Pakistan: The War of Drones

Here's a tale of two Pakistani self-haters and defeatists who enjoy every moment of hating themselves and their country: Dr. Pervaiz Hoodbhoy and Asma Jahangir.
Whenever there is a writing project in any newspaper anywhere in the world where they want to bash Pakistan using a Pakistani name, they call one man in Islamabad: Dr. Hoodbhoy. He spews more venom against Pakistan than Hamid Karzai and Bal Thackery - an Indian Hindu terrorist - combined.
Asma Jahangir, another defeatist who went to India to shake the hands of Narendar Modi, the killer of 2500 Indian Muslims, has just volunteered to Hindustan Times to confirm that Mumbai terror was a Pakistani conspiracy [see below].
Here's a letter sent by a Pakistani young man to Dr. Pervaiz Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani self-hater, and received no reply. And then watch Asma Jahangir's video.
Recommendation: We need to start a witch-hunt in Pakistan to cleanse our academia and public life of such self-haters and defeatists who poison the minds of young Pakistanis about their homeland. Such academics and human rights activists should not be allowed to hide behind the freedom of expression.
TO: Dr. Pervaiz A. Hoodbhoy
Professor and Chairman
Physic Department
Quaid-e-Azam University,
Islamabad.
E-mail: hoodb...@lns.mit.edu

NATION WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU

Dear Dr Pervaiz Hoodbhoy Sahib,

I have been reading your articles and research reports and watching your interviews on different TV channels on different issues. I have tried to go through your articles again and again to satisfy myself that whatsoever you are speaking in the name of freedom of speech is just an ordinary criticism and could be a difference of opinion.
But I regret to say that I am unable to do so. In dozens of your articles and interviews you have never ever said a single positive thing about Pakistan and have always tried to portray a false picture of Pakistan, according to which Pakistan is a failed state. Whether it's the issue of extremism, or Pakistan's nuclear assets, or Pak-India relations, or if there is an issue of western and Indian allegations, you have always come up with your nasty ideas to prove to the world community that whatever the enemies of Pakistan are saying, you are more than happy to say it from them, using a Pakistani identity, which is an act for which you feel no shame.

I am not sure if Pakistanis have seen your massive one-man campaign against Pakistan where you have alleged that we are not capable of retaining our nuclear assets. Or, now, after the Mumbai attacks, when even the cheapest of Pakistani politicians have shown some kind of patriotism and unity for the sake of Pakistan, at this crucial time again you are trying to prove what the enemies of Pakistan are trying to do. I fail to understand what motivates you except gaining popularity in West or even in India.

India is a so-called democracy where low caste Hindus, Christians and Muslims are burned alive [a ritual unique to India, doesn't happen anywhere else], where Hindu extremists are in the government, where groups like Bajrang Dal are trained in Indian Army schools. But India seems like Switzerland after reading one of your articles on India, especially the one you wrote recently after a visit to India. India's terrorist and rogue intelligence agency, RAW, which is funding and supporting separatist movements in our tribal belt and in Balochistan, continues to be an untouchable issue for you. What really is important for you is to put all your efforts toward portraying a negative Pakistan.

I give you an example from the history which you will find self explanatory in reference to our current scenario.

I am not sure if our enemies will impose a war on Pakistan or not but at this crucial stage all your efforts to distort Pakistan's image is not going to remain unnoticed and the nation will never forgive you for what you have done.

Wassalam.

Waqas Ahmed
Muscat, Sultanate of Oman

Whenever so called scholars/academics/experts (Raised/Funded by US/West) discuss any evil/wrong in our Muslim societies on Media especially TV, they never try to exactly locate the center of gravity of that issue. Their reasoning, and intended solutions are shallow and mostly in mars/space because they always try to avoid the context and history of the issue.
What is unfolding now in whole Muslim World and especially Pakistan, is somewhat ‘creative chaos’ in almost all walk of life. If you have monopoly over world resources (Oil, Drugs, Technology, Banks, Media etc) , superiority in intelligence and multiple means of buying out loyalties of the readily saleable commodities (Karzai, Yasir Arrafat, Mahmood Abbas, Musharaf, Saudis, Benaizer, Nawaz, Zardari, Local Journalist, Generals, Bureaucrats, Businessmen etc.) like the US/West does, then the fog of chaos is a good way of confusing the enemy and continuing exploitation/deprivation by de-facto colonization even after so called freedom. One of the main reason for Muslim failure during last several decades in almost all fields is the result of well planned disorientation campaign. Multiple channels are used varying from brute force of carpet bombing/armed invasions to dubious soft tool like human rights, media, trade, MNCs, NGOs, globalization, academic dialogue and last of War on terror. However the only objective is to curtail Islam, whip Muslims and thrash them depending upon the situation and environment.
We will take a common day example of the curse of Heroin. As it is normally believed that Herion like Terrorism popped out of blue from Pakistan Tribal Areas/Afghanistan. It is generally believed that simple tribal men and war lords are only responsible for menace of Heroin but never told the link between Afghan War, CIA, Heroin, BCCI and finance for US Stringers made by private MNCs.
Heroin is prepared from morphine (extracted from opium) by boiling it with acetic anhydride, and then using a process that involves hydrochloric acid, strychnine, and caffeine. The most essential chemical for Heroin (i.e. acetic anhydride) is produced only in West, No Muslim country has any plant for producing acetic anhydride. Recently its import to Afghanistan through Karachi Afghan transit route under flag of NATO/US since 9/11 has increased exponentially. MNCs producing all such chemicals are making billions.
Heroin was basically invented by BAYER Pharmaceutical/Agro MNCs. It is also operating in many countries like Pakistan and making Billions. CIA introduced Heroin in South America, Vietnam and Last of all Afghanistan/Pakistan. Hereon and present drug economy is very similar to Colonial era Opium trade of that era.

Similarly all the business families (Mostly present ruling establishment in Indo/Pak/Bangla Desh) are those who acted as middle men for opium export to China. Most of them control II Chundrigar Road, Karachi/Bombay Stock exchange and Power Houses in IndoPak. Those past collaborators/supporters of past colonials and present day ruling elites will always pray anthems of US/West. Any voice or force raising against US/West is curbed with Iron hand, it may be Lawyers Movement or Red Mosques or Tribal Areas or Rag Tag Taliban. Please see the interview of Indian Writer Amitav Gosh on BBC (23 June, 2008) about opium wars of 1830s and 1850s and opium production in Bengal/Bombay by East India Company.


This is not about blaming the US/West for our all problems. Muslims needs to set its own house in order but there is no question that the Heroin in Afghanistan, NWFP and Tribal area were almost nonexistent before CIA operation against Soviet Invasion. Similar terrorism, intolerance, lawlessness in Tribal Area is the direct product of the machinations of the local/international establishment powers that were based in Tribal region even before Afghan-Soviet War in 1970s.
For we Muslims and Pakistani in particular, this is not a time for optimism. It’s better to be cautious now – even paranoid – than sorry later. The events in our society in general and tribal region in particular did not emerge from a void but are a continuation of a dirty game played since colonization and continues unabated, involving critical inside players and their outside allies.

To draw a line in the sand, we should openly declare US/CIA directly responsible for creating/nourishing/sponsoring chaos, terror, lawlessness, drug economy in our regions.

Regards

FM Shah

Interview of Indian Writer Amitav Gosh on BBC (23 June, 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7460682.stm

#853 Posted by zeemax
“The Qayuum PML was totally discredited and NWFP sub-nationalists never forgave him for his ordering the Bhabra massacre of Khudai Khidmatgars.�

You are so wrong!
You don’t know what you are talking about. Khan Qayoom was Bhutto’s Interior Minister till the Zia Coup. He died a little bit later. The PPP replaced ML in the urban areas of NWFP and with Hindku population in Peshawar.

Sherpao had no role whatsoever in this. When Bhutto was alive it was all Bhutto’s doing and Sherpao was already dead before the July, 77 coup.

“Hayat Muhammad Sherpao was an extremely charismatic person - perhaps just as ZAB himself. He was certain to be Prime Minister of Pakistan one day had he lived. ZAB groomed him as his own son, and I believe Khar was wary of ZAB's admiration for him. Everyone knows how ZAB grieved upon Sherpao's assassination.’

Where did you hear this fable or you are making up stories on the fly! He was PPP President in NWFP just because he joined the party before anyone else did. Bhutto never groomed anyone. Not even Khar who was his closest friend. That was not in that man’s nature. I don’t know where you hear these stories. Bhutto was a different kind of beast in personal relations!

“One old member (whose grandson I knew well) couldn't run fast enough so he hobbled inside and threw his turban onto a chair and declared 'Da zama sho' (This is mine).�

Yeah right! Any more jokes?

Btw, stories from wiki are not always reliable!

Re: # 854
Gandhi may have inspired jihadis, but his method was quite different. Several times, Gandhi emphasized that, wrong means for right cause can create bad situation. Khilafat movement might not be relevant for India, but might have made middle east more powerful than what is today. A united middle east would have created a powerful state like China. The sentiment against european colonialism was very high (for valid reason). Whatever he had done, he might have expected some sort of support from the middle east for freedom struggle of India.
Coming to the Deoband, it was not involved in armed struggle against British.

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YLH, here is a quote, worth repeating like that of patwardhan. This from dawn, more credible than an indian, and like patwardhan his views are also published.

At last here is proof, that at last the gandhi inspired jihadis are creating havoc in pakistan.

From dawn of today. Please note the authors name in diary, Jamal Jamail from Krachi, he is well known military analyst, more famous than patwardhan.

Taliban destabilising Pakistan


THIS is with reference to the spate of bombings that have rocked the country and seems to continue unabated during 2008.

The perpetrators of such inhuman acts are none other than the Taliban and Al Qaeda who are following their so-called agenda of jihad against anti-Islam forces and hell bent on destabilising Pakistan.

However, if we closely look at their activities, one would realise that their effective role is that of Indian and Israeli agents, because they are attacking Pakistani defence installations and killing Pakistani soldiers and law-enforcement agencies’ personnel – something that Indians love to do. They are stabbing in the back the Muslim world’s only nuclear power.

The day Lt-Gen Mushtaq Ahmed Baig was martyred – the highest ranking officer to fall — generals in the Indian army officers’ messes must have clicked their heels and clinked champagne glasses. Their hearts must have been gladdened by such brutal acts which, if planned by the Indian agents, must have taken decades to execute. I really wonder how can the perpetrators of such heinous acts call themselves Muslims and act in the name of Islam.

#852 Posted by HP,

NAP was never unchallenged in NWFP. In fact, it struggled against ML of Qayoom Khan. Bhutto had support in Peshawar very early on and after 1971, he built the party on former ML(Qayoom) workers.

I don't dispute that for 70s election, but after 1971 as you admit, it was none other than Hayat Sherpao who built PPP for ZAB from ex-Qayoom workers. The Qayuum PML was totally discredited and NWFP sub-nationalists never forgave him for his ordering the Bhabra massacre of Khudai Khidmatgars. Sherpao brought the Charsadda/Mardan/Peshawar people away from Wali Khan's inflammatory rhetoric and exploiting their sentiments, and towards Federal politics of ZAB.

In September 1948, Chief Minister Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan gave a statement in the provincial assembly, "I had imposed section 144 at Babra. When the people did not disperse, then firing was opened on them. They were lucky that the police had finished ammunition; otherwise not a single soul would have been left alive". Khan Qayyum said hinting at the four members of the opposition in the provincial assembly. He said; "If they were killed, the government would not care about them." (Wiki)

Another interesting anecdote. In the last provincial assembly of Qayuum Khan where his members were wrangling for cabinet posts, he took all members to the assembly hall with ministery labels on the chairs, and told them to run. Whoever got to which ever chair, it would be his. One old member (whose grandson I knew well) couldn't run fast enough so he hobbled inside and threw his turban onto a chair and declared 'Da zama sho' (This is mine). That portfolio was duly granted to him.

Hayat Muhammad Sherpao was an extremely charismatic person - perhaps just as ZAB himself. He was certain to be Prime Minister of Pakistan one day had he lived. ZAB groomed him as his own son, and I believe Khar was wary of ZAB's admiration for him. Everyone knows how ZAB grieved upon Sherpao's assassination.

#847 Posted by MantoLives
“Pavo says he met the guy who was responsible for the assassination of Hayat Sherpao and he was an NAP activist.�

At this point all I can say is that it is Pavo’s civic duty to report that person to the authorities! Why is he shrinking from it?

“Incidentally, what do you think of Hayat Sherpao?�

Not much really! He started out with ZAB when ZAB only had Khar in 1967. But As far as I know, he was never as close to ZAB as Khar was!
ZAB illegally made him the CM of NWFP in 1972. He never had the majority in the NWFP assembly.

841 Posted by zeemax
“You must be kidding. Hayat Sherpao had single-handedly built up PPP as a formidable force in NWFP against the hitherto unchallenged NAP�

PPP was built by Bhutto alone. Nobody knew clowns like Sherpao without Bhutto.

NAP was never unchallenged in NWFP. In fact, it struggled against ML of Qayoom Khan. Bhutto had support in Peshawar very early on and after 1971, he built the party on former ML(Qayoom) workers. In the 70s elections, the results were pretty much what they are now in PA. ANP did not win absolute majority neither did NAP in 1970.

I have not gone thru district by district results but if you do, you will see the similarities in results.

I second Ferozk's comment.

#849 Posted by bulleya on March 17, 2008 11:29:54 am

even mushy came out and said no foreign power would be permitted to bomb pakiland...that was about a few hundred hellfires ago...look how well that turned out...

nawaz sharif seems to be, openly, coming out against usa's interference in pakistan.......good job!

#846 feroz, thank you.


#843 ana, no problem.


g'night, later...

HP,

Pavo says he met the guy who was responsible for the assassination of Hayat Sherpao and he was an NAP activist.

Incidentally, what do you think of Hayat Sherpao?

re: Masadi

Please do not be overly concerned with redflagging of your posts. Those of us, myself included, who read you, will read your posts regardless of the color of the flag attached to it. :)

Even though we disagree, I think you provide an alternative viewpoint that is missing from the mainstream viewpoint and your comments are welcome in generating a discourse on Chowk.

As to ilogs, my ilogs also do not show up on FP and I think there is a glitch and maybe the Chowk care-takers can look into it and resolve it.

Ciao

Nkg,

Re: 837. I said they were not interested in harassing Pakistan or USA, never anything about not harassing India. And incidentally after their foray into Kashmir in 1947-48 stayed away from international affairs. Till Pakistan and USA dragged them into it.

Regards

Re: # 837
Mr Majumdar, are these tribals same people, who have attacked Kashmir at the behest of Pakistan? Then your conclusion is wrong.

masadi:

Your warning is duly noted, with thanks. I am not concerned with what you wrote, and you are right, there is no reason for your post to have been redflagged when there is so much other bakwaas going on. But what you (and majumdar) missed in my highlighting that particular statement, or post is that you have more folk who disagree with you than just the usual suspects. Aur bas! Iss baat ka aur batangar bananay ki zaroorat nahiN. Don't take the redflaggers so seriously. They probably don't have much intelligent to say either. :)

See, my post was redflagged too. Wow, maybe you are right! Maybe Hamid can't sleep and has nothing better to do!!! On second thought, I really don't give a rat's ass.

goodnight masadi. :)

#823 Posted by ijaz_gul

Zeemax,Plz answer my curiousity?

Which one? Sorry I seem to have missed it.

#821 Posted by HP

..how the hell would I know who did it.

How the hell do you know who did not?

Do you know who ordered Laiquat's murder?

I think it was the Hayat's of Wah who ordered it.

I doubt that NAP people did that because there was no reason for them to kill him!

You must be kidding. Hayat Sherpao had single-handedly built up PPP as a formidable force in NWFP against the hitherto unchallenged NAP.

He was a small fry and had nothing to do with what Bhutto and the army did to the NAP government in NWFP and Baluchistan.

He was no small fry. He was extremely popular and had great potential. Also see above.

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majumdar:

Thank you for your explanation. I was not referring to my own understanding of what he had written. I was using that as an example of why some others besides the usual enfants terribles like Hamid, who masadi thinks would be up past midnight to redflag his posts, but who perhaps was more likely sleeping off his qeemati scotch would make a useless effort to redflag his statements.

But thank you for your efforts as well. :)

Ana,

What Masadi sahib means is that the tribesmen from FATA were never interested in harassing either the Americans or the Pakis until 1979 or so. They kept to themselves. Then it was the Yanks and Pakis who jihadised them for their onw interest (harassing USSR, strategic depth for Pak). And then one day decided that jihad was not kosher and started bombing the Pushtoons for being Talibs.

Regards

Masadi #830, #831

Those "terrorists" were never America's problem, they were not even Pakistan's problem. . .

You don't think that anyone besides Hamid would contest the "absolutely nothing objectionable" in this statement? With all the bakwaas we see here on a daily basis. Seriously, man, please remove your dunce cap and put your thinking one on. . .

There are two strains of militants active at the momment. The Al Qaeeda Strain who operate in Tribal Areas and against specific targets.
Then there are the home grown darlings belonging to the extremist fringes and sometimes inter linked with Taliban, sometimes not. They attack mosques (mostly Shia), churches etc. they were responsible for events that Ana alludes to.

HP #826

Gaps and speculation aside, it would not be completely beyond the realm of possibility for missionary schools to be attacked. It happened after all in 2002 in Jhika Gali, as well as churches. . . places where mostly foreign (read: amreeki) nationals are. . .as well as apne

HP,
wait n See

Masadi,

I am sure that Hamid has better things to do than to be awake at a very late hour, redflagging your posts. There are other people here besides Hamid who are perfectly capable of doing this.

I suggest you curb your paranoia, because it is growing fast.

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Re: # 802

Ahmedmadani Saab,

VC firm = VC company does what.

If thats a straight forward question, a VC firm funds new ventures/startups that are deemed risky by the conventional/conservative lending institutions. VC stands for 'venture capitalists'. VCs live life king size :) cos they extract a huge ROI than the safe lenders.

Re: # 805
The purpose of 1971 war was to stop migration from East Pakistan to India. It was the humanitarian crisis, which had led to the war. I don't think Congress or India had any sympathy towards Bangladeshis (these scoundrels were first to start genocide against Bengalees/ No moslems). If, during partition, the population exchange was done properly, India had the option of staying away from the war. Tripura, Assam and West Bengal border were deluged with non-moslem refugees. India has not benifitted from this war, but Pakistan had. They had got easy way out to get rid of the Eastern Wing (population wise Bangladesh is bigger than Current Pakistan. So East Pakistan would have controlled everything).

Re: # 593
Quite stupid. What US will gain from keeping base in Pakistan in an unstable Pakistan? It will consume resource and will not fulfill its purpose. European colonialism had kept islamic menace in backburner (for couple of centuries). Now it is surfacing again.

Ijaz,

These dots don't connect because there are just too many gaps.
Perhaps the civvies are being set up for failure in six months.

"Missionary schools may become targets of suicide bombers.....'

Why that?

Taliban welcome ANP’s offer for peace talks

Winning parties must stop pursuing pro-US policies | Terms Capital blast a revenge | Threaten action against Mehsud

Arif Yousafzai

PESHAWAR: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the NWFP chief minister-designate Amir Haider Hoti has agreed to kick start negotiation process to restore normalcy in the settled parts of Frontier.

In a message, official spokesman of the local Taliban Maulvi Umer has welcomed the recent statements of chief minister-designate Amir Haider Hoti wherein the later has invited militants for peace talks.

Maulvi Umer said that Amir of the Taliban Baitullah Mehsud had explicitly expressed the desire to cooperate with the coalition government- in-waiting- of PPPP, PML-N and ANP in Centre and the PPPP and ANP coalition government in NWFP.

He said that Amir Haider Hoti had floated a reasonable suggestion to find solution to prevailing lawlessness in the country through peaceful means. "Tehrik Taliban will soberly respond to the ANP offer for peace talks," Maulvi Umer said. He urged the winning political parties to stop pursuing the pro-American policies being pursued by Musharraf. Maulvi Umer condemned an alleged statement of Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) Chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai wherein he had accused Taliban of playing the role to protect the interests of some foreign countries.

He said Taliban had always remained loyal to Pakistan and no genuine Taliban could think of destabilising Pakistan, which, he described as fortress of Islam. Tehrik Taliban Pakistan had been formed with a view to guard the frontiers of Pakistan and foil the nefarious designs of anti Muslim forces. He said that Taliban would never lay down arms unless American and NATO forces remain present on Afghanistan soil.

Maulvi Umer said all the disputes in the tribal areas were resolved through Jirga system and Taliban would send their representatives to negotiate peace with the government officials, adding that they would extend their full cooperation to secure peace. It would be pertinent to note here that ANP's nominee Hiyder Khan Hoti in his interview with BBC admitted that the Taliban too were a force. In his various statements and interviews he has been emphasising on the need for initiating talks with the Taliban. Meanwhile, the Taliban representative without accepting a direct responsibility the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has termed the Saturday blast in Islamabad a response to the ongoing operation in the tribal areas. The Taliban representative did not accept a direct responsibility for Saturday's blast in an Italian restaurant however he said it was a response of the killing of innocent civilians by the security forces. The security forces in the last ten days have killed five Taliban in Mohmand Agency, twelve civilians in Bajaur Agency and many others in Waziristan, he added. "The tribal people are not created out of stones and wood, they also are human beings. Revenge is taken for any unnecessary operation by the government in the tribal areas and the Islamabad blast too was an action taken in revenge". He warned the government to end operation in the tribal areas. "Otherwise such activities will increase," he said.

Earlier a local Taliban commander had offered the country's new government, to be formed by PPP and PML-N, a ceasefire and talks if it stopped supporting President Pervez Musharraf's pro-US policies.

Maulana Faqir Mohammad said the local Taliban could not trust the government "as long as Musharraf is around". The militants want better relations with the government but the new leadership should stop supporting Musharraf's pro-US policies and safeguarding American interests, he said. A durable peace will remain elusive as long as Pakistan continues to support American policies, Mohammed told a gathering at Mamoond sub-district in the Bajaur tribal agency on Saturday.

Mohammed also warned that there should not be any action against local Taliban supreme commander Baitullah Mehsud. "The government should desist from deliberately creating a law and order situation in the country," he said.

Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, has been blamed by the government for a series of suicide and bomb attacks across the country, including the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto last year. He also criticised US plans to train Pakistani paramilitary forces to fight militants. "This is an insult to one of the world's best trained armies," he said, adding Pakistan's soil "would not be allowed to be used in support of the US-led forces".

The 37-year-old chief minister-designate Amir Haider Hoti has also extended hand of friendship to defiant cleric of Swat Maulana Fazalullah with a view to bring back peace to the scenic valley.

The youngest person to become a chief minister in Pakistan, Amir Haider Hoti, is optimistic that the militants' commander will reciprocate with the same zeal. The ANP government will face no hesitation in implementing Islamic Shariah in Swat district if the people of the valley floated a unanimous demand in this regard, Hoti said while responding to a question during a chat with this scribe at Shahi Mehman Khana.

Young Hoti seems to be a bit immature when one meets him but this first impression changes as soon as he starts expressing his views on important issues, ranging from provincial autonomy to controlling militancy in the country.

MPA-elect from PF-19 Mardan, Haider Hoti clinched the chief minister's slot following a tug of war between him and the former provincial president of ANP Bashir Ahmad Bilour, MPA-elect from PF-3 Peshawar.

Critics of ANP are of the view that Haider Hoti was awarded the chief minister's office just because he is the nephew of party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, the grandson of late Khan Abdul Wali Khan and the son of former federal minister for communication Azam Hoti.

The role of family influence in Pakistani politics cannot be denied. Like Asif Ali Zardari, the most likely prime minister of the future, has become the head of PPPP as a result of the will of late Benazir Bhutto. However, Asif Ali Zardari has been behaving like a veteran politician ever since he took over as party head.

Haider Hoti might have been blessed by his highly influential kin in ANP but it would be quite unjustified to reject the young chief minister-designate without giving him considerable time as head of the province. His success and failure cannot be judged at this stage.

However, Haider Hoti will have to remain alert as his critics have already started monitoring his activities. As the administrator of the Bacha Khan Trust he has already proven himself as a responsible person.

Fluent in English and Urdu, Haider Hoti has a gigantic responsibility on his shoulders. On the one hand, he would have to struggle hard to get the rights of NWFP from the centre and rename the province as Pakhtoonkhawa or Pakhtoonistan, and on the other hand he would have to rid the people of the province of injustices meted out to them in police stations, courts, hospitals and other government offices.

