The Massacre at Bajaur

Re: # 31

The top echelons were killed in a variety of ways. The intellectual life of the society was squeezed by the vaporisation of oldest universities in the world at Taxila. Once the head is off what remains is a quivering body.

This was the precursor to Macaulalisation of that part of the world!

Re: # 31

The top echelons were killed in a variety of ways. The intellectual life of the society was squeezed by the vaporisation of oldest universities in the world at Taxila. Once the head is off what remains is a quivering body.

and they have not been able to replace this loss as yet in any form whatsoever as yet.


This was the precursor to Macaulalisation of that part of the world!

Re: # 32

the cat dreams of offal (chichray)

urstruly,

``Pakistan is destined to go by the way of Iran through a bloody revolution`` ............. fine ! and pigs will fly to heaven on shab-i-miraj .......... who the heck is going to lead this revolution : qazi hussain, maulana fazloo, maulana sami or one of the other mullahs who rule the naswar belt ? .......... in case you didn`t notice, these guys will sell their sister and throw in their mother and pet sheep for a senate seat and a big screen tv ............. so that leaves your pir and murshid hafiz saeed who will probably be killed in a police encounter one of these days .............. and do you think that altaf bahi and his goons will let the mullahs run wild in karachi ?

...... mian ji, wake up and smell the kava - in 2008 BB will be back in the prime minister`s house and nawaz sharif will be sitting in the opposition scheming with president musharraf on how to get rid of pesky pinky ......... the mullahs will be fighting over duty-free land cruisers and daigs of halwa ..................

#27 by hamidm2 on November 6, 2006 6:32am PT


if the army was doing what it is paid to do,


It is doing what it being paid to do...paid to do by the US...

The paki public doesn`t really pay the paki army...the paki army owns everything and gives back to the pure denizens of land of the pure what it considers a fair sum..

Mr. Farooq Hasnat:

In paragraph 5, line 7, you say: December 30. Should it be October 30?

Regards,

number

Re: # 36

arjun mian,

...... you are right ...... the army is the biggest political party, the biggest business and the biggest bunch of fools in pakistan - if they did what they are supposed to do we would have resolved this silly kashmir issue a long time ago and you would be sitting quitely in the corner, licking your wounds and debugging your code instead of bugging us ..........

hamdim2# 38
If the Pakistani army solved the Kashmir issue they would be sitting quitely in a corner.

I am not sure they are the biggest fools in Pakistan.

Regards,

Faruk

Re: # 35

You hope and pray that someone actually does lead the revolution otherwise a preview of what happens when there is no leader was quite revealing last year when protests happened in all large cities in Pakistan and faceless crowds started running amock during the cartoon controversy.

Your assessment of sarkari moulvis is absolutely correct. They belong to the same class that oppresses Pakistan but in a different disguise. Pretty soon their jig is going to be up too cuz as the saying goes ``you can only fool all the people only once``.

In recent years a new form of leadership has emerged in Muslim lands in response to repeated assassionations and systematic corruption by a corrupt westernized ruling class. This is the new face of resistence in 21st century. This leadership is called cellular leadership. It is sort of like cancer that if you eliminate one cancerous cell, there emerge half a dozen more to replace it. No one really knows who the two rebel leaders are in Iraq and Afghnsitan respectively and yet the freedom struggle goes on with a surprising coordination. The movement collectively though proceeds towards its final destination no matter what. Frankly, by any logic I don`t think there is any way in the world to stop that.

I think people are missing the context of the strafing in Bajour. There were no signs of any problem in that area. So, why all of a sudden the Pak army went after that school? I think the matter relates to the recent attempted rocket firing in Islamabad targeting Musharaf. I think the army found some links in that area and went after the Madrassah or the congregation area of the extremist to send a message or perhaps thought that the mastermind of the Islamabad incident was in the school. That is one plausible reason for the Pak army to jeopardize the ongoing negations for the tribal cooperation

The talk of the US involvement actually helps the army as it absolves the army from the responsibility of the attack. One look at the army’s favorite newspaper the daily times shows that it was the Pakistan army that pushed the US involvement line more than any one else did. Dropping hints, talking about drones and intelligence cooperation with the US-all this is coming from the pro-army press in Pakistan and the rest are being suckered into this well orchestrated spin.

