NationStates Jolt Archive


Why Osama is in Pakistan ?

Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 09:12
Ok, that was a catchy title to bring your attention to this longish article. If you are not interested in the politics and history of Indian subcontinent and the connections it has to pan-islamism ideology followed by Osama etc , please skip reading this. For everyone else, please read this patiently, I promise this is a good read.

My comments in

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=&section=&issue=2005-08-06&id=6452

INVESTIGATION
The home of jihad
M.J.Akbar

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, aristocrat by temperament, catholic in taste, sectarian in politics, and the father of Pakistan, was the unlikeliest parent that an Islamic republic could possibly have. He was the most British of the generation of Indians that won freedom in August 1947. As a child in the elite Christian Mission High School in Karachi, he changed his birthday from 20 October to Christmas Day. As a student at Lincoln’s Inn, he anglicised his name from Jinnahbhai to Jinnah. For three years, between 1930 and 1933, he went into voluntary exile in Hampstead, acquired a British passport, set up residence with his sister Fatimah and daughter Dina, hired a British chauffeur (Bradley) for his Bentley, kept two dogs (a black Dobermann and a white West Highland terrier) [my comments: Dog saliva is considered najis - impure and to be avoided as per some schools / interpretations, especially the important school that is followed in Pakistan and India - Deobandi] , indulged himself at the theatre (he had once wanted to be a professional actor so that he could play Hamlet) and appeared before the Privy Council to maintain himself in the style to which he was accustomed. He wore Savile Row suits, heavily starched shirts and two-tone leather or suede shoes. Official portraits in Pakistan present him in a more ‘Islamic’ costume, but the first time he wore a lambskin cap and the long Indian coat known as sherwani was on 15 October 1937 when he presided over the Lucknow session of the Muslim League. He was 61 years old.

Despite being the Quaid-e-Azam, or the Great Leader of Muslims, he drank a moderate amount of alcohol and was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic methods of prayer. He was uncomfortable in any language but English, and made his demand for Pakistan — in 1940 at Lahore — in English, despite catcalls from an audience that wanted to hear Urdu. His excuse was ingenious: since the world press was in attendance, he said, it was only right that he speak in a world language. The brilliant lawyer was never short of a convincing argument. [my comments: Ironic and hypocritical, because the imposition of Urdu on the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which was Bengali speaking and the remarks by Jinnah that those who put Bengali above Urdu are traitors of Pakistan - were significant factors which fuelled Bengali nationalism and led to the eventual civil war and seperation of the two]

He married a beautiful young Parsi girl, Ruttie Petit, child of a wealthy non-Muslim Bombay business family who was disowned by her parents for marrying outside her faith.[my comments: Jinnah was a 41 when she married Ruttie who was 18. Jinnah was actually a friend of Ruttie's father Dinshaw and met her first in that capacity and started courting her when she was 16 years of age! ;) ] Ruttie wore fresh flowers in her hair, silk dresses, headbands that sparkled with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and smoked English cigarettes in ivory holders. The marriage frayed, but it produced a daughter, Dina, who loved her father but was more reticent about the nation he created. Dina stayed back in India, and must have been the only Indian to wave a Pakistani flag from her balcony on 14 August 1947.[my comments: Dina Wadia married Naval Wadia, a wealthy Parsee (Zoroastrian community which fled the Arab invasion of Persian and are now living in India) against the wishes of Jinnah. Their Son and Jinnah's grandson, Nusli Wadia is the owner of a big textile firm in India called "Bombay Dyeing"]. In an incident poignant with Wodehousian overtones, Jinnah, who wore a monocle as a young barrister, recalled his first ‘friction with the police’ to his biographer, Hector Bolitho (Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan, John Murray, 1954). It was during an Oxbridge boat race: ‘I was with two friends and we were caught up with a crowd of undergraduates. We found a cart in a side street, so we pushed each other up and down the roadway, until we were arrested and taken off to the police station ...[and] let off with a caution.’ It was the only time Jinnah went to jail. [my comments: Yes, that's right. Jinnah, the "freedom fighter" never went to prison even for a single day in all of his freedom fighting against the Bristish. Add his British passport thing and the British need for a pliant state to "contain" India and be a buffer between Russia and the warm waters of Indian ocean, the whole "great game" thing and it can be safely concluded that the British needed Pakistan and Jinnah was a willing tool In contrast, the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who gave up Savile Row for unshaped homespun cotton, spent half the years between 1920 and 1947 in a series of British prisons.

By 1940 Jinnah knew what he wanted — Pakistan. What was debatable was why. The slogan that divided India was simple: ‘Islam is in danger.’ As a proposition, it was absurd. For the believer a faith is true precisely because it is imperishable. A Muslim can be in danger, but not Islam. However, if Muslims were in danger from Hindus, then they needed security and safeguards in those regions where they were in a minority, like central India. Instead Pakistan was created on the western and eastern flanks of the subcontinent, where Muslims were in a majority and if anything the Hindus were in danger.

The logic for the creation of Pakistan had, therefore, to be blown up from saving Muslims to saving Islam. The ‘defence of Islam’ needed a fortress and Pakistan became that fortress. [my comments: A very important observation. This is the psyche of Pakistani establishment. They think of themselves as protectors of Islam. This belief is so ingrained that they have no qualms of supporting the "cause of Islam" anywhere in the world. The Army also has this psyche. That is why it is reluctant to go after the terrorists in their soil.] Ironically, the religiosity of Gandhi helped sustain Muslim League suspicions. Gandhi fantasised about a ‘Rama Rajya’ in united India, a dream kingdom of the Hindu warrior-god Rama, where every citizen had equal rights and so on and so forth. Jinnah argued that this was just a deceptive term for the Hindu rule that he feared. The demand for Pakistan was accompanied by the rhetoric of a simulated jihad. A jihad is valid if Muslims are denied the right to practise their faith, or against the invasion of a Muslim’s homeland. And so Muslims were warned that in post-British India mosques would be destroyed and the call to prayer forbidden, and they must resort to violence if necessary to protect their separateness. A typical pamphlet, circulated after the Muslim League announced a ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946, said, ‘The Bombay resolution of the All-India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from a nation of heroes ...The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come, those who want to rise to heaven. Come, those who are simple, wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves, goondas (thugs), those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers — all come. The shining gates of Heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan.’ The themes are immediately recognisable, with Heaven, as usual, playing a prominent part. [my comments: The call for Direct Action Day was the starting point of the violence of the partition, which ultimately took the lives of around 5 million lives in a vicious cycle of revenge killings]

I owe the following quote to an excellent new book by Husain Haqqani, who has served as adviser to more than one Pakistan government, was ambassador for his country to Sri Lanka and is now a visiting fellow at Carnegie (Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He quotes from a speech made by Jinnah in 1946 to the Pathans of the Frontier: ‘Well, if you want Pakistan, vote for the League candidates. If we fail to realise our duty today you will be reduced to the status of Sudras (low castes) and Islam will be vanquished from India. I shall never allow Muslims to be slaves of Hindus.’

The difference between ‘Islam in danger’ and ‘Muslims in danger’ is not academic. Shift the logic to a contemporary context. If Muslims, a minority in Britain, are in danger, then it is possible to work through the democratic and legislative framework to redress real or imagined grievances. (The Lebanese political system is structured around the possibly valid premise that everyone is in danger from one another.) But if Islam is in danger, then the conflict becomes a transnational world war in which an underground station in London becomes as legitimate a battlefield as Tikrit, and the appeal of an Osama bin Laden burrows its way more potently into receptive minds in Leeds.

George Bush and Tony Blair did Osama bin Laden a huge favour by extending the war against terrorism, sponsored by the Taleban in Afghanistan, to Iraq and giving it a more apocalyptic dimension. Why was the reaction to Afghanistan muted, and that to Iraq explosive? Most Muslims saw Afghanistan as a legitimate war. Iraq is perceived as bitter colonialism in addition to being an insult and a challenge to Muslims. [my comments: A very valid point. Iraq was a totally unnecessary thing and was a diversion. I am not convinced that starting the Iraq war was anyway helpful in the "war against terror" ...oops...the effort against extremism or whatever it is being labelled now. That said, now that they are there, US should complete the job and put a stable representative government with sufficient military authority to stand on its own etc, because withdrawing now would be even more disasterous. For Iraq, for US, for UK, for EU, for India, for Israel and all other targets of pan-islamist terrorism and that would include all of you in this board. I am giving my own suggestions for the Iraq situation near the end of this post. But do remember that the current fervor of the jihadis is in part due to the perceptions of having defeated one superpower (USSR / FSU ) and you can only imagine what it would be if there is a perception that the other superpower too has been defeated. ]

‘Shock and awe’ was a taunt waiting to be answered. Part of the Pentagon’s contempt lay in the memory of Arab armies fleeing from battle against Israel in 1967. This contempt extended to the people. The irony of course is that a dictator’s repressive and morally illegitimate army was never going to pick up the challenge, for Saddam Hussein’s tyranny had no support outside the thin band who benefited from it. Saddam Hussein was no danger to the West for more than one reason. As long as he was there, Iraq could only be a weakling. The Pentagon had no plans to deal with shadow armies that would rise in the name of nationalism in Iraq, and in defence of Iraq across the world.

Bush and Blair lost their legitimacy in their lies, and have become symbols of injustice in the minds of Muslims across the world. Young Muslims in Leeds or Karachi or Sharm el-Sheikh are convinced that the terrorists of 9/11 provided an excuse for the subjugation of key Muslim nations and the control of resources like energy. The intellectual basis for this conflict was laid long before 9/11: a provocative thesis like The Clash of Civilizations was published seven years before 9/11.

