Don't defame the armed forces

How many men in khaki die defending India every day?

Major killed, Col injured in encounter with LeT in Poonch
Jammu, July 13: An Army Major was killed and six other personnel including a Colonel injured in Mandhar sector of Poonch in an encounter tonight with Lashkar-e- Tayyeba terrorists. Major Amit Phunge was killed in the operation while Col.Ajay Katoch of 47 Rashtriya Rifles was injured when the terrorists resorted to heavy fire and lobbed grenades, official sources said. The Army team had gone to the spot following information that about 15 Pakistan-based terrorists had sneaked in. The Army cordoned off the area and launched a search operation. The injured included Dinesh Kumar and Satinder Kumar, both Signalmen, Naik Jasbir Singh, Sepoy Samir Kumar and Rifleman Dasharat.

It’s now considered fashionable and politically correct to berate the security forces and accuse them of violating human rights. The Delhi commentariat, whose ill-informed members are often indistinguishable from jholawallahs with a certain fondness for candles, having run out of abuse to heap on Hindus and organisations that speak up for Hindu rights, has now decided to pour its bile on our men in khaki. Real and imagined instances of alleged ‘encounter killings’ are being recalled, professional human rights activists are being interviewed, separatist leaders are being flown down to Delhi and panel discussions are being organised with the sole purpose of painting the security forces in the bleakest of colours. It would seem suddenly the Army has become a four-letter dirty word and there’s no crime that jawans cannot be held guilty of having committed.

Last Sunday I was invited to a popular television show in which participants were supposed to discuss whether the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 — subsequently amended in 1972 — requires amendments to make the security forces operating under this law accountable for their actions. We need not go into the specifics of who said what — much of it was predictable: The politician from Jammu & Kashmir described the law as “draconian”; the Kashmiri separatist accused the ‘Indian’ Army of “killing Kashmiri children”; the human rights activist said the colour khaki makes boys (she meant militants) see red and hence should be banned; and, the person representing Delhi’s exalted commentariat pompously demanded that “the law must go”. Two retired Generals of the Army and a Brigadier valiantly fought back. As usual, I was in a minority of one.

The point to note was that none of the critics of the Army and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act had a clue about the specifics of the law, nor did anyone offer to validate sweeping allegations of rights violations. Instead, what we heard were bizarre figures being cited and implausible charges being levelled. To be fair, the host repeatedly made it clear that the purpose of the show was not to attack or belittle the Army, but to debate the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. But that served little purpose because the critics were either not interested in this particular issue or they were keen to push their own agenda. In the process, nothing of substance could be discussed and debated.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, I ventured to suggest, was not meant to place the Army or the security forces above the law of the land but to empower them to function effectively while dealing with situations that have defied resolution through normal means — intervention by civilian authorities, action by the police and call for calm by the political class. The Army cannot be expected to function in a vacuum and requires to be given autonomy of decision and action, I argued, hence the need for the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

This fetched a volley of furious reactions: The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act gives the Army and security forces the licence to kill; it militates against the spirit of democracy; its provisions fly in the face of rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The Kashmiri separatist thought he was being profound when he said, “The right to life is inalienable, it cannot be violated,” and then went on to allege that “thousands are being killed by the Indian Army”. For a moment I was tempted to point out that having repudiated his allegiance to the Republic of India he had also forfeited the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. But I desisted from doing so because it would be meaningless trying to engage him in a debate on the provisions of the very Constitution which separatists like him find sufficiently repelling to want to secede from the Union of India.

I had taken with me some notes, which proved to be of no use when the discussion drifted into irrelevant issues and bogus allegations. But some of the details, culled from data sheets hosted on the South Asia Terrorism Portal, need to be placed on record, if only to nail the lies of those who seek to defame the Army and other security forces drafted for counter-insurgency operations. These essentially deal with fatalities suffered by our men in uniform.

For instance, 5,962 security forces personnel have been killed by terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir between 1988 and July 5, 2010. This year alone 45 security forces personnel have died in the State fighting militants. There are other insurgencies being fought by the security forces. Since 1992, as many as 939 officers and jawans have lost their lives in Manipur; 783 in Assam; 81 in Meghalaya and 22 in Mizoram. There’s more: 1,226 security forces personnel have died fighting Maoists between 2005 and 2010; this year, till July 5, we have lost 204 men in uniform to Maoist bullets.

Don't these lives count for anything? Do men who don khaki automatically surrender their right to life guaranteed by the Constitution? Are young men and women who join paramilitary forces and the Army no more than cannon fodder? And, more importantly, what about their human rights? Their right to dignity? Are these meant to be scoffed at? To be spat upon? To be violated with impunity?

The parents of a young Army Captain who went down fighting terrorists in Kashmir Valley earlier this year recounted during the show how their son was not felled by the militants’ bullets, but by a bullet fired from a nearby house. His mother, wiping her tears, said in a firm voice: “I have no more sons. If I had any, I would have sent them to join the Army. Since I have none, I am willing to offer my services.” The Kashmiri separatist slyly retorted, “We have heard thousands of such stories.”

There are two points that merit mention. First, contrary to propaganda, despite the so-called ‘sweeping provisions’ of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the security forces virtually operate in terrorist and insurgent-infested areas with both arms tied behind their backs. Or else the fatalities would not have been so high. That’s commonsense. Second, nobody, least of all the Army, condones wilful violation of human rights. But allegations cannot be deemed to be actionable unless proven to be true. Since 1990, the security forces have faced 1,511 cases of human rights abuse. These were investigated by various agencies, including the National Human Rights Commission, and 1,473 were found to be false. In the remaining cases where culpability was established, 104 men have been punished.

A last point. There’s nothing called a pretty war fought with roses and daisies. Collateral damage is inevitable in counter-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations. It’s an asymmetrical war being fought out there by men who have dedicated their lives to the service of the nation; we must get real and learn to live with the consequences. Stuff happens.

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on July 11, 2010]

Sinister face of Islamism

Horrific bloodshed in Sufi shrine, mosques

Muslims kill Muslims in name of Islam!

On July 2, suicide bombers attacked Daata Darbar, an ancient Sufi shrine in Lahore, killing at least 44 people who had come to seek blessings. For the first time in 927 years, langar was stopped at the shrine. Some news reports say there were three suicide bombers, others say there were two.

Earlier, on May 28, two Ahmedi mosques in Lahore were attacked by suicide terror squads, owing allegiance to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, resulting in the death of at least 95 worshippers who had gathered for Friday prayers.

There have been similar terror attacks on mosques and shrines in Pakistan, including a mosque in Rawalpindi frequented by Army personnel and their families -- a 10 year old boy was killed, along with scores, in that attack.

