The Price
Shandana Minhas November 19, 2001
#1 Posted by sarwar on January 2, 2001 2:49:55 pm
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#2 Posted by cutandpaste on January 8, 2001 7:39:55 pm
`If You Won`t Talk to Us Now, You Will Later` - Then They Beat Him
Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Service Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Taliban`s Systematic Torture
http://www.iht.com/articles/44076.html
KABUL The Taliban is on the run. But before the radical Islamic movement disappears down some dark alley of history, Sayed Abdullah wants the world to know what they did to him because they thought he was a Christian.
One afternoon late in 1999, Mr. Sayed, then a 26-year-old worker in a Red Cross medical-supply warehouse, was at home in Kabul with his mother, his wife and their two little girls, when Taliban soldiers surrounded the house.
``We are suspicious of you,`` Mr. Sayed remembers their leader saying. ``We want to ask you some questions.``
Mr. Sayed couldn`t imagine why.
The Taliban soldiers put him in a pickup truck and took him to the building that housed their Intelligence Division No. 1. They locked him in a cell not big enough to lie down in.
Hours later guards came and led him to a large room. He saw a table with metal legs and a wooden top. Next to the table stood the evidence the Taliban would use against him - his entire library of 500 books, many of them in English, which he had learned in school.
He felt a rush of fear.
Mr. Sayed says a Taliban commander picked up his two copies of the Bible, one in English and one in Dari, the main language of Afghanistan. Bibles were strictly forbidden by the Taliban.
``We have here a man who has converted from Islam to Christianity,`` the commander said. ``Who are you working for? Which country?``
``I`m a good Muslim,`` Mr. Sayed said he replied. ``I have those books for information, for learning, not for changing religions.``
The commander cut him off. ``If you won`t talk to us now, you will later.``
Guards tied Mr. Sayed face down on the table. They beat him until he passed out.
When he woke up, he was back in the tiny cell. Blood was on his face and his clothes. He called out, but no one came.
Later a group of Taliban soldiers came to taunt him. ``Come and see what an important person we have,`` one said. ``He converted from Islam to Christianity.``
The Taliban`s restrictions on women, its public executions, and its destruction of Afghan cultural treasures are well known. But only now is its practice of systematic torture becoming clear.
Mr. Sayed`s account of his ordeal has been supported by interviews with his doctor and aid workers, as well as by Taliban prison records. Yet the most telling evidence is Mr. Sayed`s scarred body. The torturers broke several bones in his back. He still wears a brace around his midsection to help him stand. He has chronic kidney problems. He takes painkillers, and antibiotics to fight recurring infections.
Non-Muslims were a common target of the Taliban`s wrath. With Mr. Sayed, the Taliban thought it had to set an example.
After the first beating, they took him back to the room with the bloodstained table. They handed him a piece of paper with written questions: Who do you work for? Name all the people you have taught and converted.
Mr. Sayed handed it back.
``I haven`t committed this crime,`` he said.
The guards again tied him on the table. This time, they poured water on his feet, then wound electrical wires around both of his big toes. The wires were attached to an old Soviet military field telephone. The guards turned the telephone`s crank, sending a searing electrical current into Mr. Sayed`s feet. He felt as if some powerful force was lifting him high off the table, then slamming him down again, over and over.
``Do you want to write something now?``
Mr. Sayed thought that if he continued to refuse he would convince them of his innocence. And he thought that if he confessed, they would kill him.
They cranked the phone. ``I swear to God I am innocent,`` he screamed.
He felt the current slam into his bones. Then he blacked out.
He passed the next week in the bug-infested cell. No one spoke to him. Twice a day, he was given a cup of tea and a piece of bread.
One morning Taliban soldiers dragged him to a pickup truck and drove him, along with all his books, to Intelligence Division No. 3, a walled compound with barred windows in central Kabul.
The guard who dragged him to his cell in the basement there said to the other Taliban members there: ``He will die soon. Pray for him.``
Two weeks passed. Then they took him upstairs to a torture room where Mr. Sayed was given even more hideous electric shocks that made him urinate blood.
The place is now a jail run by the Security Ministry of the new Afghan government. Shah Wali, the deputy director, said that when he arrived shortly after the Taliban fled on Nov. 13, he found a tattered yellow book of records. It notes that the 26-year-old prisoner Sayed Abdullah arrived in March 2000. It lists his crime as ``belonging to the Christian religion.``
The torture continued every few days for a month, until Mr. Sayed was ready to sign. He wrote made-up stories about spreading Christianity, about foreign money and shadowy networks of conversion-crazed preachers. Anything they wanted to hear. Anything to make the torture stop.
A few days later, Mr. Sayed was carried out into the courtyard. There were several high-ranking Taliban officials gathered there.
``It is shameful that you converted from Islam to Christianity,`` said an older man, who Mr. Sayed assumed was a government minister.
``I confessed, but I never converted,`` Mr. Sayed said.
An enraged guard ran to him, pulled his head by the hair and put a knife to his throat. ``Give me permission to cut his throat so I may be rewarded by God,`` he said.
The Taliban official waved him off. He told Mr. Sayed that he had been convicted. ``We will take you to the roof of the Ministry of Communications,`` he said, referring to the 18-story building that is Kabul`s tallest. ``First we will burn you. Then we will throw you over the edge so that everyone can see you and know the punishment for converting from Islam.``
In the months after his arrest, Mr. Sayed`s mother, Fokhraj, went several times to Taliban leaders, who denied that they were holding her son. Finally she spoke to a powerful commander. ``This is a difficult case, and you can`t solve it just by saying he is innocent,`` she recalls him saying. ``I can help, but you should please pay me $5,000.``
It was an enormous sum. She sold the house and almost everything in it, which yielded a little more than $5,000. She moved in with relatives, taking Mr. Sayed`s wife and daughters with her. She gave the money to the commander.
BY PULLING SOME STRINGS that are still unclear to Mr. Sayed and his mother, the commander got the case transferred to a civilian court, where the judges, though still with the Taliban, were more willing to deal. The commander apparently paid them well.
Things changed at the jail. There were no more beatings. Guards began putting sugar in Mr. Sayed`s tea. A Red Cross representative was allowed to visit him.
Early one morning, nearly six months after his arrest, the guards came for Mr. Sayed one last time. The Taliban commander handed him his Red Cross identification card, torn in half. Then it dawned on Mr. Sayed: The commander, illiterate like most Taliban soldiers, thought the cross on the card was a Christian symbol.
``Sign this,`` he said. He pushed a paper in front of Mr. Sayed. It said that the prisoner certified that he had been well cared for. Mr. Sayed, his fingers dislocated from the beatings, scratched a faint mark.
``I don`t know how this miracle happened, but you should be punished,`` the commander said. ``You didn`t die from the torture, but God will kill you soon. Or maybe the injuries from the torture will kill you.``
The guards dragged him outside, where the Taliban officer who had arranged his release was waiting. Mr. Sayed spent six months in hospitals. He says he still has difficulty hearing, his vision is weak and his short-term memory is sketchy. Now he is back at work, where he can perform only light physical duties because, at 28, too many parts of his body could give out.
Mr. Sayed`s house is gone. He lives with his in-laws. He has little money left. Afghanistan is moving on to what everyone hopes is a better future, but Mr. Sayed feels the past is not yet ready to release him.
He will not try to replace his library, which the Taliban burned. He says he can`t bear the sound of the word ``book.``
Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Service Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Taliban`s Systematic Torture
http://www.iht.com/articles/44076.html
KABUL The Taliban is on the run. But before the radical Islamic movement disappears down some dark alley of history, Sayed Abdullah wants the world to know what they did to him because they thought he was a Christian.
One afternoon late in 1999, Mr. Sayed, then a 26-year-old worker in a Red Cross medical-supply warehouse, was at home in Kabul with his mother, his wife and their two little girls, when Taliban soldiers surrounded the house.
``We are suspicious of you,`` Mr. Sayed remembers their leader saying. ``We want to ask you some questions.``
Mr. Sayed couldn`t imagine why.
The Taliban soldiers put him in a pickup truck and took him to the building that housed their Intelligence Division No. 1. They locked him in a cell not big enough to lie down in.
Hours later guards came and led him to a large room. He saw a table with metal legs and a wooden top. Next to the table stood the evidence the Taliban would use against him - his entire library of 500 books, many of them in English, which he had learned in school.
He felt a rush of fear.
Mr. Sayed says a Taliban commander picked up his two copies of the Bible, one in English and one in Dari, the main language of Afghanistan. Bibles were strictly forbidden by the Taliban.
``We have here a man who has converted from Islam to Christianity,`` the commander said. ``Who are you working for? Which country?``
``I`m a good Muslim,`` Mr. Sayed said he replied. ``I have those books for information, for learning, not for changing religions.``
The commander cut him off. ``If you won`t talk to us now, you will later.``
Guards tied Mr. Sayed face down on the table. They beat him until he passed out.
When he woke up, he was back in the tiny cell. Blood was on his face and his clothes. He called out, but no one came.
Later a group of Taliban soldiers came to taunt him. ``Come and see what an important person we have,`` one said. ``He converted from Islam to Christianity.``
The Taliban`s restrictions on women, its public executions, and its destruction of Afghan cultural treasures are well known. But only now is its practice of systematic torture becoming clear.
Mr. Sayed`s account of his ordeal has been supported by interviews with his doctor and aid workers, as well as by Taliban prison records. Yet the most telling evidence is Mr. Sayed`s scarred body. The torturers broke several bones in his back. He still wears a brace around his midsection to help him stand. He has chronic kidney problems. He takes painkillers, and antibiotics to fight recurring infections.
Non-Muslims were a common target of the Taliban`s wrath. With Mr. Sayed, the Taliban thought it had to set an example.
After the first beating, they took him back to the room with the bloodstained table. They handed him a piece of paper with written questions: Who do you work for? Name all the people you have taught and converted.
Mr. Sayed handed it back.
``I haven`t committed this crime,`` he said.
The guards again tied him on the table. This time, they poured water on his feet, then wound electrical wires around both of his big toes. The wires were attached to an old Soviet military field telephone. The guards turned the telephone`s crank, sending a searing electrical current into Mr. Sayed`s feet. He felt as if some powerful force was lifting him high off the table, then slamming him down again, over and over.
``Do you want to write something now?``
Mr. Sayed thought that if he continued to refuse he would convince them of his innocence. And he thought that if he confessed, they would kill him.
They cranked the phone. ``I swear to God I am innocent,`` he screamed.
He felt the current slam into his bones. Then he blacked out.
He passed the next week in the bug-infested cell. No one spoke to him. Twice a day, he was given a cup of tea and a piece of bread.
One morning Taliban soldiers dragged him to a pickup truck and drove him, along with all his books, to Intelligence Division No. 3, a walled compound with barred windows in central Kabul.
The guard who dragged him to his cell in the basement there said to the other Taliban members there: ``He will die soon. Pray for him.``
Two weeks passed. Then they took him upstairs to a torture room where Mr. Sayed was given even more hideous electric shocks that made him urinate blood.
The place is now a jail run by the Security Ministry of the new Afghan government. Shah Wali, the deputy director, said that when he arrived shortly after the Taliban fled on Nov. 13, he found a tattered yellow book of records. It notes that the 26-year-old prisoner Sayed Abdullah arrived in March 2000. It lists his crime as ``belonging to the Christian religion.``
The torture continued every few days for a month, until Mr. Sayed was ready to sign. He wrote made-up stories about spreading Christianity, about foreign money and shadowy networks of conversion-crazed preachers. Anything they wanted to hear. Anything to make the torture stop.
A few days later, Mr. Sayed was carried out into the courtyard. There were several high-ranking Taliban officials gathered there.
``It is shameful that you converted from Islam to Christianity,`` said an older man, who Mr. Sayed assumed was a government minister.
``I confessed, but I never converted,`` Mr. Sayed said.
An enraged guard ran to him, pulled his head by the hair and put a knife to his throat. ``Give me permission to cut his throat so I may be rewarded by God,`` he said.
The Taliban official waved him off. He told Mr. Sayed that he had been convicted. ``We will take you to the roof of the Ministry of Communications,`` he said, referring to the 18-story building that is Kabul`s tallest. ``First we will burn you. Then we will throw you over the edge so that everyone can see you and know the punishment for converting from Islam.``
In the months after his arrest, Mr. Sayed`s mother, Fokhraj, went several times to Taliban leaders, who denied that they were holding her son. Finally she spoke to a powerful commander. ``This is a difficult case, and you can`t solve it just by saying he is innocent,`` she recalls him saying. ``I can help, but you should please pay me $5,000.``
It was an enormous sum. She sold the house and almost everything in it, which yielded a little more than $5,000. She moved in with relatives, taking Mr. Sayed`s wife and daughters with her. She gave the money to the commander.
BY PULLING SOME STRINGS that are still unclear to Mr. Sayed and his mother, the commander got the case transferred to a civilian court, where the judges, though still with the Taliban, were more willing to deal. The commander apparently paid them well.