Haider Hoti seems to be committed to negotiate peace with the Taliban leaders. He is quite clear in his thoughts regarding the existence of Taliban as a reality. He has repeatedly said that he would try to find out a negotiated settlement of the issue.

However, Hoti says his offer of talks with the militants should not be considered his weakness because he knows how to restore writ of the government.

About the steps taken by the caretaker government for enforcement of Shariah in Swat, Haider Hoti said his government was by no means bound to pursue the policies of the caretakers, saying the ANP government would review all the actions and the good things would be accepted with thanks.

His father Azam Hoti, once addressing public gathering in Takht Bhai, said had government not stopped shelling the innocent people in Swat, he would have no other option but to join the ranks of Taliban. Haider Hoti has been focused on talks with Taliban but he speaks nothing about the popular demand of requesting the army to vacate Swat valley as lawlessness gripped the Swat district when army was deployed there.

Talking to this correspondent via phone from his hometown Mardan, Amir Haider Hoti said that ANP believed in Jirga system, which was the only solution to enmities and problems in Pakhtoon society.

He welcomed the Taliban statement in which militants had appreciated (Hoti) offer for talks. However, Hoti said that keeping in view requirements of Pakhtoon traditional Jirga, ANP government and Taliban would have to keep "Teega" (Surety Bond) between and whoever violated the Teega would have to be made accountable.

Further asked as to what he meant from Teega in peace talks with Taliban, Haider said that it would mean that both sides would resort to complete ceasefire till the Jirga announced its verdict.

Haider further said that peace could only be restored by means of Jirgas and talks and for this purpose government was required to stop attacking Taliban and in response Taliban were required to stop explosions.

He made clear that whoever challenged writ of the government would be dealt with iron fist. Our desire for peace talks should not be considered as our weakness, Haider Hoti added.

He expressed his sorrow over the bomb attack on police mobile in Mardan and expressed sympathy with the families of victims of the blast.

It will not be easy for Haider Hoti to successfully negotiate army withdrawal from Swat valley with the military high command. According to a highly reliable official source, army does not want a ceasefire with militants because it would mean halting of millions of American dollars being paid to Pakistan government.

Haider Hoti cannot, however, be made held accountable if he fails to expel army from Swat because it was it was his predecessor Akram Khan Durrani, whose party is the so-called standard-bearer of Islam and supporter of Taliban, who brought army to Swat and gave his consent in the National Security Council meeting in this regard.

The Taliban Amir in Bajaur Agency and Naib Amir of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Maulvi Faqir seems to be unhappy with the policies of ANP and he has publicly said that he could sit and talk with ANP if it brings changes to its attitude and pro-American policies.

However, Maulvi Faqir has openly said that he was ready to sit with the PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif as according to the Taliban commander Nawaz Sharif has never uttered a single word against the Taliban.

Haider Hoti will have to do his utmost to make himself acceptable to everyone, whether they are Taliban or his political opponents if he wants to rule the hearts.

http://thepost.com.pk/Ba_ShortNews.aspx?fbshortid=2813&bcatid=14&bstat us=Current&fcatid=14&fstatus=Current

There is a mosaic being put togather very quickly.
.... Benazir contacted Taliban and was murdered...
.... Baitullah willing to talk to new government....
.... Taliban Commander Maulvi Umar in contact with ANP....
.... Arrest warrants of Baitullah issued for murder of BB...
.... US changing strategy in Tribal Areas........
.... US also using Baghram Air Base to fly predators into Pakistan other than Shamsi Pakistan.
.... Suicide bombers on the loose in Punjab...
.... Missionary schools may become targets of suicide bombers.....
.... All this in the midst of a likely new government?
Any Ideas?

Zeemax,
Plz answer my curiousity?

Zee

It was not the year that made me jump, it was the allegation itself. You seems to forget what you wrote there!

#820 Posted by zeemax
"If you say it wasn't ANP, who then?"

You tendency to make everything a conspiracy theory is amazing! how the hell would I know who did it. Do you know who ordered Laiquat's murder?

The government was supposed to publish the investigation report and take the case to the court. It never did so the murder is still a mystery. I doubt that NAP people did that because there was no reason for them to kill him!

He was a small fry and had nothing to do with what Bhutto and the army did to the NAP government in NWFP and Baluchistan.

#817 Posted by HP,

Yaar HP I said "I think 1972 0r 1973..." Why jump so high because I got the year wrong?

Anyway, it is mostly accepted in NWFP that ANP killed Hayat Sherpao - and the blood feud continues till this day. If you say it wasn't ANP, who then?

Re: # 814

Rats!

Or perhaps I should say...

Oh my, oh my!

seriously...is the paki government stupid(stupider than your average inbred paki) or does it think the whole paki junta is stupid?


20 killed in S Waziristan missile strike
Foreigners among dead

By Irfan Barki & Akhtar Shehzad

WANA/ TANK: A cross-border missile attack on the house of a tribal elder left 20 people dead and five others injured in Pir Bagh area of Kot Shah Nawaz, south of the agency headquarters, Wana, in the restive South Waziristan Agency (SWA) on Sunday.

The six missiles landed in and around the house of Noorullah Wazir, eyewitnesses said. The attack claimed 20 lives, including a few foreigners, whose identity could not be ascertained. The incident that took place at around 3.30 pm completely destroyed the targeted house.

Official and tribal sources claimed that the attack was carried out from across the border and aimed at an alleged militants’ hideout, the authenticity of which was established after the killing of some foreigners in the attack.

Top military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told The News that around six explosions were heard in the area but said, at the moment, he could not confirm if it was a missile attack or the number of casualties in the incident. He said a fact-finding team had been sent to the area to probe into the incident.

However, private TV channels, quoting some unidentified eyewitnesses, reported that the attack was carried out by a drone. It is worth mentioning here that militants in South Waziristan are led by a pro-government commander Maulvi Nazir, who played a major role in expelling the Uzbek militants from the tribal agency. Under his command, the area remained peaceful since November 16, when he announced a unilateral ceasefire with the security forces.

He was reciprocated and no tussle has been witnessed in the agency since then, but at the same time attacks from across the border have been causing unrest from time-to-time. Twelve people were killed in a similar pre-dawn attack on a house in Kaloosha village in SWA on February 29 last.

Senior government functionaries based in Wana as well as sources among the militants having links with Arab fighters had confirmed to The News that majority of those killed in the attack were Arabs, Afghans and Jihadis from the Punjab.

While the militants claimed a pilotless spy plane had fired three missiles on the house, which also caused damage to three adjacent houses, DG ISPR Maj-Gen Athar Abbas had claimed that the blast was caused by explosives dumped in the house. He had ruled out the possibility of an attack by any foreign aircraft.

The February 19 incident was the second attack of its kind in the area inhabited by Ahmadzai Wazir tribe in South Waziristan. In 2004, militant commander Nek Muhammad, along with five other tribesmen, was killed in a similar air strike reportedly carried out by a CIA-operated Predator aircraft.

Local militants had admitted that the place was used as a training facility and was frequently visited by the Arab fighters and Mujahideen from the Islamic countries. He felt it was possible that their opponents, possibly Afghan refugees living in the area but having affiliation with the Americans and the Northern Alliance, had passed on information about their activities.

Militants believed that the Arab fighters were the main target of such missile attacks as they used to visit the place frequently and had recently attended crucial meetings. It may be recalled that senior al-Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libbi was killed in a similar attack on a house in Khushali Tori Khel village of Mirali town in the North Waziristan Agency on January 29. However, American and Pakistani officials are still tight-lipped about the incident and have not officially confirmed Al-Libbi's killing.

#736 Posted by zeemax
“the NAP student wing named Pakhtoon Students Federation killed Hayat Mohammed Khan Sherpao through a bomb planted under the podium when he arrived to address Peshawar University students in I think 1972 or 1973.�

This is flat out lie! He was assassinated on 16th of Feb, 1975, the NAP assemblies in NWFP and Balochistan were already dismissed and the army action had started in Balochistan in 1974.

Asfandyar Wali Khan was named as the primary accused by the Bhutto government. Afrasiab Khattak, now ANP President for NWFP and at that time, President of the Pushtoon Student Federation was also a named accused.

People who know them both also know that these two guys have never even swatted a fly in their lives. Hayat Sherpao’s murder was used for witch-hunt. Both asfandyar and Afrasiab had to leave for Afghanistan and they did not come back until the cases were withdrawn. (Perhaps asfand was arrested on his return but released quickly!)

Even Khan Ghaffar Khan, who was still in Pakistan after his return from Kabul in 1972, had to leave again along with Ajmal Khattak a former leader of the ANP.

I posted this on a thread (stuka) on UP!

I think it would be appropriate to post it here too.

“I would only ask you to look at the considerable Pakistani literature that itself points to the rising tide of religiosity in Pakistan.�

Thanks Stuka,

That is precisely the point I was trying to make in the Nawaiwaqt article.

The Punjab is not awash in some puritanical desire for the rule of law in Pakistan. It is the issue of the U-turn and overall mush’s support of the US.

Things look really good for the democratic forces now, but the reality of the terrorism and dealing with the terror, would bring even the politicians the wrath of the people as politicians can’t fight terrorism without the US help.

The failure of the politicians or not molding the public opinion in the right direction would result in another sympathy vote for either the mullah or the army!

More than the US the terrorists in Pakistan are now Pakistani issue and the state has to deal with them.

The army was reluctant to make the decision to go after the terrorists as it impacted Army’s constituency in Pakistan.

The politicians would not have any excuses and on top of that they will not get cooperation from the army.

As I said in the article: many traps are being set and the politicians at the helm are inexperienced!

Just for you to ponder at some other time.

One reason NS, aitazaz and Zardari are embracing the CJ issues is: it gives them cover and if the CJ is reinstated, they will have more goodwill in the Punjab to deal with the terrorism and the FATA and the US help issues!

#806 Posted by SR

“My friend you take yourself too damn seriously. This anonymous website is for bored middle aged desi men (who most likely don't get enough nukkie) to get on line and jerk off hot air and smoke�

Hmmm… Who takes the site seriously now? Do I post lengthy stories about how the US economic system is falling under another nic in ilogs? If you don’t take this site seriously then why post ridiculous stuff as your analysis showing how savvy (hehehe) financial analyst you are? Oh, perhaps that is your way of having fun!

Btw SR,
Seriously or not, would really appreciate your take on what Pakistan establishment is? Who is part of that and who is not? Let us just figure out you can really seriously understand an issue or not!

#808 Posted by bjkumar on March 16, 2008 12:33:28 pm
#788 HP (the moorakh)

“Did it occur to you a problem at all that the date on that piece was MARCH 4?�

Did it occur to you that you are a complete idiot for crying out loud! Hehehehe!


#803 Posted by tahmed32
#800 Posted by Dash_Dot
#799 Posted by bulleya

Guys got to figure out spoof from the reality. My comment at the end had a clue. That is a spoof!

#796 Posted by rf786
“Apologies for spoiling your booze party, but your source has serious errors or should I say is totally bogus dude.�

I don’t know who deserve that but I sure can see that you can't even figure out a simple thing!


#793 Posted by zeemax
“This article appeared on the circuits a while ago but is totally false.�

Thanks Zeemax for figuring that out! I guess you still had your wits together!

For others read my comment at the bottom of my previous post!

#788 Posted by HP
“It is coming soon…In the mean time enjoy it!�

Thank you guys for spoiling the fun by not figuring this out! You can be taken for a ride in a jiffy! This would have been all over the media if he had resigned.

Btw, Asif Raza Mir used to work in movies in the70-80s period perhaps too old for mushy’s daughter!

Now read news from the same site…. And comment on that!

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?
article_clas s=3&no=382076&rel_no=1

#812 Dash_Dot

Generally speaking, desis are lazy.

But HP is more lazy than the other desis, that's all!

The take-home lesson is - never trust HP's "sources" implicitly!

Now, come to think of it - wasn't it HP who stated he had a "source" inside Zardari's inner circle?

Re: # 808beej, why you do want to play the spoil-sport...why not let HP have his day in the sun(T)

if you are not getting enuf nookie....pliss contact SR and he will guide you and provide the GPS system as well....

#801 Posted by zeemax on March 16, 2008 10:47:10 am

why is NATO whacking pakis in pakiland? I thought, because you told us, pakiland had the US over a barrel and used this influence to fire afghan ministers at will..

Re: # 809 ["... By your argument, the US forces should not only have decimated Iraq in 1991, but also should have gone after Iran and Syria too..."]

No, no, no, Malik sahib, no. Hold your horses. Please go back and read what I said. You are taking this too far as an argument.

I was simply pointing out a statement you made. And trying to show that it was over-zealous rhetoric, even though I basically agree with the gist of what you were saying.

You had written, obviously for its rhetoric effect, that no winning army in history had ever raised the flag of peace, or similar words. It was just that specific stement that I was pin-pointing and giving two examples of winning armies that offered unilateral peace ... of course, we all know, their objectives had been achieved, that's not the point. They were the victors and they sued for peace. You had written that such a thing never happened in all of history.

cheers,

...SR

SR #805 "I can remember AT LEAST two (2) examples in my memory."

SR, lets leave spinning to gym classes. You are putting a whole new twist to what was a straight forward "Mission Accomplished" for both Indian forces in East Pakistan and US forces in Kuwait. They had no reason, at least at that moment in time, to go beyond but they had set out to accomplish. Their political and military strategy had certain goals. And once those goals were met, and they had the surrender papers from enemy commanders in hand, they declared victory. In India's case, the goal was the exit of Pakistani forces from East Pakistan. In Kuwait, it was the exit of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

By your argument, the US forces should not only have decimated Iraq in 1991, but also should have gone after Iran and Syria too.

#788 HP (the moorakh)

Did it occur to you a problem at all that the date on that piece was MARCH 4?

Is it indicative of the level of effort you put in checking your "sources"?

For your enlightenment, here is another piece from the same "source"


Visitors From the Future Due This Year
Beware of homicidal grandchildren

Two Russian mathematicians have caused a stir in the normally staid world of theoretical physics.

Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich have not only proposed a mechanism for time travel, but they have given it a timetable as well. The pair, from the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, has been speculating on what might happen when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on.

....

Re: # 780 Posted by hamidm2 on March 16, 2008 7:57:39 am

Hamid mian,

[..... of course we have few sane folks like me, hp sain and feroze main trying to hold back the tide of ignorance]

and what about meee? as usual you are ignoring poor me?

HP Re: talk is chaep ... do something ... stop making idealistic statements blah, blah, blah

My friend you take yourself too damn seriously. This anonymous website is for bored middle aged desi men (who most likely don't get enough nukkie) to get on line and jerk off hot air and smoke. Meaningless bantar is all any of this ever was or will be. If you think otherwise, then YOU are the clueless idealist, the role that you're projecting on me. This is CHOWK, for crying out loud. What else did you think this was? The Heritage Foundation?

Re: # 789 Malik99 ["... No winning army in history ever raised a white flag..."]

I can remember AT LEAST two (2) examples in my memory.

1) In 1971, after having won the war decisively in the East, Mrs. Ghandi's government declared a unilateral "cease fire" on the western front. This was in spite of Yahaya Khan's speech the previous evening, December 17th, when he declared that "we shall fight on for a thousand years."

India, at the time, could have smashed into Pakistan at Rahim Yar Khan and penetrated all the way to the Indus. cutting the country into two halves. Then after destroying every bridge, burning every crop, breaking every dam, dismantling power transmission lines and gas pipelines, they could have withdrawn out of Pakistani territory and left the country crippled.

You can argue that Richard Nixon and Breznev leaned hard on Indra to stop, because enough is enough ... (re: Henry Kissinger's book) ... but the fact still remains that it was the winner that stopped the war. It was a wise move.

Second example is that of Papa Bush. After the ejection of Iraqi army from Kuwait and destruction of the bulk of the Iraqi army, there was nothing stopping the US forces from capturing Iraq, as did his moron son, but Papa Bush ordered a unilateral cease fire. Again, it was a wise move. Again, it was the winning side that raised the white flag.

(Please note: I am making no statement as to the moral or legal justification or the wisdom of having started those wars in the first place. In both cases the winner had also started the war.)

Sorry for pointing out facts that you completely ignored to suit your rhetoric.

...SR

in #803 : change "no doubt he mush will do a final " to "no doubt he mush will try to do a final".

get the popcorn, make yourself comfortable, and watch the "rising sun" give a whole new meaning to the term "end run". :-)

HP: no doubt he mush will do a final "oversmart" thing and scoot with the loot to some other country "in the supreme national interest".

but your news source - a korean website - is hardly a reliable source. beware of greeks bearing gifts and koreans bearing news..

Re: # 799
VC firm = VC company does what ?

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HP theinteresting part of the article (source mentioned by you) is this

The president was responding to General Kayani's request to Musharraf to consider playing a statesmanlike role to resolve the political and constitutional crisis in the country," a well-placed source privy to the meeting revealed.

The point (from my view is this) they guys who got him to power while flying over karachi and the arabian sea have asked him to step down.

Nothing has changed .....everything has changed....yet everything is the same....

Tahmed32 can dance in the streets, but the basics are still the same.

HP #: "1) safe passage abroad with his mother Zarin, wife Sehba, daughter Ayla and son-in-law Asif Raza Mir (the former TV star who acted in Fatima Surraya Bajia's famous drama serial Tanhaiyan) to live with his Boston-based son Bilal Musharraf where he serves as an actuary accountant;"

....this is the only safe exit for him.....even if he is let off the hook, and has to live in Pakistan, he will be killed by al-qaeda or mehsud etc., without the layers of security he currently has as president.....

......by the way, his son-in-law is not asif raza mir, and his son, i believe, has now, gone to stanford and works for a famous vc firm, which is headed by a pakistani expat.....

This article provides the background to Admiral Fallon's resignation, and what US wanted from him in the entire Central Asian region.

"Fallon is the American at the center of every circle in this part of the world. And it is a testament to his skill, and to the failure of American diplomacy, that so much is left for this military man to do himself. He spends very little time at Centcom headquarters in Tampa and is instead constantly "forward," on the move between Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the 'Stans of Central Asia."

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/features/fox-fallon

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Re: # 788

HP Saeen,

Apologies for spoiling your booze party, but your source has serious errors or should I say is totally bogus dude.

Bilal Musharraf no longer resides in Boston, he is currently enrolled in the Stanford Business Program completing his MBA.

As for that dud Cheap Iftikhar, well we all know what Zardari thinks of him, so lets not get carried away, enjoy your drink, have one on me.

Peace.

I have outdone myself this time:

a boat with a thousand holes and atleast one a-hole...

now that was a goddamned classic! Note this please (and feel free to redflag it)

hamid writes "..... of course we have few sane folks like me, hp sain and feroze main trying to hold back the tide of ignorance.."

You are sadly mistaken if you think that HP supports the US WOT, thinks they or the Pakistan Army are blameless, or supports the War on Iraq, Feroz doesn't have much of a clue about any of this, so he and you are in the same boat (with a thousand holes (and at least one a-hole).

#788 Posted by HP,

This article appeared on the circuits a while ago but is totally false. For example, Asif Raza Mir is not musharraf's son-in-law.

But I do think he's preparing to resign after watching his interview with Atiqa Odho televised today. The guy looked totally despondent, and Odho even asked him why he doesn't smile anymore!

The enemy is whereever the US wants it to be...

Feroz talks about appeasement using the same BS allied terminology of WW2,- these rat farts are no Hitler regardless of how hard you try to convert them into one, not by any stretch of the imagination and even where morals go, the other side has done more harm in Iraq than these thugs can ever fathom to accomplish- they are nothing unless you and your masters make them into something, which is the long term plan of uber thugs, feroz has little knowledge of the issues in the WOT other than an unconditional worship of the white man and his sh**

feroz writes "You fight the enemy where the enemy is and not where the enemy is not!!!!"

The enemy is whereever the US want it to be, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, now in Pakistan, soon in Iran and the BS carries on....It is high time to call BS on this entire WOT farce and let civilian institutions emerge that deal with problems of the state and get the military out of all internal affairs of the country except defending the borders. What is criminally stupid is the undoing of the nation by these uber macho cowboy types that think that they can make peace by bombing people's families in the current methodology of the Pakistan Army/ US, they have tried all of that and the problems have only escalated. Another joke is the claim by Feroz that Al-Qaeda wants territory- who will occupy their "territory", they simply do not have the numbers to do any meaningful occupation, only if you follow through on your "tough man" methodology will they get the critical mass needed to fulfill thier perverse agenda, you are playing right into their dirty hands but then that is what the US wants to hand this country over to them so it can perpetuate its farce, and Hamid, go F yourself, it is your problem not mine if you cannot handle my arguments....

zahid e K... writes "The writer of the Koran gives the idea of building a wall to save civilization from monsters"

You need to read the Quran more carefully. It was Zulqarnaian's idea (not the idea of the writer of the Quran) and he arrived at his assessment given the terrain and the needs of the people on the other side, not something that can be generalized in the manner that you were doing

ferozk # 784 "Appeasement never works."

Appeasement does work once you run out of stamina, or options. War too works when you run out of patience. Humanity is a very complex entity, with few black and white options.

If we can strike compromises in our personal lives with the people we hate the most (our relatives), we sure can strike compromises at national and international levels too :)

But you are correct in one sense: human being is not programmed to "appease" or "compromise" when he is powerful. So the natural inclination among a group of people is to pursue war while it has the upper hand. No winning army in history ever raised a white flag.

btw - please accept my sympathies for your "worthless" life.

Good Morning Tahmed, Hamid and Feroz!

Here is little news for you!

Pakistan's President Agrees to Resign

“According to sources, Musharraf has requested three face-saving measures: (1) safe passage abroad with his mother Zarin, wife Sehba, daughter Ayla and son-in-law Asif Raza Mir (the former TV star who acted in Fatima Surraya Bajia's famous drama serial Tanhaiyan) to live with his Boston-based son Bilal Musharraf where he serves as an actuary accountant; (2) guarantees that no judicial case will be filed against him in the courts and that the restored judiciary, particularly deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, will not hear any case against him; and (3) a chance to address the nation one last time.�

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?
menu=A111 00&no=381963&rel_no=1&isPrint=print

It is coming soon…In the mean time enjoy it!

malik #781 one little problem with this "bombing the tribals have been living through" - the tribals are the most vocal in pushing to get al qaeda out of fata. maybe they know something that you dont.

hamidm #785 what is it that you dont understand about your sharing this little problem of contempt and underestimation for Pakistanis with mush and zawahiri? re-read what i wrote carefully where i have already answered this question for you.

Re: # 782'


tahmed,

"you are merely unable to deal with what i wrote below about this little problem you share with mush and zawahiri"

... you are right - i have absolutley no idea what you are talking about ..... folks like you who think that musharraf is responsible for this carnage and others who think that this carnage is a 'reaction' to the 'oppression' of muslims for the last couple of centuries, are two sides of the same bad coin ...... appeasing wimp ! ... now get out there and do your duty by campaigning for john mccain and sending cookies to our brave men in uniform who are fighting this war on your behalf .......

re: malik99 #781

Appeasement never works. As to my death, it will happen when it will happen and no; I am not nervous. I live in Pakistan where life has no meaning and people have no rights. My life in this nation was worthless before September 2001 and it still is, Al Qaeda or bombs or no bombs.

Ciao

#780 and calling me bewaqoof wont change a thing either. even a bewaqoof like me has more brains than someone like you who is calling for nuking fata and applauds lota rashid..

#766 hamidm: dont lie. i have told you enough times that if i was interestd in being a religious reformer i would not be wasting my time with on chowk.

you are merely unable to deal with what i wrote below about this little problem you share with mush and zawahiri and so you are mad at me.

ferozk #774 "It would be criminally foolish and not to mention naive to think that appeasement is answer for aggression. It never is. Al Qaeda's leadership is ideologically motivated and it is not interested in peace treaties or compromies."

You seem pretty ideologically motivated too :) And it is clear that you are not interested in "peace treaties or compromises" either. And your ideology has killed far more of "them" for far longer of a time - all in the name of someone else's war.

And btw - we are even discussing all this because you are nervouse. You are nervous because "they" have now starting bombing places that are a walking distance from your home, and not just you bombing those "remote" areas which you hadnt even heard of before. The result is that your sense of safety is now breached. You are angry and you are shouting "no appeasement!". But deep down you now know how it feels to go through a day not knowing how big the next bombing would be or where it would be - something the "tribals" have been living with for years.

