Waziristan Operation is a Faux Pas

Rationale behind Waziristan Operation
Sajjad Shaukat

After taking cognizance of the deteriorating security situation, emanating from the recent terror-attacks inside the country, Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani briefed the political leadership on October 16 in connection with the military operation against the militants of South Waziristan.

Next day, the ground operation, “Rah-i-Nijat� (Path to Deliverance) was launched after weeks of heavy aerial bombardments to weaken militant fortifications. Some 28,000 soldiers moved into a remote corner of the mountainous region, in a three-pronged attack, intended to trap 10,000 insurgents of South Waziristan including some 1 500 Uzbeks and foreign fighters. In this regard, on October 18, the Chief of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Maj-Gen. Athar Abbas said: “The army has launched an operation after receiving orders from the government.�

However, there is an appropriate rationale behind the military operation in Waziristan. Apart from the previous suicide attacks and bomb blasts, terrorists based in South Waziristan, intensified their subversive attacks in the major cities of Pakistan by acting upon the tactics of guerilla warfare in order to create lawlessness in the country.
In this respect, on October 15, five civilians and 12 personnel of the security forces have been martyred in three separate terrorist attacks by killing 9 terrorists at FIA Building, Manawan Police Training Centre and Bedian Elite Police Training Centre in Lahore. On the same day, eleven persons were killed in a car suicide attack at a police station in Kohat, while several persons were killed in similar type of blasts in Peshawar intermittently. On October 12, a suicide bomber killed 41 people in Shangla. In their most challenging subversive act, on October 10, nine militants targeted the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi where Pak Army foiled a major tragedy by killing eight terrorists and rescuing 39 hostages. In the event, 12 soldiers, a Brigadier and a Lt. Colonel had also been martyred, but militants’ ringleader Aqeel alias Dr Osman was captured alive whose links to South Waziristan were proved after initial investigation.
Waziristan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which has connections in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the attacks, occurred in Pakistan within ten days. The group had also claimed responsibility for the last year’s terror-attacks on several key installations of Lahore like the Pakistan Navy War College, FIA building, the Manawan Police Training Center and Rescue 15 building of the police including assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

It was due to the panic and sense of insecurity caused by the merciless insurgents that emotions have been running high against the Taliban militants from all segments of society. Each assault has been strengthening public opposition to militancy and religious extremism. In this context, Pakistan’s political commentators and the general masses strongly condemned the recent terror-acts, while expressing their views through electronic and printed media.

Regarding the new wave of terrorism, which killed dozens of persons, the leading newspapers printed the views of people saying: “The militants are not what they claim to be…the enemies of the United States…in fact, they are the enemies of Pakistan and they want to impose their version of Islam on us but they will never succeed.� The papers further wrote: “People of Pakistan were not only unanimous on the military operation against militants in Swat and other areas of Malakand Agency, but they also wanted a quick yet effective strike against those hiding in South Waziristan.� Similar thoughts were expressed by the people through TV channels.

However, just like the previous military operations which had broken the backbone of the insurgents in Swat, Dir and Buner, Pakistan’s major political parties and civil societies of every province have been greatly backing the ongoing offensive in South Waziristan.

Besides, the latest wave of terror-attacks and public support to the operation, Rah-i-Nijat, there is other logic behind military action in South Waziristan. Notably, the militants enter Pakistan from Afghanistan where tentacles of terrorism exist. In this respect, India has set up secret training centres in Afghanistan where its military personnel in collaboration with its secret agency, RAW have been imparting training of guerilla warfare to the youngsters, having connections with South Waziristan where some other such training centres are also working. By setting aside the atrocities of the Taliban insurgents such as hostage-takings, beheadings, and torture, Indian officials incite the local tribesmen by propagating that Pakistan’s armed forces are killing its own people. The main aim behind is to attract the innocent people, and to produce suicide bombers after brainwashing.

In this respect, an online website reported, “The new hatchery of producing female suicides bombers is being headed by Commander Maulvi Shamim at his Muddrassah in Laddha, located in South Wazirsitan. The Uzbak and Afghani women instructors are imparting Jehadi and suicide training to the innocent girls and women. Trainees include Mehsud, Punjabis and Sindhi women and girls.� They were being funded by foreign agency too. Apart from this nursery of suicide female bombers, houses in Sam Sarai, Baderzai and other places of South Waziristan Agency are also training girls and boys on similar lines. Reports suggest that the female suicide bomber who attacked the police station in Peshawar on October 16 was from the Muddrassah of Maulvi Shamim.

On October 13, 2009 a private TV channel also released a video in which the terrorists including the captured ringleader, Aqeel have been shown getting training in guerrilla warfare. He is close fellow of the late Baitullah Mehsood, the former Chief of the TTP.

In the recent past, some of our high officials repeatedly pointed out that the late Baitullah Mehsud who was killed in a US drone attack on August 5, had been backed by the foreign powers. He was having a number of secrets regarding foreign intelligence agencies. Nevertheless, like Baitullah, his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud who has threatened more suicide attacks in our country is also collective agent of RAW and CIA. While playing a double game like his paymasters, his real aim is to incite the innocent Pakhtoons in order to further destabilise Pakistan.

Now, this fact is known to everyone that Pakistan is the only nuclear country in the Islamic world. Hence, US, Israel and India are in collusion to weaken it by creating anarchy for achieving their secret strategic interests. Covert support to the insurgents of the Frontier Province and separatists of Balochistan are part of the unfinished agenda of these foreign elements. Besides NWFP, sporadic ambush attacks on the security forces, government installations and ministers in Balochistan might be cited as example.

It is of particular attention that location of South Waziristan makes it most conducive place for the anti-Pakistan plotters and fighters. In this regard, Time magazine reported on October 18, 2009: “South Waziristan is close to outsiders…which comprises harsher terrain, made it the ideal hiding place for foreign militants…over the years, various groups of militants fortified their bases…Pakistan’s military moved on South Waziristan stronghold of the TTP, an umbrella group of militants…have been behind some 80% of terrorist attacks in the country including the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto.�

Nonetheless, the South Waziristan Agency which shares a common border with Afghanistan is the epicenter of all the terrorist activities in Pakistan. Subversion in country’s major cities including Khyber, Bajaur, Orakzai and Mohmand agencies are plotted there with the support of Indian RAW which itself is being backed by the tactical help of US and Israel.

Regarding the recent terror-attacks, ISPR Spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other TV commentators have indicated Indian involvement behind the attack, remarking: “Hakimullah Mehsud and other terrorists are “the enemies of the state� and “are mercenaries who receive arms from Afghanistan to destabilize the country.�

Now, the right hour has come that Pakistan’s armed forces which have strong rationale behind the military operation must check all these activities of the Waziristan-based militants once for all.

Writer and author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com

wasn`t someone in pakistani military who called baitullah a patriot(the news, hamid mir, 1st dec 2008)! patriots seems to have a limitted shelf life in pakistan perhaps.

wasn`t someone in pakistani military who called baitullah a patriot(the news, hamid mir, 1st dec 2008)! patriots seems to have a limitted shelf life in pakistan perhaps.

Re: # 165; tahmed sahib

[[it doesnt matter if your wildest dreams come true and the taliban take over Pakistan - they will still be a bunch of rats destined for hell.]]

well said ... people seem to equate a 'success' by some thugs in these matters as being equal to them being on the right side ... by the same token, would they also concede that the 'west' with all its successes in the last (at least) 600 years was 'on the right side'? .... (only counting from the rennaissance)

... goes witout saying that an apparent success in political matters does not confer a moral high ground ... to anyone

.. on the other hand, anyone with half an un-biased brain can work out what's good from a human perspective and what's not

where was "qari" zainuddin when helpless prisoners were being butchered by the taliban? part of the taliban, i bet!! his new found understanding of the true meaning of islam seems to be based not on his reading the Quran, but rather from his reading recent newspaper headlines concerning the beating the taliban are getting from the Pakistan fauj.

#161 urstruly: i am not talking about the "inevitability" of taliban takeover. i am talking about good vs criminal, just vs unjust. it doesnt matter if your wildest dreams come true and the taliban take over Pakistan - they will still be a bunch of rats destined for hell.

"A gunman shot dead Qari Zainuddin, a rival commander of Baitullah Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday morning".

majumdar sb,
bad news for chachoo, i guess ...

http://www.geo.tv/6-23-2009/44653.htm

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: A gunman shot dead Qari Zainuddin, a rival commander of Baitullah Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday morning.

A close aide of Qari Zainuddin while confirming the killing of Qari Zainuddin claimed that he was shot dead by Gulbadeen Mehsud who was managed to flee from the scene. Gulbadeen is a resident of Makeen area. Another associate of Qari Zainuddin sustained injuries in the incident.

Qari Zainuddin had recently given statements to the media opposing Mehsud.

Wonder what Amin sahib will make of this incident.

Regards

Re: # 123
cool..
Many of IA64 technology is sourced from Compaq/Digital's Alpha design Lab...
You can search for a bengalee guy called Subhendu Mukherjee....He was part of the team, who introduced couple of technologies,with Alpha processor,which is now part of Intel....

Re: # 159

Getting upset with me is not going to avert the impending inevitability.

Chachoo,

I understand your ire against the Taliboon but that is no reason to eulogise the Pak Fouj. The latter has done far more damage to Pakistan than the Taliboon have- Bdesh was the Fouj's doing, not the Talibs. Besides, the Talibs too are a creation of the Pak Fouj, they were not born out of nothing.

Regards

#157 and try telling one of our jawans that they are "napak fauj" of Pakistan - and he will give you the thrashing that lackeys of taliban rats richly deserve.

#157 you will get your shock and awe in hell. unless God reserves hell only for the taliban rats, and lets their lackeys rot in their graves.

If history has any lesson for us, it is that that the Shock and Awe always starts after Shock and Awe. No doubt should remain in anyones mind that even Tora Bora and Daisy Cutters could not stop what is going on for the past 8 years. It is a usless debate to speculate whether Baitullah or Fazlullah are American agents or not. Their strategic attacks on pakistani security infrastructure (like ISI detention and torture centers, FIA torture centers, polioce copmmand and control centers; elimination of whole unit of commandos in Tarbela who took part in Islamabad school girl masacre) tells that they are very calculating and precise.

The making of 3 million IDPs and complete destruction of villages and towns in Swat - razing them to ground - so that Americans could verify through their satellites before issuing their next installment of blood money has not earned napak fouj any friends.

It was repoted in a Pakistani newspaper in the early days of "operation scortched earth" around May 8 that when a colonol and his escort brought the body of soldier who got killed in action to his village in Chakwal, the father of the poor fukk took out his khussa and started hitting colonol on his head. The fouji on-behalf-of-grateful-nation party ran to save their lives. From that time whenever fouj brings the corpse of a killed soldier they leave the corpse outside the villages in the area.

The recent doubling of the salaries of foujis tells a lot as to how popular this war is within fouj. Who will pay for the expenses of one million fouj in future is still not clear. Is fouj going to go back to their original salaries after "shock and Awe" is over and American blood money dries up? And like I said, the shock and Awe always starts after shock and awe.

dost-mittar #:....the story on baitullah mehsud has to be one of the most confusing events of this whole affair.....i cannot figure out whom he is representing.....he seems to be causing all the trouble, yet no one is willing to kill him......

.......the recent quick operation by the army indicates that if it wanted to, it could kick out the taliban very quickly.....they may come back in small pieces, but their bulk has been destroyed without much problem......

the simple reason being that they don't represent the local population, and hence have no support.......they are not a freedom movement or a resistance movement...........the main infrastructure of the taliban will be wiped out soon.....they will be limited to hit and run type attacks......

.......the usa doesn't fire drones on baitullah.....and the pakistan army never targeted him......doesn't make sense......in fact, the pakistan army never targeted the radio stations used by fazlullah......

.......and where do the taliban get their money from.....one theory is that it is from middle eastern sources.....another is that it is from drugs......third is that it is from india.....fourth is that it is from the usa to cause trouble in pakistan to destabalize its nuclear control.....

.........why didn't the army and usa target taliban, earlire....the theory that is becoming the strongest is, since the army and usa are now after the taliban, that india is the main source of funding.....

i.e. india is funding mehsud and various other entities, and it is infiltrating afghans into pakistan to cause trouble.......however, if that is the case, then pakistan would have gone after mehsud a long time ago....

perhaps, pakisatn army wanted to keep mehsud to influence events in afghanistan, once the usa left.......however, he got out of control.....and started taking over regions of pakistan....at which point, india jumped in and started funding him....

Re: # 154

Bulleya - I ran into this blog by Kaiser Tufail (Director of Operations - Pak Air Force):

http://kaiser-aeronaut.blogspot.com/2009/01/kargil-conflict-and-pakis tan-air-force.html

This in detail confirms what you are saying - Pak Air Fore refused to participate because they did not have spare parts. That's quite shocking and surprising indeed.

pavocavalry#:...your analysis of kargil is interesting.......and more than likely quite accurate.......

a couple of points you may want to add......paf did not participate in kargil.....the army, basically, launched th operation, without having its own air force on board......

......the paf, actually, refused to participate......they said that pakistan did not have the spare parts to carry out an operation like this, and would have to dig into its war time reserves.....

....eventually, due to this, musharraf, got rid of the complete paf high command, and promoted someone quite juior to be the next chief of air staff.....

Re: # 143

Agha Amin...reread my post #138, I said 1849.

almost all pakistani journalists are bought , those who are not are starving and living lives of destitution .trust no pakistani media or channel.they lost their souls in 1958 and many right from 1947. a pathetic lot who go for walk in islamabad cricket ground and get their instructions from intelligence guys.hopeless agencies which failed to detect indian intrusion 35 miles in siachen in 1984.
Agha Amin

jo haq baat kahay woh agent hai ,

jo sar utha kar chalay woh disgruntled hai

jis main ghairat ho woh iss mulk main rehnay kay qabil nahin

main nay aik bangali say poocha :--

aaaap kahan kay rahnay walay hain ?

uss ka jawaaab---- main uss mulk ka rehnay wala hoon jo tum west pakistani logon nay banaya , tum uss mulk ka rehnay wala hai jo hum bangleeon nay banaya
Agha Amin

its a great tragedy of pashtun history that the policy is auranngzebs about pashtuns when he said only a bone can cut a bone and used yusufzais against pashtuns

for many years i sat at justice sajjad ali shahs chambers on zamzama in karachi.an intelligence bureau officer was also our companion.

one day i asked him whats ur organisations job ?

he said to make one tribe fight another in sindh balochistan and frontier.

now he is a very senior officer and a very upright man
Agha Amin

pavo:

What do you think of this report by hamid mir?
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/2009/jun/22/hamid-mir-double-games-dont- work-in-pakistan.htm

Excerpt:
"Not a single US drone has fired on Baitullah Mehsud and that is the reason many people say that Baitullah is an American agent and US is actually playing a double game with Pakistan. Many in US think otherwise. They accuse that Pakistan is playing a double game by supporting a militant like Qari Zainuddin Mehsud who is pro-Pakistan but anti-US.

Qari Zainuddin killed the younger brother of Baitullah Mehsud, Yahya on October 27, 2008 in the Bannu area. In retaliation Baitullah killed a close aide of Qari Zainuddin Muhammad Yousaf on October 29 in the Tank area. More than 95 people have been killed from both sides in last one year. Now Qari Zainuddin has become an ally of the Pakistani security forces against Baitullah Mehsud. He contacted many powerful tribal elders of the Mehsud area recently but most of them are reluctant to cooperate. These tribal elders see no difference between Baitullah and Zainuddin. They say that both are criminals. They fear that Pakistani establishment first used Baitullah against Abdullah, now they are using Zainuddin against Baituallah and ultimately both will be killed. They also fear that Qari Hussain will replace Baitullah as the new commander of the Taliban and Qari Hussain is more dangerous than Baitullah because he is the head of suicide squads.

Many tribal elders of Mehsud area were contacted by the political administration of South Wazirastan to seek help for Qari Zainuddin. One tribal elder told an official of the administration "don't fool us, President Zardari is assuring cooperation to NATO and you are asking us to cooperate with a person who is openly saying that go and fight against NATO in Afghanistan."

a tragic phase in peshawars history when minarets of mohabbat khan mosque were used by avitabile to hang his victims.

when the english east india company liberated peshawar in 1846 the mullahs of peshawar praised them as saviours of Allah in khutbas.

we must be correct in historical facts.then khalsa and now the army of the land of the pure.sad is history.
Agha Amin

Pavocavalry:

Yeah yeah, We have read enough about Ranjit Singh and his gallant Sikh warriors. We know now that they ruled over tiny miny Peshawar valley for 15 long years and we are impressed. Now you don't need to write a million pages book in their honour.

technically the east india company defeated the sikhs at sobraon south of sutlej in 1846 .they did not go to peshawar by force ,but technically they started administration as board of control of all punjab less bahawalpur and all settled area NWFP districts on behalf of sikhs
Agha Amin

till 1843 avitabile was governor of sikh peshawar and when the east india company defeated the sikhs in 1847 peshawar was still sikh controlled.from 1846 till 1849 the east india company governed punjab and NWFP in sikh name as board of control.
Agha Amin

punjab and the then frontier was administered in name of sikhs by english east india companys board of control.this arrangement broke when sikhs revolted in 1848 against the board of control
Agha Amin

peshawar was not ruled by sikhs till 1839 but till 1849 mr gold finger .note that dost mohammad khan sent his son sardar akram khan with 5,000 horse to aid the sikhs in second sikh war of 1848-49 on the condition that sikhs will restore peshawar back to afghans.sardar akram khan avoided combat and bolted to kabul after sikhs were defeated at gujrat in 1849.


