PAK ARMY, THE TERROR MONSTER

The obfuscations, the denials, the pretensions have gone on for far too long. For far too long the mountain of damning evidence that has been surfacing with telling regularity, steeped with the blood of hapless individuals, both soldiers or civilians, has been simply ignored and filed. For far too long policy makers have stuck mindlessly to the adage “this too shall pass,” ignoring what has been clear even to them and what many informed analysts have been saying ad nauseum for years.

Osama bin Laden has, in his death at the hands of US Navy Seals in a compound bang in the middle of a secure Pakistani military station, delivered a blow so severe to nations and leaders thus far unwilling to face the fundamental truth of the foundation of the terrorism of which he was the most visible face, that it will be a crime if they do not still rouse themselves and do what they have been running away from till now.

As I wrote in my previous piece and in many others before that, the real terrorists who threaten the world are not the ones who carry out terror attacks in India and elsewhere. They are merely foot soldiers assiduously created, cultivated, protected and deployed by the military machine of Pakistan that believes terror is a technique of war that the state is entitled to use in furtherance of its religious and political objectives.

We in India have been facing terror without facing the reality that is carefully concealed behind it and paying a very heavy price, unfelt and un-understood by weak, ignorant and unwise policy makers personally untouched by this two decade old undeclared war. Despite increasing provocations, the last visible one being 26/11, we continue to fool ourselves into believing that we can defeat terror by talking and making concessions to the very guys who are using that weapon with precisely that objective.

After 9/11, the US bullied a very reluctant and duplicitous Musharraf into becoming their ally in their war in Afghanistan. Possibly they were then confident that their ‘shock and awe’ operations in Afghanistan would scare Pakistan’s military leaders into abandoning their relationship with the Al Qaida and Taliban. The LeT and other terror groups operating against India were then of no concern to them. Never did it strike them, on the face of it at least, that they were fingers of the same Pakistani hand. Had their cocky analysis – amnesic of the lessons of the Soviet misadventure -- of the mindset of Musharraf & Co. been right, the US would have achieved a relatively swift victory. It did not.

There lies the real story and the lesson that has been ignored by the US for almost 10 years. And, despite Laden, there are efforts being made still to make sure it remains so.

Like India, the US is worried about waging a war with a nuclearised Pakistan and wants to avoid it all costs, particularly since the threat to its mainland is not even near the kind that India has been, and is, dealing with. In addition, it needs Pakistan as a logistic conduit for the 120,000 US troops in Afghanistan. There is no other practical sea-land route available to maintain such a large fighting force there. The wily Musharraf, his DG ISI Kiyani -- now Army Chief -- and other Pakistani generals grasped the strategic significance of these paralyzing constraints even before America invaded Afghanistan and saw in them an opportunity to not only keep India under attack but also to score a spectacular victory for what we call terror and they Islam, over the second super power to invade Afghanistan. And they went about achieving this objective with single-minded, indeed manic devotion.

There is no getting away from the conclusion that both Musharraf and Kiyani were not only in the know of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts but would have personally authorized his protection and concealment from the Americans. Deniability of their complicity had to be built into the method used for this – think ‘non-state’ actors in 26/11 and other terror attacks – and that is precisely what is being attempted now to convince the world that they did not know that he was where no one would have suspected him of being, where he would never have chosen to go unless he was sure that the US would not get him, where a confident Musharraf probably agreed to shift him after having successfully hidden him in less incriminating places for many years.

From incompetence to complicity of a few low-level ISI operatives to involvement of India-specific terror outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen, analysts -- free and embedded -- in India, the US and Pakistan are trotting out stories that absolve Pakistan’s top leaders. A few analysts believe that various DGs of ISI were in the know but not the Army Chiefs. Implied in this reasoning is that hand-picked ISI heads and their subordinates were engaged for years in an operation of such a huge magnitude and having such enormous implications in willful defiance of the orders of the most powerful man in Pakistan. This is as absurd as it can get.

Behind the elaborate and almost impenetrable smoke screen placed with great skill by Pakistan’s military, one could always see, with some effort, that terror in Kashmir and Afghanistan were two sides of the same coin minted by it. The logical deduction from that was that the war on terror had to be won in Pakistan and that both India and the US were fighting the wrong guys in the wrong place. But the US, preferring to look only at its end of the terror matrix and focusing on a narrow, short-term objective, thought it could to get clever, determined and driven Pakistani generals to do what it wanted in Afghanistan by nudging India to give them what they wanted, at least partially, in Kashmir.

Laden has, for the first time, laid bare the real face of terror and the terrorist like never before.

This leads to the inevitable question about where the shattered US-Pakistan alliance goes from here. If Kiyani and his men in uniform – literally the state of Pakistan – are the leading soldiers of global jihad, then how does the US defeat this enemy of the world and ensure that it does not raise its ugly head ever again? A 600,000 strong Army with nuclear bombs to throw around is no pushover. Does that mean that the only super power in the world is going to accept defeat garnished with the semblance of victory and let it grow even stronger and more destructive till a bigger catastrophe strikes and results in an extremely violent and costly war?

Or is it time to kill the monster that has inflicted more misery and havoc upon its own people than it has on its many perceived enemies, and free Pakistan from its clutches? The answer is obvious but the path to it is perilous. No one knows it better than the generals who have brought Pakistan to the brink of ruin and who are going to bash on if they get away. They are not going to willingly loosen their vice-like hold over Pakistan and its resources; they have to be forced to and then weakened enough so that they do not rise again, even more murderous, as they did after the 1971 debacle.

It should not take the US more than two days to incapacitate Pakistan Army and secure its nuclear weapons. With a ready and willing India to its East, it just needs to take out Pakistan’s Air Force, making its ground forces sitting ducks from the air. With the US becoming guarantor of its security, like it is of Japan, dismantling of the military-terror apparatus can follow. Without patronage, funds and professional guidance, terrorists outfits will dissolve into the countryside, just as the Nazis did.

Yes, things may go wrong; that is a calculated risk experts in the game have to take. But, if the terrorist-generals get away even now, chances are high that things will go horribly wrong some years down the line.
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LADEN DONE, KIYANI AND CO. NEXT?

Think of Abbottabad as Ramgarh and Khadakvasla rolled into one, with a bit of old Dehra Dun thrown in. It is as complete a military town as you can find. With two Regimental Centers, Baluch and Frontier Force, an Officers’ Training Academy and a large number of retired military officers who have settled down there, it makes for an excellent place to hide someone like Osama bin Laden.