Instead of looking within and coming to grips with the grim fact of Islamist terrorists turning on Muslims in Pakistan, most Pakistanis and the Government of that country continue to live in denial. The Jamaat-e-Islami blames Americans and Blackwater for killings by Islamist terrorists. Others blame India!

Arifa Moen, 32, a teacher in the central city of Multan, told the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times: "Washington is encouraging Indians and Jews to carry out attacks in Pakistan." If a teacher has such perverse views, what will Pakistani children learn? And who will save Pakistan's children from the monsters who kill so remorselessly?

And while denial rules the collective Pakistan conscience, the terrible slaying of Muslims by Muslims continues, ironically in the name of Islam.

Worse, if you dare criticise the outrages, you are labelled an Islamophobe.

Here's my commentary on the issue:

"We Muslims are one community... (my goal was to) injure people or kill people... One has to understand where I’m coming from, because… I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.” It’s unlikely the American judge presiding over Faisal Shahzad’s arraignment was quite prepared for such a candid admission of Islamism über alles by the would-be Times Square bomber. But this is not the first time that the jihadi impulse has been so baldly stated by those who believe that bloodshed serves the cause of Islam — the more horrific the bloodletting, the greater the piety of the perpetrator of what others consider to be both a crime and a sin.

The Fort Hood killer had no qualms about killing fellow soldiers; the underpants bomber was prepared to die to bring down a trans-Atlantic passenger plane, and Faisal Shahzad was comfortable with the idea of blowing up innocent people in New York’s fashionable Times Square. Before them, Mohammed Atta al-Sayeed had led a dozen hijackers on a suicide mission to terrorise America; in London, young Muslims of Pakistani origin had stuffed their backpacks with explosives and pulled the trigger in crowded compartments of underground trains.

We in India have known for long what the West has discovered to its horror after the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center were felled on 9/11. Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s sophistry was useful distraction from the Muslim League’s coarse politics of separatism premised on the fundamentals of Islamic exclusivism, intolerance bordering on hatred of the ‘other’, the ummah’s presumed right to rule the world and hoist the banner of Islam atop every capital.

Tragic as the violence that accompanied partition may have been, far worse has since been witnessed. Islamists from Pakistan have struck again and again, in more ways than one, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. When excessive attention is focussed on 26/11 because it was jihad brought live on television screens, their other crimes tend to be glossed over. For instance the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir Valley. Or the subversion of the Indian Muslim’s mind.

Jinnah was given to lofty speech if not noble thought, but the lesser among the ranks must have sniggered when he declared on August 11, 1947, in a speech that is often quoted by those untutored in Islamism: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state... You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

That state is today rapidly sinking into the quagmire of Islamist fanaticism. Pakistan’s citizens have neither ceased to be Hindus and Muslims “in the political sense” nor has the Pakistani state steered clear of religion. The degeneration began within months of the Quaid-e-Azam’s death; a decrepit, derelict Islamic Republic of Pakistan, variously described as the “most dangerous place in the world” and an “international headache”, is now engulfed in the very jihad which it thought would destroy India.

Jinnah was able to wrench out of India what he despairingly (some would say, disparagingly) described as “a moth-eaten Pakistan”; what remains of Pakistan is being gnawed at from within by those who are so consumed by hate that they find the idea of Muslims cohabiting with Muslims an intolerable idea. Nothing else explains why suicide bombers should target worshippers at Daata Darbar, an acient Sufi shrine in Lahore, drenching a saint’s dargah with the blood of the innocent last Thursday, or kill believers gathered at a Rawalpindi mosque. Since by law Ahmediyas are not considered to be Muslims in Pakistan and treated as heretics by mullahs, their slaughter while at prayer, as it happened on May 28, is considered to be nothing extraordinary in the ‘land of the pure’.

So, when Faisal Shahzad says, “One has to understand where I’m coming from,” he means one has to look at Pakistan to understand what drives Pakistanis to kill with such ferocity and cite Islam as the reason. But Pakistan alone does not breed such monsters; look around and you will find that rare is the Muslim-majority country untainted by the violence propagated by Islamism and perpetrated by Islamists. Secular Egypt thought it would render the seeds of Islamism planted by Syed Qutb sterile by executing the man who called for “offensive jihad” as the true assertion of the Islamic identity. But the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen has flourished, carrying forth Qutb’s message that “true Islam will transform every aspect of society, eliminating everything non-Muslim”, and that Islam is the “ultimate solution”.

It would be a folly to believe that every Muslim subscribes to Qutb’s interpretation of Islam or that behind every Muslim name lurks a terrorist waiting for an opportunity to strike. For evidence of the deep schism that sets Faisal Shahzad and his ilk apart from those who just want to get on with their lives and live in peace we just need to look at Pakistan. For every suicide bomber there are thousands who are repelled by his act of terror, who weep at the sight of so much blood being shed for nothing. Muslims in Mumbai, let us not forget, refused to allow the bodies of Ajmal Kasab’s slain colleagues to be buried in their graveyards. Such examples abound.

Yet, it would do us no good if we were to gloss over the reality. Islamofascism exists and those who subscribe to it are unfortunately also those who are fashioning policy and influencing society in Islamic countries — individually and collectively. The Organisation of Islamic Conference bears evidence to this: Every time it demands the criminalisation of criticism of Islamist excesses and crimes against humanity because it allegedly “defames Islam”, it strengthens those very elements whom it should be condemning before anybody else does so but won’t because it conflates Islamism and Islam and views the former as a triumphalist, faith-driven assertion of the latter.

It’s easy to demonise critics of Islamism as ‘Islamophobes’ and call for global legislation to curb free speech. But if conceded, this will embolden the Faisal Shahzads and the suicide bombers and the fanatics for whom hate is a virtue and tolerance a sin. Rather than lash out at those who find Islamism abhorrent, its champions should ask themselves a simple question: After “eliminating everything non-Muslim”, what shall happen to ‘everything Muslim’? The terrible sight of Muslims killing Muslims in Pakistan, which was supposed to be the homeland of the Indian sub-continent’s Muslims, should provide a clue to the answer to that question.

[The comment originally appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on June 4, 2010. (c)]

For women, eyes must be covered

The joyless world of Deobandi fatwas

Is it necessary for a woman’s eyes to be covered while in observance of purdah? Is it necessary for her hands to be covered while in observance of purdah? Is it necessary for her feet to be covered while in observance of purdah?

The best purdah for a woman is that the palms and no part of her body and adornments are 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: 1587/1330=L/1429)

Can women wear gents clothes? Is it permissible for women to wear jeans and T-shirts?

There are some Hadith that relate curse for such women who adopt the resemblance of men. Therefore, wearing clothes of men is not correct for women. (Fatwa: 771/730=B)

Can women use perfume or ittar because they get more sweating (pasina)? Can they use or Islam doesn’t give permission to use?

