Kashmir Herald

Finally someone from US administration has the gumption to say it openly that Pakistan is the Al-Qaeda’s base.

Excerpt from NYTimes piece:
*****
Al-Qaida is America’s top concern among terrorist groups, he said. Osama bin Laden’s network maintains active connections ‘’that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hide-out in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe,'’ Negroponte said.
*****

Check out other press stories about this here and here and here

It is about time for all the world leaders to realize the facts and condemn Pakistan for its role in supporting and sponsoring Global Islamic Terrorism.

Hamas befriends Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen

Click here for the story.

This is an example of how all the Islamic terrorist outfits all over the world are connected and belong to the same movement to Islamisize the whole world. Al-Qaeda, LeT, Hamas, Hizb, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Hizbollah et al are all different faces of the same scourge.

Sooner we realize it, better it would for the whole community…..

And did I hear Government of India saying that there is no Al-Qaeda in India?

Blair asks Pak to “speed up” its fight against Taliban

And what makes him think that Musharraf is going to listen to him and do something about it?

Now that Blair is on his way out, he is making the right demands. But knowing Musharraf, it is a wishful thinking that Musharraf will move his ass to root out Taliban from Pakistan. Talibanism is in the blood of Pakistan. So you can’t remove it….even if you wanted to…

PM (Blair) warns of long fight against Taliban

Check it out here.

And what was Blair thinking when he supported Bush in taking eyes off of Afghanistan and instead moving to Iraq?

Poor Hamid Karzai keeps repeating the same old song that Pakistan should do more against Taliban.

Karzai pushes Pakistan to do more against Taliban

But is Musharraf going to listen? Why would he? This (Taliban) is his weapon to keep Karzai, Afghanistan, and rest of the world on toes.

And what did I hear? Bush called Mush other day and once again reposed his confidence in Mush’s war against terrorism….

“Brownie is doing a heck of a job.”….

Check out

Taliban insurgency gains strength and sophistication

No prizes for guessing the correct Axis of Evil…..

Taliban is getting stronger in Pakistan. It is time to nip the evil in the bud.

‘Taleban law’ passed in Pakistan

Is the world noticing?

“…..when Kashmiri Pandit migrants visit their ancestral places in the valley they stay with their Muslim brethren and Muslim-Pandit unity in Kashmir is as strong as it was in the past….” says J&K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

Muslim-Pandit unity is strong as was in the past: Azad

Which planet is Azad living on? And who is he fooling?

Mr. Azad, please stop fooling around and get to work for the people of the state.

“The Afghan government is facing a “crisis of legitimacy” because many appointed administrators “are quite simply thugs,” said Joanna Nathan, the Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank……”

Taliban support on rise in Afghanistan

“Eighty percent of the people out in the districts support the Taliban. Every house has a fighter in it supporting the Taliban. If the government comes, they just put down their weapons…………….”

GO FIGURE…..

“Despite Pakistan’s claim to have stopped supporting the Taliban after its 2001 ouster, the evidence is now overwhelming that the Pakistani security service — the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI — and probably the senior military leadership are tolerating, if not backing, Taliban forces………”

Is Pakistan an ally?

“Musharraf is desperate to have good relations with India, not because he is genuinely interested in peace with its neighbour, but to preserve his own military regime, says a top legal expert of that country………..”

‘Mush desperate for good ties with India’

“Pakistan is the laboratory of what is called terrorism and extremism in the West. Pakistan is so desperately poor and is in grave danger of disintegrating,” said Hassan, the author of “A Juridical Critique of Successful Treason,” - an influential book on coups in Pakistan.

Any surprises here?

Another Musharraf tactic to buy time and make himself look good in front of Western leaders……The unfortunate part is that the Western leaders fall for the facade’ that Musharraf creates….

Musharraf offered to drop all cases against Benazir: Hakim

In the land of the Taliban By Elizabeth Rubin of The New York Times

Click Here to see what is really going on inside the land of the Taliban..

“I am a charity worker not a terrorist”, says Hafiz Saeed, Founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

Check out

JOKE OF THE DAY !!!!! 

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) was banned as a terrorist organization but they still operate under a new name Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is a front organization for all the terrorist activities.

Addressing a gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. yesterday, Pakistan’s former ISI Chief Asad Durrani admitted that “Pak Army rigs polls.”

Check Here

Now is that a surprise?

Analysts and political watchers who know Pakistan have all along known that the elections in which Religious parties won majority in Tribal Areas were rigged by Musharraf and his ISI. This has been part of his double-game in which he acts as US’s ally in the war on terror and at the same time sleeps with Islamic Mullahs who control the Tribal Areas.