Agha Amin

its a tragedy of history that maulana ghulam rasul mehr a punjabi with a stronf anti pashtun bias blamed pashtuns in his book on syed ahmad shaheed.the fact is that the syeds of pir baba gave sanctuary to the followers of syed who included many hindustani pathans from doab rohail khand and oudh.one such family lives in pohan colony north of mardan on malakand road
Agha Amin

Army in an encircling movement via the Ambela Pass, but in so doing aroused the hostility of the Bunerwal tribe.

One of several bitter actions was fought on 30 October, when tribesmen succeeded in capturing the Crag Piquet, a British post overlooking the Pass, killing 60 soldiers. Lieutenant Pitcher of the 4th Punjab Regiment and Lieutenant Fosbery of the 4th Bengal Regiment led the counterattack up a steep and narrow path.

Fosbery was wounded by a boulder hurled from above, but Pitcher was the first man to reach the top, and succeeded in driving the enemy from their position. Both officers were awarded the Victoria Cross. The Bunerwal were eventually persuaded by their own casualties to help destroy the "Hindustani Fanatics", whose base at Malka was destroyed on 22 December.


Agha Amin

#136
Your cliche-ridden post is not worth answering but I must say here that so much obsession with Afghans is unhealthy for lily-livered Punjabi men.

gold finger , do note for your future guidance that many hindustani fanatics withdrew to bunner and established themselves at sittana,malka and pir baba.such was their influence that the brits were forced to launch an expedition against them in 1863,the ambeyla expedition and this was the expedition in which the brits suffered one of the maximum casualties in frontier history.included in these was my maternal great great grand fathers brother sultan mohammad khan a shinwari from dur baba in ningrahar whose family had settled in sikandara rao in aligarh district as auxillaries of nawab bangash of farkhabad in modern india.

its a strange coincidence that a great grand son of dost mohammad khan was killed at daggar few days back.

may Allah bless his soul.
Agha Amin

Further...the Sikhs, under the able leadership of Ranjit Singh, for a brief time took control of Peshawar...and one of their European Generals Avitabile (Avitabla to Sikhs) ruled like a particular tyrant over there...but it was an uneasy sojourn for the Sikhs...in 1820s out of India came Syed Ahmed Shah Barelvi, who was a prototype of the present day talibs...however he and his followers, which included sundry tribal Pathans, inflicted defeats upon the Sikhs in 1826, after setting up his headquarters in Nowshera...eventually the talibs recaptured all of the areas up to Peshawar from the Sikhs...however in 1831 when Syed Ahmed Shah Barelvi began messing with the peoples personal affairs, they decided to rise against him...thus on a predetermined signal of a fire on a hill all the tribes were to rise against him and his Hindustani fanatics, and drive them out of the region...the Barelvi escaped to Balakot, where the Sikhs pounced on him, and he along with his five or six hundred followers were killed in a last desperate fight...the Sikhs ruled over Peshawar from about 1834 to 1849...an ignominious period of Peshawar's history...in the continuous strife in the region, Ranjit Singh's intrepid and beloved general, Hari Singh Nalwa was killed by a 14 year old boy in 1837...the spot near the University of Peshawar, is still famous as the Burj Hari Singh.

good summing up mohtaram bulleya sahib,however one correction.the english east india company did not capture anything from pashtuns other than pishin and zhob from loralai from afghanistan.quetta was baloch and peshawar bannu mardan charsadda DI Khan Bannu and till present boundaries of FATA had already been conquered by great ranjit singh by 1827.the english company just conquered these areas from the sikhs.and we must remember that afghanistans major part was a hind ruled country till around 1000
Agha Amin

...i have never quite figured out the logic of using terms like, "duped" as a cause of detoriation......if someone gets duped into something, shouldn't they, themselves, or at least their leadership, carry some of the blame...

....it keeps reminding me of urstruly saying he was, "duped," into coming to america.....if someone is duped, is it their fault, or the fault of the person duping them......

......at some point, pathans will have to set up some sort of a functional society and social system....be they in afgahnsitan, fata or nwfp......the traditional values will need to change, as much of them, however glorified, are, actually, counterproductive and negative....

.....the notion of weapons being the jewelry of pathans is ridiculous......it is glorified as if it is something great.....i meet pathans all over uae and the middle east.......mostly from fata and nearby areas....apparently, they have no issues with getting rid of this jewelry....

....similary, this notion of hospitality, even to criminals and terrorists is strange also......as is the tradition of revenge at all costs.....

....none of these will allow any social system to fit into the present-day......these are archaic tribal customs, which should be looked down upon and not encouraged as some sort of an honorable trait....

as is the treatment of women in these areas......

......there are many evils in the region.....including foreign occupations etc.......some are local also.....and one of them is the taliban.......doesn't matter what they are doing, they are an evil.......even if they have a correct cause, somewhere, their whole approach to treatment of people around them is evil.......while a cause of their's can be gloried, they, themselves cannot be......

freedom struggles don't involve hoodlums taking over, othwerise, peaceful cities like swat, and handing people from poles at the main chowk......

the pushtun society will need a social overhaul......this can only come through, internally; not externally......and step one will be to not rely on weaponry as the means of negotiation......and not allowing themselves to be, "duped."

......shahid afridi is becoming a good cricket player, not because he can hit sixes.....but because he has stopped hitting sixes.....he is, now, relying on nuances of spin bowling, and behaving in a less eratic and more mature manner......glorification of his past eraticism hindered his growth......same is the case with pathans.......glorification of weapons, misguided honor etc. is hindering them....not helping them.....

the myth of pathans never being conquered is wrong also.......much of pakistan, today, was conquered from pathans by very young british soldiers......as is much of the myth of honor......quite a few polical financial transactions regularly take place amongst pathans.......

......there needs to be a cultural overhaul from tribal honor and violence to a legal framework, with social acceptance of women etc.....shooting your enemy in revenge is not honorable......nor is keeping your sister locked up in a burqa.......

......obviously, pathans, recently, have been at the receving end, of a lot of political manipulations......however, in the end, one has to pull one's self up and cannot keep blaming others......

Indeed. I am very happy there is a fundamental difference between you and I.

I am very happy with my life. You are full of bile and bitterness. You are also too stupid to realize that playing the same tune over and over again makes you a one trick pony.

Hey, never mind me. Carry on. You are entertainment dude :) It will be nice seeing you unravel.

Re: # 133
I do not hurl insults nor engage in personal attacks on any one. I deal with the issues as I see them and offer my data , arguments and commentary. You are free to challenge or ignore what I have to say, but you choose to personally attack me in the most vicious way. That's the difference between you and I.

I'll leave it to you to reflect on the folly of your ways.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

#131

Interesting. It certainly appears that you *WERE* a part of that team that designed the 80386. That *IS* a stupendous achievement and you have my sincere congratulations and utmost respect and admiration *for that achievement*.

However, it appears you have become a rotten individual since then. I find it extremely hard to believe that for a person with such a scientific training and working in a team that did not compromise in their pursuit of excellence and truth, you have developed such a warped mind.

Please understand, it is not about exposing the warts of Inida, they are there for all to see. It is the following:

1. Wilful twisting of truth to suit one's viewpoint.
2. Complete lack of balance. Quoting selectively.
3. Indulging in deflection.
4. Hiding behind published litrature regarless of how questionable the data is.

All of the above points to a person who is not interested in pursuit of truth. It points to a con-man and a person who is willing to practice deception at the drop of a hat. In other words, man with no class.

Forget explaining anything to me..look at the positions that you have taken and reflect -- if you still have the ability -- as to why you have taken the positions you have taken.

At this moment -- none of your past achievements make an iota of difference to my current opinion of you. My current opinion is based completely on your interactions at Chowk.

Not that you asked, but please, stop, take a deep breath and start over. This time do it right.

Re: # 128
So when you cited the already-debunked Hirsch story about Cheney's death squads killing BB, that was a primary source?
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 123

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2311955,00.asp

http://www.nytimes .com/1988/11/15/science/personal-computers-honoring-techinical-merit.html

htt p://enc.slider.com/Enc/Intel_80386

http://infao5501.ag5.mpi-sb.mpg.de:8080/to px/archive?link=Wikipedia-Lip6-2/15070.xml&style
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 128

Just wanted to set the record straight...thats all...rather than to rattle off skewed statements for the benefit of arriving at skewed conclusions.

daily aousaf and other news sources:--

Senior al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders are reported to have met with Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud to advise him to move his group's operations into Afghanistan and halt attacks against the Pakistani state.

Several meetings were said to have been held last week after an 11-man delegation of al Qaeda and Taliban heavy hitters arrived in Waziristan to deliver a request from Mullah Omar, the Amir al Mumineen, or the leader of the faithful in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a report in The Nation.

The Taliban dispatched Sirajuddin Haqqani, the powerful military commander of the Haqqani Network, and Abdul Hakeem Sharaee and Mir Ahmad Jan Hashemi, two senior deputies of Mullah Abdullah Zakir, the Taliban's senior-most military commander in southern Afghanistan who was released from Guantanamo Bay.

Al Qaeda sent Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaeda's senior ideologues and a representative of the religious committee, and Abdul Haq Turkistani, the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, an al Qaeda-linked group that is made up of Uighurs who fight the Chinese government. Abdul Haq serves on al Qaeda's Shura Majlis, or executive council.

The joint Taliban and al Qaeda delegation reportedly advised Baitullah to halt the Pakistani Taliban's attacks against the military and government and energy in Afghanistan. The leaders believe Baitullah's terror attacks against the Pakistani state are putting undue pressure on the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and threaten to damage the overall Taliban movement.

The Taliban and al Qaeda leadership are concerned that even a limited Pakistani military offensive in the tribal areas will put their training camps and safe houses throughout the border regions at risk as the Afghan Taliban is gearing up for a major fight with Coalition and Afghan.

Baitullah was reportedly advised to dodge the nascent Pakistani Army offensive in South Waziristan and move the bulk of his forces into Afghanistan to carry out attacks against Afghan and Coalition forces.

The Taliban and al Qaeda delegation was also reported to have advised North Waziristan Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar to provide safe passage for Baitullah and his Taliban army.

Baitullah is said to have rejected the request from Mullah Omar, responding, "Mullah Omar is our Amir but like Afghanistan, they [the Pakistani Taliban] are determined to continue resistance in Pakistan."

Baitullah is also met with the shura of the United Mujahideen Council, the alliance with South Waziristan Taliban warlord Mullah Nazir and powerful North Waziristan leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar. Nazir, who is being pressured by the Pakistani government to sit out the operation against Baitullah, is said to have not attended, according to the Islamabad Ausaf, a pro-jihadi Urdu-language newspaper. Bahadar offered Baitullah safe passage through to Afghanistan, as advised by the al Qaeda and Taliban delegation.



Agha Amin

all these sources are secondary sources.none lived in delhi in abdalis time.mountstuart elphinstone was a governor of bombay who lived in bombay and was born 9 years after ahmad shahs death.

you need to be taught the basics of research.you dont know the primacy of primary source over secondary sources.good cosmetic stuff that you can produce for a forum of layman non specialists like chowk.

cheers man .you have a long way to go in learning.
Agha Amin

Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account Of The Kingdom Of Caubul.

Re: # 125

The author said : “While describing the historic events I shall only quote and refer to non-Afghan writers and scholars to have an unbiased view of the events.�

Cited are:
1. (Henry Priestly, “Inhabitants of Afghanistan� p- 25.)
2. (Denzil Ibbetson, “Tribes and Castes of the Punjab" Vol-II & III).
3. Rita Joshi “The Role of Afghan Nobles during the Reign of Jahangir�
4. (S M Lateef, “History of the Punjab�, 1891, p-194)
5. (Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, “History of Tipu Sultan�, 1864, translated by Colonel W. Miles, p-182)
6. “Tarikh-i-Ahmadi�, as quoted by S M Lateef. The Sikhs suffered 30,000 killed.
7. Captain Murray, it did not exceed 12,000.
8. Rai Kanhia Lal, the Sikhs killed numbered about 24,000 men
9. Sir John Malcolm, the Sikhs lost more than 24,000 men.
10. Arjan Das Malik, places the Sikh dead at 25000.
11. (See S. M. Lateef, “History of the Punjab�, 1891, p- 285-6).
12. Syed Altaf Ali Brelvi, Life of Hafiz Rahmat Khan p-108-9
13. (Lieutenant General Sir G. Macmunn, “Afghanistan –From Darius to Amanullah, p-70.)
14. Abdul Karim Alvi,
15. Mountstuart Elphinston

mallesson and all other cited are secondary sources.

sources that i have cited are primary sources.


Agha Amin

mallesson and all other cited are secondary sources.

sources that i have cited are primary sources.


Agha Amin

#120

Here is what Intel says about the 80386...

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/crawford.htm

John H. Crawford
Intel Fellow, Digital Enterprise Group
Computer Architect
INTEL CORPORATION

John Crawford is an Intel Fellow, Digital Enterprise Group, and sets the architectural direction for emerging power and reliability technologies for future Intel® Processor Server platforms.

When Crawford joined Intel as a new college graduate in 1977, he worked as a software engineer developing software tools for Intel's 8086 processor; including the code generation phase of Intel's Pascal compiler for the 8086.

In 1982, he became the Chief Architect for the Intel386™ microprocessor. He was responsible for defining the company's 32-bit architectural extensions to the already successful 8086/186/286 16-bit product line. In this capacity, he set the architectural direction and later participated in the design of the processor by leading the microprogram development and test program generation. Crawford made similar contributions as Chief Architect of the Intel486™ processor. Crawford co-managed the design of the Pentium® processor up through a successful product launch in 1993.

Crawford headed the joint Architecture Research with Hewlett-Packard that developed the Itanium family architecture, Intel's 64-bit Enterprise product line. He has been involved with the Itanium family of products since its inception in 1994.

In 1995, Crawford received the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award for contributions to computer and digital systems architecture. Crawford received the IEEE Ernst Weber Engineering Leadership Recognition in June 1997. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002.

Crawford received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Brown University in 1975, and a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1977. Crawford holds 23 patents.

===========================================

We will now see Riaz warming up at the nets. He has a LOT of spinning to do....Anyway here is what the PuffedUP one has to say about himself

http://www.pakalumni.com/profile/riazul

"I was recognized as “Person of the Year� by PC Magazine for my contribution to 80386 program."

#119

Dude, you have no clue who I am or what I stand for. Hold a mirror to me?

The PuffedUP Madrassa Alumnus screams from the rooftop as to what he is. He suffers from verbal diahorrea, a terminal case of Foot-in-the-mouth disease.

Does it make me a "Bigot" if I don't buy his snake-oil?

[Sigh] Now be a nice boy and run along. I don't have any more time for you...

#119

Dude are you his mouth piece? Mind your own business.

# 120
The exhalted PuffedUP one...you have anything to refute about that educational institute in the great city of Newark, NJ called NJIT? I think it is a *Fine* school don't you?

Anyhoo, I just checked their website...I see that they mention several distinguished alumni including Wally Schirra the astronaut. They also mention this young Bangladeshi girl who graduated recently and hot a job at a Wall Street firm. I thought that was really nice of them. They also mentioned a Indian guy who opened an on-line wine business and was successful.

I mention the above because, I looked for your name dude -- everywhere -- nothing. Perhaps they are not aware that you claim to have won the "Person of the Year" award from PC magazine in 1988. Being the weekend and all, decided to check it out. I found out that John Crawford was given the award in 1988 for the Intel 80386 chip design.

I am now trying to check through friends at Intel if you worked with John Crawford and if so in what capacity. Rest assured I will report what I find out. So far it does not look good for you. But it won't be long.

I was amazed at what info is available on the net. I now have your address and phone number. :-)

Re: # #116 and 118
CoolAl, Is there any limit to your shameless bigotry and intolerance? Are you totally incapable of a civil discourse?
You bring nothing but shame to the people and religion you purport to represent.

I guess it is hopeless to expect any better from hate-filled low lives like you.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 118

CoolAL,

are you angry with Riaz because he holds the mirror to your face...and punctures your puffed up Hindutvs ego like a pin punctures a balloon...or do you have something else against him?

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Re # 112

pavocavalry, please peruse what a scholar writes about

Amad Shah Abdali:

www.geocities.com/scn_pk/warisshah.html

'Afghan invaders and Waris Shah'

Rejoinder by Brig (R) Haroon Rashid

This is in reference to an article titled “Afghan Invaders and Waris Shah� published in “The Dawn� of 22nd July 2003, (National Pages).