Bush and Blair went to Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden. If the Taleban had handed Osama to Bush, perhaps there might have been no invasion of Iraq. (This is what Pakistan believed and advised the Taleban to do.) [my comments: Well actually, the Pakistani envoy to Taliban before the US invasion included the then Paki intelligence (ISI) Chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad who is suspected to have said to Taliban that the US is just blustering and that Pakistan will stand by the Taliban and not to give up Osama. Sabbatis, this is the same guy who was present in Afghanistan on the day the NA commander Ahmed Shah Masoud was kiled and was present in US on 9/11 and was dismissed by Musharraf after India publicised evidence of him asking Omar Sheikh (Daneil Pearl killer) to wire $100K to Mohd Atta before 9/11]. Four years after 9/11 Osama is still alive, possibly in Pakistan.

I argued in The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, 2002) that Pakistan had become a terrorist haven for reasons beyond the control of its present ruler, President Pervaiz Musharraf. The conventional Anglo-American view is that this is a regrettable consequence of the heavily financed jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, whose most famous by-product is Osama bin Laden. But the reason that Pakistan has become a safety net for individual cells as well as organised, regimented movements like the Taleban has deeper roots. [I]The Sunday Times reported on 24 July that villagers in Chak 477 in Punjab, Pakistan — where the suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer’s family emigrated from — held a hero’s funeral for him despite the absence of his body, and chanted slogans like ‘Tanweer, the hero of Islam’. Among the mourners were members of a banned organisation, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which normally reserves its havoc for India. The ideology of such villages was not created by Afghanistan. Osama is in Pakistan because of this parallel ideology; the ideology is not there because of him. [my comments: Hey, the title of the thread ! :D Note the presence of JeM in the funeral of a jihadi who attacked UK. JeM is one of the most virulent jihadi org active in Kashmir and it has carried out successfull attacks in the rest of India too. Actually I was under the impression that only LeT was involved in 7/7 episode, but it appears now JeM is also involved, which only strengthens my contention that there is no longer much differences between the myriad terrorist orgs. Long time back they were brought together the umbrella called Islamic International Front (IIF) and now they all share ideology, men, money, material, training grounds and yes targets too. That's why LeT cells are there in US, UK, Australia, France and God knows where else inspite of LeT being started with the objective of "liberating" Kashmir and muslims from India]

President Pervaiz Musharraf is sincere in his efforts to fight terrorism, and has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts because of them. [my comments: It is debatable how enthusiastic he is. He was the architect of the Kargil intrusion. He used the mujahideen then to occupy the peaks. Until 9/11 he had no problems in co-existing with the jihadis. It is a fact that he engineered a split in the popular Pakistan Muslim league party which made sure that the Mullah Alliance party (MMA) won more seats in the elections. It is also speculated that he staged the assassination attempts to project the idea of "I am being attacked, the bearded fundoos are gaining power, after me the deluge, so don't push me too much and give me money and arms so that I can establish my authority" thing], His problem is the state within a state, with its own infrastructure and resource base (occasionally supplemented by Pakistan’s famous intelligence agency, the ISI, which handled all the arms and cash during the Afghan jihad and now monitors the Kashmir jihad). So how did Pakistan turn from an Islamic republic to a fortress for Muslim extremists?

Jinnah had a second epiphany after the birth of his new nation. He rediscovered the self that he had left behind in Britain, the secular, democratic barrister who had, ironically, once bitterly accused the ever-prayerful Gandhi of dragging religion into politics. In his first speech to the nascent constituent assembly, on 11 August 1947, he told Pakistanis, ‘You are free, free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state.’ [my comments: :confused: What was that all about ? If it was a secular Pakistan that he actually wanted, why raise the bogey of "Islam under threat and muslims need a seperate state to have freedom of religion"? It is clear that Jinnah himself was an opportunist and used the Islam card to get a state for himself. He did not get to enjoy it and died in 13 months after getting a country but the descendants of that country which the British helped create are now bombing Britain. Now, that is the mother of all irony.]

It was a speech he could have made as governor-general of India. It is a speech cited repeatedly by George Felix, author of Christians in Pakistan: The Battle for Justice, who campaigns for the cause of Pakistani Christians from exile in Britain. Felix has unreserved praise for Jinnah and unreserved anger for his successors.

The alternative view of Pakistan was best articulated by a cleric who considered Jinnah ‘unIslamic’. Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903–79) founded the Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Congregation) in 1941 to instil an ‘Islamic way of life and morality’, and then to use his cadres to ‘seize power by the use of all available means and equipment’ to establish ‘Islamic rule’. His prescription for Pakistan was unambiguous: Pakistan belongs to Allah, and therefore must be ruled by Allah’s law and governed by the saleheen, or the pious ones. [my comments: recall the ideology of islamism thread started by the Holy Womble. Maududi is a source of inspiration for modern pan-islamist jihadis including Osama ]

Pakistan’s elite was not particularly pious. Jinnah’s successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, had the lifestyle of a landlord rather than a priest, and warned civil servants about Maududi. Officers like Field-Marshal Ayub Khan, who would rule for a decade, detested him. But one need worked in Maududi’s favour. The identity of a nation created to save Islam from danger had to be Islamic. The Objectives Resolution moved in the Constituent Assembly by Liaquat Ali Khan in March 1949 committed the nation to life in accordance with the requirements of Islam. When the constitution was adopted in 1956, the country renamed itself the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’.

‘The secular elite assumed that they would continue to lead the country while they rallied the people on the basis of Islamic ideology,’ writes Haqqani. This was true across the decades. It was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who preferred caviar and whisky to bread and water, who ‘nationalised’ Christian schools and colleges on 1 September 1972, made Islam the official state religion on 10 April 1973, and banned alcohol.

His successor, General Zia ul-Haq, who privately attributed his successful coup against Bhutto on 5 July 1975 to divine help, was a man without doubts. He believed that Islam was the basis of Pakistan, otherwise why had it not stayed with India? He attributed all the weaknesses of his country to leaders who had deviated from the faith. Since, as he pointed out, he could import wheat but not moral values, it was his job to institutionalise such moral values as he considered necessary. Unsurprisingly, the Jamaat-e-Islami joined his government and at various points held influential portfolios like information, power, production and natural resources. He ‘Islamicised’ the economy, turned a large number of madrasas into jihad factories, and victimised women. The real mistake that America made was not the support it gave to Osama during the war against the Soviet Union but the indispensable backbone it provided to Zia. Washington used Zia to defeat Moscow. Zia used Washington to turn Pakistan away from the Jinnah vision towards the distortions of Maududi fundamentalism. [my comments: It was under Zia that Pakistan actively pursued nuclear bombs. He denied doing so until the program gathered momentum and Pakistan indeed acquired a nuclear bomb. When asked why he lied, he famously said that "It is permitted to lie in the cause of Islam". That's how he saw the Pakistani bomb. It was for the cause of Islam because Pakistan is the fortress of Islam - the psyche mentioned above. It was also under Zia that the Paki intelligence got "islamised" and even the army to a significant extent. Musharraf, was the blue eyed boy of Zia and rose quickly through the ranks due to Zia's patronage. That is why I have doubts about his enthusiasm about fighting terrorism. ]

When Zia was a young officer in the British Indian cavalry and the Pakistan armoured corps, he chose to pray in his free time instead of drinking, gambling and dancing, which other officers preferred. Musharraf belongs to the free-spirited military school. He believes in Pakistan without believing that it should become a puritan state, which is why he has periodically to reinforce his credentials among the puritans. While admonishing Blair for blaming Pakistan during a television address, he told his countrymen, ‘I am not a scholar but no one should, either, doubt my Islamic integrity.’ He said that he had gone to Mecca six times and on one supreme occasion the ‘door of forgiveness’ had been opened to him. Musharraf is cynical enough to bait a traditional enemy like India with terrorism, but appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy. [my comments: I doubt this change of heart that the author asserts. There has been no change in the ground situation to indicate it. The author also says that he "appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy" ergo if it has been productive, then the jihadi strategy is fine. This is not change of heart. This is lying down until the storm passes over.]

But Pakistan’s problem is no longer India. Pakistan’s problem is the legacy of the man who defeated Jinnah, Zia ul-Haq, an inheritance visible in Chak 477.

Zia was careful. He was the perfect host to every visiting British MP and American senator but shared his vision with only the committed. One such confidant was the Pakistani journalist Ziaul Islam Ansari, who sketched it out in his Urdu book General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq: Shaksiat aur Karnamay (Zia: The Person and his Achievements, Jang Publishers, 1990, quoted by Haqqani): ‘Pakistan ...self-sufficient, stable, strong ...[would provide] strength to Islamic revivalist movements in adjoining countries and regions ...[from the Far East to] the region encompassing the area from Afghanistan to Turkey, including Iran and the Muslim majority states of the Soviet Union in Central Asia.’ Zia believed that by turning Pakistan into an Islamic state at the lower rungs of society through legislation, and using the collateral benefits of the Afghan jihad, he could create an ‘Islamic regional block that would be the source of a natural Islamic revolutionary movement, replacing artificial alliances such as the Baghdad Pact. This would be the means of starting a new era of greatness for the Muslim nations of Asia and Africa.’

How Zia would have enjoyed the Iraq jihad! A jihad is sustained by a conviction of injustice; and there is no injustice greater than foreign occupation. This is what gave the Afghan jihad its resonance; the claimed social benefits of Soviet intervention (including equality for women and education for girls) did nothing to ameliorate the anger. Iraq, oppressed by a brutal but secular dictatorship, has slipped into a transition phase which Zia could only have dreamt of. A state within a state is challenging the occupation. The government is divided between the few who might be sincere in their friendship for the West and the many who are happy to shield their anger with duplicity. Bear in mind that the Shia jihad in Iraq has not even begun in any real sense; but that is a different story, waiting to be told. Those who seek democracy in Iraq forget that democracy will not come without independence. An occupation will breed war, not democracy; and only democracy can provide the popular leadership that can make the state within a state irrelevant. [my comments: Hence the need for the US to swallow its pride and take this to the UN and involve other powers who can operate in Iraq under UN banner thereby giving the foreign military presence legitimacy and reduce the support for jihad amongst the sunni Iraqis and also an effective patrolling of borders with the UN troops which would clampdown on the entry of sunni terrorists from Jordan and Syria....which would all lead to security and safety and would speeden up the democratic process in Iraq. But No, the neocons would rather pursue their own agenda....] President Musharraf’s problem is not his sincerity, but the fact that he presides over a system that has not yet found the space for democracy.

