Lashes to lashes, dust to dust

In explanation of the verse 104-105 of Surah A'al-e-Imran
" And there has to be a group of people from among you who call towards the good, and bid the fai and forbid the unfair" told that The criterion for the people of this particular group includes enough knowledge and understanding of the teachings of Islam.

taliban should come to power in pakistan. you know why ?because we the indian soldiers in the remote garrisons of kashmirs are bored to our bones. the last leT guys whom we killed was a 15 yr old boy and a woman terrorist !
we didnot join the force to kill pansies, for god sake.
let the vanquishers of brits,commies and yanks come to us, and we will have fun.

#299 adamkhan
Adam Khan,
I understand your anger but I think anger is your worst enemy when it comes to politics.

I am not in favor of the ANP or the Pakistan government’s decision to give in to the mullah in Swat. I have strong feelings abt what is going on in Swat and other parts of the NWFP and FATA.

In Pakistan’s context the mullah military alliance, which is not actually an alliance but a master-slave relationship, played a major part in the destruction of the NWFP society. However, we can’t ignore the reality that Pathans are a conservative society and often they look for solutions from Islamic injunctions.

In the 70s and part of the 80s, the peasants in parts of Malakand division were completely behind Khan Afzal Bungash and Major Ishaq’s Muzdoor Kissan Party and that party was as radical as they can get in Pakistan. It was a Maoist party but was actually to the left of Chairman Mao.

How that area slipped in to Mullah Fazal/Sufi’s hands is not a big mystery now. Mullah Fazal of TSNM played the same cards that Major Ishaq and Afzal Bungash played in that area. He exploited economic conditions in that area. There was a political Vacuum in that area after the Mazdoor Kisan Party was crushed by Zia. The ANP never attempted to fill the vacuum and relied on the Khans of the area to maintain election superiority. (I am not sure his name is Fazal so I apologize in advance but who cares abt the name mullah is good enough for all of them.)

The politics is not abt winning elections; it is more abt creating a grassroots structure. ANP did not do it but the Mullahs have done it. ANP might still win elections there but the hardliners or the people who truly are struggling for the rights have already chosen sides.

At this point the best way is take a step back and think abt how the current position can be reversed.

One idea is to use the army and confront the mullah again. But we know that in the last 4 yrs the Army never actually confronted its slaves so that it can use them at a later stage. The ANP pov, as I understand it, is that they want to keep the army away from NWFP and Swat and they wanna find a way to bring peace to that society. The army has no such interest.

Sometimes the best policy is to bide for the time and make a move when things are ready. Mullahs have no way of keeping people under control. They will resort to intimidation and that will be their undoing.

Right now mullahs in that area have shown their political muscle but they have no program or the political intelligence to make that last or cash the public support they have.


In a nutshell, this thing is not over yet. There is time and people should continue to push back but a military action in the area is not a solution.

tahir

"Yes I did! Where were you, walking the chowq dogs?"

After going thru all your ilogs where you attacked everyone and everything without rhyme or reason, I began to lose interest in you. My opinion is that whenever faced with a need to stand up and prove the detractors wrong, you hide for a couple of days and then visit chowk as if it did not happen.

What you did to bittersweetmojo was, to say the least, was unbecoming of the maulana of your standard.

#328 Posted by tahir

"The silliness of Indian comedy needn't be compared with the seriousness of what you're mockingly referring to"

I see. So the rantings of loop, in a prophetic manner is what you call a serious dialogue. Please read his interact once again and see where you are wrong.

An open letter to Gen Kayani
View from the other side Col (r) Harish Puri
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=172290

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Dear Gen Kayani,

----

Credit must be given to the Pakistani newspaper that published Harish Puri's letter.

Re: # 329

"...It is about 'the people' not 'the individual', and what rights are you talking about?..."

Your trickery has been played in now diseased Soviet Union. Where, outside Marxist society have you heard of democracy of the people, by the people, for the people without personal freedom to choose and without personal liberty.

I do not think you are so dumb, pleased do not, therefore, pretend. You know what Tahmed sahib meant. If not then please be honest did you really get education at the buckle of bible belt college.