It is time to blow his cover off.

How convenient?

Here is Musharraf trying to put the blame on A. Q. Khan.

Click Here

Does he really think that the world is going to buy his story that A. Q. Khan did all that without Musharraf’s and ISI’s knowledge? A. Q. Khan is just a scapegoat and a small piece in this big game of nuclear proliferation. It is time for Musharraf’s friends a.k.a Bush-Blair to openly confront him and demand the handing over of A. Q. Khan to CIA/MI5 for intense questioning.

It is time for Khan to spill all the beans…….

Who doesn’t know that Taliban leaders are enjoying their life in Pakistan?

Bush? Mush? Blair? Condi? Cheney? Rumsfeld?

They all know it but they keep their head in the sand because that is what suits them. It is time the world wakes up to destroy the global terror infrastructure in Pakistan, supported and aided by Musharraf and his ISI.

Check out:
Karzai says Mullah Omar hiding in Pakistan

Taliban terrorists admit Pakistani Mullahs role in global terrorism.

Check out…
Pakistani Mullahs push Talibanis for Global Jihad

Let us send more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ to Musharraf so that he can continue to feed and support these Mullahs….

Change in schedule of 2nd Round-table meet in Srinagar…
Check the story here
Is this change (from one day to two-days) in schedule political in nature or is it really being practical? Is he going to talk to “separatists/terrorists” separately on one day and to “those who already agree with GOI (as Umer Farooq says)” separately on second day? Is Dr. Manmohan Singh yielding to the demands of Hurriyat?
Only time will tell….

The Taliban has significantly stepped up attacks in Afghanistan this year. Going up against US, NATO and other forces as well as the Afghanistan military, it has been responsible for repeated and widespread attacks. The extent of its newfound strength is a far cry from 3-4 years ago, when the Taliban was believed to be a spent force.

As Syed Saleem Shehzad points out in the Asia Times recently:

In terms of the Taliban-led insurgency, its financial sources remain highly secretive. It is believed to be supported by various dubious sources, including the opium trade, yet observers point out that to finance an operation of the present scale for several months could only be done by states.

The number of states who are intimately connected to the Taliban is very very limited, so its an easy guess which state that is.

Earlier this month, an Indian engineer working on a construction project in Afghanistan was kidnapped and killed by the Taliban. Now news reports suggest that the killing was actually the handiwork of the ISI, again confirming for those trying to hide from the uncomfortable fact - the Taliban is not a stateless organization.

Mary Habeck, a Yale University Professor, has written a new book that goes deep into the madness of jihad and Islamic fervour. Her theory is very simple- terrorism has very much to do with Islam and there is no escaping this reality. Trying to come up with explanations other than Islam as the root cause of terrorist violence is truly bizarre, but highly popular. This myth- that terrorism springs from poverty or the Arab-Israeli conflict- needs to be shattered. Habeck has taken the first steps.

Here is my review of the same in Asia Times:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD01Ak04.html

The Taliban threat has grown steadily in the past few years. It appears to be comfortably entrenched in Pakistan, and is making inroads into Afghanistan again. While the Taliban doesn’t have the strength to topple the Afghan government, it can continue to derail progress towards stability, particularly in the southern and eastern parts of the country. According the report, the Taliban fighters have been learning their trade from the hardened Iraqi insurgents, and have started applying it in Afghanistan. And to add to their arsenal, the Taliban are acquiring missile components from their benefactors in Pakistan.

The visit by President Bush earlier this month to the region prompted Pakistan to take on some of the militants in the border areas. These actions by the Pakistani regime, if history is any guide, are going to be half-hearted, and dissipate quickly, soon as the pressure is off.

The question remains - how can the terrorist/fundamentalist threat from the region be tackled for the long haul? No one seems to have the answer yet.

Here is a news report in which Kasuri compared cross-border infiltration of terrorists at the LoC to the US attempt to suppress the insurgency in Iraq:

“Bush also talked with Musharraf about complaints that Pakistan isn’t doing enough to stop the infiltration of militants into India and Pakistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Khursheed Kasuri, said Pakistan was trying to stop the infiltrators but that it was a big challenge—much as 130,000 U.S. forces are trying to stop violence in Iraq but can’t prevent all the bloodshed.

“Does it mean you are not serious? Of course you are serious. It tells you the level of challenge,” the minister said.”

On the surface, it looks like a positive statement that acknowledges that the mujahideen coming from PoK are terrorists. But remember that most Islamic publics and governments treat the US occupation of Iraq as immoral and worth resisting by all means. Kasuri seems to be using this parallel with a clever purpose of showing that infiltration is as morally correct as the anti-American resistance in Iraq.

