From Across The Border

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#: 30

Ras Siddiqui

If only Indians and Pakistanis would learn to get along better because ine alterantive is

to work in the Middle East and

Ras

I have worked in the mid east & i say this b/c you say mid east & not Saudie ,specifically .Those that go to Mid East atleast from India for one reason & only one reason .MOre Money .

Those from India particularly from Kerala are using the money for some good cause ,upliftment of community through education,vocational training ,business ,investment etc.Wise Pakistanis & Indians of religion are doing exactly that .They have established good schools for there ,off springs & very much like immigrants like in USA executing there plan for better future of there children .Even with such negative feelings about mid east ....there is no dearth of people lining up ,in far more greater number than for u.s. & Canada ,clamouring from Asian countries (korea to Indonesia)to go to Mid east.

There must be some A$$hole & rude policeman or Saudie citizen not withstanding .....there are some everywhere .

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If only Indians and Pakistanis would learn to get along better because ine alterantive is
to work in the Middle East and...

From the daily Dawn (Karachi)


The Saudi way

By Khalid Hasan


Some years ago, a Pakistani doctor told me a story form his days in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he was working in one of the state-run hospitals.

One day, he stepped out of his apartment, wearing jeans and sneakers, walked across the road to buy a pack of cigarettes (yes, he was one of those doctors who smoke, so there is hope for the rest of Fraulein Nicotine`s suitors yet). He never got to the store because he was accosted by a plainclothesman who wanted to see his papers.

All foreigners residing in the Kingdom need to carry their identification or work permit or whatever on their person all the time. He said he did not have any on him, but he only lived across the road and it would take him five minutes to come back with his papers. Wrong number.

He was carted off to police lockup, kept there for several days and allowed neither to phone his wife nor his employers. Once freed, he resigned and left to find himself some easier place to live.

A taxi driver, with whom I was having a nice chat in Karachi once, while his rickety contraption that only needed two things, an engine and a body, bounced along Nazimabad`s back roads, said to me, ``I will go without a fare for hours but I won`t offer a ride to an Arab, even if he was a prince.``

When I said that did not sound a nice or reasonable thing to do, he turned around - without slowing down of course - and asked, ``Where do you work?`` I told him I worked in Europe. ``Well, if like me you had worked in one of those countries, you would have understood what I meant.``

He then told me of the humiliation he, an honest, upright, hard-working and devout Muslim had suffered in more than one of the Gulf states. ``I do not make much here,`` he added, ``but nobody looks down on me. Nobody calls me a `miskeen`. I walk as tall as the next man.`` He also told me that the worst thing that you could do there was to get into an accident because no matter whose fault it was, it would be the foreigner who would be blamed, unless he was a `gora sahib`.

Every other week, buried somewhere in the middle of column six or seven on an inside page of most of our newspapers is a brief news report that informs those who would notice it that three or four or more of their countrymen have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia. No one misses any sleep over it, nor do I recall ever having seen an editorial comment deploring the savagery of the punishment. Add this to what is already a long list of Pakistani dichotomy and double standards.

The recently released report on human rights by the US State Department contains a 36-page section on the Kingdom that I would not advise anyone to read before lunch unless wishes no lunch that day. The `Mubahith` or internal security force and the `Mutawwa`in` or the religious police representing the Committee to Prevent Vice and Promote Virtue (now you know where the Taliban got theirs) are a law unto themselves.

Although the Shar`ia strictly prohibits any judge from accepting a confession obtained under duress, the Interior ministry officials are said to be responsible for most incidents of abuse of prisoners, including beatings, whippings, sleep deprivation and even drugging. It is not uncommon to suspend prisoners from bars by their handcuffs or obtain confessions through torture and abuse. The Saudi government refuses to recognize the mandate of the UN Committee Against Torture.

The much-feared religious police are known for intimidating, harassing, abusing and detaining citizens and foreigners, both men and women. The punishments meted out to wrongdoers include stoning, decapitation and death by firing squad. Repeated thievery can be, and often is, punished with the amputation of the right hand and the left foot.

Flogging of those convicted of a political or religious crime is with a leather strap; but those caught drinking get off lightly, in comparison, as they are not flogged but caned. While the Saudi law prohibits arbitrary arrest, the religious police are generally free to intimidate and bring to police stations persons whom they accuse of committing ``crimes of vice``, a charge framed entirely in accordance with the judgement of the security agent.