The first British civil commissioner for Mesopotamia, as Iraq was still known at the end of the first world war, was Arnold Talbot Wilson, formerly of the Bengal Lancers, a Tarzan sort who once saved his fare on the ship home by working as a stoker. When he failed completely against the Iraqi insurrection that began in the month of Ramadan, 1920, he was recalled. The British Foreign Office, ever ready with a phrase, nicknamed him the ‘Despot of Messpot’. :eek: It is a phrase that might so easily dominate the political obituary of Tony Blair.

M.J.Akbar is editor-in-chief of the Asian Age.
Jeegee
07-08-2005, 09:17
You seem to be very intelligent. Would you like to help me build a forum that consists of current events, history, and politics?
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 09:27
You seem to be very intelligent. Would you like to help me build a forum that consists of current events, history, and politics?

You are kidding right? I am always told to shut up and stop being stupid :eek:

Yes, I will help you. What are we looking at?
Leonstein
07-08-2005, 09:28
Ok, that was a catchy title to bring your attention to this longish article. If you are not interested in the politics and history of Indian subcontinent and the connections it has to pan-islamism ideology followed by Osama etc , please skip reading this. For everyone else, please read this patiently, I promise this is a good read.
What is it with you and hating Islamists so much? And Pakistan?
Surely you can't be simple enough to buy into this old India vs Pakistan thing, can you?

Maybe your Muslims are just different from all the Muslims I have ever met.
Leonstein
07-08-2005, 09:33
Actually, that sounded probably a bit wrong.

What I mean to say is this:
Why do you feel threatened so much by Muslims, or even Pan-Islamists?
Is this one of those local Hindu vs Muslim things? Are you a Hindu?
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 09:55
What is it with you and hating Islamists so much? And Pakistan?
Surely you can't be simple enough to buy into this old India vs Pakistan thing, can you?



I tend to be suspicious of Islamic ruling establishments fantasising about Islamic empires. Many such madman, Ghauri, Ghaznavi, Abdali, etc ravaged my country during medieval times. For ex, Timur Lane, killed 100,000 civilians in one day - the day he sacled Delhi. No, I am not making this up. Look it up.

And when I see calls to return to that kind of rule, I tend to get alarmed ! It is not for no reason that Zia started named his missiles Ghauri, Ghaznavi and Abdali.

This is not some quaint brown people fighting in a far off land. This is no longer a India Pakistan thing. The islamists that are fighting against India are in bed with the islamists that are fighting against the US. Islamists of the world have already made a common cause. You seem to have missed the formation of the IIF and the significance of it and the significance of the presence of LeT cells in US, UK, France and Australia. Yes Australia too. Look up Willie Brigette. It is only we who still think that well that guy is only blowing up in that country, why should we bother.....


Maybe your Muslims are just different from all the Muslims I have ever met

You may have met muslims but maybe you have not met an islamist. ;)

Maybe you have not lost around 40,000 lives in a Jihad. Maybe you don't have the helplessness of seeing your country bombed every now and then and having your fellow citizens killed every other day and yet you cannot do anything about it. [edited : reference to personal detail removed]

Nope. This is not about muslims. Couple of my friends who I lost in the incident above were my best friends who were muslims. This is about islamists.
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 10:01
Actually, that sounded probably a bit wrong.

What I mean to say is this:
Why do you feel threatened so much by Muslims, or even Pan-Islamists?
Is this one of those local Hindu vs Muslim things?

See above.


Are you a Hindu?

Don't know how to answer this :D . I am a cultural hindu, but my belief system is not something that many hindus share.
Jeegee
07-08-2005, 10:10
Are you still interested in helping me?
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 10:21
Are you still interested in helping me?

I don't want to derail the discussion ( yes, I am hopeful of a discussion) here. Please PM me outlining your plans and I will reply.
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 11:37
Leonstein,

FYI

http://smh.com.au/news/national/asio-moves-on-islamic-radicals/2005/08/06/1123125941243.html?oneclick=true
The Federal Government has ordered an urgent ASIO report into a radical Islamic organisation actively recruiting young Muslims in Sydney, following its banning in Britain.

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock demanded the top-secret investigation into the operations of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which describes suicide bombers as martyrs and denounces Western values.

The group would be immediately banned in Australia if the ASIO report found it posed a threat to security or encouraged terrorist behaviour.

The Sun-Herald recently revealed that the group had been secretly meeting in western Sydney and distributing anti-Western literature against the wishes of Islamic community leaders.

The organization in question is Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The Oz govt is thinking about banning the organization. I hope they do. If not..well...what else..it will come back to bite you later.

I assume you must want to know more about them. Here it is
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GF24Df02.html

in the mid-1990s, a large conference was held in London, where the topic was the revival of a caliphate in the Muslim world for the "implementation of pure Islamic doctrine", as is the goal of the HT. The conference was attended by delegates from around the world, and a key question was to determine an ideal place for the Islamic revolution. Many agreed on Pakistan, a land of valiant Muslim tribes that have traditionally responded enthusiastically to Islamic issues. And strategically, the country is well situated to embrace the Asian sub-continent and Central Asia - where initially the caliphate will be created.

Subsequently, hundreds of HT members, British but of Pakistani origin, many of them students at the London School of Economics and other centers of excellence, packed their bags and departed for Pakistan.

That's right. They want a caliphate.

ATol: In a way, the HT represents the concept of Pakistan's strategic depth developed by the generals in the 1980s, which suggested the Muslim Central Asian states Afghanistan and Pakistan come together in one confederation.

NB: We are not inspired by the establishment's rhetoric. We draw our strategy from the Koran and Sunnah [the sayings and the traditions set by the Prophet Mohammed].

ATol: You are branded as anti-Zionist ...

NB: Islam is not racist at all. However, we talk about the liberation of Muslim territories and bringing them back into the discipline of khilafah [caliphate]. We talk about the liberation of the entire Palestine, and we want to establish Muslim rule over there. We don't talk about Kashmir alone. We talk about the liberation of India, because India was ruled by Muslims, and it was a Muslim state.

ATol: Excuse me. India was invaded by Muslims and they established their rule for 1,000 years. However, India was never an Islamic state. There were some adventurers who happened to be Muslim and they captured India.

NB: There are a lot of misconceptions which are required to be addressed. The Muslim caliphate remained intact in its letter and sprit for 30 years. After 30 years it turned hereditary, yet it was a caliphate because all other tenets were fully practiced. For instance, it was compulsory that subjects would pledge their allegiance to the caliph (bait). The system of the judiciary remained intact, which strictly enforced Islamic laws. Different schools of jurisprudence worked independently, but their work remained part-and-parcel in the system of governance. It was the same in Hind [India]. There were monarchs who were Muslims, and many were not upright in their character. However, if you see the system of the judiciary, it was Islamic. The education system was Islamic, etc. Therefore, Hind was an Islamic state and part of a Muslim caliphate.

ATol: In the West, the HT is perceived as a serious threat to social liberties, concepts of civil society, etc. And also in Muslim states. Why?

NB: They know exactly why we are a threat. We do not believe in using patches of the Western social system and calling it Islam, or in applying tenets of the capitalist economy and calling it Islam. We are not the kind of Islamists who say that since Islam does not forbid such systems, therefore there is no harm in adopting them. For commodities, though, we can say that since Islam does not forbid something, therefore it is allowed. For instance, if somebody drinks a syrup in which there is no prohibited ingredient, there is no debate. It is allowed.

However, all actions and mechanisms in life must be substantiated and drawn from Islam, whether it is in the economy, politics, trading and even agriculture. This kind of purist approach does not suit the West or its allies in the Muslim world, who work to establish riba-free [interest-free] banking, but at the same time allow multinational corporations to circulate like blood in their economies.

That's right. The guy wants to set up an islamic rule in India. Going by past history, I don't particularly like living in such a rule as a dhimmi.

And until now his org had a free hand in the UK, and after 7/7 the UK administration is cracking down on them. I hope it does not take another bomb in Australia for you to wake up and call them for what they are - a pan-islamist terrorist !

And some info on LeT and assorted jihadi cells in Australia.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1691382005
LeT started life as a Kashmiri terrorist group fighting India in the disputed territory claimed by both Delhi and Islamabad, but has since mutated into a formidable terrorist network. It raises funds from donations in the UK, trains up young men at its madrassas in Pakistan and in recent years has started grooming sleeper cells in the US, Britain and Australia.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16137508%255E2702,00.html
ABOUT 60 suspected Islamic extremists are operating in Australia, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said today.

"We have one person convicted who trained overseas. We know some of them have trained in Afghanistan, we know some of them trained in Pakistan."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050728-081400-1474r.htm
Since January 2002 Lashkar has been expanding rapidly by setting up new training centers in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Sind and Punjab provinces. There has been no letup in Lashkar's recruitment and training. Lashkar's fund-raising activities have also been on the rise. More important has been Lashkar's widening global network. Lashkar cells were not only found in India but also in Australia and the United States, and now in Britain.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050722/wl_sthasia_afp/indiaaustraliabritainattackscourt
The court in the western Indian city of Mumbai on Friday handed down a seven-year prison term to Mohammed Afroze, who had also confessed to plotting with a group of Al-Qaeda operatives to attack Melbourne's Rialto Towers and the Indian parliament in 2001.

Afroze told the police in Mumbai after fleeing from Britain to India four years ago that he and seven Al-Qaeda terror cell operatives planned to hijack the passenger jets at Heathrow and fly them into the two London landmarks.

The suicide squads which included men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan booked themselves on two Manchester-bound flights but the group panicked and fled just before they were due to board.

You tell me what grievances men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan
have against Australia, so that they want to blow the Melbourne tower ?

