Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi

NEWS????,

Waste of space/bandwidth. Sorry, yes it involved american embassy. The so called afghan taliban happen to come home to pakistan. Waiting for the report of ylh from karachi.

A RELATED NEWS

Five suspected Al Qaeda men arrested in Paris

By Paul Michaud

PARIS, June 13: The French police say they`ve arrested five men - two of them apparently Pakistani nationals - in an early-morning raid staged on Wednesday (June 12) in two suburbs of Paris.

Some of the men, notably the two Pakistanis, are suspected of having links with Markas Dawa al-Irshab and other terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir.

All five are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda and are being accused of having provided logistical support to Richard Reid, the British ``shoe-bomber`` who on Dec 22 unsuccessfully attempted to blow up a bomb contained in his shoe during an American Airlines flight to Miami that he had boarded at Roissy- Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris. Two of the men, who were rounded up by the anti-terrorist section of the Brigade criminelle de Paris, are said to be holders of Pakistani passports. For the moment, they have not been identified.

``Officials said the seven so far confirmed dead were from Pakistan.``

Allah tera shukr! Now we won`t have to worry about having white (American) blood on our souls, and our passports. Hamare apne log? They`re dispensable.

How disgusting!

A question to my pakistani brothers and sisters.

Who is in charge of the State of Pakistan?

It appears that this is the question the Indians are asking. when they say they want to see something on the ground, they are implying that they do not believe that Pervez Musharaf anf co are incharge of the State of Pakistan. Indeed Pervez himself said so in his speeches that the writ of the state does not run in Pakistan. And Khaled in the latest Friday times says so as well.

If this is the case why should India let its guard down. See Pervez and the co can make speeches but they cannot deliver since they do not control the State.

The days of Pervez are numbered! Indeed he has an inclining of this when he said he wished that the decisions were taken by a civilian government recently,

.

It is sad to hear such news. Unfortunately, it was to be expected. The only long term investment Pakistan has made is in training, nurturing and exporting terrorism. Today, the same people have turned on Pak. May be it is time for Pak to realise that it needs to join hands with India to fight this menace.

Sridhar

Uh-oh.

I hope those of you who are in Karachi or have family in Karachi are safe.

This will surely cause more problems.

Terrible news. Highly condemnable. Most of the dead were probably ordinary people of Karachi, who had nothing to do with the agenda of the bombers.

It is time that the rulers of Pakistan realize that the fire they have been stoking in Kashmir and Afghanistan knows no boundaries. Flames know no friend or foe.

A highly salutary article on Musharraf:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48450-2002Jun13.html

Death of 10 innocent victims in the mane of Islam does not change Pakistanis` infatuation with camels, dates, maswak and watwani. The supremacy of Islam is unchallengeable, even if Indus turns red with the blood. Just take a moment and think about all the victims - our ancestors - of Islam since MB Qasim invasion. What a shame to take pride in the bizzare, shameful and pathetic heritage that is soaked with the blood of our forefathers. The saga of never-ending appetite for blood and our religion continues!!!!!

Qat`l-e-awam as`l maiN fat`h-e-Islam hay

Islam zinda hota hay her martial law key ba`ad``.

So the jihadi ``freedom fighters`` are at work. The chickens are comming home to the roost now. What they say in Hindi, ``Jab boya ped(tree) babool ka, tab aam kahan se hoi``. You sowed the crop of jihad, you reap it now.

Now my Pakistani brothers and sisters will realize what it takes to harbour suicidal jihadis.

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August 1914 in Pakistan

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Nuclear war isn`t about to erupt here. I can say that baldly because if it does, then I`ll be vaporized and won`t have to eat my words.

But while Don Rumsfeld`s relentless squinting at leaders here and in New Delhi may help stave off war for now, it still threatens just down the road. And that threat makes Pakistan an eerie place, with the flavor of the languid European summer of 1914.