Musarrat Nazir, who till last reports came was still looking under the trees for that famous nose ornament of hers, once told me that on a visit to the Kingdom, as she arrived with her ten-year old son, tired and jetlagged, at the Riyadh airport, and as they waited their turn at the immigration and passport control window, the boy being exhausted put her head on her shoulder. Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Two or three Mutawwa`in rushed upon her screaming, pulled the terrified boy away from her and made it clear by gestures that they had to stand apart.

No physical contact in public between sexes should occur, even between mother and son. She said it was a terrifying and humiliating experience. A friend once said if you go to the Kingdom, be sure that your faith is strong because it will be tested on more than one occasion.

I hope Nawaz Sharif, currently a guest of the Kingdom, remembers to criticise only his own government because were he to criticise the Saudi government, that being an offence, he could be picked up by the `Mubahith`, the ministry of interior`s internal security service which keeps those it picks up incommunicado in special prisons while investigations continue. The authorities also open mail and use informants and wiretaps. Security forces have been known to use wiretaps against foreigners suspected of alcohol-related offences. Informants and ward bosses report ``seditious ideas`` or anti-government activity in their neighbourhoods to the ministry of the interior.

Women have a rough deal. They may not marry non-citizens without government permission (even men need permission if the intended is outside the six Gulf states).

Women cannot marry non-Muslims, while men can choose a Jew or a Christian. Although the Shar`ia prohibits violence against women, it is said to be common. Hospitals admit women who have apparently been beaten up at home. They have since been instructed to report any suspicious case to the authorities.

A woman may not travel abroad without the permission of her husband or parent. There are thousands of foreign women domestics in Saudi homes. Some countries maintain ``safehouses`` for those who have been mistreated so that they can find shelter. There are no active women`s rights groups. Women are not allowed to drive and they must occupy the back seat. They can enter city buses but through rear entrances. A woman found in a car not being driven by a relative can be arrested.

Women can now obtain identity cards but only with the permission of a male relative. In public, women must wear an `abaya`, a head to toe black garment.

The head and hair must also remain covered. Women have to show legally specified grounds for divorce, but men are under no such obligation. Women make up 58 per cent of university students but are excluded from the study of such subjects as engineering, journalism and architecture. A woman can only go abroad to study if she is accompanied by her husband or a close male relative.

After September 11 and given the nationality of the majority of the hijackers, pressure on Saudi Arabia has mounted to open up and introduce reform. How long it takes and what its political implications will be on the House of Saud is one of the great unanswered questions of our times.

US: Ex-Pakistan agents linked to Pearl

By Anwar Iqbal

South Asian Affairs Analyst

Published 3/15/2002 9:02 AM

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=14032002-092048-3170r

WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- The United States gave Islamabad a list of former Pakistani intelligence agents U.S. authorities believe were linked to the abduction and slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl, United Press International learned Friday.

And a UPI investigation has revealed Pakistani officials have engaged in a sustained campaign to prevent reporting of links between the country`s intelligence services and the Muslim extremists accused of killing Pearl. UPI first reported the possible link on Jan. 29 in an exclusive.

A senior Pakistani official, who visited Washington last month with President Pervez Musharraf, told UPI that Pakistani authorities had been handed ``some names of former ISI men,`` but added that, ``after a thorough investigation, none of them were found (to be) involved (in the Pearl murder).``

ISI, or Inter Services Intelligence, is Pakistan`s main spy agency. It recruited hundreds of Muslim extremists during the Afghan war of 1979-89, when it supervised the resistance against the Soviet occupation.

``The names (of the former agents) were first intercepted by the National Security Agency while monitoring signals from that region,`` a U.S. intelligence official told UPI. ``They were handed over to a close aide of Musharraf within a week of Pearl`s abduction.``

ISI`s former chief, Gen. Hamid Gul, also confirmed to UPI the Americans had given a list of ex-ISI officials to Pakistan after Pearl`s abduction. Gul named some of these officials but said most of them had retired after the Afghan war when then-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto sacked several officials, including Gul, from the agency.

Like Gul, many of those who were fired or retired from the ISI at that time had strong religious views and some maintained their links with Afghan mujahedin groups -- and later the Taliban -- after their retirement, as Gul himself did.

U.S. intelligence officials claim Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, the chief suspect in the Pearl case, also had worked for ISI in the past, ``as their dirty tricks man,`` as one of them put it. ``We have reasons to believe that he has done break-ins, hostage takings and other similar chores for ISI,`` he said.