Things changed at the jail. There were no more beatings. Guards began putting sugar in Mr. Sayed`s tea. A Red Cross representative was allowed to visit him.
Early one morning, nearly six months after his arrest, the guards came for Mr. Sayed one last time. The Taliban commander handed him his Red Cross identification card, torn in half. Then it dawned on Mr. Sayed: The commander, illiterate like most Taliban soldiers, thought the cross on the card was a Christian symbol.
``Sign this,`` he said. He pushed a paper in front of Mr. Sayed. It said that the prisoner certified that he had been well cared for. Mr. Sayed, his fingers dislocated from the beatings, scratched a faint mark.
``I don`t know how this miracle happened, but you should be punished,`` the commander said. ``You didn`t die from the torture, but God will kill you soon. Or maybe the injuries from the torture will kill you.``
The guards dragged him outside, where the Taliban officer who had arranged his release was waiting. Mr. Sayed spent six months in hospitals. He says he still has difficulty hearing, his vision is weak and his short-term memory is sketchy. Now he is back at work, where he can perform only light physical duties because, at 28, too many parts of his body could give out.
Mr. Sayed`s house is gone. He lives with his in-laws. He has little money left. Afghanistan is moving on to what everyone hopes is a better future, but Mr. Sayed feels the past is not yet ready to release him.
He will not try to replace his library, which the Taliban burned. He says he can`t bear the sound of the word ``book.``
#3 Posted by ylh on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
For Nasah and his fundamentalist `liberators` women:
RAWA`s appeal to the UN and World community
The people of Afghanistan do not accept domination of the Northern Alliance!
Now it is confirmed that the Taliban have left Kabul and the Northern Alliance has entered the city.
The world should understand that the Northern Alliance is composed of some bands who did show their real criminal and inhuman nature when they were ruling Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996.
The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive development, but entering of the rapist and looter NA in the city is nothing but a dreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul whose wounds of the years 1992-96 have not healed yet.
Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months were saying that they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than being scared by the US bombing.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda will be eliminated, but the existence of the NA as a military force would shatter the joyful dream of the majority for an Afghanistan free from the odious chains of barbaric Taliban. The NA will horribly intensify the ethnic and religious conflicts and will never refrain to fan the fire of another brutal and endless civil war in order to retain in power. The terrible news of looting and inhuman massacre of the captured Taliban or their foreign accomplices in Mazar-e-Sharif in past few days speaks for itself.
Though the NA has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as ``democratic`` and even supporter of women`s rights, but in fact they have not at all changed, as a leopard cannot change its spots.
RAWA has already documented heinous crimes of the NA. Time is running out. RAWA on its own part appeals to the UN and world community as a whole to pay urgent and considerable heed to the recent developments in our ill-fated Afghanistan before it is too late.
We would like to emphatically ask the UN to send its effective peace-keeping force into the country before the NA can repeat the unforgettable crimes they committed in the said years.
The UN should withdraw its recognition to the so-called Islamic government headed by Rabbani and help the establishment of a broad-based government based on the democratic values.
RAWA`s call stems from the aspirations of the vast majority of the people of Afghanistan.
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
November 13, 2001
RAWA`s appeal to the UN and World community
The people of Afghanistan do not accept domination of the Northern Alliance!
Now it is confirmed that the Taliban have left Kabul and the Northern Alliance has entered the city.
The world should understand that the Northern Alliance is composed of some bands who did show their real criminal and inhuman nature when they were ruling Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996.
The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive development, but entering of the rapist and looter NA in the city is nothing but a dreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul whose wounds of the years 1992-96 have not healed yet.
Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months were saying that they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than being scared by the US bombing.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda will be eliminated, but the existence of the NA as a military force would shatter the joyful dream of the majority for an Afghanistan free from the odious chains of barbaric Taliban. The NA will horribly intensify the ethnic and religious conflicts and will never refrain to fan the fire of another brutal and endless civil war in order to retain in power. The terrible news of looting and inhuman massacre of the captured Taliban or their foreign accomplices in Mazar-e-Sharif in past few days speaks for itself.
Though the NA has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as ``democratic`` and even supporter of women`s rights, but in fact they have not at all changed, as a leopard cannot change its spots.
RAWA has already documented heinous crimes of the NA. Time is running out. RAWA on its own part appeals to the UN and world community as a whole to pay urgent and considerable heed to the recent developments in our ill-fated Afghanistan before it is too late.
We would like to emphatically ask the UN to send its effective peace-keeping force into the country before the NA can repeat the unforgettable crimes they committed in the said years.
The UN should withdraw its recognition to the so-called Islamic government headed by Rabbani and help the establishment of a broad-based government based on the democratic values.
RAWA`s call stems from the aspirations of the vast majority of the people of Afghanistan.
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
November 13, 2001
#4 Posted by hamzadafaqui on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
Shandana Minhas.
I hope the readers would get the nuances cached like gems in your piece.Excellent indeed!
This I am sending in a hurry to be among the first register my appreciation.I intend to read again more words like these.....
Quote:
[CNN is broadcasting pictures of four wheel drives and horsemen riding side by side into the distance, presumably towards Afghanistan. Mazar-i-Sharif has been liberated, they tell us, and women are burning their chaddars in jubilation.
Stop. Rewind. What kind of Afghani woman burns her chaddar at the onset of winter?
Forward. The Northern Alliance has entered Kabul. Men are lining up in droves to have their beards trimmed. The last Afghan woman to read the news on radio pre Taliban is now the first Afghan woman to read the news on the radio Post Taliban. Her broadcast meets stiff competition from a boom box singing of deewana dil.]
We know the lies & manufactured footage which Americans excel at but the insights you have given into this diabolical mind is Harper quality.
Rest assured,I think you have found your true calling(in case you had any doubts).Muslims need you like yesterday.Please try Al-Jazeera pronto!
I hope the readers would get the nuances cached like gems in your piece.Excellent indeed!
This I am sending in a hurry to be among the first register my appreciation.I intend to read again more words like these.....
Quote:
[CNN is broadcasting pictures of four wheel drives and horsemen riding side by side into the distance, presumably towards Afghanistan. Mazar-i-Sharif has been liberated, they tell us, and women are burning their chaddars in jubilation.
Stop. Rewind. What kind of Afghani woman burns her chaddar at the onset of winter?
Forward. The Northern Alliance has entered Kabul. Men are lining up in droves to have their beards trimmed. The last Afghan woman to read the news on radio pre Taliban is now the first Afghan woman to read the news on the radio Post Taliban. Her broadcast meets stiff competition from a boom box singing of deewana dil.]
We know the lies & manufactured footage which Americans excel at but the insights you have given into this diabolical mind is Harper quality.
Rest assured,I think you have found your true calling(in case you had any doubts).Muslims need you like yesterday.Please try Al-Jazeera pronto!
#5 Posted by soysauce on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
``The Taliban are gone, the Taliban are gone, crowds line the streets to greet victorious soldiers of the Northern Alliance. What are they saying, what are they saying…a reporter on the fast track asks his interpreter. Things like my shop has been looted…my carpets are gone…they took my electric fan…the interpreter thinks. “Er…Victory”, he tells his charge, “they are saying victory.” ``
Is this for real? This is like the script for a comedy i have running in my head for years..
A white american goes to a third world country to report on a conflict. A crowd gathers round. What do they think of our boys he asks. The interpreter says to the crowd what the hell are you all staring at. They ask did he paint himself so white and rosy. The interpreter says they say they are grateful. And on and on. Actually i have come across milder variations of this in real life.
One wonders if the public opinion in the US is in effect shaped in part by the stringers..
Is this for real? This is like the script for a comedy i have running in my head for years..
A white american goes to a third world country to report on a conflict. A crowd gathers round. What do they think of our boys he asks. The interpreter says to the crowd what the hell are you all staring at. They ask did he paint himself so white and rosy. The interpreter says they say they are grateful. And on and on. Actually i have come across milder variations of this in real life.
One wonders if the public opinion in the US is in effect shaped in part by the stringers..
#6 Posted by kafir K Khan on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
What price should be paid ?
Price will be paid by Afghans is for not adopting to changing times.
It is the price paid for not revising the concept of God wher other Gods are inferior to theirs.
It is the price of being intolerant
It is the price for not being united as a country if there was a country.
A price for Afghan selfishness and eceipt.
A price where loyalties do not count.
It is price that dishonest people must pay.
Price will have to be paid for changing sides as carpet baggers.
Price when everyone is so hotheaded and each one wants to be Governor.
A price for arrogance of assuming others are weaker than you.
A price for unreasoning.
Price for unyielding where values are valueless
Price of macle chauvanism.
Price to malign women when a mother can not be looked into her eyes.
It is this heavy price which must be paid by Afghan blood, flesh and bone for being so wicked and keeping the company of the monsters, so rest of the world can sleep with peace and defeated would remeber it for long time to come.
Price will be paid by Afghans is for not adopting to changing times.
It is the price paid for not revising the concept of God wher other Gods are inferior to theirs.
It is the price of being intolerant
It is the price for not being united as a country if there was a country.
A price for Afghan selfishness and eceipt.
A price where loyalties do not count.
It is price that dishonest people must pay.
Price will have to be paid for changing sides as carpet baggers.
Price when everyone is so hotheaded and each one wants to be Governor.
A price for arrogance of assuming others are weaker than you.
A price for unreasoning.
Price for unyielding where values are valueless
Price of macle chauvanism.
Price to malign women when a mother can not be looked into her eyes.
It is this heavy price which must be paid by Afghan blood, flesh and bone for being so wicked and keeping the company of the monsters, so rest of the world can sleep with peace and defeated would remeber it for long time to come.
#7 Posted by sarwar on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
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#8 Posted by shammi on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
From the New York Times
``...Several hundred Pakistani fighters are also believed to have sought refuge in Kunduz, including relatives of some powerful clerics, this intelligence official said...Thousands of Pakistanis joined the Taliban in recent years and many of them have been captured and imprisoned by the Northern Alliance in recent days. Others have tried to slip back across the border into Pakistan, where some have been arrested.
At the news conference today, Mr. Sattar said Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan to fight made their own choice over the objections of the government....``
Mr. Abdus Sattar should be ashamed of the statement that `those Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan to fight made their own choice over the objections of the government`. For a long time, Mr. Sattar`s government`s policy was to send Pakistanis to fight for the Taleban, and give the Taleban material support. Mr. Sattar`s government did nothing to stop these poor individuals from being used as cannon fodder. Now, that a few hundred (thousand?) in Konduz are entrapped, Mr. Sattar is backing out, and leaving hundreds hanging to dry. This moral obfuscation is inexcusable.
``...Mr. Sattar said Pakistan only wanted assurances that any prisoners would be treated according to international law...``
Mr. Sattar never sought any assurance about violating international law when his government was actively undermining the UN-recognized Afghan government of Mr. Rabbani.
``...Several hundred Pakistani fighters are also believed to have sought refuge in Kunduz, including relatives of some powerful clerics, this intelligence official said...Thousands of Pakistanis joined the Taliban in recent years and many of them have been captured and imprisoned by the Northern Alliance in recent days. Others have tried to slip back across the border into Pakistan, where some have been arrested.
At the news conference today, Mr. Sattar said Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan to fight made their own choice over the objections of the government....``
Mr. Abdus Sattar should be ashamed of the statement that `those Pakistanis who went to Afghanistan to fight made their own choice over the objections of the government`. For a long time, Mr. Sattar`s government`s policy was to send Pakistanis to fight for the Taleban, and give the Taleban material support. Mr. Sattar`s government did nothing to stop these poor individuals from being used as cannon fodder. Now, that a few hundred (thousand?) in Konduz are entrapped, Mr. Sattar is backing out, and leaving hundreds hanging to dry. This moral obfuscation is inexcusable.
``...Mr. Sattar said Pakistan only wanted assurances that any prisoners would be treated according to international law...``
Mr. Sattar never sought any assurance about violating international law when his government was actively undermining the UN-recognized Afghan government of Mr. Rabbani.
#9 Posted by sarwar on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
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#10 Posted by SigaIph235 on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
Dear Brothers,
ASAK & Ramazan Karim.
For your info :
Press Release
New Delhi, Nov 15 ``We reject POTO in toto as it is an enlarged version of
the now lapsed TADA.`` This was the consensus reached at the one-day national
convention, organised here today at Rajinder Bhawan by the All India Milli
Council. The convention was inaugurated by the columnist and Member of Rajya
Sabha, Kuldip Nayar and presided over by social and political ideologue
Surendra Mohan. It was participated by a large number of legal luminaries,
journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists, religious leaders and
politicians.
In a 6-point resolution, passed unanimously, the national convention called
upon the central government to withdraw immediately the draconian ordinance
and resort to the already existing laws to deal with the menace of terrorism
in the states where it exists. It also urged the political parties,
including the entire Opposition and those within the ruling NDA or
supporting it to vote down the politically motivated ordinance when it is
introduced in both the Houses of Parliament in the same spirit it allowed
TADA to lapse in 1995.