Women can use perfume provided they are not passing by non-mahram in this state. While going out of house using aromatic perfume is not lawful. One should avoid using such perfumes which contain alcohol. (Fatwa: 604/L=212/tl=1431)

Is it allowed for a Muslim woman to cut and colour her hair for her husband? Is it allowed for a Muslim woman to do such style as Western woman for her husband?

It is unlawful and haraam for a woman to cut the hair of her head (even) though for her husband. But, she can colour it with colours other than black. The dye should not be thick having layers which may prevent water to reach to the surface of the hair. Imitating the Western-styled women and adopting their resemblance in matters against sharia’h is unlawful. It is not lawful even for husband. (Fatwa: 1347/1347=M/1430)

I would like to know if it is permissible for a Muslimah to work as a translator for a tribunal.

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 others which is fitna (evil). A father is committed to provide maintenance to his daughter and a husband is asked to provide maintenance to his wife. So, there is no need for women to do jobs which always pose harm and mischief. (Fatwa: 691/636=D/1429)

Can Muslim women in India do Government or private jobs? Shall their salary be halaal or haraam?

It is unlawful for Muslim women to do job in Government or private institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without veil. (Fatwa: 577/381/L=1431)

These are but a few fatwas issued by the learned muftis, the ulema, the scholars who teach young men with impressionable minds the real, true meaning of Islam and how it governs the daily lives of the faithful. And they have been issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband. More precisely, they have been issued by Darul Ifta, which according to this Islamic seminary at Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, the second largest in the world after Cairo’s Al Azhar, “is one of the most significant departments of Darul Uloom” to which “people from across the world pose questions on religious and social matters”.

We are further informed that “Darul Uloom has issued fatwas from its inception but when questions started coming in bulk and it was hard for the teachers to reply them in their part time, Darul Uloom set up this department (Darul Ifta) in 1892”. Darul Ifta has so far issued “more than seven lakh fatwas”. The department claims, and we have no reason to disbelieve the learned men (they have to be men as women are not deemed to be learned enough to decide on theological issues; they can merely ask and must abide by the response) that fatwas issued by Darul Uloom are held in “high esteem in and outside the country; besides the masses, the law courts in the country also honour them and consider them decisive”. In brief, they are not mere advisories but binding on Muslims. At least that’s what those issuing the fatwas believe, and would like us to believe.

It would be facetious to suggest and erroneous to presume that the more than seven lakh fatwas issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband, pertain only to how women should deport themselves and live their lives according to the tenets of Islam. From Islamic beliefs to world religions, from deviant sects and groups to innovations and customs, from the Quran to the Hadith and Sunnah, from purity to prayer, from death and funeral to business and industry, from international relations to penal code, and of course women’s issues, Darul Uloom, Deoband, has a firm view on almost every imaginable aspect of our lives, including whether it’s alright to use a razor to shave the most intimate parts of our body.

Seeking guidance from Darul Uloom, Deoband, a person asks: “Is it halaal to take a policy in LIC according to sharia’h in Islam?” The learned muftis answer: “LIC policy is unlawful due to being based on interest and gambling.” (Fatwa: 565/565/M=1431) Another person seeking enlightenment writes in: “At present I am working in a private limited company as an accountant. I want to know about bank jobs. Can a Muslim take a job in a bank or insurance company?” The scholars provide their considered reply: “The job of writing and calculating interest based work in conventional banks and insurance companies is not lawful for a Muslim.” (Fatwa: 466/466/M=1431) “Dear mufti sahab,” a person who wants further clarification writes, “Is it allowed in Islam to work as a life insurance agent?” Firm and unrelenting, mufti sahab sternly replies: “Life insurance contains interest as well as gambling and both these things are unlawful as per Quran and Hadith. Therefore, working as agent of life insurance is helping in sin, so it is prohibited by sharia’h.”(Fatwa: 762/571=L/1430)

Faced with a court order, a person seeks guidance: “I had a factory which was closed down because of sealing in Delhi. Now the court has ordered me to pay compensation (on which they have charged interest) to the non-Muslim labourers who worked there. Since my financial position is not very good, I would like to ask whether I can pay this amount from the bank interest that has accumulated in my bank account or out of zakaat?” To this profound query the muftis reply: “Interest amount of bank or zakaat cannot be given to non-Muslim labourers.” (Fatwa: 1178/1178=M/1430)

Such then are the views of Darul Uloom, Deoband, which are assiduously inculcated among those who study there. These views are then propagated at the tens of thousands of madarsas where Deobandi mullahs are employed to teach young children. It would be worthwhile to remember that the Government of secular India spends taxpayers’ money on funding these madarsas.

Islamic human bombs

This is the photograph of a Taliban commander Abdullah alias Abu Waqas, who was presented before the media in Karachi, Pakistan, on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. According to the police, Abdullah was involved in recruiting female suicide bombers and training them.

Islam, many clerics have claimed, prohibits terrorism and definitely disallows the horrific practice of jihadis strapping themselves with explosives and pulling the trigger in a crowded place, killing themselves as well as innocent men, women and children.

But there are other clerics like the notorious Yusuf al-Qaradawi who proudly proclaim that while Christians, Jews and Hindus have nuclear bombs, Muslims have 'human bombs'.

(See my earlier blog on Islam's stockpile of human bombs.)

What is alarming is that jihadis are believed to be recruiting women who volunteer to become 'breast bombers' -- explosive planted in their breasts that do not show up in security scanners.

Recently, a 13-year-old Pakistani girl called Meena told the BBC her shocking story (Bombs and beatings: Life among the Taliban) of how her own family tried to turn her into a human bomb.

Truth is often horrifyingly tragic, more so when it is the truth about Islamism and jihad.

On February 26, suicide-bombers struck guesthouses in Kabul popular with Indians on assignment to Afghanistan. Here's the AP report:

Suicide bombers strike in heart of Kabul; 16 dead
By AMIR SHAH and RAHIM FAIEZ (AP) – Feb 26, 2010
KABUL — Insurgents struck in the heart of the Afghan capital Friday with suicide attackers and a car bomb, targeting hotels used by foreigners and killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens, police said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai said were aimed at Indians working in Kabul.
The Taliban has long opposed India's involvement in the country and its ties to the Northern Alliance that helped the U.S. oust the Taliban regime in 2001 and formed the backbone of Karzai's government.
Six Indians were killed in the attacks, a spokesman for the country's foreign ministry said, revising the number from the ministry's original estimate of up to nine Indians dead. An Italian diplomat and a French filmmaker were also among the dead. Three Afghan police were killed, and six more officers were among the 36 people wounded, Afghan government officials said.
The four-hour assault began about 6:30 a.m. with a car bombing that leveled a residential hotel used by Indian doctors. A series of explosions and gunbattles left blood and debris in the rain-slicked streets and underscored the militants' ability to strike in the heavily defended capital even as NATO marshals its forces against them in the volatile south.