The Article by one "STM" writing under 'Punjabi Themes' abounds in baseless derogatory, incriminating and vituperative remarks, some of which tantamount to naked abuses to the race of Afghans known for their valour and religious pursuits. The irresponsible accusations as under have hurt the feelings of millions -- Afghans and non-Afghans alike.

To quote Waris Shah according to the author:

“Wang Kabuli kuttian gird hoyan dow dow alalhisab laga gayyan.�

A dispassionate perusal of the article, testing its salient points on the litmus of the logical inferences drawn from the relevant historic facts, shall help us in validating or rejecting the author’s acrimonious comments and the accusations of his ‘Sufi’.

Salient Points of the Article in question

1. Nadir Shah Afshar, Ahmad Shah Abdali and his two successors, called ‘Turks’, invaded India under the lame excuse of ‘strengthening the Delhi Rulers against the Sikhs and Marhattas’. Nadir Shah massacred and devastated Delhi.
2. They committed inhuman atrocities on the locals, particularly Ahmad Shah Abdali when the latter invaded the Punjab and defeated Shah Nawaz Khan, the Governor of Lahore.
3. Waris Shah volunteers to join Shah Nawaz Khan against Ahmad Shah Abdali.
4. Ahmad Shah Abdali mercilessly plunders Lahore after defeating Shah Nawaz. His lust for loot was limitless.
5. Waris Shah rejoices over the so-called defeat of Ahmad Shah Abdali at the hands of the so-called Mughals near Delhi.
6. The whole of the Punjab was devastated by the Afghans.

Relevant Historic Facts

The Afghans played a very important role in the medieval history of India. The poverty of the soil, lack of economic and sustenance resources and the struggle for existence made the Afghans to leave their home-land and descend into the plains to sustain themselves. They made their first expedition into India in 705 AD, when their contingent from Khurasan, then under the rule of Abdul Malik Hijjaj bin Yousuf joined Muhammad bin Qasim to Sind (Henry Priestly, “Inhabitants of Afghanistan� p- 25.). In the Punjab the Afghan settlements can be traced as early as 10th century. Most of the Afghans who accompanied Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and Sultan Shahab-ud-Din Ghori remained behind on the newly acquired land and founded their settlements all over the Punjab and Sirhind (Denzil Ibbetson, “Tribes and Castes of the Punjab" Vol-II & III., also see Rita Joshi “The Role of Afghan Nobles during the Reign of Jahangir�). The country between River Beas and Sutlej was once called the Afghanistan of Punjab (Afghana-i-Hoshiarpur). Subsequently, the Mughals used the Afghans to neutralise the refractory Rajputs.

While describing the historic events I shall only quote and refer to non-Afghan writers and scholars to have an unbiased view of the events.

1. Nadir Shah Afshar belonged to a clan of Tatar tribe which is of Turk origin and has nothing to do with the Afghans (S M Lateef, “History of the Punjab�, 1891, p-194). In fact Nadir Shah was a bitter eliminator of the Afghans. His same obsession became the cause of his invasion of Hind. During his siege of Kandahar a large number of Afghans had fled and took refuge in Hind. Nadir Shah sent his confidential agent, Ali Mardan Khan as ambassador to the Court of Muhammad Shah, the Emperor of India, to prevent the influx of the Afghans to Hind. Nadir Shah was determined to extirpate the whole race of the Afghan fugitives from Ghazni. He requested Emperor Muhammad Shah to expel those Afghans who had already found an asylum in Hind. The Emperor promised to do the needful but due to the Marhatta menace he did not take any concrete measures in this context. Nadir Shah reminded the Emperor three times, but to no avail. Ultimately he decided to invade India. (S M Lateef, “History of the Punjab� p-198-204).

2. Ahmad Shah Abdali, except for his invasion of Punjab when he came to punish the debauch, licentious, and carousal Shah Nawaz Khan who had killed his religious mentor Pir Sabir Shah, had been asked time and again by the local Muslims of the Punjab and Sirhind to protect the latter from the atrocities of the Marhattas and Sikhs. Throughout his life he had been fighting against the latter’s menace to the Muslims of the Punjab. After him even his grandsons had been invited by Tipu Sultan to come to the rescue of the Muslims of Hind. (Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, “History of Tipu Sultan�, 1864, translated by Colonel W. Miles, p-182). Lack of money and the local intrigues were the main causes why they did not respond to such calls in time. I shall quote two instances out of many of Ahmad Shah Abdali’s struggle against the Sikhs and Marhattas.

a. In 1762, Ahmad Shah Abdali arrived first in Jandialah and then Lahore. The Sikhs fled to Sirhind. With Shah’s presence at Lahore, the Sikhs got slack, thinking that he had no intentions of their pursuit. His sudden withdrawal to Lahore and the rumours that this time he wanted to advance beyond Delhi had made the Sikhs complacent. They did not speedily march into Malwa hills as usual. The Shah soon made them repent their blunder. He had come to know about their presence near Maler Kotla. He sallied out from Lahore at the head of his troops with utmost precaution and secrecy. He, covering a distance of 150 miles in about 36 hours, caught the Sikhs unaware and unprepared near Kot Rohera. Joined by the Afghan chiefs of Maler Kotla, Ahmad Shah on 5th May 1762 cut their route of retreat and surrounded them from all sides. Suddenly a panic seized them and general stampede followed. In the evening when Afghans stopped at a pond to water their horses, the Sikhs availed the opportunity. They fled towards Hariana and Barnala leaving behind about thirty thousands dead. Historians variously estimate the Sikh’s casualties from 12000 to 30,000. The survivors were wounded to a man. Tahmas Khan a servant to Mir Mannu and author of “Tahmas Nama,� who took part in the battle, places the Sikh dead at 25000 while Rattan Singh was told by his father a figure of 30,000. 5th May 1762 is remembered as `Bada Ghallughara' or the biggest holocaust in the Sikh History. Views of various non-Afghan writers are given below:-
i. “Tarikh-i-Ahmadi�, as quoted by S M Lateef, the Sikhs suffered 30,000 killed.
ii. Captain Murray, it did not exceed 12,000.
iii. Rai Kanhia Lal, the Sikhs killed numbered about 24,000 men.
iv. Sir John Malcolm, the Sikhs lost more than 24,000 men.
v. Arjan Das Malik, places the Sikh dead at 25000.

In the absence of Ahmad Shah Abdali from the Punjab, whenever the Sikhs got an opportunity they literally devastated the whole country, subjected the Muslims to many outrages, indignities, and hardships. They committed sacrilegious outrages to the Muslim mosques and shrines. On one occasion they chopped off ears and noses of all Muslim butchers of Lahore and expelled them from there. (See S. M. Lateef, “History of the Punjab�, 1891, p- 285-6).

b. As for the Marhattas are concerned the Third Battle of Panipat is the biggest proof of Ahmad Shah Abdali’s desire to liberate the Muslims of
Sirhind and Punjab from the Marhatta’s clutches. The incident on which Waris Shah rejoices is the massacre of a small Afghan contingent at Delhi at the hands of Sooraj Mal Jat and not the Mughals. The Marhattas army easily occupied Delhi where the small Durrani contingent that held it was cut to pieces after a spirited defence. Kanjpura on the banks of Jamuna River, sixty miles to the north of Delhi, was next besieged and the whole Afghan garrison was killed (Also see Syed Altaf Ali Brelvi, Life of Hafiz Rahmat Khan p-108-9). Ahmad Shah was encamped on the left bank of the Jamuna River, which was swollen by rains. The massacre of the Kanjpura garrison, within the sight of the Durrani camp, exasperated him to such an extent that he ordered crossing of the river at all costs. S M Lateef, “History of the Punjab�, p-235, quotes "Tarikh-i-Ahmadi", and writes:

“The Shah is said to have recited some verses of the Holy Quran, and, having blown them on an arrow, discharged from his quiver into the river. Raising then the cry “Bismillah-i-Allah-o- Akbar� meaning, ‘in the name of God the great God’ he plunged into the river, followed by his bodyguards and the troops.�

The Durranis crossed the Jamuna on 23rd October. Ahmad Shah, along with other Afghan chiefs of Hind, rushed to punish Marhattas. The Afghans caught the advance guard of Marhatta army at Sarai Sanbhalak (For more detail see S. Altaf Ali Brelvi “Life of Hafiz Rahmat Khan�,p-107-28). The Marhattas retired to Panipat. The Marhatta force consisted of 300,000 men, including 55,000 Marhatta Cavalry, and had three hundred pieces of cannon The “Gul-i-Rahmat� and the “Tarikh-i-Najibabad� by Akbar Shah Khan give the number of the Marhatta forces at three lacs. In local tales common among the people of Panipat the number is raised to nine lacs, which seems an exaggeration.

Ahmad Shah had 40,000 Afghans and Persians, 13,000 Indian Afghan cavalry and 38,000 Indian Afghan infantry, with 70 pieces of cannon borrowed from the Indian allies. According to the best accounts the number of Marhattas slain numbered to about 200,000, while 22,000 prisoners, 50,000 horses and an immense booty fell into the hands of the victors. News of the defeat flashed throughout India, couched in this code: “Two pearls have been dissolved, twenty-seven gold ‘mohurs’ have been lost, and of the silver and copper total cannot be cast up�.(Lieutenant General Sir G. Macmunn, “Afghanistan –From Darius to Amanullah, p-70.)

The Marhatta Peshwa or the king died of despondency. They retired beyond Narbada, never to recover their power. Rudyard Kipling in poem “With Scindia to Delhi� wrote:

“The children of the hills of the Khost before our lances ran,
We drove the black Rohillas back as cattle to pen.
It was then we needed Mulhar Rao to end what we began,
A thousand men had saved the charge; he fled the field with ten,
I held by Scindia, my lord, as close as man might be;
A Soobah of the Deccan asks no aid to guard its life;
But Holkar’s horse were flying and our chiefest chiefs were cold,
And like a flame among us leaped the long lean Northern knife.�

3. About Ahmad Shah Durrani, S M Lateef writes,

“After the victory at Panipat, the whole of Hindustan lay at the mercy of the Abdali conqueror. But he had no wish to ascend the vacant throne of the Mughals; so after remaining at Delhi for a few days and arranging the affairs of India, he returned to Punjab, which had already been ceded to him, and with which he appeared contented.�

4. Abdul Karim Alvi, the historian, narrates an interesting conversation here. When Mir Mannu presented himself before Ahmad Shah, the latter sarcastically asked him, “How is it that you did not present yourself before the threshold of your lord before this to do him homage?� “Because�, replied Mir Mannu, “I had another lord to serve.� “And why,� rejoined the Shah satirically, “ did not your lord and master succour you at this moment of your distress?� “Because,� answered Mannu boldly, “he was sure that his servant would take care of himself�. “And supposing,� continued the Shah, “I had fallen in your hands, what treatment would you have shown to me?� “I should have severed your majesty’s head from your body and sent it to my king�, was the reply. “And now that you are at my mercy, what do you expect of me�? “If you are a merchant,� said Mannu,� sell me: if executioner and tyrant, cut off my head: but if you are a king show me kingly generosity and pardon my life.� The Shah was pleased with the dauntless spirit of the youth, and conferred upon him the title of ‘Farzand Khan Bahadur Rustam-i- Hind’.

5. Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote about Ahmad Shah Abdali:

"His military courage and activity are spoken of with admiration, both by his own subjects and the nations with whom he was engaged, either in wars or alliances. He seems to have been naturally disposed to mildness and clemency and though it is impossible to acquire sovereign power and perhaps, in Asia, to maintain it, without crimes; yet the memory of no eastern prince is stained with fewer acts of cruelty and injustice."

"… He treated Moollahs and holy men with great respect, both from policy and inclination. He was himself a divine and an author and was always ambitious of the character of a saint. (“Account of the Kingdom of Caubul� 1815)

7. Ahmad Shah Abdali was a distinguished warrior, religious, generous and a kind-hearted king. He was a true Muslim and never believed in pomp and show of the royal courts. Unlike his contemporary kings and rajas, he did not even have a crown. His devotion to Islam further added to his simplicity and service to God. Being an accomplished poet and writer himself, he once wrote:

“I capture every province with the aid of God; It is with his help that I go everywhere without failure. Yet I, Ahmad, consider the world worthless and unimportant. I shall leave the world behind and go the next, armed only with my faith.�

Inferences Drawn

1. Nadir Shah Afshar was a Tatar and not an Afghan, hence Ahmad Shah and his two successors nor any other Afghan could be held responsible for the deeds of the former.
2. Surprisingly the author and his Sufi does not say any thing about the brutalities of the Sikhs and Marhattas on the Muslims of the Punjab, rather rejoice over the massacre of a small Muslim Afghan garrison in the Delhi Fort and Kanjpura. Furthermore, they are ignorant of the complete victory of the Afghans over the Marhattas, which is worldwide accepted and appreciated as a classic strategy of the Afghans against a force many time superior to them in men and material.
3. The pages of history bear out that Ahmad Shah Abdali was a kind-hearted person, prone to clemency and forgiveness. He spent his life in chasing the
Sikhs and the Marhattas so that Muslims of the Punjab and Sirhind could live in peace.
4. There is no evidence that Ahmad Shah Abdali ever looted the Muslims of Punjab or elsewhere for whose protection he used to come from Kabul and Kandahar.
5. There was no dearth of Muslims in the Punjab and Sirhind, yet they looked for the Afghans to shield them against the Sikhs. Certainly the Afghans were not super human beings, nevertheless, the trust reposed in them by the former clearly shows the Afghans’ gallantry, chivalry, the will to fight for their co-religionists, the acumen to administer the conquered territories, and perseverance and steadfastness to bear the hardships of war and weather for their Muslim brothers in the Punjab.
6. I have not been able to find the answers as to why:
a. Waris Shah should rejoice on the massacre of the Afghans who, according to the author, had been invited by Shah Waliullah of Delhi and fought for the Muslims.
b. Waris Shah should call the Afghans ‘the thieves’; a thief steals, while the Afghans were the conquerors and could get any thing by force if they wanted to.
c. Waris Shah and the author should close their eyes to the Sikhs’ ‘Satnami Movement’, their atrocities committed on the Muslims in Lahore and elsewhere and as reported by many historians of the time.
d. Waris Shah should abuse the proud race of the Afghans as ‘Kabuli Kuttian’
e. Waris Shah should join a debauch, who had Hindu and Sikh keeps, a licentious and a pervert, a killer of a religious and pious man, and fight a Muslim who came to punish such an enemy of Islam.

The only thing that comes to my mind is “Birds of a feather flock together.�

Brig (R) Haroon Rashid
The writer is a scholar and author of the ten-volume book collection ‘History of the Pathans’ (2002)

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Re: # 112

Agha Amin...of course...#98 and #111 are Pashtuns point of experiencing it...#112 is the Hindu/Marhatan...third is the British, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who wrote of Ahmad Shah:

“His military courage and activity are spoken of with admiration, both by his own subjects and the nations with whom he was engaged, either in wars or alliances. He seems to have been naturally disposed to mildness and clemency and though it is impossible to acquire sovereign power and perhaps, in Asia, to maintain it, without crimes; yet the memory of no eastern prince is stained with fewer acts of cruelty and injustice."

Re: # 113
Pavo,

I gave you the view of Yoichi Shimatsu, an independent outsider, a respected editor of Tokyo-based Japan Times, who has no ax to grind and knows the Indi-Pakistan issues and LeT well.

I know you have your own biases and your mind is made up. So I don't expect you or your kind to pay heed to anything that conflicts with your own pre-conceived notions, which I consider completely misguided and dangerous for the entire region.

But regardless of your own myopic thinking, there is clear realization in the world, particularly in the Obama administration and European leaders, that Kashmir can not be allowed to fester for too long, as evident from the recent William Burns statement in New Delhi. Burns said earlier this momth, “It remains our view that the resolution (of Kashmir by India and Pakistan) will have to take into account the views of the Kashmiri people.�

Until there is a resolution of Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of all parties, there will be more attacks like the Mumbai and parliament attacks, even if Pak government tries to crush LeT and other Kashmir groups. Radicalization will intensify on both sides of the border, making a nuclear confrontation a real possibility. As Stephen Cohen recently said, "Not a few Indian generals and strategists have told me that if only America would strip Pakistan of its nuclear weapons then the Indian army could destroy the Pakistan army and the whole thing would be over. This of course is both silly and dangerous—and could lead to a catastrophic misjudgment when the fifth India-Pakistan crisis does come. We were close to one last year, I have no doubt that the people who tried to trigger a new India-Pakistan war will try again."

I hope the "New Delhi's institutional inertia against Kashmir talks" as Yoichi Shimatsu puts it will not lead to mutually assured destruction in the Subcontinent.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

this is to clear the lies and utter b______t being stated by characters like riaz haq about kargil.

there was no let at kargil.all regulars and disgrace musharraf abandoned them:--

Kargil-A Military AnalysisPosted: Feb 16, 2008 Sat 07:12 am Views: 392 Interacts: 0
Kargil-A Military Analysis

15 June 2003

A.H Amin





Kargil stands as perhaps the final military effort on Pakistans part to settle the Kashmir dispute by military means.

