ZAKARIA'S AFGHANISTAN STRATEGY: SALVAGE OR SURRENDER?

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria believes, as do almost all analysts, that America's war in Afghanistan is not going well. Almost all trends, he says, are moving in the wrong direction but it is not a quagmire yet. To salvage the situation, he thinks that US policy needs to be "overhauled in four steps, each more complicated than the last".

The first of these steps outlined by Zakaria in an article in the Newsweek is the moving of the emphasis away from aggressive and punitive operations towards what the Indians calls the "winning the hearts and minds of the people" approach while simultaneously getting local forces to take on an increasing role in conducting operations. The second step is the strengthening of the Afghan government and increasing its legitimacy among the people by holding elections, reaching out to tribal leaders etc. There is not much to argue about the merits of these two basic steps.

But Zakaria steps into a veritable minefield with the last two steps which have the potential of making America end up leaving the region a far more dangerous place than it was before 9/11.

"Talk to the Taliban", says Zakaria, and "make a distinction between Al Qaida and Taliban". It is the Al Qaida which needs to be defeated to prevent terror attacks on the US. As far as the Taliban are concerned, essentially what Zakaria is saying is that the US should cut a deal with elements of the Taliban who have no links with the Al Qaida, effectively hand over Afghanistan back to them and withdraw its troops from that country.

Zakaria also believes that the rising tide of radical Islam is a reality about which not only can nothing be done, but it should not even concern the US because not all Islamists advocate global jihad and most Taliban want Islamic rule locally only. In support of these somewhat specious arguments, Zakaria highlights the fact that no Afghan has participated in any significant level in any global terrorist attack over the last ten years. Using the same line of reasoning, he supports the recent deal that the Pakistan government has struck in the Swat valley as an effort to divide the camps of Islamists between "those who are violent and those who are merely extreme". It is these "extreme" Islamists, it must be added, who were responsible for killing and beheading Pakistani journalist Mosa Khankel just after they signed the peace deal.

If Afghan nationals have not been involved in global - that term does not include India - terror attacks, it is not because they are concerned only with a share of the spoils and a measure of local power. It is because decades of war and ruin have ensured that there are very few educated Afghans living in the West. Therefore, picking suitable and motivated operatives to successfully carry out terror attacks in the West is virtually impossible. Afghans may not have been the visible face of global terror but it must be remembered that they provided the logistic and training bases that made it possible.

The last step suggested by Zakaria to ensure a lasting solution is to "pressure Pakistan" into dismantling jihadist networks, and to get India and Afghanistan to respond with concessions to ease regional tensions. That is another way of saying that India, which he believes has been "bled at very low cost" by Pakistan in Kashmir, should accept what will appear to be the victory of terror, and that Afghanistan should accept being treated almost as a notional nation whose purpose is to provide Pakistan the "strategic depth" that it has been seeking in its territory. That will happen in any case if the Taliban take control of that country again.

Would America want Afghanistan to revert back to the same conditions it was in before 9/11, minus the Al Qaida? If Zakaria's formula is followed, Pakistan, the epicenter of the terror that has been unleashed regionally and globally for decades, will again get to keep Afghanistan and also score some sort of a victory against India over Kashmir! And that handsome reward, in conjunction with the dismantling of jihadist networks that exist in Pakistan, will, as per Zakaria's assessment, ensure everlasting peace and brotherhood in the region and the world.

Also, since there is an un-checkable rising tide of radical Islam all over the world that actually does not threaten the world, Zakaria seems to suggest that the US should not be concerned if the whole of Pakistan is run over by "extreme" Islamists. All that it needs to do is to ensure that they keep the barrels of their AKs pointed towards their own people "who will weary of radical Islam quickly" as Islamists "lack the answers to today's problems". Can that ever be realistically done over time?

In the end, says Zakaria, it will be America's most powerful weapon, "a worldview that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women", that will defeat the Islamists, including the Taliban, not its military might or the combined will and efforts of other nations.

Zakaria should have known that aspirations of men and women stuck in a medieval time machine are not the same as of those who live in the 'decadent' West. For radical Islamists, their time machine is divine, questioning which means swift death. In any case, America's worldview has been on view for many decades. How come we are still witnessing the rise and sustenance of the radical Islam that should have never have risen in the first place, if Zakaria is right?