Given the the fact that Pakistan military has been radicalised and its officers, right up to the Army Chief, have helped create and sustain the Al Qaida ever since Laden made Afghanistan-Pakistan his home, the chances of a such a valuable asset being accidentally spotted in Abbottabad and the information being leaked out are minimal. In addition, very few will suspect that Pakistan will be so foolish as to do hide someone like him there, for it will implicate both the military and its rogue outfit, the ISI – many erroneously believe it is an autonomous monster – in the event of him being caught.

In the middle of such a town, for over five long years, Laden lived in a house unlike and much larger than any in the neighbourhood, fully fortified with up to 20 feet high perimeter and internal walls topped by barbed wire and watched by cameras 24/7, but with no telephone or internet that could be used to track him down through electronic surveillance. The three-storied mansion was constructed in 2005 and, as per numerous reports, was occupied since then by an ailing Laden till a US bullet sent him to the 72 virgins he had been promising to thousands who died fighting his hate-filled, religion-driven war.

And Laden was not there alone. He lived with two wives, seven children and many servants and bodyguards. According to some reports, there were as many as 22 people in the mansion when US Navy Seals slithered into it in the pitch of the night on May 1, 2011. So many Arabs, who looked and spoke different, could have neither slipped into Abbottabad quietly nor stayed there for so long unnoticed and unreported. Unless, of course, the top Pakistani military, and I dare say even the civilian leadership, not only knew about it but was completely committed to protecting the Islamic hero that they themselves had created and nurtured.

Many Indian analysts, including the usual suspects – pun intended – like Barkha Dutt who are hell-bent on making Pakistan emerge smelling good even when it stands completely exposed, have been desperately making out a case that the US could not have carried out this operation without the knowledge and assistance of Pakistan. The logic is that after 10 long years, Pakistan had decided that Laden has become lead around its legs and that sacrificing him would help it extract some strategic advantage from the Americans in so far as Afghanistan is concerned. If this indeed was the case, to an even uninformed observer it would have occurred that the safe house in Abbottabad cantonment, built when Kiyani was the ISI chief, was the last place where they would have wanted him found out. They would have first mover him out to a ‘neutral’ hideout which did not point to its top military leadership and then given him away to the Seals.

Only the naïve will believe and the not-so-naive will want to make others believe that Pakistan was in the know of the Laden operation but is not claiming credit for fear of backlash. The cold truth is that had it got even a whiff of what was under way, Laden would have whisked away within minutes from what undoubtedly was a safe house provide by the Pakistani state. Moreover, had there been any Pakistani boots in and around the mansion when the Seals were sealing Laden’s fate, and had Kiyani known what was happening, he would have not let the Americans take Laden's body out of Pakistan. His subsequent hasty burial at sea shows that the Americans did not want the body to be taken over by the Pakistanis who would have, without doubt, helped turn his burial spot into a shrine to motivate more brainwashed murderers.

The Americans have since confirmed that Pakistan was informed about the operation only after American troops had killed Osama and flown out of Pakistani airspace. Many will continue to doubt this version, but I have little doubt that the tracking down and killing of Laden was a solely American affair.

For Pakistan, Laden was a living symbol of victory, a very motivating slap on the face of the world’s only super power, a statement to faithful radicals that although Pakistan appeared to be fighting with the Americans, it was actually fighting to defeat it and achieve for radical Islam a spectacular victory without a parallel, a victory that would lead to The Flag of Islam being hoisted in Delhi and eventually the whole world. Few would have missed the victorious smirk on the faces of Pakistanis from Musharraf to Kiyani when they denied that he was in Pakistan. So confident they were of their ability to hide him from America might forever.

Laden’s killing has dealt more than just a symbolic blow to the Al Qaida. It has changed the very dynamics of the war on terror that America and the rest of the free world is fighting. With Pakistan having been exposed in the worst possible manner it could have been, Obama will now be able to justify to the American public the eventual pushing of the war into and against Pakistan.

Pakistan cannot be America’s ally. It has been forced to become one only because the US cannot prosecute a war in land-locked Afghanistan if Pakistan does not give access its sea ports and surface transport networks to provide logistic support to the troops operating there. Had there been a US-friendly regime in Iran, Pakistan’s bluff would have been called long back. It is primarily due to this crippling logistic constraint that after 9/11 the US had threatened to bombard Pakistan back into stone age if it did not join its war on terror.

In private, the Americans must know that though they have taken out Laden, his is not the head whose decapitation will suffice. The real terrorists who need to be eliminated are Kiyani, Pasha and the rest of the gang of generals and political leaders who have turned Pakistan into one big terror factory that is beginning to swallow itself, not to die but to morph into an even more radicalised and dangerous monster.

The US is most likely not going to simply walk off from Afghanistan and Pakistan like the Soviets did, leaving behind an even more radicalised Pakistan in the hands of Kiyani & Co., the very people who have betrayed the US while pretending to fight with it, so that they can start the game all over again after a respite. They too will have to be taken out along with the massive architecture that supports the beast they have unleashed. The marriage of compulsion has not and cannot produce sweet fruit. It has to and will be ended. To the advantage of the US and the rest of the world. The only question, to my mind, is when, not if.

On the other hand, the Indian foreign policy establishment, hijacked as it has been by time-pass talkers, woolly-headed romantics, Nehruvian apologists and those driven by petty politics will, as always, do nothing except talk about chemistry and 'history', enjoy great (mis)guided trips to Pakistan and elsewhere and parrot that it is in India's supreme national interest to have a strong Pakistan!
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Related reading:
1. No answers to Pakistan's formidable force multipliers
2. Should Pakistan be saved?
3. Don't beggar my buggering neighbour, make him bigger
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OBAMA, OSAMA, ISLAM AND THE WORLD

In his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama had spoken of seeking "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect" with the Muslim world. Nearly five months later, he significantly chose the "timeless city" of Cairo to tell Muslims across the globe that America and Islam were not exclusive and did not need to be in competition. Quoting from the Holy Quran, he also sensitively sought to drive home the point that America's fight against "violent extremism" was not a war against Islam, or a manifestation of a clash of civilisations, and that the US and the Muslim world had to confront this challenge jointly. For perhaps the first time ever, Muslims across the world listened to an American President with open minds and many even welcomed his words.

