Jinnah’s legacy vs terrorist trinity

The religious groups that opposed Pakistan’s creation in 1947 — namely, the JUIF and the JI — are closing ranks for a common cause: opposing military action against the Taliban and undermining Pakistan’s rebirth as a moderate Muslim democracy

The ongoing military operation against Taliban insurgents in Malakand Division is more than a matter of national survival: it is Pakistan’s last chance to rid itself of the self-induced cancer of violent jihadi politics, and reclaim Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan as a democratic state in sync with rest of the world.

However, it is important to note that the religious parties that opposed Jinnah’s Pakistan 62 years ago are now trying to subvert the struggle for reclaiming Pakistan. This was amply reflected at the All Parties Conference held at the Prime Minister’s house in Islamabad on May 18. While the main national parties supported military operation against the Taliban, the Jama’at-e Islami and the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Pakistan (F) opposed it, leading some Conference participants to note that these “religious parties were opposing the military action because of their ethnic and religious affinity with the Taliban,” as reported in this paper. (May 20)

Even so, there is nothing new about the pro-Taliban, pro-Al Qaeda stance of the JUIF and the JI. In the past, security forces have apprehended or gunned down Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in the homes of JI and JUIF members in Rawalpindi and Zhob, where the terrorists were hiding. Indeed, for leaders of JI and JUIF, Osama bin Laden is a hero of Islam and attempts to portray him as a terrorist are part of conspiracies against Islam.

One only has to recall the reaction of this religio-political lobby during the Musharraf era to an ad the print media carried portraying bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders as “religious terrorists”. Reacting to the ad at a public meeting, the JUIF information secretary asserted that “Osama is a hero to Islamic world and the Musharraf government would not get any sympathy by branding him a religious terrorist”.

On his part, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, then Amir of the JI, described the ad as part of an international conspiracy in which “Pakistan’s government had sided with the Zionists’ agenda”. He went on to argue that “bracketing of Islamists with terrorists (was) a Zionist conspiracy because Islam is fast spreading in Europe and America”. (The Nation, July 2, 2002)

However, it is intriguing that many Pakistanis, especially in the religious right, continue to see the September 11 attacks against America as part of an Israeli conspiracy to discredit Muslims — even after key Al Qaeda leaders have virtually owned up to the 9/11 attacks. In fact, in a website interview last year, Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al Zawahiri accused Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of “trying to discredit Al Qaeda network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the 11 September attacks”. “The purpose of this lie,” Zawahiri went on, was to suggest “that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hit America as no one else did in history.” (The News, April 24, 2008)

At the same time, Zawahiri denounced the peace deal on Swat last month, describing it as part of an American strategy “encouraging Pakistan government to make deals with Taliban across the border with Afghanistan”. However, confident of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan’s loyalty to Al Qaeda’s agenda for violent global jihad, Zawahiri warned that despite the deal “the problem will not end...It will escalate”.

No wonder, then, that the TTP was quick to ‘escalate’ the problem: it turned the Swat agreement on its head and invited Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omer to “settle” in Swat. At the same time, Taliban militants moved into Buner and Lower Dir, instead of laying down their arms as required by the Swat agreement between Taliban godfather Sufi Muhammad and the government.

Clearly, the breakdown of the deal was a deliberate act rooted in the Taliban-Al Qaeda agenda for pushing violent jihad across Pakistan in the name of sharia. Indeed, as the Taliban made clear, enforcing sharia law was not to be confined to Malakand Division, as Sufi Muhammad had assured the government, but “across Pakistan and the whole world”, as Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told CNN in a telephonic interview.

Given these home truths about the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus, the religious right’s argument — that military action could have been avoided had the government given the peace deal a chance — carries little weight. Indeed, if there is “an international conspiracy to change the geography of Pakistan”, as JI leaders claimed last Friday at a press conference in Islamabad, such conspiracy seems rooted in a global jihadist agenda of turning Pakistan into a base for a Wahhabi-Salafist Caliphate.

