The Pakistani Connection!

This audio recording, courtesy Al Jazeera, reminds us of Kargil, 26/11 and the perfidy of the Pakistani military-jihadi Establishment.

Recording reveals Afghan attack plot

Intercepted calls show Taliban and Pakistan-based group planning June attack on Kabul hotel.

Afghan security officials have released a recording of intercepted phone calls between a Pakistan-based group and Taliban fighters planning an attack on a Kabul hotel.

Twenty-one people died when eight suicide bombers stormed the hotel in a nighttime raid in late June.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reports from Kabul.

Shahbaz Bhatti, RIP

Another voice is silenced with jihadi guns
Pakistan’s Minister for Religious Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated on Wednesday, March 2, a short distance from his home in Islamabad. His killers, three men armed with Kalashnikovs, riddled his body with bullets. One report said the autopsy showed he had been shot 35 times, another put the figure at 25.

That number is really irrelevant. What is relevant is that his assassins are members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Pakistan’s largest daily, Dawn, in a report attributed to ‘Agencies’ and not a staff writer or reporter, says:

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing, saying the minister had been “punished” for being a blasphemer.
Witnesses said the attackers scattered leaflets signed by “The Qaeda and the Taliban of Punjab” at the attack scene, which read: “This is the punishment of this cursed man.”
Taliban militants had called for Bhatti’s death because of his attempts to amend the blasphemy law.
“He was a blasphemer like Salman Taseer,” spokesman Sajjad Mohmand said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani (said) “Such acts will not deter the government’s resolve to fight terrorism and extremism,” adding that the killers would not go unpunished.

Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, was assassinated by his bodyguard, an elite force personnel, Malik Mumtaz Hussain. The killer was showered with rose petals by lawyers when he was produced in court.

The attacks on those seeking amendments to Pakistan’s inhuman and harsh anti-blasphemy law began ever since voices of protest were raised against a poor and illiterate Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, being sentenced to death for blasphemy.
As after Taseer’s assassination, the Left-liberal commentariat in India has been vociferous in denouncing the murder of Bhatti and shedding copious crocodile tears.

The libbers’ grief would have been touching but for the fact it is so much bunk.
Here’s why. The Left-liberal commentariat remained stunningly silent when Bangladeshi dissident writer Taslima Nasreen was being hounded by mullahs and their storm-troopers. There were no voices of protest when Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen goons assaulted her in Hyderabad. There was undisguised glee when the CPI(M) used manufactured mullah rage against Taslima Nasreen to chase her out of Kolkata.

I know it for a fact that many of those who are waxing eloquent on the “assault on freedom of expression and liberalism” in Pakistan had ‘advised’ the Government of India not to extend Taslima Nasreen’s residence permit.

The Left-lib commentariat has been vicious while lashing out at those who have dared criticise the abuse of sharia’h and Muslim Personal Law in India, or sought a uniform civil code to protect the rights of Muslim women. They pitilessly mock at those who denounce the burqa, insisting it’s a matter of “individual choice” which is of course not true. They gloss over the most regressive actions and utterances of the mullahs and accuse their critics of indulging in Islamophobia.

Their hearts bleed for Pakistan’s assassinated Minister for Religious Minorities yet they cold-heartedly denounce those who seek the protection of rights of religious minorities in Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. They are frauds and charlatans.
To see them ‘mourning’ over the killing of Taseer and Bhatti is laughable.

The point is simple. Left-liberal intellectuals who preach tolerance are the most intolerant lot when confronted with contrarian views. For them tolerance means to meekly accept their bunkum.

As for Pakistan, it’s a state that continues to crumble, bit by bit. Jinnah’s dream has turned into a frightening nightmare. But, and tragically so, Pakistanis refuse to acknowledge this simple fact.

Blinded by their hate-India agenda, Pakistan and its citizenry can’t see the terrible reality. The monster they have lovingly nurtured and nourished has turned on them. This is the 21st century version of Frankenstein’s Monster. As in the story, both monster and its master shall die in the end.

Not all the nuclear bombs in Pakistan’s arsenal can save it from its fate. If at all anything can yet rescue the country, it’s the people if they take a stand. But that seems unlikely. Why else would Jamaat-e-Islami blame the CIA for Bhatti’s murder and mainstream newspapers offer space for this amazing allegation? (This question has been dealt with in a post Pak Journalists: Conspiracy Theories and Willful Ignorance on Pakistan Media Watch, to which my attention was drawn by Raza Rumi.)

Pakistan’s enemy is within. Not without.

Taliban's barbarism in name of Islam

What awaits Afghanistan

The August 9 issue of Time featured a cover story on the plight of women in those parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban enforce their barbaric interpretation of sharia’h. The magazine had a shocking picture on the cover: That of 18-year-old Aisha whose nose and ears were sliced off on the instructions of the local Taliban commander. Aisha was punished for running away from an abusive husband and parents-in-law.

UPDATE
The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant Afghan widow by emptying three shots into her head for alleged adultery. Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis. The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an "illicit affair" that left her pregnant.

Aisha’s story is symbolic of persecution of girls and women by the Taliban in the name of Islam. There are innumerable examples of young girls, some just past their puberty, being forced into marriage with members of the Taliban militia to serve as no more than sex slaves for the adherents of Deobandi Islam. Woe betide those girls who try to escape from their life of forced misery.

