The Naval War College Bomb Blasts

Feroze khan sahib,

There seems to be a sudden upswelling of jihadi activities post the elections. Any guesses why this sudden eruption.

Recently a Lt. Gen got bumped off in Pindi and before that a Maj. Gen in Kohat. Normally chowk publishes an obituary every time a senior armed forces guy gets knocked off but no obituaries were given for either of the two officers. Why?

Regards

By high-security the media probably means loads of Agency-Goons--all for the wrong reasons of course!

PBS' Frontlin World aired a documentary on the rise of Taliban specifically Molvi Fazlullah. One wants to believe that the documentary is an exaggeration and oversimplification of the extent of the problem that the Taliban/militants are. However, this particular attack strikes against that belief!

For those interested: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/preview/703/

By high-security the media probably means loads of Agency-Goons--all for the wrong reasons of course!

PBS' Frontlin World aired a documentary on the rise of Taliban specifically Molvi Fazlullah. One wants to believe that the documentary is an exaggeration and oversimplification of the extent of the problem that the Taliban/militants are. However, this particular attack strikes against that belief!

For those interested: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/preview/703/

Naval War College in Lahore (not in Karachi!!!) ??????????????????????

Feroz sahib,

Thank God you are all right, sir!

quid pro quo ?

A Pakistani court has dropped five corruption cases against Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of assassinated ex-PM Benazir Bhutto, his lawyer says.

feroze mian,

be careful out there - stay away from people in uniform

Hamid mian,

(quid pro quo ?)

So what is the quid in return for this quo???

Regards

majumdar,

hamidm mian is desperately hoping for a quid, but he'll likely end up with a wet squid.

Re: # 4

VRV,

These were exactly my feelings whenever i passed by it on my yamaha 80 cc on my way to office. What the hell is it doing in lahore where you have river ravi but you can't tell whether lahore is on its right bank or left bank because there is no water flowing in it.

Bhattiji,

Given our mentalities, I'd not be surprised if they had established the Pakistan Naval Command in Islamabad (rolling eyes icon).

We have Indian Navy boss in Dehli, btw (rolling eyes icon).

Re: # 11

People have different views when they discuss whether indian and pakistani culture is the same or not.. But as far as stupidity aspect of both countries is concerned, one cannot just differentiate between the two... Even all other south asian countries are in the same league... why not add another S for stupid before or after SAARC.

Before: SSAARC (Stupid South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation)

OR

After: SAARCS (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation of Stupids)

Re: majumder #1

The jihadi activity has been present but beyond the settled (urban) areas but now seems to have crept into the cities. According to most, this activity will see an increase as it moves towards an eventual tipping off point. There is a planned offensive in the FATA this spring and the ground logistics for it have been nearly complete.

The loss of MMA government has removed the cover of patronage from the jihadi groups and ANP will not be different since it also believes in the old concept of a jirga to attain peace, the developmental works hoped by ANP might meet with a positive response from the local population and that might be a worrying prospect for the militant groups.

The development of US military installations on the Afghan border mean that militants see Pakistan as a soft target and will concentrate here instead of Afghanistan this summer. Also, with Asif Zardari's recent statement on Kashmir, Kashmiri militant groups are not too pleased with the emerging post-election situation in Pakistan. In any case, we are gradually moving towards a new phase of this terrorist activity.

This is a calculated movement and highly sophisticated in identification of targets. The symbolism of the targets speaks to the intentions of the groups itselfs.

As to Chowk, I have idea on why Chowk did not post any obits on the dead generals.

Ciao

Re: VRN #11

Lahore has a signficant naval presence and yes; there is a naval headquarters in Islamabad. :)

Ciao

Re: bjkumar #5

I am alright, and thank you, sir, for your concern. I was close enough to see the smoke from the blast and feel the shock waves. Today, I walked to the edge of the Mall from my work and realized that I was a lot closer than 800 meters; maybe 300-400 meters. :)

My house, which is right behind Aitchison College, felt the blast and the entire building reverbrated with the blast and the after shocks. Light fixtures in Aitchison College, opposite the NWC, were jarred loose by the blast and there were reports of ceiling plaster falling on the students, 5-7 years old, who were tramatized by the event.