The fact of the matter is that the Taliban insurgency is spurred by a religiosity where terrorism and assassination are religious traditions; concepts that Al Qaeda ideologue Abu Mu’sab al Suri brought from Muslim Brotherhood camps in the Middle East to the Taliban training camps in Afghanistan where he was an instructor. These ideas continue to be flaunted in jihadist CDs celebrating beheadings of their opponents in Pakistan.

Ironic as it may seem, perhaps no leader in the Muslim world had a deeper grasp of the dark side of Al Qaeda and Taliban than former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. This is reflected in Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West (Schuster, 2008), the book she completed on the day of her assassination on December 27, 2007.

Indeed, her observations on the insurgents in northwestern Pakistan and their hatred for democracy encapsulates the present crisis of Pakistan — where “Al Qaeda and Taliban operate...with impunity, arrogance and brutality.” For Bhutto, the answer to the crisis lay in strengthening democracy, which “removes the oxygen from the air of extremists. They understand this better than anyone else and deliberately target democratic forces as a strategy for expanding their goal of an obscurantist Empire, which they call ‘Islamic’. Muslims such as myself reject the notion that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or extremists are the real face of the Muslim masses.” (p.208)

In a sense, then, the ongoing battle for Pakistan reflects a contestation between two opposite narratives: on the one hand, Pakistan as a modern democratic Muslim state spurred by an egalitarian spirit of Islam as envisioned by Jinnah; on the other, Pakistan as a launchpad for a theocratic Islamic caliphate envisioned by a trinity of Arab terrorists — the Saudi bin Laden, the Egyptian Al Zawahiri and the Syrian Al Suri.

Here, the religious groups that opposed Pakistan’s creation in 1947 — namely, the JUIF and the JI — are closing ranks for a common cause: opposing military action against the Taliban and undermining Pakistan’s rebirth as a moderate Muslim democracy.

In the long battle that lies ahead, it is imperative to rally around Jinnah’s legacy to confront jihadi terror, which has wormed its way into Pakistan and destroyed Afghanistan.

(Suroosh Irfani is an educationist and writer based in Lahore)

North Korea fires missiles after nuclear test

SEOUL: North Korea reportedly fired two short-range missiles on Tuesday, in a move set to heighten tensions after its latest nuclear weapons test drew global condemnation.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to consider the options after Pyongyang's test of a nuclear device on Monday, which some estimates said was almost as powerful as the atom bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Council called the test a ‘clear violation’ of international law and immediately began working on a resolution that could impose new sanctions on the secretive North, which has now tested two nuclear bombs in three years.

‘This resolution should include new sanctions in addition to those already adopted because such behaviour should have a cost and a price to pay,’ said Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the deputy French ambassador to the United Nations.

Following the UN condemnation, the North launched one ground-to-air missile and one ground-to-ship missile into the sea Tuesday off its eastern coast near the city of Hamhung, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

‘Intelligence authorities are analysing the motives for the firing,’ it quoted a South Korean government source as saying, adding that each missile had a range of 130 kilometres (80 miles).

In April it test-fired a long-range rocket that critics say was in fact a ballistic missile, and on Monday it test-fired three short-range missiles after the nuclear blast.

Russia estimated the force of Monday's underground nuclear explosion at up to 20 kilotons, far more powerful than the October 2006 test that announced the impoverished communist state had joined the club of world nuclear powers.

The North said the latest test would ‘contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism, and ensuring peace and security on the Korean peninsula and the region.’

North Korea has repeatedly said it needs a deterrent to ward off an attack by the United States, which it believes wants to topple Kim Jong-Il's regime.

Almost six years of disarmament talks have not stopped its nuclear drive.

Some analysts have suggested that Kim is using the nuclear test to strengthen his hand at home, and so could be even less swayed than usual by more sanctions or international criticism.

The 67-year-old was widely reported to have suffered a stroke last August, prompting speculation overseas about the succession. The North's position has noticeably hardened since then.

‘This is part of Kim shoring up support for his regime among the inner circle and the public,’ Peter Beck, a Korea expert at the American University in Washington, told AFP.

‘The internal domestic dynamic is taking precedence over external factors.’ Even China, a permanent member of the Security Council and the North's sole main ally, was strongly critical of the latest test —which North Korea had pledged to carry out because of previous censure from the Council.