Jihad Watch provides a glimpse of what it calls “Unspeakable barbarism among the Taliban, the students of Islam.”
Time has raised a fundamental question: What happens if we leave Afghanistan?
That question has been posed from the American perspective, reflecting American concerns over US President Barack Hussein Obama’s plan to pull out troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. But it’s a question that should really bother democracies across the world. The issue raised by Time has several aspects involving the liberty, rights and dignity of Afghans, especially women.

If the Taliban were to regain power in Aghanistan, as it seems likely with the US preparing to hand over control over Kabul to the Generals of Pakistan, then all those who claim to stand for freedom, liberty and dignity would stand indicted of complicity in this crime.

The years when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan will be remembered for the contempt with which Mullah Omar and his men trampled upon women’s rights. Not only were young and old women made to disappear under burqas, they were virtually banished to the darkest corners of their homes. Girls were prohibited from attending school. In the joyless world of ‘pure Islam’, along with music and art, women’s rights disappeared to as they were deemed to be ‘un-Islamic’.

That period of terror came to be symbolised by the public execution of two women in Kabul’s football stadium.

That was in the past. As for the future, a glimpse of what awaits Afghanistan has been provided by AP in this news despatch from Kabul on August 16:

Taliban stone couple for adultery in Afghanistan

By AMIR SHAH

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants stoned a young couple to death for adultery after they ran away from their families in northern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. It was the first confirmed stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in the 2001 US-led invasion.

When the Islamist extremists ruled Afghanistan, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian, and public killings for violations of their harsh interpretation of the Quran were common.

This weekend's stoning appeared to arise from an affair between a married man and a single woman in Kunduz province's Dasht-e-Archi district. The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said the Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend's house five days ago, said district Government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.

They were discovered by Taliban operatives on Sunday and stoned to death in front a crowd of about 150 men, Aqyar said. First the woman was brought out and stoned, then the man a half an hour later, Aqyar said. He decried the punishment, which he said was ordered by two local Taliban commanders.

The ancient practice of death by stoning has been abandoned in all but a handful of countries. It is still a legal punishment in some countries, like Iran, which justify it under Sharia’h, or Islamic law.

Last month, Iran's religious authorities called off the planned stoning of a woman convicted of cheating on her husband. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence -- which would have been Iran's first stoning since 2008 -- was lifted following a campaign around the world.

Two witnesses to the horrific double murder in the name of Islam told the BBC that the Taliban asked the villagers to attend the stoning through an announcement on loudspeakers in the mosque. "There was a big crowd of people... We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive... Some Taliban then came and shot him three times. The Taliban warned villagers if anyone does anything un-Islamic, this will be their fate.''

Anybody for ‘good’ Taliban?

America legitimising Taliban!

It matters little to the 70 countries whose representatives met in London last Thursday to discuss the modalities of striking a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan what Afghans think of the cowardly decision. “The London conference was not about Afghanistan, but about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s re-election campaign,” Mr Aziz Hakimi, who heads an NGO in Kabul, has been quoted as bitterly commenting after the adoption of a $ 500 million ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’. Those who take a less than charitable view of US President Barack Hussein Obama’s much-hyped but utterly hollow AfPak policy and America’s trans-Atlantic ally’s sudden urge to end the Afghan war have promptly dubbed the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ as the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’.

The outrage is understandable. The absurd theory of there being a ‘good’ Taliban with whom the world can co-exist in peace and a ‘bad’ Taliban who should be shunned has finally been put to practice. Worse, the London conference has succeeded in erasing the mythical line separating the ‘good’ Taliban from the ‘bad’ Taliban. Never mind the display of faux displeasure and bogus dismay by the Americans in London; we can be sure that the decision to bribe the Taliban, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with “jobs and homes” — euphemism for sacks of greenbacks — so that they give up their murderous ways, had the Obama Administration’s prior approval. In fact, the proposal, for all we know, may have emanated from Washington, DC. It was unveiled in London.

Mr Mark Sedwill, Nato’s newly-appointed civilian chief in Afghanistan, has been candid enough to admit that the proposed deal will involve reaching out to “some pretty unsavoury characters”. In effect, this means seeking peace with those who have sheltered Al Qaeda’s top leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They will be asked to “cut ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and pursue their political goals peacefully” for a certain price to be settled in cash. The US, at least officially, was opposed to a blanket offer, insisting that it should be limited to Taliban ‘fighters’. But it does not appear to have pushed this point too far, which only suggests that the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ is the outcome of a pre-rehearsed, carefully scripted, exercise.

Ironically, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which worked in tandem with the US in the early-1990s to facilitate the birth and rise to power of Mullah Omar and his evil gang that the world came to know as the Taliban, will now “play a key role in the reintegration process”. Pakistan, cock-a-hoop over the outcome of the London conference, has offered its services to train the Afghan police and security forces. We could soon see the ISI expanding its reach into, and control over, Afghanistan. In a sense, the US has conceded Pakistan’s claim over Afghanistan; Islamabad can now look forward to regaining its ‘strategic depth’ through a puppet regime in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is welcome to believe that he has secured his job, but so did Mohammad Najibullah suffer from delusions of invincibility till he was strung up from a lamp-post with his family jewels stuffed into his mouth. Yet, there’s little that Mr Karzai can do, apart from hope that the American and Nato troops won’t just up and leave but hang around “for at least a decade”. The contours of the ‘reintegration process’ will emerge at a peace jirga which Mr Karzai says he will convene in the coming weeks. But it’s unlikely that he is in command of the unfolding situation: It’s more than likely that Pakistan, backed by the US, will now call the shots, to begin with covertly and increasingly overtly as it gets into the act of reclaiming what it had lost in the aftermath of 9/11. Unless, of course, things go horribly wrong and the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’ turns out to be a non-starter.

