10 high schools, four higher secondary schools and four degree-awarding colleges and a network of primary schools across the district for girls and women, besides a postgraduate institution for young men and women to study at the master’s level.
Against the culture of keeping womenfolk away from development, the rulers of Swat state (1917-1969) encouraged female literacy, the first step on the way to progress, by establishing girls’ schools and colleges. The valley had the highest female literacy rate as compared to neighbouring districts.
After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their repressive activities started getting support in the Pakhtun areas of Pakistan along the Durand Line. Swat is among the more recent victims of Talibanisation. The secular nature of Swati society is slowly and gradually leaning towards extremism.
The clergy first started speaking against girls’ and women’s education through unauthorised FM radios and at public gatherings. But as they got more emboldened, they attempted to stall female education — and eliminate the presence of girls and women in the market — through fiercer means including bomb blasts. Many schools have been destroyed in this way.
Then they turned their wrath on women doctors and the female nursing staff in hospitals warning them to observe strict purdah, confine themselves only to wards for women and not to attend calls on their cellphones. The medical superintendent of a group of hospitals complied with the order and circulated a notice to the entire female staff telling them to do as they had been told. Women patients and visitors were also advised to conform to Taliban instructions.
Militants also ordered the segregation of students at the Saidu Medical College, telling the principal to keep away women students from research labs after a certain time. Meanwhile, another college refused to take in women because of the continuous threats of the militants from 2007 onwards. Militants regularly monitor hospitals and colleges. In fact, working women and those attending school or college, or going to the doctor or in the marketplace are given a bad character by the militants.
Indiscriminate mortar shelling has hit houses and killed and injured civilians. In these, the toll for women casualties has been higher since they are more often at home, while unannounced road obstructions or curfews have made sudden medical emergencies, especially among pregnant women, difficult to be attended to. As a consequence women have lost their newborns as they have not been able to make it to the hospital in time. Besides, with their men also casualties of militancy, many of them are losing breadwinners in the family.
The threatened closure of educational institutions has proved to be the last nail in the coffin. The mindset of the militants — who routinely resort to the violation of fundamental rights in order to accomplish their goal — is clear and their misused and illegal authority has led them to establish a state within a state. Swat is not a no-man’s-land and is very much an integral part of the country. By tradition its inhabitants are not religious bigots. In fact, society in Swat is more civilised and accommodating of opinions than the rest of the Pakhtun belt. Islamabad should understand that and break its silence to take assertive action against the militants if it does not want Talibanisation to engulf the area and paralyse the entire structure of society.
Where are all the international and national human rights organisations and women rights groups? They must raise a collective voice against this victimisation of Swati women and girls. It is also time for the media to take drastic steps to highlight the current lot of Swati women whose repressive treatment should also serve as a wake-up call for women parliamentarians to take an active part in rescuing them from the spread of a venomous culture. (Dawn)
udyana64@yahoo.com
Read more...
By Khurshid Khan
THE current situation in Swat is such that any sign of peace in the valley has been washed away. The people are living through the most miserable phase of its history. No doubt, the valley has witnessed invasions, turbulence and chaos from the time of Alexander’s invasion in 327 BC to the formation of Swat state in 1917.
However, at least in living memory the present chaos engendered by militancy has no parallel. It has adversely affected the physical and cultural environment, the economy, tourism, trade, governance and social life in the valley.
Unfortunately, in all this, women have been the worst sufferers. The militants’ obscurant version of Islam begins and ends with womenfolk. According to their belief, women are the source of all sins. A cleric while delivering the Friday sermon in Marghazar village was heard telling his flock, “My fellow Muslims, listen! The prices of daily commodities are rising because women abandon their homes and loiter about in the markets.”
In fact, the Fazlullah-led militants have announced a complete ban on female education from Jan 15, 2008 on FM radio. Some days ago, they announced that no government or private educational institution would be allowed to enrol girls and that all schools and colleges should stop educating them by Jan 15. Schools found violating this ban would be blown up. Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan somewhat modified the announcement saying that schools would remain closed until an Islamic curriculum was devised for imparting education to girls.
Parents and students have lost hope of schools reopening in this volatile atmosphere. The militants have usually been seen to follow up on their words and, despite the army’s presence, there have been no signs of the restoration of peace and harmony.
The militants have bombed or torched more than 100 girls’ schools and colleges to forcibly stop 80,000 girls from going to school in the district. There were 10 high schools, four higher secondary schools and four degree-awarding colleges and a network of primary schools across the district for girls and women, besides a postgraduate institution for young men and women to study at the master’s level.
Against the culture of keeping womenfolk away from development, the rulers of Swat state (1917-1969) encouraged female literacy, the first step on the way to progress, by establishing girls’ schools and colleges. The valley had the highest female literacy rate as compared to neighbouring districts.
After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their repressive activities started getting support in the Pakhtun areas of Pakistan along the Durand Line. Swat is among the more recent victims of Talibanisation. The secular nature of Swati society is slowly and gradually leaning towards extremism.
The clergy first started speaking against girls’ and women’s education through unauthorised FM radios and at public gatherings. But as they got more emboldened, they attempted to stall female education — and eliminate the presence of girls and women in the market — through fiercer means including bomb blasts. Many schools have been destroyed in this way.
Then they turned their wrath on women doctors and the female nursing staff in hospitals warning them to observe strict purdah, confine themselves only to wards for women and not to attend calls on their cellphones. The medical superintendent of a group of hospitals complied with the order and circulated a notice to the entire female staff telling them to do as they had been told. Women patients and visitors were also advised to conform to Taliban instructions.
Militants also ordered the segregation of students at the Saidu Medical College, telling the principal to keep away women students from research labs after a certain time. Meanwhile, another college refused to take in women because of the continuous threats of the militants from 2007 onwards. Militants regularly monitor hospitals and colleges. In fact, working women and those attending school or college, or going to the doctor or in the marketplace are given a bad character by the militants.
Indiscriminate mortar shelling has hit houses and killed and injured civilians. In these, the toll for women casualties has been higher since they are more often at home, while unannounced road obstructions or curfews have made sudden medical emergencies, especially among pregnant women, difficult to be attended to. As a consequence women have lost their newborns as they have not been able to make it to the hospital in time. Besides, with their men also casualties of militancy, many of them are losing breadwinners in the family.
The threatened closure of educational institutions has proved to be the last nail in the coffin. The mindset of the militants — who routinely resort to the violation of fundamental rights in order to accomplish their goal — is clear and their misused and illegal authority has led them to establish a state within a state. Swat is not a no-man’s-land and is very much an integral part of the country. By tradition its inhabitants are not religious bigots. In fact, society in Swat is more civilised and accommodating of opinions than the rest of the Pakhtun belt. Islamabad should understand that and break its silence to take assertive action against the militants if it does not want Talibanisation to engulf the area and paralyse the entire structure of society.
Where are all the international and national human rights organisations and women rights groups? They must raise a collective voice against this victimisation of Swati women and girls. It is also time for the media to take drastic steps to highlight the current lot of Swati women whose repressive treatment should also serve as a wake-up call for women parliamentarians to take an active part in rescuing them from the spread of a venomous culture. (Dawn)
udyana64@yahoo.com
Read more...
![[1100547814-2.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8ebQE0QABRreqIk-Ryw9zkp_uKlkL5YyEb_BSewiWq8_Ud96YIg7ZOXAX2LmlIr0RB99_fCutfBSuQvNcYrrezMr1gjpBTqXWeEcMIrLs0RNg4kc3ElHZilFfY-agJ16Fsa4x4qoHQo/s1600-h/1100547814-2.gif)
Talk of belling the cat: What is the agenda of Shaheen Sehbai?
Talk of belling the cat
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
By Anjum Niaz
The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting
Shaheen Sehbai’s surgical strike on President Zardari in this newspaper on Dec 26 offered an eclectic mix of facts and speculation. While swathing populist sentiments of the voiceless millions averse to a one-man rule, it also raised some serious questions. The timing; tone and tenor; and a Washington dateline warrant a critique. The presidential exposé came a day before his wife’s first death anniversary. Is there a link between the two or mere happenstance?
Mr Sehbai sweeps us off our feet by predicting the demise of this government. He bases his prophesy on events – past and present- verified by the blowhards on our TV channels ad infinitum. Sehbai sums it thus: Zardari’s is a self-fulfilling prophesy – where he himself is facilitating his own fall by the actions numbered ten in his editorializing. However he stops short of packing high-grade dynamite that can blow up the presidency. It may well provide ample fireworks for drawing room chatter, but Sehbai needs to scrabble more uncanny information that he may be privy to. He needs to calibrate the next steps: how a change will come and more importantly who will bring it. Lastly, why fire his stinger missile from across the other side of the Atlantic, unless the idea is to maintain an oceanic stretch between him (currently in Washington) and the presidency?
Still, Sehbai is the first of his tribe to trawl through parlous waters that most of us have so far studiously avoided. Perhaps President Zardari and his media-friendly information minister Sherry Rehman have successfully tamed the press (with the exception of Sehbai) the way President Bush and his busy bees did. One is reminded of that famous quote by an unnamed Bush aide (Karl Rove?) to American journalist Ron Suskind on the eve of 2003 Iraq war:
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re (Ron Suskind) studying that reality—judiciously as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Zardari is our very own “history’s actor” embroiled in “creating new realities” that daily lacerate our belief forcing us to adjust our moral compass to “study” and judge his actions that often stun-gun most into sullied shock. Excoriating his past alleged misdeeds is the only antacid that relieves our heartburn. Tongues unravel, red flags fly and blogs light up when the president is referenced. But didn’t Pervez Musharraf personally power wash the president’s unproven corruption cases with concentrates of chlorinated NRO? Didn’t the National Accountability Bureau silo the radioactive material flaring with damning evidence against the former first couple so none could fire these ballistic missiles ever again?
However, those who have read Shaheen Sehbai’s viewpoint against the present government think better it would have been for the writer to reveal some startling facts that could spool the legal duo, Messrs Naek and Khosa into a corner. “Does the writer not claim to know the president from close quarters?” Asks an initiated reader. “Does he not have impeachable information that can shake the presidency? I think Shaheen Sehbai does.”
Others feel that to target the president is being untethered from reality. He may be flawed and conflicted; still he’s no demon like his predecessor Musharraf. “Why has the media not demanded accountability of the general and his cronies whose malfeasance is well-documented?” The military dictator’s duplicity and sophistry finally pulled him down. He vacated his seat not because some Pakistani investigative journalist discovered a Watergate like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did to drive out Musharraf but Zardari trumped him and rushed in to take his seat. “I am sure Mr Sehbai, if he’s willing to launch into such an enterprise as the Watergate scandal will have many ‘Deep Throats’ to assist him in his mission,” writes a Pakistan-watcher from America.
Jettisoned by the self-censuring media too skittish to shine light on PPP’s unrighteousness, the nation repeatedly questions how a corrupt claque can overrun the land with a spoil system that blatantly privileges only the family, friends and favourites of the rulers. Unsurprisingly then, most Pakistanis are stricken with the same mental symptoms that, as cited by the Financial Times, Asif Ali Zardari suffered as recently as last year.
An Islamabad-based psychiatrist says the majority of Pakistanis have developed similar “severe psychiatric problems” today as they sit on the sidelines and watch the jaw-dropping deformed joke being played on them by their greedy rulers. The critical mass of our Les Misérables will continue to suffer from “emotional instability” as our president did. The Financial Times quoted Stephen Reich, a New York state-based psychologist saying Zardari was “unable to remember the birthdays of his wife and children, was persistently apprehensive and had thought about suicide.” The 70 per cent poor of this country don’t celebrate birthdays! But they regularly commit suicides not because they are “persistently apprehensive,” but for totally different reasons - there’s none to save them.
Our politicians have no souls. Few in the synchronous head-bobbing press stand up and ask what an email questions: “Why are they (ruling and opposition leaders) not grounding themselves to change the destiny of the poor instead of playing politics and fattening their fortunes while straddling across their luxury-lined penthouses and palaces abroad?”
“What could be better than President Zardari(and Mian Nawaz Sharif & company) taking a lead and setting up a historical precedence,” writes Naeem Sadiq in the blogosphere. “He could easily bring back what is already well recorded fortune. He could then make a public declaration asking all his countrymen to do the same. Even if the 100 billion dollar estimate is a twenty times exaggeration, we could still have $10 billion of our own – enough to restart a new Pakistan.”
At a wedding I meet a Pakistani who lives in Qatar. He has horror stories to tell. “My friends want to set up businesses in Pakistan, but are waiting for this government to go because it suffers from a huge trust deficit.”
If President Zardari wants to complete five years as he vows he will, he needs to coral his cronies. He needs to be a model of humility, honesty and hard work himself. He needs to bring traction to issues crying out loud for resolution like accountability; good governance; transparency in public dealing; and jobs on merit. These are moral certitudes that apparently don’t matter to our rulers. They feel they can do no wrong. The chief justice of the Supreme Court; ministers Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Farooq Naek appear immune to national outrage, media and public animadversion, when their daughters receive undue favours; ministers Khurshid Shah and Naveed Qamar make a production of their sons’ marriages by blatantly misusing their clout. Why does the PPP turn into a juggernaut whenever it gets power, behaving as if Pakistan is their personal playing ground?
President Zardari figures as one of the 20 ‘People Who Mattered’ in Time magazine. The list has winners as well as losers. There is for example the Olympic super swimmer Michael Phelps; Sarah Palin- impersonator and comedienne Tina Fey; self-help guru of The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren whom Obama has assigned the invocation at his presidential inauguration; and powerhouse Hillary Clinton. Included also are losers like failure George Bush, blackmailer Rod Blagojevich; also-ran John McCain; foxy Somali Pirates and dictator Robert Mugabe!
So what do you think – which list will you put President Zardari in - the winners or the losers category?
Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu
Read more...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
By Anjum Niaz
The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting
Shaheen Sehbai’s surgical strike on President Zardari in this newspaper on Dec 26 offered an eclectic mix of facts and speculation. While swathing populist sentiments of the voiceless millions averse to a one-man rule, it also raised some serious questions. The timing; tone and tenor; and a Washington dateline warrant a critique. The presidential exposé came a day before his wife’s first death anniversary. Is there a link between the two or mere happenstance?
Mr Sehbai sweeps us off our feet by predicting the demise of this government. He bases his prophesy on events – past and present- verified by the blowhards on our TV channels ad infinitum. Sehbai sums it thus: Zardari’s is a self-fulfilling prophesy – where he himself is facilitating his own fall by the actions numbered ten in his editorializing. However he stops short of packing high-grade dynamite that can blow up the presidency. It may well provide ample fireworks for drawing room chatter, but Sehbai needs to scrabble more uncanny information that he may be privy to. He needs to calibrate the next steps: how a change will come and more importantly who will bring it. Lastly, why fire his stinger missile from across the other side of the Atlantic, unless the idea is to maintain an oceanic stretch between him (currently in Washington) and the presidency?
Still, Sehbai is the first of his tribe to trawl through parlous waters that most of us have so far studiously avoided. Perhaps President Zardari and his media-friendly information minister Sherry Rehman have successfully tamed the press (with the exception of Sehbai) the way President Bush and his busy bees did. One is reminded of that famous quote by an unnamed Bush aide (Karl Rove?) to American journalist Ron Suskind on the eve of 2003 Iraq war:
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re (Ron Suskind) studying that reality—judiciously as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Zardari is our very own “history’s actor” embroiled in “creating new realities” that daily lacerate our belief forcing us to adjust our moral compass to “study” and judge his actions that often stun-gun most into sullied shock. Excoriating his past alleged misdeeds is the only antacid that relieves our heartburn. Tongues unravel, red flags fly and blogs light up when the president is referenced. But didn’t Pervez Musharraf personally power wash the president’s unproven corruption cases with concentrates of chlorinated NRO? Didn’t the National Accountability Bureau silo the radioactive material flaring with damning evidence against the former first couple so none could fire these ballistic missiles ever again?
However, those who have read Shaheen Sehbai’s viewpoint against the present government think better it would have been for the writer to reveal some startling facts that could spool the legal duo, Messrs Naek and Khosa into a corner. “Does the writer not claim to know the president from close quarters?” Asks an initiated reader. “Does he not have impeachable information that can shake the presidency? I think Shaheen Sehbai does.”
Others feel that to target the president is being untethered from reality. He may be flawed and conflicted; still he’s no demon like his predecessor Musharraf. “Why has the media not demanded accountability of the general and his cronies whose malfeasance is well-documented?” The military dictator’s duplicity and sophistry finally pulled him down. He vacated his seat not because some Pakistani investigative journalist discovered a Watergate like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did to drive out Musharraf but Zardari trumped him and rushed in to take his seat. “I am sure Mr Sehbai, if he’s willing to launch into such an enterprise as the Watergate scandal will have many ‘Deep Throats’ to assist him in his mission,” writes a Pakistan-watcher from America.
Jettisoned by the self-censuring media too skittish to shine light on PPP’s unrighteousness, the nation repeatedly questions how a corrupt claque can overrun the land with a spoil system that blatantly privileges only the family, friends and favourites of the rulers. Unsurprisingly then, most Pakistanis are stricken with the same mental symptoms that, as cited by the Financial Times, Asif Ali Zardari suffered as recently as last year.
An Islamabad-based psychiatrist says the majority of Pakistanis have developed similar “severe psychiatric problems” today as they sit on the sidelines and watch the jaw-dropping deformed joke being played on them by their greedy rulers. The critical mass of our Les Misérables will continue to suffer from “emotional instability” as our president did. The Financial Times quoted Stephen Reich, a New York state-based psychologist saying Zardari was “unable to remember the birthdays of his wife and children, was persistently apprehensive and had thought about suicide.” The 70 per cent poor of this country don’t celebrate birthdays! But they regularly commit suicides not because they are “persistently apprehensive,” but for totally different reasons - there’s none to save them.
Our politicians have no souls. Few in the synchronous head-bobbing press stand up and ask what an email questions: “Why are they (ruling and opposition leaders) not grounding themselves to change the destiny of the poor instead of playing politics and fattening their fortunes while straddling across their luxury-lined penthouses and palaces abroad?”
“What could be better than President Zardari(and Mian Nawaz Sharif & company) taking a lead and setting up a historical precedence,” writes Naeem Sadiq in the blogosphere. “He could easily bring back what is already well recorded fortune. He could then make a public declaration asking all his countrymen to do the same. Even if the 100 billion dollar estimate is a twenty times exaggeration, we could still have $10 billion of our own – enough to restart a new Pakistan.”
At a wedding I meet a Pakistani who lives in Qatar. He has horror stories to tell. “My friends want to set up businesses in Pakistan, but are waiting for this government to go because it suffers from a huge trust deficit.”
If President Zardari wants to complete five years as he vows he will, he needs to coral his cronies. He needs to be a model of humility, honesty and hard work himself. He needs to bring traction to issues crying out loud for resolution like accountability; good governance; transparency in public dealing; and jobs on merit. These are moral certitudes that apparently don’t matter to our rulers. They feel they can do no wrong. The chief justice of the Supreme Court; ministers Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Farooq Naek appear immune to national outrage, media and public animadversion, when their daughters receive undue favours; ministers Khurshid Shah and Naveed Qamar make a production of their sons’ marriages by blatantly misusing their clout. Why does the PPP turn into a juggernaut whenever it gets power, behaving as if Pakistan is their personal playing ground?
President Zardari figures as one of the 20 ‘People Who Mattered’ in Time magazine. The list has winners as well as losers. There is for example the Olympic super swimmer Michael Phelps; Sarah Palin- impersonator and comedienne Tina Fey; self-help guru of The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren whom Obama has assigned the invocation at his presidential inauguration; and powerhouse Hillary Clinton. Included also are losers like failure George Bush, blackmailer Rod Blagojevich; also-ran John McCain; foxy Somali Pirates and dictator Robert Mugabe!
So what do you think – which list will you put President Zardari in - the winners or the losers category?
Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu
Read more...
The end of the Kashmir jihad: Elections in Kashmir... By Aakar Patel
The end of the Kashmir jihad
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
By Aakar Patel
On Jan 12, 2002, President Pervez Musharraf banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. He promised that “no organisation would be allowed to carry out terrorism on the pretext of Kashmir.”
On Sept 17, 2002, Jammu and Kashmir went to vote. In the two months before polling, 570 people died, including 327 militants.
The average vote was 44 percent. The lowest turnout, 7.8 percent, was in Sopore, home to the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Geelani; the highest, 78 percent, was 10 times that, in Kargil, a stronghold of Shias, always more wary about Jihad. US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill acknowledged a dip in infiltration across the Line of Control and called the turnout “remarkable.”
On Nov 2, 2002, Mufti Mohammad Saeed and the Congress Party formed the government, agreeing to split the six-year term between the two parties with Mufti Saeed as chief minister for the first three years and Ghulam Nabi Azad the last three. They focussed on governance, not identity, for almost the whole of their terms. But then, in the manner of the subcontinent, identity appeared.
Amarnath, 90 kilometres from Srinagar, is where Hindus pray to a giant ice stalagmite, which they believe is a representation of Shiva’s phallus. The Amarnath shrine was discovered by a Muslim shepherd in the 19th century, and pilgrims walk 42 kilometres from Pahalgam in the Hindu month of Sravan (July-August) to worship there.
On May 26, 2008, the Jammu and Kashmir government agreed to give 100 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Trust, for the setting up of tents for pilgrims. In Srinagar, this was immediately shown as evidence of how Kashmir would slowly be taken over by India. (The Indian Constitution’s Article 370 gives Jammu and Kashmir separate status from the rest of the Union and Indians cannot buy land in that state.)
Kashmiri Muslims came to the streets to oppose the transfer; Jammu’s Hindus came to the streets to defend it. Hindu groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, blocked the road to the Valley from Jammu, threatening an economic blockade and alarming the country. The government cancelled the land transfer, but Mufti Saeed withdrew support from the Congress government, which resigned on July 7, 2008.
On Oct 19, the Election Commission of India announced Kashmir’s elections would be held from November 17 in seven phases till December 24. Few believed the elections would be successful.
The communist Yusuf Tarigami said “elections were no solution to the Kashmir problem.” The secular Yasin Malik said his group, the JKLF, would campaign actively for a boycott and that the elections would fail just as they had in the past. “To boycott the elections was every Kashmiri’s right,” he said. Sheikh Abdullah’s grandson Omar said his party, the National Conference, would contest but he worried that “turnout would be low.” Hurriyat spokesman Abdul Ghani Bhat said elections were a non-issue and, “whether or not they were held, would cause the Hurriyat no consternation.” The Jamaat’s Geelani said that the “so-called elections were no solution.” The JKDFP’s Shabbir Shah promised a “total boycott.” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq asked people to stay away from the elections “or face social boycott.”
On Nov 17, Bandipora, Leh, Kargil and Poonch polled 69 percent; on Nov 23, Ganderbal and Rajouri polled 68 percent; on Nov 30, Kupwara polled 68 percent; on Dec 7, Baramulla, Udhampur, Budgam and Reasi polled 59 percent; on Dec 13, Pulwama, Shopian and Kathua polled 58 percent; on Dec 17 Anantnag, Doda, Kishtwar, Kulgam and Ramban polled 66 percent; on Dec 24 Jammu, Srinagar and Samba polled 55 percent.
Why did this happen?
In 2003, there were 3,401 incidents of violence in Kashmir. In 2005 this fell to 1,415 incidents. In 2007 this fell to less than 900. Infiltration across the Line of Control also plummeted.
Without the leverage of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s and Jaish-e-Muhammad’s guns, the Hurriyat showed it had little influence. In a democracy, there is no substitute to rallying people, other than through daily contact on daily issues. Leadership on one grand, emotional issue cannot be sustained.
Musharraf ended Pakistan’s jihad; Kashmiris have put a moratorium on identity issues. Kashmiris have damaged the credibility of the Hurriyat Conference, and made it irrelevant for the next six years.
The Mirwaiz is conservative, as religious leaders must be. But along with worrying about Bida’a, in the manner of all South Asian maulvis, he fought a political battle—but without ever fighting an election. He has lost. After the results were announced on Sunday, Dec 28, he said this was a “lesson for separatists.”
Who were the winners?
Thirty-eight-year-old Omar Abdullah will become chief minister. He is secular (married to a Hindu), intelligent and experienced. Exactly the kind of man the state needs. His grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, and Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather, Nehru, had a friendship that fell apart and Nehru jailed the Sheikh for a dozen years. This was after Nehru fought against Hari Singh before Independence to have Sheikh Abdullah released. Now, these two young men, who are also close friends, are at the doorstep of history.
The BJP was rewarded for its opportunism in inflaming Jammu and won 11 seats, 10 more than last time. But it has polarised Jammu from Kashmir in its recklessness. It says the issue is of discrimination against Jammu, not Hindu versus Muslim, but this is untrue. Where it has the opportunity to use bigotry—in Gujarat, and elsewhere—it does so without qualm.
The BJP talks tough to Indians, but in December 1999, Vajpayee surrendered to the Jaish-e-Muhammad after the Kandahar hijacking and released Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh. This act of myopia under pressure from a few dozen middle-class families led to more terrorism in India, including the attack on Parliament in December 2001. It also led to the attacks on Musharraf, whose death might have led to a different story in Kashmir, and to the savage murder of The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl.
The Congress calmed tempers even at the cost of being hurt by angry Hindus in Jammu and elsewhere in India—and it is down three seats to 17. Under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, it remains the party that puts nation above self.
What about the separatists? They are fighting the wrong people.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s father was killed by the Hizbul Mujahideen in May 1990. Sajjad Lone’s father, Abdul Ghani Lone, was killed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in May 2002.
I met Abdul Ghani Lone in his Srinagar house, and while showing me out he pointed at the Indian army soldiers protecting him and referred to them as “these butchers.” But I wondered who they were protecting him from.
Mufti Mohammad Saeed’s daughter Rubaiyya was kidnapped by militants in December 1989, when he was India’s home minister. The V P Singh government released five prisoners to get Saeed’s daughter back.
These people are the victims of militancy, but they became its champions. As it now fades away, they will become irrelevant, unless they separate their message from violence.
Yasin Malik’s young face bears testimony to the brutality of the Indian state, whose guest he has been for much of his adult life. He says elections are not the solution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue.
But India has no strategy beyond offering secular democracy and the recurring right to vote, which it has been begging Kashmiris to take—and which they have finally taken, at least for now.
Yasin Malik talks about Gandhian protest, but Gandhi did not fight for a theocratic state. In a truly Azad Kashmir, Yasin Malik will be stamped out by Mirwaiz, Geelani and the Kashmiri population that will get down to the mischief of Hudood, Riba, Zina. Pakistan thinks it inherited it from Zia, but that actually came from the Muslim League and Liaquat’s 1949 Objectives Resolution.
Having predicted that Kashmirs would boycott the election, Indian liberals are now urging the government to act to resolve the Kashmir issue with some sort of geographical solution. They are wrong.
Elections are the solution. Secular democracy is the only goal. It is what Jinnah wanted. Kashmiris already have that. (The News)
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@ gmail.com
Read more...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
By Aakar Patel
On Jan 12, 2002, President Pervez Musharraf banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. He promised that “no organisation would be allowed to carry out terrorism on the pretext of Kashmir.”
On Sept 17, 2002, Jammu and Kashmir went to vote. In the two months before polling, 570 people died, including 327 militants.
The average vote was 44 percent. The lowest turnout, 7.8 percent, was in Sopore, home to the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Geelani; the highest, 78 percent, was 10 times that, in Kargil, a stronghold of Shias, always more wary about Jihad. US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill acknowledged a dip in infiltration across the Line of Control and called the turnout “remarkable.”