‘Disregarding the common objections of the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has again tested a nuclear device,’ China's foreign ministry said in a statement.

‘The Chinese government expresses its resolute opposition to this,’ it said.

US President Barack Obama, whose initial overtures to the North since taking office in January have been met with official hostility from Pyongyang, condemned what he called its ‘reckless’ atomic test.

‘North Korea's nuclear ballistic missile programmes pose a great threat to the peace and security of the world,’ he said. The North Tuesday reiterated complaints that Obama is no better than his predecessor.

‘The present US administration is talking about what it called a 'change' and 'bilateral dialogue' but it is, in actuality, pursuing the same reckless policy as followed by the former Bush administration to stifle the DPRK (North Korea) by force of arms,’ said the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

Foreign ministers from Asia and Europe meeting in Hanoi were set to condemn the nuclear test as ‘a clear violation’ of six-party agreements and UN resolutions, according to a draft text.

South Korea announced it was joining the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, an international effort to curb trade in weapons of mass destruction that involves some 90 nations and includes military exercises.

North Korea had previously said that it would see the South's participation as a declaration of war.

George Galloway - Palestinian Rights / Israel

George Galloway = Israel is a terrorist state=worse than Nazi Germany !!





Unlike many politicians who would rather stay on the safe side, even if that means betraying their conscience, George Galloway represents a rare breed of morally-guided politicians who are willing to call the spade a spade even in the face of danger and brutality.
The British lawmaker has displayed immense courage in speaking up against crimes and injustices inflicted by Israel, the United States and their European allies in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

In 2003, Galloway was expelled from the Labor Party when a party body decided that the strong statements he had made in opposition to the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies had brought the party into disrepute.

Unshaken and defiant, Galloway then co-founded the Respect party, a new leftist-leaning coalition with a number of small groups.

Galloway had castigated the horrible genocide of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of the draconian sanctions imposed on that Arab country and enforced by the United States.

In 2006, when the West and several Arab regimes were utterly silent, or colluding with Israel, Galloway spoke up loudly and eloquently against the barbaric Israeli aggression against Lebanon which utterly destroyed civilian homes and infrastructure, especially in southern Beirut, and killed hundreds of innocent civilians all over Lebanon.

In so doing, he exposed the nefarious war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israel, including the dropping by the Israeli air force of millions of cluster bomblets all over southern Lebanon for the express purpose of killing and maiming Lebanese peasants, farmers, shepherds and children for many many years to come.

Now, the brave gentleman has arrived in the huge besieged concentration camp known as the Gaza Strip, leading an aid convoy of food and medicine for the thoroughly tormented people of Gaza.

Interestingly, his auspicious arrival coincided with the occurrence of the annual anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) who said "one of the greatest forms of Jihad, is to utter a word of truth in the presence of tyrant."

"I am here to meet the heroes of Palestine’s resistance, the government of Palestine, the people of Palestine," Galloway told reporters as thousands of jubilant Palestinians turned up to greet the man and his companions.

"I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people," said Galloway, who kneeled down to kiss Gaza ground.

"We are all Palestinians"

Unafraid of upsetting Israel, its criminal-minded allies, quislings and hangers-on, Galloway said what most politicians in the capitals of Europe and North America, not even in the Arab-Muslim Middle East, wouldn’t dare say, namely that Hamas is the legitimate Palestinian government and that the Palestinian people’s will ought to be respected.

Galloway denounced former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a staunch supporter of the Hamas-isolation policy.

"He doesn’t represent the British people," said Galloway.

Blair, like most other western politicians and officials, remained utterly silent as Nazi Israel was raining white phosphorus bombs on Gaza recently, killing, maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children, whose only "crime" was their enduring vigor and determination to live and be free.

On behalf of the Palestinian people and all free-minded men and women around the World, I salute you for being a voice for the voiceless and for speaking up loudly, eloquently and defiantly for truth and justice.