Thanks to his multi-cultural and multi-racial background, Obama has taken a road no white US President could have even considered. Jack Shaheen sees elements of King and Gandhi in Obama, and believes he is a leader "who has respect for all faiths; he has the vision to see the commonality among all faiths; and is a leader who respects their differences". That is why, when Obama says that America is not and will never be "at war with Islam", his words don't ring hollow and do not sound like that of an average politician trying to make a clever political statement. That is why, even though on ground America's policy on terror remains undiluted and its "war of necessity" in Afghanistan is being prosecuted with renewed focus and vigour, Obama's carefully chosen words are designed to make them more palatable to Muslims and not arouse the kind of hostility against the US that they had till now.

As far as Af-Pak is concerned, Obama's words and actions are also likely to make it that much more difficult for Osama bin Laden to justify and find recruits for his brand of war as a holy jihad against the great Satan America. It was not surprising, therefore, that a few days before Obama spoke in Cairo, an alarmed Osama bin Laden attempted to undermine his efforts to isolate the Al Qaida and the Taliban and project America's war against them in Afghanistan and Pakistan as no more than one against violent extremism that had nothing to do with Islam. In a taped message broadcast by Al Jazeera, Osama tried to whip up emotions against Obama saying: "Obama and his administration have sown new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America. The number of these seeds is equal to the number of displaced people from Swat Valley...Elderly people, children and women fled their homes and lived in tents as refugees after they have lived in dignity in their homes. Let the American people be ready to reap what the White House leaders have sown...".

A couple of years back, Imran Khan, Pakistan's westernised playboy cricketer with a Talibani mindset had blasted President Musharraf for joining America's "war on terror" because that had led to "Muslims killing Muslims" as against Muslims killing non-Muslims earlier. That statement had echoed the then popular, black and white sentiment in Pakistan that the US was at war with Islam and had to defeated, not befriended. That is why Musharraf was so unpopular. That was also one reason why Pakistan was simultaneously fighting against and with the Taliban, in the hope that eventually the Americans would be forced to cut their losses and pull out, leaving the trophy, Afghanistan, back in the hands of Pakistan.

Obama is attempting to change that perception through this speech and many other gestures and words that add up to portray him as a sensitive, visionary and determined leader who can feel and share the pain of Muslims, but wants them to also know at the same time that he will not rest till the extremists are defeated and Af-Pak ceases to pose a security threat to the US.

That clear determination has most likely prompted Colonel Imam, the retired ISI officer who ran a training program for Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989 and trained Mullah Omar, to say that the Taliban will never be defeated. Imam also seeks to demolish the "good Taliban" theory of Fareed Zakaria, saying that there are no number two Taliban and that those who break away from mainstream Taliban have no place in society. The Americans, he adds, must negotiate with Mullah Omar who is the only man people listen to in Afghanistan. In short, the face-saving solution that Imam is offering to the Americans is one which will restore the position as it was on 9/11, and leave the Al Qaida intact.

In support of this capitulation strategy, Imam recalls the defeat of the British in Maiwand in 1880 and that of the Soviets in 1989, saying that the Afghans "couldn't care less about loss of property or loss of life...the more you kill, the more supporters will come". The Taliban will not win, he admits, but believes that in the end the Americans will tire. Imam does have a point: Afghans have little property to lose and decades of war has made them impervious to loss of life too. But, he forgets that they too are humans. He may revel in the fact that they can keep counting the dead and not flinch, but must know that there has to and will come a point when they too will tire; and when they do, it will be for a very, very long time.

Obama's words and follow-up actions will aim to de-couple this fight in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan from Islam and take the jihadi fire out of it. If he succeeds in achieving this objective in some measure, the will to fight will evaporate and the tiredness of centuries of fighting and deprivation will take a firm grip. Osama and Imam perhaps recognise this. That is why this response and that is why we must expect some spectacular attacks in the near future as the Al Qaida and Taliban try to grapple with loss of support, low morale and fewer recruitments.

Apart from these predictable responses, Obama's speech has been generally favourably received in Muslim countries, including the Arab world, that has tuned into Obama rather than Osama. It has also drawn its share of criticism from across the world, the sharpest being from some Westerners who don't like the idea of there being something called the "Muslim world", see little good in Islam and believe that there is as much common ground between Islam and Christianity as can be found between a mass murderer and Mother Teresa. Pakistanis are unhappy primarily because he did not mention Kashmir and lost an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of Pakistanis. Some Indians are not pleased because not only did he not talk of India, but also because he all but apologised to Muslims for what America had been doing without finding any fault with Islam or them, while others feel that he touched heights of greatness . Then there are those who have found him great in eloquence but lacking in substance. Such reactions indicate the influence that the Obama phenomenon has begun to exercise over the whole world.

One speech, as Obama said himself, is not going to change perceptions and prejudices overnight. He has made a beginning, an honest one, to reconcile mainstream Islam with the rest of the world based on mutual respect. No one is in any doubt about the sincerity behind this vision that has the potential of radically altering societal dynamics not only in the US but across the world based on greater tolerance and acceptance of different view points and religious beliefs, and rejection of religious extremism and violence. No one, at the same time, should also be in any doubt that this is not going to be easy.

What happens in the Hindu Kush mountains and the plains of Pakistan in the next few years will determine whether it is the vision of Obama or the viciousness of Osama that will prevail. A tectonic change that will profoundly impact the course of all mankind is under way.
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Readers may also read:
1. For India if Bush was good, Obama will be better
2. Obama: closet 'Hindu' or secular world leader?
3. Obama and Biden Vs Osama bin Laden: coincidence?

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

OBAMA and BIDEN Vs OSAMA bin LADEN: COINCIDENCE?

Is it just another meaningless coincidence?

In an earlier post, ‘OSAMA AND OBAMA: SAUL AND PAUL’, I had highlighted the many similarities between Osama and Obama, both of whom are creating history. Depending on which side of the seemingly unbridgeable divide you are, metaphorically one of them is Paul, and the other Saul.

The war that Obama will have to fight against Osama, should he become the Supreme Commander of US Armed Forces on January 20, 2009, is not going to be easy. Already, he has identified that the focus of the US has to be on Afghanistan and not on the quagmire in Iraq where the mindless ‘Bush Push’ has led to needless loss of lives and a huge financial drain without achieving anything at all. In fact with Saddam Hussein gone, the only secular state in the middle of the increasingly fundamentalist Muslim world has become another hotbed of Al Qaida activity.

Osama has miraculously evaded and survived all attempts of the only super power of the world to capture or kill him.

Was it by sheer chance that Bush got Dick, or was it also a coincidence of significance? With Dick, Bush probably began to fancy himself as the invincible Rambo. But, Dick was old and in virtual retirement before he was suddenly called up for duty. No wonder Bush with Dick failed to perform and deliver when and where it mattered!