Ciao

Re: # 12

The only thing that separated Pakistan from India is religion; ethnically and culturally we ARE the same wether the muslims like it or not.

I include excerpts from Salman Rushdie's article in the Guardian (2002) after the massacre of muslims by hindu extremists in Gujarat; I think it speaks for me on the current topic of discussion (please feel free to substitute India for Pakistan in the excerpts; the differences to me matter less than the similarities):

"Religion, as ever, is the poison in India's blood


Salman Rushdie on new horrors in the name of God

Saturday March 9, 2002
The Guardian


"The defining image of the week is of a small child's burned and blackened arm, its tiny fingers curled into a fist, protruding from the remains of a human bonfire in Ahmadabad, Gujarat.
The murder of children is something of an Indian specialty. The routine daily killings of unwanted girl babies, the massacre of innocents in Nellie, Assam, in the 1980s, and of Sikh children in Delhi during the reprisals that followed Mrs Gandhi's assassination in 1984 bear witness to our particular gift, always most dazzlingly in evidence at times of religious unrest, for dousing our children in kerosene and setting them alight, or cutting their throats, or smothering them, or just clubbing them to death with a good strong length of wood.

I say "our" because I write as an Indian man born and bred, who loves India deeply and knows that what one of us does today, any of us is potentially capable of doing tomorrow. If I take pride in India's strengths, then India's sins must be mine as well.

Do I sound angry? Good. Ashamed and disgusted? I certainly hope so. Because, as India undergoes its worst bout of Hindu-Muslim bloodletting in over a decade, many people have not been sounding anything like angry, ashamed or disgusted enough. Police chiefs have been excusing their men's unwillingness to defend the citizens of India without regard to religion, by saying that these men have feelings too, and are subject to the same sentiments as the nation in general.

Meanwhile, India's political masters have been tut-tutting and offering the usual soothing lies about the situation being brought under control. (It has escaped nobody's notice that the ruling BJP - the Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People's Party - and the Hindu extremists of the VHP - the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council - are sister organisations, offshoots of the same parent body.) Even international commentators, such as Britain's Independent newspaper, urge us to "beware excess pessimism".

The horrible truth about communal slaughter in India is that we're used to it. It happens every so often; then it dies down. That's how life is, folks. Most of the time, India is the world's largest secular democracy; and if, once in a while, it lets off a little crazy-religious steam, we mustn't let that distort the picture.

Of course there are political explanations. Ever since December 1992, when a VHP mob demolished a 400-year-old Muslim mosque, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, which they claim was built on the sacred birthplace of the god Ram, Hindu fanatics have been looking for this fight. The pity of it is that some Muslims were ready to give it to them. The murderous attack on the trainload of VHP activists at Godhra (with its awful, atavistic echoes of the killings of Hindus and Muslims by the trainload during the partition riots of 1947) played right into the Hindu extremists' hands.

The VHP has evidently tired of what it sees as the equivocations and insufficient radicalism of the BJP government. The prime minister, Mr Vajpayee, is more moderate than his party; he also heads a coalition government, and has been obliged to abandon much of the BJP's more extreme Hindu- nationalist rhetoric to hold the coalition together. But it isn't working any more. In state elections across the country, the BJP is being trounced. This may have been the last straw for the VHP firebrands. Why put up with the government's betrayal of their fascistic agenda when that betrayal doesn't even result in electoral success?

The electoral failure of the BJP (used by the let's-not-get-carried-away gang to show that India is turning away from communalist politics) is thus, in all probability, the
The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But there's something beneath it, something we don't want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of "respect".

What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again.

So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God".