Zakaria's whole argument is based on the flawed premise that most radical Islamists are concerned only with petty local issues and not global jihad. They have to be concerned with those issues in any case, but the gaze of many is beyond the horizon and those of the remaining will quickly shift there too, when the conditions are right. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, a Delhi based Islamic scholar, says that the ideology of jihadists is that "that Islam is a political system and that it is the duty of of all Muslims to establish the political rule of Islam in the world". He also says that a large number of Muslims have taken to violence to achieve this objective thinking it to be their ticket to paradise; even if they cannot eliminate non-Islamic rule, they can at least destabilise it and pave the way for Islamic rule.

This means that radical Islamists are not in it for the short haul. Bernard-Henry Levy, like many others, also believes that one can't distinguish between the Al Qaida and the Taliban. The artificial distinction that is being made by Zakaria between the "good" Taliban and the "bad" Taliban to justify the case for striking a deal with them and for rewarding Pakistan will not salvage the situation in Afghanistan. It will tantamount to surrender there. The defeat of both super powers to jihadists will be just the tonic they need to re-energise their jihad and attract more recruits globally into their holy war against America, the Great Satan, and other non-believers.

Whether we like it or not and no matter where in the world we live, we need to realise that we are all part of a historical battle between misguided radical Islam and not just the West but all the rest. Therefore, if the US cuts a deal with the Taliban and leaves Afghanistan with their ideology and AKs in place, there will not even be the illusion of peace. Attacks on India will continue without a pause and with renewed vigour. And, after a short hiatus which they will use to reorganise, re-group and re-strategise, the victorious jihadists will re-launch their global jihad with unprecedented ferocity.
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Readers may also read:
1. Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror
2. India needs to ready itself for a post-Pakistan scenario
3. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
4. Tackling Islamic terrorism: What India needs to understand

ATTACK ON SRI LANKAN CRICKETERS: NO ROOM FOR PRETENCE NOW

The inevitable has happened. This morning eight to ten terrorists armed with rockets, AKs and grenades attacked the bus carrying Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's largest state Punjab. In the attack, five security persons were killed and three were injured. At least six Sri Lankan cricketers were injured too. The tour has been abandoned and the players are flying back home.

As per the driver of the bus in which Sri Lankan cricketers were travelling to the Gaddafi stadium, a rocket was fired at the bus but it missed it because the bus was turning at a roundabout. A hand grenade thrown at the bus went under it. After that, facing small arms fire, he drove the bus quickly to the safety of the stadium, due to which further casualties were prevented. Had the rocket hit the bus, the entire team would have been eliminated. In what appears to be a providential escape, Mahela Jayawardane, Kumar Sangakkara, Ajantha Mendis, Thila Samaraweera, Tharanga Paranvithana and Chaminda Vaas escaped with injuries. All are out of danger.

Another fact that has emerged is that the terrorists targeted only the Sri Lankan and not the Pakistani team. The attack lasted nearly half an hour after which all of then simply disappeared. Till now, no arrests have been made. Naturally, there are questions being raised that the terrorists had detailed inside information about the movement of the players. They also probably had support from elements either in the police or the military that enabled them to get so close to the stadium and then effect a clean get-away too.

As this is being written, there are unbelievable live visuals on the TV screen showing a military helicopter, not players, on the pitch of the Gaddafi stadium. It is there to fly out the Sri Lankan players straight to the airport. No one in Lahore is willing to take the risk of taking the players out of the stadium by road.

This is not Taliban country; this is not Swat or FATA or NWFP. This is the very centre of Pakistan, as it were, its Punjabi heart. This has been hit by terrorists in as dramatic a manner as was Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The dress and modus operandi of those who struck in Lahore today was chillingly identical to that of those who attacked Mumbai. Does the state of Pakistan have no clue about who they are and who their backers and trainers and ideologues are? Are they too isolated and undetected "non-state" actors like the Mumbai attackers were? Are these too "rogue elements" within the establishment that the establishment is blissfully unaware of?

There are some experts who are saying in TV studio discussions that this attack has the hand of the Pakistani Army behind it. The Army is going to use this incident, they believe, along with the mess that Zardari and Sharif have created between themselves like dim wits who should have remained in prison/exile, to get back into power. That may perhaps be correct. But what does the Army want to come back to and rule over? What will this attack do? It will ensure that all sporting contacts with Pakistan, in Pakistan, are broken by all other countries of the world. That is not what the Army should be looking forward to, if indeed this attack has been orchestrated just to impose military rule.