Tyranny of Trends

Charty Durrant writes about The Tyranny of Trends. In her view, fashion
is the antithesis of sustainability. Many of our economic and
environmental problems are the consequence of our desire to show off, to
impress. We are obsessed by our egos, and the desire for glamour is a
world problem. As Oscar Wilde said, "Fashion is a form of ugliness, so
intolerable that we have to alter it every six months"!

When I was at the Economic Forum in Davos, the then President of South
Africa, Thabo Mbeki, spoke about his dreams for the new South Africa
where everyone was able to own cars, computers and TV sets. From the
floor I asked Mr Mbeki, "If people in South Africa, Brazil, China, India
and the rest of the world attempt to own personal computers, cars, TV
sets and the latest fashion in clothes, like the Europeans and Americans
do, then we will need the resources of three or four planets. Mr
President, we haven't got three or four planets; we have only one. Isn't
it time for Europeans and Americans to free themselves from their
obsession with fashion and consumer goods rather than Indians, Africans
and Chinese aspiring to the wasteful Western lifestyle? Can we not
design a lifestyle of elegant simplicity which is just, fair and
sustainable?"

My question was heard in stunned silence. Mr Mbeki appeared to be taken
aback for a moment. Perhaps he was not expecting anyone in that
gathering to question the quest for higher living standards. After a few
seconds of reflection Mr Mbeki replied, "We cannot turn the clock back
to an egalitarian, pastoral past; we are in the age of technology,
progress and development. We cannot allow our people not to enjoy the
same comforts and conveniences which European and Americans take for
granted. I want to bring high living standards to our people in South
Africa and I am sure governments in India and South America want to do
the same. There are plenty of resources to go around!"

Of course there was no opportunity to take the debate further, but the
two contrasting worldviews were there for everybody to see.

SIMPLICITY IS PART of the 'perennial wisdom'promoted by many great
thinkers and visionaries. Although sometimes people think simplicity
means a kind of 'hair-shirt' lifestyle, that is not my view. Simplicity
is a positive quality; when things are simple they are well-made, they
last indefinitely, they are made with pleasure and they give pleasure
when used. It was E. F. Schumacher who said, "Any fool can make things
complicated, but it requires a genius to make things simple."

Simplicity requires less ego and more imagination, less complication and
more creativity, less glamour and more gratitude, less attention to
appearance and more attention to essence.

Trendy, fashionable consumer-oriented lifestyles are the cause of a
threefold crisis. The first is the environmental crisis, where
over-exploitation of resources causes climate change. The second is the
social crisis, where resources are appropriated by the few, and large
numbers of people are deprived of their essential rights: consumerism
causes poverty and social injustice. The third is the spiritual crisis:
the crisis of disconnection and loneliness. Consumerism and addiction to
'fast-fashion'undermine the values of friendship, family,
neighborliness and humility.

The economic downturn and financial crisis offer us an opportunity to
re-examine the culture of consumerism and the fashion industry. It is an
opportunity to explore ways of living which offer elegance, contentment
and creativity.
The article by Charty Durrant is timely.It would be too much to expect you to practice but if you can you will feel liberated.

Our biggest dilemma ...

Our biggest dilemma is that we don't know who our enemy is. This ignorance has made ourselves our own biggest enemy. We have no doubt that India is our declared enemy. This clarity has served us well as we have prepared ourselves mentally and militarily to defend against any Indian-imposed war of aggression. Today we are a nation armed with nuclear arsenal thanks to the clarity about our neighbor's aggressive designs against our integrity. What we have not understood and recognized is the enemy in the guise of a friend. Most people in Pakistan agree that America was behind Liaqat Ali Khan's assassination. We all know Kissinger threatened Bhutto saying he would be turned into a horrible example and he was.

We all know the promised 7th Fleet never reached to save East Pakistan which was ostensibly allowed to turn into Bangladesh. We are still clueless how Zia and the rest of our top army brass were killed in a plane crash? We have hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the helm of affairs in all departments and institutions, both in public and private sectors, in all strata of society that are their active and silent agents. They are working in their masters' interests all the time. We are virtually held hostage, our integrity, sovereignty and prestige are all in their hands. Shouldn't we try to stop it all here? Let us be our own friend and not our own worst foe.