Did you look up Willie Brigette ?

you think it is still an India-Pakistan thing ?
Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 23:18
Leonstein,

I hope you now understand more about LeT and its global reach and the presence of its cells in Australia. There can be no mistaking its pan-islamist ideology with a legitimate struggle of any kind.

Here are some statements by its leader and Amir Professor (yes, believe it or not, he is a professor) Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Visit the pdf and visit ipcs.org for more Paki media watch archives.

http://www.ipcs.org/PakMedia11-UNov04.pdf

Ghazwa, November 11, 2004
We will murder the rulers if...Hafiz Saeed‘
Talks, agreements, roadmaps are useless. The Muslims should free Kashmir
through jihad. Thous ands of Kashmiris have not laid down their lives to make
Kashmir part of India. The rulers should not attempt to re-define the national
interests. They will have to support the mujahideen who are fighting in
Afghanistan and Kashmir, otherwise, Pakistan’s survival will be in danger.
Pakistan’s importance is known in the world by virtue of jihad. Pakistan should
maintain its jihadi entity. If the rulers did not change their anti -Pakistan policies, then we will murder them the way we murdered the Hindus to please Allah,’ Hafiz Saeed.
Ghazwa, November 19, 2004
We will continue to cross the border: Hafiz Saeed
Amir Jamatud Da wa Hafiz Saeed says: ‘We reject Musharraf’s roadmap. He should not hurt the sentiments of mujahideen who have given their blood for Kashmir freedom. Nobody could stop us from crossing the socalled LoC. It is our right to move across the LoC and we will not surrender this right.
Mujahideen will not let the US or India decide the fate of Kashmir. The independent Kashmir is not in the interest of Pakistan. If India could send its army in Kashmir to massacre the innocent Kashmiris, then the Pakistanis also have the right to go to Kashmir and defend their Kashmiri brothers, sisters and mothers.’ ‘The most important thing is to restore the confidence of the Kashmiris. Musharraf’s options are not in Pakistan’s interests. The Pakistani rulers did not have the courage to talk on Kashmir a few years ago. It is the
power of jihad that has enabled them to talk about Kashmir. There is not a single part in Kashmir where mujahideen are not fighting the Indian army. Lashkar-e-Taiba is considered a sign of terror for the Indian army.’
Ghazwa, November 4, 2004
‘Without Kashmir, Islam is not complete. In fact, Musharraf is an Indian agent. He has accepted the Indian supremacy over Kashmir. That’s why, he has withdrawn from the UN Resolutions. There is only one solution to the Kashir issue i.e. Kashimir through sword! Mujahideen will keep on fighting for the freedom till their last drop of blood. No force can deviate them from the front of Jihad-e- Kashmir,’ Hafiz Saeed, Amir, Jamatud Dawa.

www.almujahideen.com, November 18,
2004
We will fight hand in hand with our Iraqi
brothers: Hafiz Saeed
Hafiz Saeed [Amir Jamatud Dawa] led the Eid prayers at Qaddafi Stadium Lahore and addressing a huge number of followers said: ‘We will fight till our last blood to free Kashmir and foil Musharraf’s all designs to secularize the country.‘Without Kashmir, the Islam is incomplete because Pakistan is a citadel of Islam and without Kashmir, the citadel is incomplete.’ ‘Musharraf is being pressurized to send
Pakistan army to Iraq for the protection of the Jewish soldiers in the American army. If he did that, then we will go to Iraq and fight hand in hand with our Iraqi brothers.’

http://www.ipcs.org/PakMedia01-UJun04.pdf

Al-Qaeda is the figment of US imagination:Hafiz Saeed
‘The US thought that it would keep jihad limited to Afghanistan and extend its agenda of usurping the natural resources of the Muslim world to the Central Asia. But jihad’s wave spread all over the world. The US wants to
control this wave. Jihad is the biggest threat to the US interest. There is nothing like al-Qaeda. It is the figment of the US’ imagination. The US
has concocted an outfit like al-Qaeda to massacre the Muslims all over the world. It has concocted false stories related to al-Qaeda with the help of the foreign media.’ ‘The America is bleeding these days. It has become a threat to
the US peace. When a wounded animal becomes a threat to one’s life, it is shot dead. It is the time to gun down the US. The US is the enemy of our religious culture, jihad, curriculum, the two-nation theory, the people of tribal areas and Kashmir. At the US behest, our government is massacring the innocent people in the tribal areas and Kashmiri mujahideen. These policies
will soon boomerang on Pakistan.’

Nawai Waqt, 15 June 2004
US is masterminding my assassination: Hafiz
Saeed
‘The US is plotting my assassination. After Mufti Shamzai, I am the next target of the US and Jewish conspiracy. But I want to tell both Bush and Sharon that jihad’s spirit will not dry up with my assassination. It will further increase. Every child of Pakistan will become another Hafiz Saeed,’ Hafiz Saeed.

I think you get the idea. To know more about LeT , please visit an earlier thread on them
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=431950&highlight=shehzad+tanweer


You do agree that they are a terrorist group which needs to be destroyed, don't you? You do agree that they follow a pan-islamist ideology which needs to be defeated comprehensively, don't you? You do agree that there can be no negotiations with such a group as suggested by a "naive little girl" in another thread, don't you?

One would think that Musharraf would be fighting against this terrorist group or atleast pretend to fight against this group. One would be sadly mistaken.

AMAZINGLY, when Musharraf visited Australia, he *defended* LeT in an interview!
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2004-04-07

MARK DAVIS: They're very extreme. But look, it's more than a perception, it's a reality. You've had the Taliban here, and still here. You've had al-Qa'ida here, and still here. You've had Lashkar-e-Tayiba here and still here. I mean these are realities, they are not media misperceptions.

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: You're talking of al-Qa'ida - this is 140 million and we are talking of 500 al-Qa'ida. You think this is a majority. You are talking of Taliban, what are the Taliban? First of all, you are not even. . . do you know that even the US are dealing with the Taliban now - ex-Taliban leaders? Afghan government is dealing with them. We got hold of one Taliban governor and sent him to Afghanistan, he has been left there dealing with them. We don't even know what is Taliban. What is a Taliban, who is a Taliban? Are we calling all the Pashtun Taliban, are we calling all the students of madrassas Taliban? Who is the Taliban? To my mind, Taliban is Mullah Omar and his government, just like Saddam Hussein, we had 52 cards - Is every Iraqi a Ba'athist?

:confused: Did you get any meaning out of that reply to what was a fairly simple question?

MARK DAVIS: Well, I'm sure that's the case for most of them, but they are not the ones that are of concern. I mean, the International Crisis Group, I'm sure you've seen their report, it was a very damning report, stating that your government had pledged to crack down on the most extreme, let's forget the most extreme, and you have comprehensively failed to do that.

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Well, I totally disagree with this. We carry on doing as we are doing in accordance with what my perceptions are and my reading of this situation is, I don't care about anybody saying anything, because they are saying all wrong. They don't understand Pakistan, they don't understand our madrassas, and they don't understand what we have done. This government and I have banned the extremist organisations, we have banned Jaish-e-Muhammad, we have banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, we have banned Sipah-e-Sahaba, we have banned a Shi'ite party, we have banned about six extreme organisations. We've sealed their offices, we've frozen their accounts, but what is anyone talking? So they know what we have done? We have taken these extreme measures, nobody could have taken this before. Now, if they are talking of others, we have, we know who is who. They don't know who is who. And when they blame me that we are not acting, then they don't know anything, because madrassas they are talking madrassas. What are madrassas?

All the org he mentioned , LeJ, JeM, SSP, SeM - every goddamned jihadi orgs are still operating in Pakistan. See the opening post. JeM cadres were present in the funeral of Shehzad Tanweer who was declared as a hero and martyr, btw. The Lashkar e Janghvi and Sipah e Sahaba are still routinely killing Shia Pakistanis and blowing up shia mosques. All Musharraf does is to catch a tribal with a beard and label him Al-Qaeda and send him to Guantanamo and hey, there's your war on terror !

MARK DAVIS: Yes, but what they are specifically saying on the banned groups, they're saying, "Well, you have banned them, but you haven't done much else. " That they have been renamed, they have been reformed, very few arrests, very few serious crackdowns - so they are just challenging the perception that you re actually doing anything, fairly or unfairly. One of the groups you have banned is Lashkar-e-Tayiba. One of their graduates is of interest in Australia - Willie Brigitte was recently discovered in Australia, allegedly with plans to blow something up, again it's widely believed and according to that ICG report, that Lashkar-e-Tayiba is still functioning in Pakistan. Now, you may say these groups aren't threatening Pakistan, but they are threatening other countries. Is it acceptable that they can survive in any form?

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Lashkar-e-Tayiba has not been banned, this has not been banned. Lashkar-e-Tayiba is not threatening anybody. Who has told you that they are threatening anybody? It is Jaish-e-Muhammed which threatens and Jaish-e-Muhammed is banned.

Read that part again. JeM was allegedly involved in an assassination attempt on Musharraf. So they are "threatening". LeT, OTOH, is only blowing up Indians and others. So they are fine. For that matter, JeM leader Moulana Masood Azhar is also roaming free in Pakistan, collecting funds and recruiting people for his jihad , Musharraf "ban" notwithstanding.

MARK DAVIS: Willie Brigitte, who is now in French custody, allegedly had plans to. . .

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Who? :eek:

MARK DAVIS: A man named Willie Brigitte, he's now in French custody. He said he was trained by Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan, he was discovered in Australia, apparently with plans to blow something up. There's another Australian, David Hicks, who is now in Guantanamo Bay. He trained with Lashkar-e-Tayiba. He says that he was given training by the Pakistani army in Kashmir. So these groups do seem to be growing rather beyond any Kashmiri or any Pakistani issues.

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: It is very clear as far as we are concerned. Let's leave Kashmir aside. In Kashmir there is a freedom struggle :rolleyes: going on and the people of Pakistan are emotionally involved with it. This is a 50-year-old dispute and we better resolve it politically. Let's leave that aside. We don't think there is any terrorism going on there :rolleyes: . Now if anybody is carrying out terrorism around the world, we certainly are against it and we would like to act against it. Now the name that you are taking, frankly I don't know about that. :rolleyes:

Nice bit there.