Re: # 333
pew...
there is no bigger dumb than this Harish Puri....idiot, he is talking a musla in terms of human sense and expecting something human!!!!! this fellow needs caning based on Shariat Law....

woo hoo prophetboy...quick..find a hole to bury your head in...reality dead ahead!!!

April 14, 2009
Insurgents Make Inroads in Key Pakistan Province
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT

This article was reported by Sabrina Tavernise, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Eric Schmitt and written by Ms. Tavernise.

DERA GHAZI KHAN, Pakistan — Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, the province that is home to more than half of Pakistanis, reinvigorating an alliance that Pakistani and American authorities say poses a serious risk to the stability of the country.

The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.

Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,� said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.�

As American drone attacks disrupt strongholds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens.

Tell-tale signs of creeping militancy abound in a belt of towns and villages near here that a reporter visited last week. Militants have gained strength considerably in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan, which is a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab, police and local residents say. Many were terrified.

Some villages, just north of here, are so deeply infiltrated by militants that they are already considered no-go zones by their neighbors.

In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and Internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats. Traditional ceremonies that include drumming and dancing have been halted in some areas. Hard-line ideologues have addressed large crowds to push their idea of Islamic revolution. Sectarian attacks, dormant here since the 1990s, have erupted once again.

“It’s going from bad to worse,� said a senior police official in Dera Ghazi Khan. “They are now more active. These are the facts.�

American officials agreed. Bruce Riedel, who led the Obama administration’s recently completed strategy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Taliban now had “extensive links into the Punjab.�

“You are seeing more of a coalescence of these militant groups,� said Mr. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official. “Connections that have always existed are becoming tighter and more public than they have in the past.�

The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.

Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

At least 20 militants killed in American strikes in the tribal areas since last summer were Punjabi, according to people from the tribal areas and Pakistani officials. One Pakistani security official estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.

The alliance is based on more than shared ideology. “These are tactical alliances,� said a senior American counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters. The Pashtun Taliban and Arab militants, who are part of Al Qaeda, have money, sanctuary, training sites and suicide bombers. The Punjabi militants can provide logistical help in Punjabi cities, like Lahore, including handling bombers and target reconnaissance.

The cooperation between the groups intensified greatly after the government’s siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007, Pakistani and American security officials say. The siege has since become a rallying cry.

One such joint operation, an American security official said, was the Marriott bombing in Islamabad in September, which killed more than 50 people.

As this cooperation intensifies, places like Dera Ghazi Khan are particularly vulnerable. This frontier town is home to a combustible mix of worries: poverty, a growing phalanx of hard-line religious schools and a uranium processing plant that is a part of Pakisitan’s nuclear program.

It is also strategically situated at the intersection of two main roads. One is a main artery into Pakistan’s heartland, in southern Punjab. The other connects Baluchistan Province in the west to the North-West Frontier Province, both Taliban strongholds.

“We are being cornered in a blind alley,� said Mohammed Ali, a local landlord. “We can’t breathe easily.�

Attacks intended to intimidate and sow sectarian strife are more common. The police point to a suicide bombing in Dera Ghazi Khan on Feb. 5. Two local Punjabis, with the help of Taliban backers, orchestrated the attack, which killed 29 people at a Shiite ceremony, the local police said.

The authorities arrested two men as masterminds on April 6: Qari Muhammad Ismail Gul, the leader of a local madrasa; and Ghulam Mustafa Kaisrani, a jihadi who posed as a salesman for a medical company.

They belonged to a banned Punjabi group called Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, but were tied through phone calls to two deputies of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, the police said.

“The phone numbers they call are in Waziristan,� said a police official, referring to the Taliban base in the tribal areas. “They are working together hand in glove.� One of the men had gone for training in Waziristan last summer, the police said. The operations are well-supported. Mr. Kaisrani had several bank transfers worth about $11 million from his Pakistani account, the authorities said.

Local crimes, including at least two recent bank robberies in Dera Ghazi Khan, were also traced to networks of Islamic militants, officials said.