On Nov 2, 2002, Mufti Mohammad Saeed and the Congress Party formed the government, agreeing to split the six-year term between the two parties with Mufti Saeed as chief minister for the first three years and Ghulam Nabi Azad the last three. They focussed on governance, not identity, for almost the whole of their terms. But then, in the manner of the subcontinent, identity appeared.
Amarnath, 90 kilometres from Srinagar, is where Hindus pray to a giant ice stalagmite, which they believe is a representation of Shiva’s phallus. The Amarnath shrine was discovered by a Muslim shepherd in the 19th century, and pilgrims walk 42 kilometres from Pahalgam in the Hindu month of Sravan (July-August) to worship there.
On May 26, 2008, the Jammu and Kashmir government agreed to give 100 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Trust, for the setting up of tents for pilgrims. In Srinagar, this was immediately shown as evidence of how Kashmir would slowly be taken over by India. (The Indian Constitution’s Article 370 gives Jammu and Kashmir separate status from the rest of the Union and Indians cannot buy land in that state.)
Kashmiri Muslims came to the streets to oppose the transfer; Jammu’s Hindus came to the streets to defend it. Hindu groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, blocked the road to the Valley from Jammu, threatening an economic blockade and alarming the country. The government cancelled the land transfer, but Mufti Saeed withdrew support from the Congress government, which resigned on July 7, 2008.
On Oct 19, the Election Commission of India announced Kashmir’s elections would be held from November 17 in seven phases till December 24. Few believed the elections would be successful.
The communist Yusuf Tarigami said “elections were no solution to the Kashmir problem.” The secular Yasin Malik said his group, the JKLF, would campaign actively for a boycott and that the elections would fail just as they had in the past. “To boycott the elections was every Kashmiri’s right,” he said. Sheikh Abdullah’s grandson Omar said his party, the National Conference, would contest but he worried that “turnout would be low.” Hurriyat spokesman Abdul Ghani Bhat said elections were a non-issue and, “whether or not they were held, would cause the Hurriyat no consternation.” The Jamaat’s Geelani said that the “so-called elections were no solution.” The JKDFP’s Shabbir Shah promised a “total boycott.” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq asked people to stay away from the elections “or face social boycott.”
On Nov 17, Bandipora, Leh, Kargil and Poonch polled 69 percent; on Nov 23, Ganderbal and Rajouri polled 68 percent; on Nov 30, Kupwara polled 68 percent; on Dec 7, Baramulla, Udhampur, Budgam and Reasi polled 59 percent; on Dec 13, Pulwama, Shopian and Kathua polled 58 percent; on Dec 17 Anantnag, Doda, Kishtwar, Kulgam and Ramban polled 66 percent; on Dec 24 Jammu, Srinagar and Samba polled 55 percent.
Why did this happen?
In 2003, there were 3,401 incidents of violence in Kashmir. In 2005 this fell to 1,415 incidents. In 2007 this fell to less than 900. Infiltration across the Line of Control also plummeted.
Without the leverage of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s and Jaish-e-Muhammad’s guns, the Hurriyat showed it had little influence. In a democracy, there is no substitute to rallying people, other than through daily contact on daily issues. Leadership on one grand, emotional issue cannot be sustained.
Musharraf ended Pakistan’s jihad; Kashmiris have put a moratorium on identity issues. Kashmiris have damaged the credibility of the Hurriyat Conference, and made it irrelevant for the next six years.
The Mirwaiz is conservative, as religious leaders must be. But along with worrying about Bida’a, in the manner of all South Asian maulvis, he fought a political battle—but without ever fighting an election. He has lost. After the results were announced on Sunday, Dec 28, he said this was a “lesson for separatists.”
Who were the winners?
Thirty-eight-year-old Omar Abdullah will become chief minister. He is secular (married to a Hindu), intelligent and experienced. Exactly the kind of man the state needs. His grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, and Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather, Nehru, had a friendship that fell apart and Nehru jailed the Sheikh for a dozen years. This was after Nehru fought against Hari Singh before Independence to have Sheikh Abdullah released. Now, these two young men, who are also close friends, are at the doorstep of history.
The BJP was rewarded for its opportunism in inflaming Jammu and won 11 seats, 10 more than last time. But it has polarised Jammu from Kashmir in its recklessness. It says the issue is of discrimination against Jammu, not Hindu versus Muslim, but this is untrue. Where it has the opportunity to use bigotry—in Gujarat, and elsewhere—it does so without qualm.
The BJP talks tough to Indians, but in December 1999, Vajpayee surrendered to the Jaish-e-Muhammad after the Kandahar hijacking and released Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh. This act of myopia under pressure from a few dozen middle-class families led to more terrorism in India, including the attack on Parliament in December 2001. It also led to the attacks on Musharraf, whose death might have led to a different story in Kashmir, and to the savage murder of The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl.
The Congress calmed tempers even at the cost of being hurt by angry Hindus in Jammu and elsewhere in India—and it is down three seats to 17. Under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, it remains the party that puts nation above self.
What about the separatists? They are fighting the wrong people.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s father was killed by the Hizbul Mujahideen in May 1990. Sajjad Lone’s father, Abdul Ghani Lone, was killed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in May 2002.
I met Abdul Ghani Lone in his Srinagar house, and while showing me out he pointed at the Indian army soldiers protecting him and referred to them as “these butchers.” But I wondered who they were protecting him from.
Mufti Mohammad Saeed’s daughter Rubaiyya was kidnapped by militants in December 1989, when he was India’s home minister. The V P Singh government released five prisoners to get Saeed’s daughter back.
These people are the victims of militancy, but they became its champions. As it now fades away, they will become irrelevant, unless they separate their message from violence.
Yasin Malik’s young face bears testimony to the brutality of the Indian state, whose guest he has been for much of his adult life. He says elections are not the solution to the Jammu and Kashmir issue.
But India has no strategy beyond offering secular democracy and the recurring right to vote, which it has been begging Kashmiris to take—and which they have finally taken, at least for now.
Yasin Malik talks about Gandhian protest, but Gandhi did not fight for a theocratic state. In a truly Azad Kashmir, Yasin Malik will be stamped out by Mirwaiz, Geelani and the Kashmiri population that will get down to the mischief of Hudood, Riba, Zina. Pakistan thinks it inherited it from Zia, but that actually came from the Muslim League and Liaquat’s 1949 Objectives Resolution.
Having predicted that Kashmirs would boycott the election, Indian liberals are now urging the government to act to resolve the Kashmir issue with some sort of geographical solution. They are wrong.
Elections are the solution. Secular democracy is the only goal. It is what Jinnah wanted. Kashmiris already have that. (The News)
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@ gmail.com
Read more...
Objectifying the Pakhtun: The false fantasy of "Operation Lion Heart"; the Taliban and the dubious role of Pakistan Army....
Objectifying the Pakhtun
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Farhat Taj
Some people on the editorial pages of The News have have fantasies in which they objectify the Pakhtun. It is as if the Pakhtuns do not human needs, constraints and concerns but are objects programmed to behave in line with the fantasies of these people. Two of the people are Admiral (retired) Fasih Bukhari (Dec 15) and Zeenia Satti's article "Dangerous vacuum" (Dec 16).
in "Let's get our act together in South Asia," Mr Bukhari writes that in Afghanistan the coalition forces' "Operation Lion Heart" against Pathan supporters of the Afghan Taliban in NWFP "is an obvious reference to the third Christian Crusade of Richard II of England against Sultan Salahuddin Ayubi: obviously calculated to arouse anger in the highly religious tribesmen."
It is a fantasy that "Operation Lion Heart" will arouse Pakhtun tribesmen's anger. The connotation has nothing to do with the current realities of the Pakhtuns and their history, because the Crusades are not an episode in Pakhtun history. With a literacy rate of 17 percent among men and 3 percent among women in the tribal areas, most tribesmen and -women have little knowledge of the history of far away lands. However, the tribal people do have knowledge of Pakhtun history. For example, many tribal people would know something about the Pakhtun history of resistance to the Muslim Mughal Empire and the British Empire. I asked 411 tribesmen and -women in different places in the tribal areas to tell me how much they know about Richard II. Not a single man or woman knew who he was--including some individuals educated up to the level of MA. Only five people had heard about the Crusades (Salibi Jangey). Three of them had no idea about the geographic and ethnic identity of the peoples who participated in the Crusades. They just said that the Crusades were wars between Muslims and Christian somewhere in the world.
So how can the Americans provoke the "highly religious tribesmen" by naming their operation "Lion Heart"? Rather, the Americans were provoking, if indeed they were, the Arab militants holed up in the tribal areas.
Secondly, not all tribesmen are "highly religious." Pakhtun tribal society is like any other human society. Some individuals are highly religious but others are moderately so. Mostly, Pakhtun men and women live according to their Rewaj (Custom) not religion; religion is an important part of the Rewaj, but not the entire Rewaj.
Ms Satti writes that the Pakistani Taliban "have already benefited from the CIA's drone attacks. After each attack, the incumbents, entrusted with guarding the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan, are seen sitting on their plush sofas, doing effete 'muzammat'--while the Taliban are seen destroying NATO vehicles and firing at the drones. This has endeared them to NWFP residents, despite the Taliban's having caused the attacks, in the first place."
This statement is a wild fantasy when seen through the realities of the people of the NWFP. They are sick and tired of the Taliban. The Taliban have killed innocent people--men, women, children--they have destroyed the educational institutions in the area, devastated businesses and shattered the peace there. The Taliban even exhume and humiliate the dead bodies. The Army, an institution always respected by the people of the NWFP, is losing its prestige in the eyes of the people of the area for being seen as unable or unwilling to crush the Taliban. Despite all this, Ms Satti believes that the Taliban have become the darling of the NWFP people. Which NWFP is the writer talking about? The real NWFP, the federating unit of Pakistan, or some imaginary NWFP in the fantasies of the writer? What is the writer's source of information?
I sent the writer an email on Dec 17 and asked the following questions:
1. For whom does the Taliban's behaviour have an emotive appeal?
2) Could you explain a bit what you mean by "while the Taliban are seen destroying NATO vehicles and firing at the drones. This has endeared them to NWFP residents"?
3) When was the last time you were in the NWFP?
4) Are you from the NWFP or FATA?
The writer never replied to the email. One of my friends also sent her an email asking more or less the same questions. The writer never replied to this friend either. Perhaps the writer did not receive our emails, or perhaps she deliberately chose to ignore them. If we had received a response, we would have had a better idea of the logic behind her statement. Several people of the NWFP with whom I discussed her article expressed strong disagreement. One described it as "bizarre, naive and irresponsible."
I would request both Mr Bukhari and Zeenia Satti to check the bases of their assumptions about the Pakhtun areas against the concrete realities of the area, its people and their history before writing about them. (The News)
The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com
Some Comments:
Utmankhel1 Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
comment-top
Everyone here from Swat and Peshawar should take up the issue with leadership of ANP at whatever level is possible, to force them ask for UN or NATO help in countering the elements. The residents of these areas will have at least a sense of justice done if some of these bastards are killed so long as their brutalities continue.
Furthermore, in presence of our army we are never gonna see the bastards like Qazi being tried for their role is a pimp of army, unless some powerful force from outside does anything. NATO seems to have the capability.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090101_drone_waziristan.shtml
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
though what i m writing here seems not more than a mere propaganda, but i have to write them, as sadly thats the reality.
i remember Qazi shouting in a jalsa once,” we pukhtuns are always fighting each other, aint it better we fight hindus in kashmir”, a huge clapping followed with narae-takbeer. i remember a friend of mine in first year FSc joined jihadi training thanks to this pimp.
In school days, we were once invited to watch a movie of brutalities committed against muslims in kashmir and bosnia. This thing was arranged by the fuc..g jamaatees. A number of footages were shown, but the one that stuck in my mind was a BLACK AND WHITE footage of the massacre of Bonsnian muslims in the 90s by serbs, in which the corpses of dead were rolled over by road rollers. Now i have found out that the Black and White footage basically was the 1940s massacre of jews by nazis. I know things have been done to muslims but am trying to keep the character of these criminals in proper perspective as they used trues and lies to fuel anti hindu/christian/jews sentiments for their jihads. In short using truths and lies, these JI criminals kept on recruiting who ever they found for their jihads and now we are faced with those jihadists bent on destroying our villages and cities. All these things happened with full support of the (state of pakistan)=army through the pimps of JI and others.
These jihadists are now operating all over the puktunkhwa and FATA and we cannot do anything as the JI/PTI other religious groups and state of pakistan=army won’t let us do anything.
When our own state of pakistan=army is in love affair with the jihadists we have to look around for help somewhereelse, NATO UN comes into mind suddenly.
So Its a simple thing why dont you understand this ?
and for God sake when our own backyard is burning how are we going to look across the seas for smoke rising from another brotherly country called palestine.
similary you being my countrymen; i expect you to first help me in putting out the fire here and then we will together talk about palestine, but if after years of my cries of help are unheared and i become sure of your indifference then i damn care about anything which binds you and me together, whether it’s religion or being units of the same federation.
——-Example of rubbing salt over wounds is the statements of JI about the blasts in Pukhtunkhwa and protests against israel in pukhtunkhwa.
simple, aint it, i can’t write complex, even if i try to !
Read more...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Farhat Taj
Some people on the editorial pages of The News have have fantasies in which they objectify the Pakhtun. It is as if the Pakhtuns do not human needs, constraints and concerns but are objects programmed to behave in line with the fantasies of these people. Two of the people are Admiral (retired) Fasih Bukhari (Dec 15) and Zeenia Satti's article "Dangerous vacuum" (Dec 16).
in "Let's get our act together in South Asia," Mr Bukhari writes that in Afghanistan the coalition forces' "Operation Lion Heart" against Pathan supporters of the Afghan Taliban in NWFP "is an obvious reference to the third Christian Crusade of Richard II of England against Sultan Salahuddin Ayubi: obviously calculated to arouse anger in the highly religious tribesmen."