The message of this attack is perhaps far more dangerous and fundamental. Today it is sport, tomorrow it will be other symbols of a modern, progressive Pakistan. Finally it will be the sharia in full force in the whole country, if it still is one, just as it is in Taliban land today.

The deal between the Army and the Taliban in Swat to hand over that valley to the latter who are imposing the sharia there needs to be viewed in conjunction with what has happened in Lahore today. The slide is dangerous and it is gathering momentum. Pakistani President Zardari was not bluffing when he said that his country was in danger of being taken over by the Taliban. There is no room for pretence now.

There are clearly dominant elements in Pakistan Army and its subordinate organisation, the ISI, who are in favour of the talibanisation of the whole of Pakistan. They have grown up on that extremist ideology and have overseen its implementation in Afghanistan before 9/11. Like the terrorists that they are creating and training, they believe that the whole of Pakistan should follow the 'pure' Islam that they earlier had put in place in Afghanistan and that is now functional in large areas in the peripheral parts of Pakistan. It is also safe to assume that the these elements in the Army are not low ranking officers or men. They have to be senior officers with some serious clout and reach. For all you know Army Chief Kiyani might be one with them. Since the US is sitting on their head, they have to move undetected and with caution and then surprise the Americans somewhat like they did in Swat.

Make no mistake: the attack on the Sri Lankan team will be followed by attacks on cinema halls, music shops, girls not fully covered up etc. Radical Islam is now aiming for the very heart of Pakistan, for the state of Pakistan itself. There is an internal war brewing there, a war that will have a profound and lasting impact on the world. The world has a responsibility to ensure that the jihadi elements that have infiltrated large parts of the state of Pakistan and its structures are not allowed to consume any more of Pakistan than they already have. The rest of the world will be next.

It is time to back the retreating moderate and progressive elements in Pakistan so that they develop the stomach and the ability to fight and defeat those who are trying to turn Pakistan into a very dangerous fundamentalist Afghanistan. No matter what the cost. The world cannot just afford their defeat.

This post has featured in the News blog page of The Guardian
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1. All cylinders on fire, where is Pakistan heading?
2. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
3. India needs to ready itself for a post-Pakistan scenario
4. A vote to save Jinnah's Pakistan: Will it?
5. Pakistan: Dangers of the multi-ethnic Islamic state

KASHMIR AND AFGHANISTAN ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME TERROR COIN

A lot has been written about the real message that the people of Kashmir Valley have conveyed through their vote in the recently held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. For the first ever time, they defied the boycott call given by the separatists and militants, and came out to vote in record-breaking numbers. The verdict they delivered was split but in such a manner that only Omar Abdullah's National Conference could form a government in alliance with the Congress party.

Ethnic Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley are the face of the anti-India sentiment that the world sees and that Pakistan has been trying to exploit since 1947 to gobble up the part of the state which is still with India. Since 1989, the instrument of a low intensity war, also referred to as terrorism, has been used by that country to wear India down to the point that it is compelled to at least start the process of accepting Pakistan's claim on the state, even if it does so without appearing to.

As part of that strategy, separatist groups, ranging from those who demand merger of the state into Pakistan to those who want 'independence' from India, have been effectively used to discredit and dismiss all instruments of governance that symbolise the fact that the state is a part of a secular India. These groups have always opposed elections because they legitimise the state's relationship with India. That is what they did this time too smug with confidence that with the Amarnath Land issue still fresh in their minds, the people in the Valley would reject these elections en masse.

The unexpectedly overwhelming response of ethnic Kashmiris and people of all other ethnic groups stunned not only the separatists but also pleasantly surprised mainstream political parties and analysts. No one, it seems, had his finger on the real pulse of the people. Yes, ethnic Kashmiris voted differently from the the way voters in the other two regions in the state did. Yes, their vote was in sum not for India. Yes, most likely they did not even vote for secularism.

But, what was most significant was not what they voted for but what they voted against. And, what they clearly came out in large numbers to reject through the silence of their vote was Islamic extremism, the increasing Talibanisation of society and the jehadi culture that has not only proved to be Kashmir's curse but has also completely claimed Afghanistan and vast swathes of Pakistani territory along its Western border.

Somewhere in their souls, Kashmiris have understood that the road that Pakistan has put them on is not going to turn their Valley into the promised Islamic paradise. And they are clear that they do not want it to become what Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan have become. They do not want to regress further in that direction which, to all but the most fanatical, is a descent into a black hole of oppression, violence and intolerance of the worst kind. In the 21st century.