In his welcome address, Dr M Manzoor Alam said that the government has
narrowed the political discourse to extremely simplistic categories: either
you are pro-POTO or pro-terrorism. It distinctly echoes US President George
W Bush’s magisterial declaration: either you are with America or with WTC
attackers. Political choices and alternatives are not so unidimensional and
shorn of nuances. According to him, unlike the existing laws which have
in-built safeguards against their misuse, POTO has none.
In his inaugural address Kuldip Nayar averred that POTO is quite unjust
because onus is on the accused to prove his innocence and the accused is
presumed guilty till proven innocent. The eminent columnist wondered that
being a member of both the standing committee of the union home ministry and
Rajya Sabha, he was even then not consulted. He said the move is nothing but
to curb the fundamental rights of the common citizen. He apprehended that
like TADA, minorities and other weaker sections might be the worst sufferers
if POTO is allowed to become a law. Therefore, the entire country should
rise against the government move, he declared. He also feared that if it
remains in force, the freedom of media would also fall in jeopardy.
Surendra Mohan, in his presidential address, said that one is bound to doubt
the intention of the ruling coalition as the the 50-page document of POTO
does not contain the point ``a person spreading communal venom and dividing
different communities on communal lines would be considered committing an
act of terrorism``, which was included even in now the lapsed draconian TADA.
He said two out the 23 organisations, banned under POTO, were already banned
which shows that there already exist laws to deal with the situation.
Justice (retired) H Suresh, in his key-note address, said it becomes
difficult for him to believe that the government is not aware of what TADA
had done to the people. Yet this law is being sponsored not to contain
terrorism for the simple reason that such a law failed, but for for the main
objective to divide the people on the basis that all minority groups are not
loyal. The list of terrorist organisations amply demonstrates the
government’s partisan approach, he averred.
Prof Z M Khan of Jamia Millia Islamia said the present union home minister
who says that all those who oppose POTO would wittingly or unwittingly be
appeasing the terrorists, is the same person who was in the forefront to
campaign against TADA and his BJP had then first of all charged the Congress
government led by Chimanbhai Patel in Gujarat in 1990-92 for misusing TADA.
Then a large number of activists of BJP’s Indian Farmers’ Union had been
arrested under TADA. He also revealed that out of a total of 77,500 persons
arrested under TADA, only 8,000 were tried, 725 (0.81 per cent) convicted
and 3,000 are still believed to be in different jails.
Communist Party of India secretary D Raja was of the view that BJP is
working on two agendas, one communalism on long term and the other UP polls
on short term. He urged similar laws in Maharashtra and Karnataka be
withdrawn.
Congress Rajya Sabha member K M Khan said his party would oppose the
proposed bill in Parliament and for this purpose it had called a meeting of
its chief ministers in 12 states. Besides, it is also to issue a whip to its
MPs. Former UP minister Ashok Yadav asked the majority in UP to rise against
POTO so that the central government’s plan to gain from the elections could
be failed.
CPI leader and former Union Agricultural Minister Chaturanan Mishra said
that powers of court have been curtailed under POTO. There is no provision
of an anticipatory bail and any confession before the police has been
considered final. He suggested the Milli Council to take up the matter
seriously. He said that it should form two committees, one legal and the
other political to pursue the issue of POTO, besides preparing a booklet on
the dangers of POTO.
Akali Dal (Pheruman) secretary general Mahant Sewa Das Singh said the
minorities are always the worst victim to such draconian laws.
Human rights activist and columnist Praful Bidwai was of the view that POTO
is a photo copy of TADA with a few changes and is more draconian to TADA. He
said it should be rejected in toto.
Vice President of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Maulana Mohammed Shafi Moonis asked
what type of a law is coming, which is being opposed by all sections of the
society. There should be a bar on devising unjust, undemocratic and
draconian laws, the Maulana said..
Former Prime Minister V P Singh, who could not turn up due to indisposement,
in his message said: ``It is my firm view that laws, particularly those
posing a threat to the fundamental rights and creating a danger of
converting the country into a Police State, should not be devised to cover
one’s failures.
The participants included Prakash Ambedkar, chairman, Republican Party of
India; D Prempati, a Dalit leader; Kishore Lal, former MP; Santosh Bharti,
also a former MP; Mast Ram Kapur, a journalist; Dr Kalbe Sadiq, vice
president, All India Muslim Personal Law Board; Aziz Burney, Joint Editor,
Rashtriya Sahara (Urdu), and Maulana Abdullah Mughaisi, a renowned Muslim
theologian.
All India Milli Council
Resolution
Passed at the National Convention ``POTO and National Security``
New Delhi, 15th November, 2001
After eliciting opinions from various eminent speakers, consisting of legal
luminaries, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and
politicians from different parts of the country and discussing threadbare
the background, perspective, motive and provisions of the newly promulgated
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) 2001, which is to be presented for
approval before Parliament, beginning on November 19, the national
convention organized on November 15 at Rajinder Bhawan, New Delhi by the All
India Milli Council on the theme of ``POTO and National Security`` passed the
following resolutions:
1. We call upon the people to reject POTO in toto as it is an enlarged
version of the now lapsed TADA.
2. We call upon the central government to withdraw immediately the draconian
ordinance and resort to the already existing laws to deal with the menace of
terrorism in the states where it exists, since there are bitter experience
of the misuse of similar laws like TADA. They had put a large number of
innocent people into suffering by putting them behind the bars years
together.
3. We call upon the political parties, Members of Parliament, including the
entire Opposition and those within the ruling NDA or supporting it to defeat
the politically motivated ordinance (POTO) when it is introduced in both the
Houses of Parliament for its passage, in the same spirit it allowed TADA to
lapse in 1995.
4. We call upon the allies of NDA, like TDP, DMK, BJD, Janata Dal (United)
and Trinamool Congress and others to rise to the occasion and oppose POTO in
both the houses of Parliament.
5. We urge upon all those organizations who have faith in democracy to
organize themselves to expose the dangers to the democratic values in the
country.
6. POTO is a serious threat to civil rights, democratic institutions,
existing human rights in the country and freedom of press. Therefore, we
call upon the major political parties in the Parliament, particularly
Congress party which has got a significant position in Rajya Sabha, to come
out openly against POTO, and defeat the proposed Bill in Rajya Sabha.
#11 Posted by Aisha_Sarwari on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
I saw your picture on thefridaytimes website. Your glasses really suit you. Its odd how you picture someone and they actually look so different :)
Anyway coming to the topic. RAWA has done a good job making their voice heard. There is much hope for Afghanistan if they succeed in their mission of representing women in the broad based Government.
Aisha
Anyway coming to the topic. RAWA has done a good job making their voice heard. There is much hope for Afghanistan if they succeed in their mission of representing women in the broad based Government.
Aisha
#12 Posted by kafir K Khan on November 19, 2001 6:29:46 pm
What price should be paid ?
Price will be paid by Afghans is for not adopting to changing times.
It is the price paid for not revising the concept of God wher other Gods are inferior to theirs.
It is the price of being intolerant
It is the price for not being united as a country if there was a country.
A price for Afghan selfishness and eceipt.
A price where loyalties do not count.
It is price that dishonest people must pay.
Price will have to be paid for changing sides as carpet baggers.
Price when everyone is so hotheaded and each one wants to be Governor.
A price for arrogance of assuming others are weaker than you.
A price for unreasoning.
Price for unyielding where values are valueless
Price of macle chauvanism.
Price to malign women when a mother can not be looked into her eyes.
It is this heavy price which must be paid by Afghan blood, flesh and bone for being so wicked and keeping the company of the monsters, so rest of the world can sleep with peace and defeated would remeber it for long time to come.
Price will be paid by Afghans is for not adopting to changing times.
It is the price paid for not revising the concept of God wher other Gods are inferior to theirs.
It is the price of being intolerant
It is the price for not being united as a country if there was a country.
A price for Afghan selfishness and eceipt.
A price where loyalties do not count.
It is price that dishonest people must pay.
Price will have to be paid for changing sides as carpet baggers.
Price when everyone is so hotheaded and each one wants to be Governor.
A price for arrogance of assuming others are weaker than you.
A price for unreasoning.
Price for unyielding where values are valueless
Price of macle chauvanism.
Price to malign women when a mother can not be looked into her eyes.
It is this heavy price which must be paid by Afghan blood, flesh and bone for being so wicked and keeping the company of the monsters, so rest of the world can sleep with peace and defeated would remeber it for long time to come.
#13 Posted by rsaxena on November 19, 2001 9:59:42 pm
Re: Sigalph
somehow I get the feeling that your nick has been hijacked again...
anyway, whatever happens to POTO, I think Indians should be proud of the democratic process at work here...the ruling party has its back to the wall and is being forced to engage in some good old-fashioned debate with the opposition...if there isn`t enough support in parliament, it is dead...if ABV can add enough compromises to the bill to appease everyone, it will pass....but whatever happens will reflect the best of the democratic political process...
somehow I get the feeling that your nick has been hijacked again...
anyway, whatever happens to POTO, I think Indians should be proud of the democratic process at work here...the ruling party has its back to the wall and is being forced to engage in some good old-fashioned debate with the opposition...if there isn`t enough support in parliament, it is dead...if ABV can add enough compromises to the bill to appease everyone, it will pass....but whatever happens will reflect the best of the democratic political process...
#14 Posted by ylh on November 19, 2001 9:59:42 pm
Shandana and others :
Reply No 4 has nothing to do with me. It is this guy called Pathan who somehow hacks on to my account... (to pathan, you say you are doing this for Islam, but you are actually a liar for you are using my handle)
Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.
-YLH
Reply No 4 has nothing to do with me. It is this guy called Pathan who somehow hacks on to my account... (to pathan, you say you are doing this for Islam, but you are actually a liar for you are using my handle)
Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.
-YLH
#15 Posted by scout on November 19, 2001 9:59:42 pm
this was great Shandana. i like the way you`ve expressed your unique perspective about the situation in Afghanistan.
you look and think beyond the obvious.
you look and think beyond the obvious.
#16 Posted by scout on November 19, 2001 9:59:42 pm
sarwari #11, ``I saw your picture on thefridaytimes website. Your glasses really suit you. Its odd how you picture someone and they actually look so different :)``
whoa! hold it! what were you doing trying to picture Shandana in the first place? that`s mighty freaky if you ask me.
whoa! hold it! what were you doing trying to picture Shandana in the first place? that`s mighty freaky if you ask me.
#17 Posted by audio-video-rad on November 19, 2001 9:59:42 pm
sadna 24
“You didnot even acknowledge what was written in the rest of my post #5 which was an interview with a terrorist of the Al-Badr jihadi organisation. hamidm, either you are with him or against him”
Well, you can be against him and yet keep your sanity! BTW, I hope you are enjoying your nationalistic orgasms.
“You didnot even acknowledge what was written in the rest of my post #5 which was an interview with a terrorist of the Al-Badr jihadi organisation. hamidm, either you are with him or against him”
Well, you can be against him and yet keep your sanity! BTW, I hope you are enjoying your nationalistic orgasms.
#18 Posted by slink on November 20, 2001 12:07:26 am
`minhas you should be called manhus...jungleee janwar...why must you be stupid..``
ami?!?!
ami?!?!
#19 Posted by slink on November 20, 2001 12:11:23 am
CHOWK STAFF:
pls do me huge favor and correct the following errors (my own fault), its Parashan Khan Khattak, not Parisian Khattak, and the last word should be `country` and not `countries`. thanks
shandana
pls do me huge favor and correct the following errors (my own fault), its Parashan Khan Khattak, not Parisian Khattak, and the last word should be `country` and not `countries`. thanks
shandana
#20 Posted by Molko on November 20, 2001 12:30:41 am
Utter rubbish, to complement the utter rubbish in Ms Minahs` article in the current edition of the Friday Times. This kind of obscene cynicism we can do without. Not that it will last, of course. To quote another article from this week`s FT:
``(D)espite the fact that every armchair cynic in the moderate belt is now a born-again patriot, the actual act of becoming more than a theoretical recruit is abhorrent to most people.``
Wake me when it`s over.
``(D)espite the fact that every armchair cynic in the moderate belt is now a born-again patriot, the actual act of becoming more than a theoretical recruit is abhorrent to most people.``
Wake me when it`s over.
#21 Posted by FarzanaVersey on November 20, 2001 2:12:53 am
This is the problem, Shandana. The guilt. When you say, “This sudden sensitivity is disconcerting”, do you mean the collective one or the private one? You do realise they can be different, don’t you? When everyone is in something together ‘deconstructing’, it does become an event, but the personal sense of preconceived notions works differently. Your own take: “I don’t want to deconstruct the tribal myth and reveal the wisdom and goodness beneath, because I don’t think there is any.” Now, who is more insensitive – those who are getting precious footage or you because you have chosen not to see something you do not believe is there? After all, isn`t this a story and a tale beneath that?