In Sindhi, sucker equates to Dhurr. Mullahs and the rightwing nincompoops in Pakistan are truly Dhurr of the Pakistan army.

Why would the US attack the School? The intelligence about some high value target perhaps could have been a motivation for the US. Since there was none, the US did not even try to take credit despite the US elections situation where an attack by the US on terrorists’ targets would have helped the current administration.

So far, whatever has come out of there shows that it was an internal power struggle in Pakistan and the army responded to an attempted attack on Gen. Musharaf.

The situation in the tribal areas does offer an opportunity for Pakistan to influence events in Afghanistan as no matter what happens in the next couple of years, eventually Pakistan will have to take control of the situation Afghanistan. Since the day, Pakistan engineered the Taliban takeover in Kabul; there is no other power in the area or outside of it that can work in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s cooperation.

While the situation in the tribal belt could be advantageous, it has several downsides too. One of them might be the growing influence of the religious parties in the area. That could possibly lead to a showdown at some point of time. The possibility of the tribes in NWFP going against the Pakistan State are zilch but outside influences should never be discounted.

Every passing day leads to a growing vacuum in Afghanistan and creates more opportunities for Pakistan to control the situation in Afghanistan and point the religious fundamentalist to the growing opportunity in Afghanistan rather than looking eastwards.

bulleya,

u.s. actually has attacked its neighbour - mexico rather than canada. in 1916, u.s. took sides in the mexican civil war which made an enemy out of one of the mexican combatants - a certain pancho villa who initially was an ally of the u.s. villa attacked and killed americans in mexico as well as inside the u.s. in response to these attacks, u.s. government sent a force of around 5000 soldiers backed by airplanes inside mexico to eliminate villa who took to the hills much like obl. the u.s. campaign was a disaster. u.s. army ended up fighting with the mexican army which initially had been its ally. the campaign nearly resulted in war with mexico before the mission was aborted due to wwi.

the reason i have recounted this episode is to simply point out that third world countries like mexico and pakistan dont have a lot of options when it comes to dealing with big powers. pakistan cannot get away with providing shelter to people who are fighting and killing americans and indeed other westerners such as in spain and the u.k. also your comparison of canadian situation with pak is completely invalid. its one thing to oppose the war - its another to actually give shelter to the enemies of the u.s. as i wrote in the last post, u.n. resolution 1368 makes it binding on pakistan to provide help to americans. failure to cooperate will result in sanctions which will be of the same nature as the one applied to iraq. according to the u.n, these sanctions resulted in the death of 0.5 mn children in iraq. the same impact would result in the death of 3mn children in pak, in reality though impact on pak will be much worse because pak does not have oil.

you are also mistaken in dismissing the impact of sanctions. to engage in foreign trade, pakistan needs foreign currency. this currency is held with central banks abroad for example u.s. dollars with federal reserve. if sanctions are imposed pakistan`s foreign currency reserves will be frozen as a result of which pakistan will not be able to buy oil, or food or medicine. no economy can function without oil and its precisely for this reason that u.s. govt has something called a strategic petroleum reserve. this reserve will be tapped in case of an oil embargo. unfortunately no such reserve exists in pak.

also pakistan has not backed u.s. in other areas where support from pakistan would be very helpful. pakistan has not sent troops to iraq and it actually voted against the u.n. resolution against iran`s nuclear program. furthermore pak has not recognised israel which would be the safest way to ensure support in the u.s. because both political parties are heavily influenced by the israeli lobby.

bottom line is that its very easy to call for jehad sitting in the west. i wonder what most people here would feel when they saw their own family members suffering as people did and still do in iraq. and all this because a few tribesmen wont do the right thing which is to deny shelter to people who have no qualms about killing innocent civilians in cold blood.

amazing.

Re: # 40

urstruly,

....... we know all about these `cells` and, as you rightly point out, they are like a cancer that seeks to destroy the body that it infects ............ that is why extreme measures have to be taken to make sure that people like khalid sheikh mohammad are eliminated ....... in any case, you are doing the right thing by cheering on your holy warriors from the comfort of your home in michigan instead of joining them in their dark and damp caves - spider webs do not stop daisy cutters ........