For the moment, there is no reason to believe that the proposed deal with the Taliban will unravel, or be an exclusive affair restricted to the ‘good’ and not the ‘bad’ among the wretched lot. It now transpires that regional commanders of the Taliban’s infamous Quetta Shura held secret talks with the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Mr Kai Eide, in Dubai on January 8. The Guardian, which broke the story, quoted officials as saying, “They (the Taliban) requested the meeting to explore avenues for talks. They want protection to come out in public.” A UN official, confirming the Dubai talks, said, “The Taliban made overtures to the Special Representative to talk about peace talks… That information was shared with the Afghan Government and the UN hopes that the Afghan Government will capitalise on this opportunity.” Capitulate, and not capitalise, would be a more appropriate word.

Having decided to sup with the devil, it makes little or no sense to set a standard for those invited to the supper. Ms Hillary Clinton, rather than take recourse to subterfuge, was being honest when, commenting on the London deal, she said, “The starting premise is you don’t make peace with your friends.” Having accepted this fact, the Obama Administration should stop pretending that it is opposed to the idea of a “future Afghan Government that includes allies of Mullah Omar”. Nor should US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke make a show of insisting that the “peace plan should focus on low-ranking Taliban fighters motivated by money, not ideology”. Mr Holbrooke is welcome to insist “That is not on the agenda here. There is nothing happening on it involving the United States” and that “the Taliban’s renunciation of Al Qaeda is a red line” for the US. Such assertions on drawing a ‘red line’ amount to what is referred to as a ‘red herring’. If Pakistan and the Taliban suffer from serious trust deficit, so does the US.

India should be worried — very, very worried — about the US-sponsored attempt to legitimise the Taliban and thereby instal Pakistan’s proxy regime in Kabul. But with a limp-wristed Government taking instructions from the US, there is little that we can do other than fret and fume. There is something extremely sinister about the orchestrated clamour in the New Delhi Establishment, of which certain sections of the media are an integral part, for the resumption of India-Pakistan talks. That the dubious initiative to revive the stalled bilateral dialogue should coincide with the London conference and the appointment of Mr Shiv Shankar Menon as National Security Adviser is not entirely surprising. India’s humiliation at Sharm el-Sheikh will now be taken to its logical conclusion by Mr Manmohan Singh, ably assisted by Mr Menon. If you have any doubts, look at the craven alacrity with which Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna has signalled that the UPA Government is willing to “do business” with a Taliban legitimised by the US.

[This appears as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on January 31, 2010.]

So, Congress wants to cut a deal with Taliban!

By Kanchan Gupta

The venerable Wall Street Journal, which still takes the business of journalism seriously, has carried an interesting news story in its Wednesday’s edition. Headlined “Indian Minister Urges Afghan Political Settlement”, it is based on an interview with Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna, who apparently spoke to the writer, Joe Lauria, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which is now in session. The opening paragraph of the story is truly attention grabbing: “India, one of the biggest investors in Afghanistan, believes there is no military solution to the conflict in that country and that NATO combat operations should give way to a political settlement with the Taliban, according to Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna.”

The newspaper quotes Mr Krishna as saying, “India doesn’t believe that war can solve any problem and that applies to Afghanistan also... I think there could be a political settlement. I think we should strive towards that.” According to the daily, Mr Krishna “dismissed suggestions that India’s growing involvement in Afghanistan is intended to encircle Pakistan, a fear prevalent in some circles in Pakistan. ‘I think that is a baseless allegation,’ he said.” Mr Krishna, in his interview, “charged that Pakistan’s disruptive role in the Taliban insurgency continued”, and said “the military situation in Afghanistan was complicated by the ongoing aid for the Afghan Taliban provided by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency”.

A full reading of the news story and the extensive quotes of the Minister published alongside would reveal that he has not suggested a “political settlement with the Taliban”, at least not in so many words. But it is only logical to deduce that this is what he meant when he talked of a “political settlement”. Given the political reality of Afghanistan where the Taliban are determined not to allow democracy and modernism to take root, and want the country to return to the joyless, dark days when a one-eyed monster called Mullah Omar ruled that benighted nation with ruthless force in the name of Islam, the only people you can strike a deal with and come to a “political settlement” are the Taliban.

“If India can work happily with Great Britain after they having ruled us for so long, it only shows that we can play the game,” Mr Krishna told The Wall Street Journal. That is an allusion which only the naïve would miss or misinterpret. In interpreting foreign policy, each word, especially when uttered by the Foreign Minister of a country, is dissected many times over. And the most casual reading of Mr Krishna’s comments would suggest that they indicate a major shift in the Government’s policy on Afghanistan and a break with the national consensus that has helped its evolution: The Congress-led UPA is now willing to “play the game” and cut a deal with the Taliban.

What Mr Krishna has also signalled is the UPA Government’s rethinking on American involvement in Afghanistan. Till now, although India has steered clear of the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan, it has been a beneficiary of everything that has followed the fall of the criminal Taliban regime and the installation of the Government headed by President Hamid Karzai. New Delhi would not have been able to reopen its mission in Kabul and set up consulates elsewhere had Mullah Omar still been in power. Nor would India have been able to re-establish its people-friendly profile among the Afghan masses through infrastructure development and healthcare projects.