Being a media person, I am only sharing my own apprehensions. I hope you understand. Let me digress a bit. I had once decided to do a real story about the veil, humanise it by talking to just one woman and giving her a name and identity. She responded to my “warmth and sensitivity” by baring her soul and her face. We were sitting on the floor in her small dwelling place, gutter smells wafted in and snotty children were prowling around, obviously taken up with my tape-recorder and spiffy-looking handbag. After I got out, I don’t know why I veered towards a shop and bought biscuits and sweets (the only things available there) and went back and gave it to the family. This was clearly an Afterthought. I kept wondering whether I had done anything good at all.
You write: “We must not succumb to the black and white choices thrust upon us.”
But what about the ones we choose? How grey are they really? It is a precarious thought.
Regards,
Farzana
Being a media person, I am only sharing my own apprehensions. I hope you understand. Let me digress a bit. I had once decided to do a real story about the veil, humanise it by talking to just one woman and giving her a name and identity. She responded to my “warmth and sensitivity” by baring her soul and her face. We were sitting on the floor in her small dwelling place, gutter smells wafted in and snotty children were prowling around, obviously taken up with my tape-recorder and spiffy-looking handbag. After I got out, I don’t know why I veered towards a shop and bought biscuits and sweets (the only things available there) and went back and gave it to the family. This was clearly an Afterthought. I kept wondering whether I had done anything good at all.
You write: “We must not succumb to the black and white choices thrust upon us.”
But what about the ones we choose? How grey are they really? It is a precarious thought.
Regards,
Farzana
#23 Posted by Layman on November 20, 2001 10:11:33 am
THE ALTERNATIVE: WHAT IF?
Now that it is all over (or nearly over), I would like to pose a question to Pakistanis. If Musharraf had stood up to the US and refused co-operation, do you think the people of Pakistan would have supported Musharraf (silent majority, vocal minority whatever)? Would you personally have stood by Musharraf and country, on principle?
Now that it is all over (or nearly over), I would like to pose a question to Pakistanis. If Musharraf had stood up to the US and refused co-operation, do you think the people of Pakistan would have supported Musharraf (silent majority, vocal minority whatever)? Would you personally have stood by Musharraf and country, on principle?
#24 Posted by jay on November 20, 2001 10:11:33 am
PILLOW TALK- A RAW-MOSSAD extraction of global truth- - unspoken words, unimagined images and un-thought thoughts.
INTERVIEW WITH BILL GATES
PT- what is the next global terrorism target.
BG- It is the windows and it has to be shut.
PT- It cannot much help a B767 coming through. In fact all windows of WTC were closed on 9/11.
BG- You are a relic from the past. Look at the dictionary, windows is an operating system, that is the primary meaning, with the ancient meaning as hole in the wall.
PT- No end to learning, but still how can a B767 get into an operating system, unless you are talking of nano-planes with a n-b767 underdevelopment at Boeing.
BG- That is the problem with you all. Mossad extrapolates from the past, at micro soft we retropolate from the future.
PT- you are a genius.
BG- Many have said that. The terrorists learned to fly B767 in the US, they acquired the technology and transformed a mode of transport to a mode of terror. In Microsoft dictionary, B767 is a terrorist weapon, that is the primary meaning and that is why no one is traveling in airplanes.
PT- Windows a hole in the wall can be changed to a hole in the head to terrorize
BG- You have lost it. Windows is an operating system and can be retrograded to a system of terror, where images of death and terror will be more real than real.
PT- Now I get it. The olfactory discs can emit stench, the virtual reality machines will deliver WTC 9/11 like destruction of statue of liberty, Opra Winfry will talk like Jerry Springer, Farrakhan will be the US president, and Urstruly will be the real tahmed.
BG- Now you are getting it. A terrorist patch on the windows can create virtual reality terror and deliver real terror to virtual people.
PT- That means you should control access to the internal workings of windows. Only RAW and Mossad agents will be allowed inside the windows, it will be shut for all others. No code coolies from pakistan.
BG- This is what I meant and BG switched himself off
Note:. In the beginning there was word, and now pope has clarified that what Jesus actually meant was Microsoft word and this will be made explicit in all the new prints of bible.
INTERVIEW WITH BILL GATES
PT- what is the next global terrorism target.
BG- It is the windows and it has to be shut.
PT- It cannot much help a B767 coming through. In fact all windows of WTC were closed on 9/11.
BG- You are a relic from the past. Look at the dictionary, windows is an operating system, that is the primary meaning, with the ancient meaning as hole in the wall.
PT- No end to learning, but still how can a B767 get into an operating system, unless you are talking of nano-planes with a n-b767 underdevelopment at Boeing.
BG- That is the problem with you all. Mossad extrapolates from the past, at micro soft we retropolate from the future.
PT- you are a genius.
BG- Many have said that. The terrorists learned to fly B767 in the US, they acquired the technology and transformed a mode of transport to a mode of terror. In Microsoft dictionary, B767 is a terrorist weapon, that is the primary meaning and that is why no one is traveling in airplanes.
PT- Windows a hole in the wall can be changed to a hole in the head to terrorize
BG- You have lost it. Windows is an operating system and can be retrograded to a system of terror, where images of death and terror will be more real than real.
PT- Now I get it. The olfactory discs can emit stench, the virtual reality machines will deliver WTC 9/11 like destruction of statue of liberty, Opra Winfry will talk like Jerry Springer, Farrakhan will be the US president, and Urstruly will be the real tahmed.
BG- Now you are getting it. A terrorist patch on the windows can create virtual reality terror and deliver real terror to virtual people.
PT- That means you should control access to the internal workings of windows. Only RAW and Mossad agents will be allowed inside the windows, it will be shut for all others. No code coolies from pakistan.
BG- This is what I meant and BG switched himself off
Note:. In the beginning there was word, and now pope has clarified that what Jesus actually meant was Microsoft word and this will be made explicit in all the new prints of bible.
#25 Posted by username on November 20, 2001 10:11:33 am
Reply #: 14
``Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.``
Mr YLH... please set your feet on ground... I don`t want to burst you`re bubble but lemme tell you that you`re not that important at all... why is it always you who is having problems with the handle... probably because you`re utterly devoid of something called ``brain``. Now shut up and let others concentrate on more important things in life.
``Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.``
Mr YLH... please set your feet on ground... I don`t want to burst you`re bubble but lemme tell you that you`re not that important at all... why is it always you who is having problems with the handle... probably because you`re utterly devoid of something called ``brain``. Now shut up and let others concentrate on more important things in life.
#26 Posted by sadna on November 20, 2001 10:37:42 am
Shandana
``My boss is on the side of drama. He doesn?t think there is a surfeit of it.``
Shandana, I have been to the RAWA site, read many articles on the treatment of women in Afghanistan and seen a number of TV documentaries made by Westerners and returning Afghans. There is that Iranian filmmaker too, who wrote a long long article about his experience of filming in Afghanistan.
All had surfeit of drama and shock value(which have their own merits).
But I hope in future coverage, there are other salient facts included too. Whenever someone challenged the notion that the Taliban were no worse than previous regimes, I could never find information on things like how many schools and colleges were shut down and how many fewer children and young people were able to attend school and university, what were the principal sources of employment of men and women in earlier periods of relative peace, how had per capita income dropped or risen, what was the GNP/GDP? before and after the Taliban, what were the exports/imports which were now suffering due to the Taliban rule, disorder and sanctions, what infrastructure existed(road, services) what were destroyed, what couldnot be rebuilt, what was the power structure and peoples life like in provinces and regions other than Kabul?
We never quite got beyond the burqua, the beards and the nail polish, and that is a great disservice to the Afghans, because how will we know how and when they are going to be better off in all these aspects than earlier?
A Hindi movie and a haircut can go only so far in fixing all this (just joking, btw, for the information of all of you, I donot need any pious indignation about evil cultureless Indians from anyone)
``My boss is on the side of drama. He doesn?t think there is a surfeit of it.``
Shandana, I have been to the RAWA site, read many articles on the treatment of women in Afghanistan and seen a number of TV documentaries made by Westerners and returning Afghans. There is that Iranian filmmaker too, who wrote a long long article about his experience of filming in Afghanistan.
All had surfeit of drama and shock value(which have their own merits).
But I hope in future coverage, there are other salient facts included too. Whenever someone challenged the notion that the Taliban were no worse than previous regimes, I could never find information on things like how many schools and colleges were shut down and how many fewer children and young people were able to attend school and university, what were the principal sources of employment of men and women in earlier periods of relative peace, how had per capita income dropped or risen, what was the GNP/GDP? before and after the Taliban, what were the exports/imports which were now suffering due to the Taliban rule, disorder and sanctions, what infrastructure existed(road, services) what were destroyed, what couldnot be rebuilt, what was the power structure and peoples life like in provinces and regions other than Kabul?
We never quite got beyond the burqua, the beards and the nail polish, and that is a great disservice to the Afghans, because how will we know how and when they are going to be better off in all these aspects than earlier?
A Hindi movie and a haircut can go only so far in fixing all this (just joking, btw, for the information of all of you, I donot need any pious indignation about evil cultureless Indians from anyone)
#27 Posted by upman7626 on November 20, 2001 1:51:30 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/20FRIE.html
Today`s News Quiz
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New Delhi,
So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time`s up ? you lose.
Answer: India. That`s right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia. Which brings up another question that I`ve been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don`t hear about Indian Muslims who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land ? blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?
Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.
``I`ll give you a quiz question: Which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India,``remarked M.J.Akbar, the Muslim editor of Asian Age, a national Indian English-language daily
funded by non-Muslim Indians. ``I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for the economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That`s why a growing Muslim middle class here is moving up and, generally, doesn`t manifest the strands of deep anger you find in many non-democratic Muslim states.``
In other words, for all the talk about Islam and Islamic rage, the real issue is: Islam in what context? Where Islam is imbedded in authoritarian societies it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest, because religion and the mosque are the only places people can organize against autocratic leaders. And when those leaders are seen as being propped up by America, America also becomes the target of Muslim rage.
But where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic,democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India`s presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India`s supreme court. The architect of India`s missile program, A. P.J.Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim. The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi`s biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban in Kandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs.
Followed Bangladesh lately? It has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. Over the last 10 years, though, without the world noticing, Bangladesh has had three democratic transfers of power, in two of which, are you ready, Muslim women were elected prime ministers. Result: All the economic and social indicators in Bangladesh have been pointing upward lately, and Bangladeshis are not preoccupied hating America. Meanwhile in Pakistan, trapped in the circle of bin Ladenism, military dictatorship, poverty and anti-modernist Islamic schools, all reinforcing each other, the social indicators are all pointing down and hostility to America is rife.
Hello? Hello? There`s a message here: It`s democracy, stupid! Those who argue that we needn`t press for democracy in Arab-Muslim states, and can rely on repressive regimes, have it all wrong. If we cut off every other avenue for non-revolutionary social change, pressure for change will burst out anyway, as Muslim rage and anti-Americanism.
If America wants to break the bin Laden circles across the Arab-Muslim world, then, ``it needs to find role models that are succeeding as pluralistic, democratic, modernizing societies, like India which is constantly being challenged by religious extremists of all hues and support them,`` argues Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper.
So true. For Muslim societies to achieve their full potential today, democracy may not be sufficient, but it sure is necessary. And we, and they, fool ourselves to think otherwise.
Today`s News Quiz
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New Delhi,
So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time`s up ? you lose.
Answer: India. That`s right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia. Which brings up another question that I`ve been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don`t hear about Indian Muslims who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land ? blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?
Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.
``I`ll give you a quiz question: Which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India,``remarked M.J.Akbar, the Muslim editor of Asian Age, a national Indian English-language daily
funded by non-Muslim Indians. ``I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for the economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That`s why a growing Muslim middle class here is moving up and, generally, doesn`t manifest the strands of deep anger you find in many non-democratic Muslim states.``
In other words, for all the talk about Islam and Islamic rage, the real issue is: Islam in what context? Where Islam is imbedded in authoritarian societies it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest, because religion and the mosque are the only places people can organize against autocratic leaders. And when those leaders are seen as being propped up by America, America also becomes the target of Muslim rage.
But where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic,democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India`s presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India`s supreme court. The architect of India`s missile program, A. P.J.Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim. The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi`s biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban in Kandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs.
Followed Bangladesh lately? It has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. Over the last 10 years, though, without the world noticing, Bangladesh has had three democratic transfers of power, in two of which, are you ready, Muslim women were elected prime ministers. Result: All the economic and social indicators in Bangladesh have been pointing upward lately, and Bangladeshis are not preoccupied hating America. Meanwhile in Pakistan, trapped in the circle of bin Ladenism, military dictatorship, poverty and anti-modernist Islamic schools, all reinforcing each other, the social indicators are all pointing down and hostility to America is rife.
Hello? Hello? There`s a message here: It`s democracy, stupid! Those who argue that we needn`t press for democracy in Arab-Muslim states, and can rely on repressive regimes, have it all wrong. If we cut off every other avenue for non-revolutionary social change, pressure for change will burst out anyway, as Muslim rage and anti-Americanism.