And here's a report from The Daily Telegraph of London, in which jihadis reiterate their claim about a huge arsenal of 'human bombs':

Taliban 'ready to unleash 3,000 suicide bombers in Pakistan'
The Taliban has claimed it is ready to unleash 3,000 suicide bombers in Pakistan in protest at military operations and American drone attacks in its tribal areas.
Dean Nelson in New Delhi
The Daily Telegrapg 09 Mar 2010
In the last few weeks the Taliban's overall military commander for Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is Mullah Omar's deputy, was captured in a joint intelligence raid in Karachi by Pakistani and American agents.
Several members of the 'Quetta Shura', the movement's ruling council were later captured in the city, while the group's Pakistani leader Hakimullah Mehsud was believed to have been killed in a missile strike by an unmanned Predator drone. Earlier this week, Mullah Omar's son-in-law, a former minister in the last Taliban government was also arrested.
The threat was issued after one of its leaders claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb which killed 13 people outside an interrogation centre in Lahore where militant suspects are questioned.
Eight officials from the Federal Investigation Agency were those killed when the bomber detonated a Toyota Carolla packed with 1300 pounds of explosives between the office and a local religious school.
It was the third time the centre had been targeted and marked a return to its suicide bombing campaign after a number of serious setbacks for the Taliban leadership.
The bombing in Lahore served notice that the movement retains the ability to strike throughout Pakistan, while Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Taliban, served notice that it had the capacity to intensify its campaign.
"We have around 3,000 more suicide bombers. We'll target all government places, buildings and offices," he said in a call to a news agency.
More than 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year as suicide bombers and 'fedayeen' commandos struck in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Peshawar. The figure marked a 48 per cent increase on 2008, reflecting a furious Taliban reaction to Pakistan Army operations against Taliban militants in South Waziristan and Bajaur Agencies.
Analysts believe the success of the army offensive in South Waziristan and their recent successes in arresting senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders has damaged the militants' ability to strike as regularly as they did last year.

I came across an interesting news story on Thursday (February 18) which I am posting below:

Wife of UK airliner bomb plotter gives testimony

LONDON (AP) -- The wife of a man convicted of plotting to bomb trans-Atlantic flights has testified in a British court that she was horrified to learn of his plans – but insisted she had no advance knowledge.
Cossor Ali told a London trial she was disgusted to be later shown a suicide video he had recorded in preparation for the attacks. The 28-year-old Ali is accused of failing to disclose information about her husband's terrorism plans, an offense which carries a punishment of up to five years in jail.
Abdulla Ahmed Ali – the plot's ringleader – was previously convicted and jailed for a minimum of 40 years, one of the longest sentences ever handed out by a UK court. He hoped to down at least seven passenger jets, and kill thousands, using liquid explosives. His wife denies withholding information.

To forget would be to forgive

Nandimarg massacre of Pandits: Even toddlers were not spared by Islamists.

Twenty years ago this past week, Hindus were forced to flee Kashmir Valley, their ancestral land, by Islamic fanatics baying for their blood. Not a finger was raised by the state in admonition nor did ‘civil society’ feel outraged. In these 20 years, India has forgotten that outrage, a grotesque assault on our idea of nationhood. So much so, nobody even talks of the Kashmiri Pandits, driven out of their home and hearth, virtually stripped of their identity and reduced to living as refugees in their own country, any more.

Our ‘secular’ media, obsessed as it is with pandering to the baser instincts of Muslim separatists, waxing eloquent about the many sorrows of India’s least of all minorities, arguing the case for rabid mullahs and demanding ‘greater autonomy’ for Jammu & Kashmir so that the Tricolour doesn’t fly there any more, has not thought it fit to take note of the 20th anniversary of the new age Exodus. Our politicians, who salivate for Muslim votes and are willing to go to any extent to appease ‘minority sentiments’ — including approving the automatic though absurd inclusion of Muslims in the list of BPL beneficiaries of the Indian state’s munificence in keeping with the Prime Minister’s ‘Muslims first’ policy — would rather pretend this particular event never happened. Our judiciary, which endlessly agonises over terrorists and their molls being killed in Gujarat, has not thought it fit to set up a Special Investigation Team to identify the guilty men of 1990 and bring them to justice. It would seem Hindu pride, Hindu dignity and Hindu lives are irrelevant in this wondrous land of ours.

Tragically, Hindus have no sense of history: Those who have come of age in these 20 years, we can be sure, are ignorant of how the Kashmir Valley was cleansed of its Hindu population through a modern day genocide. To forget, it is often said, is to forgive. But should we forgive those who committed this monstrous act of criminal misdeed? Should we forget that the Government of India has disowned the Hindus of Kashmir Valley? Should we rationalise the remorseless attitude of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits?

***

Srinagar, January 4, 1990. Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a Press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu & Kashmir’s secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.

In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir Valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference Government abdicating all responsibilities. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans.

Reports of killing of Kashmiri Pandits begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.

Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.

Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: “Be one with us, run, or die!”

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Mr Jagmohan arrives to take charge as Governor. Mr Farooq Abdullah, whose Government has all but ceased to exist, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order. But it fails to have a deterrent effect.

Throughout the day, Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.

As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: ‘Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-o-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-o-Akbar); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Sharia’h); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

The Pandits have reason to be fearful. In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of noted lawyer Pandit Tika Lal Taploo by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989. Soon after that, Justice NK Ganju of the Srinagar High Court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into pieces at a saw mill.

In villages and towns across the valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Pandits. With no Government worth its name, the administration having collapsed, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.

And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: To flee their homeland to save their lives. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.

* * *

After the Holocaust, Jews reflected on their persecution and resolved, ‘Never again.’ Yad Vashem is not only a moving memorial to the atrocities committed against Jews, it is also an archive that documents specific details, including names, addresses and photographs, so that future generations neither forget nor forgive their tormentors. Twenty years after the persecution of Hindus began in Kashmir Valley, we don’t even know how many men, women and children were stripped of their rights; how many were raped, slaughtered and maimed; their names; and, what happened to those who survived. Barring those living in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi, in the hope that some day they will be able to return to Kashmir Valley with their dignity and safety assured. Deep within they know, and the rest of us know, that is never going to happen.

And thereby hangs a tragic tale of callous Hindu indifference.

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on 24/01/10]

Waxing Crescent, waning Cross

Google came up with a rather intriguing, if not ingenious, logo for Christmas this year: A stooping date palm decorated with fairy lights straddling one of four islands with sail boats dotting the blue sea which formed the backdrop. There was much excited tweeting on Google’s Christmas logo. I thought it was ghastly that someone somewhere should have supplanted the traditional Christmas tree with a date palm. Others pleaded it was creativity at work. Creativity my foot, I argued; you can’t take liberty with tradition and icons of faith, never mind that the Christmas tree as we know it was most probably part of ritual winter solstice celebrations in pre-Christian Europe: According to one version, the evergreen conifer was a symbol of fertility for the pagans which has survived the ‘civilising’ impact of Christianity. A friend suggested that it was a Judean date palm and thus an apt motif for the occasion; after all, Jesus was born not in Europe but in Judea and date palms are a common sight in Samara.