This is getting interesting. I cant wait to see how it ends :)

Re: # 769

tahmed,

bewakoof! ... stop this rant about my supposed "contempt and underestimation of the Pakistani people" ...... i don't have to go far to see what the great pakistani people are like - we have a good cross section of fools in denial like you and romair, flaming jihadis like urstruly and zeemax, and complete lunatics like masadi and pavo right here on chowk ..... of course we have few sane folks like me, hp sain and feroze main trying to hold back the tide of ignorance, but i am getting tired of standing with my finger in the hole in the dyke ....... hp sain and feroze mian you are on your own - i am out of here !

Re: # 766

CA,

"I am thinking if you change the quran by removing all the jihadi shyte by the mid summer "

........ tahmed is working on it - he has been working on it for over half a century and has yet to find a disciple .....

Re: # 774

feroze mian,

"This is downright stupid! You fight the enemy where the enemy is and not where the enemy is not!!!! "

.... do you think romair will unnderstand this simple message?.... i doubt it, the man is more dense than you think .......

Re: # 723 Why Azarbaijanies do not even make noise about the lost area of Nagarno Karabagh. In Ummah meetings many oppressions are lamented and detailed ( palestine etc) but Kashmir and Nagarnokarabagh are just little reference. Have azeris lost interest ? Why Iran is always supportive of Armenians than azeris are there any money interests coming in way ?

Re: # 748
Thanks for information.
It is said by some dr najeeb and his brother were almost about to be flown to India from UN protective compound and pakistan secret servuice and CIA got wind of that and made immediate move and executed them and made counter coup against RAW. Najeeb was considered dangerous by ISI and CIA was young and could have influence in future. It is romoured that his family was flown to India and secretly living there ?
THanks, your post are informative and subtle in many ways.

It is said Dostam sabotaged Najeeb , but he fought afterwards against ISI and taliban. Is there possibility like partition of afghanistan like partition of British Raj along Tajik, Uzbek,... etc nations. Do Uzbekistan, Tajikistan etc have interest in partition ?
These are questions you can answer if possible.
Thanks again for your contribution

1Safe #755: sorry i missed your question to me. The short answer is: We shall find out in the months following the new government takes over.

Personally, I think the new government has no choice but to get serious in fighting terrorists. And, freed from musharraf's politics and War on Lawyers (they even bugged the judge's homes!!), Pakistan has ample resources (even ignoring NATO) needed to take out the terrorists. (in iraq remember that in iraq bush had brilliantly destroyed the police/military infrastructure initially. and realized its mistake after 2-3 years after much damage was done.).

That is just my opinion of course. Hope it makes some sense.

re: bulleya

It is a mistake to assume that Al Qaeda will cease its attacks on Pakistan if Pakistan leaves GoT. Al Qaeda is not interested in Islam or sharia but in gaining territory from which to continue its ideological mission. Pakistan offers that territory to Al Qaeda and in this mission, Al Qaeda is indifferent to the long term fate of Pakistan or Pakistanis.

Before 9/11, Al Qaeda did not need Pakistan because it had Afghanistan and Sudan. If not Pakistan, where do you think it will go? Back to Afghanistan? Iraq? Sudan? There was no reason for it target Pakistan pre-2001 but now, it wants to destablize Pakistan in order to gain a sanctury from which to sustain its logistical structure. FATA offers it the price and it will not leave it even if Pakistan leaves the GoT.

It would be criminally foolish and not to mention naive to think that appeasement is answer for aggression. It never is. Al Qaeda's leadership is ideologically motivated and it is not interested in peace treaties or compromies. It sees Pakistan and Pakistanis as weak and as kafirs and not as equals in the struggle against non-believers.

You said and quote, "so, please feel free to fight them wherever you want....just not in pakistan........my suggestion would be for them to fight it out in michigan, or for you to fight it out with them, by joining the us army, in afghanistan"

This is downright stupid! You fight the enemy where the enemy is and not where the enemy is not!!!! The battle ground is Pakistan and make no mistakes about it, Pakistan will suffer because our government by their past actions have sowed what we must now reap - the sins of our intolerances. The world will little think about Pakistan or its sovereignity and if the choice is between its future and Pakistan's; then Pakistan will lose and twice on Sunday!

Ciao

Re: # 736

Wow.

bulleya: i see you repeat your earlier claim that al qaeda will stop attacking pakistan if pakistan stops fighting them. in doing so, you ignore what i #743 which was addressed to you and you did not respond. so let me repeat - are you prepared to cede fata and the people there to al qaeda rule? yes or no.

hamidm mian #: "do you really believe that if we left the taliban, al-qaeda and the other riff raff alone that they will stop their murder and mayhem?..."

....depends on how you define, "we"......if you define we to be americans and the usa, then you are correct, they will not leave you alone.....they hate you too much, and feel you have killed far too many of their innocents.....

on the other hand, if by, "we" you mean pakistanis and pakistan, then they will leave pakistan alone.....uptil 9/11, they had nothing against pakistan, and now, they do....once pakistan backs out of gwot, it will be back to status quo......

...i still long for the days, when the biggest fear in pakistan consisted of burning cd's, headshaving football teams in shorts, smuggling cars to bara and beyond, and raiding of massage parlors......

that was a lot better than bombs going off in super market and model town.......

so, please feel free to fight them wherever you want....just not in pakistan........my suggestion would be for them to fight it out in michigan, or for you to fight it out with them, by joining the us army, in afghanistan......

personally speaking, i don't the usa military, nato or the pakistan military has any stamina or desire left to fight them anywhere......it's impossible to fight a bomb dropped from 10,000 feet or a suicide bomber.......

hamidm mian #: "do you really believe that if we left the taliban, al-qaeda and the other riff raff alone that they will stop their murder and mayhem?..."

....depends on how you define, "we"......if you define we to be americans and the usa, then you are correct, they will not leave you alone.....they hate you too much, and feel you have killed far too many of their innocents.....

on the other hand, if by, "we" you mean pakistanis and pakistan, then they will leave pakistan alone.....uptil 9/11, they had nothing against pakistan, and now, they do....once pakistan backs out of gwot, it will be back to status quo......

...i still long for the days, when the biggest fear in pakistan consisted of burning cd's, headshaving football teams in shorts, smuggling cars to bara and beyond, and raiding of massage parlors......

that was a lot better than bombs going off in super market and model town.......

so, please feel free to fight them wherever you want....just not in pakistan........my suggestion would be for them to fight it out in michigan, or for you to fight it out with them, by joining the us army, in afghanistan......

personally speaking, i don't the usa military, nato or the pakistan military has any stamina or desire left to fight them anywhere......it's impossible to fight a bomb dropped from 10,000 feet or a suicide bomber.......

hamidm #761/#762: " the war against musharaf has nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the war against terrorism"

tell that to zawahiri - who is going all out to try and intimidate the new government now that the "mush umbrella" is gone. and spare me the namecalling - which is a sure sign that a man has only weak arguments.

Here is a question: What is common between you, musharraf and zawahiri?

Answer: Your contempt and underestimation of the Pakistani people.

Musharraf made the mistake of thinking he could intimidate them with his uniform and fake accent - and merely mad them mad enough to leave him kick out his "kings party" plus lotas and beards. Zawahiri will learn the hard way in due course that pakistanis are not arabs who tolerate "hosni mubaraks" and "pious hypocrites" a la saudi arabia as rulers. I dont know if you will ever learn though.

paki sovereignty being gang-banged...

I'll bet these guys are blackwater...

US forces cordon off hospital

Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD- American security personnel cordoned off the Shifa International Hospital after 11 US nationals injured in the Saturday evening blast were reportedly admitted there.
Although there was no official confirmation about the number of injured US nationals as the US Embassy could not be contacted. despite repeated attempts by The Nation, the other diplomatic sources placed the number falling between 7 and 11.
According to eyewitnesses 7 of the 11 injured Americans were rushed to the US Embassy and 4 admitted in the Federal Government Employees Hospital, were also later shifted to the Shifa International Hospital.
Soon after the bloody blast in a roadside Italian restaurant all members of the diplomatic community who had come to dine or shop in a relatively safe sector of the Capital rushed back to their homes in the Diplomatic Enclave.
According to police sources security personnel deployed at various entry points of the Diplomatic Enclave were alerted to check vehicles with more vigilance.
Meanwhile it was reliably learnt that the entire diplomatic community had suspended their movement schedules even within the Capital territory.
Embassies and High Commissions have sent urgent messages to their employees not to go out of the Diplomatic Enclave until further instructions from their respective governments.
All the diplomats residing outside the Diplomatic Enclave have been advised to shift to safer resorts.
A source also hinted at shifting of families of the families to their home countries if the security situation continues to deteriorate.

HAHA...perfect response to paki protests on the previous airstrikes..you protest..oh yeah...protest this...

yoo hoo zeemax(or should I say grim faced zeemax)


Pakistan border strike 'kills 16'
map
At least 16 people have been killed in a missile strike on a building near Pakistan's northern border with Afghanistan, state television has said.

The attack took place in the South Waziristan region, where tribal militants are based, Reuters news agency reported residents as saying.

The Pakistani state TV report said several missiles destroyed the house of a suspected militant leader.

Reuters reported the military saying seven militants were among the dead.

"Initial reports suggest militants were hiding there and seven of them were killed and several wounded," an unnamed military official told the news agency.

A local tribesman said foreign militants were believed to be staying at the compound, in a village near Wana in South Waziristan.

"Militants have cordoned the blast site and are taking out bodies from the rubble," the tribesman told AFP news agency.

"The missile has left only part of a boundary wall intact and turned the compound into a pile of debris," he said.

War on militants

It was not clear who launched the strike.

A local tribesman, Rahim Khan, told the Associated Press that the missiles were fired from an unmanned drone aircraft.

US forces, operating in neighbouring Afghanistan, are believed to have been behind previous strikes in Pakistan's border region.

In February, at least 12 people - including suspected militants - were killed in a missile attack on a house near the Afghan border.

A month earlier, a senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed in a strike in North Waziristan.

The US considers strikes in the tribal border region - the heartland of al-Qaeda and the Taleban - to be vital in its war against Islamist militancy.

However, the Pentagon seldom confirms them, since Pakistan publicly opposes any US strike on its territory.

College or pro-football hamidm?

I am thinking if you change the quran by removing all the jihadi shyte by the mid summer classic, then perhaps within one generatiion maybe the jihadi gene can be removed from the world. But it would mean, no cousin marriages and a lot of inter faith fking.

#742 Posted by bulleya on March 16, 2008 4:03:12 am


...i have been around the world a couple of times now......i have yet to find any country whose citizens are so gung-ho in fighting other peoples' wars.


yeah...why did pakiland sign up for the WOT completely voluntarily? what was mushy thinking?


the only war, traditionally that pakistanis have (as their own) is with our friendly neighbors to the east


you lost all those wars...used to be, you won the wars against your own people...but even that has changed now..


where did the rest of the wars come from........why are explosions taking place in pakistan


yeah....why!! why!??!!..they should be taking place in nepal...that's where the jihadi infrastructure is..


doesn't matter which side wins, pakistanis lose and die......


sound good..


here is an idea......get out of every war


does that include the proxy war in kashmir that you are a big supporter of? you know..the proxy war for which the jihadis infrastructure was created?



and if you don't want to withdraw, then, first, go participate in those wars yourselves..


like you were so gung ho on doing after 9/11?

Re: # 761

tahmed,

... do you have a better idea ?....... are you willing to have another football season being disrupted by a bunch of bedouins and sheep herder ? .......... i am simply exploring the possibilities and going nuclear is just one of them - another could be the re-conquest of mecca and a restoration of the idols in the kaaba ...... i think that is the best long-term solution, but i don't think it is possible before the football season starts ....

#691 Posted by zeemax on March 15, 2008 8:11:33 pm


If NATO keeps bombing tribals, their soft targets all over Pakistan will continue to be hit wherever these could be found.


US bombs the jihadis
jihadis respond by whacking pakis all over lahore, pindi and islamabad
US pressures the paki army to bomb the jihadis
jihadis respond by whacking pakis all over lahore, pindi and islamabad

and so on and so forth...

If this was a nuclear reactor, the situation would be like Chernobyl...meltdown by chain reaction...

Re: # 759

oh shut up, tahmed! ........ the war against musharaf has nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the war against terrorism .... it will still be going on when he leaves the scene in a couple of weeks-months ....... who are you going to blame when you don't have to kick around ? .... you are more senile than i thought !

hamidm: "nuclear option"? you are totally losing it now!!

the nuclear option ?

.......... i know most people do not like to talk about such things, but i have been thinking about the long term cost of this war against the mohammedan hordes ........ the way it is going - a war of attrition with us loosing four or five brave men every day in some godforsaken place in iraq or idiotistan - this could go on for ever ...... is there a quicker solution ? .... what if we dropped a couple of nukes on places miran shah, mansoora, tehran, nowshera and mecca ...... would that end the war ?....... i know it is far fetched but it is something that needs to be discussed ........ it is possible that just one or two nukes will send the message ........ i know, i know - the animals on the other side do not live in houses and have family and friends like ordinary people, but we have to look at the options ...... there has to be a way to end this thing before the next football season - i hate distractions during the playoffs ........

#754 hamidm: i have had a better idea (while you were too busy hailing the "rising sun" last year and sniffing at the "unwashed masses" and the "droopy eyed chief justice" to listen). and feb 18 proved that idea made sense - proper elections marginalized the religious parties whom you uncle mush had patronized, and scared the crap out of the terrorists. who then got desperate enough to come out in the open and show their true face to the people of pakistan - and have shot themselves in the foot in the process even if they dont realize that yet.

Re: # 742 Bullya:

All those wars were necessary to keep Pakistan afloat. Whenever Pakistan stopped sleeping with superdada, it landed in trouble. The economy remained stagnant or nose dived. Pakistan's birth was for these wars. Illegitimate daughter of aunt Britany and unkil.

A relative of mine was killed in Mumbai blasts in 2006. We know the next war would be aar-paar one to annihilate pakistan.

Re: # 754

This is an illusion that this "riff raff" would support any democratic government that wouldn't share their worldview as has been suggested by Deobandi bookworms trapped in a time warp with those death-worshipping mavericks. Once you start making concessions, they'll always expand their wishlist in order to topple the whole system wher human will plays -- at least principally -- a fundamental role and not that of these mavericks disguised as God's will.

Romair uncle, where do you get those wonderful drugs? It is not other people's wars. It is intimately a pakistani issue, being entirely complicit in creating, fostering and deploying the jihadi culture abroad. Now...now...we will hear that the americans and the saudis are behind this....with their cash and their political motives....but couln't you pakistani knuckleheads have stopped for a second from all the kneeling and bobbing and just said "wait a minute....this jihad shyte is a crappy concept...let's change the koran..(Afterall we are the theykaydaars of islam) and tell these amreekans and saudis to piss off"

I am sure that thought might have crossed ur minds when u were watching the throat slahing video of Daniel Pearl?....maybe not..perhaps you were completely fascinated by the popcorn in the bowl infront of you...thinking.."Butter just makes everything better.."

re #749 and #751

Can this jihadi menace be reduced to just Arab ghoondas and Afghan death-worshipers? I hope you both are right, then that would not be so difficult to handle.

But what if this is a more widely spread and more powerful wave than that? What can be done about it then?

Also, Tahmed bhai, do you consider the crime of last night an abberation, or is this an escalation a la Baghdad?

Re: # 753

tahmed,

.... do you have a better idea ? ..... or do you want to retreat from all the fronts and come home and sit in your basement hoping that 'they' will leave you alone ....... do you really believe that if we left the taliban, al-qaeda and the other riff raff alone that they will stop their murder and mayhem?

hamidm #752 that's right, genius. throw money at your problems like bush has been doing past 7 years (and mush has been happily collecting the cash and making sure he keeps his terrorist monkeys around and performing for more cash from bush).

..... there is only one way to win this global war being waged by barbarians against mankind - support john mccain for president and a one dollar a gallon war tax on gasoline ..... we must find this vermin wherever they are and kill thme before they kill us ........ you cannot retreat an inch, because if you do they will take a mile ...... that is the nature of the beast

Re: # 749

But these Beduins are not against generals and certainly no friend of democracy which is merely an evil system to them. What they're striving for is an "Islamic state" which's nothing but a totalitarian system where the ancient Arabic culture'd be relived. Even a democratically elected government'd have a hard time facing these Gogs and Magogs. They don't want a dialogue but complete surrender to their ideology. Once the death-worschipper on the Afghan side are stopped from entering the Pakistani territory, the few infected death-worshippers in FATA could more easily be taken care for considering the fact that most people in FATA prefer to live a normal life like most people in the heartland Pakistan

chowk staff,

.... i see that in my absence over the last couple of days you have let mad masadi sneak in again .......... what happened ? ...... please make sure that this idiot does not rear his ugly head on this forum - we have enought fools, cospracty theorists, flaming jihadis and romairs on this forum as it is ......

... thank you for your cooperation

#747 you dont need a wall. you just need to get the democratic government in place. with musharraf no long around to protect them (as part of his strategy of remaining the "indispensable" man in the so-called WOT) the arab ghoondas who found a safe haven fata under musharraf are finished.

The onslaught of suicide bombings in recent months is a clear indication that al qaeda understands this quite well and are getting desperate to try and intimidate the elected rulers to continuing musharraf's policy of giving them safe haven in fata

HP Sain , Hello to you Sir .

About the exiles in Kabul there were three distinct phases.

The first wave went in 1973-76 both Balochistan and NWFP.Stalwarts like Agha Shaista from Nushki and many bigger leaders.Unfortunately Daud Khan's support to Baloch and Pashtun was more rhetoric and little action.By 1976 Daud Khan had made a U turn .He had decided to bite the hand of Afghanistan's greatest benefactor the USSR.Thus he toured Pakistan,Iran,Saudi Arabia etc.The exiles in Kabul were facing uncertainty about the future.

The second phase was this phase of uncertainty 1976-78.

Even Dr Najeeb came to Kabul Peshawar in 1976-77.

When the Saur Inqilab came the Afghan state actively supported all exiles but on ideological basis.The ANP had no ideology but being Pashtuns the Afghans had a soft corner for them.Murtaza Bhutto got very active logistic support although most of the funds came from Libya and Syria where the indomitable int chief Kholi was just heroic.

The Kabul regime got cold feet after the 1981 hijacking however and ultimately Murtaza left for Syria.

The main difference between daud and PDPA regime was that Daud had sympathy for the ethnic nationalists while the PDPA supported all exiles regardless of ethnicity for ideological reasons.

Re: # 746

The writer of the Koran gives the idea of building a wall to save civilization from monsters. Not an invention of right or left wing loonies or even this humble person

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Some have naively suggested a quid-pro-quo between war on terror and the terror unleashed on civilzation in Pakistani cities.

Those once serene mountains have become the hideouts of the 'angels' of death. Their primitiv mountaneous mind with a simplistic worldview is totally overwhelmed by the complexities of the modern world. These apocalypse-mavericks confuse the centuries old lifestyle as Shariah (the Way) not knowing or accepting the endtime mindset according to their own books which say that Quran and religious knowledge'd be lifted. This clearly shows that the journey of human mind is toward secular ideas. Not religious obsesion but boundless ideas and human intellect will hold sway in the battle of ideas.

These 'angels' of death with their death cult are no new phenomenon. Islam saw Assassins long ago. They kept playing havoc by spreading death unless exterminated by the Mongol force. The death-worshippers should get death -- what they crave for; and those who stand for life and its dignity should get it. Maybe Pakistan should build a great wall like Zulqernain to ensure the safety of its territory and people from the death-worshippers on the Afghan side.

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#742 bulleya: This is not "another people's war" anymore. This has been Pakistan's war ever since al qaeda slipped into Pakistan and tried to carve out that piece of Pakistan for itself. Those sitting in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi did not understand this because fata was the other side of the moon for them. The fata people understood this - and that is why ANP and tribals are the one's pushing to get al qaeda out. And now..al qaeda is attacking Pakistani cities, and people are confused. Pakistanis can cede the people of fata and fata territory to the terrorist, and thus "sell land to buy peace". And then find what a coward always finds in the end - a bully will keep pushing you for more if he thinks he can get away with it.

So, people like yourself and SR need to wake up and smell the coffee - even though it is a few years later than you should have woken up to it.

...i have been around the world a couple of times now......i have yet to find any country whose citizens are so gung-ho in fighting other peoples' wars......afghanistan, gwot, taliban, etc.......the only war, traditionally that pakistanis have (as their own) is with our friendly neighbors to the east......which, ironically, is the quietest area now.....

where did the rest of the wars come from........why are explosions taking place in pakistan, if americans are fighting arabs......strange.......

a % of pakistanis are hell-bent on fighting arab wars......another % are hell-bent on fighting afghanis' wars.......another % are hell-bent on fighting american wars.......and another % on fighting global wars and gwots.....

doesn't matter which side wins, pakistanis lose and die......

here is an idea......get out of every war.....simple.....withdraw......anyone who says this will not reduce violence is either an idiot (or an expat - who tend to have equally idiotic views when it comes to pakistan/usa relations).....

how in the world can withdrawing from wars not reduce violence......obviously it will reduce it......it may not reduce it 100%, but there is bound to be some % decrease.......

1. withdraw from tribal areas
2. withdraw from lal masjids
3. withdraw from palestines
4. withdraw from afghanistans
5. withdraw from gwots
6. withdraw from iraqs........

and if you don't want to withdraw, then, first, go participate in those wars yourselves........then encourage others to do so......

Monto,

Gandhi was actually mohammadda gandhi, many indians could not pronounce sacred highly evolved language, Arabic, so they started calling him Mahatma. Mahatma in Arabic means fascist bigot. Thanks for teaching us Arabic.

Since you are secular, why don't you declare yourself non-religious and non-arabic. Start with your name. Why dont you dearabize it? May be Ravi for first and Lahorkar for last is ideal. Or do you want to use Hindu numerals instead? Numerals might make your rootless.

Secularism is supposedly for not having influence of groups
on the functioning of state. But the people who are fanatic about it have imbibed alien location specific culture, be that Rome, Mecca or Moscow.

Zeemaz,
If ANP and Bilours are indeed KANJARS, then what are the people who voted for them. They must be the same too?
I am curious because you have an incisive insight into NWFP Affairs.

I see the mad red-flagging cow from UP is at it again. Some dog should cure her hoof and mouth and all orifices heat!

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HP
Keep on dreaming,i envision a union of Pakistan Afghanistan and central asian states.I have the right to dream too.

#729 Posted by MantoLives,

Manto, the NAP student wing named Pakhtoon Students Federation killed Hayat Mohammed Khan Sherpao through a bomb planted under the podium when he arrived to address Peshawar University students in I think 1972 or 1973.

SR
Your flair for analysis and criticism is impressive.Please keep in check your creative flow,it needs a lot to be desired.

#725 Posted by SR
"Absolute autonomy to the smaller units is the minimum first step."

I know all that way better than you think. I have been involved but that struggle is going on for the last 40 years. Is there any thing special that you know and the folks in Baluchistan and Sindh don't?

How do you propose it should be done outside of the constitution or within the current constitution? I mean talk is easy but ask the people that have been involved. It is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Every thing requires a process to complete and that takes time not some ideals.

Try and figure this out instead of just writing national rights manifesto!

#725 Posted by SR

SR, you are confused about things.
"I wrote that it can not be changed. It will have to be dismantled. It SHOULD be disemboweled."

And how do you propose to do that? That was my question that you ignored and continue with lofty ideals. The old days of Mao and red book are long gone. Face the reality and find ways to do things instead of just making statements.

Agha,


"HP should visit Afghanistan . "

I know what I know. I am probably better connected in kabul and know people that you probably don't. so don't worry about that part.

#719 Posted by pavocavalry
"all guerrilla warfare is based on " HIT AND RUN" , a person should visit afghanistan before stating that taliban control an area or not "

How do you know I have not visited Kabul or Afghanistan:)

You accept them as hit and run group, then claim that they control some area! Shadow governors don't mean a thing!

Talibs may control some deserted areas and thats about it!
Look talibs don't know squat abt the 4th generation or the 5th generation war. I think you guys are just impressed with the folklore and have no idea whats going on there!

"Late Dr Najeeb Shaheed of Afghanistan questioned ANP in Kabul , why did you sign the constitution of 1973 and then you come here and talk that you are against Pakistan.Daud Khan, Najeeb etc all saw the partys opportunist stand.And then the blood of Sherpao.ANP used an activist from Amazo Garhi (Garhi Kapura) in Mardan to do it . ______ Bacha , well meaning guy although wrongly motivated did that . I think I met him one time in East Germany.Hayat Sherpao was a really great man."

Whoa... so much for Non-Violent politics and this too when Bacha Khan was alive and well.

Re: # 728

Was there any truth to this charge?

I have recently heard about the blood feud between some of the ANP leaders like Bilours and some Peshawar PPP stalwarts.