These elections, therefore, represent a victory of the ordinary Muslim over the fanatic Muslim represented by the Taliban and the various jehadi groups spawned by the state of Pakistan. The significance of this unexpected and remarkable victory that can change the course of history is not limited to Kashmir. It extends right into the heart of Pakistan. And into the whole world.

In Pakistan, free and fair elections were held in 2008, perhaps for the first time after 1950. In those elections too, Pakistani Muslims voted emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who had thoroughly messed up the ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, that they wanted the country to get off the road of religious extremism that was hurtling them all towards disaster. What was even more significant was the fact that despite the presence of the Americans next door in Afghanistan, the people of the Frontier, most affected by Islamic extremism, thrashed the extremists through the ballot.

Unfortunately, Pakistan has failed to live up to the promise that that was held out by the people's verdict. The events of the last few months, including the terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, have left no one in any doubt that Pakistan has relapsed into its old ways. The military is back in effective control, the ISI is still on the destructive pathway that has brought Pakistan to the brink, and the jehadi terrorists continue to be patronised and encouraged by powerful elements as an instrument of a state policy that has become Pakistan's cancer.

Pakistan is, thus, not defined by its people. It is defined by its military, including the ISI, with the help of an influential anti-India section of the Mohajir and Punjabi elite that is closely aligned with it. It is well known that the Sindhis, Baluchis and Pashtoons have never harboured the kind of anti-India feelings that have been made central to the very idea and existence of Pakistan by its military-led elite. The military cannot shed this positioning as then the very basis of its power and motivational underpinnings will fall apart. If that happens, it will lose its muscle and centrality in the power matrix of the state. That is something it is not going to allow to happen and that is something that no one in Pakistan has the power to make a reality.

As long as the the Pakistani military establishment, of which the ISI is a part, retains its primacy as the executor of the will the state of Pakistan as defined by it, there is going to be little real change in the country's views about its neighbours either in the east or west. That means that the same destructive, expansionist policies on both fronts will continue to be persisted with.

The presence of the US in Afghanistan has forced Pakistan's military to pretend to be America's ally while it continues to covertly support, encourage and promote the elements fighting against it. The tactic being used is conceptually the same as is being used against India in Kashmir.

Wear the Americans down in Afghanistan to a point where they are forced to seek an 'honourable' exit from there and leave it back in the hands of Pakistan through a new and improved Taliban, quite like it was before 9/11, minus the Al Qaida. This is the cornerstone of Pakistan's position on the 'war on terror' as the ally of the US. Pakistani generals reckon that the US will bolt from Afghanistan much faster than India will from Kashmir. Therefore, they will do everything to ensure that the Americans effectively lose their Afghan war, just like the Soviets did. They will, in fact try their utmost, without totally giving themselves away, to ensure that the US dose not achieve a decisive victory there, because that will probably deal a death blow to the Talibani and jehadi infrastructure that has been painstakingly set up by the military over decades. The rout of these elements will wind up being a body blow to the military itself.

It needs be understood, therefore, that neither the Americans nor the Indians can afford to lose their wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir respectively. These two flash points are the the last real battlegrounds of a retreating ideology that, as per Maulana Wahiduddin, is based in the mistaken belief that "Islam is a political system and that it is the duty of all Muslims to establish the political rule of Islam in the world".

What is happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and elsewhere and what happened on 9/11 is not due to "random terror", an aimless jehad, that Vir Sanghvi and, possibly, a few others have suddenly discovered it to be. As Maulana Wahiduddin explains, although terror attacks will not eliminate non-Islamic rule or bring down governments immediately, jehadis believe they can at least destabilise them and pave the way for Islamic rule. Due to lack of military power to force a change through open war, this strategy of chipping away has been adopted for bringing about the desired result of establishing Islamic rule in an open time-frame beyond what is normally considered by the US and others while developing responses to defeat it.

This ideological problem affects the whole world, as it does moderate Muslims in Pakistan, India and elsewhere, including the US. A defeat in Kashmir for India and/or the US in Afghanistan will have disastrous long term consequences from which no nation of any consequence will be immune. Even a notional defeat is not an option because it will be touted as a triumph of terror and used as a powerful motivator to attract more people from around the world to join the 'holy' cause and take terror to new levels.

This is the most fundamental aspect that needs to be understood and properly internalised so that myopic and disjointed political and military strategies can be avoided in future.