Analysis has mostly centred around political aspects of the operation while the military aspects have been largely left to the imagination of the public.Lately it has been claimed that Kargil was launched to bail out Mujahideen as a last resort ! This is an insult to the memory of the Pakistani armed forces "Volunteers" who died in that Himalayan wasteland without a funeral and in circumstances of unimaginable misery !

Kargil operation cannot be understood unless the personalities and motives of the principal characters are examined ! Every action in history is the final culmination of a personality's self perception,ambition and subconscious as well as conscious urges.

In this context the Kargil operation was born out of two key factors ! One was the personality of general Pervez Musharraf and the second was the unceremonial manner in which Nawaz Sharif ousted General Jahangir Karamat Musharraf's predecessor army chief of Pakistan Army.

Musharraf as those who have served with him know which includes this scribe also has always been an intensely ambitious man ! One hallmark of his personality is that he wants to stand out as a great military commander ! Propelled by an enormous ego wherever he served he endeavoured to do something extraordinary ! However fate did not allow him the glory in battle which his other coursemates like shabbir sharif achieved ! In 1965 Musharraf was a subaltern in an artillery unit which saw little action apart from supporting operatiions by indirect fire ! The 16 SP unlike 3 SP which fired on Indian tanks with direct gunsights at Chawinda stayed in conventional artillery role ! In 1971 Musharrafs commando company was not involved in action ! Nevertheless Musharraf compensated for this lack of combat laurels by achieving laurels in army courses and in various command assignments ! His final opportunity came when he ascended to the post of army chief in a situation when the army was in a subservient position vis a vis the civilian head of state , something which was regarded by the military herarchy as worse than blasphemy !

The forced retirement of General Karamat by prime minister Nawaz Sharif was regarded as a personal defeat by the Pakistani military brass and by Musharraf who felt that he would be a far weaker army chief under a strong prime minister who had asserted civilian control over the military machine !

These two factors were the fathers of the Kargil operation ! Ambition accompanied by a perception that the Pakistani public must be convinced that the soldiers were better than politicians.

Kargil at the military level was the brainchild of three men i.e General Musharraf the army chief ,Aziz the then army Chief of general Staff and Mahmud the then corps commander 10 Corps ! Musharraf and Mahmud were motivated by intense ambition to achieve military glory and Aziz was motivated by his Kashmiri ancestry plus military ambition.The person they selected to execute the operation was again one distinguished by out of proportion ambition i.e Major General Javed Hassan , author of a book in 1990s that claimed that India was on its way to disintegration and in which mughal king Humayun was resurrected from the grave to fight at Second Battle of Panipat !

In November December 1998 just one month after Musharraf's elevation to the post of army chief volunteers were asked for at the army level for an operation in Kashmir ! Many thousand volunteered including both officers and men from various units !

At no stage did any Mujahideen enter Kargil ! This is a piece of fiction and has no veracity !



These were attached to NLI units in the 80 Brigade sector for training.The principal idea of the plan was to infiltrate four battalions of NLI (Northern light Infantry) stationed in 80 Brigade Sector into Kargil Heights overlooking and dominating the Srinagar Ladakh road the lone Indian link with the Siachen and Leh Sectors ! The idea being to cut the lifeline of Indian supplies to Leh and Siachen Sectors ! Indian held heights in Kargil were to be occupied in February 1999 while Indian infantry had abandoned these heights at the approach of winter snow as an annual routine since 1948.In occupying the heights no fighting was involved ! The real issue was that of supplying Pakistani troops holding these heights which was far more difficult from the Pakistani side than from the Indian side !

Plans were kept secret and even the Commander 10 Corps Engineers of was not allowed to enter the Operations Room in 10 Corps Pindi.

The distance involved in reaching the heights varied from 15 to 35 kilometres from Pakistan side over mountains as high as 13 to 19,000 feet .To do this each battalion was divided into two parts , one acting as porters taking supplies forward and one half occupying the heights .

The heights were occupied as per the plan but the four units while doing so were severly exhausted ! In March-April the Indians discovered the Pakistani presence and reacted severely ! Severe fighting continued till July once the Indians finally re-captured the heights after Pakistani troops had been left to the mercy of Indian artillery and overwhelming troop concentrations as a result of the Blair House Accord !

A brief military examination of the plan reveals following weaknesses.(1) Failure to assess strategic repercussions of the operation at geopolitic and national strategic level .(2) Logistic failure in incorrect appreciation of supplying the troops . (3) Failure to understand that by occupying the heights the Indians were driven into a corner and had no choice but to retaliate , not for glory as was the Pakistani military's case but for pure military survival . (4) At a more subtle level the use of the Chora-Batalik Sector as a future spring board for Pakistani operations against India was sealed since Indians heavily fortified this sector for any future war.

The Pakistani planners failed to assess that war as an instrument of policy is no longer in vogue at the international level and their temporary military success would only bring greater international censure and a negative war mongering image without any corresponding military gain at the strategic level.

This scribe interviewed a former commander of FCNA and 10 Corps about logistics and General Imtiaz Warraich replied as following :--

" We initiated this operation but failed to support it with comprehensive operational planning and above all buildup for essential logistic support without which no operation can succeed"......'" the principal reason for our heavy casualties and lack of progress was unimaginative and callous logistic operations to support the units".

At one point the sepoys who had volunteered to fight and had come from many other infantry units to the NLI units refused to act as porters carrying supplies over 15 kilometres and were so exasperated that they defied Javed Hassan's personal orders in unit durbars to carry supplies and when Javed Hassn threw his cap on the ground threatened to march over it unless they were not employed as porters ! One such volunteer told this scribe that we had volunteered to fight ,not to act as porters ! The same fact was also mentioned in ISI chief Ziauddin Butt's secret report to Nawaz Sharif prepared by an Engineer officer on Zia's staff in ISI !

The failure to assess the "Enemy" factor was another strategic planning failure at the highest level .I asked General Warraich this question and he stated " Capture of Kargil Heights would totally stop all Indian movement to Leh and Ladakh Sectors unlike Pakistan in Siachen and Indians had no option but to do and die " !

Lust for glory and honour in battle are perfectly reasonable aspirations as long as they are accompanied by commensurate military talent in the generals who are at the helm of affairs ! This was sadly lacking in the Musharraf team who planned the operation. Their egos were many times larger than their real military talent !

By promoting an intensely ambitious man to the rank of army chief Nawaz did a favour which could only be repaid by betrayal ! The plan was based not on sound military reasoning but on burning ambition and an unrealistic desire for glory by men far away from the heat of battle ! No one above major level died , yet in a report to the military secretarys branch Javed Hassan recommended retiring 75 % of officers involved in the operation below colonel level !

The prime minister was not fully briefed because of ulterior motives ! Had the operation succeeded it would have been projected as a proof of Musharraf's Napoleonic brilliance and if it failed as it did Nawaz Sharif would have been made the scapegoat !

The operations planners were distinguished neither by loftiness of thought,nor audacity in the conduct of battle athe operational or strategic level.Thus boldness at tactiacl level was sacrificed because of operational and tactical timidity at the highest level.

No one appreciated that the army men who were employed , and it is a fiction that there was a single Mujahid in Kargil , had flesha nd blood ! These men mourned by a few hundred families were sons husbands fathers and brothers !

The Kargil operation at the military level is a watershed ! Idealism that propelled many hundred to die in those Himalayan wastes is buried for good ! Now there is a new breed which dominates the army ! The ones who aim at going on lush UN secondments or to KESC,WAPDA or as well paid consulatants !

What can one conclude ! It was the human heart that failed in Kargil and this heart which failed was housed in the ribcage of men sitting in the GHQ and not on the rocky pinnacles of Kargil ! Once the supply lines were closed under Indian threat of a counter attack , these brave men all Pakistan Army regulars were abandoned to die , pounded by artillery fire , bayoneted by overwhelming numbers , weakened by starvation ! Who can hear their cries ! Our ears are covered with heaps of lies ! Truth died at Kargil ! What remains is a body guard of lies!

Agha Amin

note on ahmad shah abdali and durranis:--

1-while ghilzais were the real liberators of afghanistan the abdalis were collaborators of persians.
2-ahmad shah abdalis golden moment was when his master nadir shah afshar was assasinated and he bolted away with the persian treasure.
3-defeated by mughal emperor mohammad shah rangeela at sirhind in 1748.
4-looted delhi many times in between 1749 and 1761.mir and sauda have written numerable poems on his style of looting.defeated the marathas in 1761 not because they were a danger to muslims but because the marathas had begun expanding into punjab and he perceived them as a long term threat to afghanistan.
5-looted punjab many times.
6-confirmed many sikh chiefs on his line of communication from lahore to karnal as chiefs of states of jind ,patiala,kapurthala,farid kot etc so that they should not loot his loot rom delhi.

a great pashtun hero no doubt.

his lifes best biography is by ganda singh.
--------------------------------------------------

SHAH GARDI:--

1-17 JANUARY TO 22 FEBRUARY 1757:--

timur shah son of ahmad shah married to mughal emperor alamgir 2 daughter--100 wives of wazeer intizamuddaulah carried back by ahmad shah--all houses in delhi numbered and tax imposed on each.thousands of women raped

2-31 MARCH 1757 TO 10 APRIL 1757

durrani again sacked delhi--married 16 year daughter of emperor mohammad shah--handsome boys and pretty girls seized and taken to afghanistan--head of naqshbandi family has left a detailed account available in national archives india and at india office library london

3-14 TO 27 JANUARY 1760

delhi again looted and raped--mir dard has left a detailed account

4-29 FEBRUARY -23 MARCH 1760

delhi again looted by abdali.tahmas khan miskin has left a detailed account

5-29 JANUARY 1761 TO 22 MARCH 1761

after defeating marathas at panipat , to recover the costs of war delhi again subjected to loot and raoe by abdali

THIS IS NOT CRITICISM AT ALL.

THIS IS HOW BUSINESS WAS DONE THEN.


Agha Amin

Ahmad Shah Abdalii's Life

Ahmad Shah Abdali was devoutly religious, and wanted to honor God and his instructions, according to his Muslim faith. He was knowledgeable in religion, and Sufism held great influence in his life. He followed two great religious leaders, Shah Fuqirullah of Jalalabad and Mian Mohammad Omar of Peshawar. It is said that some 17,500 followers of Mian Mohammad Omar Sufi aided Ahmad Shah's army in the famous Panipat battle near Delhi, India, as did warriors from almost every Pashtun tribe, bringing them victory.

Ahmad Shah Durrani firmly believed in Pashtun ways and promoted Afghan family character. During his reign, building national unity was stressed to such a degree that tribal feuds gradually and steadily faded. His policies stressed equality, and freedom for individuals were expanded. Friendship treaties were formulated with neighboring states based upon the principle that freedom is a natural right of all races.

Ahmad Shah Abdali steadfastly supported the Pashtun code of honor, customs and characters under the essence of Islam. The Afghan ruler accepted other cultures by inviting the right to coexist in the land of Afghans free of any discrimination. His only terms were that others should appreciate Afghans and be no threat to their independence.

Ahmad Shah was not only a heroic warrior but also an elegant and charming poet. His poetry and prose are classics with political, religious, humanitarian and national overtones.

Ahmad Shah wrote tender, powerful, simple, and sensitive poetry. Like other oriental poets, his poetry speaks of grief, satire, bitterness, joy, reverence and humility. Ahmad Shah wrote some 2,500 poems.

A compilation of Ahmaed Shah's Diwan exists, as compiled by Professor Habibi. The book is a monumental volume of magnificent poetry and prose Ahmad Shah wrote in his native mother tongue, Pashtu.

The well-known nineteenth-century thinker, Sayyed Jamaluddin Afghani writes in his famous book, Tetmat-al-bayan fi Tarikh-al-Afghan, (published in Arabic) that Ahmad Shah took great interest in all his tribes and considered them all for strengthening national unity. He gave equal attention to all of them. He formed a nine-member council that represented each tribe from around the country for the purpose of advising him in all affairs. The council was powerful and heard in all matters pertaining to the country and building and maintaining national unity.

Ahmad Shah was famous for being a just and fair leader. It is said that during his reign a lion and deer could live together and drink from the same well. During Ahmad Shah's reign there were administrative posts such as First Minister, Finance Minister, Controller, Tax and Revenue Minister, Chief Justice, Chief of Army, Minister of Defense, Interior Minister, ambassadors and others.

Historian Ghobar writes in Persian that Ahmad Shah Abdali predominantly spent his life with the sword, gun, battles and politics. His character and morals were supreme.

The public considered him a high religious personality. He advised his sons to treat criminals with respect and not to look down upon them. He taught his children not to bow their heads or backs during greetings. They were also encouraged to stay in contact with the learned and prominent.

English Colonel Milson writes that Ahmad Shah Durrani was constantly in contact with all his tribal people and their leaders. He sought their opinions in all national matters and followed Afghan traditions with keen interest. Milson witnesses that Ahmad Shah expressed to his nation, "I am your King. My duty is to keep you independent, preserve your pride and dignity, and to secure your prosperity and unity."

Re: # 108

The simplest way to interprett an american leader is to take the opposite meaning of what he/she said.

Certainly this is surgical operation which has no other option left.taliban cancer of terrorism must need this operation.Pains of this operation should be tolerate because all medicated agreements and negotiation had failed.
This is need for survival of nation.

Re: # 107
Hersh has categorically rejected the rumor about Cheney's involvement in BB murder. Dawn published its retraction weeks ago.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Waziristan Operation-Coverup for Benazir ?

It is possible that waziristan operation is a coverup for benazir assasination.

Its quite clear after seymour hershs revelations and siskinds book the way of the world that Benazirs murder could have been the handiwork of a special assasination squad organised by Dick Cheney and professional assasin General Mc Crystal now commanding US forces in Afghanistan.

On the other hand one obscure Mehsud commander has suddenly emerged who accuses baitulla of benazirs murder.

It appears that baitullah is the bad dog for the whole benazir affair.blame baitullah and get over the affair.

what a tragedy.

one is at a loss to understand what the much trumpeted waziristan operation will achieve.

its a sheer wastage of pakistan airforce bombs and expensive cobra helicopter rockets each costing in between a 50,000 USD tp half a million USD per bomb or rocket,while baitullah conveniently relaxes in birmal in paktika province in afghanistan.


Waziristan a cover up that suits all including pakistani politicians and americans.

an undoubted failure no doubt.

Agha Amin

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Re: # 101

Riaz sahib...I always wondered...but what a shame that some one would sell oneself so cheap!

Re: # 102
Pew, Your side has dominated all the discussion and debate about LeT. The world needs to hear the other side as well to make up its mind. Shimatsu is a respectable, independent, Japanese journalist who knows a thing or two about the much-maligned LeT. He is sharing his views in the piece I posted.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 100 Riaz

"... Lashkar is respected by professional soldiers on both side. A Pakistani hero who fought on the Baltistan heights, Corporal Ahmed, told me of his admiration for the stoicism of these jihadis, who wore sandals to battle in the snow. ..."

We must either live on different planets where the meaning of respect is opposite to yours, or you just don't get it. All I remember is that when the Northern Light Infantry and Lashkar dead were abandoned by the Pak military in Kargil, it was not respect - indeed it was an extreme form of disrespect that the dead were not even accorded the honor of a proper burial by the cowards who sent them in the first place. It was left to the Indian Army to give Islamic last rites to these abandoned dead.

Re: # 100 Riaz

Sahib, you should stick to developing business plans for the trillion dollar halal business. You know little of the damage done to Pakistan, its reputation, and the 'Kashmir cause' by the LeT.

Re: # 98
Goldfinger,
Have you ever wondered why Pavo and TrichMir and few others are so well received, even cheered on by our fellow Chowkies from our friendly neighbor to the East?
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 94
Here's a piece by Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of The Japan Times in Tokyo and journalism lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Shimatsu covered the Kashmir issue and Afghan War for years for Japan Times:

Blaming the Lahore-based Lashkar is all-too easy since the outfit was once the West Point of the Kashmir insurgency. The Army of the Righteous, as it is known in English, was a paramilitary force par excellence that routinely mauled the Indian Army along the Himalayan ridge that forms the Line of Control of divided Kashmir. In an attack on the strategic town of Kargil in late spring 1999, Lashkar broke through India’s alpine defense line and came close to forcing New Delhi to the negotiating table.

Along the sawtooth LoC, Lashkar is respected by professional soldiers on both side. A Pakistani hero who fought on the Baltistan heights, Corporal Ahmed, told me of his admiration for the stoicism of these jihadis, who wore sandals to battle in the snow. At a checkpoint in Indian-controlled Kargil, an army captain wearing a Sikh turban said frankly that nobody in the Indian Army could fight man-to-man against Lashkar.

Lashkar earned its reputation in clean-fought mountain warfare, pitting lightly armed guerrillas against Indian armor and superior firepower.

In its finest hours, these fighters would never consider the dirty tactics used against civilians in Mumbai, for example, the gangland-style executions using a shot to the back of a kneeling captive’s head. That is more typical of the Mumbai underworld.

Like many of the misguided decisions in the war on terror, the banning of Lashkar by Pakistan in 2002 did more harm than good. Without central discipline and a unifying cause, splinter groups broke off and many a cadet went solo. During his residency in Karachi, Dawood is known to have sent his young recruits for training by former Lashkar instructors. The moralistic cause had degenerated into a school for hitmen.