Mush - We are against terrorism !

Reporter - But sir, look at that terrorist.

Mush - What terrorist? That is not terrorism, and we are against terrorism !

MARK DAVIS: I might just clarify that - it might be a pronunciation problem of mine - Lashkar-e-Tayiba - I mean this is not a banned group?

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, no, no, this is certainly not a banned group.

MARK DAVIS: They are on a watch list, though, you've put them on a watch list have you?

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Yes, yes.

MARK DAVIS: So they are on a watch list but they are not banned?

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No.

MARK DAVIS: The American have just taken into custody a group of them in Iraq, outside of Baghdad, that they say, were operating. . .

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, I think we are mistaken there. I don't think Lashkar-e-Tayiba has come out anywhere. That is not the reality, I don't think so. Maybe you are talking of Jaish-e-Muhammad, which is the main troublesome organisation which has been. . .

If you follow the other thread you would know that LeT men have been found in Kashmir, US, UK, France, Australia and Iraq.

MARK DAVIS: Now, it's now known as JD, so is JD still. . .

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: JD is Jaish-e-Muhammad.

MARK DAVIS: Yeah.

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: JD? I don't know. Jaish-e-Muhammad is the one which an extreme organisation and the leader is underground. We will get hold of him at any time, we are trying to look for him.

He is clearly playing fool. JD is Jamaat-ud-dawa alternatively the pseudonym and political parental organisation of the LeT. Professor Hafiz heads that too.


The point of this whole thread and my many other threads on this subject is that he is getting away with this nonsense. The jihad factory is still at peak production. Pretty soon there will be rent-a-jihadi arrangement where a jihadi affiliated to one organization will lend his services to any organization. In fact, we are seeing the beginnings of this by joint operations where organizations of different objectives have come together to share targets. JeM men and LeT men collaborated in the Indian parliament attack. Now LeT men are doing AQ's job. LeT was started with the avoved aim of liberating Kashmir and muslims from India by planting the "green flag on the red fort" - green flag is flag of islam and red fort in Delhi is a symbol of Indian military. You tell me what business a Pakistani affiliated to LeT has in Australia or Iraq or US or UK or France?

This means that they have already come together while we are still divided. This is no longer an India-Pakistan thing. Pakistan is now everybody's neighbor. Welcome to globalisation.

Oh, btw ,a note at the end of the transcipte

At the end of the interview, the President conferred with his staff and advised that Lashkar-e-Tayiba is a terrorist group and that it is banned in Pakistan.
HAHAHAHA...the bugger does not even know if he has actually banned it or not. This is his committment to banning and fighting the war on terror.

Excuse me while I puke.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 01:13
from the interview above


PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: You're talking of al-Qa'ida - this is 140 million and we are talking of 500 al-Qa'ida. You think this is a majority. You are talking of Taliban, what are the Taliban? First of all, you are not even. . . do you know that even the US are dealing with the Taliban now - ex-Taliban leaders? Afghan government is dealing with them. We got hold of one Taliban governor and sent him to Afghanistan, he has been left there dealing with them. We don't even know what is Taliban. What is a Taliban, who is a Taliban? Are we calling all the Pashtun Taliban, are we calling all the students of madrassas Taliban? Who is the Taliban? To my mind, Taliban is Mullah Omar and his government, just like Saddam Hussein, we had 52 cards - Is every Iraqi a Ba'athist?

:confused:

Really?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakban28jul28,0,3428943,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Pakistan Connection Seen in Taliban's New Tactics
By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer


ASADABAD, Afghanistan — Telephone and power lines haven't reached the villages clinging to the craggy mountainsides of Kunar province. Digital phones and computer chips are even further beyond the shepherds' imaginations.

So when sophisticated bombs detonated by long-range cordless phones began blowing up under U.S. and Afghan military vehicles on mountain tracks, investigators knew they had to search elsewhere for the masterminds.

Afghan officials immediately focused on nearby Pakistan and its military, whose Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped create the Taliban in the early 1990s and provided training and equipment to help the Muslim extremists win control over most of the country.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf joined the Bush administration's war on terrorism and publicly turned against the Taliban immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. But Afghan officials allege that Taliban and allied fighters who fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 are learning new, more lethal tactics from the Pakistani military at numerous training bases.

"Pakistan is lying," said Lt. Sayed Anwar, acting head of Afghanistan's counter-terrorism department. "We have very correct reports from their areas. We have our intelligence agents inside Pakistan's border as well.

"If Pakistan tells the truth, the problems will stop in Afghanistan. They say they are friends of Americans, and yet they order these people to kill Americans."

At least 38 U.S. troops have died from hostile fire in Afghanistan this year, higher than the annual combat death toll for any year since the invasion.

Musharraf has denied that his military supports the Taliban or any other Afghan insurgents and the Bush administration and U.S. military spokesmen continue to praise Pakistan's role in combating terrorism.

Pakistan's army recently added 4,000 troops to the 70,000 soldiers patrolling the rugged, nearly 1,500-mile, border between the countries in what it says is a determined effort to stop infiltrations of Afghanistan.

Pakistani Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a military spokesman, said it was ridiculous to suggest that Pakistan had a secret operation to train insurgents to build complex electronic bombs.

"This is just a figment of some absurd mind, nothing else," Sultan said.

High-tech bombs similar to those being found in Afghanistan have killed Pakistani soldiers too, he said. More than 250 Pakistani troops have died in border operations in the last year, Sultan said.

"We haven't found any sanctuary, so far, where such items probably could be made," he said, adding that Pakistan's military didn't know where the sophisticated bomb-making technology was coming from.

Anwar, the Afghan official, who has worked in intelligence for 27 years, acknowledged that there was no smoking gun linking insurgents in Afghanistan to Pakistan's military intelligence.

Yet despite the Pakistani military's assertions, increasing numbers of guerrillas are crossing into eastern and southern Afghanistan, Anwar and other Afghan officials said.

"Last year, the enemy wasn't able to attack our checkpoints or plant so many mines," Anwar said. "This year, they have become very strong."

Anwar said reports from intelligence agents across the border and 50 captured prisoners describe an extensive network of militant training camps in areas of Pakistan's federally administered North Waziristan tribal area where government forces are firmly in control.

Tauda China, a village in the area, which is home to Pushtun tribes, is the site of one camp where Inter-Services Intelligence agents trained militants, Anwar said. He alleged that there were as many as six other camps in the surrounding valley, which is closed to outsiders and guarded by Pakistani troops and armed Afghans.

"Our agents have been there," Anwar said. "They tried to enter the valley and the soldiers didn't allow them."

Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani journalist who freelances for the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that at least some training camps that were closed on Musharraf's orders have been reopened.

The government denies that there are training camps. But Ali, who also writes for the Pakistani magazine the Herald, visited one camp and found armed militants with fresh recruits as young as 13 undergoing 18-day "ideological orientation" and weapons training. Several sources said 13 militant camps had been reactivated in the Mansehra region alone in the first week of May.

Militants said their official funding had continued during Musharraf's ban, but the camps had been abandoned and falling apart until this spring.

"Our transport fleet is back, electricity has been restored and the communications system is in place," a militant guide reportedly boasted to Ali.

The reported reopening of militant training camps in Pakistan coincides with the discovery of the high-tech bombs in Afghanistan.

Two months ago, Afghan security forces discovered six high-tech bombs in the town of Sarowbi, east of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The triggers consisted of long-range cordless phones attached with black electrical tape to electronic boxes, which Anwar believes convert the ringing phone's signal into an electrical charge, detonating the explosives.

"These phones are Pakistani-made phones," he said.

Since March, when heavy winter snow in the insurgents' hide-outs began to melt, the Taliban and its allies have been intensifying attacks on military and civilian targets in Afghanistan.

In addition to the rising number of U.S. deaths, about 700 people, including Afghan civilians, soldiers and insurgents, have died in the escalated fighting.

In late June, suspected Taliban guerrillas ambushed a four-man Navy SEAL reconnaissance unit high in the Hindu Kush mountain range of Kunar province. Only one of the SEALs survived the attack, and only by good fortune, according to the Pentagon's account. A rocket-propelled grenade blast knocked him down a mountainside, and despite his wounds he managed to escape to a village that gave him shelter.

Sixteen U.S. troops sent to rescue the SEALs died when insurgents shot down their helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Lt. Naqibullah Nooristani, operations commander for Afghan troops fighting alongside U.S. forces in Kunar, said the Taliban and its allies were proving so resilient because they were receiving improved training and equipment just across the border in Pakistan.

The guerrillas who escaped after attacking the U.S. troops left behind trash that suggests they have a good supply chain, Nooristani said.

"When our soldiers got up on the mountain, we saw empty cans of Pepsi and old running shoes, which means they changed into new ones for the operation," the lieutenant said, sitting on the edge of a cot where he sleeps next to his desk.

"They have Pepsis in the mountains while I can't find them here in the city," Nooristani said. "That means they are well supported."

The lieutenant estimated there were 300 Taliban fighters just in the Pec valley northwest of Asadabad, the provincial capital. Thousands more are fighting in several other border provinces in eastern and southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said.

Police recently found four remote-controlled bombs in the luggage of an Afghan taxi passenger traveling on the main road from Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border, said Anwar, the Afghan counter-terrorism chief. The detonators were small, silver-colored explosive capsules that were made in Pakistan, he said.

The man transporting the bomb components, Sanaullah Khan, was from Parwan province, north of Kabul.

Under interrogation, Khan said he had entered Afghanistan with four Pakistani men after receiving training at a camp in Shamshatu, near Peshawar, Pakistan, Anwar said, reading from an interrogator's report.

Khan provided few details about the training camp, Anwar said.