Isn’t this too clever a response?

In his article “What’s in a name?”, Raheemullah Yusufzai commenting on Afghanistan’s information minister Makhdoom Raheen’s letter to Pakistan complaining about using the names of Afghan warrior-kings Mohammad Ghauri and Ahmad Shah Abdali for medium- and long-range nuclear-capable missiles manufactured by Pakistan, wrote:

“Makhdoom Raheen needs to be reminded that Ghauri, Abdali and Ghaznavi are very much part of Indian, and for that matter Pakistani, history due to their frequent forays into the subcontinent.”

Yes, sadly, they are very much part of Indian (and thus Pakistani) history but India does not glorify them. It is only Pakistan that does so.

He went on to write: ” Many Muslims in the subcontinent consider them their heroes for liberating them from Hindu and Sikh rule and establishing Muslim power. It is widely believed they were requested to invade India to rescue the Muslims.”

Rahimullah Yusufzai got it all wrong. Except Abdali, neither Ghaznavi nor Ghauri came to rescue Muslims from the Hindu yoke. There were no Muslims in India at that time. Their sole purpose was to plunder and Islamize India.

He continued: “Both Pakistan and India have chosen the names of warrior-kings for their formidable missiles.”

Indian missiles are not named after warrior kings. Pakistan in order to justify the names of their missiles after Ghauri, Abdali etc tries to pass of f the name Prithvi as if it was named after Prithvi Raj Chauhan. It is purpose specific as it is ground to ground missile and thus Prithvi. One is named Akash — that ground to sky, one is Agni and so on. These are generic secular names after natural things like earth, sky, fire.

A Pakistani can see India only in its own image.

One can only imagine what hell would have broken loose if India had named its missiles after the names of Hindus who fought the Muslims. These names would have been Prithvi Raj Chauhan, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Raja Man Singh, Govind Singh, Ranjit Singh or even Savarkar etc etc.

If Pakistan is looking for naming its missiles after its native warrior kings, it can always do so and name its missiles after Govind Singh, Ranjit Singh or Hari Singh Nalwa — now, they were the real son-of-the-soil warriors.

Afghanistan has made a valid point which I have tried to point out many times.

Pakistan is probably the only country that glorifies those who invaded and plundered its own land and massacred its people. And in my opinion it comes from their hatred of any thing Hindu and of India. Pakistan does not see itself as the inheritors of the history and culture of their own land but as an extension of Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Recent developments in Bangladesh are confirming that India is now caught in the grip of an Islamist pincer. On the northwest is Pakistan and on the east is Bangladesh, a threat that is fast proliferating with jihadis and anti-India sentiment. While the world is fixated on India-Pakistan “peace process”, the real storm is quietly gathering force in Bangladesh. Here is my summary of this menace in the World Press Review:

http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/2269.cfm

Whatever strategic gains India achieved by splitting Pakistan into two in 1971 have been nullified by the rise of terrorist Islam in Bangladesh. It is now a de facto hostile state and even better armed and ideologically motivated than East Pakistan before 1971. Vote bank politics in West Bengal and Assam have a big hand in how the whole story went from triumph to disaster for India in 35 years.

The saddest part of this horror story is that despite the ghastly massacre of 16 BSF soldiers by Bangladesh Rifles personnel in 2001, and hosting of Northeastern secessionists by Dhaka, Indian diplomacy has failed to prevent the rise of this new jihadi serpent on its very doorstep. How long will it be before the Muslim-majority border areas of Assam and West Bengal begin a new homeland agitation?

OK. This is the height of Bush Administration’s incompetence and stupidity. You must have heard that the six major ports in US are being run by a foreign Arab firm based in UAE. So do you feel secure now? Arab firm running the ports! So how difficult do you think it would be for an Al Qaeda operative to sneak in a nuclear dirty bomb or any other weapon of mass destrcution into US mainland thru one of these six ports? No prizes for any guesses.

Next time, you guys go to the voting booth, think about this before voting for someone like Dubbya.

Blast at Pakistan’s Nuclear facility kills one. Whatever Pak authorities might say, the nuclear assets they are holding on are the WMDs that are going to kill the peace-loving peoples of the world. These are the WMDs that are at most risk of falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists, including UBL, living in NWFP of Pakistan. These are the WMDs that are real and actually existing. These are not those imaginary ones that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld went looking for in Iraq.

So would someone care to take care of these ones?

In the current issue (Winter 2005/06) of the Washington Quarterly, Paul Staniland discusses fencing of borders as a crucial tactic in countering today’s trend of transnational insurgencies. One of the tactics Staniland considers is resettlement of populations. While a problematic suggestion in today’s globalized and globalizing world, this topic was discussed in an entry on this blog last year.