If America wants to break the bin Laden circles across the Arab-Muslim world, then, ``it needs to find role models that are succeeding as pluralistic, democratic, modernizing societies, like India which is constantly being challenged by religious extremists of all hues and support them,`` argues Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper.
So true. For Muslim societies to achieve their full potential today, democracy may not be sufficient, but it sure is necessary. And we, and they, fool ourselves to think otherwise.
#28 Posted by shammi on November 20, 2001 1:51:30 pm
From the NY Times:
QUOTE So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time`s up — you lose.
Answer: India. That`s right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia. Which brings up another question that I`ve been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don`t hear about Indian Muslims — who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land — blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?
Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.
...where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India`s presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India`s supreme court. The architect of India`s missile program, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim. The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi`s biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban in Kandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs END QUOTE
For further reading, go to ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/20FRIE.html
QUOTE So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time`s up — you lose.
Answer: India. That`s right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia. Which brings up another question that I`ve been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don`t hear about Indian Muslims — who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land — blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?
Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.
...where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India`s presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India`s supreme court. The architect of India`s missile program, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim. The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi`s biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban in Kandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs END QUOTE
For further reading, go to ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/opinion/20FRIE.html
#29 Posted by rsaxena on November 20, 2001 1:51:30 pm
re: ylh
``Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.``
How the heck does this stuff always happen to you?
``Chowk staff Please look into this mess, and kindly ban the other handle... I think I have earned it.``
How the heck does this stuff always happen to you?
#30 Posted by ylh on November 20, 2001 1:51:30 pm
username..
Why dont you shut the hell up, and stop misusing my handle?
-YLH
Why dont you shut the hell up, and stop misusing my handle?
-YLH
#31 Posted by ali1 on November 20, 2001 1:51:30 pm
I think Afghans in particular and Pakistanis/Muslims in general are better off without the Taliban, the nuances and biases of the western media withstanding.
Did someone notice the Arab colony outside Jalalabad? The Jeddah style villas remind one of the British colonial residences in the middle of Indian poverty. This was some pan-fundamentalist enterprise rather than just Bin Laden money at play. Glad its gone now.
Did someone notice the Arab colony outside Jalalabad? The Jeddah style villas remind one of the British colonial residences in the middle of Indian poverty. This was some pan-fundamentalist enterprise rather than just Bin Laden money at play. Glad its gone now.
#32 Posted by slink on November 20, 2001 2:28:30 pm
thank you all for reading.
farzana, collective or individual, where do you draw the line when it comes to sensitivity? does it even exist outside the group, where you have someone elses feelings to measure it against?
in this business, your bias is evident from the word go, especially when you work with content. and the mirror isn`t very flattering most of the time :) as for the grey, we must not accept the division of everybody else into friend or enemy, sometimes its just person. and that person can sometimes assume animal form (goat, bear, hyena etc), but what you call grey can give us the time to decide whether we choose black or white, if that is ultimately the choice we must all make.
ali, its possible to think the taliban are horrible and also think the present campaign is against basic human values.
farzana, collective or individual, where do you draw the line when it comes to sensitivity? does it even exist outside the group, where you have someone elses feelings to measure it against?
in this business, your bias is evident from the word go, especially when you work with content. and the mirror isn`t very flattering most of the time :) as for the grey, we must not accept the division of everybody else into friend or enemy, sometimes its just person. and that person can sometimes assume animal form (goat, bear, hyena etc), but what you call grey can give us the time to decide whether we choose black or white, if that is ultimately the choice we must all make.
ali, its possible to think the taliban are horrible and also think the present campaign is against basic human values.
#33 Posted by tvarad on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
From the National Review (Rich Lowry Editorial)
The Smear
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around.
November 20, 2001 12:45 p.m.
I consider myself a moderate Northern Alliance skeptic. Meaning that I thought we should arm the Alliance and aid its push in the north, but doubted it could rout the Taliban soon and didn`t expect much from it in the political arena.
Well, the Northern Alliance has, of course, defied all expectations on the battlefield. And if I`m still a doubter about how productive a role they — or anyone else for that matter — will play in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Alliance does deserve to be defended from the rankest and most hypocritical charge levied against it by Pakistani-inspired critics: that it destroyed the capital city of Kabul when it took it over in 1992.
We hear this over and over again in the media. It`s one of the reasons Colin Powell wanted the Northern Alliance to ``invest`` Kabul, instead of actually capturing it (one of the most hilariously unworkable ideas in recent diplomatic history). And it is supposedly the reason why Pakistan — suddenly a great defender of reasonable, pluralistic government in Afghanistan — quakes at the idea of the Northern Alliance back in the saddle again.
This is all very rich, since it`s Pakistan that, through one of its proxies, bears most of the responsibility for wrecking Kabul in the early 1990s.
That proxy was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His name has a Beelzebub-like ring to it, which is appropriate since he pretty much exemplifies the fanaticism, ruthlessness, and evil that has characterized recent Afghan history.
He was Pakistan`s favorite mujahedeen leader during the war against the Soviets, because he was a Pashtun and an Islamic extremist — sort of a Taliban before the Taliban existed. Hekmatyar`s faction in the 1970s became famous for throwing acid on women who dressed in Western clothes. The Pakistanis made a point of funneling U.S. aid to him even though — or, more like it, because — he was virulently anti-American.
When the Communist government fell in 1992, Hekmatyar decided that he would wage a campaign to oust the other mujahedeen factions from Kabul. This he proceed to attempt with artillery barrages that reduced Kabul to rubble and killed thousands of civilians.
And the Pakistanis backed him throughout, even when the civil war harmed their economic interests by making trade routes in Afghanistan impassable.
Ahmed Rashid explains in his book, Taliban:
Pakistan`s policymakers were thus faced with a strategic dilemma. Either Pakistan could carry on backing Hekmatyar in a bid to bring a Pashtun group to power in Kabul which would be Pakistan-friendly, or it could change direction and urge for a power-sharing agreement between all the Afghan factions at whatever the price for the Pashtuns, so that a stable government could open roads to Central Asia. The Pakistani military was convinced that other ethnic groups would not do their bidding and continued to back Hekmatyar.
So, maybe if the State Department is serious about avoiding another Kabul circa 1992, it should ban Pakistan from all meddling in a post-Taliban government. ( I once floated the idea of handing Pakistan the responsibility of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, as a way of making it someone else`s problem, but am now convinced the Pakistanis need to be controlled like any other Afghan faction.)
The Pakistanis eventually dropped Hekmatyar, not because he was killing people, but because he was killing them ineffectually. He was losing the war. The Pakistanis picked up the Taliban instead, who could kill and degrade women and actually take over the Afghan government.
Now, we get news that Hekmatyar is petitioning Pakistan to let him into Peshawar as a way station to reentering Afghanistan.
Talk of a country ``exorcising its demons`` is usually metaphorical, but Hekmatyar is an actual, living demon. The U.S. should demand that Pakistan keep him out of Peshawar, and do all it can to keep him out of Afghanistan, since he is the one who did so much to wreck Kabul the first time around.
The Smear
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around.
November 20, 2001 12:45 p.m.
I consider myself a moderate Northern Alliance skeptic. Meaning that I thought we should arm the Alliance and aid its push in the north, but doubted it could rout the Taliban soon and didn`t expect much from it in the political arena.
Well, the Northern Alliance has, of course, defied all expectations on the battlefield. And if I`m still a doubter about how productive a role they — or anyone else for that matter — will play in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Alliance does deserve to be defended from the rankest and most hypocritical charge levied against it by Pakistani-inspired critics: that it destroyed the capital city of Kabul when it took it over in 1992.
We hear this over and over again in the media. It`s one of the reasons Colin Powell wanted the Northern Alliance to ``invest`` Kabul, instead of actually capturing it (one of the most hilariously unworkable ideas in recent diplomatic history). And it is supposedly the reason why Pakistan — suddenly a great defender of reasonable, pluralistic government in Afghanistan — quakes at the idea of the Northern Alliance back in the saddle again.
This is all very rich, since it`s Pakistan that, through one of its proxies, bears most of the responsibility for wrecking Kabul in the early 1990s.
That proxy was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His name has a Beelzebub-like ring to it, which is appropriate since he pretty much exemplifies the fanaticism, ruthlessness, and evil that has characterized recent Afghan history.
He was Pakistan`s favorite mujahedeen leader during the war against the Soviets, because he was a Pashtun and an Islamic extremist — sort of a Taliban before the Taliban existed. Hekmatyar`s faction in the 1970s became famous for throwing acid on women who dressed in Western clothes. The Pakistanis made a point of funneling U.S. aid to him even though — or, more like it, because — he was virulently anti-American.
When the Communist government fell in 1992, Hekmatyar decided that he would wage a campaign to oust the other mujahedeen factions from Kabul. This he proceed to attempt with artillery barrages that reduced Kabul to rubble and killed thousands of civilians.
And the Pakistanis backed him throughout, even when the civil war harmed their economic interests by making trade routes in Afghanistan impassable.
Ahmed Rashid explains in his book, Taliban:
Pakistan`s policymakers were thus faced with a strategic dilemma. Either Pakistan could carry on backing Hekmatyar in a bid to bring a Pashtun group to power in Kabul which would be Pakistan-friendly, or it could change direction and urge for a power-sharing agreement between all the Afghan factions at whatever the price for the Pashtuns, so that a stable government could open roads to Central Asia. The Pakistani military was convinced that other ethnic groups would not do their bidding and continued to back Hekmatyar.
So, maybe if the State Department is serious about avoiding another Kabul circa 1992, it should ban Pakistan from all meddling in a post-Taliban government. ( I once floated the idea of handing Pakistan the responsibility of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, as a way of making it someone else`s problem, but am now convinced the Pakistanis need to be controlled like any other Afghan faction.)
The Pakistanis eventually dropped Hekmatyar, not because he was killing people, but because he was killing them ineffectually. He was losing the war. The Pakistanis picked up the Taliban instead, who could kill and degrade women and actually take over the Afghan government.
Now, we get news that Hekmatyar is petitioning Pakistan to let him into Peshawar as a way station to reentering Afghanistan.
Talk of a country ``exorcising its demons`` is usually metaphorical, but Hekmatyar is an actual, living demon. The U.S. should demand that Pakistan keep him out of Peshawar, and do all it can to keep him out of Afghanistan, since he is the one who did so much to wreck Kabul the first time around.
#34 Posted by vineet on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry112001.shtml
National Review, Rich Lowry
The Smear
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around.
November 20, 2001 12:45 p.m.
consider myself a moderate Northern Alliance skeptic. Meaning that I thought we should arm the Alliance and aid its push in the north, but doubted it could rout the Taliban soon and didn`t expect much from it in the political arena.
Well, the Northern Alliance has, of course, defied all expectations on the battlefield. And if I`m still a doubter about how productive a role they — or anyone else for that matter — will play in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Alliance does deserve to be defended from the rankest and most hypocritical charge levied against it by Pakistani-inspired critics: that it destroyed the capital city of Kabul when it took it over in 1992.
We hear this over and over again in the media. It`s one of the reasons Colin Powell wanted the Northern Alliance to ``invest`` Kabul, instead of actually capturing it (one of the most hilariously unworkable ideas in recent diplomatic history). And it is supposedly the reason why Pakistan — suddenly a great defender of reasonable, pluralistic government in Afghanistan — quakes at the idea of the Northern Alliance back in the saddle again.
This is all very rich, since it`s Pakistan that, through one of its proxies, bears most of the responsibility for wrecking Kabul in the early 1990s.
That proxy was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His name has a Beelzebub-like ring to it, which is appropriate since he pretty much exemplifies the fanaticism, ruthlessness, and evil that has characterized recent Afghan history.
He was Pakistan`s favorite mujahedeen leader during the war against the Soviets, because he was a Pashtun and an Islamic extremist — sort of a Taliban before the Taliban existed. Hekmatyar`s faction in the 1970s became famous for throwing acid on women who dressed in Western clothes. The Pakistanis made a point of funneling U.S. aid to him even though — or, more like it, because — he was virulently anti-American.
When the Communist government fell in 1992, Hekmatyar decided that he would wage a campaign to oust the other mujahedeen factions from Kabul. This he proceed to attempt with artillery barrages that reduced Kabul to rubble and killed thousands of civilians.
And the Pakistanis backed him throughout, even when the civil war harmed their economic interests by making trade routes in Afghanistan impassable.
Ahmed Rashid explains in his book, Taliban:
Pakistan`s policymakers were thus faced with a strategic dilemma. Either Pakistan could carry on backing Hekmatyar in a bid to bring a Pashtun group to power in Kabul which would be Pakistan-friendly, or it could change direction and urge for a power-sharing agreement between all the Afghan factions at whatever the price for the Pashtuns, so that a stable government could open roads to Central Asia. The Pakistani military was convinced that other ethnic groups would not do their bidding and continued to back Hekmatyar.