Conservative politicians in New Delhi have seized on the brutal Mumbai attack to discredit the nationalist revolt in Kashmir and undermine the five U.N. Security Council resolutions (1948-1965) that call for a plebiscite on the status of the once-independent country. By linking Lashkar to Mumbai, the Indian right hope to deter President-elect Barack Obama from his oft-stated policy of bringing the Kashmir issue to the fore.

These same politicians hope to repeat their successful handling of Bill Clinton, who reversed the American policy of sanctions for India’s nuclear bomb tests in 1998 within two short years by proposing nuclear cooperation with New Delhi. The Enron gas-fired electricity plant outside Mumbai played a major role in that about-face.

So did the Battle of Kargil. A greater international leader would have seen that the Islamic tactical victory was the key for dislodging New Delhi’s institutional inertia against Kashmir talks. Clinton intervened in the Kargil battle by pressuing Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif to order a pullback, and the Indian artillery in violation of the truce opened fire on the retreating guerrillas.

The Kashmiris again lost their right of self-determination, the U.N. resolution remained unresolved, and America got nothing out of the deal. Worse yet, this policy failure shattered any lingering hopes among Islamic militants for American evenhandedness. The inevitable consequence of the Kargil betrayal was 911, and the rise not of Laskar-e-Taiba but of Al Qaeda.

President-elect Obama should not submit to the hysteria being whipped up over the Mumbai atrocities. Mumbai was a criminal event that India’s elite cannot face up to, for Dawood’s D-Company was and still is their procurer of starlets, smuggled gold, drugs, loans for gambling debts and urban land for their new hotels and office blocks. Don’t mix up the healthy oranges for the rotten apples Kashmir is a historic judgment awaiting the verdict of a popular referendum.


Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

#95 Posted by TrichMir on June 19, 2009 1:39:16 pm

" ... every Pashtun, who has an iota of self respect and pride, vehemently hate both these religious nuts and this evil state that was created by the low life hate-mongering scum and we were dragged into this filth against our wishes"

So true. If there is any consolation, some of my unfortunate folks have been uprooted multiple times since 1947. First to India and then after 1984 massacres, some of these folks had to move back to punjab.

It's interesting that before 1947 when our brown sahibs took charge, folks did not have to uproot themselves during muslim, sikh or british rules. They use to say - rulers change, riyaya does not.

May god look after interests of our average citizens.

Re: # 35

agha amin...you have picked out points selectively from Ahmed Shah Abdali's life wanting to make him look bad...which is understandable since you write more from the the Marhata/Sikh perspective than that of the Pastuns. For example you state that he suffered a setback against Mohammad Shah Rangeela (and Mir Manu at Manpur)...but you didn't say that he returned in 1750 to defeat them, and in 1751 to do so again, when he again defeated Mir mannu, conquered Kashmir, and forced the Mughul Emperor, Mohammad Shah, to cede to him the country as far east as Sirhind. You failed to mention that he was the founder of the Durrani Empire and is regarded by many to be the founder of modern Afghanistan, and Afghans call him Ahmad Shah Baba, beloved of all the Pashtun tribes of his time, with whom he would sit on the flooras one of them, who all rallied to his support. He was a learned man, and wrote a collection of odes in his native Pashto language. He was also the author of several poems in Persian. Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote of Ahmad Shah:
“His military courage and activity are spoken of with admiration, both by his own subjects and the nations with whom he was engaged, either in wars or alliances. He seems to have been naturally disposed to mildness and clemency and though it is impossible to acquire sovereign power and perhaps, in Asia, to maintain it, without crimes; yet the memory of no eastern prince is stained with fewer acts of cruelty and injustice.

DAILY TIMES.COM
SAUDI REGIME IS TRYING TO SPREAD WAHABISM IN PAKISTAN BY SUPPORTING TALIBAN.
The Kingdom in Pakistan —Saleem H Ali

During my last visit to Lahore when I interviewed various progressive scholars, they also expressed the strongest concern about America’s unflinching support for Saudi Arabia’s policies, which made them more suspicious of the West’s resolve in tackling extremism

The assassination of Dr Sarfraz Naeemi at a prominent madrassa in Lahore marks a turning point in Pakistan’s civil strife. The Taliban profess to be “pure� Sunni Muslims, and have targeted Shia mosques and seminaries many times before. However, Maulana Naeemi is the first notable Sunni scholar to be murdered by the Taliban.

The growing rift within Sunni Islam that has spread across Pakistan and fuelled the Taliban with foot soldiers from some radical centres of learning has clear connections to Wahhabi doctrines. The culpability of Saudi Arabia, both officially and privately, in perpetuating intolerance across the Muslim world must be duly acknowledged. No longer can we afford to believe cultural excuses from the Saudis for spreading ossified worldviews in other Muslim countries as a means of shielding their own state.

Pakistanis have also been made acutely aware of the arcane interpretations of sharia law in Saudi Arabia this week with the arrests of some poor pilgrims who were duped into drug trafficking by a Karachi agent.

While returning from Hajj three years ago, I had my first encounter with the pernicious evangelism of the Saudi brand of Wahhabi Islam. Before boarding the flight from Jeddah to Islamabad, each passenger was handed a book in Urdu, free of charge, by the Saudi boarding agent in which allegations of heresy were made against any Muslims who did not adhere to the “pure� Saudi brand of Islam. If each Haji returning to Pakistan is to be gifted such vitriol against pluralism, imagine what is going on in madrassas that receive funds from Saudi sources.

Let us not forget also that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were initially the only two countries to recognise the Taliban regime in Afghanistan before 9/11 (the UAE also briefly recognised the regime).

Saudi financing of radical doctrines was acknowledged by the 9/11 Commission report, which points out that “awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shi’a Iran to promote its Sunni [sic!] fundamentalist version of Islam, Wahabbism.�

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower, veteran journalist Lawrence Wright described how the rate of Saudi investment would impact the Muslim world: “...eventually, Saudi Arabia, which constitutes only a little over 1 percent of the world Muslim population would support 90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions in Islam.�

The Saudi influence in Pakistan is palpable everywhere. They bail us out when we run out of wheat; they provide political asylum in palaces to former prime ministers; they broker peace deals and provide funds for our weapons programmes.

No doubt some aspects of Saudi assistance to Pakistan and other Muslim countries are to be appreciated. However, what they want in return is an insidious evangelism of their exclusionary version of Islam, which must be resolutely rejected. They feel vindicated in destroying several mosques in their own country (such as the destruction of the Sabah Masajid in Medina) for fear of bidda’, or innovation, and we see the same callous destruction by the Taliban now of shrines and places of worship that deviate from their definition of “pure�.

While the world worries about Iran’s return to radicalism in the aftermath of the election, let us not forget the other radical Islamist country across the Gulf. In terms of human rights and treatment of minorities and women, Saudi Arabia is far more retrogressive than Iran and has played a more consequential role in the radicalisation of strategically important countries like Pakistan.

The Saudi government and Wahhabi sympathisers have recently attempted to differentiate Wahhabi Doctrine from “Qutbist� doctrine, named after the Egyptian Muslim Brother Syed Qutb, who travelled extensively in Western countries as well. They have argued that Al Qaeda leaders follow Qutbist views rather than Wahhabi views. However, this argument is not as compelling if one reads some of the writings of Syed Qutb, in books with misleading titles such as Islam and Universal Peace (1977). Much of this book follows a supremacist ideology that can be found in the Wahhabi tradition as well.

The Saudi government would claim that it has been a victim of terrorism by Al Qaeda as well. Indeed, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly declared war on the Saudi royal family. However, the Saudi government has realised that there is tacit support for many of Al Qaeda’s ideas within the Saudi people, and so they have co-opted many of the radical clerics by allowing them to evangelise in other Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even from a theological perspective, the Saudi view of Islam is highly hypocritical. For example, there is no concept of a monarchy in the Islamic tradition and yet Saudi Arabia is a kingdom. Strict Wahhabi doctrine also forbids photography yet the Saudi monarch insists on his portrait being displayed in every office in the country!

The Saudi establishment has thus kept an uneasy and unprincipled balance of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Such an approach is unsustainable from the perspective of regional conflict resolution as well as for Saudi Arabia’s own viability as a state.

Maulana Naeemi had repeatedly warned against the influence of absolutist Saudi doctrines in Pakistan. He recognised that the Taliban ideology was most closely associated with the Salafi/Wahhabi brand of Islam. Many of the draconian capital punishments that the Taliban practised in the Swat valley were emulating judicially prescribed practices in Saudi Arabia. However, this source of Taliban doctrines is still not being fully recognised by Pakistanis or the West.

During my last visit to Lahore when I interviewed various progressive scholars, they also expressed the strongest concern about America’s unflinching support for Saudi Arabia’s policies, which made them more suspicious of the West’s resolve in tackling extremism. Perhaps such matters were on President Obama’s mind as he visited Saudi Arabia last month. The lack of transparency in any communications during that visit has once again left an unsettling impression.

The unholy alliance between the United States and the Saudis is going to be mutually destructive unless it is predicated on international principles and norms. As a member of the new G-20 group of world powers, the Saudis must be pressured by the other members to reform internally and stop exporting intolerance. The Great Kingdom of the Khaadim-ul Harmain risks becoming an unpleasant anachronism if it continues to resist positive change.

Dr Saleem H Ali is associate professor of environmental planning and Asian studies at the University of Vermont and the author of Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan’s Madrassas (Oxford University Press, 2009) www.saleemali.net
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Betullah's day are numbered? The Glorious army has been bombing the whole Malakand right and left for months and the whole command of Swati Talebans is still alive. Nobody believes a single word uttered by the ISPR liars.

Who knows how many innocent civilians have been killed by the Jihadis and morons of Rawalpindi.

It is nice to see that both the religious nuts and the evil army are butchering each other.
What people like the author of this article don't seem to know is that every Pashtun, who has an iota of self respect and pride, vehemently hate both these religious nuts and this evil state that was created by the low life hate-mongering scum and we were dragged into this filth against our wishes.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/06/17/the _other_islamist_threat_in_pakistan/

THE BOSTON GLOBE

The other Islamist threat in Pakistan

By Selig S. Harrison

June 17, 2009

THE DANGER of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan is real. But it does not come from the Taliban guerrillas now battling the Pakistan Army in the Swat borderlands. It comes from a proliferating network of heavily armed Islamist militias in the Punjab heartland and major cities directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a close ally of Al Qaeda, which staged the terrorist attack last November in Mumbai, India.

Pakistan’s failure to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba militias and the recent release of two of its leaders jailed after the Mumbai attack led to an angry exchange on Monday at a meeting in Russia between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari.

No new US aid commitments should be made to Islamabad until it takes decisive action to disarm Lashkar-e-Taiba in accordance with Article 256 of the Pakistan Constitution, which bars private militias. The administration wants to provide $3 billion in new military aid on top of the $10 billion already showered on Pakistan since 2001, together with a five-year, $7.5 billion program of economic aid. Surprisingly, while congressional leaders are seeking to attach a variety of conditions to the aid package, they have so far ignored the critical issue of the militias.

Disarming Lashkar-e-Taiba should be the top US priority in Pakistan because it would greatly reduce the possibility of a coup by Islamist sympathizers in the armed forces. The closet Islamists in the Army and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) are not likely to risk a coup in Islamabad unless they can count on armed support from Lashkar-e-Taiba and its allies to help them consolidate their grip on the countryside.

Equally important, a strong US stand on Lashkar-e-Taiba is necessary to defuse India-Pakistan tensions that could lead to another war and to sustain the improvement now taking place in US relations with India, a rising power eight times larger than Pakistan.

New Delhi fears a repeat of the Mumbai massacre, in which 166 were killed, and views US readiness to pressure Islamabad on the militias as a litmus test of US friendship.

To be sure, the Pakistan government did make a show of cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba after the Mumbai tragedy. It banned it, placed two of its leaders under house arrest, and jailed and arrested six of its operatives on charges of “facilitating a terrorist act.’’ But the two leaders were released on June 2. The government stopped short of breaking up the militias and destroying the weapons stockpiles at their four training camps near Muridke and Muzaffarabad, and it has yet to prosecute the six prisoners or to arrest Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, identified by US and Indian intelligence sources as the ringleader of the Mumbai attack, who is still at large.

Under a new name, Jawad-ud-Dawa, Lashkar-e-Taiba has continued to operate its militias, its FM radio station, and hundreds of seminaries where jihadis are trained, in addition to its legitimate charities and educational institutions. When the UN designated Jawat-ud-Dawa as a terrorist group, the Pakistan government issued another ban and Jawat-ud-Dawa changed its name to the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation.

The “foundation’’ now has 2,000 members doing relief work in war-torn Swat with the approval of the Pakistan government, amid credible reports that it is using its humanitarian cover to recruit new members as it did after the 2002 Kashmir earthquake.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is on the Sunni side of the Sunni-Shia doctrinal divide in Islam and has its deepest roots in a 20,000-square-mile swath of southern Punjab between Jhang and Bahawalpur, where it champions the cause of landless Sunni peasants indentured to big Shia landowners.

“It is common knowledge that the local police are in their pocket in much of that area,’’ retired diplomat Tariq Fatemi, a former ambassador to Washington, told me recently.

Sunni extremist groups have been active in the Punjab since the creation of Pakistan and became the nucleus of Lashkar-e-Taiba when the ISI, with US funding, built up a jihadi movement to fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and key allies such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi still get ISI support and have close ties with other intelligence agencies, but how much and how close remain uncertain.

Like Al Qaeda to Americans, Lashkar-e-Taiba is a powerful emotive symbol to the 1.2 billion people of India. Hindu nationalists use this symbolism to fan fears of another Mumbai and to step up demands for reprisals against Pakistan. Increasingly, they are criticizing the United States for giving Pakistan money and weaponry without monitoring whether they are being used to strengthen Pakistan forces on the Indian border.

Why, they ask, should the United States give another $10.5 billion in aid, on top of the $14 billion already provided since 2001, to a government in Islamabad that is unwilling or unable to disarm home-grown terrorists who threaten India?

Why, indeed.

Selig S. Harrison is author of “Pakistan, The State of the Union,’’ a report just published by the Center for International Policy, where he is director of the Asia program.

i guess the pathans are like sardars is not entirely untrue...

hinjras have used them as cannon fodder and stabbed them in the back.....

Agha sahib,

i am not a history buff like u but let me tell u ...baitullah's day are numbered....wazirastan would be pacified within a year.....these pakhtuns are good fighters, better than punjabis but they are no supermen.

"The Pakistani military junta must not forget that since 1958 Pakistan was an army with a state rather than a state with an army. If now Pakistani military junta makes grand claims of peace in order to please USA, Pakistan is on the road to Balkanization".

The military of Pakistan, as you yourself acknowledge, has usurped all resources and people of the region have suffered to the point that you see the dis-empowerment of the army as inevitable, hence you are agonised, I believe.
On the other hand it is un-realistic for a next door neighbour of India and China to relish dreams of world superiority on the imaginary ground of an international religious bond, which translates into a mighty military power that crushes 170 million people under its weight. History makes its decision for those who do not choose wisely and it is hard to see somebody close diagnosed with fatal disease. Whether US likes it or not, the relegation of its satellite Pakistan army to a sub-level of authority is the hope of survival for 170 million Pakistanis. Whether that necessarily means dis-integration of Pakistan? I am not sure.
" As an ex army officer, I am surprised where are the fabled corps commanders? Where is the ideology of Pakistan?"
In the last days before surrender in Dhaka, professors, doctors, intellectuals of bengali origin were handpicked from their homes and killed. The ideology of murder never takes you to any happy place.

Re: # 87 Pavo

"...one major reason of the militancy is musharrafs stopping use of tribal pashtuns in kashmir in between 2001 and 2008..."

You really think that it is as simple as that! Did Mushy have a choice? What with LeT/JuD linking up with Al Qaeda - could he really have continued on that path?

Earlier you wrote, 'What is the difference between Waziristan and what India is doing in Kashmir?'

Great question - the answer will be quite illuminating.

Re: # 88

Agha Amin,

I may not agree with many points in your article. But you are one of the few to talk about the risk of Pakistan breaking up (may still never happen though) as early as 2005. 2005 was when Musharraf sent army into FATA. That is certainly fore-sightedness on your part.

the foundation of pakistans disintegration were laid by musharraf.below is an article that i wrote in 2005:---






Headlines / Pakistan is on the road to Balkanization


Pakistan is on the road to Balkanization
by A. H. Amin
(Monday, December 5, 2005)

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"Musharraf's policies and his petty opportunism are a grave danger for the region. It is possible that in the end his policies may prove to be seriously counterproductive for world peace."


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When war is expensive beyond acceptance a Trojan Horse is the best option. A Trojan Horse is economical, easier to manipulate and the strategic course less subject to the friction of war.

Lately, the USA has successfully applied this strategy in the Islamic world. The first Trojan Horse of note was Sadaat an ambitious man from a humble background who delivered the most fatal stab wound in the back of the Muslim world. This Trojan horse was delivered the coup de grace by a fearless Egyptian subaltern Islambouli. Another deadly Trojan Horse was the Shah of Iran.