In fact both border fencing and resettlement fly in the face of contemporary thinking of open borders, free trade etc. But the reality of today’s world is that democracy, open borders, free trade and so on don’t actually always result in that city on the hill. And as Derek Chollet and James M. Goldgeier discuss in the same issue of TWQ, even a Marshall Plan, much touted for the post 9/11 rebirth of Europe, may not fundamentally make those attracted to Islamic fundamentalism less susceptible to becoming suicide bombers.

On Nikolas Gvosdev’s Washington Realist blog, I just posted the following comment:

Firing shots in the dark doesn’t mean you will necessary hit the target. I think where many of us fail is in understanding that the problem needs to be analyzed and defined, only then the solution can be architected. As far as I understand, we have set out to defuse terrorism and extremism, not to undo communism (which was the case in Eastern Europe). There is no evidence that democracy can automatically defuse extremism, and there’s country after country where terrorism and other conflicts are endemic despite decades of democracy.

The point then is, apart from our ingrained urge to “spread freedom”, what purpose does a policy based heavily on democratization serve? Is it cost effective considering that resources are limited? What other tools are there to achieve our policy goals, particularly national security, and even energy independence? Have we done a thorough cost-benefit analysis of various options? Is there maybe a mix of various tools (even including democracy promotion, but not limited to it) that would be the most cost-effective policy?

As has been obvious in other parts of the world, the “upset” win of Hamas in the Palestinian elections again demonstrates the lack of negative correlation between democracy and terrorism. Of course some might say that Hamas will moderate itself after coming to power. Maybe it might. But the point is that given the choice, a people elected a fundamentalist group that has been declared a terrorist group by much of the outside world.

Yet another data point that suggests that the heavy weightage given to democracy as a weapon against terrorism needs to be reconsidered.

Check out The War in Pakistan editorial in The Washington Post.

Do I need to add anything?

When will Bush and his cronies take those ear-muffs off?

Check out the latest NYTimes story about Pakistan’s failed efforts in eradicating the terrorist elements from its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

The story gives you the picture of the actual sanctuary where the Islamic terrorists are getting brain-washed, recruited, and trained for their Islamic Jehad. It also gives you an insight into how the global war on terror is failing. In spite of what Bush and his cronies might tell you, the global war on terror is being lost under Bush’s watch. American tax payers need to wake up and stop Bush from wasting their billions of dollars on a war that is needed but is being executed poorly. The real sanctuary for the Islamic terrorists is Pakistan and that is where this war on terror needs to be fought. Not in Iraq. Not in Iran. The first theater for this war on terror has to be Pakistan. If American tax payers want their hard-earned dollars used effectively to eradicate global terrorism, they need to wake up and force Bush and his cronies to change the course and redirect this war on Pakistan.

Will American tax payers wake up? I doubt.

Obviosuly not. In his latest piece, The Independent’s celebrated Middle East Correspondent Robert Fisk, rightly asks why the West is not going after Pakistan that has nuclear weapons, is unstable, is run by a dictator, and is the prime shelter-ground for Islamic terrorists. He asks:
“And why Iran? Why not that infinitely more unstable Islamic state called Pakistan whichhas nuclear weapons? Because its dictator, President General Musharraf is on “our side”.
“Our side”. Is Musharraf really on “our side”? If that were the case, don’t you think that by now we would have captured OBL? He obviously is playing double-games and sadly Bush and his company does not get it. Or does not want to get it.
Robert Fisk continues to say:
In Afghanistan, the Taliban are slowly returning. Outside Kabul every woman wears a burqa. Weren’t they supposed to have taken them off? Weren’t women now “free” in Afghanistan? US troops are being killed at an increasing rate there. Weren’t they supposed to have won?”
Right questions. But is Bush and Company listening?

What is the universalising glue that holds together the enterprise of jihad? It is this interconnectedness and unity which is Islam’s strength. There are lots of liberals who claim that Islam is actually fragmented and absorbed into the shapes set by different national and regional regimes, but they need to explain why people from 25 or 30 different nationalities congregate in Pakistan’s terrorist camps under a single banner. The ‘millat’ or ‘ummat’ is a very broad category within which values like civility, mercy and mutual assistance congregate. Those outside the ‘millat’ fall beyond the pale of civilisation- the jaahils. The clash of civilisations is one between the millat and the non-millat, at the broadest level of conception.