It is a fantasy that "Operation Lion Heart" will arouse Pakhtun tribesmen's anger. The connotation has nothing to do with the current realities of the Pakhtuns and their history, because the Crusades are not an episode in Pakhtun history. With a literacy rate of 17 percent among men and 3 percent among women in the tribal areas, most tribesmen and -women have little knowledge of the history of far away lands. However, the tribal people do have knowledge of Pakhtun history. For example, many tribal people would know something about the Pakhtun history of resistance to the Muslim Mughal Empire and the British Empire. I asked 411 tribesmen and -women in different places in the tribal areas to tell me how much they know about Richard II. Not a single man or woman knew who he was--including some individuals educated up to the level of MA. Only five people had heard about the Crusades (Salibi Jangey). Three of them had no idea about the geographic and ethnic identity of the peoples who participated in the Crusades. They just said that the Crusades were wars between Muslims and Christian somewhere in the world.
So how can the Americans provoke the "highly religious tribesmen" by naming their operation "Lion Heart"? Rather, the Americans were provoking, if indeed they were, the Arab militants holed up in the tribal areas.
Secondly, not all tribesmen are "highly religious." Pakhtun tribal society is like any other human society. Some individuals are highly religious but others are moderately so. Mostly, Pakhtun men and women live according to their Rewaj (Custom) not religion; religion is an important part of the Rewaj, but not the entire Rewaj.
Ms Satti writes that the Pakistani Taliban "have already benefited from the CIA's drone attacks. After each attack, the incumbents, entrusted with guarding the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan, are seen sitting on their plush sofas, doing effete 'muzammat'--while the Taliban are seen destroying NATO vehicles and firing at the drones. This has endeared them to NWFP residents, despite the Taliban's having caused the attacks, in the first place."
This statement is a wild fantasy when seen through the realities of the people of the NWFP. They are sick and tired of the Taliban. The Taliban have killed innocent people--men, women, children--they have destroyed the educational institutions in the area, devastated businesses and shattered the peace there. The Taliban even exhume and humiliate the dead bodies. The Army, an institution always respected by the people of the NWFP, is losing its prestige in the eyes of the people of the area for being seen as unable or unwilling to crush the Taliban. Despite all this, Ms Satti believes that the Taliban have become the darling of the NWFP people. Which NWFP is the writer talking about? The real NWFP, the federating unit of Pakistan, or some imaginary NWFP in the fantasies of the writer? What is the writer's source of information?
I sent the writer an email on Dec 17 and asked the following questions:
1. For whom does the Taliban's behaviour have an emotive appeal?
2) Could you explain a bit what you mean by "while the Taliban are seen destroying NATO vehicles and firing at the drones. This has endeared them to NWFP residents"?
3) When was the last time you were in the NWFP?
4) Are you from the NWFP or FATA?
The writer never replied to the email. One of my friends also sent her an email asking more or less the same questions. The writer never replied to this friend either. Perhaps the writer did not receive our emails, or perhaps she deliberately chose to ignore them. If we had received a response, we would have had a better idea of the logic behind her statement. Several people of the NWFP with whom I discussed her article expressed strong disagreement. One described it as "bizarre, naive and irresponsible."
I would request both Mr Bukhari and Zeenia Satti to check the bases of their assumptions about the Pakhtun areas against the concrete realities of the area, its people and their history before writing about them. (The News)
The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com
Some Comments:
Utmankhel1 Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
comment-top
Everyone here from Swat and Peshawar should take up the issue with leadership of ANP at whatever level is possible, to force them ask for UN or NATO help in countering the elements. The residents of these areas will have at least a sense of justice done if some of these bastards are killed so long as their brutalities continue.
Furthermore, in presence of our army we are never gonna see the bastards like Qazi being tried for their role is a pimp of army, unless some powerful force from outside does anything. NATO seems to have the capability.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/01/090101_drone_waziristan.shtml
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
though what i m writing here seems not more than a mere propaganda, but i have to write them, as sadly thats the reality.
i remember Qazi shouting in a jalsa once,” we pukhtuns are always fighting each other, aint it better we fight hindus in kashmir”, a huge clapping followed with narae-takbeer. i remember a friend of mine in first year FSc joined jihadi training thanks to this pimp.
In school days, we were once invited to watch a movie of brutalities committed against muslims in kashmir and bosnia. This thing was arranged by the fuc..g jamaatees. A number of footages were shown, but the one that stuck in my mind was a BLACK AND WHITE footage of the massacre of Bonsnian muslims in the 90s by serbs, in which the corpses of dead were rolled over by road rollers. Now i have found out that the Black and White footage basically was the 1940s massacre of jews by nazis. I know things have been done to muslims but am trying to keep the character of these criminals in proper perspective as they used trues and lies to fuel anti hindu/christian/jews sentiments for their jihads. In short using truths and lies, these JI criminals kept on recruiting who ever they found for their jihads and now we are faced with those jihadists bent on destroying our villages and cities. All these things happened with full support of the (state of pakistan)=army through the pimps of JI and others.
These jihadists are now operating all over the puktunkhwa and FATA and we cannot do anything as the JI/PTI other religious groups and state of pakistan=army won’t let us do anything.
When our own state of pakistan=army is in love affair with the jihadists we have to look around for help somewhereelse, NATO UN comes into mind suddenly.
So Its a simple thing why dont you understand this ?
and for God sake when our own backyard is burning how are we going to look across the seas for smoke rising from another brotherly country called palestine.
similary you being my countrymen; i expect you to first help me in putting out the fire here and then we will together talk about palestine, but if after years of my cries of help are unheared and i become sure of your indifference then i damn care about anything which binds you and me together, whether it’s religion or being units of the same federation.
——-Example of rubbing salt over wounds is the statements of JI about the blasts in Pukhtunkhwa and protests against israel in pukhtunkhwa.
simple, aint it, i can’t write complex, even if i try to !
Read more...
Asinine and anodyne in '09?: The industry of conspiracy theory in Pakistan
Asinine and anodyne in '09?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Mosharraf Zaidi
The writer is an independent political economist
One measure of character is the ability to take responsibility for one's own fate and actions. No matter how many detractors and enemies may exist, any human enterprise--a business, an idea, or a country--must be able to ward off adversity in order to survive and thrive. A linear approach to problem solving, in short, is a useful tool to have. This is why the propensity of Pakistanis to explain their country's failures through conspiracy theories, and the propensity of Pakistan's friends to do the same is the most alarming of indicators.
Traditionally, the conspiracy theory of choice, for all calamities, is RAW. Whenever the US is providing vast sums of aid and assistance to the country, RAW is joined in its infamy in Pakistan, by the CIA. Where there is smoke, there is a cigarette, and so for every mention of the CIA, a generous dollop of Mossad references is also necessary. Like maple syrup over a pancake, British MI6 too is all over Pakistan. Since 1998 there is no doubt what the grand prize in the little game is: Pakistan's gold-plated, diamond-encrusted bling-bling nukes. What were they after before 1998? Since Pakistan didn't have nukes, one possibility may be that they were after our women. Whatever they were after, they've always been hard at work trying to contaminate the Land of the Pure.
In the last few years, traditional conspiracy theories to explain away the Pakistani state's difficulties are now supported by a spectrum of new ones. Pakistanis have now discovered that in fact its not only RAW, CIA, Mossad or MI6 that are trying to destroy Pakistan from within. It is also the ISI--even if inadvertently. Good or bad, whatever happens in Pakistan can now be traced to a heat-seeking ISI agent. It is they who are behind everything in Pakistan. Every politician is owned by them, every bureaucrat works for them. Every fancy license plate is a product of ISI largesse. Every profit-turning business is a beneficiary of a contract for phantom goods and services. Every mullah donates money, every burqa sold contributes revenue. New mosques are built by the ISI, but so are new malls, new parking lots and new soda fountains. Left to the right, north or south, up or down the ISI seems to have joined the ranks of RAW and CIA as the owners of the remote control that manages Pakistan's central nervous system, its skeleton, its muscles, its very heart and soul.
So on we go, on this merry-go-round of a national obsession with passing the buck to the invisible hand of seemingly divine structures. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but who needs a shower and soap, when you have intelligence agencies? In 2009, it seems that spying is the new Lux. Spy work is next to godliness. Omni-potent gangs of secretive evil geniuses plotting the demise of all things Pakistan. The line begins in Langley, Virginia and ends at ISI headquarters in Islamabad.
If you are progressive and liberal, the ISI has ruined Pakistan's E Street drive to development and secularism. The ISI-Taliban-LeT nexus has driven nine-inch-nails into the Quaid's secular dream. If you tilt more to the right, the RAW-CIA-Mossad-MI6 quadrant has destroyed Pakistan's drive to keep the dream of the ummah alive. The kaafirs are plotting to derail Pakistan from the siraat-e-mustaqeem trail.
Conspiracy theories that blame intelligence agencies (local or foreign) for the breathtaking and oft-unbelievable life and times of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan exist because of intellectual laziness. It is easier to weave stories where the dots don't all connect, than it is to painstakingly make the linear connections required to understand a fascinating, resilient, creative, but deeply dysfunctional state. Audiences at home and abroad are more easily and cheaply titillated by a narrative that involves cloaks and daggers than they would be by new institutional economics, identity politics and random walks.
The habitual blaming of American and Israeli organizations for cancers that are deeply ensconced within the body politic and society of Muslims is not endemic just to Pakistan, but in fact to the global Muslim community. It is a tired and pathetic tactic, and it fails to conceal the deep crises of faith, gender, literacy and integrity that plague the Muslim experience all over the world.
Intelligence agencies exist to operate in secrecy. Contrary to their protestations, they almost surely behave outside the law at times. But the overwhelming evidence in Pakistan suggests that intelligence agencies--foreign or national--can only have made a marginal contribution to the rot.
For example, in the 2008 election, it surely could not have been an intelligence agency that forced the Election Commission of Pakistan to use the discredited 2002 voters' list. No intelligence agency stopped government from investing in power plants and the energy sector. It is not any intelligence agency that is stopping Pakistan from addressing climate change. Spy masters from India did not initiate the practise of establishing ghost schools, nor of hiring political pets as primary school teachers. The CIA is not stopping the federal government from reforming the BPS system of grading in government. Nor did Mossad force the Punjab or NWFP to dispense with the DCO system without conducting a credible analysis of the costs and benefits of a return to the colonial commissioner system. The MI6 does not kill mothers during childbirth, and the ISI does not cause gastrointestinal epidemics because of contaminated water. Spies aren't the ones that let the Securities and Exchange Commission slip from capable hands in 2004 to a revolving door of leadership ever since. No intelligence agency will be responsible for letting the current State Bank governor leave without any attempt to retain her, and no intelligence agency will be responsible when an incompetent sycophant is named to replace her.
Of course, the spies have been central to the conduct of overt and proxy wars in the South Asian region for donkey's years. That's what they do. They should certainly be scrutinized and held to account for their behaviour. Pakistanis however need to take enormous care in dumping their entire load of dirty laundry onto RAW, or the CIA, or Mossad, or MI6, or even the ISI.
There would never have been any possibility of Lashkar-e Taiba-training camps in Pakistan if the country enjoyed a 100 per cent literacy and school enrolment rate. There would be no recruitment pool for the Taliban if the economy generated enough jobs for the willing and able. Friday sermons would not be a source of fear and loathing across the country if Islam was treated with the respect any faith deserves, rather than as a political football for mullahs and heretics to kick around for personal and interest group gain. There would be no link between Pakistani citizens and domestic problems in the UK or India if Pakistani public policy reflected even a nominal degree of sensitivity to the ethos and aspirations of all of its citizens. And no RAW, CIA, Mossad, MI6 or ISI agent would represent a threat to Pakistan if Pakistan didn't represent such a major threat to itself. In 2009, Pakistan must dump the asinine and the anodyne. Ordinary Pakistanis must take responsibility to build an ordinary and functional Pakistan. (The News)
www.mosharrafzaidi.com
"RAW Totay": The conspiracy theory parrots. The supporters of Sipah-e-Sahaba and Taliban remember Lal Masjid and shed crocodile tears....
Everyone at fault, except us. Why is it that everything that goes against us becomes a conspiracy?
Read more...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Mosharraf Zaidi
The writer is an independent political economist
One measure of character is the ability to take responsibility for one's own fate and actions. No matter how many detractors and enemies may exist, any human enterprise--a business, an idea, or a country--must be able to ward off adversity in order to survive and thrive. A linear approach to problem solving, in short, is a useful tool to have. This is why the propensity of Pakistanis to explain their country's failures through conspiracy theories, and the propensity of Pakistan's friends to do the same is the most alarming of indicators.
Traditionally, the conspiracy theory of choice, for all calamities, is RAW. Whenever the US is providing vast sums of aid and assistance to the country, RAW is joined in its infamy in Pakistan, by the CIA. Where there is smoke, there is a cigarette, and so for every mention of the CIA, a generous dollop of Mossad references is also necessary. Like maple syrup over a pancake, British MI6 too is all over Pakistan. Since 1998 there is no doubt what the grand prize in the little game is: Pakistan's gold-plated, diamond-encrusted bling-bling nukes. What were they after before 1998? Since Pakistan didn't have nukes, one possibility may be that they were after our women. Whatever they were after, they've always been hard at work trying to contaminate the Land of the Pure.
In the last few years, traditional conspiracy theories to explain away the Pakistani state's difficulties are now supported by a spectrum of new ones. Pakistanis have now discovered that in fact its not only RAW, CIA, Mossad or MI6 that are trying to destroy Pakistan from within. It is also the ISI--even if inadvertently. Good or bad, whatever happens in Pakistan can now be traced to a heat-seeking ISI agent. It is they who are behind everything in Pakistan. Every politician is owned by them, every bureaucrat works for them. Every fancy license plate is a product of ISI largesse. Every profit-turning business is a beneficiary of a contract for phantom goods and services. Every mullah donates money, every burqa sold contributes revenue. New mosques are built by the ISI, but so are new malls, new parking lots and new soda fountains. Left to the right, north or south, up or down the ISI seems to have joined the ranks of RAW and CIA as the owners of the remote control that manages Pakistan's central nervous system, its skeleton, its muscles, its very heart and soul.