Re: # 716

"ANP is neither a leftist nor an enlightened party.their opportunist/confused stand is well covered in Juma Khan Sufis's book on Politics of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Vanguard Books 2005 Lahore.Juma was long time ANP leader,spent some 14 years in Kabul in exile and emerged disillusioned from ANP."

Thanks for the reference... I'll look for this book.

#716 Posted by pavocavalry

Actually the ZAB had implicated Asfand in the Hayat Sherpao’s murder and he had to leave for Kabul.

#716 Posted by pavocavalry
Hello Agha,
You are not going to win this argument. I know what the disputes were with Najeeb and why Bacha Khan left Kabul. It was not only Bacha Khan but even Khair Bux Marri had to come back!
You need to understand the differences between the nationalists in ANP and the Najeeb group in Kabul. When Ghaffar khan and Ajmal Khattak went to Kabul it was still under Daud. Obviously, you don't know the whole story.
But you're right that the ANP does not have influence in the tribes now.

Re: # 683

My good friends from across the border are busy repeating the fallacy that we know as "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc".

The history of Islamic militancy in the subcontinent is quite clearly Deobandi specific. This is why they need to come up with a fatwa in the first place. Barelvi Islam - the adherents of which formed the mainbody of those TNT-ists everyone here loves to hate- never considered terrorism and militancy halal.

I don't like repeating the history lesson but I am afraid I have no option because such lies and misinformation should not go unchecked.

Achyuth Patwardhan, one of the Socialist stalwarts in the Congress, has given a remarkably candid and self critical analysis of the Congress Party vis-a-vis Khilafat: ’It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE ’HIMALAYAN ERROR’ of Gandhiji’s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences. On merits, it was a thoroughly reactionary step. The Khilafat was totally unworthy of support of the Progressive Muslims. Kemel Pasha established this solid fact by abolition of the Khilafat. The abolition of the Khilafat was widely welcomed by enlightened Muslim opinion the world over and Kemel was an undoubted hero of all young Muslims straining against Imperialist domination. But apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim Leadership of clerics and maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secular, modernist leadership among the Muslims of India and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of the Maulvis. Maulana Mohammed Ali’s speeches read today appear strangely incoherent and out of tune with the spirit of secular political freedom. The Congress Movement which released the forces of religious liberalism and reform among the Hindus, and evoked a rational scientific outlook, placed the Muslims of India under the spell of orthodoxy and religious superstition by their support to the Khilafat leadership. Rationalist leaders like Jinnah were rebuffed by this attitude of Congress and Gandhi. This is the background of the psychological rift between Congress and the Muslim League’.

and

’Since the Khilafat agitation, things have changed and it has been one of the many injuries inflicted on India by the encouragement of the Khilafat crusade, that the inner Muslim feeling of hatred against ’unbelievers’ has sprung up, naked and unashamed, as in years gone by’.

and

A terrible and gruesome fallout of the disastrous Khilafat experiment of Mahatma Gandhi was the Moplah Rebellion in Malabar District in 1921. According to the Report of the ENQUIRY COMMITTEE OF SERVANTS OF INDIA SOCIETY, the number of Hindus murdered by Moplah Muslims was 1500, the number of Hindus forcibly converted 20,000 and the value of property looted about Rs three crore. When the national and local leaders appealed to the virulently anti-Hindu Moplah Muslims in the name of Mahatma Gandhi to follow the ways of peace and non-violence, they replied bluntly with Islamic fervour: ’GANDHI IS A KAFIR, HOW CAN HE BE OUR LEADER?’ Dr Anne Besant declared: ’The Moplah Muslim marauders murdered and plundered abundantly, killed or drove away all Hindus who would not apostatize. Somewhere about 100,000 people were driven from their homes with nothing but the clothes they had on, stripped of everything’. She also accused all the Khilafat religious preachers for all this terrible atrocities. J Campbell, chief of the Intelligence Department, Government of India, held the Khilafat leaders squarely responsible for inciting racial hatred resulting in Moplah carnage.

http://www.newstodaynet.com/2006sud/06aug/2208ss1.htm

Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to harness the feeling for the cause of national independence backfired and led to the uprising in Kerala known as the Moplah Rebellion. It took the British several months to put it down at the cost of thousands of lives.



Moplahs were very much part of the grand Khilafat Movement that Gandhi was spearheading and Gandhi kept apologising for them


The Dravidian Moplahs had directed their revolt with class venom against some Aryan high-caste Hindus with property as well as Britishers: Brahmanical elements tried to use that to spark a crisis in Hindu-Muslim relations all over India. Gandhi tried to hold a balance: like the U.S. press and the Negro nationalists who read it he stressed that the Moplah uprising could be made part of a united drive for independence by Indians of all sects.But he was also aware of the pan-Islamic dimension: in a December 1921 call to the British to suspend their attacks against the Moplahs, he was to observe that the Moplahs saw themselves as fighting for a religion with methods they considered religious: Yogesh Chadha, Rediscovering Gandhi (London: Century 1997) p. 254.


And lets not forget the Tehreek-e-Hijrat Fatwa that Gandhi’s right hand man Azad gave to Muslims which gave Muslims two options "JEHAD" or "HIJRAT".

The Muslim Ulema, thinkers and activists called for the boycott of foreign goods and non-cooperation with the British government. Meetings were organised in order to rally the masses to support these issues. The meetings were organised under the banner of Mo’tamar al-Ansar (The Workers Conference) and various newspapers such as Al-Hilal of Maualana Abul Kalam Azad and The Comrade of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar. Both Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad and Maulana Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar were put behind bars for publishing anti-British articles in their newspapers. The latter spent four years in prison between 1911 and 1915CE.


The allegiance of the Muslim intelligentsia of India at that to the Khilafah is unquestionable. Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad summed up their view when he wrote in his newspaper al-Hilal on 6th November 1912 that the Ottoman Sultans possessed the only sword which Muslims had for their protection. Insofar as the “caliphate was essentially a religious integration of the shari’a�, it became “necessary by revelation, is of God’s institution and that obedience to its authority is farz, or positively commanded�.


The Khilafat Movement


In September 1919, Maulana Muhammad Ali and his brother Shaukat Ali, together with Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, and Hasrat Mohani, started a new organization, the Khilafat Movement (1919-1924). Their avowed aim was to use whatever leverage they had to protect the Khilafah. They organized Khilafat Conferences in several northern Indian cities. It is noticeable that the scholars and activists that were part of the Khilafat movement came from different schools of thought and backgrounds, for example Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was known to be a ‘ghayr taqleedi’ (non-taqleedi – who believed Taqleed to Mazahib is prohibited) and Maulana Mahmood Hasan was Deobandi who are followers of the Hanafi Mazhab yet they were united in the objective of working for the maintenance of the Khilafah.


In 1919, the Bombay Khilafat Committee agreed on two important organisational goals: “first, to urge the retention of the temporal powers of the Sultan of Turkey as Caliph, and second to ensure his continued suzerainty over the Islamic holy places.�

Delivering the presidential address at the Calcutta meeting of the Bengal Provincial Khilafat Conference in 1920, Maulana Azad discussed the importance of Khilafah he declared, “the purpose of this institution was to organise and lead the Muslim community in the right path, to establish justice, to bring about peace, and to spread God’s word in the world. For all this it was absolutely necessary for the caliph to possess temporal power�. Maulana Azad had no doubt that “without an Imam, their lives were un-Islamic and that they would be damned after death�.


Maulana Azad published a book in 1920 called Masla-e-Khilafat (The Issue of Khilafah), he stated: “Without the Khilafah the existence of Islam is not possible, the Muslims of India with all their effort and power need to work for this�.

In the same book page 176 Maulana Azad said, “There are two types of ahkam shariah, the first is related to the individual like the commands and prohibitions, the fara’id (obligations) and wajibat in order to perfect oneself. The second is not related to the individual but is related to the Ummah, nation, collective obligations and state politics like the conquering of lands, political and economic laws�.

According to Peter Hardy, Maulana Azad believed that, “The Muslim who would separate religion and politics for Muslims is an apostate who works silently�.


The loss of political power in India and the threat posed by a combination of forces to the temporal authority of the caliph, was so worrisome for the leaders of the Muslim community that some of them felt compelled to issue fatwas ‘in favour of migration (hijra)’ from India.


Maulana Abul Kalam Azad issued a fatwa which was published in the daily Ahl-e-Hadith of Amritsar on 30 July 1920. In his fatwa he urged Hijrat from India as an alternative to non-cooperation with the British. (YLH’s note: Was the Hijaz Born Azad a "Wahabi"... note "Ahle-Hadith)

Maulana Abdul Bari’s fatwa said, “every Muslim residing here should adopt non-cooperation but if (that is) impossible, should proceed for hijrat�. Maulana Shaukat Ali issued a statement on behalf of the Central Khilafat Committee, “expressing the hope that all dedicated Muslims would stay in India and work for the non-cooperation. Only if it did not succeed would they consider resorting to hijrat�. The impact of the fatwa was electrifying and thousands of Muslims preferred to leave the Dar al harb of India where their religious rights symbolized in the position of the Turkish Caliph was being infringed.


And most amazing was the fact that Gandhi’s encouragement led to Deobandi ulema creating the Jamiat ulema Hind ... which in its numerous forms and heads plagues South Asia even today... and all these groups are spin offs of the same.

Re: # 705 HP wrote: ["... Self contradictory statement

And what is the establishment made of? How do you [propose to change that?

Sorry you can’t figure out how to change the STATE APPARATUS, please don’t scream!..."]

Alright, I won't scream. But WHO is saying anything about changing the STATE APPARATUS? I certainly did not.

I wrote that it can not be changed. It will have to be dismantled. It SHOULD be disemboweled.

The powerful federal center is a monster that MUST be killed. The least painful way to do that is to devolve power in the real sense.

Absolute autonomy to the smaller units is the minimum first step. Even the provincial level is still too centralised. Autonomy should extend to the district in matters of local adminsitration. Only things like planning, agriculture, energy, health and education should be at the provincial level.

A small and loose confederation should consist of a cooperative council of the provinces that regulates things like issuance of currency and foreign relations. The president of the union can be a rotating chair that is occupied for a year by one of the provincial leaders. The armed forces should be largely disbanded and be limited a token honor guard for parades on March 23rd.

A small strategic defence division should be left intact to control the atomic bombs for the interim while the political leadership should begin nuclear disarmament plans right away.

The powerful centralised state is a cancer that is eating the country alive. This parasite MUST be terminated.

These are my feelings, not the ones you assumed.

...SR

Lets admit that modernity and capital maximisation has caught on with the masterminds of militants. The ones lobbying grenades, setting off explosive devices and Drones on two legs are just being used. They are pawns.

Guerrilla warfare as perfected by Sivaji, the father of modern guerrilla warfare was a savage and protracted affair and it took about eighty years to succeed even at that time! A rudimentary glance at guerrilla warfare’s history proves that guerrilla warfare is a story of successes as well as failures. A Guerrilla war in order to succeed must be fought in an environment in which both internal, local and international conditions favour it. Imam Shamyl who led the Daghestanis war of resistance against the Russian Czars was one of the most charismatic and brilliant leaders in the history of guerrilla war. Yet Shamyl failed and finally died as a prisoner under house arrest in European Russia. The international conditions did not favour Shamyl’s war and the great man despite all the valour and advantages of adverse terrain failed! Almost during the same time the Greeks were successful in attaining independence since West European powers specially Britain actively helped them. Around the same time, the Armenians, another Christian people failed to attain independence since no external power favoured their cause! Sandino of Nicaragua was a great guerrilla leader of Central American history! He eluded the US Marines who hopelessly tried for a long time to militarily defeat him but was finally treacherously killed by the Somozas. Nicaragua had to wait for many more decades to evict the Somoza dynasty till the late 1970s. Local conditions favoured guerrilla warfare but international conditions were against it and USA was bent at all cost to defeat any radical movement in Central America. Cuba with the particular Cold war tension of the late fifties and early sixties was the only guerrilla success story in South and Central America. The Basmachis also failed for similar reasons to defeat the USSR in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Biafara was yet another failure of a secessionist movement. The worst story of failure of guerrilla warfare can be found in Kurdistan where the brave Kurds despite being morally right, ethnically homogeneous and terrain wise well placed have failed to create an independent Kurdistan. Local conditions favour them but international conditions by virtue of being divided into three different countries as well as lack of open superpower support has so far doomed their struggle. I do not think there is any braver race in the Middle East than this warrior race that produced a Saladin! But all the valour and sacrifice of many decades has so far not brought them any success! Balochistan is yet another failure story of guerrilla warfare. Local conditions favoured the guerrillas in Balochistan in the 1970s but international conditions were against them and those indomitable men who were superior in minor tactics than any Afghan Mujahideen group failed in the final reckoning! They failed not because they lacked valour or because of tactical incompetence but simply because they did not get a billion dollar aid package from a super power and all important neighbouring countries did not actively help them! Malaya is yet another example of failure. Distance from Mainland China, ethnic composition of the local population and international involvement doomed the cause of the extremely brave, motivated and tactically sound, Chinese Communist guerrilla warriors of Malaysia. Che Guevera an extremely charismatic and brilliant guerrilla leader is yet another example of failure in guerrilla wars. Che drew wrong conclusions from the successes of the Cuban revolution and paid it with his life while trying to bring a similar revolution in Bolivia through guerrilla war! The ethnic logistic as well as internal conditions of Bolivia were different from Cuba and did not favour guerrilla warfare. The population was largely Mestizo (Red Indian/European mixed) and was far more conservative than Cuba. Distance from main external base country was so great that logistically it was difficult to support Che’s brilliant war from outside.

Re: # 694 HP wrote: ["... mistake you make in your analysis..."]

Mine was no analysis... I clearly wrote that was my conjecture... There simply isn't enough data yet to form a cogent hypothesis. You assume too much.


HP wrote: ["... you assume that there is one well organized group in Pakistan ..."]

Again, it is YOU who is assuming what I allegedly assumed. This was quite a baseless assertion and it betrays your personal prejudice not anything I've written.

HP wrote: ["...Nothing of that sort exists. There are many groups and they are going out in their crazy and criminal pursuits of some undefined goals.."]

Perfectly reasonable statement. No problems with anything in it. I agree.

HP wrote: ["...In their frustration after being rejected by the people, they have started bombing..."]

Now THIS is what seems more like an analysis or a theory that you are forwarding.

"Hey, THEY (people) have rejected US, so lets go bomb them."

Oooookay... That's a point of view, but a rather two dimensional one. It seems to assume a "one well organised group" in Pakistan that is going around bombing (since Feb 18th) Surely the bombs before the "people's rejection" could not be a result of THEIR "frustration" with the people. Do you not see the fallacy of your argument here. Are you not doing yourself what you mistakenly attribute to me?

HP wrote:["...You must be really weak-kneed that some thugs and criminals intimidate you..."]

Oh yes, sir, no questions. I am a yellow blooded, weak kneed, certified coward. Happy?

...SR

Another point of interest.Many Talibs I met are old Khalqi leftists.They told me that they had no choice but to grow beards and be Talibs .That they said was the need of the day.Mulla Borjan initially the main leader of Talibs was a regular Afghan army officer from the military academy " Harbi Pontoon" and a Khalqi .He became a Talib.It has been alleged that he was killed in a plot with links to the Paki int agencies.

On the other hand the Soviets had successfully infiltrated and converted the Jamiat by blackmailing them that they were a minority and could not survive without Soviet and later Russian support.So the Northern Alliance was more Russian infiltrated and the Talibs more Pakistan infiltrated.

Both the Northern Alliance and Talibs are not as bad as portrayed.All acted rightly for the right reasons.The ISI mishandled the Northern Alliance because those in high and medium positions were empty windbags with little intellect.

Tailpiece:-- When Akhtar Rahman left ISI he destroyed most of the records because of professional jealousy against Hamid Gul.Hamid Gul off course had a much better intellect and character.No projection of any one , since I was at logger heads with him always , but still we must state things as they are or were.

the taliban also have shadow governors in many provinces in the south , the general rule is that they are free to manoeuvre after 1400 hours or 1500 hours in the afternoon and southern parts of Helmand Kandahar and Nimroz Province for almost 24 hours.HP should visit Afghanistan . We can have some good scotch and then I take him around.He is a well meaning man although his wit is sometimes soo salty.

all guerrilla warfare is based on " HIT AND RUN" , a person should visit afghanistan before stating that taliban control an area or not .the important fact is that USA has already acknowledged 10 % of Afghanistan is under Taliban conrol.More important they have admitted , the US , that the Kabul government controls just 30 % . The major problem in recognising Taliban is that any one can be a Talib .The Pashtuns generally dress the same way and many Talibs even shave off their beards for operational reasons.The rule of the thumb is that Talibs are strong in parts of Kunar , Tagab district of Kapisa,Muqur district Ghazni , 90 % of Zabul province , 80 % of Helmand Province,60 % of Farah Province , 50 % of Kandahar Province , 80 % of Uruzgan Province , 30 % of Khost , 35 % of Paktika.Theirs is a nuisance value.Every company who wants to work in the Pashtun area has to set aside at least 10 % to 15 % for security.

#716 Posted by pavocavalry,

And then the blood of Sherpao.ANP used an activist from Amazo Garhi (Garhi Kapura) in Mardan to do it . ______ Bacha , well meaning guy although wrongly motivated did that . I think I met him one time in East Germany.Hayat Sherpao was a really great man.

Pavo, you actually know who killed Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao????? That incident was the death of NWFP. ANP (NAP at that time) killed him that much I know, but didn't know who exactly. ANP are opportunist hindu-loving traitors.

#714/715 Posted by HP

Taliban in Afghanistan are hit and run group and don't have the resources to control an area.

On what do you base this statement Sir? According to the last report out of US I saw, Taliban control all of Helmand province (which is the largest poppy cultivating area) and overall about 50% of Afghanistan. I would be glad to be corrected.

However, that does not support your implication that they are not fighting against the State. which they are!

No! They've only started to fight the Pakistani State/Army (which have so far been the same thing) after they attacked them. If Pakistani establishment stops attacking them, so will they.

I think you are just way too impressed with these criminals and their stories. For some even mafia is romantic!

That is partly correct. I think these people live a life much better than eating, sleeping and counting notches in fcking women. Their life has a purpose. We live like dogs.

one thing is very clear , the ANP has little clout in tribal areas except some afridi leaders in parts of khyber agency and afridis have had little part in the main insurgency in tribal areas in the last 4 years.

ANP is neither a leftist nor an enlightened party.their opportunist/confused stand is well covered in Juma Khan Sufis's book on Politics of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Vanguard Books 2005 Lahore.Juma was long time ANP leader,spent some 14 years in Kabul in exile and emerged disillusioned from ANP.

Late Dr Najeeb Shaheed of Afghanistan questioned ANP in Kabul , why did you sign the constitution of 1973 and then you come here and talk that you are against Pakistan.Daud Khan, Najeeb etc all saw the partys opportunist stand.And then the blood of Sherpao.ANP used an activist from Amazo Garhi (Garhi Kapura) in Mardan to do it . ______ Bacha , well meaning guy although wrongly motivated did that . I think I met him one time in East Germany.Hayat Sherpao was a really great man.

The Pashtuns are revolutionary but in the long term they dont like opportunists.

#713 Posted by zeemax
No one said that the majority of tribes and population in the area is not pro Pakistan. The FATA taliabn would lose support if they say anything against Pakistan and these criminals know it.

However, that does not support your implication that they are not fighting against the State. which they are! Otoh, Pakistan citizens can be criminals too.

Kaal is not a good example to bring in this debate as he said he does not know enough history to even understand what I wrote on Nawaiwaqt thread! He certainly does not know Pakistan better than me or you!

""We shall not allow Pakistan soil to be used for anyone to help NATO in Afghanistan"."

Non sense! Who are they to make this decision? I think you are just way too impressed with these criminals and their stories. For some even mafia is romantic!

I called it a stretch. Here is what I said and please don't use statements out of context.

"In Afghanistan they are fighting a foreign occupation so their tactics there can be justified, even though that would be a stretch too

"they control the largest single tract of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in Helmand) "

The tribes in Pakistan have controlled the drug trade. It was taken away from them after the afghan war was over in the late 80s. They got it back by supporting the taliban and now it is out of their control. Taliban don't control any area in Afghanistan in Helmand or anywhere else.

Taliban in Afghanistan are hit and run group and don't have the resources to control an area.

HP,

The statement of Maulana Faquir of Bajaur is extremely significant in relation to the loyalty of the FATA tribals to Pakistan. Note what he said:

"We shall not allow Pakistan soil to be used for anyone to help NATO in Afghanistan".

This means clearly he considers FATA to be Pakistan, and NOT the Islamic Emirates of Waziristan, or anything else. Get it Sir?

I hope KaalChakra is listening too because strangely he, even being an outsider, has sensed the truth of how patriotic and committed are the tribes to Pakistan. We must appreciate that, and take the Urstruly advice and apologize and compensate them, and withdraw immediately from NATO support. No alternative is going to work.

#711 Posted by HP,

But protect their drug money and the illegal trade from whom? I don't see anyone fighting them for that but only for their support of the Afghan Taliban (whom you do not consider 'criminals' even though they control the largest single tract of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in Helmand)

... could you please clarify?

Zee,
The Taliban in Afghanistan may be different but the ones in FATA are certainly criminals. In Afghanistan they are fighting a foreign occupation so their tactics there can be justified, even though that would be a stretch too.

What the taliban in Pakistan are fighting for? They are trying to protect their drug money and the illegal trade.

I went to the Hayatabad market and it is twenty times bigger than Bara! all that stuff is coming from Afghanistan. why would the business in Hayatabad care for some Islamic jihad when they have a legit business going on there? Otoh, the people in the tribal areas make money from arms, and drugs and blackmail. They need to protect that!

#708 Posted by HP,

HP he only said what I've always been saying and which is the truth. Taliban are NOT terrorists, the sectarians and the Kashmir Jihad splinters are! That's only what Maulana Faquir confirmed.

Zee

They appear to be two different statements!

Anyway, as I said the heat is getting to these criminals. The days of their sponsors in the army are coming to an end!

#691 Posted by zeemax
"3) They will henceforth not mask their faces because terror groups are acting in their garb."

That is what I wanted to confirm! I have not seen Express today so I missed this statement!

It appears that he is now disowning the groups something that he never did before! so the heat is getting to the criminals and believe me it is just the beginning...,these criminals don't know what is coming after them!

HP,

Here's the Jang link (also posted on Connect), but it doesn't give the ANP remark, but portrays support of Pakistan and its army.

http://www.jang.net/jm/3-16-2008/images/4232.gif

http://express.com.pk/images/NP_LHE/20080316/Sub_Images/1100370228-1.gif

#692 Posted by SR

I did not see this post earlier!

“It is not this government, or that government, or politicians or military etc. It is the state itself. The REAL ENEMY of the PEOPLE is the STATE APPARATUS aka ESTABLISHMENT�

Self contradictory statement

And what is the establishment made of? How do you [propose to change that? The problem with the old pseudo left (especially pro china!) is that they cannot think of solutions, they only think of opposition!

SR, Sorry you can’t figure out how to change the STATE APPARATUS, please don’t scream!

How could the State be responsible? It is the people or the establishment running the State, that is responsible and you find some political ways to defeat them instead of getting intimidated by a few criminals. The State is controlled by whosoever takes it over by any process.

HP, I have posted the news item from today's Daily Express, which has all the main points including ANP's Hindu connection, on Chowk Connect to your attention.

#701 Posted by HP,

HP I'll just reproduce the Jang link for you. I was replying to an email.

#695 Posted by ijaz_gul,

Ijaz, Maulana Faquir means 'pro-India' by saying 'Hindu connection', and not the Hindu/Sikh minorities living in NWFP. Are you aware there're many Hindus/Sikhs living in FATA itself? How many run businesses in their Bara markets?

The tribes, as by my experience of them, are neither sectarian nor discriminating in religion alone. The Kafir enemy who attacks them or tries to occupy them is a different matter altogether. They would rate even Pakistani Muslims as Kafir's in that case, as they have still not (I hope) done, but they will if sanity is not restored.

#700 Posted by zeemax

I did not see this statement on Jang! Any way it does not matter. Usually even taliban don't use such language for Khudai khadmatgars!

#698 Posted by HP,

HP, the video footage of Maulana Faquir's rally was shown on many TV channels last evening, plus news report is in Jang of today though the remark re ANP/Hindu connection was I think deleted. I'll locate the Jang link and post it in a few minutes and look for the complete transcript.

#697 Posted by ijaz_gul

"Just like the Government looses its writ in the lawless areas, Greenbacks proliferate."