Here is a review of mine in Asia Times on this topic, Salman Rushdie’s ‘Shalimar The Clown’:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HA14Df01.html

YES. That is what Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai says. For him, the fight against drug trade and opium production in his state of Afghanistan is more important. And guess what, he has even invited Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his co-terrorists for talks. I thought US had a policy of not negotiatiing with terrorists! Then how come it is allowing its puppet Karzai to ignore war on terror and negotiate with Talibanis. But who are we kidding? US and its few (on last count, how many were there?) allies have already ignored the war on terror and have always negotiated with terrorists. US will not accept it openly but dealing with the biggest terrorist Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is a proof in itself. Isn’t it funny that everytime US claims to have struck a high-profile target in the Pak-Afghan border, the high-profile target escapes unscathed? Should I give prizes to those who can guess who enables these escapes? No, I won’t. CIA must be fooling itself if it thinks that Musharraf and his ISI is going to let them get their hands on Al-Qaeda’s high-value terrorists.

War on terror ended the day Bush and his cronies took their eyes off of Tora-Bora and moved to Mosul, Iraq. It is no surprise that the Taliban is already back to its terrorists operations in Afghanistan. Just in last few days, two major attacks have left more than 30, including a Canadian diplomat dead in Afghanistan. And why shouldn’t Taliban be active again? Who is there to check on them? As Karzai says, his bigger problem is Opium trade. Who gives the damn about War on Terror? Bush? NO. Blair? NO. Musharraf? Never.

In today’s Washington Post, Karl Vick discusses the historical and contemporary drive to establish a Caliphate (or the less Anglicized term - Khilafat). The US invasion of Iraq gave an opening for Muslim extremists to reenergize the drive for a Caliphate starting from Baghdad and the nearby Sunni triangle. Bagdhad was the capital of the Caliphate in the middle ages.

The other interesting point Vick makes is that the connection between democracy and defusing of religious extremism, used to justify the invasion and “democratization” of Iraq, simply does not exist. Turkey is possibly one of the starkest examples of this phenomenon. Despite the efforts of Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, and the military regimes in more recent times, the dream of a “secular” Turkey has never materialized.

As Vick points out:

Ataturk’s vision of national identity overtaking religion appears to have been only partially realized. Schoolchildren are assembled each morning to chant slogans concluding, “My existence should be a gift to the Turkish existence. How happy is a man who says ‘I am a Turk.’ ” But the first words whispered in the ears of newborns are prayers.

The phenomenon reminds one of communist countries, where despite decades of official indoctrination, people stuck to their religions and beliefs. The all-encompassing and coercive drive for democracy in Iraq, and other Muslim nations risks a similar outcome. In fact, bringing democracy at the gunpoint may turn these populations steadily into the hands of extremists, defeating the very purpose for which such an immense exercise is being carried out.

In today’s Washington Post, Walter Reich, former director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC, wonders why Steven Spielberg, in his latest movie Munich, omits any discussion of the reason Jews wanted to return to Palestine in the post-World War II era. The movie is about the 1972 killings of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists, and the subsequent retaliation by Israel.

The bigger question raised is: do a people, who have been foribly evicted from their longtime homeland, have the right to return, and demand a sovereign nation where they can reclaim their history, culture and heritage, and practice their faith and traditions without the fear of oppression and discrimination? The following words by Reich fill in the apparent gaps left by Spielberg in the Munich script:

Jews had lived in that land for well over a thousand years. It was the place of their prophets, their kingdoms, their Zion, their Temples and their rabbinical academies. It was the place where they had developed as a nation and created the teachings that spawned the religions of the Western world. It was the place from which, ultimately, most were exiled.

A new threat has emerged this week - a terrorist threat to the software industry of India. Software has been a critical part of India’s economic boom. Terrorists attacked scientists attending an international conference in Bangalore, killing a reputed professor of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and injuring several other scientists.

As B. Raman points out, this attack is not surprising, and may be a part of the strategy of Pakistan-based terrorist groups to dismember India and create several homelands for Muslims.

The LET, the HUJI and the JEM, all of whom are members of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, look upon J&K, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Junagadh in Gujarat as rightfully belonging to Pakistan. They want to “liberate” them from Indian control as a first step in their plan to “liberate” the Muslims of North and South India and incorporate their “homelands” in the so-called Islamic Caliphate advocated by bin Laden. They also similarly want to “liberate” the Muslim majority areas of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province and ultimately incorporate them into the so-called Islamic Caliphate.

For those who believe that Kashmir is the beginning and the end of the “India-Pakistan rivalry”, or the “core issue”, this new turn in Pakistan-based terrorism in India should be an eye-opener. Kashmir is only a stepping stone, and the geostrategic implications of a few “Muslim homelands” within present-day India are obvious.