So on we go, on this merry-go-round of a national obsession with passing the buck to the invisible hand of seemingly divine structures. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but who needs a shower and soap, when you have intelligence agencies? In 2009, it seems that spying is the new Lux. Spy work is next to godliness. Omni-potent gangs of secretive evil geniuses plotting the demise of all things Pakistan. The line begins in Langley, Virginia and ends at ISI headquarters in Islamabad.
If you are progressive and liberal, the ISI has ruined Pakistan's E Street drive to development and secularism. The ISI-Taliban-LeT nexus has driven nine-inch-nails into the Quaid's secular dream. If you tilt more to the right, the RAW-CIA-Mossad-MI6 quadrant has destroyed Pakistan's drive to keep the dream of the ummah alive. The kaafirs are plotting to derail Pakistan from the siraat-e-mustaqeem trail.
Conspiracy theories that blame intelligence agencies (local or foreign) for the breathtaking and oft-unbelievable life and times of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan exist because of intellectual laziness. It is easier to weave stories where the dots don't all connect, than it is to painstakingly make the linear connections required to understand a fascinating, resilient, creative, but deeply dysfunctional state. Audiences at home and abroad are more easily and cheaply titillated by a narrative that involves cloaks and daggers than they would be by new institutional economics, identity politics and random walks.
The habitual blaming of American and Israeli organizations for cancers that are deeply ensconced within the body politic and society of Muslims is not endemic just to Pakistan, but in fact to the global Muslim community. It is a tired and pathetic tactic, and it fails to conceal the deep crises of faith, gender, literacy and integrity that plague the Muslim experience all over the world.
Intelligence agencies exist to operate in secrecy. Contrary to their protestations, they almost surely behave outside the law at times. But the overwhelming evidence in Pakistan suggests that intelligence agencies--foreign or national--can only have made a marginal contribution to the rot.
For example, in the 2008 election, it surely could not have been an intelligence agency that forced the Election Commission of Pakistan to use the discredited 2002 voters' list. No intelligence agency stopped government from investing in power plants and the energy sector. It is not any intelligence agency that is stopping Pakistan from addressing climate change. Spy masters from India did not initiate the practise of establishing ghost schools, nor of hiring political pets as primary school teachers. The CIA is not stopping the federal government from reforming the BPS system of grading in government. Nor did Mossad force the Punjab or NWFP to dispense with the DCO system without conducting a credible analysis of the costs and benefits of a return to the colonial commissioner system. The MI6 does not kill mothers during childbirth, and the ISI does not cause gastrointestinal epidemics because of contaminated water. Spies aren't the ones that let the Securities and Exchange Commission slip from capable hands in 2004 to a revolving door of leadership ever since. No intelligence agency will be responsible for letting the current State Bank governor leave without any attempt to retain her, and no intelligence agency will be responsible when an incompetent sycophant is named to replace her.
Of course, the spies have been central to the conduct of overt and proxy wars in the South Asian region for donkey's years. That's what they do. They should certainly be scrutinized and held to account for their behaviour. Pakistanis however need to take enormous care in dumping their entire load of dirty laundry onto RAW, or the CIA, or Mossad, or MI6, or even the ISI.
There would never have been any possibility of Lashkar-e Taiba-training camps in Pakistan if the country enjoyed a 100 per cent literacy and school enrolment rate. There would be no recruitment pool for the Taliban if the economy generated enough jobs for the willing and able. Friday sermons would not be a source of fear and loathing across the country if Islam was treated with the respect any faith deserves, rather than as a political football for mullahs and heretics to kick around for personal and interest group gain. There would be no link between Pakistani citizens and domestic problems in the UK or India if Pakistani public policy reflected even a nominal degree of sensitivity to the ethos and aspirations of all of its citizens. And no RAW, CIA, Mossad, MI6 or ISI agent would represent a threat to Pakistan if Pakistan didn't represent such a major threat to itself. In 2009, Pakistan must dump the asinine and the anodyne. Ordinary Pakistanis must take responsibility to build an ordinary and functional Pakistan. (The News)
www.mosharrafzaidi.com
Also read:
"RAW Totay": The conspiracy theory parrots. The supporters of Sipah-e-Sahaba and Taliban remember Lal Masjid and shed crocodile tears....
Everyone at fault, except us. Why is it that everything that goes against us becomes a conspiracy?
International conspiracies against Pakistan - an eye opener for conspiracy theorists
Read more...
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Rehman Malik shows he has a heart of gold. DG FIA Tariq Pervez retires gracefully.
DG FIA Tariq Pervez retires gracefully
Malik shows he has a heart of gold
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 (The News)
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: The Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Tariq Pervez, refused to get extension and retired on Monday on attaining the superannuation age of 60.
“Ask the advisor,” he told this correspondent when inquired whether he was offered extension. However, a source said that Interior Advisor Rehman Malik wanted to give extension to the polite but competent police officer of grade 22. However, Tariq Pervez was not interested.
“I am fully satisfied that I retire with honour and dignity, and this is very important to me,” he said. Tariq Pervez plans to engage in counter-terrorism efforts and may join a think-tank. To a question, he said he faced pressure for many times during his service. “When one does the right job, one is bound to face such situations.”
During his excellent career, Tariq Pervez has to his credit resolving several terrorist attacks including suicide bombings after this scourge struck Pakistan in the wake of the 9/11 episode. He always enjoyed good reputation as far as his integrity was concerned.
Under his stewardship, the terrorists, who had tried to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf, and who had bombed the Marriott Hotel Islamabad and resorted to many other high-profile bombings in the ongoing wave of terrorism, were traced. He had prepared a useful book of suspected terrorists.
Tariq Pervez served in the FIA for many years. A most remarkable but eye-opening incident related to his recommendations to the then FIA chief for dismissal of Rehman Malik, a senior agency official at the time, on a variety of serious charges in late nineties. Both were then posted in the FIA.
As luck would have it when Malik became all-powerful Interior Advisor in the present government for being very close to President Asif Ali Zardari, he plainly conveyed to Tariq Pervez that he has forgotten what the officer had proposed about him. The advisor told him that he should not worry about any victimization by him and he would continue to be the FIA director general during his incumbency.
Not only that, Malik kept treating Tariq Pervez decently and never gave any sign that the officer had once suggested his sacking from service on several charges. Before penning down his recommendations, Tariq Pervez had carried out an in-depth investigation into the allegations against Malik on the directions of his high-ups.
Throughout his outstanding police career, Tariq Pervez has been a thorough professional but straightforward officer, who has been more concerned about his official work and assignment rather than “politics” like a number of other bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that names of two senior police officers including Tariq Khosa, who has earlier served in the FIA, and Asif Nawaz are being considered for appointment as the FIA chief.
The powerful National Accountability Bureau (NAB) law had taken away many vital powers of the FIA especially relating to investigating corruption and other crimes. This significantly changed the domain of the agency, which became more engaged in detection of terrorist attacks with its special investigation unit doing this job, cyber crime and intellectual property rights offences.
However, after the NAB has been made irrelevant, all the old powers of the FIA have been given back to it and hundreds of its posts that had been taken by the NAB have been revived. The FIA has now been provided teeth as a result of which it has again emerged as an agency to be reckoned with.
The latest major case that the FIA under Tariq Pervez laid its hands on pertained to the alleged scandal involving Khanani & Kalia International for allegedly transferring a hefty amount of foreign exchange out of Pakistan. After 9/11, a number of FIA officials have been given specialized training with the American funding in different fields.
Read more...
Malik shows he has a heart of gold
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 (The News)
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: The Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Tariq Pervez, refused to get extension and retired on Monday on attaining the superannuation age of 60.
“Ask the advisor,” he told this correspondent when inquired whether he was offered extension. However, a source said that Interior Advisor Rehman Malik wanted to give extension to the polite but competent police officer of grade 22. However, Tariq Pervez was not interested.
“I am fully satisfied that I retire with honour and dignity, and this is very important to me,” he said. Tariq Pervez plans to engage in counter-terrorism efforts and may join a think-tank. To a question, he said he faced pressure for many times during his service. “When one does the right job, one is bound to face such situations.”
During his excellent career, Tariq Pervez has to his credit resolving several terrorist attacks including suicide bombings after this scourge struck Pakistan in the wake of the 9/11 episode. He always enjoyed good reputation as far as his integrity was concerned.
Under his stewardship, the terrorists, who had tried to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf, and who had bombed the Marriott Hotel Islamabad and resorted to many other high-profile bombings in the ongoing wave of terrorism, were traced. He had prepared a useful book of suspected terrorists.
Tariq Pervez served in the FIA for many years. A most remarkable but eye-opening incident related to his recommendations to the then FIA chief for dismissal of Rehman Malik, a senior agency official at the time, on a variety of serious charges in late nineties. Both were then posted in the FIA.
As luck would have it when Malik became all-powerful Interior Advisor in the present government for being very close to President Asif Ali Zardari, he plainly conveyed to Tariq Pervez that he has forgotten what the officer had proposed about him. The advisor told him that he should not worry about any victimization by him and he would continue to be the FIA director general during his incumbency.
Not only that, Malik kept treating Tariq Pervez decently and never gave any sign that the officer had once suggested his sacking from service on several charges. Before penning down his recommendations, Tariq Pervez had carried out an in-depth investigation into the allegations against Malik on the directions of his high-ups.
Throughout his outstanding police career, Tariq Pervez has been a thorough professional but straightforward officer, who has been more concerned about his official work and assignment rather than “politics” like a number of other bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that names of two senior police officers including Tariq Khosa, who has earlier served in the FIA, and Asif Nawaz are being considered for appointment as the FIA chief.
The powerful National Accountability Bureau (NAB) law had taken away many vital powers of the FIA especially relating to investigating corruption and other crimes. This significantly changed the domain of the agency, which became more engaged in detection of terrorist attacks with its special investigation unit doing this job, cyber crime and intellectual property rights offences.
However, after the NAB has been made irrelevant, all the old powers of the FIA have been given back to it and hundreds of its posts that had been taken by the NAB have been revived. The FIA has now been provided teeth as a result of which it has again emerged as an agency to be reckoned with.
The latest major case that the FIA under Tariq Pervez laid its hands on pertained to the alleged scandal involving Khanani & Kalia International for allegedly transferring a hefty amount of foreign exchange out of Pakistan. After 9/11, a number of FIA officials have been given specialized training with the American funding in different fields.
Read more...
What is happening in Swat? A local Swati explains the whole story...
By Afzal Khan:
December 30th, 2008
I belong to Swat and have closely observed the present militant uprising in Swat two years back. The solution to present situation in Swat is very simple.
It just needs sincerity from the government side. If the government is sincere in bringing peace, they can bring it in a couple of days. But we don’t know, why the government itself wants to spoil the peace of Swat.
Mulana Fazalullah is a very common man and he cannot challenge the writ of the government by his own. Today he is the head of Swat state (because government of Pakistan has no writ there). In Swat the Talibans have their own judicial system, their own judges, their own law, their own way of punishment and their own way of administration.
Recently they have issued an administrative order that from January 15, 2009 there will be a complete ban on female education in Swat. Most of the schools have even acted upon this order from the very first day of its issuance and they have banned female education.
Mulana Fazlullah became the head of this State in just two years with the support of 1500 to 2000 millitants (as claimed by the government itself). Before 2005, his business was to run cable chair over the river Swat in his village Imam Dheri. This was the only source of his income. The ticket of this cable chairs was just Rs. 1 per head for one side trip, from this one can guess the chunk of money he was earning. This can just hardly support his family. In 2005, he started an illegal FM radio through which he was delivering some controversial and funny speeches. Most of the people were listing him on his illegal FM radio just to amuse themselves from his funny wordings.
What I mean to say that Mulana Fazlullah is just a common figure of the society and no more exceptional personality. The militants (The so-called talibans) in Swat are fighting the Pak Army, FC and police since 2006. During these two years they never faced the shortage of guns and ammunitions, so the question is, from where they get these guns, ammunitions and explosive materials in such a huge quantity that they are fighting the well-equipped (Jet fighters, Gunship helicopters, heavy artillery and bulletproof tanks) 40,000 security forces and exploding security posts, police stations, schools, markets, hotels, bridges, hospitals, electricity grid stations, telephone exchanges, gas supply plants and houses of political and intellectual personalities. Surprisingly the government is not stoping them from doing so, even they do all these activities during curfew hours.
Let me clear one thing that, the Talibans in Swat are composed of four groups, i.e. the locals (Swatis), Qabayalis (those belong to FATA),the banned Jehadi organisations from all over Pakistan (they are known as Panjabi Talibans here in Swat) and the forgniers ( Arabs, Tajik, Uzbek, Chechens, Indian etc). All these four groups work there under the umbrella of Pakistan government or government agencies. Here is a big question, you must want to ask, why the government itself want to do so? We are raising this question since last two year in Swat that why (and how) the government can do so? But this is what the ground reality. Because as I mentioned above how its possible for 2,000 militants to fight for two years against well-equipped 40,000 security forces and in the result 80% Swat is under the control of Militants and their power is growing.
More interestingly the illegal FM radio channel is still running. Can you believe that the government is not capable of banning this illegal FM radio? of course the government is, but it deliberately don’t want to ban it. How funny it is, when everyday we read in news paper that the 30 to 40 militant were killed in the Army operation. If you calculate, with this ratio it just need 4 to 5 months to finish all the militants in Swat! but the reality is totally against it, the number and influence of militants is increasing day by day despite of two years long operations. The only prominent effect of this operation is in the form of considerable deaths and casualties of common people and a huge disaster to infrastructure. Those who are fortunately not suffered from physical causalities are suffering from mental stress.
If you ask some one in Swat about the situation in Swat, no one can tell you the truth, because the truth exposes both the Talibans and the government, and in both cases slaughtering (from Taliban side) and gun shooting (from security forces) is one’s unfortunate (ultimate) fortune.