Shamshatu is the site of a large U.N. camp for Afghan refugees. As recently as this spring, Pakistani newspaper reports said 90% of the camp's residents were loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and warlord whose Hizb-i-Islami militia is now allied with the Taliban against the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Khan told investigators he had received the explosive devices found in his bag from a Pakistani whom he identified as Fazal Rabi. He said Rabi lived at the camp and was "very well connected with Al Qaeda," according to the interrogation report.

Lt. Gen. Moin Faqir, who oversees the Afghan army's operations as central corps commander, said his forces first started seeing bombs with computer components six months ago in Kunar province.

"It is not easy to use these mines unless you are well trained for it," he said.

Unlike conventional land mines that have plagued Afghanistan for decades, these new devices are not triggered by the pressure of wheels rolling over them, Faqir said.

Instead, they are designed to explode directly under the vehicle's passenger cab, increasing the chances that a relatively small explosion would maim or kill. They are also easier to conceal than regular land mines.

Faqir said he could not say with certainty who was providing the equipment and training to build the new bombs.

"I think we all know where these mines are from," he added with a pained smile.

The Afghan general chose his words carefully. A uniformed U.S. military advisor was sitting on a couch next to him, taking notes on everything he said. Without using names, Faqir made it clear he thought the source of the sophisticated bombs was an enemy of the worst kind because it pretended to be an ally.

"No one should have two faces with his friend," he said, adding that such people would suffer shame and destruction. "Once you shake hands with somebody, you should stand with him till the end."

The tali-pakis come from Pakistan side, carry out their attack and run back into Pakistan. It has been reported that in several incidents the Pakistani army posts would be unresponsive to the tali-pakis fleeing back in their plain sight.

Now this recent report says that the Pakistani army actually gave covering fire to the taliban fleeing back, well almost, I dunno what's the military term for that. It is not blue on blue, since they did not fire on US troops. It is not covering fire because they are US "allies". I suppose we have to invent a word for this.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/v-pfriendly/story/334660p-285921c.html
G.I.s' night in firefight hell

By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Thursday, August 4th, 2005

FORWARD OPERATINGBASE SALERNO, Afghanistan - For Army Staff Sgt. Jesse Landazuri, the decision to bail out of his two-man border outpost last month came after the ninth or 10th incoming rocket-propelled grenade finally knocked him to the ground.
Wounded in the face and leg by the shrapnel, the 82nd Airborne Division trooper abandoned his position just as he and Queens-born Pfc. David Joy were about to be overrun on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by a platoon of suspected Al Qaeda fighters.

"I made the call, we have to get out of here or we’re gonna get killed," Landazuri calmly recounted yesterday over a plate of meatloaf at this base about 6 miles from Pakistan.

Landazuri, 23, of Fontana, Calif., and Joy, 23, raised in upstate Lockport, had held off the 40 or so enemy fighters for almost an hour with their M-240 SAW machine gun, repelling a well-coordinated attack that made worldwide headlines.

Just after midnight on July 14, a foggy, moonless evening, green tracer rounds from Kalashnikov rifles and heavy machine guns streaked past the duo from Company B of the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, known as the "White Devils."

The enemy forces were firing from two positions, the hero G.I.s said.

"One was covering us and the other was covering our escape," Landazuri told the Daily News in the pair’s first interviews. Nearby, a squad of U.S. troops moved to higher ground overlooking Joy and Landazuri at Outpost 4, on the peak of a rubble-strewn hill dotted with trees and shrubs in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost Province.

On the opposite hill inside Pakistan, just a few meters away, a Pakistan Army border outpost responded by firing its .50-caliber heavy machine gun straight up in the air - a move that infuriated the Americans taking massive enemy fire. It was a warning that the U.S. soldiers should not try to seek safety on the Pakistan side of the border.

"We were screwed where we were, and we needed to get more people up there," Joy said of his "terrifying" night.

After 40 minutes of the firefight, almost a dozen RPG rounds exploded near the two men, including one that stunned them when it landed on their bunker. Their buddies nearby thought they were dead.

So did the enemy.

"To Allah! To Allah! We took for you," the Islamic jihadis could be heard yelling, they were so close. "We give this mountain back to you!"

Dazed and bleeding from a spray of shrapnel, Landazuri stood up and blasted away with a sawed-off shotgun, which he kept within reach even during the chow hall interview.

The U.S. backup squad opened fire again and covered the men’s escape. A quick-reaction force soon arrived by helicopter and the enemy fighters fled back into Pakistan, where coalition forces counted at least 11 killed by U.S. artillery and air strikes. The Pakistani government reported finding 24 bodies inside its border, angering local tribal leaders.

Pakistan has publicly insisted U.S. forces do not operate inside their country, but it has recently relaxed some restrictions in the wake of terror attacks in London and Egypt, sources told The News.

For Joy and Landazuri, little trust remains for Pakistan’s border guards. And after their first firefight, they said a few lines from Johnny Cash’s "The Man Comes Around," are what they live by.

"And I looked, and behold: A pale horse/And his name, that sat on him, was Death/And Hell followed with him."

Joy said everybody in the squad knows those words by heart now.

Oh and this just in. Sounds like fun.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/
Exclusive: CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged, "didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."


Did the Bush Administration deliberately allow his escape? Was it because they knew they can "contain" him in the mountainous region or alternatively was it because the capture of Osama would have led to a islamist revolution in Pakistan, a la Iran, which would have put the nukes in the islamist hand or is it a combination of these two. In that case, why is that he is still allowed to exist even after 4 years and now that Musharraf is supposedly firmly in control of the establishment ? If Musharraf is still not firmly in control to go after Osama , even after four years, what is the purpose of having him at that position?

It appears that Iraq was too tempting an opportunity to let go for the neocons. Start the scaremongering, attach a nice catchy label "war on terror", scare the public about WMDs, Use Saddam and Osama interchangingly (Saddama ;) ) and insinuate Iraq did 911 etc and manufacture the consent for Iraq war. It would also serve a nice distraction from the questions about why Osama is not actively pursued. And the best part is , this plan works. Look at the public debates...it's all Iraq this , Iraq that. Nobody gives attention to a country called Afghanistan and the terrorist attacks in Afghanistan get lesser attention compared to the attacks in Iraq.

Nobody even asks nowadays "Why Osama is not captured?". He has indeed become a bogeyman to keep scaring the public and a convenient stick to beat the domestic political opponents and an excuse to threaten other countries.

This scam is called war on terror..err..excuse me..effort against extreme ideology or whatever it is called now.
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 01:43
India was once conquered by Muslims. That's true, but do you think we Germans have to hate the Italians because the Romans once conquered us?
What about the French? They fought us plenty of times, and won quite a lot too. Does that mean we have to fight the French when we see them, and always be suspicious of them?

The Pakistan Business is unfortunate, but for the time being Musharraf rules with a rather irony fist over there. He's not going to risk American support by doing something really underhanded. Certain individuals (like that nuke professor, Khan was it?) may think differently, but frankly, that's not our business. Musharraf has to deal with that, and he will because he wants to stay in power.
You have to excuse them for calling it a "freedom fight" in Kashmir, from their point of view it may very well be. I personally think they oughta make it completely independent and start a free trade zone India, Pakistan and Kasmir. Let the Kashmiris decide what Government they want, not the Indians or the Pakistanis.

I've heard countless times of the various "terrorist" groups, the people that get their houses raided and so on.
Quite frankly, I couldn't give a shit. These groups are a tiny minority in a huge group of people who just want to live their lives. But now the Australian Government is introducing laws that may allow them to deport Residents just for saying something like "Osama Bin Laden may be a good man."
I for example don't think you can classify Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorists just like that. You have to be more critical when you make these decisions.
Just for saying that, they can soon deport me, because Hezbollah (and probably Hamas) are on the Aus-Government's Terrorism List.

My chance of being killed by a terrorist is tiny. The chance of them turning this (or any other place) into a caliphate is even smaller.
But my chance of being fucked in the name of this whole terrorism scare are huge.

So I adjust my priorities accordingly.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 02:36
do you think we Germans have to hate the Italians because the Romans once conquered us?
What about the French? They fought us plenty of times, and won quite a lot too. Does that mean we have to fight the French when we see them, and always be suspicious of them?

Does the Italians still look to impose a neo-Roman empire on Germany? Does the French still harbor territorial designs on Germany?

That's the difference. I am not "suspicious" because I am paranoid or something. I have given you their own words, for God's sakes. What else do you want me to do? Produce him before you to show that he is real?

Seems like you missed the whole "We want to restore the islamic rule over India" fantasy by the LeT, Hizb-ut-Tahrir gang.

Certain individuals (like that nuke professor, Khan was it?) may think differently, but frankly, that's not our business.

Now that you bring him up, did you know that Abdul Qadeer Khan was a card carrying member of Lashkar-e-Toiba ?

Probably not.

The chance of them turning this (or any other place) into a caliphate

Again you miss the point.

There is no snowballs chance in hell that there will be an islamic caliphate of any real meaning.

But that does not mean the pan-islamists will give up trying and *that* means the war will go on until they are defeated.


Pakistan Business is unfortunate...Quite frankly, I couldn't give a shit....My chance of being killed by a terrorist is tiny....

That's what the Americans thought until 9/11.

That's what the Britishers thought until 7/7.

Heck, that's what even I thought living in deep south India. It is strange for me to look back and think how naive I was that we can still negotiate a peace and avoid the conflicts.

And I bet, that's not what you would be thinking if Willie Brigette and David Hicks had succeeded.

But my chance of being fucked in the name of this whole terrorism scare are huge

That is correct and that is what is happening to the American and British public in this scam called war on terror. They ARE being well and truly screwed.

But it is also true that just because the Bush administration has hijacked the whole war on terror thing to suit their neocon agenda, it does not mean that pan-islamist terrorism is not a threat to the non-muslim societies (even muslim societies like the shia community) of the world.