It would be foolish to believe that the ‘Indian presence’ in Afghanistan will remain untouched and undiminished if the US and NATO troops were to abruptly pack up and leave that country. A “political settlement” — or, to put it more bluntly, a deal with the Taliban — may please those in the UPA Government who believe Islamism is a benign idea and Islamists are the natural allies of ‘secularists’, but it will be disastrous for India and its national interest.

Since Mr Krishna is the Minister for External Affairs, we must presume that whatever he has told The Wall Street Journal, as well as the implied meaning of his statement, reflect current thinking in South Block. More important, since Mr Manmohan Singh unilaterally frames foreign policy these days, Mr Krishna’s comments must be taken to reflect the Prime Minister’s views — unless they are refuted or denounced by the Government’s drum-beaters in the media. It may not be entirely coincidental that the Prime Minister’s prescription for redrafting India’s policy on Afghanistan bears close resemblance to the current thinking in Washington, DC.

As US President Barack Hussein Obama watches his much-touted AfPak policy unravel, his strategists work overtime to convert the 21st century’s Great Game into a Grand Bargain. Mr Obama spoke of a ‘surge’ in the deployment of US troops, but there are as yet no signs of 40,000 more Americans being sent to win the war against the Taliban. And while policy-makers in the Obama Administration dither, Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has submitted a ‘confidential’ report — whose contents have been leaked to The Washington Post! — to the American President, underscoring the problems posed by “inadequate resources” at his disposal. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” he has said.

While Gen McChrystal has made a case for the immediate deployment of additional soldiers to bolster the presence of 64,000 troops in Afghanistan, Pentagon appears to be divided on the issue. It would like Mr Obama to take a political call on whether to go ahead with the ‘surge’ or begin pulling out troops from Afghanistan, and then strategise on the next steps to be taken. Interestingly, Gen McChrystal is also believed to have said in his report that “while Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increa-sing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India”.

That’s an understatement, but it nonetheless accurately reflects the Afghan reality which is intimately enmeshed with the reality of Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ policy that visualises Islamabad’s control over Kabul with the Taliban’s help and the imposition of Islamist absolutism. In such a scenario, it is amusing to think of the UPA Government cutting a deal with the Taliban.

[This appeared as the main article on the edit page of The Pioneer on Wednesday, September 25, 2009. The same day, alarmed by the possible fallout of SM Krishna's comments, the MEA spokesperson issued a statement, saying, "The Minister has been misquoted in his interview with The Wall Street Journal." A classic example of the adage -- What did the politician have for lunch? What he said at breakfast! A related news story of interest in The Wall Street Journal which appeared a day later: Dubious Afghan Vote Drove U.S. to Revisit Strategy.]

For god and US

With Taliban gaining a strong foothold in the country's north and northwest, Pakistan faces balkanisation

By Ahmede Hussain

With half of the country about 1000 miles apart, Pakistan, at its very birth, has been a deformed baby. Its founding fathers tried, however unsuccessfully, to unite the nation on the basis of religion, which soon turned out to be futile for the nascent 'Islamic Republic'. Bengalis, which formed the majority of the country, found themselves culturally alienated from the Punjabi-dominated culture that the establishment tried to impose on them in the name of Islam. It gave birth to the Language Movement, which saw disenchanted Bengalis, once one of the driving forces behind the anti-British Pro-Pakistan movement, take to the streets to make Bengali, not Urdu the state language.

The logic behind making Urdu the national language of Pakistan was a warped one--it was seen as the mother tongue of the Muslims, contrary to the 'Sanskritised Bengali', which the Punjabi elite considered the language of the Hindus. They ignored the fact that Urdu had never been the mother tongue of anyone in Pakistan; all the major ethnicities--Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Pakhtuns, Seraikis and Balochs had their own languages; Urdu, on the other hand, was the language of the gentry in Hindu-dominated Uttar Pradesh. The Bengalis eventually broke away from the brutal, oppressive Pakistani regime through a bloody war of independence.

During Bangladesh's Liberation War, because of the struggle's Left lenience, the US helped the marauding Pakistan army with arms and military hardware. At the fag end of the war, the US sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal to stop the war, prompting the Soviet Union to turn up with a nuclear submarine. In fact, Bangladesh's birth has been a major blow to the US foreign policy in the region. To make matters worse, the Saur Revolution in 1978 brought Marxist People's Democratic Party to power in Afghanistan; the overthrow of friendly Shah regime in Iran had added to the increasing anxiety of the US; the war in Vietnam the US feared that the entire South Asia and Far East might turn Red.

So when some of the Afghans took up arms to fight the invading Soviet Red Army, the US poured millions on the Mujahideen cause, arming the Afghan guerrillas FIM-92 Stingers, personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missiles, which made life difficult for the communists. The Afghan freedom fighters, as the western media portrayed them, underwent armed training in Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan was one of the biggest front states in the Cold War. The country later also became biggest casualty of the proxy war between the US and USSR. Dissemination of Jihadist ideology spread in the country fast and it refused to stop even when after the Afghan War I stopped with the brutal execution of Mohammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed President of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Talibans, Afghan students who took lessons in different madrasas across Pakistan, suddenly overpowered the US-backed Northern Alliance; the latter became extremely unpopular among the masses for the rapes, extortions and arsons that its members had perpetrated during its short rule. The first military offensive that the Talibans launched was in October 1994 in Maiwand, Kandahar. Within a year, the group was in control of half the country.