Google had another explanation for the visual accompanying its ‘Happy Holidays’ message: It was a picture postcard from a tropical island and meant to convey warmth and good cheer. However, the warmth and good cheer disappeared when a second picture postcard showing three snowmen was superimposed on the earlier visual a couple of days later. That was followed by a third postcard, showing a lakeside house lit with fairy lights, a pier, a boat and snow-capped mountain peaks in the background. Even as I write this column on Christmas eve, a fourth picture postcard, depicting a Tolkienian landscape with fireworks in the sky, has surfaced. Google, no doubt, will justify this tomfoolery, but I find it distasteful if not downright subversive. Just as I find being politically correct and wishing people ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’ obnoxious. There’s no reason to be mindful of the Crescent when it’s the season of the Cross. If someone were to send me a card wishing me ‘Happy Holidays’ on Basant Panchami, Vijaya Dashami or Deepawali because being secular is fashionable, I would promptly throw it into the wastepaper basket and probably look through that person the next time I met him or her. The last time I was in London I bought a piggy bank simply to thumb my nose at those who find it offensive to Muslim sensitivities. Tolerance cannot be reduced to pandering to bigotry, nor is there any reason why we should bother whether the OIC is displeased. Similarly, if celebrating Durga Puja in Rome offends the Vatican, so be it.

The issue, however, is far more important than bogus secularism and fake concern for those who wallow in manufactured grievances and imagined victimhood. Europe, which is slowly waking up to the threat posed by assertive Islam — the Swiss vote against the construction of Islamic minarets and the rising popularity of Dutch politician Geert Wilders are manifestations of the fear of Eurabia becoming a reality — would do well to ponder over Pope Benedict XVI’s homily delivered during Christmas Eve midnight mass in St Peter’s Basilica. “There are people who describe themselves as ‘religiously tone deaf’. The gift of a capacity to perceive god seems as if it is withheld from some. And indeed our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today’s world, the whole range of our experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for god, to make us ‘tone deaf’ towards him,” the Pope said, adding, “…For most people, the things of god are not given priority, they do not impose themselves on us directly. And so the great majority of us tend to postpone them. First we do what seems urgent here and now. In the list of priorities god is often more or less at the end. We can always deal with that later, we tend to think.”

The Pope was not exaggerating but merely pointing out the reality as witnessed, most noticeably, in Europe where faithlessness has become the leitmotif of modernism and the public expression of faith is frowned upon as militating against the principles of a secular state presided over by its deracinated elite which is more comfortable with Prada than religiosity and believes spirituality is so much hocus-pocus meant for the gullible, unwashed masses. The smart set which reads newspapers on Kindle would rather invest millions in the stock markets than donate money to the local church. The plate is still being passed around at Sunday mass, but the pews are increasingly empty. Christmas stories are no longer about reconnecting with — and rediscovery of — faith, but falling sales of Barbie dolls. That Britons throw away food worth 60 million pounds during Christmas tells the story of Britain’s moral decline; it’s symptomatic of all of Europe.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Church of England should find itself in penury. It has been deserted by adults and is shunned by teenagers. The Daily Mail says the Church of England now plans to “target children as young as two in a desperate recruitment drive… Senior bishops have privately admitted they are comprehensively failing to connect with teenagers and children”. My friend Daud Haider, the dissident Bangladeshi poet who lives in exile in Berlin, had recently come home for dinner. He told us amazing stories of how churches are being leased out on weekends to serve as night clubs as there are no congregations to cater to and no funds to keep them from falling into disuse and disrepair. Materialism and the concomitant death of spiritualism, coupled with a strange craving to be seen as endorsing ‘multiculturalism’, which has come to mean repudiation of one’s Christian identity 1 hence ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ — have extracted a terrible toll. The crisis of faith is, in essence, the existential crisis that Europe faces today. A limp-wristed, notionally Christian Europe is now confronted by muscular, robust Islamism and doesn’t quite know how to respond.

The crisis is not Europe’s alone. A similar crisis is beginning to take shape in India where urban elitism bereft of values and ethics rooted in faith is seen as both trendy and politically correct. With Wendy Doniger telling The Hindus An Alternative History and Kancha Ilaiyah proclaiming that 2009 marked the arrival of Post-Hindu India, and the commentariat lavishing praise on both, we could be headed the same way as today’s Europe. The Pope may have described Christians who have strayed from their faith as the “religiously tone deaf”, but the expression is equally applicable to Hindus who are persuaded by the bunkum that has brought Europe to its knees. If there is no cause for immediate alarm it is because the vast majority of Indians neither need Wendy Doniger to ‘interpret’ Hinduism for them nor do they believe that they live in post-Hindu India.

[This article originally appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer.]

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

Iran discovers new Zionist conspiracy!

Following are excerpts from an Iranian TV report on swine flu, which aired on IRINN, the Iranian news channel, on May 6, 2009:
Reporter: "Every so often, diseases develop in different corners of the world, and disappear after wreaking damage to the tune of billions of dollars. After avian flu, the time has come for pigs. It is a disease that afflicts pigs, but because of the physiological similarity between humans and pigs, this disease afflicts humans as well. Now, the main actors in this great movie must go into action. The director has fulfilled his role very well, and gathered the boldest and most famous actors for this blockbuster.
"The international news networks air the trailers of this movie for free. With the outbreak of this disease, the American president went into action, and said in a sensational speech: 'My government has consulted health officials, and they have not advised the closing of the U.S. borders.'
"In his speech, Barak Obama mentioned a medicine called Tamiflu - but what exactly is Tamiflu? Who are the compassionate manufacturers of this medicine? This great pharmacist is none other than Rumsfeld, the former American secretary of defense. He is one of the shareholders, and an active and influential member on the board of directors of Gilead Science, which is the main provider of medicine for this disease.
"It should be noted that the Gilead Sciences is a Jewish company. Its name, in Hebrew means "holy place," and all its shareholders are Zionists."
"The US is One of the Few Countries With an Arsenal of Viruses
Dr Ali-Reza Mehrabi, ShaidBeheshtiUniversity: "The United States is one of the few countries with an arsenal of viruses. It is one of the countries with the largest arsenals of smallpox.[...]
"It is interesting that last year, [Rumsfeld] bought, if I'm not mistaken, 18 billion dollars worth of new Gilead stocks.[...]
"If we accept the assumption that work was conducted in a laboratory in Mexico - whether in a pig farm or some other place - the mere fact that this substance found its way out, even if by mistake, shows that the U.S. is conducting experiments in a peripheral country, rather than on its own soil. In this case, the U.S. might have lost control."