Ignoring this real threat (because of Bush and co manipulating the threat) is a folly. I pray that it does not take a bombing in Australia by LeT cadres for you to realise this. That's all from me. Bye.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 02:56
:D . I am a cultural hindu, but my belief system is not something that many hindus share.does your religion or sect have a name...

and what do you mean "cultural hindu"?
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 02:59
And I bet, that's not what you would be thinking if Willie Brigette and David Hicks had succeeded.
How much money would you give up?

http://students.washington.edu/brandond/terror.html
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:04
Oh, I forgot the Bali bombings in which more than 200, including 88 Australians died.

IIRC, while Hambali was caught soon after the attacks, his brother Gunawan, was arrested in Pakistan at the Abu Bakar University in Karachi, which is affiliated with ...what else...but the LeT. I remember reading that during interrogation, Gunawan revealed that he and Brigitte, helped transport some 200 Thai and Indonesian men to LeT terror camps in Pakistan for training. Jemaah Islamiya group, the group which did the bombings, along with the Marriott hotel one, considers Australia a legitimate target and shares the same ideology with the pan-islamist orgs.

But you don't have to worry. You don't have to give a **** and you won't be affected. They know your heart and will leave you in peace. :)
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:11
does your religion or sect have a name...

and what do you mean "cultural hindu"?

I guess I can be called a Vaishnava.

I am a cultural Hindu, because I don't share the "religion" part with many hindus, but I share the "culture" part. I don't think that would make much sense.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:17
I guess I can be called a Vaishnava. interesting...

is he like a priest?
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/sadhus/large/4-Vaishnava.jpg

source: http://images.google.com/images?q=Vaishnava&hl=en&hs=gIH&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&tab=wi
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:19
How much money would you give up?

http://students.washington.edu/brandond/terror.html

Do you take IOU's ? :D

I am interested in knowing this. Please answer this.

Would you be holding the same opinions you are holding if the Jemaah Islamiya cadre manages to blow up Sydney or wherever you live in a series of 13 coordinated bomb attacks and managed to kill say 300 ?
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 03:24
But you don't have to worry. You don't have to give a **** and you won't be affected. They know your heart and will leave you in peace. :)
That's right.
They don't know shit about me, and they can well try and kill me. They've got my permission.
It's the strength of numbers.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:26
interesting...

is he a priest?

http://images.google.ca/images?q=tbn:FPA02l9RnoMJ:http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/sadhus/large/4-Vaishnava.jpg

He needs a shave :D

I think he is a sadhu or a sanyasi (those who renounce material life and spend their lives in spirtual quest)

He wears a Tilak ( the vertical streak in his forehead) so he might be a Vaishnava. His beard indicates that he might be a north Indian devotee, from the mountains. Those who live in the south and in the plains, tend to be clean shaven.

But I dunno if he is a priest or not. There are very few restrictions in hinduism. I can start a temple and be a priest. Nobody can say jack to me. Believe it or not, there are temples for movie actors who are worshipped by over enthusistic fans. :D
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 03:29
Would you be holding the same opinions you are holding if the Jemaah Islamiya cadre manages to blow up Sydney or wherever you live in a series of 13 coordinated bomb attacks and managed to kill say 300 ?
Yes.
If they blew up the Brisbane CBD tomorrow, and killed 300 people, then that would not change my opinion. I'm still more likely to die driving my car to Uni every day.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:29
I can start a temple and be a priest. Nobody can say jack to me. Believe it or not, there are temples for movie actors who are worshipped by over enthusistic fans. :DYep...
But that would be a Sect...not a Religion.

BTW...I am not saying you should not belong to a Sect...

I am very open minded.
Kuehenberg
08-08-2005, 03:30
When India becomes as powerful as it could be, it would get no international respect, and for god's sake you are going to fight pakistan someday?
The Order of Death
08-08-2005, 03:32
Great terrorist attacks are experienced, which are forcing to change and shaking the balances, relationships even way of life, understanding and culture of the world. Al Qaida is the responsible of all these attacks. The attacks of that organization did not have a concrete aim or demand. How could an organization exist without being found? RELATED:
Calls for Leading Muslim Cleric to resign and be prosecuted for saying "Al Qaeda does not exist"




Neşe Düzel from Radikal (a Turkish newspaper) asked this question and more on Al Qaida to Mahir Kaynak, a former academic and a former intelligence officer. He has suggested different and debateful views, which will be summarized in this article.

The significant argument of Mahir Kaynak is that there is no Al Qaida. According to him an organization should have an objective. The objective of Al Qaida is unknown or not clear. On the other hand other terrorist organizations like IRA and ETA has clear objectives and geographical areas that they conduct their attacks. They also have staff and an organizational structure. Al Qaida does not have any of these.


He furthermore set forth his claims on the none existence of Al Qaida. Against the claim that Al Qaida is targeting to establish a kind of Taliban rule all over the world he argued that it is impossible for Al Qaida to accomplish this target since it has neither power, nor staff nor supporter in Islam. Further more he argued that there is no Al Qaida. According to Kaynak, Al Qaida is the name of the operation carried out by an intelligence service, which is CIA…With this operation an anti-Islam front among the peoples of the world is tried to be created.


His answer to the question: What is expected from the creation of an anti-Islam front ? Is it also creative ? He argues that the current conflict in the world is not between the Islam and the West but between the global capital and the US. According to Kaynak, today there are two approaches on how the new order will be created. One is the approach of the global capital. The other is the approach of the US of Bush and Russia of Putin. The former is adopting the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis of Huntington. The latter is trying to base the new order on two camps like in the history, on one side the US and on the other side Russia…there is no power centers having political aims other than those in the world at the moment. Global capital has a plan for the future of the world. Global capital has a moderate Islam policy. It is trying to abolish the disputes between capitalism and Islam and to integrate Islam to the market economy…At that point the attacks of Al Qaida creates a massive anti Islam front in the world that without discriminating moderate or radical all Islam is perceived as “terrorist”. This is made by a western power center. It is trying to destroy the moderate Islam model of the global capital. Then the US is trying to use Al Qaida against the global capital, because the global capital is organized among Islam…there is integration among the capital in Saudi Arabia and global capital. The US wants eliminate this structure.


According to his conception of global capital, it is the group that does not own a factory, business or a company, just control and use the money. The money used by the people in finance sector is not limited to their own fortunes…today global capital is controlling trillions of dollar and is powerful as nation states…today the US government with Russia is trying to eliminate the power of global capital and Al Qaida is used against both Islam and global capital. However some claim that Usame Bin Ladin is fighting against the entire world in his cave.


According to Mahir Kaynak, CIA carries out the Al Qaida operation and Putin could be its partner or only knows about it. The group used in the operations is called Al Qaida. They are not organization. States are carrying out that terrorism. Decision makers in the US might have decided these, even Bush may not know.


Why not CIA makes the September 11 attacks? This is a very cheap war now and one side is shown as Al Qaida and the other is the entire world. This is very nonsense, because the attacks of the organization has great effects even it is reshaping the world but there is no traitors to the organization, money does not have any influence on it, no intelligence could be gathered about it. Why? Because there is no organization called Al Quaida.


On the organization of Al Qaida he thinks that 3 or 5 Muslims are used according to the project. Mostly the perpetrators are dieing. May be the perpetrator himself does not know about what he is going to do. It could be said to them that “take the bag and bring it over there” then the bomb in the bag is exploded by remote control. Here is the suicide bomber. On the other hand a person could not hide so long as Bin Ladin did, unless he is hidden by the intelligence agencies.


Moreover he thinks that through Al Qaida the West is trying to abolish the political characteristic of Islam, since it is identified with terrorism. In any case, in which you want to abolish a thought, the first thing you should do is to eviscerate it and then to make this movement solely activist. Today the West is doing the same against Islam.


Lastly for Mahir Kaynak Turkey is controlled by the global capital. Thus the government does not have good relations with the US.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:34
He needs a shave :DI don't think he must shave if he thinks its religious to have a beard...

But I do think he needs to see an Eye Doctor...an Ophthalmologist...
He has the nastiest eye infection I ever seen...
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:34
Yep...
But that would be a Sect...not a Religion.

BTW...I am not saying you should not belong to a Sect...

I am very open minded.

Yeah. Gandhi said that "There are as many religions as there are humans in the world".

Very true.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:38
I don't think he must shave if he thinks its religious to have a beard...


It is not actually a religious requirement, like it is required of the Sikhs to not cut hair or it is required of muslims to have circumcision. Those are part of the requirement in practicing the faith.

But the Sadhu grows a beard becuase he no longer cares about the beauty of his material body. The beard comes naturally due to his beliefs, not as a requirement to his beliefs. I hope you get what I mean.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:43
When India becomes as powerful as it could be, it would get no international respect, and for god's sake you are going to fight pakistan someday?

:confused: I don't understand.

If you are asking if India is going to fight a war with Pakistan someday, the answer is , it completely depends upon Pakistan. India is a status quo power, it is happy with the current situation , it does not look to change borders or anything. It is Pakistan which wants a change in status quo and is more likely to engage in misadventures like Kargil and the Parliament attack.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:44
It is not actually a religious requirement, like it is required of the Sikhs to not cut hair or it is required of muslims to have circumcision. Those are part of the requirement in practicing the faith.

But the Sadhu grows a beard becuase he no longer cares about the beauty of his material body. The beard comes naturally due to his beliefs, not as a requirement to his beliefs. I hope you get what I mean.It is cool either way...

He still should see an Eye doctor...I hope someone in his church tell him...
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:45
Yes.
If they blew up the Brisbane CBD tomorrow, and killed 300 people, then that would not change my opinion. I'm still more likely to die driving my car to Uni every day.

One is a preventable calculated cold-blooded mass murder. The other is a freak accident.

Please don't say that you can prevent the accident by staying at home. :(
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:46
If you are asking if India is going to fight a war with Pakistan someday, the answer is , it completely depends upon Pakistan. India is a status quo power, it is happy with the current situation , it does not look to change borders or anything. It is Pakistan which wants a change in status quo and is more likely to engage in misadventures like Kargil and the Parliament attack.
You do realize.. that problem was artificially created by the British Empire...