For the next seven years, Afghanistan never made it into the headline of any international newspaper. The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001prompted the US to go to Afghanistan again to slay the monster it had so diligently created. Even though the US-led Afghan War II has ousted the Talibans from power, it has failed to neutralise most of them. Most of the Talibans went into hiding, even though the US won the war, there was no casualty on the Taliban side.
Over the last eight years when the world's attention has been focused on Iraq, the Talibans have regrouped, making a safe heaven in the North-west Pakistan, especially in the picturesque Swat valley. Their ideology knows no boundary and the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans have joined hands in their war against Pakistan, Afghan and the US armies in the region.

Encouraged by the Obama administration's policy of holding dialogues with the so-called 'moderate Talibans', the Pakistan government has held several round of talks with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Taliban umbrella group in the country. According to the deal that has been struck at that time, the Pakistan government will enforce Sharia law in the Swat valley, in lieu of which the Talibans will lay down arms. The law has been enforced in the valley, once famous for its diamond mines, but the Taliban promise of cessation of hostility has never materialised. Instead the Talibans strengthened their position in the northwest, and last week they, led by its area commander Maulana Fazlullah, ran over Buner, which is only 60 miles away from the capital Islamabad.

The group has eventually withdrawn from the area, but what the head of police of the country's Northwest Frontier Province has said last week is even more alarming: The Talibans have infiltrated deep into the country; their presence can be felt as far away as the Punjab, and they may have chemical weapons under their belt.

What is alarming about Pakistan is that because of years of militarisation and corruption all its democratic institutions have fallen apart. Pakistan is now a failed state, tittering on the verge of disintegration. Some recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan have shown that its civil and military administrations are gradually loosing control over the country, an ominous sign for the reason as in its armoury include nuclear weapons. The Pakistan army's handling of the Swat crisis has raised questions about its ability to launch a war on the Talibans.

Demographically speaking, Pakistan is now dangerously divided. In the last elections, the Muslim League (ML), which is centre of the right, has won most seats in Pakistan; the People's Party, ML's secular counterpart, won in Sindh; the Northeast Frontier Province, the hotbed of Taliban activities, has surprisingly elected the Left-leaning National Awami Party.

The US, Pakistan's long time ally, has so far limited its presence into a string of missile attacks on the country's Taliban prone areas. The policy no doubt has failed; more US intervention in the country cannot be ruled out, and it may include direct military presence. Pakistan's fate now hangs in balance--it can be Talibanisation or Balkanisation, or, worse still, both. Only a united effort by the democratic forces in Pakistan can avert the catastrophe that is literary 60 miles away.

Star Weekend Magazine, Dhaka

Taliban a child of CIA & ISI, says Zardari

American dollars, CIA assistance helped spawn Taliban. Why blame Pakistan's ISI alone?

Kanchan Gupta / Comment / May 11, 2009.

That America's CIA collaborated with Pakistan's ISI to set up the Taliban is no secret. Veteran journalist Steve Coll, in his fascinating book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin)had laid bare details about how American 'interests' of the time were best met by handing over Afghanistan to a bunch of Isalmist goons who had studied theology (and hence the name 'Taliban') at Deobandi madarsas in Pakistan. This allowed Pakistan virtual overlordship of Afghanistan. What followed was a nightmare, leading to the spectacular 9/11 attacks in the US and sending Americans scurrying for cover: The chickens of Washington's chicanery had come home to roost.
Every time the CIA's role -- with the US Administration's approval -- in creating the monster called Taliban came up for mention in the past, it would be strenuously denied. In his testimony before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher named the Clinton Administration, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for creating the Taliban: “Let me repeat that: The Clinton Administration, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, created the Taliban." There was studied silence.
Addressing a conference on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia', in London in March, 2001, leading US expert on South Asia said Selig Harrison who was then with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, said the CIA worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's Taliban. "I warned them that we were creating a monster," Harrison said, adding, "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
John Pilger wrote an interesting piece for The Guardian (September 20, 2003):
"For 17 years, Washington poured $4 billion into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war...
CIA director William Casey backed a plan by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and Britain's MI6, with the British SAS trained future al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989..."
Cut to last week. In an interview to NBC's David Gregory (video here), Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was blunt in telling the truth that the US has till now sought to keep out of public discourse -- that America, having helped procreate the Taliban, must share the responsibility for the threat that the monster now poses to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here's a relevant extract from the interview:
Gregory: And is it America's war or Pakistan's war?
Zardari: It's a war of our existence. We've been fighting this war much before they attacked 9/11. They (Taliban) are kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world. We got together, we created this cancer to fight the superpower and then we went away -- rather, you went away without finding a cure for it. And now we've both come together to find a cure for it, and we're looking for one..."
US President Barack Hussein Obama should elaborate on the point made by Mr Zardari. Not that silence will amount to denial -- the Americans (and their CIA) have known to indulge in such activities around the world -- from Korea to Vietnam to Latin America. Given a chance they would do it in India, too. If Manmohan Singh gets to remain Prime Minister after May 16, this could happen sooner than later.
PS: On a lighter note, here's a delightful news story I found on the Russia Today Website:
CIA’s weapon against Taliban - Viagra!
The KGB was once notoriously known for using attractive women as ‘honey traps’ to achieve their goals. Now, as time and technology move forwards, US intelligence has found a new way of exploiting the sexual angle…Viagra.
Cash and weapons are well-tried options but in some cases they don’t tick all the boxes, particularly when trying to garner support among Afghanistan’s tribal leaders, reports The Washington Post.
The newspaper quotes Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company, as saying: “If you give an asset $US 1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone. Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it.”
Amidst the growing Taliban insurgency, CIA operatives are using a wide range of other products and services to win supporters among the locals. Pocketknives, tools, medicine and surgery, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions and travel visas are all among the gifts offered.
“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people – whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra,” as one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours commented.
The Viagra method proves to be especially effective with ageing Afghan chieftains who often have four wives, the maximum number allowed by Koran, and are eager to be at their best.