Let me also clear that the so-called Taliban in Swat don’t want Sheriyat in Swat, they just want power in which they have to define everything by their own. For example, what is wrong and what is right, this can only be define by Talibans. No one has the right to disagree with it, otherwise slaughtering is his fate. As far as I know, most of the local Talibans are from the lower and illiterate class and they have just a greed of power and revenge from this class divided society, the other non-local groups fight against the government as they were first created, raised and supported and then banned in the previous government. The non-local groups still get support and were getting support in past from agencies. In the past they were supported by the local agencies and now they are supported by local as will as foreign agencies. In this way, one can say that they are enjoying their golden period.
The Swat was famous all over in NWFP for its peace, beauty, high literacy rate and good financial status of its habitants .The people of Swat are hopeless for peace as the present situation is just like a “TOPI DRAMA”. The common man in Swat thinks that we cannot get back our old Swat in the coming 30 years as 200 schools, 80% bridges have been exploded. The tourism which was growing and was established as profitable industry is 100% destroyed.
Because of tourism Handicrafts was also an established business which is almost 100% destroyed. The education sector is almost destroyed. Health facilities are almost zero. Peace of mind has blown away. Unemployment is increasing day by day and the people are migrating to the other part of the country due to this unpredictable situation. In such a harmful situation, the silence of government is meaningful! There are no sincere efforts toward the real peace or plans for the rehabilitation.
Read more...
December 30th, 2008
I belong to Swat and have closely observed the present militant uprising in Swat two years back. The solution to present situation in Swat is very simple.
It just needs sincerity from the government side. If the government is sincere in bringing peace, they can bring it in a couple of days. But we don’t know, why the government itself wants to spoil the peace of Swat.
Mulana Fazalullah is a very common man and he cannot challenge the writ of the government by his own. Today he is the head of Swat state (because government of Pakistan has no writ there). In Swat the Talibans have their own judicial system, their own judges, their own law, their own way of punishment and their own way of administration.
Recently they have issued an administrative order that from January 15, 2009 there will be a complete ban on female education in Swat. Most of the schools have even acted upon this order from the very first day of its issuance and they have banned female education.
Mulana Fazlullah became the head of this State in just two years with the support of 1500 to 2000 millitants (as claimed by the government itself). Before 2005, his business was to run cable chair over the river Swat in his village Imam Dheri. This was the only source of his income. The ticket of this cable chairs was just Rs. 1 per head for one side trip, from this one can guess the chunk of money he was earning. This can just hardly support his family. In 2005, he started an illegal FM radio through which he was delivering some controversial and funny speeches. Most of the people were listing him on his illegal FM radio just to amuse themselves from his funny wordings.
What I mean to say that Mulana Fazlullah is just a common figure of the society and no more exceptional personality. The militants (The so-called talibans) in Swat are fighting the Pak Army, FC and police since 2006. During these two years they never faced the shortage of guns and ammunitions, so the question is, from where they get these guns, ammunitions and explosive materials in such a huge quantity that they are fighting the well-equipped (Jet fighters, Gunship helicopters, heavy artillery and bulletproof tanks) 40,000 security forces and exploding security posts, police stations, schools, markets, hotels, bridges, hospitals, electricity grid stations, telephone exchanges, gas supply plants and houses of political and intellectual personalities. Surprisingly the government is not stoping them from doing so, even they do all these activities during curfew hours.
Let me clear one thing that, the Talibans in Swat are composed of four groups, i.e. the locals (Swatis), Qabayalis (those belong to FATA),the banned Jehadi organisations from all over Pakistan (they are known as Panjabi Talibans here in Swat) and the forgniers ( Arabs, Tajik, Uzbek, Chechens, Indian etc). All these four groups work there under the umbrella of Pakistan government or government agencies. Here is a big question, you must want to ask, why the government itself want to do so? We are raising this question since last two year in Swat that why (and how) the government can do so? But this is what the ground reality. Because as I mentioned above how its possible for 2,000 militants to fight for two years against well-equipped 40,000 security forces and in the result 80% Swat is under the control of Militants and their power is growing.
More interestingly the illegal FM radio channel is still running. Can you believe that the government is not capable of banning this illegal FM radio? of course the government is, but it deliberately don’t want to ban it. How funny it is, when everyday we read in news paper that the 30 to 40 militant were killed in the Army operation. If you calculate, with this ratio it just need 4 to 5 months to finish all the militants in Swat! but the reality is totally against it, the number and influence of militants is increasing day by day despite of two years long operations. The only prominent effect of this operation is in the form of considerable deaths and casualties of common people and a huge disaster to infrastructure. Those who are fortunately not suffered from physical causalities are suffering from mental stress.
If you ask some one in Swat about the situation in Swat, no one can tell you the truth, because the truth exposes both the Talibans and the government, and in both cases slaughtering (from Taliban side) and gun shooting (from security forces) is one’s unfortunate (ultimate) fortune.
Let me also clear that the so-called Taliban in Swat don’t want Sheriyat in Swat, they just want power in which they have to define everything by their own. For example, what is wrong and what is right, this can only be define by Talibans. No one has the right to disagree with it, otherwise slaughtering is his fate. As far as I know, most of the local Talibans are from the lower and illiterate class and they have just a greed of power and revenge from this class divided society, the other non-local groups fight against the government as they were first created, raised and supported and then banned in the previous government. The non-local groups still get support and were getting support in past from agencies. In the past they were supported by the local agencies and now they are supported by local as will as foreign agencies. In this way, one can say that they are enjoying their golden period.
The Swat was famous all over in NWFP for its peace, beauty, high literacy rate and good financial status of its habitants .The people of Swat are hopeless for peace as the present situation is just like a “TOPI DRAMA”. The common man in Swat thinks that we cannot get back our old Swat in the coming 30 years as 200 schools, 80% bridges have been exploded. The tourism which was growing and was established as profitable industry is 100% destroyed.
Because of tourism Handicrafts was also an established business which is almost 100% destroyed. The education sector is almost destroyed. Health facilities are almost zero. Peace of mind has blown away. Unemployment is increasing day by day and the people are migrating to the other part of the country due to this unpredictable situation. In such a harmful situation, the silence of government is meaningful! There are no sincere efforts toward the real peace or plans for the rehabilitation.
Read more...
Swat falls to Taliban militants - Associated Press - What do orindary Pakistanis think?
The Taliban in Swat ban girls schools and girls education (Where is the Pakistan Army?)
Amir Hameed Comments:
This cancer of Fazal-ullah needs to be stopped and taken out and should not be allowed to spread. These fagg0t beardos are no muslims, this is for sure. I would like to ask their supporters on this forum that where in the Quran is it mentioned that girls should not be allowed to get education?
On the other hand, these b@stards have support of the agencies else how can one explain that they (agencies) were able to kill Bugti but have not been able to capture this fagg0t?
...
geele.mitti Says:
......
By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi, Associated Press Writer – Mon Dec 29, 6:33 pm ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.
The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.
"You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."
The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.
Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.
A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.
The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.
Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat's 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.
Swat's militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area's inefficient judicial system.
Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.
In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.
They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls' schools.
In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah's corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.
Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.
The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.
Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.
On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.
"The terrorists' aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.
"The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create."
Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.
The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.
A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.
The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.
A Swat militant boasted that "we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places."
"They cannot move independently like us," said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.
"With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations," he said. "Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah's path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad."
___
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear
Some Comments:
Re: Live with Talat 29-December-2008
A special episode of live with talat regarding Swat situation with Rasheed Iqbal ( Journalist ), Syed Inam-ur-Rehman ( Swat Peace Jirga ) , Zia-ud-Din (Global Peace Council ) and lot of guests from Swat.
engsaaiqbal Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
comment-top
salam to all.
It is crystal clear that the situation in swat is created by the army.They intentionally do not want to handel the situation.we are the resident of swat and have keen observations.If taliban walks in mingora bazaar(known as chena)while the city is coverd from all the side by armed forces so how the militants enter the city.Swat is settled area and we have no border attached with other countries or tribal areas so how such a huge amount of weapons come to the district as a resident of swat i my self can not carry knife to mingora bazzar. It is something amazing that an atomic power which can exact shoot it target thousand of kilometer away can not shoot some thousands militants.This drama should be stop further………..
FM radio frequency can be jammed in few minutes but still It is running by the militants.I can just request the pak army to stop killing the people instead of taliban.Other wise a horrible civil war will begin which will have no end………………………..
syed amjad iqbal
engsaaiqbal@hotmail.com
...
eqykhan Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
AA,
Swat situation is a totally drama by Govt. and other related forces, killing innocent people, creating hostile environment for terrorist to come, live and supporting them to achieve what the govt want? Only solution is to change govt. policies……..
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
Read more...
Amir Hameed Comments:
This cancer of Fazal-ullah needs to be stopped and taken out and should not be allowed to spread. These fagg0t beardos are no muslims, this is for sure. I would like to ask their supporters on this forum that where in the Quran is it mentioned that girls should not be allowed to get education?
On the other hand, these b@stards have support of the agencies else how can one explain that they (agencies) were able to kill Bugti but have not been able to capture this fagg0t?
...
geele.mitti Says:
It is really sad to see Swat fall to these so called Muslims.
What is it? Is it military backed covert operation where factions in our own military giving these people sanctuary with the dream of regaining control over Afghanistan or they are backed by Afghan/Indian/US coalition, getting weapons from them and using against us. It is hard to believe that Pak army could be so incompetent to take control unless either they are willing to do so or they are not only facing the extremist but also Western/US coalition.
It is hard to believe that the are able to stand against the professional machinery of a trained and we sourced army with out any external help.
By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi, Associated Press Writer – Mon Dec 29, 6:33 pm ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.
The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.
"You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."
The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.
Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.
A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.
The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.
Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat's 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.
Swat's militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area's inefficient judicial system.
Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.
In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.
They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls' schools.
In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah's corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.
Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.
The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.
Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.
On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.
"The terrorists' aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.
"The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create."
Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.
The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.
A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.
The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.
A Swat militant boasted that "we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places."
"They cannot move independently like us," said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.
"With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations," he said. "Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah's path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad."
___
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear
Some Comments:
Re: Live with Talat 29-December-2008
A special episode of live with talat regarding Swat situation with Rasheed Iqbal ( Journalist ), Syed Inam-ur-Rehman ( Swat Peace Jirga ) , Zia-ud-Din (Global Peace Council ) and lot of guests from Swat.
engsaaiqbal Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
comment-top
salam to all.
It is crystal clear that the situation in swat is created by the army.They intentionally do not want to handel the situation.we are the resident of swat and have keen observations.If taliban walks in mingora bazaar(known as chena)while the city is coverd from all the side by armed forces so how the militants enter the city.Swat is settled area and we have no border attached with other countries or tribal areas so how such a huge amount of weapons come to the district as a resident of swat i my self can not carry knife to mingora bazzar. It is something amazing that an atomic power which can exact shoot it target thousand of kilometer away can not shoot some thousands militants.This drama should be stop further………..
FM radio frequency can be jammed in few minutes but still It is running by the militants.I can just request the pak army to stop killing the people instead of taliban.Other wise a horrible civil war will begin which will have no end………………………..
syed amjad iqbal
engsaaiqbal@hotmail.com
...
eqykhan Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
AA,
Swat situation is a totally drama by Govt. and other related forces, killing innocent people, creating hostile environment for terrorist to come, live and supporting them to achieve what the govt want? Only solution is to change govt. policies……..
...
Utmankhel1 Says:
First to all of those talking about social disparity, and struggle between rich and poor, don’t mislead people who are always trying to find an alternative reason to Army’s backing of the taliban darama as the reason for the situation.There is nothing pecular about Swat. Why not in Dir, Buner, Mardan, Peshawar ? ? ? The society is more or less the same so why would there be a clash between poor and rich. Furthermore, there has never been such things as Chawdhry, Wadera in pukhtun society. Don’t try to confuse things.
Now the question is why is our intelligence agencies doing this ? ? ? ? What could be their motives for this criminal behaviour ? ? ? any sane person has some idea ? ?
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An open letter to the President of Pakistan from an Indian citizen
By R.Alamsha Karnan
An open letter to the President of Pakistan from an Indian
Dear President of Pakistan
I appreciate your genuine aspiration to have friendly relationship with India and save your nation from the brink of collapse. 180+ million hard working and lovely people of Pakistan have the right to expect peace and prosperity for their nation and that’s the reaon they have elected you in the first place.
We can not deny the fact that the 1947 partition and the birth of Pakistan was a culmination of more than 150 years of Hindu-Muslim hatred perpetrated and fanned by the British. This partition has divided millions of families across the border and they desperately want to meet and reunite with their loved one’s.
Pakistan is getting isolated in the comity of nations and is being projected as an unfavourable destination for business. Millions of your well educated and hard working youths are facing embarassment and difficulties abroad. Even employers in gulf countries are showing reluctance towards hiring Pakistani manpower and in general, every one wants to stay away from Pakistan. There is a very big image problem for your nation. Why can’t you change the image of Pakstan as a dynamic and peace loving nation instead?.
I would like to ask you a few simple questions and wish you may find some surprisingly simple answers to take your nation forward.
Question 1:
India has appointed several Muslim Presidents including Dr.Abdul Kalaam and has even honoured him with the highest civilian award “Bharat Ratna”. Can a Pakistani Hindu aspire for such a honour and distinction?.
Question 2:
Why can’t you nominate a respectable, patriotic Pakistani Hindu as your Vice President and see how the entire world is going to standup and applaud your nation?.
If you can do it, entire world will admire it as a master stroke by the people of Pakistan and they will keep their head high in pride.
Good luck and God bless.
Read more...
An open letter to the President of Pakistan from an Indian
Dear President of Pakistan
I appreciate your genuine aspiration to have friendly relationship with India and save your nation from the brink of collapse. 180+ million hard working and lovely people of Pakistan have the right to expect peace and prosperity for their nation and that’s the reaon they have elected you in the first place.