In the recent elections in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has made significant gains. This despite the fact that the party is banned, and its members can only run as independents, and furthermore, Egyptian authorities made sustained efforts to intimidate voters. One can only extrapolate what a truly democratic Egyptian regime will look like.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood of course has produced such contemporary jehad stalwarts as Sayyid Qutb, who influenced Bin Laden’s terrorist saga. Bin Laden’s associate, Ayman Zawahiri, himself started out early with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The current crop of Muslim Brotherhood, still alive and kicking after decades of brutal suppression by the Egyptian state, has a clear agenda - bringing Egypt under the rule of the Sharia.

Will the “march of freedom” in the Middle East bring peace to the region? Or will it help bring to fruition the dreams of Qutb and others - bringing back the Caliphate with the rule of the Sharia? The portents from the first experiment - Iraq - are not good, and further confirmed by the consensus views of Iraq’s leading groups on Israel. It is no wonder, then, that Israel itself is in no hurry to spread “freedom” into neighboring Syria. For those still lost in romantic idealism that democracy can cure all, consider this - Pakistan under the democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif fostered intricate links with Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda, and essentially midwifed the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan.

What is the lesson learned from all this? That its not at all clear either brutal and unpalatable state suppression or therapeutical liberal democracy are the keys to winning the war on terrorism. Do we start from square one again, seeking the right strategy?

YES, that is how Foreign Policy magazine titles its news item about terrorist training camps operating in Pakistan, with the active support of Pakistani Intelligence Agency ISI. In its The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2005 story, it says:
“Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf cracked down on terrorist groups operating on Pakistani soil in the wake of the September 11 attacks. This year, Washington was so pleased with Musharraf’s support in the war on terrorism, it approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. But reports that terrorist camps are reopening in Pakistan received only scant attention in 2005. In July, the Herald, a Pakistani magazine, reported that previously abandoned terrorist training camps were open for business in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Islamabad denied that the camp in question existed, though the Herald’s reporter received a guided tour of a “fully rehabilitated” camp in Mansehra that was complete with office space, four residential halls, a volleyball court, and, of course, young men carrying AK-47s. Although there’s no sign that the camps have Islamabad’s backing, one militant told the Herald that they operated in a “regime of controlled freedom.” Intelligence sources also told the New York Times in August that three Pakistanis jailed last summer for attempting to assassinate the U.S. ambassador in Kabul said they were trained in Mansehra. Exasperated Afghan military officials say Pakistan continues to back the Taliban, which it hopes to use once U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan. Of course, Musharraf may never be able to monitor every inch of his country’s difficult terrain. But camps that journalists can find are camps that Pakistani soldiers can find too…if they were looking.”

Do we need to say more?

No prizes for any guesses! Yes, it is Pakistan - the State of Islamic Terrorism. In his latest book “Seeds of Terrorism”, Pakistani journalist Mohammed Amir Rana has claimed that at least 15 Pakistani legislators and senators have close relationships with Osama bin Laden. Check out the news item. For George Bush, it took only one cooked up (by Dick…Dick Cheney) meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and some Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, to declare Iraq as Al Qaeda collaborator and thus the justified target for war. What will it take for Bush and rest of the world leaders to see the scourge of Islamic terrorism being promoted in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities?

Check The road to Nuclear Jihad to see what Pakistan is up to and what dangers lie ahead for rest of the humanity because no one is doing anything about Pakistan and its terrorist infrastructure. B. Raman says:
“There is a greater danger of al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorists getting hold of nuclear and radiological weapons/materials from the supporters of their pan-Islamic ideologies in Pakistan’s scientific community — such as A Q Khan — than from any other quarter.

Unless A.Q. Khan is interrogated outside Pakistani territory by a group of international experts not connected with Pakistan, the international community will never be able to establish the progress made by the terrorists in their efforts to acquire WMD weapons/materials.”

So when will the world wake up and put Pakistan on notice and add her to the Axis of Evil?

Here’s a good new report from Newsweek on female suicide bombers in Iraq:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10315095/site/newsweek/

We need a strong understanding of theories of jihad- especially the debate on the roots of male Muslim rage being determined by oppression of women. If hatred and fanaticism have nothing to do with gender discrimination or with poverty, what answer is left? Rationally speaking, we have to go back to the nature of Islam as a religion and its historical origin and mode of expansion across the world.

One major trap promoted by liberals and secularists has been the politically correct bromide that “all religions are peaceful” and that it is poverty or gender inequalities or oppression which generates terrorists. How would they respond to this new de-gendering of jihad? The woman profiled in the Newsweek article was Belgian, who married into Islam, and had no stake in Iraq’s occupation except the common bond of the ‘ummah’. And what an ummah it is- no longer a male brotherhood, but a unified ‘Muslimhood’!