The whole thing is about the free flow of the greenbacks. I will look forward to your analysis!

#691 Posted by zeemax
Please Post the link to this statement!

Asfand of ANP took a great stand when he called them criminals and demanded strong action against these criminals. Unfortunately, the Pak media is not reporting his statement!

Perhaps the leader of the gang of criminals wants to get back at Asfand for saying the right thing!
"
2) They will not negotiate with ANP till ANP ends its Hindu connection."

Who wants to negotiate with these criminals? Not Asfand! Nawaz can't talk to these criminals without ANP approval first! Though no matter what the leader of the criminals says,Even Nawaz would not talk with them. The criminals attempt to split the ANP/PMLn/PPP is at par with Mush's efforts.

Birds of a feather!

HP,
As we probe deeper and get to the eye of the storm, the religious factor gets into oblivion. Right now I am researching an issue and shall post it after having completed it. Suffice to make a sweeping statement. Its all about the "ECONOMICS OF MILTANCY". Just like the Government looses its writ in the lawless areas, Greenbacks proliferate.

HP,
As we probe deeper and get to the eye of the storm, the religious factor gets into oblivion. Right now I am researching an issue and shall post it after having completed it. Suffice to make a sweeping statement. Its all about the "ECONOMICS OF MILTANCY". Just like the Government looses its writ in the lawless areas, Greenbacks proliferate.

Zeemax,
When Mulana Faqir says what he says, it means words are put in his mouth.

ANP is a Pakistani party and its members have sworne by the constitution many times. Wali Khan was one of the signatories to the original constitution.

What does the maulana mean by pro Hindu. Are not Hindus the biggest minority group in Pakistan. Dony Hindus and Sikhs live in Waziristan? None of them are killed in the name of jehad so far.

Its a clevely drafted statement hitting at divides in our country. Who does it? You know as much as I do.

#681 Posted by SR

“And we didn't have to wait long for another "message" to be delivered. This was at the Supermarket in F-6, at an upscale Italian Restaurant. Perhaps HP will no longer claim that there was a ISI safe house next door.�

It is very important for an educated person to absorb the whole thing before commenting on it. There is no message. It was perhaps a grenade or two tossed by some Lal Masjid type mullah.

Some people tossed Grenades in Gohati, Assam too killing three people injuring fifty!

The first mistake you make in your analysis is that you assume that there is one well organized group in Pakistan that has thought about all the messages and planned for the next ten years! Nothing of that sort exists. There are many groups and they are going out in their crazy and criminal pursuits of some undefined goals. In their frustration after being rejected by the people, they have started bombing. You must be really weak-kneed that some thugs and criminals intimidate you.

contd... #691:

... The distinction is made easier by looking at the pattern of the attacks and whom these targeted.

The fourth group(s) (i.e. the sectarians plus the break-away Kashmir Jihad splinters) had no conflict with the military but rather with the Police and the domestic intelligence agencies like FIA and Intelligence Bureau (IB) whom had been entrusted with going after them in the 90s. The Police and FIA were exclusively targeted, and not the military or the cantonments, in Lahore by organisations mainly based in Sargodha district in Punjab (hub of Sipah-e - Sahaba / Lashkar-e-Jhangvi) as per the investigations. The bombings in Charsadda / Peshawar mosques can be attributed to the sectarians amongst the two above.

The blowback from Jamia Hafsa was exclusively aimed at the hard as well as soft targets of military/ISI, chiefly in Garrison town of Rawalpindi - and others in Tarbela, Risalpur, Nowshera, Kohat, Bannu etc apart from the check posts/convoy bombings in Swat and FATA - and not at the Police or Domestic Intelligence agencies. These are components of the openly declared war between Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani army, and only the ignorant will categorize these along with the former.

The problem will not be solved unless first it is clearly understood by those in-charge in Government mouthing wholesale Islomophobic hubris.

Re: # 686 Urstruly ["... if a country has secret ... torture centers, ... the country is a .. banana republic. ... the regime running it should be triued in Hague for crimes against humanity..."]

I generally agree with all you've written in this post except that I have a fundamental point of dispute about the regime running it ...

Yes, agreed, that the present rulers should be brought to justice, but that WILL NOT solve anything. This problem is not regime specific. It is a fundamental systemic problem. It is not this government, or that government, or politicians or military etc. It is the state itself. The REAL ENEMY of the PEOPLE is the STATE APPARATUS aka ESTABLISHMENT itself and NOT individuals. I've said before that even if you brought back two of your favorite members from the Khulfa-i-Rashideen and made them president and prime minister and brought back Khalid-bin-Waleed and appointed him COAS, even then the fcuked up system WILL NOT CHANGE. The system is DESIGNED to be corrupt and exploitative. The federal state is the real enemy. Not specific individuals.

I say this as one who was himself a wrongful victim of detention and torture back in 1974 at the hands of Zulifkar Ali Bhutto's regime. I was the lucky one who got out and lives to tell the tale.

This went on under Jehilat Ali Khan, Ghulam Mardood, Kanjar Mirza, Ayub and Yahya, as well as under Bezamir and Nawaz Badmash. And, of course, we all know about what happened under general Zina-al-Fak...

...SR

Policy statement issued by Pakistani Taliban.

Maulana Faqir, second in command after Baitullah Mehsud and head of the 10,000 strong Bajaur Militia, said the following at a large gathering yesterday:

1) They're willing to talk to Nawaz Sharif because he has never said anything against Taliban.

2) They will not negotiate with ANP till ANP ends its Hindu connection.

3) They will henceforth not mask their faces because terror groups are acting in their garb.

Revealing? This confirms my categorization that three out of four militancy organizations have no interest in destabilizing Pakistan or its politics, while the fourth is taking advantage of the free-for-all to settle scores because an easy scapegoat is available. The Indian connection of ANP (Frontier Gandhis?) is also brought to light.

Pakistan should know whom to negotiate with and whom to go after. Nawaz Sharif had earlier successfully dealt with the fourth group in the 90s, and can certainly deal with its splinter off-shoots now. Distinctions will clearly need to be made.

Yesterday's targeting of Americans would nevertheless be by Swat or FATA Taliban, while the Lahore ones by the fourth group(s). If NATO keeps bombing tribals, their soft targets all over Pakistan will continue to be hit wherever these could be found.

The bombings of late shows some inside info that the jihadis have about the military and their other targets. This is a good sign, at last the jihadis have access to military information and at last the army and the jihadis are uniting to purge the western elements.

Re: # 688

What really surprises me is the arrogance and in-your-face bravado which they have to come out openly in public space. This despite how they are butchering local population and insulting their religious icons at the same time.

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Re: # 686

The government statement in myy last post was reported by ARY.

SR:

It is correct that the Batalvi's house was not a detention center, but the house at its rear indeed was an interregation and torture center. It was reported by none other but BBC. That is the reason the truck drove all the way to the back where the servent quarters were and the exploded adjacent to the house in the rear. The government's one of the nmany responses -other than finding heads of the suicide bombers, breaking the back of terrorists, and not giving further permission to anyone to wreak such havoc was - that the government "will move all such facilities out of the residential and urban areas..."

Beside all that, the point is that if a country has secret detention, interrogation, and torture centers, it doesn't matter where, it only means that the country is a pretty fukked up banana republic. And the regime running it should be triued in Hague for crimes against humanity.

End to hippocrazy,

The italian restaurant bombed was the only one serving alcohol, and this should teach them a lesson. It is time that pakistanis start demanding integrity in teh society, this is a right step, the legacy of teh gin drinking and pork eating man founding an islamic society has to stop.

hippocrazy moordabad.

Implosion of a nation.

AS the suicide bombers are exploding while the students and people are engaged in protest marches against a danish cartoon, there is serious implosion of the economy, un-noticed

from jang of today

Sugarcane being sold to brick kilns as fuel
Punjab mills stop buying; growers in quandary as exploitation of farmers continues across country

Saturday, March 15, 2008
By Shahzad Anwar

KARACHI: The cash crop of sugar cane that has in recent past caused sugar crisis and rocked the governments due to sugar scandals is being sold as fuel to brick kilns in Punjab as sugar mills are not willing to buy cane.

................ Growers complain that sugar mills are not ready to purchase their produce.

The highest desperation is reported from some areas of Punjab particularly in Sargodha District where growers are helplessly selling sugarcane to brick kilns at throwaway prices, whereas kiln owners used one of the major cash crops as fuel purpose.

“It is worst situation and never happened in the history of the country,� Chairman Sindh Abadgar Board Abdul Majeed Nizamani commented while talking to The News. The long queues of trolleys loaded with sugarcane are noticed outside each sugar mill in Punjab.

With todays attack on the italian restaurant, the jihadis have finally started attacking the elites. The YLH and tahmeds who for a long time maintained that jihad is a tribal issue, linked to poverty, at last the proof is emerging that all of pakistan is afflicted by the TNT -strain of islam. the next targets will be the generals, retired and serving, who have most benefitted from the military.

Pakistan is OK

Every day, first I read the indian news reports, then I read jang and dawn. When I find a few reports of bomb blasts, a few reports of paki troops attacking their own citizens with artilary and helicopter gunships, I feel secure, good the pakistan I know has not changed. That is a good feeling, good to know that the founding priciples of pakistan, the TNT, which requires it to attack another has not changed.

The hindus and christians in pakistan have been knocked, most of teh ahmadias have escaped, most of teh shia doctors and other wealthy have been killed, an now the pak society have identified the tribals to attack, the second of teh two nation theory.

Pakistan is an amoebaic society, it continously divides it self and one attacks the other. I admire the genious of jinnah, he had a good understanding of teh pak society.

Another Message to the Power elite

First, the blast in Model Town, Lahore, which HP claimed was near a FIA safe house, and now a blast in F-6 in Islamabad.

There was NO safe house for FIA or anyone else near Batalvi's house, so that was an incorrect argument. And we didn't have to wait long for another "message" to be delivered. This was at the Supermarket in F-6, at an upscale Italian Restaurant. Perhaps HP will no longer claim that there was a ISI safe house next door. There just isn't.

I think my conjecture about the "terror message" to the elite looks more and more plausible.

This blast was less than a 1,000 yards (as the crow flies) from our residence and the windows rattled a millisecond after the deafening BANG. This is a classical psychological warfare tactic.

...SR

Assadi miaN,

Go easy on the US elite! I personally think you should focus more on the skill you apparently excel at - the skill of eating alive that Mantolives character - for whom you seem to have developed a taste of sorts!

And feel free to expose the demagoguery of the Jinnah character, too!

Loud blast heard in Islamabad: witnesses ISLAMABAD, March 15 (AFP): A loud blast was heard in the Pakistani capital on Saturday, AFP correspondents said. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause. A private TV channel reported the blast occurred in a restaurant in the posh Supermarket locality. An eye witness said dozens of people were injured. Security officials said the blast hit a restaurant frequented by foreigners. (Posted @ 20:50 PST)

Asadi,

It doesn't matter. In fact our friend Khalid Bhatti posts his articles on his blog, posts them later on Unplugged and finally published on Chowk. So lets hope for the best.

Best of Luck.

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HAHAHA....perfect reply to pakiland's protests...

seriously..change your name to condomistan

Afghanistan fires 4 more missiles at Pak village

By Ali Afzal Afzaal

PARACHINAR: Four more missiles fired from Afghanistan fell on the border village of Boraki in Kurram Agency on Friday evening, a day after a strong protest was lodged with the US-led coalition forces over the attack on a Pakistani village that had killed four persons.

Official sources said the missiles fell near a checkpoint manned by the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC). The troops, however, remained safe as none of the missiles exploded. A senior official of the political administration, while requesting anonymity, told The News that the missiles were fired from the neighbouring Paktia province of Afghanistan. He said they did not know who was the target of these missiles.

"We have informed senior government functionaries of the firing of missiles from across the border," said the official. He said the missiles fell about 500 meters inside Pakistani territory and frightened the soldiers and residents of the adjoining villages.

The official said senior military officials based in Parachinar, the regional headquarters of Kurram Agency, also visited the border village and took the missiles into possession. Top military spokesman and DG ISPR Maj Gen Athar Abbas, when reached by telephone, told The News he, too, had received similar reports but the local military officials in the area could not confirm the same. "It cannot be confirmed whether these were missiles or mortar shells and also there were no details about reports that these missiles were fired from across the border," explained the DG ISPR. He said the attack didn't cause any casualty.

It may be mentioned here that four people, including two minor girls and two women, were killed in North Waziristan Agency a few days back when five artillery shells fired from across the border by the US-led coalition forces hit a home in the border town of Lawara Mandai. The government for the first time admitted foreign aggression and lodged a strong protest with the military representatives of the coalition forces based in Islamabad.

yoo hoo prophetboy...


remember the LeT? yup..the kashmiri freedom fighters your government trained..and the jiahdis for whom pakis raised money in chanda boxes...

Splinter militant groups behind blasts: Investigators

SHAIQ HUSSAIN
ISLAMABAD - Investigations into the recently carried out suicide attacks, including one at the Lahore office of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in which nearly 30 people were killed, disclosed that 10 to 12 splinter militant groups are involved in the blasts.
Background interviews with the officials, linked with the probe into the recent spate of deadly suicide blasts, revealed the involvement of small groups of militants who left their paternal Jihadi organisations such as Lashkar-i-Taiba and others.
“The major Jihadi outfits do differ with Pakistan’s policy to support the United States in anti-terrorism endeavours but they are also against inflicting loss to the country’s security forces,� said an official here requesting anonymity.
The problem, he said, lies with the splinter militant organisations operating outside the ambit of major Jihadi organisations.
Another official, when contacted, said that currently it is being investigated whether those small militant groups, comprising not more than 20 persons each, are carrying out the suicide attacks on their own or are being used by Al-Qaeda.

tahmed writes "deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan..."

A big fraud whose leash was loosened by the Army to put the pressure on Musharraf to give up his wardi, otherwise he would have done their thuggery till death "did him part" from them.... The fool has come to enjoy his celebrity and now as the army's "used goods" disposal is being arranged. Once again the people and their "arrangements" are secondary to these thugs, CJ included.

#669 tahmed

tahmed,

There will NEVER be democracy in ANY Muslim-majority country. Never. It goes against the grain of Islam, which is a socio-political ideology that mo used to create his empire.

You will live long enough to verify this many times over. No point cursing me. It's actually true. Sorry.

Chief Justice Zindabad!!

Deposed CJ rejects monetary, other benefits from govt

ISLAMABAD: The deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhery has rejected government’s offer of huge sum of money and foreign settlement here on Friday.

According to family sources of the deposed Chief Justice, a high profile representative of government met Justice Iftikhar Chaudhery at Chief Justice House in Islamabad few hours ago.

The representative said the money would secure the future of CJ’s children and he could be settled in any country of his choice, claimed Justice Iftikhar’s family sources.

The Chief Justice, however, once again turned down the offer.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/updates.asp?id=40375

No wonder even the scum "elite" of Pakistan - power hungry politicians, loan defaulters, hypocritical men in beards, retired lawless generals - have joined the great Awam of Pakistani in saluting this man and rising above their miserable selves to think of the nation and future generations.

No wonder the entire nation has been energized by this man to turn ex-bully in uniform, the hosni-mubarak wannabe, turn into a whiny little man still seeking to keep his job even if only as a useful idiot. In trying to bribe the Chief Justice, Mush and his lotas show just how brain-dead and desperate and mindless of the national interest these scoundrels are!!

peeweema: tell us how pakiland has america over a barrel and how a grim faced fallon will be read the riot act soon..

Pakistan protests four deaths by NATO artillery fire

dpa
dpa - International News Service in English

Mar 13, 2008 07:37 EST

Islamabad (dpa) - Pakistan lodged a "strong protest" with the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan after one of their artillery shells killed four people on the Pakistani side of a remote border region, an army spokesman said Thursday.

Wednesday's attack sparked a protest by around 2,500 angry tribesmen in Khar town of the neighbouring tribal district of Bajaur.

The demonstrators chanted slogans like "Death to American" and "Death to Musharraf," and set ablaze an American flag.

"This is not the first American attack in tribal areas. They carry out at least one such attack in every 15 to 20 days," a member of parliament from the tribal district, Kamran Khan, told the rally. "We condemn the killings of innocent people."

Hmmm...post #666, no fatwas forthcoming from the minons of the shaitan?

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#662 Posted by ajeya on March 14, 2008 6:32:35 am

it tells him pakiland is moderate and righteous...just like the killings on hundreds of thousands in bangladesh, the support for islamic terrorist, the islamic terrorist training infrastructure and the targeting of pakis tells him that pakiland is moderate and righteous...

#661 Posted by akcheema,

sour grapes ... HAVE-NOTs and HAVEs .... ... what sort of a country ... similar to Afghanistan .. the very computer you are keying in ... product of the west

This is such an amateurish post that it clearly displays the total disconnect you have with the issues involved.

Go in peace brother ... and see you in May. I hope you learn a few things in the meantime.

#660 Posted by Urstruly on March 14, 2008 6:22:28 am


I contend that the head of a bomber can never survive because of the mechanics of the explosion.


don't let me get in the way of your conspiracy theories but they found the head of the women who killed rajiv gandhi. maybe you need to work that angle into your conspiracy theory as well. CIA did it perhaps..don't know..I'm sure a committed conspiracy theorist like you will come up with something..

#605 tahmed32

The % of Hindus in Pakistan has decreased drastically.

The % of Muslims in India has increased.

What does that tell you?

Re: # 650

You are a seriously misguided individual my friend. So the suicide bombers in Pakistan are against some perceived occupation as well are they? If the Iraqi bombers ever have time to consider their actions, exactly who are they weakening in the process? Say for argument's sake, the americans leave as a result of this madness, what sort of a country are they going to be left with? Probably very similar to Afghanistan I'd say. Is that what you have in mind for your homeland in due course too? Zeemax, I liked your analysis of cost-effectiveness of suicide bombers vs higher technology in warfare; does explain a lot.

Zeemax, are you sure all this isn't just sour grapes? the west have so much, we have nothing, so it must be their fault? Same logic the HAVE-NOTs of a society would use towards the HAVEs. Or is it just pride-talk since we have nothing else, may as well eh?

By the way, all this current technology, the very computer you are keying in your answers from are a product of the west; why don't you forfeit all that and join your uncle in that cave, wherever that is. I have also noted that some of these highly intelligent criticisers of the american-elite, seem to actually live within the Great Satan; that is an interesting concept. We live in the west, where the relative freedom to say what we want allows us to actually criticise the west from within; but we can't possibly be physically living in the land of the pure as life is too hard ("hein talkh bohat banda-e-mazdoor ke auqat").

Why don't at least one of you put your NECK where your mouth is and, like I said before, show these up and coming generation of suiciders how it is done properly eh?

As I said, I am still away but logged on to see where you guys were up to; there seems to be a mutually-bonded group conratulating each other on their individual contributions, with a hindoo thrown in, now and again, for good measure.

By the way, I'll return around early May and I wouldn't mind that request of a list of muslim scientists that I asked for before. All the explanantions have been given before. I am sure all these intelligent minds put together should be able to come up with something.

Zeemax:

Have you noticed in Fisks' article the line where he says that of all the suicide bombings in Iraq (530 according to him) only 10 suicide bombers have been identified. On the other hand in pakistan the government cliam to find the "head" of the bomber in almost every case. The news from Iraq never mention the "head found".

My contention is on two points;

1. I contend that the head of a bomber can never survive because of the mechanics of the explosion.

2. I also contend that the pakistani government's insistence on "finding head" and then releasing the news to the media while the remains of the victims are still clinging to the trees and overhead wires means only one thing, that about 90-95% of these attacks are in fact not suicide attacks but other mechanism (remote control, IEDs etc.) are employed; while portraying such attacks as suicide attacks works at two levels for the government (actually these haramis shouldn't even be called government, but I am at loss of words):

1. It hides their incompetence and cover up gaps in the security system. "Oh! no one can stop suicide attacks" line of shit argument.

2. For some reason neo-colonial powers and their tut-poonjia chamchay here take suicide attacks as some sort of their own moral high ground. So wiping off a whole village using a smart bomb is a legitimate military tactic but using suicide attackt o eliminate a strategic target is morally low. I never understood the logic.

#658 Posted by majumdar,

I suppose they would come to some sort of a settlement based on their respective power.

Zee sahib,

Assuming USA just walked out and left the Iraqis to themselves. The Shias wud still win wud they not given that they are a majority, wud Sunnis reconcile to the position that say Muslims have in India.

Regards

#655 Posted by majumdar,

Iraq is not a very good example, as it could have been any other group trying to take over the country with american help. You must remember Hazballah and Iran are Shia too who have no such conflict with Sunnis, and Pakistan has no sectarian problem except in Parachinar which flares up from time to time.

A better way to look at Iraq is as a battle between the occupiers and their collaborators for their own ends, and those who stand to lose significantly as a result of that collaboration.

#605 tahmed32

[#600 jay thakeray: i agree with you that indian and pakistani societies are very different. we dont burn our minorities. we dont ridicule their religion. we dont have anything like the pakistan-obsessed freaks like you.]

Does your Islam teach you to lie in order to cover up for your Islamic activities?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Pakistan:

Human Rights Violations on Hindus

There have been severe persecution of Hindus by Muslims in Pakistan since its formation in 1947. The increasing Islamization has caused many Hindus to leave Hinduism and seek emancipation by converting to other faiths such as Buddhism and Christianity. Such Islamization include the blasphemy laws, which make it dangerous for religious minorities to express themselves freely and engage freely in religious and cultural activities [8]

Minority members of the Pakistan National Assembly have alleged that Hindus were being hounded and humiliated to force them to leave Pakistan.[9] Hindu women have been known to be victims of kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam.[10] Krishan Bheel, a Hindu member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, came into news recently for manhandling Qari Gul Rehman.[11]

Hindus in what is now Pakistan have declined from 23 % of the total population in 1947 to less than 2% today. The report condemns Pakistan for systematic state-sponsored religious discrimination against Hindus through bigoted "anti-blasphemy" laws. It documents numerous reports of millions of Hindus being held as "bonded laborers" in slavery-like conditions in rural Pakistan, something repeatedly ignored by the Pakistani government.

Forced and coerced conversions of religious minorities to Islam occurred at the hands of societal actors. Religious minorities claimed that government actions to stem the problem were inadequate. Several human rights groups have highlighted the increased phenomenon of Hindu girls, particularly in Karachi, being kidnapped from their families and forced to convert to Islam.

Kidnapping charges were pending against a Muslim man who abducted a fifteen-year-old Christian, Samina Izhaq, and forced her to convert in August 2004.

On September 2, 2005, Ghulam Abbas and Mohammad Kashif reportedly drugged and kidnapped Riqba Masih, a Christian woman, from the village of Chak, Punjab, and took her to Lahore. The kidnappers repeatedly raped Masih and threatened to kill her and her family if she did not convert to Islam but Masih refused. On September 3, 2005, another unidentified accomplice took Masih into custody and detained her until September 6, 2005, raping her repeatedly. Later that day, the kidnappers took Masih to Faisalabad and abandoned her at a bus stop from where she made her way to her parents' home. Police arrested Ghulam Abbas and Mohammad Kashif and charged them with kidnapping and rape. Following an October 24, 2005, hearing in which a Faisalabad court denied bail, Kashif escaped from the courtroom and remained at large at the end of the reporting period. Abbas remained in police custody, and police are attempting to find Kashif[2].

On October 18, 2005, Sanno Amra and Champa, a Hindu couple residing in the Punjab Colony, Karachi, Sindh returned home to find that their three teenage daughters had disappeared. After inquiries to the local police, the couple discovered that their daughters had been taken to a local madrassah, had been converted to Islam, and were denied unsupervised contact with their parents[3].

Zee sahib,

Do you think the Shias/collaborators would just roll over and play dead in Iraq/Pakistan? Or resist? Mind you Shiites are a majority in Iraq.

And if they do resist, will the Muslims as a whole be better off?

Regards

#653 Posted by majumdar,

Of-course. Just as in Pakistan .... those seen as collaborators as the Shia in Iraq.

Zee sahib,

You wud of course have noticed that most of the victims of the suicide bombers were Momins themselves.

Regards

Zee sahib,

You wud of course have noticed that most of the victims of the suicide bombers were Momins themselves.

Regards

Zee sahib,

You wud of course have noticed that most of the victims of the suicide bombers were Momins themselves.