Warhead-rattling resonates in every dusty alley I`ve prowled in northern Pakistan, along with shrugs at the risks. As a doctor told me cheerfully (she hid behind a black veil with only a slit to reveal her eyes and a bit of nasal cleavage): ``I`m not worried about war, because life and death are decided by Allah.``

Everybody here is behaving irresponsibly. Both India and Pakistan are cavalierly playing with nuclear fire and brutalizing the Kashmiris they claim to be championing, while the Bush administration intervenes tardily to defuse crises rather than taking the initiative to prevent them from occurring in the first place. If a new August 1914 is to be definitively averted, President Bush must show continuing interest in the region when it is hot and also when it is not. But judging from his lack of engagement in countries not in the headlines, I wouldn`t bet that he will.

The next crisis will come with any new big terror attacks in Kashmir. Even if infiltration from Pakistan is halted, there are 2,500 militants already in Indian Kashmir. When they strike, the pressure within India to whack Pakistan will be enormous.

``The Indian Air Force and the Army are raring to have a go, and only political authority is holding them back,`` said Sumit Ganguly, author of the aptly titled ``Unending Conflict,`` an excellent new book on India-Pakistan relations and the three wars between them since independence.

Hamid Gul, a rabble-rousing former lieutenant general and head of Pakistan`s intelligence agency, says that the moment India strikes, Pakistan will call for a jihad against India and invite Muslims from all over the world to sneak into India and wage attacks. He added that Pakistan would also support separatist movements around India and might even bomb India`s high-tech centers.

``If India attacks,`` said General Gul, ``then it`s `Come one, come all, it`s Jihad!` ``

Much of the visible Pakistani society (i.e. males) can be divided between the religious beards and the more secular cheeks, but many beards and cheeks alike seem quite prepared to think what is supposed to be unthinkable. Hamid Nasir Chattha, a prominent politician, noted in a newspaper essay yesterday that Pakistan had spent a fortune acquiring a nuclear capability and suggested that as a result it would be almost a shame not to use it: ``If the use of nuclear is unavoidable for the survival of Pakistan, then it must be used with no hesitation.``

A survey of Pakistani elites published in a recent book, ``Pakistan and the Bomb,`` found that 98 percent believed that Pakistan would be justified in using nuclear weapons ``if India were about to attack Pakistan across the international border.``

The U.S. Naval War College held an India-Pakistan war game not long ago in which each country`s leaders were played by officials from that country. The games began with a terrorist attack, grew into a border war — and then Pakistan covered its retreat by firing four nuclear weapons at pursuing Indian troops. India responded with 12 nuclear warheads. The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency estimated that the result would have been 15 million casualties.

So what can be done?

Many experts agree on what eventual peace in Kashmir will look like: The Line of Control will be turned into an international border between India and Pakistan, and India will grant real autonomy to its Kashmiris. So the Bush administration needs to rouse itself from its diplomatic duff. President Bush has done nothing substantial so far to reduce the risks emanating from any of the four most dangerous places in the world: the Middle East, India/Pakistan, North Korea and (in the longer run) China/Taiwan. Mr. Bush`s aides have quelled crises as they arise, but they have not sought aggressively to make peace in any of these places.

It`s time for the White House to take the initiative and prevent crises instead of just managing them. Appointing a special envoy for peace in Kashmir would be a good place to start.

New York Times

Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda

By DEXTER FILKINS

New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.

The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country`s remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.

He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.

Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the ``legal implications`` that could impede the interrogations.

Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.

Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.

Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.

They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.

They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas`s religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.

Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.

Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.

One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.

Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.

A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.

Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.

The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla`s activities in recent months.

The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.

The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.

To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man`s death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called ``Blow of the Believer,`` published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.

The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.

The article is entitled ``The story of an American Shaheed,`` using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.

The article said Mr. Adam was ``born into a considerably wealthy family,`` and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.

El Mush must crackdown on the jihadis for the sake of a civil society in Pakistan...and not for India`s sake. But that means he must have the cojones to do that. Will he?

Nothing was done when they bumped of your interior minister`s brother, given that the minister was a general.

You have made a faustian bargain and it is not only the Indian govt and the army that is paying for it [along with the Kashmiris], but the bill is coming up due, and guess, who`s gonna pay up?

Cover story

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article

A state of war

BY TREVOR FISHLOCK

The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?

Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.

Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.

In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.

It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.

Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.

The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.

Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.

The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.

At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.

Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.

India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.

India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.

Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.

Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.

Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.

Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.

The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.

Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.

In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.

Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.

It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.

It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.

In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.

People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.

Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.