The post 9/11 era is an era of Trojan Horses in the Muslim world. They rule in the name of sanity. In reality they are anesthetists employed to administer a strategic anesthesia to the core convictions of the Muslim masses. Usually men with little political clout, a minority ethnic status, avaricious, conceited, sons settled in the USA, and with little connection with Islam or the real aspirations of a Muslim.

Pakistan was created in 1947 and soon the Pakistani generals in league with British trained civil servants and feudal lords started a joint Jihad to destroy Pakistan's democracy which finally succeeded in 1958. Since 1958 Pakistani military junta has ruled the country and used the Kashmir Dispute as a reason for gobbling up Pakistan's 70 % budget. In the process Pakistani military miserably failed in 1965 war despite significant superiority over Indians in number and quality of equipment. The matter is discussed in great detail in my book The Pakistan Army till 1965 held at US Army Staff College and War College Libraries and also at Air War College Karachi Library. The Staff College Quetta had refused to accept it in their library.

All along Pakistani military junta used various pretexts to solicit Western military and financial aid, the ulterior motive being to consolidate its own position in the Pakistani power politics. First it used the Soviet threat to get US aid. Later it used Afghan war as an excuse for getting aid and now it is using the Islamist Threat as an excuse for getting aid. Even this earthquake is a golden opportunity for this avaricious and corrupt military junta.

When I was research aide with Ikram Sehgal in 2002 one day he told me to prepare draft of a presentation that he had been asked to deliver at the army's National Defence College. The highlight of the topic given to him by the National Defense College (NDC) was that "Ideology is no longer fashionable"!. At that time the NDC had a commandant who in his book had made the Mogul Emperor fight at Panipat after he had died in his book India - A Study in Profile!. Ironically, the same general was the architect of the Kargil blunder as the divisional commander of Northern Areas. Interestingly, before Kargil he was in DC as Defense Attaché!

Recently, General Musharraf has started another jugglery show claiming that he is the man of peace. A good move since Kashmir and USSR are no longer in vogue. Musharraf states that he wants friendship with India and Israel. We do not question his good intentions but taken in depth this signals Musharraf's acceptance that 1947 partition of India was a faux pas. If so many Muslims were killed in 1947, 1965 and 1971 then what was the use of the whole exercise in futility. If Israel is now being engaged by Pakistan's military junta - why it was not done earlier? Why this whole game? Seen in depth, Pakistan's military junta has an institutional interest in peace now. It wanted war when it suited its institutional interests and it wants peace when it suits Musharraf. Seen in this context, Pakistani military junta may be initiating a process similar to the one initiated by Gorbachev that led to disintegration of USSR.

Surely, if India is not a threat, why have such a large army? Why not undo the federal structure and let Balochistan and Sindh and NWFP be states as initially hinted in the Pakistan Resolution of 1940. Why should Pakistan Army be building cantonments in Balochistan?

What Musharraf is indirectly signaling is that partition was a blunder? That war is good when it is good for Pakistani military junta and bad when it does not suit the Pakistani military junta? This is an indirect attack on Pakistan's ideology. Who says that the last Mir Jafar was produced in 1757?

If Musharraf is to be believed then Three wars were fought for no reason. Afghanistan destroyed by pursuing an adventuresome and a genocidal foreign policy by all starting from Ayub, Zia down to Naseerullah Babar and even Musharraf as he stood before 9/11.

The West must not forget that Musharraf may prove to be a liability rather than an asset for the world in the long run. What must be understood is the fact that Musharraf's appeasement of the West will lead to a massive Islamist backlash. Musharraf is far more fragile now than anyone can imagine. Cheap adventure-ism as well as cheap appeasement is equally dangerous. The Pakistan Army was a laughing-stock when they bogged down at Khem Karan. Now Musharraf has proved that all was a grand strategic fraud. If peace with India was good why did not the Pakistani generals did it earlier. Why, so that they could gobble 70 to 80 % of Pakistan's budget every year since 1958? These are serious questions, which no Pakistani politician is asking. Why at least 50,000 Baloch killed since 1947? Why this aimless genocide? Why were 1 million Afghans killed from 1978 till to date just because the military usurper Zia wanted US money and Stingers to sell in the black market? Why is everyone silent?

Musharraf's short-term theatrics need to be reviewed seriously. If all that he states is right then Pakistan will have to re-think its ideology. If Pakistan leaves its ideology then it is a state comprising nationalities, a multi-ethnic state. The Pakistani military junta must not forget that since 1958 Pakistan was an army with a state rather than a state with an army. If now Pakistani military junta makes grand claims of peace in order to please USA, Pakistan is on the road to Balkanization.

What Musharraf has initiated is a dangerous game. Paying in the short run - but - self-destructive for the Pakistani military junta in the long run. Possibly good for the region if a self-serving military machine is reduced to size. Possibly dangerous for the region if a backlash starts and Islamic extremism is the main beneficiary. Musharaff's policies need to be questioned not only by the Pakistani people but also by the whole world.

In the Pakistani context following may be the implications:

Pakistan's smaller provinces may question the rationale for Pakistan. If India is not a threat and Afghanistan is a friend why not have an independent Baloch, Pashtun or Sindhi state. Why have a large army which has been involved in a dangerous foreign policy and in aggression against Pakistan's neighbors. The Durand Line may have significance for the Pakistani junta but for the Baloch and Pashtun it is a Berlin Wall, which will become meaningless one day.
Why should Pakistan have a nuclear program and a large standing army. Why should not the US insist that Pakistan reduce its army and dismantle its nuclear warheads.
Conversely if the Pakistan Army is reduced - why should the smaller provinces stay with the Pakistani Federal State. It is only the coercive force of the army that has kept the Pakistani confederation together.
Why should not Pakistan's neighbors demand a redrawing of boundaries.
Musharraf's policies and his petty opportunism are a grave danger for the region. It is possible that in the end his policies may prove to be seriously counter-productive for world peace. The Pakistani military junta needs to stop playing games, which it has been playing since 1954 when it entered Pakistani politics as a subversive force and since 1982 when it entered regional politics as a subversive adventurous force. The USA must understand that they are not dealing with rational good-natured men but with crafty opportunists who may prove to be a serious strategic liability.

Who has given the Pakistani military junta to decide what is good and what is bad for Pakistan, if their claims are to be believed as now Musharraf states Pakistan was a faux pas?

Now in order to divert the mass' attention Musharraf has come up with a new diversionary scheme that he would build reservoirs. What he wants is to woo the Punjabis, emotional people that they are, but more fatally pitch Punjab against Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan. As an ex army officer, I am surprised where are the fabled corps commanders? Where is the ideology of Pakistan? Who has given a general dismissed by this country's elected Prime Minister the right to do whatever he pleases to do? Musharraf's strategic decisions are taken as if Pakistan is a Paan to be chewed. Sometimes a sweet one and sometimes a sour one. May Allah help Pakistan. Ranjit Singh imported Tejh Singh from Meerut with the hope that a non-Jat army chief would be a blessing. Tejh Singh destroyed the Khalsa at Mudki and Feroz shah in 1845. British historian Malleson recognized that had Tejh Singh not been treacherous the Sikhs would have been won. Alas! it is the tragedy of the Indus Valley that it never trusted its sons.

Some day Kargil and the post 9/11 Pakistani policy may be examined and more Tejh Singhs discovered.

Americans don't trust Trojan Horses for they are really exciting the desire to atone and vindicate the lost honor in the whole Muslim World.

Or is it possible that Musharraf is USA's Trojan Horse to deal with the "Final Solution" of the Pakistani WMDs. This is a matter which historians will decide.


Source:



by courtesy & © 2005 A. H. Amin


Agha Amin

one major reason of the militancy is musharrafs stopping use of tribal pashtuns in kashmir in between 2001 and 2008.

this is a strange breed created in the afghan war and the aftermath afghan civil war .it has to fight and kill.

the same guys created major trouble after 2003 when musharraf launched the army in FATA without provocation.
Agha Amin

#84 and it is good for India too as long Pakistani
army keeps fighting/occupied with somebody else,
less time and resources for them to meddle east of
the border including Kashmir.

on afghan side there is no anvil to stop baitullah ....so what will the pakistani hammer do ?

if americans were serious about all this they would have fenced and mined the afghan side long ago.
Agha Amin

what i meant was that if pakistan army had to fight against the tribals then whats the difference from any other army fighting freedom fighters.

i maintain that this operation is to please the americans while the americans want to destabilise pakistan.

US strategy is simple --if a pakistani soldier dies or a tribal insurgent dies both are good for USA.

i maintain that kashmir insurgency was as foreign supported as waziristan.india being a sovereign country had a strategy.pakistan being a third rate stooge has none.
Agha Amin

now that the army has moved in waziristan all that baitullah must have done is move a few miles into paktika.

this is what wazirs and mahsuds have done against mughals ,sikhs ,british.army cannot sustain for long in waziristan. fencing is a political issue hence difficult.loser is pakistan or what people call pakistan...in reality about 10,000 families.
Agha Amin

Amin sahib,

i dont think that bombing or killing is the answer. if yes then what is the difference from indian army in kashmir

Well sir, if someone thinks that bombing or killing is the answer then obviously he is very different from the Indian Army You shud know that of course. When has Indian Army used tanks and heli gunships on its own citizens? Has it falttened towns in J&K like Mingora? Do millions of Kashmiri Muslims live as IDPs like Swat/Bajaur Muslims do?

Regards

the solution is not to send the army every where. as an ex soldier i know this is not the solution.swat is ok but leave the FATA alone . this is not the answer to baitullah.evidence has proved that the terror outfit is far beyond waziristan.the tribals , i mean waziristan as other agencies were not like this before 1947 have long experience in this sort of warfare.conventional war fare is not the answer.if baitullah has foreign backers they can find other baitullahs,rather they are having alternative baitullahs.this bragging is not the answer.swat was never the citadel ,it was an outpost.waziristan is the citadel.best leave it alone.what baitullah has done punjab is retaliation of what was from 200done to waziristan from 2003 till to date.
Agha Amin

Re: # 78 Agha Amin..OK then what is the solution???when ANP made deal with em in swat they started talkin about thier way of life etc,so how can you talk to these ignorant people?
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

waziristan is one part of a big plan . if baitullah has big patrons then what they have planned is far bigger.waziristan is a chapter but strategy is a book .therein lies the danger . everything is moving in a direction.unfortunately those who hold the top political and military positions may not understand the whole picture.

let those who enjoy the perks and privilieges pay the price unless they flee abroad.
Agha Amin

the situation is far more dangerous than most understand.lets not under estimate the tribal wazirs and mahsuds.i dont think that bombing or killing is the answer.if yes then what is the difference from indian army in kashmir in red army in afghanistan.the situation is very simple.baitullah has already withdrawn major forces in paktika afghanistan.even if one baitullah is killed there are many who can take over.this operation is not the solution.
Agha Amin

Re: # 76

here's the relevant extract from the story that I was referring to. Purri khichdi ban gayi hai ki kaun apna Taliban hai aur kaun behda (Punjabi for bad).

Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander in North Waziristan and considered one of the ‘good’ guys because he is ostensibly not set on attacking Pakistani interests, appeared to have laid a trap for the defenceless cadets after being asked to guarantee their safe passage. While the full details of the kidnapping have yet to emerge, it seems that Gul Bahadur may have planned to escort the cadets out of North Waziristan and then have them captured and taken to South Waziristan and handed over to Baitullah Mehsud, the ‘bad’ Taliban leader against whom a military operation may be in imminent.

Similarly, Maulvi Nazir, another Taliban leader hailing from South Waziristan Agency and also believed to be one of the ‘good’ guys because he helped the state take on Uzbek militants linked to Al Qaeda, has reportedly provided men to Baitullah to send to Swat to fight the state there. The unholy alliance between Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir makes nonsense of the theory that it is possible to separate the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ and take on just the bad Taliban.

Re: # 75

Majumdarji,

here's the Dawn link for the cadet kidnapping story:

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pak istan/provinces/16-waziristan-simmers-hs-01

Re: # 74

Before the Swat operation TalliAghani were openly funding TalliPakies (with the consent of elements within Pak Army). After Swat, they are being funded by TalliAfghanis in a clandestine manner (with some support of rogue elements within ISI/PA).

One has to realise that both Af and Pak Taliban are not monolithic entities. The best example was when 400 cadets were kidnapped in Waziristan (right after the Swat operation was kicked off) even though the AfghanTalli commander had given assurance to the Pak Army that they will be given a safe passage. But they instead handed over these cadets to Baitullah Mehsood (Pak Taliban).

Dude, thanks for the correction. But your equation suggests that TaliPakis are being funded by Tali Afganies who are in turn in being funded by Pak Army. So why is Pak Army fighting its own sub-subsidiary in W'stan unless of course the whole thing is a charade?

Regards

Re: # 72
Majumdarji,

Mr Rikhiye's analysis does NOT say there are 100,000 TalliPakies. Instead that's the number of TalliPakies + TalliAfghanies + LeT/LeJ etc...

TalliAfghanies + LeT + LeJ are funded by the Pak Army/ISI.

TalliPakies are probably funded by TalliAfghanies and elements within Afghan Army (diverting US arms for instance), I think.

Amin sahib,

If Mr Rikhye's analysis that the TaliPakis have more than 100,000 soldiers in their fold, then we must move to the next crucial question: Who is funding and arming all these men? The answer to that question is crucial as to whether Pak Army will win or not.

Regards

Re: # 70 tahmed, I agree,you made a good point regarding saudi and other arab countries helping and financing those madressas where they preach hate instead of true Islam. neither Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz nor the rulers of any Arab or Muslim state are holding special national telethons to help raise funds for some 400,000 new Pakistani refugees. Many fled their homes after the Taliban took over the Swat valley, and others were forced to leave amid the fierce fighting between the Taliban and the Pakistani military. what about Saudi aid to the suffering Pakistanis? On April 23, the Saudi King gave Pakistan 150 tons of dates, as "humanitarian aid."

Is this an appropriate response from the "custodian" of the two holiest mosques, the second-largest Muslim country in the world and one that is 70% Sunni? Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Khyber: True. The damage done to so many Pakistanis by talibans and their supporters is unforgivable - tens of thousands of people killed in the cities, hundreds of girls' schools (often built with funding provided by ordinary people and through the efforts of dedicated volunteers) destroyed, prisoners brutally murdered.

The only bright spot is, as they say, "That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger". Thus, there seems no doubt that Pakistan will emerge stronger and more united than ever before after it has put an end to the taliban.

The one thing most Pakistanis still dont recognize I think is that the taliban are as much a creation of our generals as they are of rogues from saudi arabia, egypt, central asia. The media downplays this aspect of these "fellow muslims" - although it would be an added benefit for Pakistan if people recognize that "fellow muslims" are not necessarily friends of Pakistan either. And they would thus recognize that the "muslim world" is more complex than sacred lands inhabited by "pious arby-speaking muslims" that they think it to be.

Folks:

It should be clear now that The Pakistan Civil War of 2009 is spilling over from the ravines and fields of FATA and Swat to cyberspace. Chowk is the first cyber battlefield with folks like Pavo, Fakirlppi and Tahmed going at each other.

Re: # 53 Tahmed various

Sahib, you are now hyperventilating.

"...but these taliban are no match for the people of Pakistan. .."

But, the Taliban are the people of Pakistan

"...the Pakistani nation heaves a sigh of relief that these animals are finally being dispatched to hell..."

Curious geography - the ones in the west are going to hell, the ones in the east are going to heaven with 72 houries

Re: # 46 Pavocavalry

It seems that old suspicions die hard. So, you think that the the recent operations by the Pak Army are all a show? Pretty good show, if it is one.

Thanks Tahmed, Nation has finally realised the gravity of situation and recognised the threat posed by Taliban to the integrity of the country.Taliban are worst enemies of Islam, They send suicide bombers to mosques and they demolish schools and shrines. They do everything that Islam and education prohibits. Anyone who supports Taliban are insane.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

khyber: pakhaer raghghalay dae, my friend. ;-)

and more barking isnt going to save your taliban masters either, per #53.

Re: # 60tahmed32...I agree with your posts,like I said these guys are living in denial.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

#61 re-read #60. more barking isnt going to spare you from hell.

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#58 with the traitor musharraf no longer around to protect you scoundrels and mislead pakistanis with his "America's war" garbage - you can only bark now. but pakistan is kicking your filthy asses to hell.

tahmed is a big " G____"

u punjabis are pakistans problem and mirzais are a punjabi kafir sect.when the army kills good muslims you mirzais are happy.

"who is the loser in FATA"

the taliban. and treacherous rats.