* * *

I will revert to this issue soon. Meanwhile, here are two links to articles worth reading on the Taliban:

Story of US, CIA and Taliban

The Taliban

PS:
I am thankful to Srikanth Nalla for pointing out that the story of the CIA luring Afghan informants with Viagra appeared on alternet.org three months ago. Actually someone had sent me the snippet from Russia Today and I was keeping it for appropriate use. Zardari's assertion offered the opportunity.
The alternet.org story was published under the headline "The CIA's Bizarre Plan to Win Hearts and Hard-ons in Afghanistan" and appeared on February 11, 2009.

Has Musharraf fled Pakistan?

Comment / Kanchan Gupta / May 7, 2009.

When Gen Pervez Musharraf resigned from his post as President of Pakistan on August 18, 2008, there was speculation that he would seek asylum in a Western country, most possibly the US. Another version had it that the Saudi monarch had arranged for him to shift to a palatial building in either Jeddah or Riyadh. Yet another story said that the Sheikh of Dubai had made arrangements to ‘receive’ him. But nothing like that happened. Gen Musharraf, a cigar-smoking, fun-loving man stayed put in Army House, Rawalpindi, making occasional appearances in public to hold forth, in his pompous style, on internal and external issues. He visited India for the India Today conclave and quite frankly made a fool of himself by talking utter rubbish.
On April 19 this year, when Pakistan began showing signs of crumbling before the Taliban’s onslaught, Gen Musharraf left for a ‘private visit’ to Saudi Arabia. From there he left for a ‘lecture tour’ of Europe, and hasn’t been heard of since then.
It would appear that Gen Musharraf was worried about the Taliban getting him. Which is ironical, considering that he contributed in no small measure to the growth of the Taliban in Pakistan and collaborated with the Taliban in Afghanistan to try and topple the Karzai regime. A recent story in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, elaborates on this point.
On Thursday, May 7, PTI put out an interesting report datelined Islamabad. It is reproduced here:

Musharraf unlikely to return to Pak in the near future

PTI/Islamabad
As Pakistan is gripped by a volatile situation following a crackdown on Taliban, question marks hang over whether former President Pervez Musharraf, on a trip to Europe, will return back home or not.
Musharraf is not expected to return to Pakistan from a foreign lecture tour in the near future, said his close aide Maj Gen (retired) Rashid Qureshi.
Qureshi, a former spokesman of Musharraf, confirmed that the former President would stay abroad for a longer period of time but had no information on when he would return home. "I have no idea how long the former President will stay abroad. Though I am still in touch with him, (I) have no exact idea on this count," Qureshi told The News daily. Musharraf, who survived two assassination attempts, is believed to be on the hit list of several militant groups. There has been considerable speculation in political circles about him leaving Pakistan for an unspecified period of time.
Sheharyar, another aide of the former military ruler, said Musharraf is currently in London and would be travelling to the US from there. Musharraf would then travel back to Europe, he said. On Tuesday, a three-member judicial review board of the Lahore High Court had ordered the release of two JuD leaders – Amir Hamza and Mufti Abdur Rehman – and extended the detention of Saeed and Ahmed by 60 days.
In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, the UN Security Council had declared JuD a front for a terror outfit.
JuD leaders were placed under house arrest on December 12 last year under the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance, which allows a person to be held for up to 90 days. The review board has subsequently extended Saeed's detention twice.

Asif Ali Zardari is Barack Hussein Obama's blue-eyed boy as Hamid Karzai falls from grace

It pays to let Taliban and Al Qaeda flourish. Or else Hamid Karzai would not have fallen from grace with the Americans!



Comment by Kanchan Gupta / May 6, 2009.

In a story headlined "OBAMA'S WAR: A New Approach to Karzai -- Administration Is Keeping Ally at Arm's Length; Skepticism of Afghan Leader Shapes Policy", filed by Rajeev Chandrasekaran, Tuesday's Washington Post makes a couple of interesting points:

Today, as the two leaders meet in the White House, that skepticism drives the administration's evolving policy toward Afghanistan and the battle against Taliban insurgents, a conflict whose outcome will in part define Obama's presidency.
In assessing the nearly eight-year struggle from Washington, senior members of Obama's national security team say Karzai has not done enough to address the grave challenges facing his nation. They deem him to be a mercurial and vacillating chieftain who has tolerated corruption and failed to project his authority beyond the gates of Kabul.
"On all fronts," said a senior U.S. official, "Hamid Karzai has plateaued as a leader."