By the way, Kashmir Herald’s editorial for this month, (http://www.kashmirherald.com/main.php?t=E&st=D&no=6) mentions the new women’s wing of Jaish-e-Muhammad. Some strong research must be done connecting Dukhataran-i-Millat, Zarqawi’s female human bombs and Jaish to demonstrate that the reasons for zealotry are far simpler and theological than the liberals would have us believe.

Sreeram

Well known writer Robert Dreyfuss lays out a powerful case for why the current direction of the US administration in the war on terror points to a train wreck. What is lost in the pervasive administration rhetoric about democracy is that the war is about terrorism and political Islam, neither of which can be defeated by democracy.

As Dreyfuss points out:

Today, the unpleasant reality is that 150,000 US troops, who are dying at a rate of about 100 a month, are the Praetorian Guard for that radical-right theocracy. It is a regime that sponsors Shi’ite-led death squads carrying out assassinations from Basra (where freelance reporter Steven Vincent, himself murdered by such a unit, wrote that “hundreds” of former Ba’athists, secular leaders and Sunnis were being killed every month) to Baghdad. Scores of bodies of Sunnis regularly turn up shot to death, execution-style.

The latest revelation is that SCIRI’s Badr Brigade, now a 20,000-strong militia, operated a secret torture prison in Baghdad holding hundreds of Sunni detainees. There, prisoners had their skin flayed off, electric shocks applied to their genitals, or power drills driven into their bones. SCIRI and Dawa are the senior partners in an Iraqi government which has imposed a unilateralist constitution on the country that elevates the power of the Shi’ite-dominated provinces and enshrines their vision of Islam in the body politic.

And Dreyfuss puts it quite succintly here:

real “Islamofascists” are already in power in Baghdad - and they are, shamefully, America’s allies.

The Kashmir issue seems unresolvable, but is Kashmir really a unique problem in the Indian subcontinent, or is there a bigger picture that we all are missing?

Vinod Kumar suggests in a new article that looking at the bigger picture offers a simpler solution, albeit a radical one, at least within the contemporary debate. Vinod points out about 86.6% of Indian Muslims supported formation of Pakistan before Partition, but a much smaller proportion settled in Pakistan. Tensions between the remaining Indian Muslims and India’s Hindus have persisted for six decades, most notably in Jammu and Kashmir, but also in many other areas all across India.

Could it be, as Vinod suggests, that the root of the problem is that the partition remains unfinished? In fact Pakistan talks regularly about Kashmir being the unfinished agenda of partition, but of course in that sense the problem may be far broader. And if in exchange for Pakistan gaining control over Muslim-majority areas of Kashmir, Indian Muslims migrated to Pakistan, would that resolve the persistent tensions, the riots, the wars, and the nuclear confrontations? There is of course the matter of Kashmiri Hindus, for whom their status as refugees will be permanently formalized, and the much larger issue of Muslims in the rest of India who may never have even considered just getting up and walking away from their lives and starting up afresh in a different land.

There are certainly going to be some polarizing views on this topic, but it provides an alternative to the standard but unsatisfactory autonomy/self-determination prescription thrown about by many in recent years.

Here we go again. As usual and expected, Pakistan has its dirty hand in every dirty game that is played in South Asian region. Government of India has accused Pakistan of playing a role in the killing of Border Roads Organization’s Indian driver M. R. Kutty. Refer Pak hand in Kutty’s killing. As expected and as is known to everyone except Bush and his cronies, Pakistan has continued to support Taliban forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan so that it could keep its control over Afghanistan for its strategic interests. Billions of dollars in aid and loan waivers have not changed Pakistan’s attitude a bit. On one hand, it still supports Islamic terrorists elements and on another hand it continues to fool Bush administration by pretending to be a staunch ally for war on terrorism. What will it take for the world to stand up and take notice of Pakistan’s dirty hand in promoting Global Islamic Terrorism? Another 9/11 or 7/7?

Just came across an old Washington Post article (probably not online any more) from August 2002, just when the Saddam-WMD-Al Qaeda propaganda had started to be pumped up in preparation for the Iraq invasion. The article was about the Florida trial of two immigrants of Pakistani and Egyptian origin. They had been caught in a federal sting while trying to purchase components for missiles and nuclear weapons. One of them testified that the purchases were for Pakistan’s ISI agency, and were to be used by that country’s military and terrorist groups. Interestingly, the article mentioned that the word “Pakistan” was being removed from court documents. Around that time, there was also an ABC Dateline show on the trial.