So, maybe if the State Department is serious about avoiding another Kabul circa 1992, it should ban Pakistan from all meddling in a post-Taliban government. ( I once floated the idea of handing Pakistan the responsibility of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, as a way of making it someone else`s problem, but am now convinced the Pakistanis need to be controlled like any other Afghan faction.)
The Pakistanis eventually dropped Hekmatyar, not because he was killing people, but because he was killing them ineffectually. He was losing the war. The Pakistanis picked up the Taliban instead, who could kill and degrade women and actually take over the Afghan government.
Now, we get news that Hekmatyar is petitioning Pakistan to let him into Peshawar as a way station to reentering Afghanistan.
Talk of a country ``exorcising its demons`` is usually metaphorical, but Hekmatyar is an actual, living demon. The U.S. should demand that Pakistan keep him out of Peshawar, and do all it can to keep him out of Afghanistan, since he is the one who did so much to wreck Kabul the first time around.
National Review, Rich Lowry
The Smear
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around.
November 20, 2001 12:45 p.m.
consider myself a moderate Northern Alliance skeptic. Meaning that I thought we should arm the Alliance and aid its push in the north, but doubted it could rout the Taliban soon and didn`t expect much from it in the political arena.
Well, the Northern Alliance has, of course, defied all expectations on the battlefield. And if I`m still a doubter about how productive a role they — or anyone else for that matter — will play in post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Alliance does deserve to be defended from the rankest and most hypocritical charge levied against it by Pakistani-inspired critics: that it destroyed the capital city of Kabul when it took it over in 1992.
We hear this over and over again in the media. It`s one of the reasons Colin Powell wanted the Northern Alliance to ``invest`` Kabul, instead of actually capturing it (one of the most hilariously unworkable ideas in recent diplomatic history). And it is supposedly the reason why Pakistan — suddenly a great defender of reasonable, pluralistic government in Afghanistan — quakes at the idea of the Northern Alliance back in the saddle again.
This is all very rich, since it`s Pakistan that, through one of its proxies, bears most of the responsibility for wrecking Kabul in the early 1990s.
That proxy was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His name has a Beelzebub-like ring to it, which is appropriate since he pretty much exemplifies the fanaticism, ruthlessness, and evil that has characterized recent Afghan history.
He was Pakistan`s favorite mujahedeen leader during the war against the Soviets, because he was a Pashtun and an Islamic extremist — sort of a Taliban before the Taliban existed. Hekmatyar`s faction in the 1970s became famous for throwing acid on women who dressed in Western clothes. The Pakistanis made a point of funneling U.S. aid to him even though — or, more like it, because — he was virulently anti-American.
When the Communist government fell in 1992, Hekmatyar decided that he would wage a campaign to oust the other mujahedeen factions from Kabul. This he proceed to attempt with artillery barrages that reduced Kabul to rubble and killed thousands of civilians.
And the Pakistanis backed him throughout, even when the civil war harmed their economic interests by making trade routes in Afghanistan impassable.
Ahmed Rashid explains in his book, Taliban:
Pakistan`s policymakers were thus faced with a strategic dilemma. Either Pakistan could carry on backing Hekmatyar in a bid to bring a Pashtun group to power in Kabul which would be Pakistan-friendly, or it could change direction and urge for a power-sharing agreement between all the Afghan factions at whatever the price for the Pashtuns, so that a stable government could open roads to Central Asia. The Pakistani military was convinced that other ethnic groups would not do their bidding and continued to back Hekmatyar.
So, maybe if the State Department is serious about avoiding another Kabul circa 1992, it should ban Pakistan from all meddling in a post-Taliban government. ( I once floated the idea of handing Pakistan the responsibility of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, as a way of making it someone else`s problem, but am now convinced the Pakistanis need to be controlled like any other Afghan faction.)
The Pakistanis eventually dropped Hekmatyar, not because he was killing people, but because he was killing them ineffectually. He was losing the war. The Pakistanis picked up the Taliban instead, who could kill and degrade women and actually take over the Afghan government.
Now, we get news that Hekmatyar is petitioning Pakistan to let him into Peshawar as a way station to reentering Afghanistan.
Talk of a country ``exorcising its demons`` is usually metaphorical, but Hekmatyar is an actual, living demon. The U.S. should demand that Pakistan keep him out of Peshawar, and do all it can to keep him out of Afghanistan, since he is the one who did so much to wreck Kabul the first time around.
#35 Posted by vineet on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry112001.shtml
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011120-99975287.htm
Foreign fighters used Kabul as terrorist base
By John Jennings
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban`s Arab ``guests`` were using Kabul as a planning base for terrorist attacks, according to new evidence that came to light after the regime was ousted from this capital city by troops of the Northern Alliance.
``There were 22 nationalities [of foreign fighters] present in Kabul,`` said Dr. Gino Strada, head of a local Italian-funded charity. ``There seemed to be more Arabs than Afghans in Kabul.``
Northern Alliance forces took reporters on a tour of one former foreign ``base`` — a five-story house in an affluent part of the city — that still held many signs of its previous residents. A clear picture emerged from the accounts of neighbors as well as from documents, weapons and munitions that the foreign fighters left behind when they abandoned the house as the Taliban evacuated the city last week.
Followers of Saudi-born financier Osama bin Laden formed a well-organized, professional political and military organization, operating openly and with great independence from the government. In fact, most of their neighbors appeared convinced that the foreigners, not Afghan Taliban leaders, really held control in Kabul.
Many of the ``qarargah,`` or headquarters for foreigners, amounted to self-contained garrisons that slept dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of fighters, side by side on the floor or outside in good weather. The foreign commanders — known generically in Afghanistan as ``Arabs`` — often parked military vehicles in and around their compounds, on their way to and from the front lines.
At one palatial compound, neighbors said they had complained to the local Taliban security forces about the dust, noise and congestion on their street from the foreigners` tanks, but that the foreigners simply laughed at the Taliban troops.
The Taliban troops ``were outgunned, so [the foreigners] got their way by brute force,`` remarked Ghulam Ahmadi, headmaster of a small grade school just across the street.
Some buildings were fitted with administrative offices, classrooms and medical aid stations, as well as cells the foreigners used to imprison Afghans who got on their bad side.
On the first floor, a sunny room with bay windows opened on the walled bungalow compound`s front yard. Above the door was a circular seal that read, ``Islamic Emirate Afghanistan Defense Ministry — [Volunteer] Units.``
Just inside was a large mural map of the Arabian Peninsula and the surrounding countries. It was dotted with tiny American and other Western flags labeled ``Christian installations in the Holy Land.``
As Western journalists fanned out across newly liberated Kabul last week, similar troves turned up all over town. One Arab compound was littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, as well as neatly written lecture notes in Arabic on how to blow up bridges.
The foreign fighters preferred modern-style bungalows in the relatively posh, centrally located Karte Parwan, Shahr-e-Nau and Wazeer Akbar Khan neighborhoods. As soon as the foreigners were out of the way, local residents plundered the furniture and any small arms left about. The heavier arms and ammunition, of little use to civilians, remained.
The real treasure for Western intelligence officials probably will turn out to be what the tenants have left as garbage: the heaps of Arabic documents, notes, letters and pamphlets littering the floor of the abandoned headquarters.
Elsewhere, a meticulously maintained military service record for one Arab fighter recorded the man`s training, participation in specific military operations, the outcome of those operations and a space for the fighter`s own comments. The man wrote that he had enough training and wished to volunteer for a ``martyrdom`` mission either inside or outside Afghanistan.
Some of the foreigners were indeed ``martyred`` right in Kabul, though perhaps not as they had hoped. Local people nurtured an intense hatred for the heavily armed Arabs, Pakistanis and others who virtually took over their capital.
After the Taliban left town, residents who had managed to conceal their firearms through the regime`s rule conducted house-to-house searches and found several foreigners who were gunned down in the main park in the Shahr-e-Nau neighborhood.
``We`re going to fix these foreigners,`` said Abdul Razzaq, 36, a brigade commander from north of Kabul. A tall, stocky man with a neatly trimmed beard and ready smile, he stood beside a dirt road 20 miles west of the capital.
The business of flushing out and hunting down Arab and Pakistani Taliban, Mr. Razzaq continued, had united Afghans across ethnic and sectarian lines.
The commander began showing off Pakistani identity cards taken off men whom his troops had killed north of Kabul as Northern Alliance forces advanced last week. Most Afghans these days talk, sincerely, of how tired they are of war — but still harbor a desire for revenge against Kabul`s former foreign residents.
``Yes, my boys killed them all,`` Mr. Razzaq said of the Taliban allies from this neighborhood. ``We`re going to kill all the Arabs. If I came to your country, beat your wife and drove you from your home, wouldn`t you kill me?``
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011120-99975287.htm
Foreign fighters used Kabul as terrorist base
By John Jennings
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban`s Arab ``guests`` were using Kabul as a planning base for terrorist attacks, according to new evidence that came to light after the regime was ousted from this capital city by troops of the Northern Alliance.
``There were 22 nationalities [of foreign fighters] present in Kabul,`` said Dr. Gino Strada, head of a local Italian-funded charity. ``There seemed to be more Arabs than Afghans in Kabul.``
Northern Alliance forces took reporters on a tour of one former foreign ``base`` — a five-story house in an affluent part of the city — that still held many signs of its previous residents. A clear picture emerged from the accounts of neighbors as well as from documents, weapons and munitions that the foreign fighters left behind when they abandoned the house as the Taliban evacuated the city last week.
Followers of Saudi-born financier Osama bin Laden formed a well-organized, professional political and military organization, operating openly and with great independence from the government. In fact, most of their neighbors appeared convinced that the foreigners, not Afghan Taliban leaders, really held control in Kabul.
Many of the ``qarargah,`` or headquarters for foreigners, amounted to self-contained garrisons that slept dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of fighters, side by side on the floor or outside in good weather. The foreign commanders — known generically in Afghanistan as ``Arabs`` — often parked military vehicles in and around their compounds, on their way to and from the front lines.
At one palatial compound, neighbors said they had complained to the local Taliban security forces about the dust, noise and congestion on their street from the foreigners` tanks, but that the foreigners simply laughed at the Taliban troops.
The Taliban troops ``were outgunned, so [the foreigners] got their way by brute force,`` remarked Ghulam Ahmadi, headmaster of a small grade school just across the street.
Some buildings were fitted with administrative offices, classrooms and medical aid stations, as well as cells the foreigners used to imprison Afghans who got on their bad side.
On the first floor, a sunny room with bay windows opened on the walled bungalow compound`s front yard. Above the door was a circular seal that read, ``Islamic Emirate Afghanistan Defense Ministry — [Volunteer] Units.``
Just inside was a large mural map of the Arabian Peninsula and the surrounding countries. It was dotted with tiny American and other Western flags labeled ``Christian installations in the Holy Land.``
As Western journalists fanned out across newly liberated Kabul last week, similar troves turned up all over town. One Arab compound was littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, as well as neatly written lecture notes in Arabic on how to blow up bridges.
The foreign fighters preferred modern-style bungalows in the relatively posh, centrally located Karte Parwan, Shahr-e-Nau and Wazeer Akbar Khan neighborhoods. As soon as the foreigners were out of the way, local residents plundered the furniture and any small arms left about. The heavier arms and ammunition, of little use to civilians, remained.
The real treasure for Western intelligence officials probably will turn out to be what the tenants have left as garbage: the heaps of Arabic documents, notes, letters and pamphlets littering the floor of the abandoned headquarters.
Elsewhere, a meticulously maintained military service record for one Arab fighter recorded the man`s training, participation in specific military operations, the outcome of those operations and a space for the fighter`s own comments. The man wrote that he had enough training and wished to volunteer for a ``martyrdom`` mission either inside or outside Afghanistan.
Some of the foreigners were indeed ``martyred`` right in Kabul, though perhaps not as they had hoped. Local people nurtured an intense hatred for the heavily armed Arabs, Pakistanis and others who virtually took over their capital.
After the Taliban left town, residents who had managed to conceal their firearms through the regime`s rule conducted house-to-house searches and found several foreigners who were gunned down in the main park in the Shahr-e-Nau neighborhood.
``We`re going to fix these foreigners,`` said Abdul Razzaq, 36, a brigade commander from north of Kabul. A tall, stocky man with a neatly trimmed beard and ready smile, he stood beside a dirt road 20 miles west of the capital.
The business of flushing out and hunting down Arab and Pakistani Taliban, Mr. Razzaq continued, had united Afghans across ethnic and sectarian lines.
The commander began showing off Pakistani identity cards taken off men whom his troops had killed north of Kabul as Northern Alliance forces advanced last week. Most Afghans these days talk, sincerely, of how tired they are of war — but still harbor a desire for revenge against Kabul`s former foreign residents.