Dont you?
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:49
He still should see an Eye doctor...I hope someone in his church tell him...

Church? what church?

The sadhus are kinda nomads. They roam all over India. They sometimes live in the mountains, without a care, and come down to the plains only for special congregations, like the kumbhmela or something.

They are the original hippies !

But times are changing for them too. Materialism and capitalism is catching on in India. See here for an interesting account of the life of a sadhu, by an American sadhu.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1417297,00110001.htm
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:54
Church? what church?his congregation...the people who share his religion...People he trust...

people like you.

someone him has to help him...and give him advise...to save his eyes.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:56
You do realize.. that problem was artificially created by the British Empire...

Dont you?

Yes, I know the whole British foreign office links and Jinnah's British passpot, the great game, the buffer nation to contain an unpredictable India...and a kashmir conflict to contain Pakistan in turn. The Brits have truly played havoc.

That is why I mentioned that it is the mother of all irony that Brit-Pakis are bombing London.

Now the state has been hijacked by islamists. The Intelligence is also infiltrated by the pan-islamism. Did you know that Hamid Gul, the ex ISI chief was the mentor of Osama ? He still is according to many accounts.

Please read the Islamist study thread by the Holy Womble, especially a character called Maududi. All this is touched upon in the opening post.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 03:58
his congregation...the people who share his religion...People he trust...

people like you.

someone him has to help him...and give him advise...to save his eyes.

I understand your sincerety and compassion. I appreciate it. But there is NO WAY I can find him among my 1.03 Billion countrymen. If you can tell me where you got his pic, I will try to trace him.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 03:58
Please read the Islamist study thread by the Holy Womble.You do realize HollyWoly is Jewish.

Dont you?
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 04:00
I understand your sincerety and compassion. I appreciate it. But there is NO WAY I can find him among my 1.03 Billion countrymen. If you can tell me where you got his pic, I will try to trace him.you are too far away my friend...

It has to be people like you(someone who share his religion)...but someone close to him.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 04:05
You do realize HollyWoly is Jewish.

Dont you?

Yes, I saw "Israel" in location and I gathered that he is not an Arab from his posts. :D

Pardon me for asking, but why should that take away the validity of the posts in that particular thread. I cross checked and what he wrote in that thread is factual.

He may have been prejudiced elsewhere in other threads, I am not saying that he is or that he isn't , but why should that take away the validity of his points in that thread ?
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 04:09
One is a preventable calculated cold-blooded mass murder. The other is a freak accident.

Please don't say that you can prevent the accident by staying at home. :(
The result is the same.
And why can't I prevent being killed in a car crash by not being exposed to a car?
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 04:12
Yes, I saw "Israel" in location and I gathered that he is not an Arab from his posts. :D

Pardon me for asking, but why should that take away the validity of the posts in that particular thread. I cross checked and what he wrote in that thread is factual.

He may have been prejudiced elsewhere in other threads, I am not saying that he is or that he isn't , but why should that take away the validity of his points in that thread ?Let my put it this way...

If I ask a Green-Irish (catholics) about the Orange(Crown Loyalists)...or vice-versa I expect to get a biased discourse...

So If I am looking into the Ireland/England struggle...I would rather get my sources from people like You or....HollyWomble. (unless you or him have a British/Irish girlfriend...or other special interest)

But If I want to Learn about anything Islam related...I shall take his Jewish views with a grain of salt...(If I even have time to read his Anti-Islam Propaganda).

Its nothing personal...its just common sense.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 04:17
But there are enough open source info available to check if it is a really biased opinion or not, so we can refute and expose the bias if we want to, right?

I agree that people who have stakes in an issue, tend to be emotional and biased about it. But that does not mean that whatever they say is biased and are invalid. In that case we cannot have any debates at all, since we ALL are inherently biased.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 04:19
In that case we cannot have any debates at all, since we ALL are inherently biased.There is enough People and sources with no stakes in this issue.

Like a German, Japanese or Brazilean Newspaper.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 04:21
The result is the same.
And why can't I prevent being killed in a car crash by not being exposed to a car?

I give up.

You carry on.

There is of course no problems in having a preventable mass murder because evidently more people get killed by coconuts falling on their head every year. What was I thinking ! :headbang:

I am sorry to have taken so much of your time. Please forgive me.
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 04:23
Like a German, Japanese or Brazilean Newspaper.
Stay away from anything made by a guy called "Axel Springer" though.
"Spiegel (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/)" and "Zeit" are good, you just have to find English articles for the latter.
Leonstein
08-08-2005, 04:25
There is of course no problems in having a preventable mass murder because evidently more people get killed by coconuts falling on their head every year.
Correction: There is no problem not caring about possible preventable mass murders when more people get killed by coconuts.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 04:31
Aryavartha, while we are talking about Pakistan...

a month ago I met this Family from Pakistan...I knew beforehand they were Muslim...
But When I had them close in from of me...they don't look like Arabs...

Their racial looks are like Indians...

are you the same race?...Pakistanis and Indians?
I wonder
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 04:32
There is enough People and sources with no stakes in this issue.

Like a German, Japanese or Brazilean Newspaper.

But it so happens that they have no stakes at all that they don't even report many incidents. And whatever the Indian media reports is dismissed as "biased" and not taken seriously. We have been crying hoarse about the islamisation of Pakistan starting with Zia and the presence of terrorist training schools in Pakistan. Even now they are running. But our claims are dismissed as biased. If you had read the transcripts of Musharraf's interview to the Australian TV, he asserts that the Lashkar-e-Toiba is not a terrorist group and it is not dangerous enough to be banned.

But where did the London bombers get training from? especially Shehzad Tanweer ?

Do you agree that if the training camps had been closed down the London bombings would not have occurred ?

So why do you dismiss our protests about the training camps as biased ?

Have we not been vindicated? What more proof do you need that can pass this bias test ?
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 04:43
Aryavartha, while we are talking about Pakistan...

a month ago I met this Family from Pakistan...I knew beforehand they were Muslim...
But When I had them close in from of me...they don't look like Arabs...

Their racial looks are like Indians...

are you the same race?...Pakistanis and Indians?
I wonder

Of course , we are the same race. It is impossible for me to say a Pakistani from an Indian at first sight and possibly never if he is a Punjabi or Sindhi. We share the same culture. In fact, a hindu/sikh punjabi of India and a muslim punjabi of Pakistan has more culture in common than the hindu Punjabi's affinity with an Assamese hindu from North east and the muslim punjabi's affinity with a muslim Balochi. We share the same food, language, heritage, history, arts. We also share a common future, maybe.

But they deny their "Indianness". That is the whole problem. The ideology behind the creation of Pakistan is " It does not matter what culture you have, or where you are born, but since you are a muslim, you cannot live with hindus and you have to live seperately". That is the basis of their creation. They go out of the way to deny the Indianness in them. They import an alien arab culture just so that they don't have to follow the "Indian" culture. That is one of the reasons that area is a mess. They deny their identity and are now rootless and take to hardline Islam in search of identity.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 04:54
They import an alien arab culture just so that they don't have to follow the "Indian" culture. Maybe they did not like the Caste Culture or..they saw some other flaws in your religion...

either way It is their Choice to Make..You CANNOT force them to follow your culture.

Tolerance is the Key for religion conflicts.
OceanDrive2
08-08-2005, 05:04
Im logging off...gotta sleep.

I wish you all freedom and peace.
Aryavartha
08-08-2005, 05:29
Maybe they did not like the Caste Culture or..they saw some other flaws in your religion...

either way It is their Choice to Make..You CANNOT force them to follow your culture.

Tolerance is the Key for religion conflicts.

There is no one culture that can be imposed on anybody. It is the tolerance for different cultures that resulted in many diversified cultures in India.

You know what's the funniest part of the partition. The muslims in the areas that is now called Pakistan did not make the demand for Pakistan. It was a demand by the muslim elite of India proper (the Muslim league leaders) who saw themselves as the inheritors of the Mughal dynasty and they knew that in a democratic India, they would not get into power and so they demanded a seperate state. To mask their power politics, they raised the "we muslims are different nation so we need to have a different country" slogan which is the basis of the Two-Nation theory.

The Muslim leagues first demand was to have seperate electorates as in the weightage of 30% muslim population = the weightage of 70% population. When this preposterous proposal was turned down, the demand for a seperate state began. So there.

India is a very tolerant place. It is the only country where the President is from a minority community (Abdul Kalam, muslim, 13% of population). The Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff of all three defence services , army, navy and Airforce, are from the Sikh minority community ( < 2% population). The leader of the ruling party is a Catholic born in a foreign country (Sonia Gandhi, Italy, Christians form < 3 %). No other nation can come close to that.

P.S: I saw your last reply after I typed this post, I dunno when I can post again after the weekdays start, so I am posting this anyway...
OceanDrive2
13-08-2005, 23:11
Please read the Islamist study thread by the Holy Womble.
You do realize Holy-Womble is Jewish.

Don't you?... but why should that take away the validity of his points in that thread ?*snip...If I want to Learn about anything Islam related...I shall take his Jewish views with a grain of salt...(If I even have time to read his Anti-Islam Propaganda).

Its nothing personal...its just common sense.*snip...

Do you agree that if the training camps had been closed down the London bombings would not have occurred ?

So why do you dismiss our protests about the training camps as biased ?

Have we not been vindicated? What more proof do you need that can pass this bias test ?hmmmokay...

Let me see your Indian-Media links...Ill take a look...
And I will also take a look at the HolyWomble "Islam-Study" you talk so much about... just post the links... and I shall look into it. Time permitting.
Aryavartha
13-08-2005, 23:45
Hey, how are you?

I thought I might have "lost" you. ;)

here's

Shehzad Tanweer, LeT and stuff about training camps in Pakistan (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=431950)

here's the islamism thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=434314)

Let me see your Indian-Media links

I am not sure what you want. There are tonnes of reports of the training camps and jihadis orgs. Try here for news and analyses.

http://www.satp.org/default.asp