Deoband fatwa Website goes offline

Kanchan Gupta / Note / May 13, 2009.

In my post of Tuesday, April 07, 2009, headlined 'Taliban in India: They are already here!', I had reproduced some of the fatwas listed at Darul Uloom Deoband's fatwa Website, wwww.darulifta-deoband.org, designed and maintained by a Muslim living in the US -- or so the site claimed. The Darul Ifta Deoband site was hyperlinked to Darul Uloom Deoband's official Website www.darululoom-deoband.com. Madarsas which are inspired by Darul Uloom Deoband, and are known as 'Deobandi madarsas', are the most prolific breeders of Taliban in Pakistan.
I have just received an e-mail alerting me that the Darul Ifta Deoband Website cannot be accessed. I tried to access it, but the browser kept on returning a 'not found' message.
It is possible that the site has been shut down for routine maintenance. But it is also possible that Darul Uloom Deoband has decided not to place its fatwas in the public domain, lest others get to know of what it has to say about women's 'place' in society, the 'duties' of a good Muslim, the 'importance' of covering a woman in a burqa before letting her step out, if at all, of her home, and other such theological issues of great importance.
Just in case the latter is true, I have decided to paste below a statement from the main Darul Uloom Deoband Website, before it 'disappears', denying that the great centre of Islamic learning ever issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. It may be recalled that 'secular' media and their patrons in India's political establishment had gone to town claiming that Darul Uloom Deoband had issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. Here goes the Darul Uloom Deoband statement:

News (Darul Uloom - Deoband)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darul Uloom Denies the Fatwa About Cow Slaughter Published in Newspapers


Darul Uloom Deoband: 26/04/1429 H

Mufti Habibur Rahman Sahib, the head of Darul-Ifta Darul Uloom Deoband, has refused explicitly the so-called fatwa published in newspapers explaining that he had issued no such kind of Fatwa which pronounced slaughtering cow, selling and eating its meat as haram.
The Mufti Sahib declared the news published in Dainik Jagran on 26 April 2008 as baseless and false.
Making it clear, he said that a person from Muzuffarnagar (UP) had asked over the phone weather the act of those slaughtering cow secretly and eating it was Islamically lawful or unlawful. He replied him over the phone saying: "In the light of the shari'ah, eating meat of cow is permissible but people of the States where cow slaughter is banned should avoid it as slaughtering cow and eating its meat stealthily is unsuitable and wrong."
He said that the mediapersons should have rightly understood the context of my reply but they instead misinterpreted it and blamed that slaughtering cow and selling its meat was haram. They overlooked the legal prohibition to which I referred.
Actually, it is the habit of the media persons not to present news in its original context but they add to it ifs and buts on their own. This mentality of them is reflected here as well. I request them to present the news in a right way and also mention the legal prohibitions according to which it is absolutely wrong to violate the law; slaughtering cow and selling its meat is legally unlawful.

Issued by:

Office of Mohtamim

Darul Uloom Deoband.

A monstrous experiment

Nasir Abbas Mirza
Remote madrassas in Pakistan may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued


Take a little boy and incarcerate him in a remote madrassa. Keep him far away from the rest of the world and bar any interaction with humanity. Indoctrinate him with a distorted version of a religion and tell him that he does not belong to this world. Teach him about the fanciful world that awaits him in the heaven, and that in order to attain that he has to destroy everything that stands in his way, including his own body.

By the time he is sixteen, the child would have become a drone: an un-manned man. Instead of a lively teenager, we would have a robot in living tissue ready to detonate on remote orders.

At full steam ahead in Pakistan, this is a monstrous experiment in brainwashing and it is on a par with, if not worse than, Nazi Germany’s eugenics. They did it in the name of science; here, it is being done in the name of God and religion. On a very large scale, this is a hugely successful experiment in which nurture triumphs and nature takes a beating.

Are we really prisoners of our genes? Or are we prisoners of our parents, teachers and societies? From what we are witnessing, genetic influences are secondary to environment.

Behavioural scientists have Nobel Prize-winning research material in Pakistan. Freud, Skinner or Pavlov would have worked nights to study this. Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the sound of a bell; this young man would blow himself up at the sound of a bell — his phone bell. “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man,” goes the old Jesuit saying.

It may be sinister, the Jesuit saying, but the fact remains that nobody understands the vulnerability of a child’s brain better than priests. On the one hand, witness the vigilance of parents when they let a maulvi sahib into their house to teach the Holy Quran to their children; and, on the other hand, there are parents in the same society who ‘give’ a child to madrassa-running priests not until he is seven, but until he is 14 or 15 or forever.

‘Give’ is a generalisation. Given our attitudes towards birth control, an overabundance of young children is a natural outcome. In population growth, we are not too far behind the 6 percent population growth rate of our role model country, Saudi Arabia. There is an endless supply of young boys for madrassas. There are abducted, orphaned or abandoned young boys. Then there are parents who are too poor to bring up a child. They simply sell or donate their boys for tabligh or jihad or for any other religious duty. The religious pretence converts their dastardly act into a noble deed.

Priestly abuse of children has been going on for as long as there have been priests and children. But never has this been done in such an organised manner as is the case here in Pakistan. This abuse (aside from the pervasive sexual abuse) spells disaster. Just step out of a large city and all you would see around you are hundreds and thousands of little children — from six to thirty-six months old. Until these kids are of an age to observe the ways of their elders, they live and behave like untrained dogs. That’s the real Pakistan and no military or political leader is having sleepless nights over this.

Mismanaging the national security state has kept our governments so busy that social uplift has been low on their priorities. For sixty years we gave all our money for security and today we don’t even have that. Even in a perfect world, our leaders couldn’t have done anything about it. The job at hand is beyond their capabilities. Just take a roll call of our leaders in the last thirty years. They have been such a simple and basic lot that protocol and property left them no time for anything else.

Will this ever change or improve. No, not for another thirty years. That’s thirty years after we do the needful: that is, a drastic reduction in the number of children we produce, modern education for all on war-footing basis and to do this, schools and First World-standard teachers. So start counting once all this is in place.

From Zia to Zardari, and all others in between, no one even acknowledged that we have an overpopulation problem. Such is the fear of backlash from religious conservatives.

Here’s the equation: a population that breeds likes rats equals poverty equals despair equals cannon fodder for religious organisations and terrorist networks. Were these children better off working at motor workshops or making carpets? Perhaps the ILO or an NGO can answer this question. They seem awfully quiet on something much worse than child labour.