#41 by HP on November 6, 2006 10:52am PT

WOW...you really are clutching at imaginary straws...It took you almost 10 days to come up with this spin?

p.s. don`t let this get in the way of your self-delusions, but a bunch of PAF men were picked up for the rocket thing...

Re: # 41 HP
[...creates more opportunities for Pakistan to control the situation in Afghanistan and point the religious fundamentalist to the growing opportunity in Afghanistan rather than looking eastwards...]

Yep - f*** the afgans, all over again...:)

Isn`t this typical of pakis?... instead of trying to eliminate islamic terrorism - they want to just export it somewhere... use it for ``strategic`` purposes... lessons of last five years is already lost on these fools... :)

Sitting comfortably in their perches in the West - they want to push islamic cr@p all over the place.... un-f***ing-believable...

#30 by kaalchakra
“Actually, Badshah Khan pulled it off...although Gandhi ji certainly provided the inspiration :) “


People really missed this post. I wish Kaal sometime get into this and write with little bit more details.

This is true that for a long time Badshah(Bacha) Khan had more support in the tribal areas. He had difficult time working with people outside the core Pushtoon areas in NWFP but that was not the case in the tribal areas. The common element was Pushtoon nationalism but over the years, those links began to weaken as the successive Pakistan governments offered financial benefits to the tribes. That included pretty much free trade and no taxation. As the Pushtoon nationalism waned, other political element stepped in. The war in Afghanistan became a Pushtoon war and since religious element controlled that war, the area turned more towards religion. However, I still believe that the Taliban support in the area is ethnically motivated and religion is just the ideological thread in the whole thing. Badshah Khan’s ideological source was his secularism even though he was fully cognizant of the religion pull in the area.

“People of the area were not always the religiously inspired ``animals`` that so many outsiders see them as these days. Unbelievable as it may be, it was the great land of Gandhara, of Purushpur, of TakshaShila, and most amazing of all - of Kanishka....”

That is not true! All the seats of ancient cultures that you mentioned were in essence dominated by the religions of those eras. It would be hard to just ignore the reality and call those seats some places that promoted secularism or tolerance. So the whole thing is still the extension of the same theme. Since there has never been any industrial progress in these areas, the dogma still dominates.

I think the time has now come to re-organize the whole area based on the ancient boundaries. That is why I promote annexation of the Eastern Afghanistan and the Irani Balochistan by Pakistan. They are rightfully ours. On the Eastern side, I think the current Indian Punjab should be part of Pakistan and the first step to accomplish that is for Pakistan to open Pakistani borders for Sikhs. They should be able to visit Pakistan and Punjab without passport or visa and we should just accept the Sikh beard as symbolic Passport.

We may see dropping of IQ levels initially but the Punjabi IQ levels are not enviable anyway!

#45 by mohar11 on November 6, 2006 12:03pm PT


Remember Condi Rice saying some cr@p about the chinese notation for crisis and opportunity were the same..apparently the urdu notation for getting bombed by a foreign power and being utterly unable to do anything about it and opportunity are the same..

faisaluno #42: ........no one is talking about providing shelter to anyone.........all i am saying is that no one should be allowed to indiscriminately kill a citizen of pakistan, from the air or ground.........and then simply apologize afterwards.........there is no un resolution that allows that........if you know of one, please highlight it........there is a difference between supporting someone, and letting them kill your citizens.........even hr watch has objected to such killings.........the pakistani journalist who reported the previous attack was done by a usa predator, disappeared for three months, and was then found dead.......

..........you need to simply ask yourself the following question:...........would the usa bomb an apartment complex in michigan, if it had some intelligence that mullah umar was going to visit it?..........i highly doubt it............would it, after the bombing, be able to simply get away with an apology.........

...........the president of pakistan needs to do what the majority of pakistanis want him to do.........after all he is the president of pakistan..........if he wants to do what the majority of americans want him to do, then he should have carried out his coup there..........

.........pakistan became a frontline state earlier, and one can see the result of that incorrect decision...........let the usa fight its own wars..........it has created far too many enemies for itself..............no point in pakistan creating an equal amount of enemies...........