For seven long years, Bush has looked inside, over and under many a 'bush’(coincidence?) without any luck. The 'bush fires' that he started to smoke out and decimate his foes have all but gone out of control, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama, on the other hand, has spoken with clarity about the importance of hunting down Osama and the Al Qaida elements in Afghanistan and elsewhere. He has also made it clear that if need be, US forces will go into Pakistan, where Osama and others are holed up, and from where they are directing operations in Afghanistan. Simultanoeusly, he has detailed his determination to pull out of Iraq in a definite time-frame and concentrate all resources to normalise the situation in Afghanistan.

Is Obama’s picking of Biden as running mate a fateful decision which will together see them getting the better of Osama at last? Obama - Osama; Obama and Biden - Osama bin Laden. Not only do both these combinations sound eerily similar, the total number of alphabets in both are also identical!

In 1993, James Redfield wrote ‘The Celestine Prophecy’ in which he used a mythical Peruvian manuscript to help people gain profound insights into the mysterious coincidences and synchronicities that lead us to a particular destiny. Redfield had also predicted that a massive transformation in human society would take place in the last decades of the 20th century.

Are these coincidences meaningless or is there a real reason for them, as Redfield believes? Is it also a meaningless coincidence that more than 20 million copies of his novel have been sold across the world?

Are the two wars in Iraq and the rise of the Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden an important part of the massive transformation under way in the world?

Have Obama and Biden been mysteriously driven together to play a significant role in this transformation?

Does this combination remind some of you of Christ and anti-Christ?

Are you beginning to get the goose pimples?

Or am I reading too much in too little?

We will begin to find out in November 2008. Wait.
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1. President Obama is Barack indeed
2. Barack 'barracks' McCain
3. Obama and Jindal: Hanuman and the Monkey
4. Looking for India's Obama in Harvard!
5. The Sarah Palin Effect: Will it last?

TACKLING ISLAMIC TERRORISM: WHAT INDIA NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND

The arrest of a number of suspects responsible for the serial blasts in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, and also earlier terror attacks elsewhere in India, has thrown up some very interesting facts about the growth of Islamic terrorism in India. These need to be analysed objectively so that an effective response can be developed to deal a terminal blow to this scourge not just in India but also in the rest of the world, including Pakistan.

According to conventional wisdom and vote-driven political dishonesty, a few Indian Muslims have been drawn to Islamic terrorism mainly due to economic deprivation, lack of education, comparatively poor representation in government jobs, and various anti-Muslim riots that have taken place over the years. As a result, India’s response to this challenge has completely missed the bus and remains confused and ineffective.

In the West too, some observers had hastily rushed to similar conclusions after 9/11 to explain the wave of violent terrorism which climaxed in mainland US on that day in a dramatic manner. However, this view was questioned by others, including Princeton economist Alan B Krueger, who found after carrying out a detailed analysis of a number of studies, that there is no correlation between material deprivation or inadequate education and the lure of terrorism. In his book, ‘What Makes a Terrorist’, Krueger in fact highlighted that most terrorists, whether Palestinian or those belonging to the Al Qaida, were reasonably well educated and held paying jobs. A person joining a terrorist organisation, he observed, “holds strong political views and is confident enough to impose an extremist vision by violent means.”

The Students Islamic Movement of India(SIMI), which the police claim is behind a series of terror attacks in India, almost mirrors Kruger’s findings. It was founded in 1977 with a mission to revive Islam in India and transform the entire country into an Islamic state. Its slogan is "Allah is our Lord, Qur’an is our constitution, Muhammad is our leader, Jehad is our way and Shahadat is our desire". Note that this charter was adopted much before the demolition of the Babri Masjid structure in Ayodhya and other incidents which are now being played up by terrorists, media and politicians to explain the series of terror attacks that have taken place over the last few years all over India.

SIMI’s founder is Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqui, currently a professor of journalism and public relations at the University of Western Illinois. Its former general secretary, Nagori, who is believed to be the real force behind SIMI’s terrorist activities, also holds a Masters degree in Journalism.

This is what Nagori told Sayantan Chakravarty in an interview published in India Today in 2001: “Let me explain the concept of jehad as detailed in the Quran. It is not when an individual is harmed but when an entire community finds itself collectively persecuted that the cry for jehad is given. ... Warn. If nothing works then one is forced to revolt, take to arms....When we are told that there is a rashtrapita in Gandhi, and another great statesman in Nehru, we feel it is a direct attack on our fundamentals.”

Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog of Oxford University recently published a paper titled, “Engineers of Jehad”. Like Krueger, they also found that terrorists were mostly well educated. They, in fact, went on to highlight that “graduates from subjects such as science, engineering and medicine are over-represented among Islamist movements in the Islamic world.” Closer home, they cited the example that two of the three founders of the Lashkar-e-Toiba were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology at Lahore.

Nine persons, all SIMI activists, have so far been arrested in connection with the Ahmedabad blasts. Their backgrounds are pretty much in line with the findings of the above and more studies done in the West:

• Mohammad Sajid Mansuri. Graduate in psychology; was a marketing executive.
• Mohammad Usman Agarbattiwala. Graduate in commerce; post graduate
diploma in human rights
• Samsuddin Sheikh. Arts graduate; taught at Iqra Islamic School, Bharuch.
• Mohammad Arif. Graduate.
• Yunus Mansuri. Graduate
• Iqbal Kasam Sheikh. Graduate
• Gyasuddin Ansari. Graduate
• Remaining three studied till class 10, before starting own businesses.

A key suspect at large is Abdul Subhan who is also a graduate and has done a computer course from a Mumbai college.

Besides, the above mentioned individuals, the police have detained three doctors in connection with the blasts. A doctor from the prestigious AIIMS had also been briefly detained earlier, but was released after 28 hours as nothing incriminating was found against him.

It needs to accepted once and for all that the Islamic religious terrorism being carried out by SIMI and its associate organisations based in India and Pakistan is born out of their very fundamental and irreconcilable difference with every other religion, law, and societal and political process. Most of those who join them and take to this path of trying to implement the rule of Islam as interpreted by them, can easily be motivated to take to arms and kill. And to convince them to do so, real and imaginary grievances are also always available in plenty, like they are to Hindus, Sikhs, Christians etc.

But it must never be forgotten that these grievances are the excuse for indulging in terrorist activities. They are not the reason for them.

The reason, as has been already stated, is the uncompromising non-acceptance and intolerance of any other way of life or belief. If this basic fact is understood, the Islamic terrorism that India, indeed the world, is facing can be tackled more effectively and without loss of focus.