These need to be taken note of along with the great faith that US President Barack Hussein Obama has placed in Pakistan's dissolute President Azif Ali Zardari and rewarded him for allowing Pakistan to descend into chaos and the Taliban to occupy vast tracts of land where they have let loose a reign of terror in the name of enforcing shari'ah. Zardari's prize: $ 7.5 billion in American aid. The money could also be candyfloss to keep Zardari happy as the Americans plot with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif whose PML (N) could join the Pakistani Federal Government with him as the Prime Minister.
It is interesting to note that while Obama is 'reaching out' to Pakistan and appeasing those who are responsible for the rapid march of the Taliban, he has been slyly introducing measures that can only be described as anti-India.

Fleeing Swatis describe horrific scenes

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Swat Valley, escaping the horrors inflicted by the Taliban who have been enforcing 'true Islam' in areas taken over by them with the help of the gun and terror.

The joyless world, bleak and dark, created by these erstwhile students of Deobandi madarsas, is what is upheld as the cherished desire of those who believe in radical Islam's slogan, "Democracy is the problem. Islam is the solution!" Here is a report filed by AFP from Peshawar:

PESHAWAR: Shop owner Saeed Khan has already buried one child killed in fighting between the Taliban and government forces in northwest Pakistan. He cannot bear to lose another.
So the 50-year-old bundled his wife, son and daughter onto a bus in the Taliban-infested town of Mingora in the Swat valley and hurried to the city of Peshawar, hoping for a future free from further bloodshed.
‘I lost my son, who was a police officer in Swat, in a suicide attack in Mingora early this year. I buried him in front of my house,’ Khan told AFP, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘I don’t want to dig graves for my daughter and son in Mingora. That is why I left the area... His death broke me. Tell me where should I go and from whom should I seek justice?’
Local officials say more than 40,000 men, women and children have packed up and fled Mingora since Tuesday, fearing that Pakistan’s military could unleash a fresh ground and air assault against Taliban fighters.
The bedraggled refugees, some leading goats and cattle through the streets, are seeking safety for their loved ones, as the Taliban claimed to control 90 per cent of the former ski resort and tourist getaway, once favoured by Westerners.
‘I am immediately leaving the city with my wife, mother and four kids,’ said taxi driver Ali Rehman, 46.
‘I don’t really know my destination and destiny. My family and I need protection.’
At the bus stop in Peshawar — the capital of the North West Frontier Province — exhausted and anxious people told stories of horror as they poured out of vehicles carrying old bags, blankets and bundles of clothes.
Zarina Begum, 40, pleaded for help as she staggered off a bus.
‘A mortar hit my house and as a result, I lost one of my eyes. Please take me to hospital, I want medical treatment,’ Zarina begged.
‘They (Taliban) killed my husband, they slit his throat after accusing him of spying... I escaped Swat because I don’t want my son to be killed under the same circumstances. I don’t want to receive his decapitated body.’
The government had hoped that a peace deal agree in February would placate hardliners trying to impose a repressive brand of Islam, but instead the deal appears to be in tatters.
Clashes have flared in recent days throughout Swat, where wealthy Pakistanis and foreigners used to enjoy the breathtaking mountain scenery from plush hilltop hideaways, or cruise down the ski slopes.
Now, gunfire rings out in Mingora, where armed Taliban patrol the streets.
‘I’m really scared of going to Swat. Whenever I see Taliban, they look like vampires,’ said 25-year-old shop keeper Salman Mujtaba, who lost family members in a suicide attack near Mingora.
‘I will never ever go back to Swat. It has lost its beauty.’

Barbarians at barbarians' doorstep

'No wonder that others consider Muslims barbarians'
By Humayun Gauhar
The Nation (Pakistan)
May 3, 2009


While divorce is the absolute and undisputed Islamic right of a woman, last month in Ghotki, Sindh, which is not under Taliban control, a jirga ordered that the ears, lips and nose of a woman and her parents to be cut off for demanding divorce on grounds of torture by her husband. Such punishment is completely, totally and utterly un-Islamic and no less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out. Where is the State? Where is the famous independent judiciary? Where are the human rights activists? Where are the lawyers? Where is the media? Where is the civil society? Where are the religious scholars?
Last month in a place called Kala Dhaka, NWFP, also not under Taliban control, a couple was shot dead on the orders of a jirga for the 'sin' of eloping. Is this punishment any less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out? To get married by choice is also the absolute Islamic right of any adult man or woman and no one can stop it, including parents. An English language newspaper reported on its front page: "The jirga was held on the intervention of the political administration to review its order of killing Alia Bibi and Azeemul Haq, but it upheld its decision and they were shot dead." Political Tehsildar Jamshed Khan told: 'I regret the killing, but what can I do. There is no other law except the jirga system in this area'." No other law? After 62 years? Where's sovereignty? Where is the State? Where is the newly independent judiciary and the rest of the shebang? Why have they not been able to end such barbaric practices? Because jirgas and panchayats have been made part of the system. Parliament should have struck this down for being un-Islamic but it seems that un-Islamic customs take precedence over Islam in this Islamic Republic of ours. It's legalised barbarity is no less than some of the barbaric practices of the Taliban that have been legalised in Swat and Malakand. We don't realise that while the jirgas and panchayats maintain the iniquitous status quo through barbarity, these Taliban too have a limited or no understanding of Islam and use religion as a tool for achieving power. Are we ashamed of tolerating such barbaric practices in the name of custom and for spoiling the name of Islam? No wonder that others consider Muslims barbarians.
Legalised barbarity in our rural and tribal areas has been ignored by us, the privileged, because it never touched us. But now that we imagine that Taliban barbarity might soon arrive at our doorsteps we are going hysterical. You think that such people can change society? All we can do is moan in drawing rooms and groan in seminars, columns, television and blogs wondering why our country is going to hell in a hand basket. We raise all sorts of issues but never our class's barbarity. It's because we are still mentally colonised.