Three years later, the world doesn’t know much more about Pakistani nuclear proliferation, except that the network was linked at least as high up as A. Q. Khan, the then head of its nuclear program. Musharraf has refused to allow Khan to be interrogated by international investigators, and the US administration has quietly acquiesced to letting the world’s worst case of nuclear proliferation go unpunished. More significantly, the network remains incompletely shut down.

Meanwhile Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and WMDs have turned out to be propaganda, which many suspected back in August 2002. And now we have an Iraq that is, according to both external and internal observers, a worse danger to its own people as well as to international security. And yet, 2100 US lives and $200 billion+ later, that mushroom cloud threat is still out there.

We are at a unique point in history: there may not be another historical example of a superpower that so quickly squandered its immense resources while taking a wrong turn.

I happen to have many Pakistani friends of liberal mindset who often share intimate details of their educational system. One point which Subodh Atal makes is worth expanding upon. The public education system in Pakistan, which teaches secular subjects in the curriculum unlike the madrassas, is equally hate-mongering and jingoistic. My friends tell me that in high school, they learn about the “great deeds” of Aurangzeb, who is potrayed as a famous warrior of Islam who expanded the rule of the faithful into the far corners of Hindustan. He is equated with Mahmud of Ghazni and Mohammad Ghori as famous carriers of the crescent into heathen lands. No mention is made of Aurangzeb’s persecution of non-Muslims and desecration of Hindu places of worship. Other interesting aspects of Pakistani public school textbooks include coloured versions of Partition, stereotypes about the cunning and crafty nature of Hindus and misrepresentation of facts about India-Pakistan wars since 1947. In other words, what the secular education system in Pakistan does is put a little gloss over what is taught in the madrassas, without changing the essential indoctrination purpose.

Treatment of important historical events in the subcontinent is extremely biased and anti-Hindu in Pakistan’s public schools. The products of these educational institutions go on to run the country as ruling elites. So, it is a mistake to see the madrassas alone as the root cause of jihad in Pakistan. The armed forces officer corps, the ISI, the secular politicians and the intelligentsia are all equally trained to hate India and to believe that Kashmir is an inseparable part of Pakistan. Just because a Benazir Bhutto or a Khurshid Kasuri or a Maleeha Lodhi talks in suave English and hobnobs with western diplomats, there should be no automatic presumption that she or he is qualitatively better than fiery maulvis or mujahideen commanders.

Often, people mistake Pakistan’s problem to be one of mullahs and fanatical army officers. The malaise goes much deeper. The obsession with madrassa education ignores the more fundamental issue- the myth and creation of Pakistan, which are being sustained through a wholesale campaign of hatred towards non-Muslims. ‘Modernisation’ of Pakistani madrassas is indeed a much-needed reform, but that will certainly not resolve the animus brainwashed into Pakistani minds about their “cunning” and “deceitful” neighbour. A sweeping reform that ensures peace in South Asia will have to move beyond madrassa-fixation and get into the business of spreading values of nonviolence and tolerance in a broad spectrum of the Pakistani population.

An article by William Dalrymple in today’s Asia Times talks at length about Pakistan’s madrassas, which came into the spotlight after 9/11. Tens of thousands of these religious schools teach over a million students, and at least some proportion of these schools have been associated with extremism. There are multiple problems in education in Pakistan, which has been considered a jehad factory for the past many years. The military which controls Pakistan’s government spends just over 1% of its budget on education, pushing poor kids into the madrassas. On the other hand, as Dalrymple points out, the military is spending billions on advanced weapons systems. An interesting aside is that while the Pakistani regime was making a lot of noise about the rest of the world not pledging enough money for the earthquake survivors, it did not consider diverting some of the military budget towards earthquake reconstruction, just as education is not a priority for the regime. Of course madrassas by themselves are not the only problem with Pakistan’s education system. According to some reports, Pakistani public school textbooks themselves inculcate intolerance.

While Dalrymple’s article does a good job discussing Pakistani madrassas, it has some glaring historical errors. One that stood out was his comment: When the Mongol invasions destroyed the institutions of learning in the Islamic heartlands, many learned refugees fled to Delhi, turning northern India for the first time into a major center of scholarship. Dalrymple would do well to look up, for example, information on Taxila University in erstwhile Gandhar state, which was a center for Hindu and Sanskrit teachings attracting students from all over the world, long before Muslim invaders pillaged and destroyed that university and many other cultural icons and seats of learning all over India.

Ironically enough, Taxila town now hosts one of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons sites, with its nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles named after one or the other Muslim invader that wreaked death, destruction, genocide and mass forced conversions on Hindus.