India’s experience in Kashmir for over 60 years should leave no one in any doubt that when faced with Islamic non-acceptance of non-Muslim political authority when Muslims are in a majority, economic and monetary sops yield no dividends whatsoever. Increasingly unreasonable demands for these will be made all the time for practical reasons. But, giving into them repeatedly will not help at all. On the contrary, it may lead to greater hardening of stance as every concession is projected as a ‘victory’ for Islam and an under-pressure ‘defeat’ for its opponents.

Economic measures have worked and will work well in most other situations. But when the issue is a basic and almost elemental clash of various ideologies and beliefs, based on an interpretation of Word of the God who says to his believers that there is no other God but Him, they will not.

It is not just India which is facing this problem. Even the Islamic state of Pakistan is under threat by such elements. For that country perhaps the threat is much greater. Pakistan created armed Jehadi groups to covertly execute its state policy of “bleeding India by a thousand cuts” and acquiring “strategic depth” for itself by literally usurping Afghanistan. Thanks to Osama bin Laden, this political tool has morphed into an almost pure jehad waging war with the non-Islamic world. As a result, Pakistan’s favoured weapon has, unfortunately for the country, turned right back on it to convert Muslim Pakistan itself into a real Islamic state, like Afghanistan was before 9/11.

In Pakistan, Muslims are not a minority who have grievances against the state. In fact, no other religious group has even a voice in that country’s affairs. Yet, it has all but lost the Frontier to “pure Islamic” rule which is now threatening to overrun the whole country.

The one and only real food that can sustain Islamic terrorism is “success”. Osama bin Laden has become a role model for Islamic terrorists because of the dazzling success he achieved by executing 9/11 and then evading all efforts to capture him. The Taliban had similarly achieved success in Afghanistan, first by driving the Soviets out and then by establishing what Laden had described as the only pure Islamic state in the world.

Those major successes are sustaining the religious motivation of terrorists engaged in a similar war in India and elsewhere, and are helping draw fresh recruits. It needs to be reiterated that it is the educated and well off individuals who are leading Islamic terrorism everywhere. Laden himself is a post graduate and belongs to a very rich Saudi family. Their aim is unambiguous and purely religious. It does not matter whether they are living in the affluent West, in a ‘non-Islamic’ Muslim country or in any other Muslim minority country. Therefore, efforts by non-Islamic governments anywhere to defeat Islamic terrorism by giving economic and political sops within the existing non-Islamic structures of state will not yield any results.

The only real way to dry up recruitments to various terror groups like SIMI is to deny them success. 9/11 and Afghanistan would not probably not have happened if the US had not forgotten about the region after pumping in tons of money and weapons into Pakistan to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. To deny success, stringent measures need to be put in place before the problem becomes too large to handle easily.

In India, fortunately, the base of terror is still small. This is the time to deal a mortal blow to it. It will be a monumental blunder if it is allowed to grow unchecked. Unfortunately, India’s politicians can barely see beyond votes. That is why, despite UN reports indicting India for not putting any anti-terror mechanism in place, India’s politicians have doggedly refused to take any step which might cost them Muslim votes, even though there is sufficient reason to believe that, bar the shouting, a vast majority of Muslims will actually be pleased if this cycle of violence and death is stopped before it explodes.

Unfortunately, when leading politicians like Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Yadav criticise any action taken against the unapologetically anti-national SIMI and its terror wing, the state is rendered impotent. Perhaps such leaders do not even realise that when they say that SIMI is a secular organisation, they unwittingly give it legitimacy, which is a vital food that will immeasurably help it to attract more people into its fold. With such "successes" being given to them by the enemies of their version of Islam for free, in an absolutely lax political, judicial and security environment, what more can Islamic terrorists ask for?

It is time for India’s politicians to put their heads together in a completely bipartisan manner to take on and defeat the scourge of Islamic terrorism without any further delay. Implementing the Sachar commission and similar reports to improve the lot of Muslims in India is fine, if that is the objective. But, if any party is doing it in the fond hope that such measures will help kill Islamic terrorism, it is making a monumental blunder. Only when this elementary fact is understood by those in power will real, concrete steps be possible. Till then, terrorists will have a free run.
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Readers may also like to read:
1.'Tackling religious terrorism in a democracy.'
2. Islamic terrorism: Muslims in India like Jews in Nazi Germany?
3. 9/11 to 9/19: beads on a string that needs to be cut

MUSHARRAF MAULED: JINNAH'S PAKISTAN NEXT?

When Pakistan voted the two main political parties of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to power earlier this year in an election ordered by General Pervez Musharraf, it looked like Pakistan had voted to save Jinnah’s liberal Pakistan from Arab-led Islamic fundamentalists who were determined to turn that country into a ‘pure’ Islamic state, just like Afghanistan was before 9/11. Then, everyone rejoiced at the victory of democracy and the defeat of a military dictator who was perceived to be fighting America’s war against Muslims.

To me, the situation then was reminiscent of what happened in India after Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977 because of the excesses committed by her government during the Emergency that she had imposed solely to remain Prime Minister. That was, for India, a defining moment which could have led to its history being rewritten. But, Indira Gandhi’s opponents blew it by getting mired in the politics of personal vendetta which backfired, as it had to, and resurrected Indira Gandhi and the Congress party from the dead.

I had then posted an article, ‘A vote to save Jinnah’s Pakistan: will it?’, highlighting that the dangers facing Pakistan were far greater than what India faced in 1977. It was clear to me that Pakistani leaders needed to co-opt Musharraf in Pakistan’s internal war against terror and not repeat the mistake that Indian leaders had made. But, then itself it was beginning to appear that no lessons had been learnt and that Pakistan was heading towards a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The mauling of Musharraf by the deadly duo of Zardari and Sharif, resulting in his resignation as President yesterday, has led to scenes of joy in Pakistan and a euphoria in the Karachi Stock Exchange. Sadly, this is really no more than a victory of the politics of petty vendetta over common sense and national interest. This mauling, rather than strengthening democracy, may actually accelerate Pakistan's slide into anarchy and fundamentalism. And that may well lead to the mauling of the Pakistan that Jinnah dreamt of by the Pakistan that Osama bin Laden is dreaming of.

At this point, it is only appropriate that I reproduce my earlier post that says it all in gripping detail.

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In 1977, India voted to dramatically and humiliatingly rout the invincible Indira Gandhi and her Congress party out of power. India had then emphatically signalled that the nation was not willing to accept the curbs and excesses that it had experienced during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi's personal defeat in her own constituency drove home the point that no matter how powerful and charismatic the leader, he/she had to respect the individual liberties that the founding fathers of the country had guranteed through the constitution.