“The money that’s coming in is huge,� said Zulfiqar Hameed, head of investigations for the Lahore Police Department. “When you go back through the chain of the transaction, you invariably find it’s been done for money.�

After the suicide attack here, the police confiscated a 20-minute inspirational video, titled “Revenge,� for the Red Mosque, which gave testimonials from suicide bombers in different cities and post-attack images.

Umme Hassan, the wife of a fiery preacher who was killed during the Red Mosque siege, now frequently travels to south Punjab, to rally the faithful. She has made 12 visits in the past several months before cheering crowds and showing emotional clips of the attack, said a Punjabi official who has been monitoring her visits.

“She claimed that they would bring Islamic revolution in three months,� said Umar Draz, who attended a rally in Muzzafargarh.

The situation in south and west Punjab is still far from that in the Swat Valley, a part of North-West Frontier Province that is now fully under Taliban control after the military agreed to a truce in February. But there are strong parallels.

The Taliban here exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by hard-line mullahs who usurp authority by playing on government neglect and poverty.

In Shadan Lund, a village just north of here, militants are openly demanding Islamic law, or Sharia, said Jan Sher, whose brother is a teacher there. “The situation is sharply going toward Swat,� Mr. Sher said. He and others said the single biggest obstacle to stopping the advance of militancy was the attitudes of Pakistanis themselves, whose fury at the United States has led to blind support for everyone that goes against it.

Shabaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, said he was painfully aware of the problems of insurgent infiltration and was taking steps to restore people’s faith in government, including plans for new schools and hospitals. “Hearts and minds must be won,� he said in an interview Monday. “If this struggle fails, this country has no future.�

But people complain that landowners and local politicians have done nothing to stop the advance and, in some cases, even assist the militants by giving money to some of the religious schools.

“The government is useless,� said Mr. Ali, the local landlord. “They live happy, secure lives in Lahore. Their children study abroad. They only come here to contest elections.�

The police are left alone to stop the advance. But in Punjab, as in much of the rest of Pakistan, they are spread unevenly, with little presence in rural areas. Out of 160,000 police officers in Punjab, fewer than 60,000 are posted in rural areas, leaving frontier stations in districts virtually unprotected, police officials said.

Locals feel helpless. When a 15-year-old boy vanished from a madrasa in a village near here recently — his classmates said to go on jihad — his uncle could not afford to go look for him, let alone confront the powerful men who run the madrasa.

“We are simple people,� the man said. “What can we do?�

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan; Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Peshawar, Pakistan; and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, Waqar Gillani from Dera Ghazi Khan, and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar.

An open letter to Gen Kayani
View from the other side Col (r) Harish Puri
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=172290

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Dear Gen Kayani,

Sir, let me begin by recounting that old army quip that did the rounds in the immediate aftermath of World war II: To guarantee victory, an army should ideally have German generals, British officers, Indian soldiers, American equipment and Italian enemies.

A Pakistani soldier that I met in Iraq in 2004 lamented the fact that the Pakistani soldier in Kargil had been badly let down firstly by Nawaz Sharif and then by the Pakistani officers' cadre. Pakistani soldiers led by Indian officers, , he believed, would be the most fearsome combination possible. Pakistani officers, he went on to say, were more into real estate, defence housing colonies and the like.

As I look at two photographs of surrender that lie before me, I can't help recalling his words. The first is the celebrated event at Dhaka on Dec 16, 1971, which now adorns most Army messes in Delhi and Calcutta. The second, sir, is the video of a teenage girl being flogged by the Taliban in Swat -- not far, I am sure, from one of your Army check posts.

The surrender by any Army is always a sad and humiliating event. Gen Niazi surrendered in Dhaka to a professional army that had outnumbered and outfought him. No Pakistani has been able to get over that humiliation, and 16th December is remembered as a black day by the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani state. But battles are won and lost � armies know this, and having learnt their lessons, they move on.