Viewed in this context, the proposal of the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband that a 'resolution' of Kashmir will stop terrorism against India from Pakistan, indicates that there is still no holistic understanding in the UK of the real dimensions of the problem of terrorism from which even his own country is not free. Implicit in Miliband's statement that appeared, much to India's discomfiture, in The Guardian even as he was being given a guided rural tourism tour by Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, is the suggestion that a resolution acceptable to Pakistan will necessarily involve India giving and Pakistan gaining. As almost everyone in India already knows, if that happens, Pakistan sponsored terrorism will only get fuelled further, not put out.

There is a view in India that a strong Pakistan is needed to keep Talibanis away from India's borders. This implies that Pakistani Punjabis and Sindhis will willingly allow such elements to convert their provinces too into another Afghanistan once the protective umbrella of Pakistan is removed, and join them in their holy war against India. This deduction appears to be completely erroneous. Ordinary Punjabis and Sindhis, like the Kashmiris in India, have no illusions about the fact that these elements have become their own cancer, a fact that has been admitted even by President Zardari. But, since they are seen to be fighting against India, they do get a measure of support due to a mindset created by the ideology adopted by Pakistan that sees a secular India as an enemy that has to be defeated.

It is, therefore, only natural that once ordinary Sindhis, Baluchis and the Punjabis are lightened of the heavy ideological anti-India baggage of the state of Pakistan, they will most likely vigorously cleanse their own provinces of these elements and ensure that they are confined to FATA. They may well take steps to weaken them there and in Afghanistan too by denying them the strong ideological and logistical base that the state of Pakistan has been providing to them, and without which they cannot survive for long.

The results of the recent elections in Kashmir Valley and Pakistan have clearly indicated that ordinary Muslims do not support this ideology of terror and the social repression it promises - if it affects their own lives. They may cheer it from the sidelines, but do not want it to reside in their homes. There is no reason to believe that the people of Afghanistan do not share the feelings that their ethnic brothers on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line have expressed in the elections there. But, they are themselves terrorised by ruthless AK47 wielding fanatics who can cross all limits of brutality without batting even the proverbial eye lid.

Ordinary Afghanis may hate the presence of US troops on their soil but that does not mean that love for the Talibanis and other jehadi groups is overflowing in their hearts. If the fear factor is decisively removed from their midst, they too will not opt for a Talibanised Afghanistan.

Both India and the US, therefore, need to work in unstated unison to ensure that Pakistan's military and the ISI are weakened to a point
where they are no longer able to hijack the agenda of the people of Pakistan again. Terrorism needs Pakistan's military and the ISI to survive; they need it to flourish to protect their relevance and the idea that Pakistan has become.

Strengthening of Pakistan's military to help the US in its war in Afghanistan is not going to yield the dividends that the US is hoping for. Rather than strengthen the war on terror, it is going to lengthen it. Worse will happen in the long run if the US pushes a deal favourable to terror in Kashmir in the hope that it will enable it to de-induct from Afghanistan after wiping the Al Qaida out from there by leaving that country in the 'safe' hands of the Pakistani military.

Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin. The war on terror has to be decisively won in both these places. The US cannot afford to make the mistake that it made when the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. That mistake resulted in 9/11 and more. This time, the consequences of a mistake will be far worse for the US and the rest of the world.
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Readers may also read: Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror

UNDERSTANDING AND DEFEATING THE IDEOLOGY OF TERROR

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has said something about Islamic terrorism that most Muslims have always known. But, secular India has been shying away from facing that basic truth. The often parroted statement that terrorism has no religion has ensured that no response has been developed to counter an ideology that has already claimed the lives of thousands of innocent citizens, and is set to claim many more.

What does the Maulana who is a Delhi based Islamic scholar have to say about the terrorism that his fellow religionists are using as a tool to achieve their objectives? Writing in The Times of India of December 12, 2008, he says that the ideology of terrorism is "that Islam is a political system and that it is the duty of of all Muslims to establish the political rule of Islam in the world". A large number of Muslim youth, he adds, have taken to violence to achieve this objective thinking it to be their ticket to paradise. Even if they cannot eliminate non-Islamic rule, they can at least destabilise it and pave the way for Islamic rule.

In other words, the lure of real political power in this world for practical and smart leaders, and great sex with 72 virgins in heaven for gullible foot soldiers who die young, is the explosive and powerful combination that ensures that it is easy to keep attracting adherents to this violent ideology.