In 2008, in the first free and fair elections held in Pakistan since 1970, the nation has voted even more emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who have thoroughly messed up the very idea and ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, that it wants to save the country from the inevitable disaster towards which they have been taking it for quite a long time now.

MA Jinnah had visualized a secular and democratic Pakistan in which there would be a complete separation between the totally free personal religious beliefs of its citizens and the functioning of the state. Though Pakistan was created as the country for all Muslims of undivided India, Jinnah was very clear that the religion had no absolutely no role to play in governance. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 made that ideological cornerstone absolutely clear.

Jinnah’s concept of Pakistan was, unfortunately, given a hasty burial as the other leaders of Pakistan went about Islamizing the nation and ‘cleansing’ it of people belonging to other religions who were forced to either convert to Islam or flee to India. In 1973, the country drove a major nail in Jinnah’s conceptual coffin by introducing an Islamic constitution.

In 1977, just as India was taking a watershed step towards rejection of an oppressive regime, Pakistan was equally fatefully falling into the hands of a military dictator who would go on to unleash fundamentalist Islamic forces that would make Jinnah look like an infidel and push the country suffocatingly into the grip of Islamic extremists spearheaded by the Arab Al Qaida and its subordinate homegrown arm, the Taliban. The abyss that General Zia ul Haq had pushed Pakistan into had only a one way ticket till now.

Yes, there were times when victories and successes, as seen through only the narrow prism of an Islam that some mullahs and their followers preached, justified the relentless march towards increasing religious extremism. In reality, these ‘achievements’ just covered the deepening and widening cracks that were destroying the very core of Pakistan and, most importantly, concealing the fact that this was not the kind of Islam that the vast majority of voiceless, fearful and increasingly terrified Pakistanis wanted.

More than thirty years after that downhill journey started, and after a full ‘dekho’ in Afghanistan of the kind of life they would ‘enjoy’ in a fully Islamized Pakistan, those who were courageous enough to say what they really wanted to through the ballot box have told the whole wide world that they do not want the Al Qaida, mullahs and the Talibanis to run their country at all. This rejection of that extremist brand of Islam has been almost complete in the areas most affected by their domination, particularly the Frontier bordering Afghanistan.

That the people of the Frontier have soundly thrashed the extremists, despite the much hated presence of US troops next door against whom these guys are fighting, is the most telling message of this watershed election in Pakistan. This can well be viewed as nothing short of a spectacular resurrection for what the Qaid-e-Azam stood for. After 60 years, Jinnah has risen from the ideological grave in which he had been buried as dead. The expected defeat of mainstream fringe parties supporting President Musharraf should not deflect any one from the real message that the voters of Pakistan have unequivocally given to those who are going to guide the destiny of their nation in future.

Pakistan’s battle to save Jinnah’s country has not been won yet. Indeed, it has just been joined. A long and really hard fight can be expected in the future to conclusively send the mullahs and the military back to their respective barracks, particularly the former, before victory can be proclaimed. Will the battle be won?

Pakistan today finds itself in a situation quite similar to what India faced in 1977. Almost the entire opposition had then come together to rout Indira Gandhi whose misrule during the Emergency united as ideologically opposed parties as the Left and the BJP. The country rejoiced when they all won and formed the government. Much was expected from them; a new direction, a new energy, a new hope. What did they deliver? First, they got after Indira Gandhi in a most petty and vindictive manner. Then they started fighting among themselves, unable to rise above the very differences which had thwarted all their efforts to defeat the Congress earlier. Disillusionment set in soon; people forgave Indira Gandhi quickly and she stormed back to power in the next elections. And the dynasty’s pre-eminence has never been threatened ever since.

Benazir Bhutto’s PPP, Nawaz Sharif’s PML, the ANP and independents together command a two thirds majority in the Pakistan National Assembly. Enough to impeach President Musharraf should they so desire. That seems to the consuming passion of Nawaz Sharif, the man earlier overthrown by Musharraf in a military coup, above everything else. Sharif is not willing to join the government to be headed by PPP, the largest party, as long as Musharraf is President. He is also bent upon reinstating the Supreme Court judges sacked earlier by Musharraf to legitimize his presidency. As had happened in India, Pakistani politicians are seemingly unable to rise above their petty hassles for the sake of their country.

PML (Q) and MQM, the two major parties backing Musharraf, may have suffered reverses in the elections primarily because of the anger against Musharraf for becoming the stooge of the US in the latter’s fight against Muslim ‘terrorists’. But, paradoxically, the ones who have been totally rejected by the voters are those who are fighting against the US! That shows how hated their version of Islam has become in Pakistan.

People may hate Musharraf for fighting with the US, but they just do not want their country to be governed by those fighting against the US. The reaction against Musharraf is clearly emotional; the rejection of the Al Qaida and the Taliban reflects the practical realization of the Muslim who wants to live a life of freedom from the fear, the choking dogma, the oppression, the violence and the economic doom that these guys have given and promise to give in the name of Islam.

Pakistani politicians would do well to learn the right lessons from what happened in India so that they do not squander this priceless opportunity to reclaim Pakistan from the brink. Reconciliation rather than confrontation has to be central if extremist forces have to be conclusively defeated. It must be remembered that no matter who comes to power, even if it is the fiery anti-American Imran Khan, Pakistan’s fight against terror has necessarily to be on the side of the US, whether tacitly or openly. The seeing of everything from the prism of a “Muslims are killing Muslims” mindset, to quote Mr. Khan, has to be shed if there has to be any realistic hope of honouring the peoples’ verdict.

The electorally defeated extremists who want to ruin the great Satan US are the ones who are ruining Pakistan. They have to be fought collectively by all those who have Pakistan’s interests uppermost in their agenda. Expending energies in trying to overthrow Musharraf, who they would do well to co-opt in this terminal fight, and in petty infighting, will quickly disillusion the masses. That will then set the stage for a triumphant march to Islamabad by the Al Qaida, the Taliban and the clerics who incubate them. A repeat of what happened in Afghanistan will play out in the very heart of Pakistan with an intensity and ruthlessness far greater than what the world saw there. Mainstream Pakistani politicians who have quickly put Benazir Bhutto’s assassination behind them would do well to remember the final moments of President Najibullah in Kabul.