#55 "why did the army get provoked and enter FATA ?"

because..FATA is a part of Pakistan. duh uh!!

why did the army get provoked and enter FATA ?

why give other countries an ideal breeding ground for insurgency.

who is the loser in FATA:--

Pakistan and Pakistan Army

Is it somebodys theka that all shoulb be controlled from islamabad.the nukes can stay with punjab and others can live as they wish.

pakistan needs to forget about kashmir and just think of preserving itself.
Agha Amin

#52 "pakistan army is designed to fight on the eastern border "

dont repeat these stupid cliches. pakistani bombs and bullets are designed to send all enemies of pakistan to hell. whether from the east or from the west. and pakistani marksmen are trained to shoot straight and send traitors to hell.

more bad news for taliban-toadies, mullah-kafirs, and other treacherous rats - they are receiving "dialogue" in the language they understand. Coming and going, from US drones from one side and Pakistani Air Force from the other. As the Pakistani nation heaves a sigh of relief that these animals are finally being dispatched to hell:

Jets bomb Taliban hideouts in South Waziristan
Friday, 19 Jun, 2009
PESHAWAR: Pakistani fighter jets on Friday bombed Taliban militant hideouts in the northwest tribal belt, officials said, as the death toll from a suspected US missile strike in the area rose to 13.

Up to three unmanned drone aircraft are reported to have dropped four missiles on a militant training school in the South Waziristan tribal zone on Thursday.


http://www.dawnnews.net/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/ dawn/news/pakistan/04-jets-bomb-taliban-hideouts-swaziristan-qs-07

pakistan army is designed to fight on the eastern border not the western border.any prolonged or casualty heavu deployment in the west will damage its military effectiveness.

since the army is at least 70 % punjabi , pashtuns/ranghars/sindhis/northeran areas being rest , naturally any casualties inflicted by the army in tribal areas will increase ethnic hatred.this is what has happened.

the punjabi talibans are a phenomenon but they are juniour partners of the pashtun taliban.

the solution in waziristan is not military.no amount of such operations will succeed.jinnah was no fool to realise this .and musharraf was the biggest fool in sending the army in waziristan.

as casualties multiply the liberal element will become weaker and weaker on both sides.

why persecute your own people so that they have no choice but to become tools in hands of foreign powers ?
Agha Amin

#48 big words from a small rat.

dude: i am sorry to break this sad news to you and other indians like you - but these taliban are no match for the people of Pakistan.

Re: # 47

Tahmed - Instead of shooting the messenger, which points of Orbat.com analysis posted by Agha Amin do you disagree with?

abay mirzai , tu kahan say a giya.pakistans tragedy is that mirzais are terribly afraid of taliban.then we have shia channels like dawn and express and all things are said with ulterior motives.below is a quote from ravi rikhye.one should read all sides views but u murtids are a really jaundiced lot.

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www.orbat.com

RAVI RIKHYE

0230 GMT June 18, 2009



If Estimates of Taliban Forces Are Correct, Pakistan Cannot Win



For many years, each time the Pakistan Army has said it lacks the resources to fight the Taliban, at Orbat.com we've engaged in rude sniggering. The Pakistan Army has close to 30 division-equivalents worth of troops, 80% infantry. It is one of the largest armies in the world. Its men are long-service professionals - long service means 10, 15, and 20 years for the soldiers and NCOs. It is well-trained, reasonably well equipped by Third World standards and well led.

How then could Pakistan claim it cannot fight the Taliban?

Of course, it didn't/doesn't want to fight the Taliban because even today with the exception of Baitullah Mesud whom the Pakistan Army says it is hunting, the other three major commanders are pro-Government, as are a host of minor commanders.

But from www.longwarjournal.org June 17, 2009 we learn that this Mesud gentleman has 30,000 fighters under his command and another 20,000 in allied/associated groups. The three other major commanders have 50,000 fighters. AQ in Pakistan has 10,000. This makes 110,000 fighters, and it doesn't take too much math to calculate that at 600 fighters per Pakistan army battalion (rifle and weapons companies) the Pakistan army has 130,000 infantry to the Taliban's 100,000. Of course, that doesn't count the Pakistan Army's approximately 130 or so towed artillery battalions and the approximately 300 or so fighter aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force.

No one can argue that the Pakistan Army has firepower superiority. But the Taliban's forces, for all they operate in units as large as brigades, do not fight a conventional fight when facing the Pakistan Army. They are guerrillas, and while that firepower comes in handy if the Taliban commander makes a mistake, it is of basically no help except to make holes in the ground and kill civilians.

So Pakistan could send every single soldier it has facing India to the west, it is absolutely, completely, totally not in a position to fight the Taliban and win. Even the US, for all its phenomenal surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, mobility, and firepower resources cannot win at such odds.

So - something we'd better get used to as a concept - even if Pakistan suddenly got religion and decided to go after the Taliban, it is not going to win. You are going to get one ghastly mess that will, within a year's of fighting, destroy what remains of Pakistan's economy and unity because all out wars inflict unbearable stress on any country, leave alone a 3rd world nation riven by ethnic divides on every side.

Now, Pakistan is not going to get religion. It's going after the Mesud because the US has given the 10-centimer diameter steel shaft and because it seems the Pakistan Army has decided to come down on the Government's side - at least for now. You must keep in mind the Army's leadership is totally opportunistic. At any rate, its not going to go after the other commanders because they are vital strategic assets against the US in Afghanistan and India.

The prospect of taking on the Mesud and his 50,000 own/allied fighters is bad enough, AQ will have to join in because the Pakistan Army is intruding into its safe havens. Now here's what's really scary: the Pakistanis are doing their level to keep the "good" Taliban out of this battle and perhaps even get some of them to help with eliminating Mesud. But, as Bill Roggio at LWJ says, basing his opinion on local information and media the good Taliban are tied by promises and ethnic loyalties to the Mesud fellow. The Pakistan army can say all it wants "we are only targeting an anti-Pakistan person", and it is true in the Frontier money does run thicker than blood, but if for no reason other than that the "good" Taliban have to wonder if Mesud is knocked out the Pakistan state is not going to go after them to bring them under control they way they were under control before the fall of Kabul in 1996.

So: to sum up. Mesud and AQ have 60,000 fighters which is way too many for the entire Pakistan Army to take on to begin with. The whole kit and kaboodle has 110,000 fighters. This is not a winning situation no matter which way anyone looks at it.

Here's more bad news: according to the Indians, Pakistan has deployed 22 brigades against the Taliban. That's almost a third of its infantry, and people, you have to realize that so far the Taliban haven't really put up up a fight. For all the drama the ISPR tries to keep going, if 390 Pakistan soldiers/Frontier Corps have been killed, that's 65 a week. That's not a war, its a bunch of skirmishes.

As someone who has closely studied the Pakistan Army for forty years, Editor can testify that by its lights, the Pakistan army is doing what it can.

Because - please don't forget - there's the equivalent of 40 powerful Indian divisions sitting to the East of the Kashmir Cease Fire Line and International Border, excluding the minimum defense against China and the 70,000 specialized CI troops - who are all regular soldiers, by the way, not paramilitary. You want paramilitary, India can deploy 500,000 against Pakistan if it needs to.

Beyond a point, if anyone thinks the US is going to be able to restrain India indefinitely so that Pakistan can shift all its infantry to the west is plain dreaming. Study the history of the subcontinent for just the last 1000 years and you will see this is just the right time for Delhi to start preparing to bring India's fractious and turbulent northwest under control. In case someone doesn't get it, India's northwest includes ALL of Pakistan.

The Pakistanis would have to be absolute lunatics to even think of moving many more troops to the west. Now if an Editor as an Indian citizen is saying that, think what the Pakistanis will say if the US wants them to move more troops. And that's if they want an all-out war with the Taliban that they cannot win. And they don not want such a war.







0230 GMT June 17, 2009



Mutiny in 3 Pakistan Army Brigades?



India Today, a leading multi-lingual weekly of India, says that that mutinies have occurred in Pakistan Army brigade at Kohat, Parachinar, and Turbat. The last is in Balochistan, and we have no clue why troops there should mutiny unless the Pakistan Army has also stepped up operations there at the US's behest. 900 troops are said to have deserted.

While six cases of soldiers killing soldiers are reported, we caution not to read much into this. Given the tension the Pakistan Army has been under, and given the Army has been busy destroying many of the same towns and villages its men are recruited from, this is a small figure.

Bill Roggio of www.longwarjournal.org confirms the story via his US intelligence sources.

The India Today story says according to Pakistani sources 370 troops have been killed since the offensive began, and that while on the one hand the government says it is hunting Taliban leader Mesud who is behind most of the suicide bombings, on the other hand Mesud is maintaining contact with two senior army officers and the Taliban seem to have detailed knowledge of Pakistan army movements.

Meanwhile, Mr. Roggio reports the Pakistan Army says it has killed one Al Qaeda commander and wounded another. Since Al Qaeda is composed almost entirely of foreigners, while the Pakistan Army has never particularly gone out if its way to tackle AQ, it has frequently captured AQ personnel to hand over to the US. It is quite likely that to show the US it means business - and also because these are, after all, foreigners, the Pakistan Army is making a serious push against AQ.

Could the above news about the mutinies be a plant? We don't think it is an Indian plant because there is nothing in the reports that has not been happening for some time. Mandeep Singh Bajwa, for example, told us about desertions stepping up right in the first week of the offensive in Buner. The number of Pakistan soldiers given as killed is also modest. As for Mesud working with senior officers, that is no news at all.

But could it be a Pakistan plant to signal the US that the Pakistan Army may be reaching the end of its rope and needs to stop the offensive?

It's possible, but why the Pakistanis would need to leak this to the Indians is a great mystery.









0230 GMT June 16, 2009



Roll cameras. You see, right now the locals are very upset with the Taliban. But that doesn't mean they have changed one bit their centuries old hatred of central authority.

Next point. The Taliban are guerillas, albeit they have reached what in the old days we used to call Stage II: they control territory, and fight in organized units. When guerillas are stressed, they disperse. No one in their right mind - and this time not even the Pakistan army for all it's previous empty boasting - thinks the problem is anywhere near solved. Everyone is expecting the Taliban to hit back the minute the Pakistan Army reduces pressure. And the Pakistan army has to reduce pressure, because despite whatever carrots/sticks the US has used on Pakistan to get Islamabad moving, the Pakistan Army does NOT want to stay in tribal territory a day longer than it has to. To maintain the kind of relentless, single-minded pressure for decades such as India does in its CI campaign requires much, much more manpower and much more money than the Pakistanis have. It requires a mindset of endless sacrifice, of shutting off your mind from the present, and simply slogging on and on and on. Lets see the US Army fight the kind of decades long campaigns the Indian army engages in, and you will get the point. Next year will mark the start of Decade Six in the first of India's CI wars, in North East India. Can the US Army continue fighting into a sixth decade with absolutely no assurance there will not be a Decade Seven or even a Decade Ten? It cannot, and nor should the US expect the Pakistanis to do so.

The Pakistan army is winning right now. It will not be winning tomorrow.

Stop cameras. In all fairness to the Pentagon, it doesn't give a single darn what's going to happen in the 2010s, 2010s, and 2030s. All it wants is to ease the expected pressure on its forces in Afghanistan this year and the next. It is already looking to getting out of Afghanistan, not spending the next 50 years there. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, as long as its short term objectives are met, Afghanistan and Pakistan and so on can go where they want to.

But now we come to the truly dismal part of this campaign the Pakistan Army has engaged on.

You see, nothing has really changed and it cannot change as far as Pakistan and its insurgents are concerned. Kashmir is still very much on the agenda, getting the Americans out of Afghanistan is still very much on the agenda.

Just as the Pentagon is playing a short-term game, so is Pakistan. With US backing and "encouragement" It has no particular trouble whacking those Taliban that turned renegade. These are the ones that grew so strong they told the Pakistanis to stick it to themselves. These are the ones that broke the compact between Pakistan and the Pushtoon tribes: you and we will wage against Afghanistan, against the foreigners and the non-Pushtoons; we will leave you alone in your homes, but outside of tribal territory you are to leave us alone.

Meanwhile, this war that Pakistan is fighting on the US's behalf is taking its toll of Pakistan. Any war creates instability, the longer it goes on the more the instability. The Taliban are already resorting to the kinds of brutal suicide attacks that sap a nation's morale.

Soon the Taliban are going to be visiting villages in the territory they have allegedly lost but actually have not, and they are going to start executing those that collaborated with the government. The only way you can stop them is to station government forces in every village. That is not going to happen. And as for the "Awakenings" business, forget it. Pakistani frontier tribesmen are genetically encoded to fight authority.

If the US wants the Pakistan Taliban out of the game, there is only one thing it can do: implement the Russian solution. Shoot one of ten males to introduce yourself to the villagers. If they cooperate, okay. If they don't, shoot another one in ten males, and go on doing it until there are no males left alive. Obviously the US can't do this. But what the US needs to see is that the Pakistanis cannot do it either. So the US has to live with the reality there will neither be Awakenings in Pakistan, nor can the Pakistan Government protect every village.

When the Taliban come back, there will be blood - a lot of it.

By the way, doesn't all this seem a bit familiar to the old timers the Editor's age or older? It should. That show was called Second Indochina, which followed First Indochina, which followed the war against Japan and so on. We Americans always have a home to come back to when we're sick of killing. Where will the Pakistan Army go when it is sick of killing its own people?






Agha Amin

Re: # 29
khyber...
It may sound bad for you Pakistanis...
There is much difference in Guerilla warfare and fighting under the shield of civilians with direct war...Pakistani Army, after failing in conventional war, tried this stuff on India (Kashmiri jihadis) and now they are tasting, what they were forced to do...
Indira Gandhi created LTTE to support Tamils in Srilanka and even used some of the amry bases to train them. Then, her son , Rajiv Gandhi was forced to send IPKF to SriLanka (for the fear of US intervention) and even he lost his life at the hand of LTTE...I am seeing the same drama being enacted here again, though Tamils in Srilanka and Talibs/Kashmiris are different breed of people.
In every field, you guys follow India ( Cricket, Hockey and even in dirty politics)...

forget about the marathas , even the sikhs were so civilised that jassa singh ramgharia granted asylum to bhambu khan brother of ghulam qadir khan rohilla.he gave him 5 villages and 7,000.

the english company ,nawab of oudh asked for him but jassa singh refused.tarikh i hussain shahi has a detailed account
Agha Amin

the marathas were far more civilised than any of the powers of that time.
Agha Amin

Re: # 34
gf...
oh really!!!! So, people of this 2000 year old civilisation invited looters, such that looters can destroy and pluder their property and take jewelery, their daughters, wives etc..to far away land.....
...and the sin marathas committed is very serious; they used to collect grains (not even money or jewelery and never touched women folk, whatever place they conquered)...

this is gem of info....
i will provide another story of a great moslem hero...

Muhammed of Ghajni was invited by priests of Shiva temple( Somnath) in Patan to get rid of all the gold and valuable gemstones and destroy the main stone, as the priests did not found anyone in nearby to do that job....

urstruly

does your hate for the fauji opression also extend to that tooth fairy, aka Zia ul haq? or was he a mard a momin?

pavocavalry,

Why did not Ahmad Shah Abdali come to loot Delhi
after Battle of Panipat with Marathas?

Agha Amin

you still didnt answer my question, how is this a punjabi pushtoon clash?

SHAH GARDI:--

1-17 JANUARY TO 22 FEBRUARY 1757:--

timur shah son of ahmad shah married to mughal emperor alamgir 2 daughter--100 wives of wazeer intizamuddaulah carried back by ahmad shah--all houses in delhi numbered and tax imposed on each

2-31 MARCH 1757 TO 10 APRIL 1757

durrani again sacked delhi--married 16 year daughter of emperor mohammad shah--handsome boys and pretty girls seized and taken to afghanistan--head of naqshbandi family has left a detailed account available in national archives india and at india office library london

3-14 TO 27 JANUARY 1760

delhi again looted and raped--mir dard has left a detailed account

4-29 FEBRUARY -23 MARCH 1760

delhi again looted by abdali.tahmas khan miskin has left a detailed account

5-29 JANUARY 1761 TO 22 MARCH 1761

delhi again subjected to loot and raoe by abdali

THIS IS NOT CRITICISM AT ALL.

THIS IS HOW BUSINESS WAS DONE THEN.
Agha Amin

It is no secret that fouj is that criminal organization in pakistan that gains its strength by stoking the fires of ethnic hatered in Pakistan. I will not go into the details of East India company's harami aulad like Ayub Khan or Yehya Khan but take for example, the terrorist organization like MQM. By the end of 90s this terrorit group was almost disbanded and heaving last breath when fouj took over and started feeding these snakes again. The issue of Balochistan and sindh ultranationalism always gains its strength during fouji regimes. Why these people stop complaining during civil governments?

Take another example, of Chief Jsutice restoration movement - it was only fouji quarter (including Agha Amin and the so called veteran foujis) who tried to turn it into a "Punjabi Chief justice" issue. The fact remains that it was Balochi and Sindhi lawyers who gave their life in the cause of this movement. Tens of lawyers in Sindh were burnt alive by the pet dogs (MQM) of fouji terrorists. Agah, you should be ashamed of yourself turning the struggle against this fouj oppressed system into an ethnic struggle. Can't you see below, evem the most rabid ethnic chauvinists are having trouble swallowing this fouji pill?

agha amin:

What I fail to understand is that how is the post 2001 stand of the Taliban, that is aided by wahabi fighters from across the globe, a Pushtoon Stand?