Taliban in India: They are already here!

Forget Swat, fear Taliban amid us
Kanchan Gupta

There is, we are told, disquiet among Muslims over Justice Markandey Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, while rejecting the petition filed by Mohammad Salim, a student of Nirmala Convent Higher Secondary School in Madhya Pradesh, for quashing the school’s regulation requiring students to be clean shaven. The student’s counsel, Mr BA Khan, a retired judge, argued that Article 25 of the Constitution guaranteed protection to Salim to pursue his religious practice of keeping a beard and the school regulation was violative of the right to freedom of religion. He said forcing the student to shave his beard was against “his religious conscience, belief and custom of his family”. Mr Khan, who made an elaborate case linking the student’s faith and his beard, does not sport one himself. This prompted Justice Katju to point out, “But you don’t sport a beard!”

While rejecting Mohammad Salim’s petition, and rightly so, the Supreme Court bench made two points. First, if Salim found the school’s rules abhorrent and unacceptable, he could join some other institution. “But you can’t ask the school to change the rules for you.” Second, “If there are rules, you have to obey. You can’t say that I will not wear a uniform I will (wear) only a burqa.” Justice Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, was presumably directed against those who wish to imitate the Taliban and their subversion of the secular state and destruction of civil society in the name of practising Islam and enforcing Islamic injunctions.

This week we had a glimpse of what that means, thanks to a two-minute video shot with a cellphone in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and smuggled out by those who are alarmed by the prospect of the Taliban’s ruthless enforcement of “religious conscience, belief and custom”. The video showed a 17-year-old girl, a resident of Kabal, being held face down on the ground by men while a Taliban commander flogged her with a leather strap. The girl kept on pitifully begging for mercy and screaming in pain — “Leave me for the moment... you can beat me again later...” But this did not have the slightest impact on her tormentors: The flogging continued as a large group of men stood around, watching intently at this public display of Islamic fervour.

The girl was punished, the Taliban claimed, in accordance with shari’ah for stepping out of her house without being escorted by a male family member. But this may not be the real reason: Another account said she was falsely accused of violating shari’ah after she refused to marry a local Taliban commander.

The public flogging of the teenaged girl has revived memories of the Taliban executing Zarmeena, a mother of seven children, in Kabul’s sports stadium on November 17, 1999. In more recent times, two women were executed by the Taliban outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan in July last year. In Swat, too, women have been punished in a similar manner. On November 26, 2008, Bakht Zeba, a former member of the Swat district council, was dragged out of her home by the Taliban and brutally assaulted before being shot dead. Her crime, according to shari’ah as laid down by the Taliban: She criticised the ban on girls attending school.

The global outrage over the public flogging of the teenaged girl is believed to have ‘shaken’ the so-called civilian Government of Pakistan into ordering an inquiry. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to whom many jihadis owes a huge debt of gratitude for interceding on their behalf and ordering their release from prison when Gen Pervez Musharraf was in power, has tauntingly dared Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to arrest the barbarians of Swat and put them behind bars.

That, of course, is a tall order for an effete regime which shamelessly capitulated to the Taliban’s jihadi terror in Swat Valley and signed a ‘peace agreement’ with Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, one of the many organisations that are collectively referred to as the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, on February 16. As part of that deal, mullahs have been allowed to impose shari’ah and set up Darul Qaza or qazi courts, replacing the Pakistani justice system, such as it is.

Ironically, the ‘peace agreement’ has been endorsed by the US in preparation of President Barack Hussein Obama opening negotiations with the ‘good Taliban’. Just how good the ‘good Taliban’ is has been shockingly exposed, though not for the first time, by the smuggled video of a teenaged girl being flogged. For those who may still nurse doubts, here’s some more visual evidence: The photograph published along with this article shows a young Taliban fighter with the hands of a man that were chopped off for an unstated crime. In the land of shari’ah, these would be considered no less than trophies to be proud of.

It is this Taliban and Talibani mindset that we should be scared of; both are already there in our midst. Mohammad Salim is not alone in wanting to emulate those who flaunt their “religious conscience, belief and custom” to the exclusion of a secular state’s enlightenment. What the Taliban are practising in Swat Valley and in the wastelands of Afghanistan is being preached by mullahs in India. And they are doing so openly. A casual reading of the fatwas listed on Darul Uloom Deoband’s Website, http://www.darulifta-deoband.org, will prove this point. Here are some randomly selected examples:

Fatwa 1587/1330=L/1429: “The best purdah for woman is that the palms and no part of her body and adornments is exposed, ie, the whole body is covered from head to toe. If it is possible to see through the purdah, then the eyes also should be covered...”

Fatwa 1141/1141=M/1429: Family planning is haram and unlawful in Islam. You should apprise your wife of the commandment of shari’ah...”

Fatwa 691/636=D/1429: It is not a good thing for women to do jobs in offices. They will have to face strange men (non-mahram) though in veil. She will have to talk and deal with each other which are the things of fitna (evils).”

Fatwa 1386/227=TL/1429: “It is unlawful for women to go out after applying perfume.”

From here to chopping off the thumbs of women who use nail varnish is a very small step.

The Pioneer | Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | Editorial Page Main Article