This is the real “core issue”, to borrow Musharraf’s words on Kashmir, which will determine whether Pakistan will survive as Jinnah’s country or become Osama Bin Laden's nation, the Islamic state that he and his band of religious extremists are trying desperately to create in the landmass that presently constitutes Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Destinies of nations are sometimes determined by a few course-altering events, not much different from the tide in the affairs of men that Shakespeare had written so magically about. That tide in the affairs of countries is upon Pakistan now. Pakistani politicians would do well to take it at the flood and lead Jinnah’s Pakistan on to fortune. If they miss it this time too, they may well condemn their country to remain bound in shallows and in miseries at the mercy of Arab Laden.

Will they succeed? Both Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif have already dug their heels in as if the most important issue facing the country is their mutual fight to death. The right lessons do not seem to have been learnt yet. Will they and others ever learn and display necessary magnanimity, statesmanship and clarity of purpose before it is too late for Pakistan?

Will this vote of the people of Pakistan to save the country save it? What do you think?

OSAMA AND OBAMA: SAUL AND PAUL

On June 03, 2008, Barak Hussein Obama Jr, made history by becoming the first African American presumptive Presidential nominee of any major US political party. Beating the powerful Hillary Clinton in a close and hard fought battle for nomination, Obama appears to be on course to the Oval Office, with Clinton too gracefully throwing her weight behind him.

On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden made history of another sort by launching the strongest and most audacious attacks on the US mainland ever. The most dramatic of these attacks was on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. These were reduced to rubble by two hijacked airliners which were flown right into these buildings in a meticulously planned and perfectly executed operation by suicide squads of the Al Qaida, the terrorist organisation created by Osama.

Obama was born in 1961 to a Kenyan Muslim father and a white American mother in Hawaii. Osama was born in 1957 to the tenth wife of a Saudi Arabian Muslim in Saudi Arabia. The parents of both Obama and Osama divorced after they were born and their mothers remarried. Obama lived till he was ten years old in Indonesia with his stepfather and his half sister, before moving to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents. Osama grew up with three step brothers and one step sister in Saudi Arabia.

Obama studied in local school in Indonesia and Puhao School in Honolulu. Osama studied in the elite and secular Al-Thager Model School in Saudi Arabia. Obama graduated from Columbia University, majoring in political science and international relations. He also studied law at the Harvard Law School, becoming the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Osama studied economics and business administration at King Abdulazziz University. He also got a degree either in civil engineering or public administration.

Obama married Michelle Robinson and has two daughters from her. Obama married an indeterminable number of women and has fathered between 12 and 24 children, still counting.

Obama, till a couple of weeks back, was a member in good standing of the Trinity United Church of Christ whose 10-point Vision is: “A congregation committed to ADORATION. A congregation preaching SALVATION. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. A congregation committed to LIBERATION. A congregation committed to RESTORATION. A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.”

Osama till date follows the fundamentalist Wahabi sect of Islam, believing in the restoration of the Sharia and rejecting all other ideologies and religions of the world. He believes that heretics, America, Israel and even Shias are the four principal enemies of Islam and has adopted the tool of armed Jehad to right perceived injustices to Muslims perpetrated by the US and others. His version of Islam was functional in Afghanistan when it was reeling under the Taliban. In fact Osama is so rigid in his religious views that he had called Afghanistan “the only Islamic country” in the Muslim world during those days.

Around AD 10, a man by the name of Saul was born in modern day Turkey. In his early years, Saul was strongly opposed to Christianity that was struggling to take root then. Saul was a Jew and trained to be a Pharisee, that is, a learned and strict observer of religious law. Under the influence of this upbringing, he actively tried to suppress the early Christian movement through persecution. According to some accounts, he was present at the stoning of Stephen. All that changed dramatically one day when he was on the road to Damascus to imprison Christians there. As per the Bible, a great light shone on him, and he heard the voice of Jesus asking him as to why he was persecuting Him. That experience converted Saul and from that day onwards he starting preaching Christianity and changed his name to Paul.

Paul and Saul were two individuals with diametrically opposite religious views in one body. Obama and Osama are also two such individuals in separate but remarkably similar bodies. Both are involved in their own Jehads. One is Jehad for and the other is a Jehad against: metaphorically the Jehads of Paul and Saul.

Saul was engaged in a Jehad against Christians. Osama’s Jehad is not against Christians alone. And it is being executed with much more powerful and destructive tools which do not view even civilians, including women and children, as innocents. Paul led a Jehad for the Lord and against nobody. Obama has been involved in a Jehad, through his church, for the rights and progress of African Americans. This Jehad is one of peace and reconciliation with the whites who had once enslaved blacks. This Jehad emits positive energy, tolerance and enlightened acceptance of the aberrations of history. Osama’s Jehad radiates an awful lot of negative energy, intolerance and blind rejection of all other points of view.

Obama’s Jehad has already got him just one small step short of the White House, and will most likely see him there in 2009. Osama’s Jehad has got him into a remote and inhospitable corner in Afghanistan/Pakistan, hiding and hounded, with nowhere else to go.

If ever there was a great light that could turn the Saul in Osama into a Paul, it is the meteoric ascension of black Obama in white America, facilitated willingly by white Americans. The Great Satan, as Osama likes to call the US, has shown to him and the world what can be achieved by the power of a positive, inclusive Jehad.

It remains to be seen whether Osama will be enlightened or blinded even more by this bolt of bright clear light that the exceptional rise of Obama has released.

This post was also published by Chicago Sun Times
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Readers may also like to read the following:
1. Obama and Jindal: Hanuman and the Monkey
2. Looking for India's Obama in Harvard!

A VOTE TO SAVE JINNAH'S PAKISTAN: WILL IT?

In 1977, India voted to dramatically and humiliatingly rout the invincible Indira Gandhi and her Congress party out of power. India had then emphatically signalled that the nation was not willing to accept the curbs and excesses that it had experienced during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi's personal defeat in her own constituency drove home the point that no matter how powerful and charismatic the leader, he/she had to respect the individual liberties that the founding fathers of the country had guranteed through the constitution.

In 2008, in the first free and fair elections held in Pakistan since 1970, the nation has voted even more emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who have thoroughly messed up the very idea and ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, that it wants to save the country from the inevitable disaster towards which they have been taking it for quite a long time now.

MA Jinnah had visualized a secular and democratic Pakistan in which there would be a complete separation between the totally free personal religious beliefs of its citizens and the functioning of the state. Though Pakistan was created as the country for all Muslims of undivided India, Jinnah was very clear that the religion had no absolutely no role to play in governance. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 made that ideological cornerstone absolutely clear.