``Yes, my boys killed them all,`` Mr. Razzaq said of the Taliban allies from this neighborhood. ``We`re going to kill all the Arabs. If I came to your country, beat your wife and drove you from your home, wouldn`t you kill me?``
#36 Posted by ylh on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Rsaxena,
This stuff is all the same. Almost one year ago this chap hijacked my handle.. and he appears periodically to show his ugly face.
Thanks for being concerned.
-YLH
This stuff is all the same. Almost one year ago this chap hijacked my handle.. and he appears periodically to show his ugly face.
Thanks for being concerned.
-YLH
#37 Posted by shammi on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Editorials:
The case against Pakistan`s dictator - The Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=95001492
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry112001.shtml
The case against Pakistan`s dictator - The Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=95001492
It was Pakistan, not the Northern Alliance, that wrecked Kabul the first time around
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry112001.shtml
#38 Posted by shammi on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
From the Cato Insitute
Terrorist Sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China
http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-16-01.html
Terrorist Sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China
http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-16-01.html
#39 Posted by ali1 on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Thomas Friedman`s article in today`s NYT will be posted at least 50 times by the McLingums on chowk.com today. Bets anyone?
For the McBanias and McLingums who haven`t heard about it yet.... there is a great article on India by Thomas Friedman. Hurry, Ms. Atharakhasmi Tripathi has offered 30 cents to every Indian who reads and reposts that article. The offers ends today, so hurry.
For the McBanias and McLingums who haven`t heard about it yet.... there is a great article on India by Thomas Friedman. Hurry, Ms. Atharakhasmi Tripathi has offered 30 cents to every Indian who reads and reposts that article. The offers ends today, so hurry.
#40 Posted by shammi on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Of all places Peru?
`Peru Arrests Pakistani on Terror Charges`
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011120/wl/attack_peru_pakistani_dc_1.html
`Peru Arrests Pakistani on Terror Charges`
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011120/wl/attack_peru_pakistani_dc_1.html
#41 Posted by Bapu on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Monday November 19, 7:15 PM
Pakistan wants captured fighters treated fairly
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Islamabad urged the United Nations on Monday to ensure that Pakistanis captured in current fighting in Afghanistan were treated according to the law even though it did not approve of them fighting there.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar told a news conference that if any Pakistanis had gone to Afghanistan ``it was their own choice`` but Islamabad would fulfil its responsibilities to its citizens.
He made the statement when asked about news reports that many Pakistanis were among thousands of Taliban fighters surrounded by Northern Alliance forces in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz.
``It will be important that all Afghans observe the principles of humanitarian law and refrain from reprisals or violence against those people who surrender,`` Sattar said.
``We have of course no role in this matter,`` he said, but added that Islamabad hoped the United Nations and the U.S-led coalition against terrorism would act together to prevent ``excesses``.
``The government of Pakistan has constantly maintained that Pakistani citizens have no business to go to a foreign country and fight on the side of one or the other group or faction,`` he said.
But he added: ``Pakistan has a responsibility to its citizens. Even citizens who commit a violation of the law still receive protection of their government.``
Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters supporting the Taliban and linked to Osama bin Laden`s al Qaeda network are deeply unpopular among many Afghans. Following the opposition`s military gains over the past 10 days many foreign fighters have been captured or killed.
``We too will fulfil our responsibility toward our nationals and make representation to the concerned authorities that these people should be dealt with in accordance with law and not subjected to any inhuman act on the part of their captors,`` Sattar said.
Pakistan wants captured fighters treated fairly
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Islamabad urged the United Nations on Monday to ensure that Pakistanis captured in current fighting in Afghanistan were treated according to the law even though it did not approve of them fighting there.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar told a news conference that if any Pakistanis had gone to Afghanistan ``it was their own choice`` but Islamabad would fulfil its responsibilities to its citizens.
He made the statement when asked about news reports that many Pakistanis were among thousands of Taliban fighters surrounded by Northern Alliance forces in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz.
``It will be important that all Afghans observe the principles of humanitarian law and refrain from reprisals or violence against those people who surrender,`` Sattar said.
``We have of course no role in this matter,`` he said, but added that Islamabad hoped the United Nations and the U.S-led coalition against terrorism would act together to prevent ``excesses``.
``The government of Pakistan has constantly maintained that Pakistani citizens have no business to go to a foreign country and fight on the side of one or the other group or faction,`` he said.
But he added: ``Pakistan has a responsibility to its citizens. Even citizens who commit a violation of the law still receive protection of their government.``
Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters supporting the Taliban and linked to Osama bin Laden`s al Qaeda network are deeply unpopular among many Afghans. Following the opposition`s military gains over the past 10 days many foreign fighters have been captured or killed.
``We too will fulfil our responsibility toward our nationals and make representation to the concerned authorities that these people should be dealt with in accordance with law and not subjected to any inhuman act on the part of their captors,`` Sattar said.
#42 Posted by friend on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Kissa YLH ke handle kaaa ...
We had an Urmila Matodkar in Mumbai who claimed to have got Anthrex letters... Perhaps all for some free publicity.
Now we have YLH, claiming that his handle has been hacked. (Hai mummy, yeh to joke baan gaya, kissi ne YLH ke handle ko hack kar diya ..)
YLH, goot attempt.
We had an Urmila Matodkar in Mumbai who claimed to have got Anthrex letters... Perhaps all for some free publicity.
Now we have YLH, claiming that his handle has been hacked. (Hai mummy, yeh to joke baan gaya, kissi ne YLH ke handle ko hack kar diya ..)
YLH, goot attempt.
#43 Posted by ali1 on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
Reply # 31 slink
[ali, its possible to think the taliban are horrible and also think the present campaign is against basic human values.]
Thank you for asking. Dunno if my views amount to much but......
As a human being my heart goes out to the Afghans who have suffered because of the war. I also think that they have a better chance now of making it through this winter then they had under the Binladin/Mullah Omar leadership. The world too realizes the dangers that a failed state, specially a failed muslim state, poses to world peace and will hopefully do everything possible to ensure that Afghanistan does not revert to its blackhole status of the past 10+ years. That alone gives me hope for the future of Afghan people.
As a Pakistani (and American) nationalist, I feel that this is a just campaign. Remember the mullah on CNN, ``pehle um pakistan ko tabah karega, phir amreeka ko tabah karega``. Self preservation is a very basic human ``value`` and Pakistan, America and all other nation states have every right to defend themselves from the Islamists who do not believe in nation states at all. Even if we go by the Taliban figures of 2000 civilians killed in US bombing, it shows to me that the US has done a fair job of avoiding civilian casualties.
As a muslim, I believe that Bin Laden and Omar threatened the stability of all muslim states, specially Pakistan. They were a bigger threat to muslim causes than Sharon and Advani and if it takes this campaign to get rid of them then be it.
Muslims today can choose b/w the path of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and that of the retrogessive muulanas gangohi and thanvi, and I choose Sir Syed. I hope that muslims will make as good a choice as they did in 1857.
[ali, its possible to think the taliban are horrible and also think the present campaign is against basic human values.]
Thank you for asking. Dunno if my views amount to much but......
As a human being my heart goes out to the Afghans who have suffered because of the war. I also think that they have a better chance now of making it through this winter then they had under the Binladin/Mullah Omar leadership. The world too realizes the dangers that a failed state, specially a failed muslim state, poses to world peace and will hopefully do everything possible to ensure that Afghanistan does not revert to its blackhole status of the past 10+ years. That alone gives me hope for the future of Afghan people.
As a Pakistani (and American) nationalist, I feel that this is a just campaign. Remember the mullah on CNN, ``pehle um pakistan ko tabah karega, phir amreeka ko tabah karega``. Self preservation is a very basic human ``value`` and Pakistan, America and all other nation states have every right to defend themselves from the Islamists who do not believe in nation states at all. Even if we go by the Taliban figures of 2000 civilians killed in US bombing, it shows to me that the US has done a fair job of avoiding civilian casualties.
As a muslim, I believe that Bin Laden and Omar threatened the stability of all muslim states, specially Pakistan. They were a bigger threat to muslim causes than Sharon and Advani and if it takes this campaign to get rid of them then be it.
Muslims today can choose b/w the path of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and that of the retrogessive muulanas gangohi and thanvi, and I choose Sir Syed. I hope that muslims will make as good a choice as they did in 1857.
#44 Posted by apparition on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
re Layman # 22
I personally abhor the war thats going on in afghanistan so yes i would have supported Musharraf. And by now we can all see that the war, an endeavor to please the american public, was a bad idea............ after one month ....osama is still at large while innocent lives are being lost each day.
United States is an extremely resourceful country. If it could buy arms from the soviets for afghans DURING the soviet afghan war it could have just as easily bought the loyalties of the taliban and captured osama without this bloody battle.
I have no sympathy for the taliban but if the US was ready to talk to illegitimate regimes of pakistan and saudia then she should have also considered negotiating with the taliban.
At this point one can only hope that future has some good in store for the people of Afghanistan.
#45 Posted by apparition on November 20, 2001 8:14:07 pm
re scout # 16
you mean you don`t do that ???????????
an image of a shortish fairish woman with a very no nonsense expression on her face appears in my mind when i read your nick .......
you mean you don`t do that ???????????
an image of a shortish fairish woman with a very no nonsense expression on her face appears in my mind when i read your nick .......
#46 Posted by slink on November 21, 2001 1:19:12 am
ali1,
nobody here likes the war. and very few people here like the taliban. on the indus news network the other day (the network for which the company i work for is currently producing documentaries and reports about the afghan crisis from the pakistani perspective) journalist mujahid barailvi was interviewing the second in command of the jui, among the things he asked him was whether the jui thought the interests of the pakistani people were subservient to the interests of the taliban, he had no answer. he also asked him whether the jui would like to see the same version of `islam` the taliban created in afghanistan to be imposed on pakistan. he had no answer to that either.
my heart goes out to the afghan people too, the thing is if my heart keeps going out to people there wont be anything left in my chest cavity for daily use :) among the themes that kept popping up in the footage manduck has gathered from refugee camps is that the common afghan (who is neither a solider or a guide) makes no distinction between the russians and the taliban or the northern alliance, in the words of one particularly articulate refugee `they have all helped hammer nails into our coffins.`
so yeah, they have all contributed to the state of things, and so have we, and so has india, and so has the us, and so have a lot of other parties. and hence my problem with certain segments of the media painting the northern alliance in the color of saviors. there is an excellent article on the unhcr webiste about the current humanitarian crisis and how its been building up for a couple of years now.
nobody here likes the war. and very few people here like the taliban. on the indus news network the other day (the network for which the company i work for is currently producing documentaries and reports about the afghan crisis from the pakistani perspective) journalist mujahid barailvi was interviewing the second in command of the jui, among the things he asked him was whether the jui thought the interests of the pakistani people were subservient to the interests of the taliban, he had no answer. he also asked him whether the jui would like to see the same version of `islam` the taliban created in afghanistan to be imposed on pakistan. he had no answer to that either.
my heart goes out to the afghan people too, the thing is if my heart keeps going out to people there wont be anything left in my chest cavity for daily use :) among the themes that kept popping up in the footage manduck has gathered from refugee camps is that the common afghan (who is neither a solider or a guide) makes no distinction between the russians and the taliban or the northern alliance, in the words of one particularly articulate refugee `they have all helped hammer nails into our coffins.`
so yeah, they have all contributed to the state of things, and so have we, and so has india, and so has the us, and so have a lot of other parties. and hence my problem with certain segments of the media painting the northern alliance in the color of saviors. there is an excellent article on the unhcr webiste about the current humanitarian crisis and how its been building up for a couple of years now.
#47 Posted by sadna on November 21, 2001 11:09:08 am
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55681-2001Nov19.html
#48 Posted by stuka on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
ALI1:
In all seriousness, do you think the mutineers of 1857 made a good choice? They put back on the throne a aged Mughal king who was essentially powerless. The nobles, both Hindu and Muslim, who revolted under the banner of the mutiny were essentially backward looking people who were looking at a continuation of the old system. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan`s vision, IMO, was diametrically opposite. How do you reconcile the two?
P.S: Regardless of previous interacts, I am looking for serious input. If u can provide it, great, otherwise, we can revert back to the norm.
In all seriousness, do you think the mutineers of 1857 made a good choice? They put back on the throne a aged Mughal king who was essentially powerless. The nobles, both Hindu and Muslim, who revolted under the banner of the mutiny were essentially backward looking people who were looking at a continuation of the old system. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan`s vision, IMO, was diametrically opposite. How do you reconcile the two?
P.S: Regardless of previous interacts, I am looking for serious input. If u can provide it, great, otherwise, we can revert back to the norm.
#49 Posted by rsaxena on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Re: Fatimah
``WE THESE ISRELIS WHO ARE INDIAS PAL AT LEAST SOME OF THEM``
you got that right, 12-head...i was at a meeting with the foreign minister from israel, shimon peres, in new york last week and he couldn`t stop talking about india in the context of global affairs...your paranoia about the indo-jewish conspiracy is starting to come to life...