Regards

A must read - particularly for the benefit of the 'drone' theorizing author and his cohorts:

Robert Fisk: The cult of the suicide bomber

Few players in the 'war on terror' are more chilling, or misunderstood, than suicide bombers. Yet the true scale of their grisly activities has never been properly calculated. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Robert Fisk details the shocking extent of the most widespread campaign of self-liquidation in human history

Friday, 14 March 2008

Khaled looked at me with a broad smile. He was almost laughing. At one point, when I told him that he should abandon all thoughts of being a suicide bomber – that he could influence more people in this world by becoming a journalist – he put his head back and shot me a grin, world-weary for a man in his teens. "You have your mission," he said. "And I have mine." His sisters looked at him in awe. He was their hero, their amanuensis and their teacher, their representative and their soon-to-be-martyred brother. Yes, he was handsome, young – just 18 – he was dressed in a black Giorgio Armani T-shirt, a small, carefully trimmed Spanish conquistador's beard, gelled hair. And he was ready to immolate himself.

A sinister surprise. I had travelled to Khaled's home to speak to his mother. I had already written about his brother Hassan and wanted to introduce a Canadian journalist colleague, Nelofer Pazira, to the family. When Khaled walked on to the porch of the house, Nelofer and I both realised – at the same moment – that he was next, the next to die, the next "martyr". It was his smile. I've come across these young men before, but never one who so obviously declared his calling.

His family sat around us on the porch of their home above the Lebanese city of Sidon, the sitting room adorned with coloured photographs of Hassan, already gone to the paradise – so they assured me – for which Khaled clearly thought he was destined. Hassan had driven his explosives-laden car into an American military convoy at Tal Afar in north-western Iraq, his body (or what was left of it) buried "in situ" – or so his mother was informed.

It's easy to find the families of the newly dead in Lebanon. Their names are read from the minarets of Sidon's mosques (most are Palestinian) and in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, the Sunni "Tawhid" movement boasts "hundreds" of suiciders among its supporters. Every night, the population of Lebanon watches the brutal war in Iraq on television. "It's difficult to reach 'Palestine' these days," Khaled's uncle informed me. "Iraq is easier."

Too true. No one doubts that the road to Baghdad – or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul – lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated affair. What is astonishing – what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi "government" or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists – is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.

But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as "several", we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers' victims may appear insignificant; but the killers' ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable.

Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel's occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion.

And, although neither the Iraqi government nor their American mentors will admit this, scarcely 10 out of more than a thousand suicide killers have been identified. We know from their families that Palestinians, Saudis, Syrians and Algerians have been among the bombers. In a few cases, we have names. But in most attacks, the authorities in Iraq – if they can still be called "authorities" after five years of catastrophe – have no idea to whom the bloodied limbs and headless torsos of the bombers belong.

Even more profoundly disturbing is that the "cult" of the suicide bomber has seeped across national frontiers. Within a year of the Iraqi invasion, Afghan Taliban bombers were blowing themselves up alongside Western troops or bases in Helmand province and in the capital Kabul. The practice leached into Pakistan, striking down thousands of troops and civilians, killing even the principal opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. The London Tube and bus bombings – despite the denials of Tony Blair – were obviously deeply influenced by events in Iraq.

Academics and politicians have long debated the motives of the bombers, the psychological make-up of the men and women who cold-bloodedly decide to undertake the role of suicide executioners; for they are executioners, killers who see their victims – be they soldiers or civilians – before they flick the switch that destroys them. The Israelis long ago decided that there was no "perfect" profile for a suicide bomber, and my own experience in Lebanon bears this out. The suicider might have spent years fighting the Israelis in the south of the country. Often, they would have been imprisoned or tortured by Israel or its proxy Lebanese militia. Sometimes, brothers or other family members would have been killed. On other occasions, the example of their own relatives would have drawn them into the vortex of suicide-by-example.

Khaled is – or was, for I no longer know if he is alive, since I met him a few weeks ago– influenced by his brother Hassan, whose journey to Iraq was organised by an unknown group, presumably Palestinian, and whose weapons training beside the Tigris river was videotaped by his comrades. Hassan's mother has shown me this tape – which ends with Hassan cheerfully waving goodbye from the driver's window of a battered car, presumably the vehicle he was about to ram into the American convoy at Tal Afar.

None of this addresses the issue of religious belief. While there is evidence aplenty that the Japanese suicide pilots of the Second World War were sometimes coerced and intimidated into their final flights against US warships in the Pacific, many also believed that they were dying for their emperor. For them, the fall of cherry blossom and the divine wind – the "kamikaze" – blessed their souls as they aimed their bombers at American aircraft carriers. But even an industrialised dictatorship like Japan – facing the imminent collapse of its entire society at the hands of a superpower – could only mobilise 4,615 "kamikazes". The Iraq suicide bombers may already have reached half that number.

But the Japanese authorities encouraged their pilots to think of themselves as a collective suicide unit whose insignia of imminent death – white Rising Sun headbands and white scarves – prefigured the yellow headbands imprinted with Koranic script that Hizbollah guerrillas wore when they set out to attack Israeli soldiers in the occupied zone of southern Lebanon. In Iraq, however, those who direct the growing army of suiciders do not lack inventiveness. Their bombers have arrived at the scene of their self-destruction dressed as car mechanics, soldiers, police officers, middle-aged housewives, children's sweet-sellers, worshippers and – on one occasion – a "harmless" shepherd. They have carried their bombs in Oldsmobiles, fuel trucks, garbage trucks, flat-bed trucks, on donkeys and bicycles, motor-bikes and mopeds and carts, minibuses, date-vendors' vans, mobile recruitment centres and lorries packed with chlorine. Incredibly, there appears to be no individual central "brain" behind the bombings – although "groupuscules" of bombers obviously exist. Inspiration, imitation and the globalised influence of the internet appear sufficient to empower the bombers of Iraq.

On an individual level, it is possible to see the friction and psychological trauma of families. Khaled's mother, for instance, constantly expressed her pride in her dead son Hassan and, in front of me, she looked with almost equal love at his still-living brother. But when my companion urged Khaled to remain alive for his mother's sake – reminding him that the Prophet himself spoke of the primary obligation of a Muslim man to protect his mother – the woman was close to tears. She was torn apart by her love as a mother and her religious-political duty as the woman who had brought another would-be martyr into the world. When my friend again urged Khaled to remain alive, to stay in Sidon and marry – eerily, the muezzin's call to prayer had begun during our conversation – he shook his head.

Not even a disparaging remark about those who would send him on his death mission – that they were prepared to live in this world while sending others like Khaled to their fate – could discourage him. "I am not going to become a 'shahed' [martyr] for people," he replied. "I am doing it for God."

It was the same old argument. We could produce a hundred good ways – peaceful ways – for him to resolve the injustices of this world; but the moment Khaled invoked the name of God, our suggestions became irrelevant. Rationality – humanism, if you like – simply withered away. If a Western president could invoke a war of "good against evil", his antagonists could do the same.

But is there a rational pattern to the suicide bombings in Iraq? The first incidents of their kind took place as American troops were actually advancing towards Baghdad. Near the Shia town of Nasiriyah, an off-duty Iraqi policeman, Sergeant Ali Jaffar Moussa Hamadi al-Nomani, drove a car bomb into an American Marine roadblock. Married, with five children, he had been a soldier in Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran and had volunteered to fight the Americans after Saddam's occupation of Kuwait. Shortly afterwards, two Shia Muslim women did the same.

In its dying days, even Saddam Hussein's own government was shocked. "The US administration is going to turn the whole world into people prepared to die for their nations," Saddam's vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, warned. "All they can do now is turn themselves into bombs. If the B-52 bombs can now kill 500 or more in our war, then I'm sure that some operations by our freedom fighters will be able to kill 5,000." Ramadan even referred to "the martyr's moment of sublimity" – an al-Qa'ida-like phrase that ill befitted a secular Baathist – and it was clear that the vice-president was almost as surprised as the Americans. But only two days after the US occupation of Baghdad, a woman killed herself while trying to explode a grenade among a group of American troops outside the capital.

Throughout the five years of war, suicide bombers have focused on Iraq's own American-trained security forces rather than US troops. At least 365 attacks have been staged against Iraqi police or paramilitary forces. Their targets included at least 147 police stations (1,577 deaths), 43 army and police recruitment centres (939 deaths), 91 checkpoints (with a minimum of 564 fatalities), 92 security patrols (465 deaths) and numerous other police targets (escorts, convoys accompanying government ministers, etc). One of the recruitment centres – in the centre of Baghdad – was assaulted by suicide bombers on eight separate occasions.

By contrast, suicide bombers have attacked only 24 US bases at a cost of 100 American dead and 15 Iraqis, and 43 American patrols and checkpoints, during which 116 US personnel were killed along with at least 56 civilians, 15 of whom appear to have been shot by American soldiers in response to the attacks, and another 26 of whom were children standing next to a US patrol. Most of the Americans were killed west or north of Baghdad. Suicide attacks on the police concentrated on Baghdad and Mosul and the Sunni towns to the immediate north and south of Baghdad.

The trajectory of the suicide bombers shows a clear preference for military targets throughout the insurgency, with attacks on Americans gradually decreasing from 2006 and individual attacks on Iraqi police patrols and police recruits increasing over the past two years, especially in the 100 miles north of Baghdad. Just as the Islamist murderers of Algeria – and their military opponents – favoured the fasting month of Ramadan for their bloodiest assaults in the 1990s, so the suicide bombers of Iraq mobilise on the eve of religious festivals. There was a pronounced drop in suicide assaults during the period of sectarian liquidations after 2005, either because the bombers feared interception by the throat-cutters of tribal gangs working their way across Baghdad, or because – a grim possibility – they were themselves being used in the sectarian murder campaign.

The most politically powerful attacks occurred inside military bases – including the Green Zone in Baghdad (two in one day in October 2004) – and against the UN headquarters (in which the UN envoy Sergio de Mello was killed) and the International Red Cross offices in Baghdad in 2003. By December 2003, British officials were warning that there were more "spectacular" suicide bombings to come, and the first suicide assault on a mosque took place in January of the following year when a bomber on a bicycle blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Baquba, killing four worshippers and wounding another 39.

Scarcely a year later, another suicider attacked a second Shia mosque, killing 14 worshippers and wounding 40. In February 2004, a man blew himself up on a bus outside the Shia mosque at Khadamiyah in Baghdad, killing 17 more Shia Muslims. Only a few days earlier, a man wearing an explosives belt killed four at yet another Shia mosque in the Doura district of Baghdad. The suicide campaign against Shia places of worship continued with an attack on a Mosul mosque in March 2005, killing at least 50, two more attacks in April that killed 26, and another in May in Baghdad.

While Shia mosques were being targeted in a deliberate campaign of provocation by al-Qa'ida-type suiciders, markets and hospitals frequented by Shia Muslims were also attacked. Almost all the 600 Iraqis killed by suicide bombs in May 2005 were Shias. After the partial demolition of the Shia mosque at Samarra on 22 February 2006, the "war of the mosques" began in earnest for the suicide bombers of Iraq. A Sunni mosque was blown up, with nine dead and "dozens" of wounded, and two Shia mosques were the target of suicide bombers in the same week. In early July 2006, seven suicide killers blew themselves up in Sunni and Shia mosques, leaving a total of 51 civilians dead. During the same period, a suicide bomber launched the first attack of its kind on Shia pilgrims arriving from Iran.

Bombers were to attack the funerals of those Shia they had killed, and even wedding parties. Schools, university campuses and shopping precincts were also now included on the target lists, most of the victims yet again being Shia. Over the past year, however, an increasing number of tribal leaders loyal to the Americans – including Sattar Abu Risha, who publicly met President Bush on 13 September 2007, and former insurgents who have now joined the American-paid anti-al-Qa'ida militias – have been blown apart by Sunni bombers.

Only about 10 of the suicide bombers have been identified. One of them, who attacked an Iraqi police unit in June 2005, turned out to be a former police commando called Abu Mohamed al-Dulaimi, but the Americans and the Iraqi authorities appear to have little intelligence on the provenance of these killers. On at least 27 occasions, Iraqi officials have claimed to know the identity of the killers – saying that they had recovered passports and identity papers that proved their "foreign" origin – but they have never produced these documents for public inspection. There is even doubt that the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up in a bird market earlier this year were in fact mentally retarded young women, as the government was to allege.

Indeed, nothing could better illustrate the lack of knowledge of the authorities than the two contradictory statements made by the Americans and their Iraqi protégés in March of last year. Just as David Satterfield, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's adviser on Iraq, was claiming that "90 per cent" of suicide bombers were crossing the border from Syria, Iraq's Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was announcing that "most" of the suiciders came from Saudi Arabia – which shares a long, common border with Iraq. Saudis would hardly waste their time travelling to Damascus to cross a border that their own country shared with Iraq. Many in Baghdad, including some government ministers, believe that the nationality of the bombers is much closer to home – that they are, in fact, Iraqis.

It will be many years before we have a clearer idea of the number of bombers who have killed themselves in the Iraq war – and of their origin. Long before The Independent's total figure reached 500, al-Qa'ida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was boasting of "800 martyrs" among his supporters. And since al-Zarqawi's death brought not the slightest reduction in bombings, we must assume that there are many other "manipulators" in charge of Iraq's suicide squads.

Nor can we assume the motives for every mass murder. Who now remembers that the greatest individual number of victims of any suicide bombing died in two remote villages of the Kahtaniya region of Iraq, all Yazidis – 516 of them slaughtered, another 525 wounded. A Yazidi girl, it seems, had fallen in love with a Sunni man and had been punished by her own people for this "honour crime": she had been stoned to death. The killers presumably came from the Sunni community.

One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

A must read - particularly for the benefit of the 'drone' theorizing author and his cohorts:

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tahmed writes "#595 masadi: you are a liar and a hypocrite. Blaming me for the killings in iraq while failing to meet my challenge to cut and paste anything I wrote in that article simply makes you a bigger liar and a bigger hypocrite"

Even though I have on several occassions answered your dimwitted challenges, in this particular case I don't need to copy paste anything, the title of your cheerleading article said it all. You were pro US Iraq war through and through, if now you have seen the folly of your unconditional worship of the US elite then why don't you condemn the US invasion of Iraq in clear terms here. I have on several occassions challenged you to do that and on every occassion you have been unable to say one bad word about the murderous elite you worship. You are partner in their crimes tahmed, like I said, a mega, mass murderer, like all sellouts you cling to the earth having shallow morality, whenever exposed trying to weasel yourself out of responsibliity for your ideas while pontificating about "individual responsibility". You and your friend hamid are the glaring hypocrites that are a disgrace to our parts of the world and a disgrace to this site...

Muzumu,

I meant worry Mopla happening. sorry! with saudi money and US connivance jihadism/wahabism spread to muslim population all over. Desi islamic nuts might do mopla even for money. they may not do it in bangalore, hyderabad or pune where there is US corporate interests are tied but to make the Indian state weak do else where. poor and innocents will suffer. aim of globalization is to make non-anglo states weak. this is bad when US itself is losing control over the world order. Indian state is much transparent and fair in comparison to many in non-western world. if Indian govt is weakened then the poor and voiceless will suffer. mind that that includes poor muslims

Re 571 Hizada Paki:

Caught doing what? Hizada can do only meaningless Tali dance. yes, a chowk needs such a hizada in the evening for amusement of passerby. this fool hizda thinks his noise of talias have some great philosophical and political mystical meaning.

used to have free time then. Little bit now. did not know bharatrakshak is rss site. even if it is why can it be not useful to act as central repository of what is happening in many field, esp security. there is another good site if pakis would like to meet real good indians, ie goodnewsindia.com

hizadaPaki, many moons ago in b tech years urs truly was card carrying cpm member. now i feel all these party politics is useless. parties are fiefdoms of few.

Guru,

(Our worry is that there is no Mopla happening in India. )

If "no Mopla is happening in India" why is that a cause of concern?

Regards

Re 589 Muzumdar:

Before 9/11, CIA concluded that year in their next century outlook paper. The way it is going they may hasten and do this themselves. Our worry is that there is no Mopla happening in India. Before that India should put in place Police state to take care of Islamists & Jihadis within India.

They must have calculated the years they would like to use their bastard child before dumping into Indus. Sounds very harsh and cruel but MAJ was witness to the copulation between uncle and britany aunt or was used as old dai.

Some of the posts in this thread confirm what I had suspected. Fascists hate secular members of their minority communities, because they make them feel guilty.

They secretly love the bad ones, since the bad ones justify their genocidal tendencies. The proof is in how they hate secular members of their own community.

oooh!!! pakiland pushes a resolution in the organization of islamic camel jockeys....now kashmir will surely banega pakiland(by 2010, like zeemax predicted)

Pakistan pushes yet another anti-India resolution in OIC
14 Mar 2008, 0000 hrs IST,Sameer Arshad,TNN
Print Save EMail Write to Editor
The apparent thaw in India-Pakistan ties not withstanding, Islamabad has again prevailed upon the Organization of Islamic Conference’s (OIC) ministerial summit in Dakar, Senegal, to issue its customary resolution slamming Indian on Kashmir.

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ibsanoglu, in his inaugural speech, on Wednesday described Kashmir as "a pressing and burning political dispute" before the 57-member organisation.

It expressed concern over the "alarming increase in the indiscriminate use of force and gross human rights violations by India against innocent Kashmiris". "OIC regrets that India hasn’t allowed our fact-finding mission to visit Jammu & Kashmir," it said.

The resolution backed the ongoing composite dialogue process between India and Pakistan and lauded Islamabad’s "flexibility" towards the resolution of the Kashmir problem. "OIC hopes that India would reciprocate Islamabad and work towards finding a just and peaceful settlement to the Jammu & Kashmir dispute in accordance with the aspirations of the people," it said.

Ever since OIC charter was finalized in 1972, Islamabad has used it as a forum for anti-India propaganda. However, the rhetoric of the early days is absent, as most member countries support Indian secularism and appreciate the manner in which various communities live in harmony, with their rights protected by the state through laws and an independent judiciary.

#571 Posted by HP on March 13, 2008 11:16:23 pm


I caught him about two years ago.


really? that's the standard?

then what about the time you were shown to be an idiot when you proved that the asia times was an intelligence agency operation?

Re: # 593
Masadi,

"that fulfills the agenda of the US elite who want to make sure their base keeps growing and engulfs the major population centers of Pakistan"

Why would the US elite want to occupy Pakistan?

A history lesson for pakistanis.

The YLH and romair on chowk have talked about the good old days of the sixties, and little did they know the reason for the good days, the americans in peshawar. The days are coming back, now the predators are in peshawar, waiting for the US troops to move in.

From dawn of today

Before the War on Terror, the Americans were present on a long--term basis in Pakistan in the Sixties when they had set up a camp at Badaber near Peshawar. There were listening facilities in place -- i.e., the USAF's 6937th Communications Group --while U--2 reconnaissance flights took place from Peshawar Airbase, flying over the Urals to Bodo in Norway. However, the downing of a U--2 and arrest of Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, brought to an end the US flights from Pakistan while the communications wing at Badaber was formally closed down on January 7, 1970. It may be that at that time the Americans enjoyed some of the facilities that they have now demanded. But that was a different era and Pakistan was facing different challenges. Few in Pakistan, even in the top echelons of its armed forces, knew what was going on in Badaber and at the Peshawar Air Station. Today, however, the world has changed, and so has Pakistan.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2229/1795516412_a55f86110d.jpg?v=0

go to the above link....damn....chowk_software....

zeemax, here is something for you...especially for you!

Re: # 632 hahahahahahahah zemax, you are way to zealous....and far too earnest!

Re: # 631

Thanks tahmed, you need a good sleep. Trying to prove that islam is a tolerant religion is a hard task, simply because it is not.

zeemax here it is:
vouch (vouch)
v. vouched, vouch·ing, vouch·es
v.intr.
1. To give personal assurances; give a guarantee: vouch for an old friend's trustworthiness.
2. To constitute supporting evidence; give substantiation: a candidate whose strong record vouches for her ability.
v.tr.
1. To substantiate by supplying evidence; prove: charges that he could not vouch.
2. Law To summon as a witness to give warranty of title.
3. To refer to (an authority, for example) in support or corroboration; cite.
4. To assert; declare.
n. Obsolete
A declaration of opinion; an assertion

#629 Posted by Dash_Dot,

I don't know what you're talking about. Can you look up 'vouch' in wiktionary and check if it's the same as 'certify'?

I suspect you're the one HP termed a circlejerk.

OK dokey. time to do something useful. by all. (dont forget your pills, jay).

The mad lesbian cow from OTW is at it again. Chowk staff should really do something about that ugly spinster.

zeemax please don you mafia gangster cap and certify that masadi does not red-flag posts......

Hail Don Zeemax!

DashDot: actually this is a 2 year old child who cant write and so is clicking on the "flag objectionable material" instead to express himself.

#623 i think you forgot your pills this morning, jay. you are sounding more nucking futs than usual.

masadi stop red-flagging this place...

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#618 jay: I know it must be very frustrating for you to see the rest of the world does not live in the same dimension as Nucking Futs like you.

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Re: # 620 you have been slandered Kaal. along with alephnull and someone called circlejerker.....those invoved were...I will let you find out about it yourself....

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Re: # 612
#612 Posted by zeemax on March 14, 2008 1:39:27 am
#597 Posted by masadi,

Masadi Saheb, .... but he does NOT red flag posts !!! I can vouch for that!

arey bhai, zeemax, red-flag or black flag...what difference does it make....chowk staff do a great job here....they review the red-flags before hanging the person.....you know a proper religious, judicious review.

anyway since when did you become a Certification Authority! You are talking like the local mafia hood/don/gangster leader.

God this is scary!

Defining war on terror.

The notion that pakistan is a victim of terror and pakistan is fighting an internal war on terrorism is totally wrong. Terrorism and the war on terror is about muslims attacking people of other religion. That is why no one in the world recognises pakistan as a victim of terrorism.

The suicide attacks in pakistan are a religious ritual, part of a religious idea of jihad.

That is the reason why the jihadic killings o not attract front page news.

What is happening in waziristan is part of the war on terror, to prevent the jihadis attacking the nato forces. Lahore and karachi bombing are simple religious practice.

jay thakeray #614 "wait a decade". almost a decade ago on chowk you were confidently predicting the demise of pakistan too. pakistan will be around long after you have reincarnated as a low caste flea.

Jayp,

(There is no doubt what so ever that the jihadis will defeat the army, wait a decade.)

I suppose you wud think that is a good thing for India, no?

Regards

Zee sahib,

(even found supporting the Indian spy )

I presume this crime wud be worse than the other things you have mentioned in # 612.

Regards

Re: # 608
majumdar,

all of your suggestions are impractical and does not take into account the reality of pakistan.

Pak army is in power, they control nearly 10 percent of the pak GDP through the trucking to corn flakes making operations. Army is the largest industrial group in pakistan.

The only group that can take on the army are the jihadis and their numbers are increasing, which is a good thing. More are coming out of the madrassas. Support from the abdul pakis for the jihadis are on the increase, as zeemax tells, now jihad is an all pakistan, educated pakistani operation. Lal majid and the recent LUMS college sup[port for taliban are anecdotal evidence of the increasing base of the jihadis.

There is no doubt what so ever that the jihadis will defeat the army, wait a decade.

#612 zeemax: so many accusations in one post!! cut and paste what i wrote to back your words - otherwise join masadi in the hypocrite corner.

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majumdar sahib #608 a lot of what you say is starting to happen. Musharraf had an interest in keeping terrorism at a certain level since that made him the "indispensible man". During his time, Pakistanis saw the WOT as a US war and mush promoted that wrong concept by pretending to be fighting this war under US duress only .

The civilian government otoh is treating terrorism as Pakistani's fight, and is already being pressured by those who have seen the true face of the terrorist - ANP from the frontier is pushing for it and now people in Lahore too.

Re: 608

Oops, "jest" not best

Regards

Pakistan army wants to have exclusive rights to kill their own citizens from helicopter gun ships, and they have protested against cross border firings.

Many might consider this as stupid idea, but from an islamic point of view this is very valid, only the paki soldiers should kill pakis. You may recall that all those killed by the jihadis are called shaheeds, they are entitled for teh 72 houris, and the suicide bomber in turn is also a shaheed, and all of the dead are happy. Paki army being a jihadic army, the paki mulsims killed by the army are shaheeds,a and hence they should be happy.

I do hope that teh NATO forces understand the islamic doctrines and leave the killings to paki army.

from dawn of today

Protest lodged over US firing


MIRAMSHAH, March 13: Pakistan lodged a protest with coalition forces in Afghanistan on Thursday after two Pakistani women and two children were killed by US fire from across the border, the army said.

The US-led coalition confirmed that it had launched a ‘precision guided’ strike on Pakistani territory but said it targeted a militant compound.