And you are absolutely right when you say that you are no expert on pushtoons. you didnt have to spell it out.

note on ahmad shah abdali and durranis:--

1-while ghilzais were the real liberators of afghanistan the abdalis were collaborators of persians.
2-ahmad shah abdalis golden moment was when his master nadir shah afshar was assasinated and he bolted away with the persian treasure.
3-defeated by mughal emperor mohammad shah rangeela at sirhind in 1748.
4-looted delhi many times in between 1749 and 1761.mir and sauda have written numerable poems on his style of looting.defeated the marathas in 1761 not because they were a danger to muslims but because the marathas had begun expanding into punjab and he perceived them as a long term threat to afghanistan.
5-looted punjab many times.
6-confirmed many sikh chiefs on his line of communication from lahore to karnal as chiefs of states of jind ,patiala,kapurthala,farid kot etc so that they should not loot his loot rom delhi.

a great pashtun hero no doubt.

his lifes best biography is by ganda singh.

i have nowhere claimed that i am an expert on pashtuns .

the essence of this writeup is that pashtuns were used as cannon fodder starting from mahmud ghaznavi till 2001.
Agha Amin

Re: # 19, 21

majumdar and sunil,

Ahmad Shah Abdali was one of Pashtun's greatest heroes...he conquered Delhi at the invitation of a beleaguered populace there...a populace who were getting fed up at the wickedness of the Marhatas...Abdali had a force of about 35,000 and decimated an opposition of the Marhatas numbering about 150,000 or more on the field of battle at Panipat...it was a rout...

AGHA AMIN..WHAT DO U THINK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE PUBLISHED TODAY IN DAILY TIMES??????
'' “The danger of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan is real. But it does not come from the Taliban guerrillas now battling the Pakistan Army in the Swat borderlands. It comes from a proliferating network of heavily armed Islamist militias in the Punjab heartland and major cities, directed by Lashkar-e-Tayba, a close ally of Al Qaeda, which staged the terrorist attack last November in Mumbai�.

South Punjab stretches from Jhang to Bahawalpur, dotted with madrassas that private citizens from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait fund generously, thinking they are spreading the message of Islam. Only in Dera Ghazi Khan, the origin of the dreaded clerics of Lal Masjid in Islamabad, there are 185 registered madrassas, of which 90 are Deobandi (with a total of 324 teachers), 84 are Barelvi (with a total of 212 teachers), six are Ahle Hadith (107 teachers) and five are Fiqh-e-Jafaria (10 teachers). Multan is the traditional base of madrassas, while Rahimyar Khan and Bahawalpur have seen their proliferation in recent years.''
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Agha Amin ...did u train all these Taliban and their leaders?
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Re: # 30adamkhan...Thanks for ur views,AGHA AMIN sounds like HAMID GUL,IMRAN KHAN AND QAZI HUSSIAN.These people are living in denial and can't read the writing on the wall.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Agha Amin:

"waziristan operation will fail" does not substantiate the heavy intellectual diarrhea that you spluttered in your article.

A common trait between all you dime a dozen non pushto speaking commentators on pushtoons, is that you guys treat the Pushtoons as indomitable alien race that is so easy to predict and analyze. This is an analysis that one could expect from people like Hameed Gul and all of those other ex army morons.

Pathetic to say the least.

If there was a Punjabi vs Pushtoon war in Pakistan then the victims of these suicide bombings would have been predominantly Punjabis and not Pushtoons. How difficult is that to understand?

Re: # 28.... here is ur intro on chowk......

Agha Amin
Ex Editor ,author, ex military officer,consultant

Articles published in daily "NATION" , Online " PRAVDA" ,daily "NEWS" , "Defence Journal","Globe",Indian Strategic Review",Pakistan Army Journal,Citadel Magazineof Command and Staff College Quetta,Journal of Afghanistan Studies ,Friday Times,DAWN,Afghanistan Times,Outlook Afghanistan etc.


SO IF U WERE EX ARMY OFFICER,THEN U DON'T HAVE TRUST AND CONFIDENCE IN UR PRESENT COMRADES OF PAK-ARMY.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

ha ha ha , i jokingly compared baitullah to khushal khan !

naturally how can a tribal fight gunships and artillery other than by guerrilla warfare.

this modern abdali is an indomitable warrior.

i am amused at these light weight intellectuals reacting to my interacts.

the bottom line is that waziristan operation will fail.
Agha Amin

Re: # 16..WELL SAID....writer of this article does not have any knowledge,hate to say that but its a fact.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Amin,I dont know what you are talkin about,you are totally wrong by saying,'' Baitullah Mahsud whether aided or not aided by USA or India or Russia is an indigenous product. He is unique because he is intellectually superior to all Pashtuns in the region'',Bait Mahsud is a criminal and he has pukhtuns blood on his hands,he DOES NOT represent pukhtuns on eiether side of PAK-AFGHAN border,he is just a WANTED CRIMINAL.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Agha Amin....Khushal Khan and Ahmad Shah Abdali,were not hiding in rat holes and killed innocent people,they were not wearing religion mask and terrorizing innocent people,they were not bombing schools or hanging dead bodies to trees or poles,they did not behead innocent people.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Army needs to crush these terrorists no matter where they are, they are destroying everything,so before they take over entire country,they must be crushed.
http://pukhtunkhwatimes.blogspot.com/

Re # 17

pakahir wroora! khushala ossay.

Are we seeing the new policy of Iraq-trained General McChrystal in action in Pakistani tribal areas?

majumdar,once upon a time gold,diamonds,women were considered assets.and could be found in laege quantity with the ruler,it is no longer so, In fact good % of assets are intelectual and it is not possible to loot but for this reason mehsud may have been as abdali!

majumdar,

Don't be sarcastic. I am talking from pathan POV...

Bhatti sb,

Baitullah mehsood being compared with abdali

Fair point. Bait hasn't looted Punjab or Delhi-yet.

Regards

Baitullah mehsood being compared with abdali and khushal khan......

yeh din bhi dekhna thaa....

I thinking PAVO is having too much drug that is availabale in Kabul....

Re: # 15

Adam Khana rora pakhairuno!

Re: # 14

Agha Amin,

It is ridiculous that you are trying to compare a known criminal thug like the Mehsud character to some of Pashtun's greatest heroes, like Khushal Khan and Ahmad Shah Abdali...how can somebody who is out to destroy the very fabric of the Pashtun culture represent them? Adam Khan is right...he represents no Pashtuns...As for your observation: "the settled area pashtuns are closer to punjabis in education and culture"...not that there is anything wrong with Punjabis...but I would tend to totally disagree with this fallacy...in 1849 when the Brits came to the Frontier, HW Ballew, a surgeon with the Brit army wrote a very detailed account of the area which is now the region of the sp-called settled Pakhtuns...and his descriptions are every bit of a people who are as tribal and ferocious as any of the other tribes...probably the settled area pashtuns are now a bit more educated having availed a bit more of the opportunities on tap...otherwise except for the dialects they have the same language, tribes, customs, jealousies, sense of honor, pride and vengeful nature...and above all by no stretch of the imagination are mullahs representatives of pashtuns...these talibs are aliens comprising of sundry different nationalities, created first to fight Russians and now out to destroy the Pashtun culture.

Agha Amin:

So if the current Pakistani Taliban represent true Pushtoon sentiments then why did they have to kill more than a thousand tribal elders to gain power in FATA?

Why didnt pushtoon nationalists join hands with these guys instead of whining about the clash of Hujra and Jumaat? Have you heard of Afzal Khan lala?

What is your opinion regarding the raising of tribal lashkars against the Taliban? Are those mere punjabi stooges? or they are pushtoons driven by the obligation of badal?

If punjab is the main target then why are Pushtoons in Peshawar and DI Khan bearing the brunt of Baitullah's onslaught? Do you seriously believe that when these suicide bombers head towards Peshawar, they are actually aiming to kill Punjabis? How many Pushtoons have died in these "true pushtoon" initiated suicide bombings compared to Punjabis?

This might come as news to you but Baitullah mahsood is not fighting for Pashtoons, he is fighting for wahabism (take his word for it instead of guessing his motives), to him attock is not a border but a hurdle. He is not driven by pushtoonwali or he wouldnt be beheading jirgas and ordering the uzbeks and punjabis under his command to kill his own mehsuds...

Coming up with alternative explanations is cool, but unbridled abstraction can push one towards that uncool zone.

the tribal pashtuns have substance in resisting all foreign occupiers muslim sikh brit american punjabi etc

the settled area pshtuns are closer to punjabis in education and culture

if the talibans keep ideology as the centrepiece they will take over punjab also


Agha Amin

i have already discussed in great detail the pashtun and non pashtun division here in my ilogs and on my blogs.

the simple fact is that afghanistan in all probability will be divided in pashtun and non pashtun parts once the USA/NATO withdraws
Agha Amin

#9 Now a hate monger wants to teach love Pakistani majority...

Agha Sahib: You have started an interesting and timely topic and reading your writing I get the feeling that you admire defunct leftist rulers of Kabul. This may color your thinking.
I grew up in Lahore and I know that even fifty year back there were thousands of well established Pashtun families living there. I worked in Peshawar for couple of years and I had no problems. Let me say that there is no inherent conflict between two people. The real conflict lies in power and the benefits that flow from it. Punjab is easy going in its ways. If Punjab were a monolithic entity, it would claim first right to rule under any system democratic or otherwise. The fact is that some minorities have taken a big chunk of the benefits and they still want more.
For analytical purposes I distinguish between urban and rural Pashtuns. Urban Pashuns understand economics and state politics, while rural tribes are aggressive and set in their traditional ways but they are also subject to lure of money. The issue for Pakistan is to absorb these people in main society without losing stability.
Your suggestion that Pakistan allow border tribes to import duty free is undesirable because it is like saying make smuggling legal. If people want government services taxes have to be paid. I do recognize the need to develop industry and agriculture. In fact Pakistan should include Afghan needs in development planning.
What are your thoughts about Pashtun and non- Pashtun divisions in Afghanistan?

I am sorry but I don't see this as Pushtoon vs Punjabi thing.

What I see is that the Pushtoons in major cities are the biggest victims of the Taliban and other Pushtoon militants who hide in tribal areas and strike regularly in major cities of NWFP and elsewhere. So a lot of it is really Pushtoon-on-Pushtoon violence.

Both NWFP and Pakistani govt have tried to negotiate peace with them to no avail. While I am all for talks, I don't see how any talks are likely to succeed in bringing durable peace.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 2 Major Sahib General Sahib Killed Hindustani Muslims on orders of PPP leaders including mrs Bhutto.
Tikka, Yahyya killed their "low" class bengalis brothers and when they started raping mothers and sisters bengalis went to kafirs for help and they could not understand this attitude. Bengalis had problems "attitude" problems.
THen they recently quite "docile" old baluchi leader and Musharaff boasted it will be different its will be different they will not know who they blasted.

There is common thread no justice or prosecution of criminals. People are nothing just numbers.
This criminality has no limits. Same thing will happen people will be slaughtered. This only country in world where crimilas , murders are cheered and praised and people are fan of them.
There is even criminal mind poisoning. In Karachi in 1971 when news started coming army is raping bengali women " High class women circle" of Karachi joked as race improvement program.
Otherwise very educated people like YLH still do not justify but condone and and demagnify the crimes of army saying "only" 100,000 bengalis were killed. The killing was desensitised. So when the millions Afghans were killed they just killed Barbarians. We have taught in schools lots of religion but morality was not part of it.
We have "animal Farm " here as Aptly described in 1984 by George Orwell.
I do not even talk much on such subjects as If I can not speak truth I do not want to lie.

There is loss of morality on ground. People have lost courage. Nobody in country ( all big writers and leaders intelluctual talkative people) say even once let us clean system and try the criminals who have killed hundreds of thousands of people, helpless , Bengalis, afghans, Mohajirs and Baloachis. They never say they are sorry( words are cheap), Musharaff said about genocide of bengalis let us forget and forgive. Great philosophy and moral lessons. One should forgive but not forget. Do you think any of these criminals are going to be hanged ? No they are praised that is real situation.
Pathans are sufferers for sure specially citizens of A.stan but some times their leadersship cries for justice with others during day but at night they attend party with army punjabi buddies. Awam is also wrong when they accept and acquiesce the criminals as leaders, teachers, preachers,professors.Actually majority province ethinic history is criminal and they have sided with suppression freedom and always have acted as sword of oppressors and their poet WaRIS sHAH CRIES AND CURSES THEM. But they are too dumb and corroup to improve, they can not be good rulers of other provinces.
If I become education minister to reduce criminality and falsehood will discard so called pakistan studies, regious indoctorination and force therm to study your few books and that can be far better moral teaching than all hate mongering and remembering. You have done monumental work , you have understood the under current but you are unfortunate for you are born in wrong country and they will not value your work. I am sorry to tell you to enjoy culture one should be cultured , to appreciate you work needs depth in atleast in some serious art or science. Most here are educated means it just making money and diatribe, bad words and hate and pure hate.
Good day , please accept my respects.

Re: # 6
I am not sure if Baitullah has the power that you attribute to him but those who disrespected Rahman Baba's grave do not belong in the company of the brave and the great.

Re: # 5
Your fear of Pakistan breaking along ethnic lines is well grounded. Budget 2009-10 is a clear example that the military and the elite(mostly feudal lords) are playing games for money and they do not have their full attention on keeping the country together.

peshawar bannu kohat di khan all were ruled by sikhs till 1849 when the english east india company liberated the pashtuns and the punjabi muslims.just like it liberated the muslims of delhi from the marathas in 1803.

the ANP has failed the pashtuns as well brought out by juma khan sufi in his biography of bacha khan published by vanguard.

the advice is to punjabis as punjabis will be the losers.baitullah whatever he is is equal in status to mir wais hotaki and khushal khan and ahmad shah durrani.
Agha Amin

If they can live happily in UK and usa they can do that here and mostly doing.
At same time Shia Imamburghas are normal targets, shia doctors in Karachi were killed systimatically.You know in northern tribal areas what happens in Hangu , Shias are terrified. Every year in many parts of country " Moharam and procession and mornings " are considerd provocative and regular sensetive areas declared and military shows prescence by :Flag Marches". If this is normal then it is normal and fine. One group is minority puts fear in their mind and they "behave"is truth. Every thing is not well in state of pakistan even after American micromanagement we need another management ?
More fear is fragmentation along ethinic lines as has happened in Sindh or as Pathans control Quetta ( similar to hindustani muslim control in Karachi).Native have anger and anguish. That is real faultline not Shia Sunni Business like iraq.
This is my feeling , I may be totally wrong.

Mr. Amin
Peshawar was ruled by Ranjit Singh until 1839. Then Pathan razakaars were sent into Kashmir in 1947. Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan became the darling of Pakistan and Bacha Khan and his family was exiled. So, please tell me about this punjabi-pashtoon alliance. How long did the Mufti Mahmud/NAP government last? From my observation of Pakistan, all provinces have complaints against Punjab. It used to be the muhajirs in the early days of Pakistan that allied with Punjab but they became unnecessary after few years. How could you say that Baitullah Mehsud is intellectually superior among Pashtuns? Do you really think he is smarter than Asfandyar or Afrasiab?

Re: # 1
Hullo Mr. Ahmad Madani
Iam curious about your observations. Iraq could break after the Americans leave, you say. Are you sure that the shias and sunnis cannot co-exist in that country? Do you think Americans would not mind their conquest after they have withdrawn militarily?

thanks my dear brother madani sahib.

what did the so called naseerullah babar achieve in karachi ? after the so called operation MQM still came back in elections ?

what did army achieve in 1971 ?

what did army achieve in balochistan ?

its a tragedy that the pashtoons who fought the brits and for pakistan are being killed like they are some beasts ?


Agha Amin

Thanks for your effort to elaborate the past and ponder about future.
It appears american's guiding strategy used in Iraq of useing tribal fatricide.( It is my feeling American's are finding excuse to get out declaring victory and leave mess and once that happens Iraq will disintegrate )
From todays head lines
" Rival commander wants Baitullah eliminated now
ISLAMABAD: Qari Zainuddin, a rival commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Chief Baitullah Mehsud, on Wednesday accused the TTP chief of having links with India and Israel. He acted against Islam as well as the country"
If this way to act will backfire very slowly as fatricide will lead to civil war.
Already in AFpak area is pakitan is very hated as Pakistan planned and destroyed Afghanistan along with Amercans. This cruel ways and short cuts for American cash felt fine but such bad immoral deeds take time to get poisonous fruits.
Worrying part all other ethinic groups consider correctly the pakistani state is reason of their constant misery.
There is real danger of 41 million can get united and kick American stooges and Peshawar and Quetta will slip in no time.
Places where wise human do not go in daylight, fools venture even in dark of night. Once American leave all of western Pakistan will ungovernable more likely.
Once American godfathers vacate place being too hot then Pakistani "intelluctuals" will face the music. It has possibility of what happened to Cambodia.
You are right nothing is inevitable but stupidity, intelluctual laziness and love of gold seems loose thinking is inevitable.
Thanks for taking efforts , I personally appreciate you work ( we have here lots of cheap hatred and stupidity)
A.M.