``WE THESE ISRELIS WHO ARE INDIAS PAL AT LEAST SOME OF THEM``
you got that right, 12-head...i was at a meeting with the foreign minister from israel, shimon peres, in new york last week and he couldn`t stop talking about india in the context of global affairs...your paranoia about the indo-jewish conspiracy is starting to come to life...
#50 Posted by Shah on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts
view this users filtered interacts
#51 Posted by Deepika on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Stuka,Zafar,&Dost Mitter So proud of Delhi take note
We invite you to a
Lok Sunwayi(HEARINGS) of Delhi Cycle Rickshaw
Pullers and Owners
Do you know that:
„« A citizen of Delhi can legally own any number of cars, trucks, buses or even aeroplanes. But owning more than one cycle rickshaw is ¡¥illegal¡¦. And that such an ¡¥illegal¡¦ vehicle can be confiscated and sold as junk by the municipality.
„« A person owning a car or a bus is allowed to hire any number of persons, who have a valid driving license, to drive his/her vehicle. But if a rickshaw owner allows a relative to ply his vehicle, or hires someone else to operate it, the municipal corporation treats it as an offence serious enough to confiscate and destroy his rickshaw.
„« This `rickshaw to the puller` policy may appear pro-poor on paper, but in fact has facilitated a multi crore extortion racket by the municipal employees.
„« If a car owner commits a traffic offence or strays into a `No Entry` zone, he/she pays a relatively small amount of money by way of fine. A rickshaw puller committing a similar offence, invites confiscation and destruction of the vehicle, or in some areas, a minimum fine of Rs. 325 (apart from the grease money) for getting it released.
„« There is no set limit on the number of cars, two-wheelers and other motorised vehicles that can be registered in the city of Delhi. But the municipal authorities have fixed an unrealistic quota of 99,000 for cycle rickshaws „o in actual fact there are 5¡V6 lakhs of them plying in Delhi.
„« The license-quota-raid-raj, as it operates in this sector, has facilitated a vast extortion racket.
„« The loss of income suffered by rickshaw-pullers and owners due to monthly bribes and fines to the police and the corporation employees would amount to no less than 60 crores per year in the city of Delhi alone. In addition, they suffer losses due to confiscation and destruction of thousands of rickshaws every year.
To get a fuller account of how the municipal and police officials use absurd and colonial minded laws to tyrannise and fleece rickshaw-pullers and owners through various legal, illegal and extra-legal means, we invite you to join us for a Lok Sunwayi of the people engaged in this trade.
We solicit your support and urge you to inform other interested people to join us for this Lok Sunwayi.
#52 Posted by hamzadafaqui on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
ali1---42
[``Thomas Friedman`s article in today`s NYT will be posted at least 50 times by the McLingums on chowk.com today. Bets anyone?``]
That is understandable.Please be a bit forgiving & generous.
Athharaakhasmi Tripathi?You must be kidding!How can someone be named thus at birth.Oh I see!the astrologer! Hmmmmmm.Good Coinage.;)
[``Thomas Friedman`s article in today`s NYT will be posted at least 50 times by the McLingums on chowk.com today. Bets anyone?``]
That is understandable.Please be a bit forgiving & generous.
Athharaakhasmi Tripathi?You must be kidding!How can someone be named thus at birth.Oh I see!the astrologer! Hmmmmmm.Good Coinage.;)
#53 Posted by jay on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Havnt heard from temporal for a long time
Three more Pakistanis detained in America
By Our Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov 20: Three more Pakistani nationals have been detained by US authorities, bringing the total number of Pakistanis in custody so far to nearly 70.
These are cases of which the Pakistan embassy has been informed and relate only to Pakistani nationals, not to US citizens of Pakistani descent, hundreds of whom are also said to be in custody. Almost 90 per cent of the Pakistani nationals detained are being held on immigration charges.
The three new cases, reported over the weekend, concern Syed Farooq Ahmed, 33, held in New York; Khwaja Mahboobur Rahman, 47, in Baltimore, Carroll County; and Qaiser Rafiq, 39. in Suffield, Connecticut.
A Pakistan embassy press release says that contact has been established with the FBI, the State Department and the relevant detention centres to provide the requisite consular assistance to the three detainees. The embassy has urged Carroll County Detention Centre officials to provide medical treatment to Mahboobur Rahman, who is suffering from high blood pressure. US officials at Suffield, Connecticut, have neither confirmed nor denied Qaiser Rafiq`s arrest. However, the embassy says it has been inquiring about his welfare from the officials concerned on the basis of the information provided by Mr Rafiq`s family.
Three more Pakistanis detained in America
By Our Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov 20: Three more Pakistani nationals have been detained by US authorities, bringing the total number of Pakistanis in custody so far to nearly 70.
These are cases of which the Pakistan embassy has been informed and relate only to Pakistani nationals, not to US citizens of Pakistani descent, hundreds of whom are also said to be in custody. Almost 90 per cent of the Pakistani nationals detained are being held on immigration charges.
The three new cases, reported over the weekend, concern Syed Farooq Ahmed, 33, held in New York; Khwaja Mahboobur Rahman, 47, in Baltimore, Carroll County; and Qaiser Rafiq, 39. in Suffield, Connecticut.
A Pakistan embassy press release says that contact has been established with the FBI, the State Department and the relevant detention centres to provide the requisite consular assistance to the three detainees. The embassy has urged Carroll County Detention Centre officials to provide medical treatment to Mahboobur Rahman, who is suffering from high blood pressure. US officials at Suffield, Connecticut, have neither confirmed nor denied Qaiser Rafiq`s arrest. However, the embassy says it has been inquiring about his welfare from the officials concerned on the basis of the information provided by Mr Rafiq`s family.
#54 Posted by Brad Cruise on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
BILLY GRAHAM THE FUNDAMENTALIST OF ALL FUNDAMENTALIST SON ,IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID THE CHRISTIAN GOD IS DIFFERENT THAN MUSLIM GOD WHICH IS EVIL
November 20, 2001
THE EVANGELIST
Muslim Group Seeks to Meet Billy Graham`s Son
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
The Associated Press
The Rev. Franklin Graham drew attention with remarks on Islam.
• Photos
• Graphics • Conversations
• Portraits of Grief
• Complete Coverage
In Depth
Religion
Muslim advocacy organization, the Council on America-Islamic Relations, said yesterday that it had sent a letter to the Rev. Franklin Graham, to discuss remarks that Mr. Graham, an evangelist, made describing Islam as evil.
Nihad Awad, the council`s executive director, said that he wrote to ask Mr. Graham to meet with him and Muslim scholars, as a response to remarks Mr. Graham made in an October interview broadcast on Friday on NBC`s ``Nightly News.``
Mr. Graham, the eldest son of the evangelist Billy Graham, is president of Samaritan`s Purse, a Christian relief organization that provides food, clothing and medical aid to poor people overseas.
According to a transcript of the interview, Mr. Graham said Islam had attacked the United States on Sept. 11. He said that Muslims worshiped a different God than Christians and that he believed Islam to be ``a very evil and wicked religion.``
The remarks came amid a longer interview, devoted mainly to Mr. Graham`s Christian theology. Mr. Graham has emerged as a major figure among evangelical Protestants, offering prayers at national events, including President Bush`s inauguration.
His criticism of Islam stands out when many public figures have emphasized interreligious understanding, not least Mr. Bush, who has asked Americans not to blame the faith for the acts of Sept. 11.
Mr. Awad said he wanted to give Mr. Graham ``a chance to know Islam first-hand.``
In his letter, Mr. Awad said ``negative impressions of Islam are most often based on a lack of accurate and objective information.``
On Sunday, Mr. Graham sent a statement to The Charlotte Observer, in which he said his group was providing ``more relief and aid to Muslim people`` than to anyone else. He also said his calling was as a Christian minister, proclaiming God, not analyzing other faiths.
But he said, too, that he had expressed concerns about ``the teachings of Islam regarding the treatment of women and the killing of non- Muslims, or `infidels.` ``
A spokeswoman said yesterday that Mr. Graham would not comment further.
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#55 Posted by veeresh on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Goodbye Sam, Hullo Samantha.
Tweedle dee dum went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Tweedele dee dee came tumbling back after a shave without foam.
It doesn`t have to rhyme, Taliban makes for excellent Northern Alliance, like biryani.
And finally:-
````We shall always wave happily or angrily at cameras````
#56 Posted by veeresh on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Amazing world!! Everybody wants to be ylh!!
Ahmed Madani for President, ylh for Leader of Opposition, and may I take a bow for solving all of Pakistan`s problems?
I want to see this on the chowk font
ylh
yih
y1h
YLH
y|h
and finally
y-h
y=h
y( *)h
or maybe
y
#57 Posted by shankar on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Apparition,
Dunno why; but when I picture the nick ,scout, I imagine a very pretty girl with a moustache & a goatee.
Dunno why; but when I picture the nick ,scout, I imagine a very pretty girl with a moustache & a goatee.
#58 Posted by Brad Cruise on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
ny times
November 21, 2001
THE INTERVIEWS
A Police Force Rebuffs F.B.I. on Querying Mideast Men
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
he Portland, Ore., police will not cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its efforts to interview 5,000 young Middle Eastern men nationwide because such questioning violates state law, the department`s acting police chief, Andrew Kirkland, said yesterday.
The decision is the first known case of a city`s refusing to go along with the antiterrorism effort, which was announced last week by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
But top police officials in several other cities have also said that Mr. Ashcroft`s plan raises troubling questions about racial profiling — an issue that has brought endless grief to police departments nationwide — and may violate local and state laws about issues like intelligence gathering for political purposes.
Charles Gorder, an assistant United States attorney in Portland, said he could not comment on the decision by the police. But Mr. Gorder, who is coordinator of the local F.B.I. joint terrorism task force, said, ``We will get the interviews done,`` suggesting that F.B.I. agents would do the questioning themselves. ``We do not think there any violations of state or federal law,`` Mr. Gorder added.
Acting Chief Kirkland said the United States attorney`s office in Portland asked the police last Thursday to help with interviews of young Middle Eastern men in the city, sending along a list of 200 names. He said he quickly decided not to cooperate.
``I didn`t have to think too long about it,`` Mr. Kirkland said yesterday in a telephone interview. ``We`re not going to do it.``
Mr. Kirkland said Oregon law prohibited the local police from questioning immigrants when they were not suspected of any crime and the only issue under discussion was their foreign citizenship.
``If the F.B.I. has something specific about a crime they are investigating, or a potential crime that these people might commit, then we would reconsider,`` said Mr. Kirkland, an assistant chief who is Portland`s acting chief this week while Chief Mark Kroeker is on vacation.
But the F.B.I. list, he said, contained ``no specifics`` about what crimes the 5,000 men might be involved with, saying only that they had come to this country in the last two years on student, tourist or business visas from countries with suspected terrorist links. The department also received a list of questions about the men`s activities and knowledge of terrorist groups, he said.
Portland has a large immigrant population, and Acting Chief Kirkland said the city had historically passed through periods when immigrants were targets of political and police persecution.
Mr. Kirkland, who is black, said his own background had also played a role in his decision. ``I grew up in Detroit,`` he said, ``and I hated the police with a passion. They were always stopping and bothering me.``
F.B.I. agents began interviewing some of the 5,000 men late last week, but there are so many on the list that Mr. Ashcroft has asked local police forces around the nation to conduct many of the interviews themselves, so they can be completed within 30 days. Despite his sense of urgency, a number of major city police departments said they had not yet been officially contacted by the F.B.I. or the Justice Department. Those cities include Baltimore, Minneapolis, Tucson and Seattle, police officials said.
In Seattle, the police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, said that he had not received a formal request for help but that he had contacted the local F.B.I. office himself and was told the bureau was interested in questioning fewer than two dozen men in Seattle. Since the number was small, Chief Kerlikowske said, the F.B.I. might be doing all the interviews itself.
``I think for police departments this is an incredibly sensitive problem,`` the chief said. ``On the one hand, we don`t want to harm relationships with community members that we have worked hard for years to build. We depend on information that these people bring to us when they come to trust us.``
``On the other hand,`` he said, ``we want to track down the terrorists. So it is a Hobson`s choice. We`d like to be able to help the F.B.I., and we know the local community in a way they don`t.``
But before he could have his officers conduct such interviews, Chief Kerlikowske said, he would have to review an ordinance prohibiting investigations to determine a person`s political or religious thinking.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., the police chief, Daniel Oates, also expressed reservations, saying he had not yet been contacted about the interviews. Because the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has international students who might be on the list, Chief Oates said, ``I have questions about the propriety of this.``
How, he asked, ``does someone end up on this list?``
#59 Posted by SigaIph235 on November 21, 2001 11:42:40 am
Like in the movie ,Gunga Jamuna ,Dilip Kumar ,hunted by the ``authorities`` ,fighting for justice against nepotism,corruption& injustice ,Osama indeed will become Karbala of gheto kids & may be one priviliged one too,in all Islamic world for long time
Bin L