Tahmed sahib,

The comment disband the army may have been made in best. But what really needs is a small standing army but a somehwat larger dedicated counter-insurgency force, the Pak Army in its current state is clueless on counter-insurgency measures.

And of course more importantly:

Keeping Army firmly under civilian control.
Purge the ISI of pro-Talib elements.

And as Masadi sahib says, invest in modernising and developing the tribal areas rather than bomb it back to the stone ages.

Regards

masadi,

You say that the only way to defeat the terrorism is to introduce social development in pakistan. This is simply not possible as long as the pak army is in power.

The support for teh US essentially come from the paki generals, who are the most benefitted from the army-US colaboration. The generals know that their life styles cannot be threatened by the jihadis.

If a dozen generals are knocked off ina few months, then the generals will know that they are no more safe and will do something to address the problem.

DashDot: I thought lawyers had declared this to be a black flag week? :-)

#600 jay thakeray: i agree with you that indian and pakistani societies are very different. we dont burn our minorities. we dont ridicule their religion. we dont have anything like the pakistan-obsessed freaks like you.

good morning Tahmed32! This place is like a red-light district this morning....every house (post) having a red-light (flag) attached to it

yes, today is friday...another week for good friday and for the good lords resurrection! Wine and bread any one!

#601 DashDot - greetings. This is for masadi's own good. :-)

#595 masadi: you are a liar and a hypocrite. Blaming me for the killings in iraq while failing to meet my challenge to cut and paste anything I wrote in that article simply makes you a bigger liar and a bigger hypocrite.

Re: # 599 tahmed32 sirjee, temper, temper!

There are people like Dost mitter talking about similarities of india and pak societies. here is a comparisaon. Three people shot dead in a city in pakistan and did not make the head lines, it is part of the local news.

In the same city, educated people, the students are protesting, not about the crime and lack of police action, it is about a Danish cartoon,. That is what education is about ib pakistan.

from jang of today
///////////////////////////

Karachi

Two persons were killed while one person was shot dead on Thursday.According to police, eight persons carrying arms and riding on four motorcycles came in the Marwari Mollah and opened fire.

Some of the area people came under fire among which Umair Hussain Butt, 25, that according to some witnesses was present outside a shrine of the locality, and Ganga Devi, 50, sustained bullet wounds and later succumbed to their injuries. At least two other persons Shahjahan and Kamran also came under fire and were rushed to the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK). The incident occurred near the Muslim Marwari Jamaat Hall.

//////////////////////////////////////////////
Karachi

The Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) took out a rally in the city on Thursday against the republication of caricatures in Danish newspapers.

Thousands of students from the University of Karachi, NED University, Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), Sindh Medical College, Dawood Engineering University, Jinnah Postgraduate College of Physiotherapy and other private educational institutions participated in the rally.

The participants were carrying banners and play cards demanding to severe diplomatic relations with Denmark and other European countries that allowed republication of blasphemous caricatures. They burnt effigies of Danish prime minister and the editor of the offending newspaper near Denso Hall.

#597 you idiot stop accusing me of redflagging your posts. i didnt do it.

majumdar sahib #564 there is a slight difference between "disband the army" and "reduce it in size". :-)

No doubt the civilian government has a number of issues to deal with wrt the army: how to keep it focussed on its job of protecting (rather than attacking, as in case of musharraf) the nation and how to reduce its budget so more funds are available for national development. No doubt Pakistan does not need close to a million man army when it is secure from indian attack after nuclearization.

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Masadi sahib,

Re: 591/593

For a change, I agree with you.

Regards

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HP re: rude and obnoxious cursing

Dear HP

Please accept my apology for mixing you up with SLYDER... He is the one who was cursing, you just simply disagreed, as is your right. I'd read both messages earlier and didn't re-read them when I sat down to reply.

Please forgive me. The horse does not fart. He just neighs and whinny

cheers,

...SR

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HP Re: FATA "criminals" ... send more army not less

I beg to differ. If we agree that they are indeed criminals (which the purportrators of these violent acts ARE), then it is simply a LAW ENFORCEMENT issue as I previously stated. You do not wage a war on civilians who happen to share a geographic location with "criminals"...

Could you ever imagine the US army bombing a Mississippi ghetto because some murders and bank robbers came from there? Surely, that would be unthinkable. Those murderers and bank robbers would be dealt with by law enforcement agencies according to the law (as it SHOULD be), but with full regard to the safety of the innocent residents of the neighborhood.

Dishing out collective punishment to a population for the crimes of a sub-group within that population is a sure way to undermine your objective of crime control. The population will close ranks and many more previously non-criminals will turn into "criminals"... By taking this approach you simply aggrevate the problem, you don't solve it.

As for the "message to the Punjabi elite" ... well, that is my conjecture and it may be just that. But I feel it has potential.
Now, if I am correct, then over the course of the next few months there should be other similar attacks on other neighborhoods like Defence, Gulberg etc., in Lahore or similar places in other cities. If, on the other hand, this was a case of mistaken identity (they thought it was the nearby FIA "safe house") then this will be a stand-alone incident of its kind.

There is no need to get excited and start huffing and puffing over a conjecture. It's not good for your blood pressure. I realise you have an innate need to be rude and obnoxious to those whose views differ from yours, so I really don't mind your cursing. When I take a tonga ride from Lohari to Rang Mehal I don't mind the horse farting either.

...SR

Guru,

(9 years from now Pakistan would not be a country.)

Why specifically 9 years? What is special about the year 2017?

???

Regards

Re: # 566

I would be now working on the issue of "De-Islamizing the Zia Generation"..........you can then discuss the shit there that needs to be cleared up from the minds of an entire zia generation of Pakistan that mouths the Islamist propaganda all the time.

My thesis is that Pakistan is NOW ready for an imminent Islamist take over!!!

9 years from now Pakistan would not be a country.

BTW for record, do not know RSS first hand. Did not attend their shakhas. bharatrakshak.com is a good site to know about what is happening in india in terms of economy, technolgy, IT and science besides the security of India which includes politics. Just do not visit nukad threads. One also learns about one's history from number of sources and not only JNU sanctioned history.

Pakistanis should viist bharatrakshak.com to hear genuine Indians. Behind their jingoistic verbage the mind is not anti Islam or even Pakistan.

HP sain,

(After 1978, they have plunged in to a lunatic frenzy and they need electric shocks now to recover!)

But who plunged them into a lunatic frenzy, they on their own or by chance did the "civilised people" have a role in plunging them?

Regards

Zee,
Don't distort history here. They were okay until 1978 but then no one cared about them except for recovering stolen cars and buying Hashish from them or visit Bara for shopping. After 1978, they have plunged in to a lunatic frenzy and they need electric shocks now to recover!

Their lunatic frenzy is equal to the RSS frenzy on the RSS thread below.

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zeemax(+-)HP: here is a prediction

in twenty years from now, if we meet on an Internet place like chowk, we will be having the same discussion after having received the same information

Life-cycles in those parts does not change. It has not changed for 1000s of years and I donot think it will change - islam, buddhism, hinduism animism, etc what ever...

#575 Posted by zeemax
"How can the great intellect which introduced us to the synonym 'macaca' relent?"

Don't forget Khasi! These guys are still recovering from their khasipan!
You read that great intellectual discussion between ahole,Kaal and their best friend the circle jerk! These are so khasi that I don't need to be involved again.

Zee sahib,

Re: 579

Thanks. So what is their grudge against Paki state that they are willing to even kill themselves?

Regards

#576 Posted by majumdar,

Who are these FATA “criminals�?

Yaar these FATA “criminals� are the same who announced death sentences for heroine dealing just last week.

#570 Posted by HP, (2nd attempt).

But when was the last time these hardcore criminals listened to the reason?

How about from 1947 all the way till 2005?

#570 Posted by HP,



How about from 1947 all the way till 2005?

HP sain,

Who are these FATA “criminals�? Why is their grudge against the Pakistani state so strong that so many are willing to kill themselves to get even with the Paki state?

Regards

#571 Posted by HP,

Well HP it's time for you to end your 'hiatus' from hindooo bashing. How can the great intellect which introduced us to the synonym 'macaca' relent? Many of the worms from yesteryears seem to have resurfaced!

It seems Hizada Paki visits bharatrakshak. Visit often and stay there so that you do not turn into a drone. We know pseudoMuslims are more dangerous and vicious than even Jihadis.

#565 Posted by SR
“Once FATA, Malakand and Swat etc., have their landlocked "independence" and impose sharia to their hearts content, you can encourage others of similar inclination to abandon the godless cities of Karachi and Lahore and migrate over there. Provide them with financial incentives to migrate. Even pay for their passage.�

How about this: Let’s just send all criminals from the Pakistani Jails to FATA, Swat and Malakand. You have some very simplistic solution or perhaps you are trying to be sarcastic.

May be because you do not digest normal food well. Recycled shit might give you necessary nutrients so that you do not turn into a human drone.

BTW how many zees are there? U are there during US daytime and also US night time. Or is this also outsourced?

Bottomline: Have you started your long March to Mecca? Where have you reached? On your visit do call on Amir Gen. Dostam. He is the real inheritor of Mughalai.

Zee,

Guru is a proven nutcase and crazy. I caught him about two years ago. He left after that and now has come back with the same things he was copy pasting from Bahratrakhsak.com previously!

He forgot that the RSS sponsored thread is below this thread and says something about deobandi and whatever!

#520 Posted by SR
“The purpose of attacking affluent neighborhoods in the heart of Punjab is to send a message to the Punjabi elite that,�

Sorry the reports are that there was a FIA secure house next to the Batalvi house. So there was no message for Punjabi elite. It was a message to the law enforcement!
Was the attack on the FIA office at Temple Road a message to the elite? No elitist in Punjab lives in Model Colony. It is a mostly a middle class neighborhood and actually the Nawaiwaqt neighborhood. Your thesis based on inaccurate facts and information is enough to make the whole thing bogus!

“it is also seen, by more and more people, as a war that Musharraf has blunderingly launched on the behest of the Americans�

There is no need to find more and more people. Lots people that say WOT it is a bogus war. But the war in FATA or with the criminal is not bogus. Now is the time that the problem in FATA should be separated from the WOT. These criminals are not worthy of a war.

If it takes negotiation to make these criminal stop bombing then politicians can try that. But when was the last time these hardcore criminals listened to the reason?

It would be a serious mistake in fact a catastrophic mistake, if these FATA criminals are not dealt with! We need to send more army there not reduces it by any means.
These criminals would take retreat by the law enforcement a sign of weakness and try and to extend their criminal control over the area!

Hamidm is right on this count!

Why do we have to suffer the same cycle of oft-repeated and argued-threadbare shit all over again whenever yet another hindooo joins?

There is a bug. Post do not get posted. This is a test to see if the reception is clear.


Before the rise of the Arab Empire, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was already moving West and was mentioned in Syria in 662 AD by the Nestorian scholar Severus Sebokht who wrote the following:

"I will omit all discussion of the science of the Indians, ... , of their subtle discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians, and of their valuable methods of calculation which surpass description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value."[2]

According to al-Qifti's chronology of the scholars[3]:

"... a person from India presented himself before the Caliph al-Mansur in the year [776 AD] who was well versed in the siddhanta method of calculation related to the movement of the heavenly bodies, and having ways of calculating equations based on the half-chord [essentially the sine] calculated in half-degrees ... This is all contained in a work ... from which he claimed to have taken the half-chord calculated for one minute. Al-Mansur ordered this book to be translated into Arabic, and a work to be written, based on the translation, to give the Arabs a solid base for calculating the movements of the planets ..."

The work was most likely to have been Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta (Ifrah) [4] (The Opening of the Universe) which was written in 628[5]. Irrespective of whether Ifrah is right, since all Indian texts after Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya used the Indian number system, certainly from this time the Arabs had a translation of a text written in the Indian number system. [6]

In his text The Arithmetic of Al-Uqlîdisî (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), A.S. Saidan's studies were unable to answer in full how the numerals reached the Arab world:

"It seems plausible that it drifted gradually, probably before the seventh century, through two channels, one starting from Sind, undergoing Persian filtration and spreading in what is now known as the Middle East, and the other starting from the coasts of the Indian Ocean and extending to the southern coasts of the Mediterranean."[7]

Al-Uqlidisi developed a notation to represent decimal fractions. [8][9] The numerals came to fame due to their use in the pivotal work of the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals was written about 825, and the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who wrote four volumes (see [2]) "On the Use of the Indian Numerals" (Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi) about 830. They, amongst other works, contributed to the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle-East and the West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system

Oops! I meant: Mr. Laddu....

Re: # 562
Mr. Daddu, since you can't walk your dog, may I suggest that you let the dog walk you in a decent park. Looks like you've been around dirty sewers (ganda nallah) for too long now to clean your tongue.

Will you ever behave? Write an article perhaps and get it over with?

Re: # 552 Mohammad Hamid [".... you think .. if the army pulled out ... jihadis will go back ... give up ... the imposition of sharia ?..."]

The situation today has become far worse than it could have been had it not been mishandled in the very beginning. Nonetheless, the presence of the army and continued civilian casualties ("collateral damage") at the hands of the army is not improving anything. For every militant killed several innocents are also "sacrificed" and THAT breeds more and more resentment and revenge. Many who were "undecided" could have been won over to the side of reason if, instead of war, peace and prosperity could have been spread, are lost into the blackhole of militancy. At this point its more a question of limiting the damage and cutting them loose. Give those areas autonomy or independence... Have a referandum and if the vast majority wants the tooth faity, let them have it. Sooner or later they themselves will come to their senses. But they won't take it from you if you try and shove it down their throat with the bayonet of a gun. You simply cannot justify continued mayhem in the name of moderation.

Urstruly's advice of pulling out and paying compensation is a good first step towards getting rid of this menace. A limb needs to be amputated in order to save the remaining body.

Once FATA, Malakand and Swat etc., have their landlocked "independence" and impose sharia to their hearts content, you can encourage others of similar inclination to abandon the godless cities of Karachi and Lahore and migrate over there. Provide them with financial incentives to migrate. Even pay for their passage.

Having achieved that much, you can then go ahead and repeal the regressive laws down-country and Lahore and Karachi can have their bars and night clubs back and the Casino can finally be resurrected from its ruins near Clifton beach. Convension business can start trickling in to Karachi and the unemployed girls from koh-kaaf who are presently overcrowding Dubai's night clubs, their vast talant pool under-utilized, can freely start shuttling in and out of Karachi. It's a win-win solution.

...SR

Tahmed sahib,

(your solution is to disband the army.)

Not neessarily a bad idea, either disband it or reduce it very significantly in size. With nukes the external borders are safe now. There are no external enemies, the only enemies are internal and they have largely been created by the Pak Army itself.

Regards

#561 createalpha: i think the Pakistan governmnet should be responsible enough to fulfill its lawful obligations to its own citizens and to the international community. Musharraf has done neither - he has used the terrorist scam as a money making scheme.

You say you "I as a US citizen feel that every islamist that dies is a boon to the human race. " First, dont drag the people of US into this, because you are speaking only for yourself.

Your views were shaped not in the US but in India were you were obviously brought up without anyone teaching you respect human life. How are you any better than the "terrorist" at whose death you say you feel happy?

All I can say is on this joy you say you feel at someone's death is: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee my friend". it'll take too long to explain and i think you are too old to change your thinking on such a basic issue anyway. Sorry if this sounds unfriendly, but that is what I think.

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Tahmed, serious question...how do u feel when US (where u pay taxes) drops bombs on pakis in nwfp? Which side are u on? I know, I as a US citizen, feel that every islamist that dies is a boon to the human race.

#558 Posted by tahmed32 on March 13, 2008 5:47:46 pm

OMG!! They have a BLUEPRINT...and I'm sure they've also had a MEETING...

damn...the jihadis are toast..they're going to die laughing...

/it
Holy Prophet (pbuh), one would find that every principle, every ethic, and every moral framework that he put forth was also put in practice by him, as well. His life s is a unique example in the history of mankind. That is the reason it is said that if one wishes to understand the Holy Qura'n and the principles it put forth one must look into the life of Holy Prophet. After him, the people who took over the helm were those who were personally trained by him. They had watched him every step he took in his life so closely that it seems that a camcorder was always following him around. So their lives serve as examples as how mere common men would be able to put the ideals in practice. For every Muslim, Holy Prophet's life, his personality, his teachings, his principles, his politics, his wars, his peace gives the ideal framework for the humanity. And that is what we must strive for. We may not be able to achieve the utopia but there are good marks for honestly trying – both in this world and beyond.
/it

What a dictator - despite kidnapping thousands of Pakistanis, and despite $10 b from the US taxpayer - could not do in 7 years, democratic parties are doing even before taking office - getting serious about terrorism!!

New govt has blueprint to tackle suicide bombings
By Qudssia Akhlaque The News)

ISLAMABAD: Feeling the heat of the growing internal security crisis because of the increasing number of suicide bombings and US drone and missile attacks, leaders of the political parties set to form the government in Islamabad are preparing to deal with this enormous challenge on war-footing.

...
The Pakistan People’s Party as well as its key coalition partners PML-N and ANP all view this as a major threat to the internal security and are all set to accord top priority to this complex issue when they form the government next week.

“Yes, assured security for the citizens is the issue number one for all of us,� PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar observed while talking to The News...Apparently, ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan had most emphatically underlined the need to urgently tackle this grave issue.

“We think we have a solution to the problem. We have a blueprint that can be acted upon and it is doable,� PPPP’s articulate spokesperson Farhatullah Babar told this correspondent ...A more specific plan includes live telecast of proceedings of the Defence and Interior committees of the National Assembly and the Senate which have been disallowed in the past.

.. While it is not clear yet what shape the anti-terror policy of the new government will take, indications are that the strategy and approach pursued will be a departure from the existing one. That it will be more inclusive and non-violent.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=13559

#518 Posted by Urstruly


Well we have come full circle. Let me illustrate – in 336 you say

“Hence my basic argument is that that Muslim sedition against the contemporary world order is a political issue at its core and should be treated as such; not addressing it as such, and making it what it is not at its core i.e. religious issue, shows the culpability and criminality of those who make it so.�

From there we move to 402 and you say

“The vision that Islam puts forth of a righteous individual is so juxtaposed on the image of a righteous society that it is impossible to separate the two. In other words, in Islam, politics is the religion and religion is the politics. A righteous individual thus becomes the building block of a righteous society.�

And in 518

“His life s is a unique example in the history of mankind.� (Holy Prophet)

To 536

Where you go back to taking an anthropological view, Darwinian process of Natural Selection and end it with the need for elections to establish representative government and the rule of law. In other words back to good old politics.

You can’t do that, because by doing it, you will just twist yourself up in knots, and before you know you will forget which end is up. This, I think is your fundamental problem you are just too much torn between a great intellect which pushes you towards rationality while your sense of loyalty grips you towards the Islamic vision. I think you need to have a deep conversation with yourself as to which side you are really on, because in the Islamic vision there is no room for doubt (yakeen muhkam).

hamidm: i see from ft that mush did have a card up his sleeve..only the card turned out to be the joker that made everyone laugh: take away my powers of presidency (the key 52b to be exact) but dont bring back the (gulp) judge.

in other words, let me remain as your useful idiot please...

HAHAHA...

US: boom
pakis: we protest
US: umm..okay..
pakis: no..we mean it...stop
US: yeah, or what
pakis: or we'll protest..

Pakistan protests US missile strike

MIRANSHAH (AFP) - Pakistan lodged a protest with coalition forces in Afghanistan on Thursday after two Pakistani women and two children were killed by US fire from across the border, the army said.
The US-led coalition, which helped to topple Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in late 2001, confirmed that it had launched a “precision guided� strike on Pakistani territory but said it targeted a militant compound.
The issue of foreign military intervention in Pakistan is sensitive, with President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally, saying earlier this year that unauthorised actions would be treated as an invasion.
Chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said coalition artillery fire destroyed the victims’ house in North Waziristan, an alleged haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
“The coalition forces were firing at a group of militants when five shells landed in Pakistan, destroying a house and killing two women and two children,� Abbas told AFP.
“We have lodged a very strong protest with the coalition forces across the border,� he said.
Local officials said the house in the town of Lwara Mundi, a hotbed of militancy on the frontier where there have been frequent clashes between security forces and militants, belonged to a local tribesman.
In Kabul, a spokesman for the US-led coalition said it could not comment directly on the Pakistani account but confirmed it had launched a strike on the other side of the porous 1,500-mile frontier.
“We can confirm a precision-guided ammunition strike on March 12 on a compound connected with Haqqani network 1.5 kilometres across the border in Pakistan,� coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher told AFP.
The Haqqani network refers to militants led by Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is allegedly based in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
“I do not have any information on any casualties that may have occurred,� the spokesman said.
Belcher said that, “The information I have is that the government of Pakistan was notified immediately following the strike. “It is not the first time that they (coalition forces) have had to respond to an imminent threat across the border in Pakistan. Every time we do, we clear that with Pakistani authorities.�
Several previous missile strikes in the region have been attributed to the United States, including one that killed senior Al-Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libi in North Waziristan in January.
The border between the two countries has been wracked by fighting since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Separately on Thursday, more than 1,000 tribesmen protested against the killing of eight civilians by Pakistani forces this week in Bajaur tribal region, witnesses said.
“There will be a popular uprising if the security forces do not stop killing innocent people,� Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Haroonur Rasheed told the gathering as tribesmen chanted, “Stop being stooges of the US army.�

S ince when believers in the theory of planned design became the guardians of evolution ?

why waste money on drones when you can kill the same number of pakis using cheaper artillery?


AP
US-led coalition fire kills civilians



By HASBUNALLAH KHAN and STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 20 minutes ago

TANGRAI, Pakistan - U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan fired across the border into Pakistan in a strike targeting Taliban militants, and the Pakistani army said Thursday that civilians were killed.
ADVERTISEMENT

The attack illustrates Washington's concern the Taliban and al-Qaida are using Pakistan's lawless frontier as a base for attacks in Afghanistan.

But anger at civilian deaths could lead to a review by the incoming Pakistani government of the country's counterterrorism strategy and its U.S.-backed policy of using military force to root out militants.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said troops used "precision-guided munitions" to strike a compound about a mile inside Pakistan on Wednesday.

Maj. Chris Belcher said the troops were responding to an "imminent threat" and that the coalition informed Pakistani authorities after the strike.

"We received reliable intelligence indicating senior Haqqani network members were in the compound at the time of the strike," Belcher said Thursday in Kabul.

Siraj Haqqani is a prominent Afghan militant. On Wednesday, a coalition statement accused him of organizing a suicide attack that killed two NATO soldiers at an Afghan government office on March 3. It said Haqqani "has become the most dangerous Taliban leader in Afghanistan."

In Tangrai, a village of about 40 houses surrounded by fields and mountains, residents led an Associated Press reporter to the rubble of the house hit in the attack. Only one of its four walls was standing amid a tangle of mud bricks, bedding and cooking pots.

"We are innocent, we have nothing to do with such things," said Noor Khan, a greengrocer who said the house was his family home.

He said six of his relatives — four women and two boys — died in the attack.(ali's tax $$ at work...)

"We are poor people just trying to earn a living," he said.

The Pakistani army said four civilians — two women and two children — died. There was no way to resolve the discrepancy between the numbers.

It was not clear whether the coalition forces fired from the ground or the air or what weapons were used. Belcher said he could not detail the threat and had no information on casualties.

Pakistan's army, which has received billions of dollars from Washington to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban, initially said the incident was an accident.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, said five artillery shells fired by coalition forces strayed into Pakistan's North Waziristan region. One shell hit a home in the village, killing two women and two children, he said.

Asked later about the coalition statement that the compound had been hit deliberately, Abbas said the government summoned a coalition representative to explain.

"We have called for an explanation of whatever statement they have given," Abbas said. Firing across the border "is a violation and second, civilians were killed," he said.

Asked whether militants were present, Abbas said: "We have asked them to explain how the civilian casualties occurred."

Pakistan has deployed approximately 90,000 troops to hunt down militants in its border regions. President Pervez Musharraf has sought to convince Pakistanis that they are fighting to protect their own country, not just for America's sake.

But with violence escalating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many here hope the anti-Musharraf parties who triumphed in parliamentary elections last month will scale back military activities and seek dialogue with militant groups, whose influence has been growing.

Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said the new parliament would review its counterterrorism strategy.

"Pakistan's integrity and territorial sovereignty should be respected," Iqbal told the AP. "Killing of innocent people is highly deplorable and there should not be any repeat."

There have been several incidents in the past of coalition fire landing in Pakistani territory.