There’s a reason for that: in matters of faith or religious beliefs, no one dare object. All kinds of evil, illegal or inhuman practices can be given sanction if a particular religion or sect proves that it is part of its belief. You could be dying in a hospital but no one would give you a hallucinogenic drug to save your life. But, hey, you can get official approval for the use of cannabis or other hallucinogenic drugs if you prove that use of these substances is part of your religious belief. In 2006, the US Supreme Court did just that.

Our children face a frightening future not because of the Taliban (they are just a handful) but because of the ultra-conservative wave of religion that has swept this country. Remote madrassas may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued.

Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director who specialised in frightening people, was once driving in Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, “That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen.” It was a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted, “Run, little boy! Run for your life!”

The writer is a freelance columnist

(Courtesy: Daily Times, Pakistan, May 11.)

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.

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.

Age no bar in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's religious police, or mutaween, officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, prevented young girls from escaping from a school building that had caught fire. Reason: They were "not properly attired". The screaming, frightened girls were pushed back into the blaze, to die. Fifteen of them perished. At least this 8-year-old was spared a life of misery and pain.
8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI
CAIRO (AP)

An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday. Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages.
The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a "clear and unacceptable" violation of human rights. The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.
A court in the central Oneiza region previously rejected a request by the girl's mother for a divorce and ruled that the girl would have to wait until she reached puberty to file a petition then.
There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage. Though a woman's consent is legally required, some marriage officials don't seek it.
But there has been a push by Saudi human rights groups to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon. One Saudi human rights activist Sohaila Zain al-Abdeen was optimistic that the girl's divorce would help efforts to get a law passed enforcing a minimum marriage age of 18.
"Unfortunately, some fathers trade their daughters," she told The Associated Press. "They are weak people who are sometimes in need of money and forget their roles as parents." It was not clear if the man received money for the divorce settlement. The man had given
the girl's father 50,000 riyals, or about $13,350, as a marriage gift in return for his daughter, the lawyer said.
The 8-year-old girl's marriage was not the only one in the kingdom to receive attention in recent months. Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or young boys including a 15-year-old girl whose father, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate.
Saudi Arabia's conservative Muslim clergy have opposed the drive to end child marriages. In January, the kingdom's most senior cleric said it was permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who believe they are too young are doing the girls an injustice. But some in the government appear to support the movement to set a minimum age for marriage. The kingdom's new justice minister was quoted in mid-April as saying the government was doing a study on underage marriage that would include regulations.
There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty marriage gifts or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.
And here's another good news story:

In April, a Yemeni girl, age 8, was granted a divorce from her 28-year-old husband who abused her physically and sexually, after she sued her father and spouse. That was the first time a girl had petitioned Yemen’s courts for such a thing. Some groups estimate that as many as 50 percent of Yemeni marriages involve children.

An anonymous donor from the Emirates gave the girl, Nojoud, enough money to pay her way out of the marriage. Shariah law actually called for her abusive husband to be awarded, not prosecuted. But for Nojoud, that was a small price to pay for her freedom.

Mush should fear exploding mangoes!

Recall how Zia made his exit!
Mush should fear exploding mangoes
News from Pakistan provides the much-needed levity in these otherwise dreary times when we live in fear of rampaging Gujjars demanding their community be excluded from the Hindu caste system, declared a tribe and thus be pushed down the social hierarchy that is sustained by the cynical politics of caste identity practised by every political party, the BJP included. Over the past week, two major stories have emanated from Islamabad.
The first was based on comments by AQ Khan, the man who stole nuclear know-how from European countries to build an 'Islamic Bomb' and then sold technology and hardware to rogue states, among them Iran, Libya and North Korea, made to mediapersons during a funeral. Khan, who has been under house arrest ever since the Americans went public with his illicit trade, has now claimed that he peddled blueprints, centrifuges and the glowing stuff at the behest of Gen Pervez Musharraf. The Americans, who are still shoring up their favourite Pakistani, have responded with a banal statement that neither confirms nor refutes Khan's assertion. "We have not changed our assessment that AQ Khan was a very major and dangerous proliferator. He sold sensitive nuclear equipment and know-how to some genuinely bad actors," an unnamed US official has told ABC News.
Here are two facts about the 'dangerous proliferator'. Khan travelled to Pyongyang, Tehran and other such destinations, hawking technology to build nuclear bombs, after Gen Musharraf had been appointed Army chief by a gullible Nawaz Sharif, whom he was to later depose in a coup, and during his early years as Pakistan's military dictator. Second, Khan would use military aircraft, which cannot take off without clearance from what we refer to in this part of the world as 'highest level', for his foreign travel from Pakistani bases under the Army's control. For Gen Musharraf to pretend astonishment over Khan's nasty business is as laughable as the Americans feigning outrage over the father of the 'Islamic Bomb' wanting to spawn its siblings with other mates. Khan has merely said what everybody has known for long, including Gen Musharraf's minders in Washington, DC.
The other story which has had the Pakistani media in a tizzy for the past few days, and has been strangely ignored east of Wagah, is about Gen Musharraf preparing to flee Pakistan to seek shelter in another country. Colourful details, all of them strenuously denied by Gen Musharraf but not the Government of Pakistan, of which he is the notional head of state, have appeared in Pakistani newspapers -- about how he has had a raging row with Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, his hand-picked successor as Army chief; how the military he once headed has now turned against him; and, how a plane has been kept parked and ready to fly off with him into the sunset. Americans have swiftly come to the aid of their beleaguered 'staunch ally', letting it be known that he continues to enjoy their support.
But wait. Let's not rush to conclusions. Pakistan has a long history of Army chiefs viciously biting the hand that once lovingly fed them; of Americans dumping favourite dictators like cads dump women after bedding them; of politicians selling their souls to the devil for loaves and fishes of office; and, of people swinging from one extreme to another. Gen Ayub Khan came to power in October 1958 because the Americans didn't want the Pakistanis to elect a Government. He went on to famously declare, "We must understand that democracy cannot work in a hot climate. To have democracy we must have a cold climate like Britain." His job done, Gen Ayub Khan was given the boot by Gen Yahya Khan, who, after seizing power, remained closeted with 'General Rani' (a name that should ring a bell here) as Gen Tikka Khan let loose his rapacious soldiers on the Bengalis of East Pakistan.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, still smarting under Pakistan's humiliation in 1972, sacked the military's top brass and appointed Gen Zia-ul-Haq as Army chief. To stop Bhutto from going ahead with his 'Islamic Bomb' project, the Americans facilitated an Army coup on July 5, 1977, which led to the installation of Gen Zia as 'Martial Law Administrator'; less than two years later, on April 4, 1979, Bhutto was executed by his favourite General. The Americans went on to use Gen Zia to wage the Washington-sponsored jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. With the law of diminishing returns setting in, his utility became questionable. On August 17, 1988, a US-supplied C-130 Hercules, carrying Gen Zia and the American Ambassador, Arnold Lewis Raphel, exploded soon after take-off from Bahawalpur. Raphel's death was what Americans describe as 'collateral damage'. Gen Zia's grieving widow claimed he had been killed "by his own"; whiskey-induced cantonment gossip placed the blame on "exploding mangoes".
It's mango season this time of the year and Gen Musharraf, who has darkly hinted in his memoir, In the Line of Fire, at what may have caused Gen Zia's plane to explode, would be stupid not to worry about his future now that the Bush presidency is nearing its end. If a crate of mangoes, gifted to another military ruler, could have exploded in mid-air, what's there to stop something from blowing up in his face? Given the ignominious exit made by Pakistani Generals who seized power to 'set things right' in Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Neverland, he may put up a brave face but deep within would be an extremely troubled man.
To rid himself of stress in his trying time, he could order a copy of Mohammed Hanif's hugely entertaining novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, published by Random House and due for release later this week, and look for insights between the lines into the way the Pakistani military, the ISI and the Americans work in tandem to get rid of Generals -- and lesser individuals -- who have outlived their utility. He may think he knows it all, but he would be surprised to find out what all he doesn't know. For starters, he could begin by checking whether Jinnah's portrait in his living room blinks at him. The rest he can read in Mohammed Hanif's account of the days leading to Gen Zia blowing up with exploding mangoes aboard a C-130 Hercules 20 years ago.