Had these self-evident facts been mentioned in India by a non-Muslim, there would have been a huge furore against that individual for communalising terror, followed by the usual talk that Islam is a religion of peace. Indeed the latter is what Maulana Wahiduddin Khan believes, as do many other Muslims, saying that "this kind of thinking" was not prevalent during the time of the Prophet or his early companions and is a later invention. This, he says, was developed over the last few centuries and has become widespread in the Muslim world today.

So, the first and most important thing to understand is that Islamic terrorism is not the handiwork of a few lunatics who "have no religion". It is the violent and widespread expression of the almost universal, even if erroneous, belief among Muslims that establishment of Islamic political rule over the whole world is the 'divine right', indeed the purpose, of the religion.

In this light, Pakistan's avowed objective of bleeding India to death by inflicting on it a thousand cuts makes nothing but sense and, more importantly, tells us why it can never be abandoned by that country, no matter what it says publicly. That is why, as long as it exists as one Islamic state, it cannot live in harmony with and in the shadow of a non-Islamic India. In the same light, the rejection in 1977 of the secular Indian state by the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) appears perfectly logical, as does its slogan, "Allah is our Lord, Quran is our constitution, Muhammad is our leader, Jehad is our way and shahadat (martyrdom) is our desire".

Why has terror become the preferred tool to achieve a grand political objective in the name of religion, and why is it getting increasingly out of hand?

Politically, Islam today is a pale shadow of what it was a few centuries back. From the heights that it had reached when the Ottoman and Mughal Empires were at their peak, the political power of Islam has reduced drastically and is now relatively insignificant across the world. In fact, had it not been for oil, even the economic prosperity that the Muslim world is enjoying would not have been able to camouflage this grievous loss of political power and dominance.

The one without-oil nation that has not been able to reconcile to the decline of the political power of Islam and is reacting the most to is Pakistan. It believes that it is the inheritor of the mighty Mughal empire that once ruled over almost the whole sub continent and has taken it upon itself to reclaim that lost political rule in the name of Islam. Since it does not have the size or military might to achieve that objective by overt use of force, it has created and deployed the tool of Islamic terror in the garb of jehad to chip away at India till it falls. Its success in defeating the mighty Soviets in Afghanistan and establishing its rule there through the Taliban gave just the fillip that the ideology needed to step up its terror attacks on and in India.

Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida had an identical global objective. Saudi Arabia, the country to which Laden belongs, and the rest of the Arab world are basking in the glow of petro dollars. They do not want to disturb their lands and lives to establish the political rule of Islam over the whole world. That is why Laden was forced to turn to Pakistan, the only Islamic nation that was willing to use terror as a destabilising tool to achieve this objective. He and the Al Qaida had a free run there and in Pakistan-controlled Afghanistan. As a result, his outfit grew stronger and stronger in that huge, protected sanctuary till 9/11, after which the US finally reacted with massive force.

9/11 also had a major impact on Pakistan. Faced with the possibility of being wiped off the map by the US, it officially abandoned the terror outfits it had created and nurtured for years, and joined the opposite camp! Today it is running unsuccessfully with the hares while pretending to be hunting with the hounds, a dangerous game that has turned its Frankenstien on itself and one that can be played only up to a point.

The 11/26 terror attack on Mumbai has woken up the world to the really serious threat that Islamic terrorism poses to world peace. After vehement denials about the involvement of his country men in the attack initially, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari cleverly deflected any responsibility for what those 10 Pakistanis did by saying that they were "non-state actors". The UN reacted swiftly and banned the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which was found to be responsible for the Mumbai attack.

Pakistan has yet to show on ground that it will reign in these elements. Till now, as India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherji said in Parliament, such "non-state actors", promoted and guided by the establishment, have simply been changing their signboard and carrying on with their business as usual. This time, however, no one is willing to let that country get away by its fake "we are victims of terrorism too" line, because it can no longer hide the fact that posturing apart, it is still not willing to roll back the ideology of terror that it has put in place as a cornerstone of its national policy.

This is something that has been known all along to India, but this country has perfected the art of the Ostrich response, despite the really heavy price it has had to pay for it again and yet again.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan believes that the best way to counter this ideology of violence is through the ideology of peace that the Prophet practiced. Can there really be a willing return, under the present circumstances, to the ideology of peace that the Prophet preached? Is is possible for the Mullahs suddenly to abandon the political agenda that has given rise to terrorism and guide the followers of Islam in a spiritual direction, a glimpse of which given by Sufi saints? Is it possible for moderate Muslim scholars to risk their lives and take on those who have radicalised Islam and given it an almost wholly political twist?