We can not deny the fact that the 1947 partition and the birth of Pakistan was a culmination of more than 150 years of Hindu-Muslim hatred perpetrated and fanned by the British. This partition has divided millions of families across the border and they desperately want to meet and reunite with their loved one’s.
Pakistan is getting isolated in the comity of nations and is being projected as an unfavourable destination for business. Millions of your well educated and hard working youths are facing embarassment and difficulties abroad. Even employers in gulf countries are showing reluctance towards hiring Pakistani manpower and in general, every one wants to stay away from Pakistan. There is a very big image problem for your nation. Why can’t you change the image of Pakstan as a dynamic and peace loving nation instead?.
I would like to ask you a few simple questions and wish you may find some surprisingly simple answers to take your nation forward.
Question 1:
India has appointed several Muslim Presidents including Dr.Abdul Kalaam and has even honoured him with the highest civilian award “Bharat Ratna”. Can a Pakistani Hindu aspire for such a honour and distinction?.
Question 2:
Why can’t you nominate a respectable, patriotic Pakistani Hindu as your Vice President and see how the entire world is going to standup and applaud your nation?.
If you can do it, entire world will admire it as a master stroke by the people of Pakistan and they will keep their head high in pride.
Good luck and God bless.
Read more...
Monday, 29 December 2008
Basit, son of DDG Intelligence Bureau Riaz Sheikh, writes an open letter to Ansar Abbasi
This site has moved to http://criticalppp.com/archives/657, click this link if you are not redirected
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Jundullah responsible for Saravan bombing: Joint terrorism by ISI, CIA and the Saudi Arabain Intelligence Services
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:36:04 GMT
The Jundullah terrorist group has claimed responsibility for a deadly Monday suicide attack that rocked a southeastern city in Iran.
A suicide bomber carrying explosives tried to enter a police station in the city of Saravan in Sistan-Baluchestan Province on Monday.
The bomber, however, failed to enter the building and was killed in the explosion.
Four people have reportedly been killed in the attack among two of whom were police officers. Nearly 20 others were wounded.
The city of Saravan has become a hotbed of terrorist activities by the Jundullah cell.
Earlier in June, sixteen Iranian police officers were abducted by Jundullah (Soldiers of God) terrorists at a checkpoint in Saravan.
The armed insurgents threatened that if the Islamic Republic refuses to release its 200 members from Iranian prisons, they would kill the hostages.
After Iran refused to meet the terrorist cell's demands, the group announced on Dec. 3 that it had killed all the 16 abducted Iranian officers.
A report on the Arabic Nahrainnet website later revealed that Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies were behind the abduction of the Iranian police officers.
The report, citing informed sources in Pakistan's Peshawar, claimed that Saudi Arabia and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been using the "proxy army" to destabilize the government in Iran.
ABC News, in 2007, cited US and Pakistani intelligence sources that the group, which "has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of Iranian soldiers and officials", "has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials."
In another report in July, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that US Congressional leaders secretly agreed last year to President George W. Bush's $400-million funding request for a major escalation in covert operations in Iran.
Under the ruling, the US can arm and fund terrorist groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and Jundullah militants.
The group's ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi describes his terrorist cell as a 'national movement' and denies any links to Washington.
CS/HGH
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79858§ionid=351020101
Read more...
The Jundullah terrorist group has claimed responsibility for a deadly Monday suicide attack that rocked a southeastern city in Iran.
A suicide bomber carrying explosives tried to enter a police station in the city of Saravan in Sistan-Baluchestan Province on Monday.
The bomber, however, failed to enter the building and was killed in the explosion.
Four people have reportedly been killed in the attack among two of whom were police officers. Nearly 20 others were wounded.
The city of Saravan has become a hotbed of terrorist activities by the Jundullah cell.
Earlier in June, sixteen Iranian police officers were abducted by Jundullah (Soldiers of God) terrorists at a checkpoint in Saravan.
The armed insurgents threatened that if the Islamic Republic refuses to release its 200 members from Iranian prisons, they would kill the hostages.
After Iran refused to meet the terrorist cell's demands, the group announced on Dec. 3 that it had killed all the 16 abducted Iranian officers.
A report on the Arabic Nahrainnet website later revealed that Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies were behind the abduction of the Iranian police officers.
The report, citing informed sources in Pakistan's Peshawar, claimed that Saudi Arabia and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been using the "proxy army" to destabilize the government in Iran.
ABC News, in 2007, cited US and Pakistani intelligence sources that the group, which "has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of Iranian soldiers and officials", "has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials."
In another report in July, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that US Congressional leaders secretly agreed last year to President George W. Bush's $400-million funding request for a major escalation in covert operations in Iran.
Under the ruling, the US can arm and fund terrorist groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and Jundullah militants.
The group's ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi describes his terrorist cell as a 'national movement' and denies any links to Washington.
CS/HGH
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=79858§ionid=351020101
Read more...
Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored
Monday, 29 December 2008 (The Independent)
We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.
Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.
By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.
Exactly. Only the "rules" of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.
Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.
....
Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words
O those who pass between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea
And the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky
… From you steel and fire, from us our flesh
From you yet another tank, from us stones
From you teargas, from us rain
… As bitter dust, go where you wish, but
Do not pass between us like flying insects
… Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
… And we have what you lack
A bleeding homeland of a bleeding people …
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
… So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
those who pass between fleeting words!
–Mahmoud Darwish 1988
Read more...
We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.
Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.
By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.
Exactly. Only the "rules" of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.
Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.
....
Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words
O those who pass between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea
And the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky
… From you steel and fire, from us our flesh
From you yet another tank, from us stones
From you teargas, from us rain
… As bitter dust, go where you wish, but
Do not pass between us like flying insects
… Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
… And we have what you lack
A bleeding homeland of a bleeding people …
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
… So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
those who pass between fleeting words!
–Mahmoud Darwish 1988
Read more...
Our leaders and their writing - by Aakar Patel
Monday, December 29, 2008 (The News)
India’s early leaders wrote a lot. Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches number some 20 volumes. Nehru’s Selected Works, still being edited, have reached volume 39 and the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote almost every day, sprawl over 100 volumes, possibly unmatched anywhere in the world.
These are books meant to be dipped into, not consumed front to back — except for Ambedkar’s, whose collected works do not include letters he wrote, and whom every Indian child must be taught, along with Gandhi.
He had clarity on Pakistan as early as 1940, and Partition, though inevitable, might have been less painful if his Thoughts On Pakistan had been more widely read and understood. Jinnah wrote no book, but his letters have been edited by Z H Zaidi. For some reason Zaidi also includes correspondence to Jinnah, and most of it is banal. This is irritating because the Jinnah Papers volumes are very expensive.
Each volume of Gandhi’s collected works can be bought for as little as Rs25 (free online), while each volume of Jinnah’s is between Rs2,500 and Rs4,750. It is surprising the Pakistan government does not subsidise the publications of its founder, as India does the publications of its early leaders.
Pakistanis who trawl through the Jinnah Papers will not find much illumination: Jinnah wrote little about his view of Islam, or its history or Pakistan’s future or form of government. His letters are about everyday life: motor car repairs, travel plans, statements of accounts, granting of appointments, telling people not to name their companies after him, accepting or declining invitations, a series of very brief exchanges with Liaquat, a rejection of Bombay Bar Association’s decision to honour his 50 years at the Bar in 1947, saying that the vote was carried narrowly.
One woman, Mrs K L Rallia Ram of 5, Masson Road, Lahore, wrote to Jinnah every other day in 1946 and 1947, alerting him to the conspiracies she was convinced Hindus, Sikhs, Communists and the RSS were plotting against him. She attached newspaper clippings in support of her theories. Zaidi has included many letters by her in the volumes.
While there is abhorrence for Jinnah in India, Iqbal’s is a grey figure. He is reviled for the idea of Pakistan, but the educated North Indian loves the width and beauty of his writing.
Manmohan Singh began reintroducing Iqbal to India through couplets that he delivered in Parliament’s Central Hall in the middle of his budget speeches of 1991-1996, through which he liberalised India’s economy.
I was familiar with the basic lines of Tarana-i-Hind but had not registered its most stirring couplet: Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma sab mitt gaye jahan se, ab tak magar hai baqi naam-o-nishan hamara, till Manmohan Singh recited it in his Punjabi lilt. Iqbal is to be read like Ambedkar is to be read: front to back, and carefully.
His great work is the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, and it is one of the world’s undiscovered classics. His understanding of east and west is majestic, perhaps unmatched in all India. And his defence of religion in the opening lecture is the best I have ever read, and would be an excellent response to recent books by the rationalists Dawkins and Hitchens.
Naipaul’s dismissal of Iqbal, though it is comprehensive, does not appear to have incorporated the reforming side to him. Muslims of course love the middle-period Iqbal of Shikwa and Bang-e-Dara and Javidnama but not the author of the Reconstruction lectures, or the young unifier of India, before he went to Europe.
I have spent many hours talking about Iqbal with my late friend Dr Rafique Zakaria, who said he had a book of Iqbal’s bawdy verse somewhere but could never find it. It is no surprise that the great scholar Annemarie Schimmel chose Iqbal as her muse in India. The man that Pakistan’s Muslims, and perhaps India’s, needed alive after 1947 was not Jinnah, who died in 1948, but Iqbal, who died in 1938.
The formulation of the current Islamist intellectual Tariq Ramadan (Hassan al-Banna’s grandson) that Muslim states retain their Hudood laws but suspend their execution would have found favour with, and is possibly lifted from, Iqbal, through his sixth lecture. This is actually something that the Pakistan state has lapsed into doing, though without reasoning it through.
The other Islamist of course was Maudoodi, who had a very nimble mind. Al-Jihad fi al-Islam was written when he was only 24. It was interesting to go through the work of the modern Islamists, al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb and see how much they had lifted from him, especially Qutb. And how much brighter he was than them (strange to be proud of the fact that ‘our’ fundo is better than ‘their’ fundo!).
His political extension of the concept of Tawheed, and his construction of a religious state around it and also its top-down implementation was the work of a very intelligent and creative mind, but one with limited understanding of civilisation’s universality.
The writings of Hindu reformers Vivekanand and, in particular, Gandhi, softened the religion and made it flexible enough for Nehru and Ambedkar to legislate their reforms. Gandhi and Vivekanand were effective because they modernised the faith from the inside, unlike Ambedkar who fought it from outside and was ineffective outside his community.
The true Hindu intellectual was Radhakrishnan, India’s second president. His writing was like Iqbal’s: deeply immersed in the culture and the religion, but with the perspective of a trained European scholar.
The RSS’s writers were more passionate than intellectual, in part because of the audience they were addressing. The writing of RSS ideologues Golwalkar and Upadhyay is mostly moderate, and written in the emotional style of the Indian religious discourse. Hindutva, Savarkar’s classic, is simple, but overly emotional. Though his message on inter-caste marriage was pragmatic, and derived in scholarly fashion, he succumbed to caste when he insisted on his children’s marriage to fellow Chitpavan Brahmins.
Savarkar’s inclination towards the 19th century Italian reunifiers Mazzini and Garibaldi makes one think of what his thoughts would be on nationalism as it has now evolved in Europe.
Today India has no intellectuals in politics other than Manmohan Singh and Arif Mohammed Khan, a very fine mind. Except in Bengal, where caste is in decline, democracy has removed the layer of nominated, as opposed to elected, politicians, who have traditionally carried intellect to Delhi.
Few autobiographies have been written by Indian politicians in recent years, and no good ones other than one by Mani Shankar Aiyar, who was born in 1941 in Lahore’s famous Laxmi Mansion, home to Manto after 1948.
Political biographies in Pakistan peaked in the 90s when Bhutto’s supporters (Mubashir Hasan, Rafi Raza, Iqbal Akhund) and opponents (K M Arif, Sherbaz Mazari, Akbar Bugti, G M Syed) published their memoirs after Zia’s death. While a lot of Pakistani autobiography, like Indian autobiography, is self-aggrandising and dishonest, this period’s writing was possibly the most direct, and certainly the most entertaining. Mubashir Hasan wrote about his ministerial tenure in great detail but let his fellow liberals down by not revealing what he did, or even thought of, during Bhutto’s passing of the inhumane Second Amendment. He does not mention it at all, even in passing.
Bhutto comes across as deranged. The contours of his character revealed through his treatment of that fascinating character J A Rahim in Hasan’s and Raza’s books; his treatment at the hands of Akbar Bugti in Mazari’s book; and his behaviour just before his hanging in Gen Arif’s book are astonishing.
Zia wrote no book, but Ayub Khan wrote one and shouldn’t have. It starts off wrongly — by leaning on religion — and it paints a picture of him that collapsed the year he was booted out. He is seen positively today by very few excluding, presumably, Samuel Huntington (who likened Ayub to the Greek lawgiver Solon) and the economist Shahid Javed Burki.
Altaf Gauhar also wrote on Ayub, and his writing was dishonest — but Rafique Zakaria told me a story about Gauhar’s superb understanding of secularism and Islam, which made me see Gauhar in a different way.
Musharraf will be seen 20 years later in a better light than he now is, but he damaged his cause with his second-rate autobiography, actually written by Humayun Gauhar. Politicians have stopped writing in Pakistan and India. On the evidence of Ardeshir Cowasjee’s reporting, Asif Zardari cannot even spell, leave alone write. It will be strange if the only picture of him as a man comes out from newspaper columns.
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@gmail.com
Read more...
India’s early leaders wrote a lot. Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches number some 20 volumes. Nehru’s Selected Works, still being edited, have reached volume 39 and the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote almost every day, sprawl over 100 volumes, possibly unmatched anywhere in the world.
These are books meant to be dipped into, not consumed front to back — except for Ambedkar’s, whose collected works do not include letters he wrote, and whom every Indian child must be taught, along with Gandhi.