Jinnah’s concept of Pakistan was, unfortunately, given a hasty burial as the other leaders of Pakistan went about Islamizing the nation and ‘cleansing’ it of people belonging to other religions who were forced to either convert to Islam or flee to India. In 1973, the country drove a major nail in Jinnah’s conceptual coffin by introducing an Islamic constitution.

In 1977, just as India was taking a watershed step towards rejection of an oppressive regime, Pakistan was equally fatefully falling into the hands of a military dictator who would go on to unleash fundamentalist Islamic forces that would make Jinnah look like an infidel and push the country suffocatingly into the grip of Islamic extremists spearheaded by the Arab Al Qaida and its subordinate homegrown arm, the Taliban. The abyss that General Zia ul Haq had pushed Pakistan into had only a one way ticket till now.

Yes, there were times when victories and successes, as seen through only the narrow prism of an Islam that some mullahs and their followers preached, justified the relentless march towards increasing religious extremism. In reality, these ‘achievements’ just covered the deepening and widening cracks that were destroying the very core of Pakistan and, most importantly, concealing the fact that this was not the kind of Islam that the vast majority of voiceless, fearful and increasingly terrified Pakistanis wanted.

More than thirty years after that downhill journey started, and after a full ‘dekho’ in Afghanistan of the kind of life they would ‘enjoy’ in a fully Islamized Pakistan, those who were courageous enough to say what they really wanted to through the ballot box have told the whole wide world that they do not want the Al Qaida, mullahs and the Talibanis to run their country at all. This rejection of that extremist brand of Islam has been almost complete in the areas most affected by their domination, particularly the Frontier bordering Afghanistan.

That the people of the Frontier have soundly thrashed the extremists, despite the much hated presence of US troops next door against whom these guys are fighting, is the most telling message of this watershed election in Pakistan. This can well be viewed as nothing short of a spectacular resurrection for what the Qaid-e-Azam stood for. After 60 years, Jinnah has risen from the ideological grave in which he had been buried as dead. The expected defeat of mainstream fringe parties supporting President Musharraf should not deflect any one from the real message that the voters of Pakistan have unequivocally given to those who are going to guide the destiny of their nation in future.

Pakistan’s battle to save Jinnah’s country has not been won yet. Indeed, it has just been joined. A long and really hard fight can be expected in the future to conclusively send the mullahs and the military back to their respective barracks, particularly the former, before victory can be proclaimed. Will the battle be won?

Pakistan today finds itself in a situation quite similar to what India faced in 1977. Almost the entire opposition had then come together to rout Indira Gandhi whose misrule during the Emergency united as ideologically opposed parties as the Left and the BJP. The country rejoiced when they all won and formed the government. Much was expected from them; a new direction, a new energy, a new hope. What did they deliver? First, they got after Indira Gandhi in a most petty and vindictive manner. Then they started fighting among themselves, unable to rise above the very differences which had thwarted all their efforts to defeat the Congress earlier. Disillusionment set in soon; people forgave Indira Gandhi quickly and she stormed back to power in the next elections. And the dynasty’s pre-eminence has never been threatened ever since.

Benazir Bhutto’s PPP, Nawaz Sharif’s PML, the ANP and independents together command a two thirds majority in the Pakistan National Assembly. Enough to impeach President Musharraf should they so desire. That seems to the consuming passion of Nawaz Sharif, the man earlier overthrown by Musharraf in a military coup, above everything else. Sharif is not willing to join the government to be headed by PPP, the largest party, as long as Musharraf is President. He is also bent upon reinstating the Supreme Court judges sacked earlier by Musharraf to legitimize his presidency. As had happened in India, Pakistani politicians are seemingly unable to rise above their petty hassles for the sake of their country.

PML (Q) and MQM, the two major parties backing Musharraf, may have suffered reverses in the elections primarily because of the anger against Musharraf for becoming the stooge of the US in the latter’s fight against Muslim ‘terrorists’. But, paradoxically, the ones who have been totally rejected by the voters are those who are fighting against the US! That shows how hated their version of Islam has become in Pakistan.

People may hate Musharraf for fighting with the US, but they just do not want their country to be governed by those fighting against the US. The reaction against Musharraf is clearly emotional; the rejection of the Al Qaida and the Taliban reflects the practical realization of the Muslim who wants to live a life of freedom from the fear, the choking dogma, the oppression, the violence and the economic doom that these guys have given and promise to give in the name of Islam.

Pakistani politicians would do well to learn the right lessons from what happened in India so that they do not squander this priceless opportunity to reclaim Pakistan from the brink. Reconciliation rather than confrontation has to be central if extremist forces have to be conclusively defeated. It must be remembered that no matter who comes to power, even if it is the fiery anti-American Imran Khan, Pakistan’s fight against terror has necessarily to be on the side of the US, whether tacitly or openly. The seeing of everything from the prism of a “Muslims are killing Muslims” mindset, to quote Mr. Khan, has to be shed if there has to be any realistic hope of honouring the peoples’ verdict.

The electorally defeated extremists who want to ruin the great Satan US are the ones who are ruining Pakistan. They have to be fought collectively by all those who have Pakistan’s interests uppermost in their agenda. Expending energies in trying to overthrow Musharraf, who they would do well to co-opt in this terminal fight, and in petty infighting, will quickly disillusion the masses. That will then set the stage for a triumphant march to Islamabad by the Al Qaida, the Taliban and the clerics who incubate them. A repeat of what happened in Afghanistan will play out in the very heart of Pakistan with an intensity and ruthlessness far greater than what the world saw there. Mainstream Pakistani politicians who have quickly put Benazir Bhutto’s assassination behind them would do well to remember the final moments of President Najibullah in Kabul.

This is the real “core issue”, to borrow Musharraf’s words on Kashmir, which will determine whether Pakistan will survive as Jinnah’s country or become Osama Bin Laden's nation, the Islamic state that he and his band of religious extremists are trying desperately to create in the landmass that presently constitutes Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Destinies of nations are sometimes determined by a few course-altering events, not much different from the tide in the affairs of men that Shakespeare had written so magically about. That tide in the affairs of countries is upon Pakistan now. Pakistani politicians would do well to take it at the flood and lead Jinnah’s Pakistan on to fortune. If they miss it this time too, they may well condemn their country to remain bound in shallows and in miseries at the mercy of Arab Laden.

Will they succeed? Both Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif have already dug their heels in as if the most important issue facing the country is their mutual fight to death. The right lessons do not seem to have been learnt yet. Will they and others ever learn and display necessary magnanimity, statesmanship and clarity of purpose before it is too late for Pakistan?

Will this vote of the people of Pakistan to save the country save it? What do you think?