Some may be due to the poor demarcation of the long, rugged border. In June last year, a rocket fired during a battle between U.S.-led NATO forces and insurgents in Afghanistan struck a home in North Waziristan, killing 10 civilians.

But there have also been several cases where unmanned U.S. drones have fired missiles at suspected militant hideouts in Pakistan's border regions, including a strike in January that killed a senior al-Qaida commander.

U.S. military officials and soldiers have said on several occasions that they already have authority to pursue or fire on militants a short distance inside Pakistan.

Pakistani officials usually deny such incidents or voice complaints with no obvious consequences, leading many to believe that cross-border strikes are carried out with Islamabad's tacit blessing.

Re: # 530

SR mian,

.... so you think that if the army pulled out of the tribal belt and swat the jihadis will go back to doing whatever it is that they do when they are not blowing up things ? ... they will give up their demand for the imposition of sharia ?

.... i think you should check with urstruly and the imam of your sector's masjid before you surrender .......

#549 chaltahai

Don't let ali bother you. When he's not massaging his mullah's balls, or chasing his sisters around, he is busy banging his head on the ground as prescribed by his pedo-prophet. All that banging has taken a toll. Add to that the ass-pounding he gets from his neighborhood mullah on a daily basis. You should really feel sorry for him.

#548 Posted by slyder,

That does appear to be the truth ... with pitifully few exceptions.

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jihadis are easily impressed...whether it is commonplace words like "vacuous"...or whether it is bare hairy forearm sticking out of the bukha of their cousin.

#536 Posted by Urstruly

Qisas and Diyat

... and how many people realize this injunction actually eliminates completely the cycle of violence and revenge?

You suggest this and still people call you a terrorist, extremist etc.

As Echoboom used to say, there's no bigger honour than to be called that.

vacuous ... what a beautiful word ... but Ali_1 has never been short of vocabulary from achoots falling in buckets of shit when born to vacuous!

#531 chaltahai

[ajeya, from the partition fiasco to communal riots to violence against ethinic, caste based and other minorities, Modern India doesn't really have a sellar reputation in "ahimsa" non-sense....]

I agree with the rest of your post. But let me address this point you have raised. Unlike in Islam, the caste-based violence has no support amongst the Hindu priestly classes. In fact, they have spoken out against it for the longest time.

This is an important distinction. Unlike the jehadis, the caste based violence - which is limited to rural and backward areas of the country, has NO SUPPORT in the rest of the country. So you cannot really drag "Hinduism" into that.

Modern India DOES have a stellar reputation in the "ahimsa" nonsense. Look at the Christians (the one with the stellar reputation?). Look at what they have perpetrated on the Jews who have been nothing if not non-violent for all the time they have been persecuted. Just imagine now, if the Jews had done to the Christians what the Muslims have done to Hindus in India. The Christians would have decimated each and every Jew in retaliation. Contrast that with what Hindus have done to the Muslims after ALL that Hindus have endured. VERY non-violent in contrast, I would say.

Hindus have the characteristics of the proverbial holy cow. You prod it in the ribs - it just moves away a couple of feet and keeps ruminating.

Hindus are the MOST tolerant bunch of people in this world. Bar none.

#535 Posted by SR:

Thanks for the note. However, drawing from the Indian experience, the Punjabi "elite" with the STRONGEST connection to the army must be the types who speak English with an English accent. The section who speak Hinglish or plain vanilla Punjabi MAY have a stronger connection with the Taliban? So either the group splits or joins either side en-mass. NS will like to see the group intact and not split. So what will he do? Your suggestion regarding the devolution of power is the only long term solution for both India and Pakistan. But what about the short run? Call me a utopian, if you may, but a refoumulation of groups brought about by the LSM seems the only way out to me.

#535 Posted by SR

You continue pulling chootiya facts out of your ass like you've been doing about US economy and gold for years now.

Let's check this out:

["Sixty percent of the senior army officers (those who had received their commission by or before 1980) are legal domicile holders of Lahore city."]

Source? Your phoopa jaan who is the upper division clerk in GHQ?

["Almost three fouths of all officers are Punjabi while Punjab is only about half the country's population."]

More made up BS

Rest of your chutya post ignored.

Sorry, nothing personal. Just have some time available while I'm in listening in to a boring meeting.

#534 Posted by slyder,

whose H1B visa ink hasn't dried yet is laying claim to the entire western civilization

Great you pointed this particular aspect out. I've been rather perplexed over that.

#533 Posted by bulleya,

And the tailor must be me!

#535 so..your solution is to disband the army. Next idea..

#534 Lets hope you have made better use of your time in the meantime. :-)

#532 Posted by SR,

Agreed in full. It's nice when differences narrow.

SR# 521

Observations well narrated.

From an Anthropological point of view, our society has come to the verge of extinction. It is at that stage when Darwinian process of Natural Selection starts encompassing the whole specie. There are no two arguments about the fact that for the past 60 years our society has been stagnant in all aspects. Every effort by the society to evolve out of the status quo was crushed by the brute state apparatus. Not only that, but the powers that be, put a system in place which is and has been used in the past to maintain the status quo of corruption, incompetence, and oppression. Pakistan is probably the only country in the world where corrupt and incompetent are respected while honest and deserving are ridiculed. A whole class has emerged that has vested interests in keeping this system stagnant and status quo maintained. This is a clear defiance of God's law of perpetual evolution that ascertains the continuity of life on this planet.

But first time in the history of Pakistan, the brute state machinery has met its match, which is as merciless, as swift and as certain. Only a mentally deranged or a clear enemy of Pakistan and Muslims would be glad at the carnage that this anti-state element is wreaking upon the state machinery and innocent who caught in cross-fire but I am sure that you will not find it callous if I say that this is the only leverage that that segment of Pakistani society has who wish to change the status quo of oppression and stagnation against the forces of darkness and oppression. In other words, the message to the oppressive ruling elite is that either change or become guillotined (extinct). Yes it is ironic and paradoxical that the agent that is so hell bent on destroying the state infrastructure has also become the agent of change. The carnage will continue and it will intensify unless we make ourselves convinced that old way of doing business cannot go on, but rather it will make us extinct.

Our safety, prosperity, and guarantee to pass this phase of Natural Selection lies in the choices that we make today. Unfortunately our choices are very limited and very painful. Yes it is akin to chopping off your own gangrenous leg of which we have been so comfortably used to having for so long, but it has become necessary for the survival of the specie, Our choices are:

1. Re-enact deposed judiciary and establish a transparent judicial process.
2. Dictator and his cohorts must be deposed and tried in court of law for their crimes against Constitution and people of Pakistan.
3. Send the Army back to barracks.
4. Compensate people of Baluchistan, Waziristan, relatives of martyred children of jamia Hafsa School and Swat according to the principles of Qisas and Diyat along with a state apology for the crimes committed against them by state machinery.
5. Americans and NATO be told to shove their WOT and get lost.
6. Establish a fair, impartial and judicious Election commission as agreed by all political parties.
7. Hold election and establish representative government and rule of law.

Either do that or be Extinct.

Re: # 527 GT re: "Punjabi elite" and the army

There is a substantial over-lap between the "army" and the so-called Punjabi elite (well, if masadi can have his US elite, why can I not have my Punjabi elite?)...

Sixty percent of the senior army officers (those who had received their commission by or before 1980) are legal domicile holders of Lahore city. Almost three fouths of all officers are Punjabi while Punjab is only about half the country's population. Punjab is to Pakistan, for all practical purposes, what Serbia was to Yugoslavia.

The Punjabi elite's disenchantment with the dictator is just a passing fad. The honeymoon may be over with this one as he seems to have over-stayed his welcome, but wait a while and you'll see the dramma repeat itself. The interests of the Punjabi elite (indeed most Pakistani elite) are more closely aligned with the interests of the army than any other group or party.

The only way out is to disband the army and that will not happen until the present federal power structure remains intact. The state, in other words, IS the army and the army the state. In order for one to weaken (or die), the other must also be crippled (or killed).

...SR

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SR: "of the man who had an untreatable headache that no medicine could cure. Finally a surgeon figuered out that his balls pushed up so hard that it gave him a headache. Castration was suggested as a treatment. The man considered his options and reluctantly agreed because the headache was constant and unbearable.

A few months after the operation his clothes got tight as feminization of his emasculated body began and he gained fat around the hips. Somebody recommended him to a world famous tailor who could make flattering clothes for the ugliest figuers.

When the tailor saw the design of his underwear, he said to the man, "Oh, please never wear these kind of underwear. They'll push your balls up so hard that you'll get a severe headache."

...was this man an expat pakistani consultant living in michigan, by any chance........

Re: # 529 zeemax Re: tearing up the state

I still believe that the federal state is the real enemy. The center should be severely cut back to size. The federation abolished and a loose con-federation put in sits place. The more power devolves to the people in regional and local units, the more just and fair the system will ultimately become.

A strong central state is incompatible with liberty and justice.

...SR

ajeya, from the partition fiasco to communal riots to violence against ethinic, caste based and other minorities, Modern India doesn't really have a sellar reputation in "ahimsa" non-sense....

there is a misconception among the jihadis that non-muslims would still idly by and watch their livlihood ururped by allah's warriors. non-muslims, as I have been saying, are smarter, richer, stronger, more in number, and have institutional backing to fight islamists.

One suicide bomb in a mall in the US, would mean, the end of Iran as we know it. When the nuclear winter wears off in Mecca, jewish kids will go ice skating on Lake Mecca with kaaba as the local Hot Dog stand.

islamists should have fought the battle with the other muslims first, get insitutionalized and then taken on the non-muslims...they done fk'ed up. they went in the reverse order and are now getting spanked from philippines to amreeka.

Re: # 525 Mohammad Hamid ["... so you too are recommending capitulation and appeasement ...]

No one wants or recommends surrender. That is a very BLACK and WHITE view of the situation. "Either you are with us, or you are against us." Let's grow up a bit and appreciate the shades of grey.

This should have been seen as a law enforcement issue from the start and not as a "WAR" between "Good and Evil."

Europe has dealt with terrorism for three decades and their approach has been a mature one with basically satisfactory outcomes. It's only this new round of "terrorism" where the US got involved and Mr Bush made a bad situation worse by first misdiagnosing it and on top of that by prescribing the wrong medicine for a potentially fatal disease that should otherwise be controlable, if not curable.

Reminds me of the joke of the man who had an untreatable headache that no medicine could cure. Finally a surgeon figuered out that his balls pushed up so hard that it gave him a headache. Castration was suggested as a treatment. The man considered his options and reluctantly agreed because the headache was constant and unbearable.

A few months after the operation his clothes got tight as feminization of his emasculated body began and he gained fat around the hips. Somebody recommended him to a world famous tailor who could make flattering clothes for the ugliest figuers.

When the tailor saw the design of his underwear, he said to the man, "Oh, please never wear these kind of underwear. They'll push your balls up so hard that you'll get a severe headache.

All the man actually needed was to replace his underwear. Instead he got himself castrated.

THAT is what I am saying we should avoid. I don't want the constant headache any more than you do. I just value my balls, that's all.

...SR

#521 Posted by SR is a surprise considering his previous and fairly recent stand on the issue (I think he had suggested separating all regions west of Indus from Pakistan and let them do what they want). Though it would be fair to take this post at face value for the time being.

#474 CreateAlpha

[Remember, chinkoos and even hinjews have killed millions of their own people...]

Really, "hin"jews have done that? That's a real gap in my knowledge. Where was that now? When?

#521 Posted by SR:

Dear SR,

That was a very good write-up. Following HPs artice, I have come to understand that the fight over the piece of pie is now between the army, businessman (Punjabi?) and the jihadi/Taliban groups (if you care, you may see my interact on HPs board). The events in Lahore, as you describe, is consistent with this understanding.

Right now the Punjabi elites may be against the dictator but that does not necessarily mean that they are against the army. What kinds of coalitions will form amongst these groups is something tobe seen.

Re: # 521

Those who accept the Islami logic of 9/11 as a 'legitimate reaction' to foreign policy of western governments are bound to justify and accept the logic of lahore blasts as a 'legitimate reaction' to government's policies!!!

Re: # 521

SR,

.... so you too are recommending capitulation and appeasement ......

does this mean that your wife and daughter are willing to wear the burka and go to jinnah super only if accompanied by you ?....... you might want to check with them before you surrender

#423 Eklavya

[ajeya, as a faithful Muslim I get far more than I get as a faithful Christian.

In both cases I am assured of a great afterlife, although Islamic afterlife, you as an unbeliever would yourself agree - seems far more interesting and attractive.

But the real difference lies in what I get right here, in this mortal life. I get a far more detailed blueprint for living from God, an extremely rich communal life, and much much more important than ANYTHING ELSE in this life, the absolute assurance in all my political ambitions or disagreements and fights with others, I have God Himself on my side, that I am right by divine definition, and will ultimately win because that is God's own plan.

And God just does not whisper this favor in my ears. He actually has his other faithfuls politically swing to my side, and offer moral support far more often than were I merely a Christian.

Since life is full of political problems all the time, that is a blessing of immeasurable proportions.

As a faithful Christian, I get none of that. A Christian God is far less generous. And his followers, half the time, can't decice whom to help in case of a fight. Please understand, I need security, I need power, and I need a divine plan for both.

Did I tell you, this Christian God is a most boring fellow, almost, next only to the Hindu whatever it is that they talk about among themselves.]

I am rather disappointed by your answer, after all the buildup from AlephNull. I was expecting something profound and earth-shattering - some incisive piece of wisdom that would "point me gently in the right direction". No such luck.

So let's see.

In both cases I am assured of a great afterlife, although Islamic afterlife, you as an unbeliever would yourself agree - seems far more interesting and attractive.

Wrong. It is not a question of what I think - remember? It is a question of what the person of "faith" gets. Ask any true Christian believer - they like THEIR version of afterlife MUCH MORE than the Islamic version.

I get a far more detailed blueprint for living from God, an extremely rich communal life, and much much more important than ANYTHING ELSE in this life, the absolute assurance in all my political ambitions or disagreements and fights with others, I have God Himself on my side, that I am right by divine definition, and will ultimately win because that is God's own plan.

Wrong again. The Christian faithful finds HIS communal life far richer, and "knows" that God is on THEIR side in all THEIR "political ambitions or disagreements and fights with others".

And God just does not whisper this favor in my ears. He actually has his other faithfuls politically swing to my side, and offer moral support far more often than were I merely a Christian.

Wrong yet again. Take some time and listen to the Christian tele-evangelists sometimes. They match the Muslims in nuttiness in all respects. And they vote down the party line as well - Mike Huckabee won three states in the South SOLELY on their votes.

The main difference is that fewer Christains are as rabid beleivers as the born-agains and the other assorted groups, and their role model is a non-violent Christ as opposed to a violent person like muhammad.

I'm thoroughly underwhelmed by your response. I kind of expected this, but I guess AlephNull had built up by expectations that there is going to be some substance behind your assertions.

I guess not.

Hamidm Sahib:

From the war of drones to "On the verge of creating synthetic life".

Please review this talk by Craig Venter - the man who did the human genome -

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227

Each year my classmate, the interviewer, from that educational institution organizes TED.

Can you explain to me where this knowledge is taking the humans, and where Islamic red-necks like Massaddi Mian can take? What blinds these red-necks, is Craig Venter new Allah to these new life forms that he is creating?

Sorry for the double click... I didn't mean to post it twice

HITTING CLOSE TO HOME

The blast in the suburban residential area that was in a private home in the "F"-Block of the upscale locality of Model Town. The target (randomly chosen, I assume) was the house of a lawyer, the late Ijaz Batalvi, who was a legal consultant to the state lawyers in Mr. Bhutto's supreme court appeal to overturn his death sentence in 1979.

It was a terribly strong blast and it was felt far beyond Model Town.

The office of a consulting firm run by an old friend is also in Model Town, Lahore. It is about a quarter mile away in G-Block. It was seriously shaken up. I spoke to him a couple of hours after the blast and learnt that the huge french window in his corner office along with many other windows around the building and the houses next door were shattered. Sharp glass pieces flew into his chair. Fortunately he was not in his office at the time. The huge glass broke and mostly fell outside where cars were parked and it broke windshields of three cars. By chance, no one was standing there either. It is a place where people pass all the time. Anything could have happened. A children's school a block down the street had all its windows shattered and the poor kids were scared breathless.

This was too close for comfort. I remember Jimmy Stewart's civil war movie "Shanandoah" in which he keeps telling his sons that the "war doesn't concern us." Then one day the yankees take his little son prisoner while the boy was out fishing. At that point Jimmy Stewart turns to his other sons and says, "Now it concerns us." Well, that is how many "movers and shakers" of Lahore felt about this blast. Even though most of their physical life remains unperturbed, this event has impinged upon their psychological space.

These are obviously "revenge" attacks by those whose villages have been destroyed, crops and live stock ruined and their families have been killed in the northern areas adjoining Afghanistan. This may also have a lot to do, as in Swat, with the killing of students in Lal Masjid.

They all blame the so-called "Punjabi Army" for the atrocities committed in the name of the "war on terror."

The purpose of attacking affluent neighborhoods in the heart of Punjab is to send a message to the Punjabi elite that, regardless of their prosperous isolation, they will not rest easy either if the indiscriminate attacks on "militants" (which mostly end up killing innocent civilians instead, while the real militants are elsewhere) are not stopped.

There is a growing perception that this is a misguided war that is increasing terror rather than defeating it.

It is also seen, by more and more people, as a war that Musharraf has blunderingly launched on the behest of the Americans. It is widely believed that the "solution" to this crisis has to be found through political means and not by military force.

Shortly after the blasts there was a spontaneous protest rally against Musharraf as his misguided policies were seen as the cause of the blood shed.

Now that Lahore has started seeing blood on its streets, Musharraf's days should be strictly numbered. (Unless, of course, those spineless swindlers -- AAZ & NS -- keep him proped up to serve their OWN interests.)

...SR

HITTING CLOSE TO HOME

The blast in the suburban residential area that was in a private home in the "F"-Block of the upscale locality of Model Town. The target (randomly chosen, I assume) was the house of a lawyer, the late Ijaz Batalvi, who was a legal consultant to the state lawyers in Mr. Bhutto's supreme court appeal to overturn his death sentence in 1979.

It was a terribly strong blast and it was felt far beyond Model Town.

The office of a consulting firm run by an old friend is also in Model Town, Lahore. It is about a quarter mile away in G-Block. It was seriously shaken up. I spoke to him a couple of hours after the blast and learnt that the huge french window in his corner office along with many other windows around the building and the houses next door were shattered. Sharp glass pieces flew into his chair. Fortunately he was not in his office at the time. The huge glass broke and mostly fell outside where cars were parked and it broke windshields of three cars. By chance, no one was standing there either. It is a place where people pass all the time. Anything could have happened. A children's school a block down the street had all its windows shattered and the poor kids were scared breathless.

This was too close for comfort. I remember Jimmy Stewart's civil war movie "Shanandoah" in which he keeps telling his sons that the "war doesn't concern us." Then one day the yankees take his little son prisoner while the boy was out fishing. At that point Jimmy Stewart turns to his other sons and says, "Now it concerns us." Well, that is how many "movers and shakers" of Lahore felt about this blast. Even though most of their physical life remains unperturbed, this event has impinged upon their psychological space.

These are obviously "revenge" attacks by those whose villages have been destroyed, crops and live stock ruined and their families have been killed in the northern areas adjoining Afghanistan. This may also have a lot to do, as in Swat, with the killing of students in Lal Masjid.

They all blame the so-called "Punjabi Army" for the atrocities committed in the name of the "war on terror."

The purpose of attacking affluent neighborhoods in the heart of Punjab is to send a message to the Punjabi elite that, regardless of their prosperous isolation, they will not rest easy either if the indiscriminate attacks on "militants" (which mostly end up killing innocent civilians instead, while the real militants are elsewhere) are not stopped.

There is a growing perception that this is a misguided war that is increasing terror rather than defeating it.

It is also seen, by more and more people, as a war that Musharraf has blunderingly launched on the behest of the Americans. It is widely believed that the "solution" to this crisis has to be found through political means and not by military force.

Shortly after the blasts there was a spontaneous protest rally against Musharraf as his misguided policies were seen as the cause of the blood shed.

Now that Lahore has started seeing blood on its streets, Musharraf's days should be strictly numbered. (Unless, of course, those spineless swindlers -- AAZ & NS -- keep him proped up to serve their OWN interests.)

...SR

#516 Posted by tahmed32,

go to hell.

I'm on my way!

Tehsin A # 411

Yes I also appreciate this civil way of discourse. I wish that other people use it as well instead of being volunteer propagandist all the time. I mean what do they get with that "khaya piya kuch nahin, glass toRa baaraa aanay". What a waste of time.

Once again I am inclined to agree with your point that despite having a framework for a model individual, a utopian society and that of a righteous polity such a society never existed in Islam's history. But is this God's honest truth? Let's see.

First of all we must understand that ideals, frameworks, and principles in nature are just that; meaning that they serve as the guiding light to keep humanity on track. But human being is a paradoxical mix of error, omission, and perfection. Human beings constantly need "A" guiding light to keep on the path which he thinks is right. It needs effort and it does not come naturally.

Having said that, if one cast an unbiased look at the character, life, and history of Holy Prophet (pbuh), one would find that every principle, every ethic, and every moral framework that he put forth was also put in practice by him, as well. His life s is a unique example in the history of mankind. That is the reason it is said that if one wishes to understand the Holy Qura'n and the principles it put forth one must look into the life of Holy Prophet. After him, the people who took over the helm were those who were personally trained by him. They had watched him every step he took in his life so closely that it seems that a camcorder was always following him around. So their lives serve as examples as how mere common men would be able to put the ideals in practice. For every Muslim, Holy Prophet's life, his personality, his teachings, his principles, his politics, his wars, his peace gives the ideal framework for the humanity. And that is what we must strive for. We may not be able to achieve the utopia but there are good marks for honestly trying – both in this world and beyond.

#515 Posted by hamidm2,

Yes I did. What did you expect them to do? Ask for an entry pass?

Bhai it's a war! They were going to bring down the FIA building with 85 KGs of explosives in water tanks loaded in the back and vaporize themselves along with it. Nothing was going to stop them. Do you think they did it for enjoyment?

#514 if you consider me to be a murderer, why are you chatting with me? go to hell.

Re: # 510

zeemax,

.... sorry, but i don't believe that 'no one' is enjoying this ..... i am convinced that the jihadis are thrilled at the prospect of going to heaven to do you you know what .... did you see the truck driving over the policeman at the fia building gate?

#512 Posted by tahmed32,

tahmed you asked what I meant by 'you killed him' and I told you. But that wasn't the point, nor was it whether there was an arsenal inside or not.

The point was, that person should have been kept alive at all cost to negotiate if the Government calculations of the aftermath proved wrong. As it turns out, all those estimates were not even close to the actual reaction - and now there's no one to negotiate with who has credibility on both sides.

hamid writes" .... even in the early seventies, before the rebirth of islam, the jamiat was the only force on the uet campus that had guns ...... "

So does every redneck militia (arsenals to match those of the Pakistani Army)in michigan, you should move out of that godforsaken state....hypocrite...

#511 you say i murdered someone and then say i am missing the point!! you claim the mosque had no guns and say i am missing the point!!

if you have a point to make, dont present it wrapped inside accusations and bogus remarks.

#509 Posted by tahmed32,

and how did i kill him?

Every one and anyone who supported the Lal Masjid action is a murderer, and is paying the price. Soon, even that distinction will disappear. I think you're deliberately missing my point.

#507 Posted by hamidm2,

Didn't you see his live conversations till the last moment on TV? I think they're still on youtube.

And I really wish you would stop that stupid rhetoric of seventy virgins if you want to get anywhere in a conversation about this conflict which no one is enjoying.

#508 how does "licensed" make any difference? and how did i kill him? did i sleep walk over and throttle that man? or did i bore him to death with my chowk posts?

#505 Posted by tahmed32,

I said whether there were or not (actually there were exactly 14 licensed Kalashnikovs and nothing else), that wasn't the point. The point is what I wrote. He was negotiating and you killed him. Now you don't have anyone credible to negotiate with and you're being bombed to shreds.

Re: # 504

zeemax,

.... how do you know he 'regretted' the outcome ?....... i thought the purpose of the exercise was to get to heaven and get it on with seventy virgins ...... i heard the man died with a big smile on his face ... so stop lying

#503 Posted by bjkumar,

Or he pours salt on them like on an earthworm so it melts .. LOL ... I think he did it to neembu on OTW ... ROTFL!

#504 zeemax: there were no guns, no armed men in lal masjid? that colonel was died of old age at lal masjid? and spare me theatrics by calling me a murderer.