He had clarity on Pakistan as early as 1940, and Partition, though inevitable, might have been less painful if his Thoughts On Pakistan had been more widely read and understood. Jinnah wrote no book, but his letters have been edited by Z H Zaidi. For some reason Zaidi also includes correspondence to Jinnah, and most of it is banal. This is irritating because the Jinnah Papers volumes are very expensive.
Each volume of Gandhi’s collected works can be bought for as little as Rs25 (free online), while each volume of Jinnah’s is between Rs2,500 and Rs4,750. It is surprising the Pakistan government does not subsidise the publications of its founder, as India does the publications of its early leaders.
Pakistanis who trawl through the Jinnah Papers will not find much illumination: Jinnah wrote little about his view of Islam, or its history or Pakistan’s future or form of government. His letters are about everyday life: motor car repairs, travel plans, statements of accounts, granting of appointments, telling people not to name their companies after him, accepting or declining invitations, a series of very brief exchanges with Liaquat, a rejection of Bombay Bar Association’s decision to honour his 50 years at the Bar in 1947, saying that the vote was carried narrowly.
One woman, Mrs K L Rallia Ram of 5, Masson Road, Lahore, wrote to Jinnah every other day in 1946 and 1947, alerting him to the conspiracies she was convinced Hindus, Sikhs, Communists and the RSS were plotting against him. She attached newspaper clippings in support of her theories. Zaidi has included many letters by her in the volumes.
While there is abhorrence for Jinnah in India, Iqbal’s is a grey figure. He is reviled for the idea of Pakistan, but the educated North Indian loves the width and beauty of his writing.
Manmohan Singh began reintroducing Iqbal to India through couplets that he delivered in Parliament’s Central Hall in the middle of his budget speeches of 1991-1996, through which he liberalised India’s economy.
I was familiar with the basic lines of Tarana-i-Hind but had not registered its most stirring couplet: Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma sab mitt gaye jahan se, ab tak magar hai baqi naam-o-nishan hamara, till Manmohan Singh recited it in his Punjabi lilt. Iqbal is to be read like Ambedkar is to be read: front to back, and carefully.
His great work is the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, and it is one of the world’s undiscovered classics. His understanding of east and west is majestic, perhaps unmatched in all India. And his defence of religion in the opening lecture is the best I have ever read, and would be an excellent response to recent books by the rationalists Dawkins and Hitchens.
Naipaul’s dismissal of Iqbal, though it is comprehensive, does not appear to have incorporated the reforming side to him. Muslims of course love the middle-period Iqbal of Shikwa and Bang-e-Dara and Javidnama but not the author of the Reconstruction lectures, or the young unifier of India, before he went to Europe.
I have spent many hours talking about Iqbal with my late friend Dr Rafique Zakaria, who said he had a book of Iqbal’s bawdy verse somewhere but could never find it. It is no surprise that the great scholar Annemarie Schimmel chose Iqbal as her muse in India. The man that Pakistan’s Muslims, and perhaps India’s, needed alive after 1947 was not Jinnah, who died in 1948, but Iqbal, who died in 1938.
The formulation of the current Islamist intellectual Tariq Ramadan (Hassan al-Banna’s grandson) that Muslim states retain their Hudood laws but suspend their execution would have found favour with, and is possibly lifted from, Iqbal, through his sixth lecture. This is actually something that the Pakistan state has lapsed into doing, though without reasoning it through.
The other Islamist of course was Maudoodi, who had a very nimble mind. Al-Jihad fi al-Islam was written when he was only 24. It was interesting to go through the work of the modern Islamists, al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb and see how much they had lifted from him, especially Qutb. And how much brighter he was than them (strange to be proud of the fact that ‘our’ fundo is better than ‘their’ fundo!).
His political extension of the concept of Tawheed, and his construction of a religious state around it and also its top-down implementation was the work of a very intelligent and creative mind, but one with limited understanding of civilisation’s universality.
The writings of Hindu reformers Vivekanand and, in particular, Gandhi, softened the religion and made it flexible enough for Nehru and Ambedkar to legislate their reforms. Gandhi and Vivekanand were effective because they modernised the faith from the inside, unlike Ambedkar who fought it from outside and was ineffective outside his community.
The true Hindu intellectual was Radhakrishnan, India’s second president. His writing was like Iqbal’s: deeply immersed in the culture and the religion, but with the perspective of a trained European scholar.
The RSS’s writers were more passionate than intellectual, in part because of the audience they were addressing. The writing of RSS ideologues Golwalkar and Upadhyay is mostly moderate, and written in the emotional style of the Indian religious discourse. Hindutva, Savarkar’s classic, is simple, but overly emotional. Though his message on inter-caste marriage was pragmatic, and derived in scholarly fashion, he succumbed to caste when he insisted on his children’s marriage to fellow Chitpavan Brahmins.
Savarkar’s inclination towards the 19th century Italian reunifiers Mazzini and Garibaldi makes one think of what his thoughts would be on nationalism as it has now evolved in Europe.
Today India has no intellectuals in politics other than Manmohan Singh and Arif Mohammed Khan, a very fine mind. Except in Bengal, where caste is in decline, democracy has removed the layer of nominated, as opposed to elected, politicians, who have traditionally carried intellect to Delhi.
Few autobiographies have been written by Indian politicians in recent years, and no good ones other than one by Mani Shankar Aiyar, who was born in 1941 in Lahore’s famous Laxmi Mansion, home to Manto after 1948.
Political biographies in Pakistan peaked in the 90s when Bhutto’s supporters (Mubashir Hasan, Rafi Raza, Iqbal Akhund) and opponents (K M Arif, Sherbaz Mazari, Akbar Bugti, G M Syed) published their memoirs after Zia’s death. While a lot of Pakistani autobiography, like Indian autobiography, is self-aggrandising and dishonest, this period’s writing was possibly the most direct, and certainly the most entertaining. Mubashir Hasan wrote about his ministerial tenure in great detail but let his fellow liberals down by not revealing what he did, or even thought of, during Bhutto’s passing of the inhumane Second Amendment. He does not mention it at all, even in passing.
Bhutto comes across as deranged. The contours of his character revealed through his treatment of that fascinating character J A Rahim in Hasan’s and Raza’s books; his treatment at the hands of Akbar Bugti in Mazari’s book; and his behaviour just before his hanging in Gen Arif’s book are astonishing.
Zia wrote no book, but Ayub Khan wrote one and shouldn’t have. It starts off wrongly — by leaning on religion — and it paints a picture of him that collapsed the year he was booted out. He is seen positively today by very few excluding, presumably, Samuel Huntington (who likened Ayub to the Greek lawgiver Solon) and the economist Shahid Javed Burki.
Altaf Gauhar also wrote on Ayub, and his writing was dishonest — but Rafique Zakaria told me a story about Gauhar’s superb understanding of secularism and Islam, which made me see Gauhar in a different way.
Musharraf will be seen 20 years later in a better light than he now is, but he damaged his cause with his second-rate autobiography, actually written by Humayun Gauhar. Politicians have stopped writing in Pakistan and India. On the evidence of Ardeshir Cowasjee’s reporting, Asif Zardari cannot even spell, leave alone write. It will be strange if the only picture of him as a man comes out from newspaper columns.
The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@gmail.com
Read more...
The massacre in Gaza: Can there be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
29/12/2008
The long drawn-out siege of Gaza and the numerous military assaults on its people are only the latest (Israeli) crimes in a catalogue of terror.
By Stuart Littlewood
* U.S. definition fits perfectly
The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.
Yesterday’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with at least 230 reported killed in raids on “Hamas terror operatives” (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to “a mass execution”, said Hamas.
Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
The killing spree couldn’t have happened without the tacit approval of America, Britain and the EU. The political pea-brains that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being planned and executed.
According to the U.S.'s own definition of terrorism Israel is squarely in the frame. Under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 "Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism", the term “terrorism” means an activity that…
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended
• to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
• to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
• to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
The order and its definition of terrorism, signed 23 September 2001 by George W Bush, is used to outlaw and crush any organization, individual or country the U.S. doesn’t like. The Israeli regime’s "amoral thugs", as a British MP branded them, have plainly been terrorizing the Palestinians for the last 60 years.
The long drawn-out siege and blockade of Gaza, and the numerous military assaults on its people and their legitimate government, are only the latest crimes in a catalogue of torment and terror. They are clearly attempts to "intimidate and coerce", while the mass destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, the withholding of humanitarian aid, the assassinations, the abductions, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, and the many violent and dangerous acts including indiscriminate bombing and shelling (and the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon), ensure Israel’s ugly head is a perfect fit for America’s terrorist hat.
How does the world feel about Obama pledging to “forge an unshakeable bond” with the "miracle" of Terrorist Israel?
How do we feel about the EU rewarding Israel for its terrorist acts with enhanced benefits under the EU-Israel Association Agreement?
How do we Brits feel about our Intelligence and Security Committee being chaired by a Friend of Terrorist Israel and 5 out of its 9 members also being the Zionist regime’s devoted Friends? How do we feel about our Foreign Affairs Committee being chaired by a Friend of Terrorist Israel...and our Defence Committee too?
Britain’s prime minister Brown and his predecessor, now peace envoy Blair, both self-confessed Zionists, have given their undying support to a terrorist state and steered Britain’s foreign policy on a course that has earned the opprobrium of civilised people.
The best Brown could do today was urge “restraint”. He called on Gazan “militants” to “cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately”, but didn’t urge his bosom pals to end the siege and their illegal occupation which, as every sane person knows, are the cause of the strife. Our Foreign Office went so far as to say they were “deeply concerned” then spouted the mantra: “The only way to achieve a lasting peace is through peaceful means”.
The only peaceful means of achieving a lasting peace is for Western leaders to pull the plug on Israel until the regime conforms to international law and the will of the United Nations (without whose misguided generosity there would never have been a state of Israel), pulls back behind the 1967 border and strictly observes the principles of universal human rights.
If they don’t shoulder their responsibility, they risk a mighty moral backlash from ordinary people, who are beginning to learn the awful truth.
-- Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=198480
...
Comments:
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
comment-top
-Israel Killed 1500 Palestinian muslims in last three years
-Hammas Killed 300 Israelis jews in last three years
-Osama bin ladin killed 10000 Mulims ,
Hikmat yaar killed thousands mulims .
Mulla Umer killed thousand innocent mulims
bush killed thousands muslims .
Taliban Killed thousands of innocent muslims ,
Baitullah mehsoud is the mass murmurer of innocent muslims
Million muslims killed in afghanistan fighting between so called mujahideen .
Zulm is zulm ,Qatl is Qatal ,either bu jews muslims or any one ,
Read more...
The long drawn-out siege of Gaza and the numerous military assaults on its people are only the latest (Israeli) crimes in a catalogue of terror.
By Stuart Littlewood
* U.S. definition fits perfectly
The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.
Yesterday’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with at least 230 reported killed in raids on “Hamas terror operatives” (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to “a mass execution”, said Hamas.
Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
The killing spree couldn’t have happened without the tacit approval of America, Britain and the EU. The political pea-brains that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being planned and executed.
According to the U.S.'s own definition of terrorism Israel is squarely in the frame. Under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 "Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism", the term “terrorism” means an activity that…
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended
• to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
• to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
• to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
The order and its definition of terrorism, signed 23 September 2001 by George W Bush, is used to outlaw and crush any organization, individual or country the U.S. doesn’t like. The Israeli regime’s "amoral thugs", as a British MP branded them, have plainly been terrorizing the Palestinians for the last 60 years.
The long drawn-out siege and blockade of Gaza, and the numerous military assaults on its people and their legitimate government, are only the latest crimes in a catalogue of torment and terror. They are clearly attempts to "intimidate and coerce", while the mass destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, the withholding of humanitarian aid, the assassinations, the abductions, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, and the many violent and dangerous acts including indiscriminate bombing and shelling (and the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon), ensure Israel’s ugly head is a perfect fit for America’s terrorist hat.
How does the world feel about Obama pledging to “forge an unshakeable bond” with the "miracle" of Terrorist Israel?
How do we feel about the EU rewarding Israel for its terrorist acts with enhanced benefits under the EU-Israel Association Agreement?
How do we Brits feel about our Intelligence and Security Committee being chaired by a Friend of Terrorist Israel and 5 out of its 9 members also being the Zionist regime’s devoted Friends? How do we feel about our Foreign Affairs Committee being chaired by a Friend of Terrorist Israel...and our Defence Committee too?
Britain’s prime minister Brown and his predecessor, now peace envoy Blair, both self-confessed Zionists, have given their undying support to a terrorist state and steered Britain’s foreign policy on a course that has earned the opprobrium of civilised people.
The best Brown could do today was urge “restraint”. He called on Gazan “militants” to “cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately”, but didn’t urge his bosom pals to end the siege and their illegal occupation which, as every sane person knows, are the cause of the strife. Our Foreign Office went so far as to say they were “deeply concerned” then spouted the mantra: “The only way to achieve a lasting peace is through peaceful means”.
The only peaceful means of achieving a lasting peace is for Western leaders to pull the plug on Israel until the regime conforms to international law and the will of the United Nations (without whose misguided generosity there would never have been a state of Israel), pulls back behind the 1967 border and strictly observes the principles of universal human rights.
If they don’t shoulder their responsibility, they risk a mighty moral backlash from ordinary people, who are beginning to learn the awful truth.
-- Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=198480
...
Comments:
netengr Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
comment-top
-Israel Killed 1500 Palestinian muslims in last three years
-Hammas Killed 300 Israelis jews in last three years
-Osama bin ladin killed 10000 Mulims ,
Hikmat yaar killed thousands mulims .
Mulla Umer killed thousand innocent mulims
bush killed thousands muslims .
Taliban Killed thousands of innocent muslims ,
Baitullah mehsoud is the mass murmurer of innocent muslims
Million muslims killed in afghanistan fighting between so called mujahideen .
Zulm is zulm ,Qatl is Qatal ,either bu jews muslims or any one ,
Read more...
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No difference people in GAZA and people in Bunair , (Taliban ka inteqaam - BBC Urdu)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2008/12/081231_bunair_hayee_visit_ra.shtml