There is little doubt that eventually this ideology will have to be countered and defeated by Muslims themselves. But that willing change is unlikely to take place unless a conducive environment is created for it to take firm root. And that can only happen if this ideology is weakened sufficiently through a string of decisive and crippling defeats that decapitate its ideologues and demoralise its foot soldiers. Till that happens, dramatic incidents like 9/11 and 11/26 are only going to attract even more cannon fodder, itching for heavenly sex, to kill innocent people and die.

The world has to act. Sooner the better.
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Readers may also like to read:
1.'Tackling religious terrorism in a democracy.'
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3. Pakistan: dangers of the multi-ethnic Islamic state

9/11 TO 9/19: BEADS ON A STRING THAT NEEDS TO BE CUT

Pakistan is imploding. Its Frankenstein has grown too big and too strong to be controlled. In fact, it now wants to seize control. And in a hurry. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is under siege; its leadership is losing control to the very terrorists it once created and nurtured with great care and effort as Jehadis.

September 19, 2008, was, according to some analysts, Pakistan’s 9/11. That evening, Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel, located a shout away from the residences of Pakistan’s top leaders, was destroyed in a fidayeen attack when a truck laden with 1000 kilograms of explosives blew up at its security check post. This daring attack, within hours of President Zardari’s address to Parliament, has shaken the nation like no other attack had till now.

Between 9/11 and 9/19, Islamic terrorists have been striking with almost monotonous regularity across parts of the world, particularly in India and lately in Pakistan. To the casual observer, these attacks may not appear to have much in common. But make no mistake: they are all beads on the same one Islamic string. And that string needs to be cut.

Let us face the one uncomfortable truth that has created this explosive string: Islam is in retreat. From the heights that it had reached when the Ottoman and Mughal Empires were at their peak, the Islamic world has lost most of its might over the last couple of centuries. Had it not been for the oil beneath the sand made valuable by the West, even the economic prosperity that has camouflaged the grievous loss of political power and dominance, would not have blessed many Muslim countries, particularly in the Gulf. Fortunately, oil wealth has made the Arab world more or less comfortable with the situation. They are agitated basically by the political marginalisation of the Palestinians and their oppression by the state of Israel.

The only one nation that has not been able to reconcile to the decline of the grandeur and power of Islam and has reacted to it is Pakistan, the Islamic state carved out of India in 1947. It mistakenly believes that it is the inheritor of the Mughal empire. Powerful sections of its establishment, if not all of them, have taken it upon themselves to reclaim that lost empire. From that desire has emerged the strategy of bleeding India to death by inflicting on it ‘a thousand cuts’. In the single minded pursuit of this strategy, Pakistan has hopelessly intertwined its politics with the legacy of the Mughals, the teachings of Islam and the concept of Jehad. The breaking away of Bangladesh in 1971 should have opened many Pakistani eyes, but it had the opposite effect.

The Quranic concept of Jehad was first distorted and exploited by Pakistan as a political tool to successfully throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The spectacular success that Pakistan achieved in Afghanistan, albeit with American help, against a super power, was just the heady tonic that its establishment needed to unleash Islamic terrorists against India with renewed vigour, initially in Kashmir and later in the rest of the country.

The success in Afghanistan also proved to be equally heady for radical Islamists for whom the battle was more than just political. For them it meant a return to ‘pure’ Islam and the way of life that was prevalent during the time of the Prophet, as interpreted by them. That is what they achieved in Afghanistan after throwing the Soviets out. That is also what attracted Arab millionaire Osama bin Laden to set up base in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Laden was unable to reconcile to the domination of Christian West over the Muslim world and the presence of American troops in the Holy Land. He also believed in the restoration of the Sharia and the rejection of all other ideologies and religions of the world. It was this rare confluence of ideology and beliefs that enabled Laden give concrete shape to his ambitions in this part of the world.

Osama bin Laden’s presence and vision helped Pakistan give global shape to its jehad which was, until his arrival, limited to India, notwithstanding the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Laden believed that it was not just heretics, but America, Israel and even Shia Muslims who were the principal enemies of Islam. Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni and had the same problems with Ahmediya Muslims. So, this explosive combination quickly converted Pakistan into the natural ideological home and the physical training ground of Islamic terror groups who earnestly believed that with the power of Allah with them, they would be able to defeat not just India, as the state of Pakistan wanted, but also the remaining super power, as Laden did, and then establish the rule of Islam over the whole world.