Coffee Break, Sunday Pioneer, June 1, 2008.
(c) CMYK Printech Ltd.

Islamofascism: Muslims in denial mode

Hyderabad bombing: Killed by Islamists but Muslims won't admit it!

Islam’s enemy within
At a recent conference on radical Islam, attended by scholars from India and South-East Asian countries, it was irritating to hear professors from Jamia Millia Islamia repeating the canard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks being an elaborate conspiracy hatched by the Christians (of America) and the Jews (of Israel) to “defame Islam” and use the globally televised images of the imploding twin towers as justification for the US-led “war against Muslims”. The first time I heard this astonishing fiction was in Cairo where I had arrived soon after the terrifying attack, led by an Egyptian, Mohammed Atta, on the World Trade Center, one of the symbols of American power. The war in Iraq had not yet begun but the Taliban hoodlums, including Mullah Omar, were fleeing Afghanistan to save their lives. The fall of a ‘model Islamic state’ and the walloping the ‘soldiers of god’ were receiving from the invading kafirs had greatly distressed my friends in the Muslim Brotherhood who had wrongly believed that the flattening of the twin towers would signal the liberation of Cairo, not Kabul. Instead, they were shocked to see a tsunami of anger striking Arab shores. Rather than accept the 9/11 attacks had proved to be counter-productive, they chose the path of denial. Whispered allegations, anonymous e-mail and stories buried in the inside pages of Arabic newspapers began to do the rounds, spreading the patently false claim that the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon had been planned and executed by the Americans and the Israelis. To substantiate this absurd claim, there were further absurd claims — Jews did not report for work on that fateful day, only the Mossad could have carried out an operation of this scale, the CIA had ensured the hijackers would not be frisked, etc. I found the assertions mildly repugnant and largely amusing, attributing the fiction to the street Arab’s lack of access to facts.
Seven years later, when I hear that absurd claim being repeated, that too by those who should know better, I don’t feel amused, but irritated. And so it happened at the conference on radical Islam when a professor of Jamia Millia Islamia questioned the authenticity of events as they unfolded on September 11, 2001, two of his colleagues nodding their heads vigorously in approval. My irritation gave way to anger when he went on to suggest that analyses of video images of the hijacked aircraft being flown into the twin towers showed they were “studio-generated”. Only someone who has undergone lobotomy would say something so stupid in public. But more than being silly, there’s a sinister purpose to such comments and they should not be attributed to a lobotomised brain; Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil would vouch for this. A lie repeated again and again, as Paul Joseph Goebbels proved through word and deed, tends to be believed by the masses. Islamofascists, both at home and abroad, who peddle the myth that ‘Islam is the solution’ and thus see nothing wrong with the ghastly crimes committed in the name of Islam, would naturally take to Goebbelsian propaganda tactics like a duck takes to water. Fiction propagated slyly at conferences and seminars, mentioned between the lines in newspaper articles, and slipped into Friday sermons by mullahs after the jumma namaaz, acquires a certain legitimacy and is soon perceived as fact.
We have seen this happen on more than one occasion. When Hindus were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the Kashmir Valley by killer squads of Islamists who indulged in rapacious depredations and revelled in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, an insidious campaign was launched, pinning the blame on Mr Jagmohan, then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir: He was accused of telling the Hindus to flee the Valley. Strangely, this fiction was believed by the secular intelligentsia which, in any event, is desperate to clutch at straws to absolve Islamic fanatics of their crimes and eager to paint Islamist marauders in the most glowing of colours. Similar tactics were — and continue to be — used in the wake of the slaughter of kar sevaks in Godhra and to tar Hindus by blaming them for the violence that followed. After the bombing of commuter trains in Mumbai, killing 187 people, it was blatantly suggested by our homegrown Islamists that the massacre was the handiwork of either “Government agencies” or “Hindu organisations”.
They are now using the same tactics in their response to the jihadi attack on Jaipur on May 14, in which at least 80 people were killed and many more maimed. The Hindustan Express, a Delhi-based Urdu newspaper, pontificated in an editorial comment on May 16, “Apart from elements like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Al Qaeda or HuJI (who may possibly be involved in these explosions) why should we not think also of those international powers and agencies who are known to the Government for their discomfort towards Indo-Pak peace?” Why not, indeed! The Jamaat-e-Islami’s biweekly journal, Daawat, was nauseatingly sly in its comments on May 19, “The truth cannot be out without changing the formula for the probe into the bomb blasts. Instead of going through the formality of a probe and connecting the links, we will have to see which group of people gets political benefit out of such incidents.” The only group that stands to benefit from the bloodbath in Jaipur, the Jamaat-e-Islami, whose mullahs pretend to be as innocent as Goldilocks, needs to be told, comprises those who subscribe to the slogan, “Islam is the solution.”
These are the people who are at ease with explosives being strapped to an eight-year-old girl and the button on the remote control being pushed as she reaches out to take a chocolate from a soldier (not an American) in Iraq. They are untouched and unmoved by the sight of the blood of innocent victims, as was spilled on the streets of Jaipur, of their perverse ideology. They are fully aware of their criminal misdeeds, but they want us to believe they are not to blame. And if you dare point a finger at radical Islam and its army of Islamofascists, they will accuse you of indulging in Islamophobia.
It’s time we called their bluff. The only other option is to subjugate ourselves to those who know no mercy and meekly accept Islam as the solution.

Coffee Break / Sunday Pioneer / May 25, 2008