Pakistani officials deny ISI is linked with Omar, saying he never worked for any Pakistani government agency. But an investigation by UPI has revealed Pakistani officials tried to suppress reports in the local media suggesting Omar had worked for the agency.

Also, journalists visiting Pakistani Kashmir over the past two years have seen evidence that ISI officials were supervising military training for Islamic militants from Omar`s group and other extremist organizations.

On Feb. 17, the reputable daily The News said Omar had told his Pakistani interrogators that he would expose ISI`s links with Muslim militant groups if he were extradited to the United States.

Arrested last month, Omar -- a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin -- confessed to kidnapping Pearl before a court in Karachi, but later said police forced him to do so.

On Thursday, Omar was indicted by a U.S. court on a charge of conspiracy to take a hostage resulting in death. U.S. authorities have urged Pakistan to send him to the United States to face trial.

``Hours before the paper was published a senior government official called me and asked me not to print this story. I told him it was already well past midnight and too late to take it out of the paper,`` Shaheen Sehbai, The News` then-editor, told UPI this week.

``The official also told me the ISI would be very upset if the story was published,`` recalled Sehbai, who moved to Washington last week after he was forced to resign for publishing the story.

``The next day, the government stopped all official advertisements to the Jang newspaper group,`` which is Pakistan`s largest and publishes The News and several other leading dailies and magazines, Sehbai said.

Following this, Sehbai said, the group`s owner, Mir Shaiklur Rahman, called him and asked him to see officials from ISI and the ministry of information to ``sort out my differences with them.``

Sehbai said he was asked to sack three reporters, but the newspaper`s management and the government both deny this charge.

However, in a letter sent to Sehbai, Rahman admits to ``discussing the fallout of the story ... which was perceived to be damaging to our national interest and elicited severe reaction by the government,`` with Sehbai.

The Feb. 17 article, which has since been removed from the newspaper`s Web site, says a jailhouse statement by Omar links ISI not only with Jaish-e-Mohammed -- the group allegedly responsible for kidnapping and killing Pearl -- but also with the leader of a radical Muslim group called Tanzim-ul Fuqra or Organization of the Poor -- Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani.

Pearl was abducted while trying to interview Gilani. Before his abduction, he was investigating links between Jaish and Richard Reid, the so-called shoe-bomber accused of trying to blow up an American airplane.

Pearl was last seen driving in a car with Omar on Jan. 23. On Feb. 22 police received a videotape showing Pearl`s decapitated body and reports in the Pakistani media have suggested the corpse was thrown into the Arabian Sea near Karachi.

The alleged links between ISI and extremist Islamic groups like Jaish have their roots in two long-standing regional conflicts, Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Throughout the 1990s in Pakistani Kashmir, ISI supervised several training camps run by Jaish-e-Mohammed and similar groups. Until Sept. 11, no serious effort was made to hide this relationship. Journalists often visited them to interview the militants and film them practicing guerilla war techniques.

In December 1999, two of Jaish`s leaders -- including Omar -- were released from Indian jails in exchange for the passengers and crew of a hijacked airliner.

Despite this and allegations of other links to terrorism, Jaish-e-Mohammed -- or Army of Mohammed -- openly operated in Pakistan until the crackdown against militants that Musharraf instituted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Following Sept. 11, Musharraf also purged ISI -- sacking many of those believed linked to Islamic extremism, including the agency`s chief Gen. Mahmood Ahmed.

In Afghanistan, ISI was the conduit for U.S. support to Islamic militants fighting the Soviet occupation of that country during the 1980s.

Gul was put in charge of ISI by Pakistan`s military leader Gen. Zia ul Haq during this period. Gul -- an avid Muslim with radical views -- packed the organization with officers from various branches of the Pakistani armed forces who had strong religious leanings and shared his vision of an Islamic revolution in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.

According to Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, ISI was instrumental in setting up the Taliban to secure its dominant position in the region.

``ISI created the Taliban movement to ensure that it continued to control Kabul as well,`` he says.

``I did not collect religious minded officers from anywhere,`` Gul told UPI. ``Pakistan is an Islamic country and most Muslims love their religion. In that sense, we are all religious minded.``

(With reporting by UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale.)