That is where the Pakistani establishment made a fatal mistake.

Most Pakistanis do not want their country to become an Islamic state of the kind that Afghanistan was before 9/11. They are aware that even the Mughal Empire was never an “Islamic state”. The creator of Pakistan, Jinnah, in fact actually visualised a liberal, secular state that had nothing to do with the personal matter of the religious beliefs of its citizens. But, tragically, his vision, which would have produced a mirror image of the India Pakistan had broken away from, and in time exposed the contrived concept behind its creation, was summarily dumped by other Pakistani leaders in favour of an increasingly Islamised state. That idea was given a firm one way ideological direction by General Zia-ul-Haq after he overthrew Bhutto to become the ruler of Pakistan.

It is against human nature to remain static mentally and physically. The world has changed drastically over the last thousand years, thanks to the undying spirit of enquiry and the ability of man to think not just adaptively but creatively. But for Laden and the Taliban, nothing short of a return to ‘pure’ Islam will do. They want to roll back time. Their war is rooted in and is inseparable from that ideology. For them, it is not a convenient political tool to be used dishonestly and then discarded.

That is why today Pakistan is under siege. It is having to confront within Pakistan the very ideology which it successfully used to virtually annex Afghanistan. The proponents of that ideology, having been routed in Afghanistan, can naturally not accept the fact that their mother state is now sleeping with the US and has become the frontline state of their enemy in its war against them. Even elements in the Pakistani establishment and the ISI cannot live with the humiliating defeat that has been inflicted on them by the Americans. They still believe that they can defeat the US like they did the Soviets, if the state of Pakistan continues to support them. Of course they don’t want to even remember that in their war in Afghanistan, the US was with them and now there is no USSR to back them.

The tactical decision of Musharraf to join up with the US after 9/11 to save the state of Pakistan has generated a lot of emotional anger among ordinary Pakistanis. That is because they do not know how deep in trouble their country is. They do not want their country to become another Afghanistan; yet they do not want it to be on the side of the US. Their rulers know better. That is why, notwithstanding whatever he had said earlier, Zardari did not take long after getting power to say that Pakistan faced a grave danger from Taliban and that the organisation should be banned. No wonder, then, that he has come under attack so soon.

9/19 has a clear and very ominous message for Pakistan’s rulers from their creation, the Taliban and their invited guest, Osama bin Laden: join us in our holy jehad against the US or join battle with us; we are going to get you, no matter where you are.

9/19 has also made it clear that Pakistan’s jehadis-turned-terrorists have the capability and the support required to strike terror at will wherever they wish to against those who oppose them. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was not an aberration. Nor was the hijacking of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid by radicals. The Al Qaida has already said that it will kill Musharraf.

The state of Pakistan has already lost all but nominal authority in nearly the whole of Pakistan save Punjab and Sind. Now, it is under siege in the very heart of the country. Some believe that 9/19 was actually meant to be an attack on Parliament when Zardari was addressing it, to take out almost the entire political Pakistani leadership in one huge blast.

After 9/11, the US moved swiftly and decisively against those who had carried out the attacks. It could do so because Americans were united in that fight against a clearly identifiable enemy. Pakistan too has to move like that if it wants to save itself. But, Pakistanis are deeply divided in that fight and the enemy is no one else but one of their own who was till yesterday their hero.

Will Pakistan and its military be able to decisively fight with and kill and defeat Pakistanis and other Muslims fighting the US in Afghanistan and in control of large parts of Pakistan? If the answer is yes, Pakistan might survive in its present shape as a country. Otherwise, it may soon find people looking for it in a few barely read pages of history books.

Notwithstanding what Pakistan does or not to face this challenge of its own making, the world needs to realise that unless the one common string that joins almost all terror attacks that have been carried out across the globe is cut decisively, innocent lives will continue to be lost and the world will continue to remain as unsafe as it is today.
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Below is a 'must watch' dramatic CCTV footage of the minutes preceding the blowing up of the truck at the security gate of the hotel. Listen to the conversations too, if you can understand Hindi/Urdu.


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Readers may also like to read:

1. Mumbai 11/26: wake up to Islamic terror, this is just the beginning
2. Pakistan: dangers of the multi-ethnic Islamic state