Pakistan army chief bribed his Bangla

counterpart to ensure Khaleda Zia`s win

In a bid to gain a foothold in Bangladesh politics and promote Islamic fundamentalist groups in that country, a Pakistan army chief paid a bribe of Rs 100 million to his Bangla counterpart to ensure Khaleda Zia`s return to power, a Pakistani media report said.

``One army chief of Pakistan actually bribed his Bangladeshi counterpart to bring Khaleda Zia to power and help revive Jamaat-e-Islami,`` The Friday Times reported in its latest issue. The paper did not name the military officer.

Stating that the Indian media is now writing about the ``many strongholds of the Inte-Services Intelligence in Dhaka under the benign regard of the Bangladesh army and Khaleda Zia`s party,`` the weekly said. ``So strong is the swing of the pendulum in favour of Islam that the secularists have been thrown back on the defensive.``

The weekly said Pakistan countered the alleged Indian ``penetration`` of Bangladesh ``especially after India tried to outflank it in Afghanistan by moving closer to the Rabbani government.``

The journal said former prime minister Sheikh Hasina was ``convinced that ISI was behind the two attempts on her life made in Dhaka.``

It said the skirmish between Indian and Bangladeshi border guards last year ``indicated the persisting right-wing orientation of the Bangladeshi army.``

``Who is winning the war in Bangladesh? One has to say Pakistan is,`` the article said.

Denying reality

``Ironically it is the Indians who are likely to fight with Pakistan in war ,are the ones most interested in friendship too..the north Indians ,Punjabis ,Rajputs,Kashmiri hindu ,Dogra etc.``

Above is reproduced from another post. Nice to know that the lotus eaters are still alive, though gasping for breath. Take it from me, there are no punjabis and rajputs etc in pakistan. Ask them about basant, the festival is banned, ask them about saris, what they aore a fifty years ago, ask them what mullahs have to say.

Pakistan the land of the pure has dissolved into the muslim ummah where all that is regional and historical has vanished in the mire of a book.

Ask the rajput about faisalabad, ask the punjabi when he will name his son mohammed bin abdullah.

In pakistan there are only the hazratul oslamis, the alquida people, the laskers, no punjabi, no rajput. Every thing indian has to be denied for pakistan to exist, otherwise the sheer stupidity of its creation will overwhelm even the most bigoted.

re: AAmir # 25

It is possible that some of these things occurred. Knowing U.P. reasonably well, I however believe that a completely different scenario is more likely.

Over the last few months, these fools have been building up feverish hype about ``Mandi wahin banayenge.`` In a last ditch effort, this paramhansa fellow announced to anyone who cared he would commit suicide if certain things didn`t come to pass. That raised their expectations further. Utopia was at hand! Their dreams were about to be fulfilled!

Now, thankfully, all that sh1t has come crashing down on them. So, how are these ``rambhakts`` to accept this turn of events? More importantly, how are they to save their faces before others?

There is a simple answer: these proud people had to retreat because everyone from Advani to George Fernandez to Rajiv Gandhi to Buta Singh came and begged paramhans for mercy, and the great paramhans ``reluctantly`` (that is important) agreed for the ``good of the nation.`` How and why ``good of the nation`` when these characters are unlikely to be much concerned about the feelings of Muslims? Well, that is where the strategic invoking the name of Pakistan comes in.

As I said, both these scenarios are possible. But I personally believe the latter is more likely to have been the case.

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http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=STONE-03-14-02&cat=II

``Under an interpretation of Sharia law, adultery and rape can be proven only if a person involved confesses or four Muslim men of good standing witness the crime, said Robin Phillips of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, an attorney who worked with McCollum on the resolution. A woman can be found guilty on the evidence that she is pregnant, she said``

why is it that the rape has to be witnessed by four muslim men of good standing. Isn`t it contradictory. Why would men of good standing ``watch`` while the rape is happening. Wouldn`t they stop it? if they don`t stop it, then are these dudes ``men in good standing``?

What a piece of crappy islamic logic?

Dear Temporal . . . I shall help you strategise your new movement/religion as long as it contains pathar kabab (goat, not lamb); aubergines (baingan not brinjal) and heeng from Persia.

warm regards,

Swami

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Islamic Reasoning

Most intolerant state is India. Hindus and Muslims fight over religious places.

More tolerant state is Pakistan. Minorities may worship but must not ask for any share in state power.

Most tolerant state is Saudi Arabia. Minorities may not worship, unless they want to worship Allah.

Islam is a religion of peace. There is no compulsion in Islam.