But much more sadly, the video of the teenager being flogged represents an even more abject surrender by the Pakistani Army. The surrender in 1971, though humiliating, was not disgraceful. This time around, sir, what happened on your watch was something no Army commander should have to live through. The girl could have been your own daughter, or mine.

I have always maintained that the Pakistani Army, like its Indian counterpart, is a thoroughly professional outfit. It has fought valiantly in the three wars against India, and also accredited itself well in its UN missions abroad. It is, therefore, by no means a pushover. The instance of an Infantry unit, led by a lieutenant colonel, meekly laying down arms before 20-odd militants should have been an aberration. But this capitulation in Swat, that too so soon after your own visit to the area, is an assault on the sensibilities of any soldier. What did you tell your soldiers? What great inspirational speech did you make that made your troops back off without a murmur? Sir, I have fought insurgency in Kashmir as well as the North-East, but despite the occasional losses suffered (as is bound to be the case in counter-insurgency operations), such total surrender is unthinkable.

I have been a signaller, and it beats me how my counterparts in your Signal Corps could not locate or even jam a normal FM radio station broadcasting on a fixed frequency at fixed timings. Is there more than meets the eye?

I am told that it is difficult for your troops to "fight their own people." But you never had that problem in East Pakistan in 1971, where the atrocities committed by your own troops are well documented in the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. Or is it that the Bengalis were never considered "your own" people, influenced as they were by the Hindus across the border? Or is that your troops are terrified by the ruthless barbarians of the Taliban?

Sir, it is imperative that we recognise our enemy without any delay. I use the word "our" advisedly � for the Taliban threat is not far from India's borders. And the only force that can stop them from dragging Pakistan back into the Stone Age is the force that you command. In this historic moment, providence has placed a tremendous responsibility in your hands. Indeed, the fate of your nation, the future of humankind in the subcontinent rests with you. It doesn't matter if it is "my war" or "your war" � it is a war that has to be won. A desperate Swati citizen's desperate lament says it all � "Please drop an atom bomb on us and put us out of our misery!" Do not fail him, sir.

But in the gloom and the ignominy, the average Pakistani citizen has shown us that there is hope yet. The lawyers, the media, have all refused to buckle even under direct threats. It took the Taliban no less than 32 bullets to still the voice of a brave journalist. Yes, there is hope � but why don't we hear the same language from you? Look to these brave hearts, sir � and maybe we shall see the tide turn. Our prayers are with you, and the hapless people of Swat.

The New York Times predicts that Pakistan will collapse in six months. Do you want to go down in history as the man who allowed that to happen?



The writer is a retired colonel of the Indian army who lives in Pune. Email: hbpuri@hotmail.com

#329 Posted by masadi on April 13, 2009 6:23:28 pm


that slave owning thug James Madison....


didn't mo wax a village full of jews?

masadi: so what if James Madison had slaves - that was over 200 years ago. At that time the ulema in turkey were arguing that slavery was permitted in islam as well, and slave markets flourished in the ottoman empire as well. dont judge people who lived in the past by today's standards.

masadi: no you idiot. democracy rests on the foundation of basic rights of the individual. a "democracy" that violates the basic rights of the indivdual is a sham - meant to fool simpletons like you.

Tahmed writes "Wrong, dud man. Protection of the rights of the individual is the very basis for democracy and freedom.

The name James Madison will be shine through history as being the main proponent of the US Bill of Rights. Otoh, the name Jehadi Masadi stands tarnished before history due to you, good only for minting khota paisas."

Learn what democracy means moron. It is about 'the people' not 'the individual', and what rights are you talking about? Rights determined by whom? By a dictator? or 'by the people'? Make up your goddamned mind whether you are for democracy or dictatorship because the American corporation when it got recognized as an 'individual' in 1886 by extension of the 14th amendment to protect its 'rights' totally subverted democracy.

And where the F do you get off calling me a Jehadi? and comparing my high morality and regard for democracy to that slave owning thug James Madison....

TNITC masadi

Re: # 323
Nem,
"We had the above dialogues in one of the best acclaimed comedy TV serials in India"

The silliness of Indian comedy needn't be compared with the seriousness of what you're mockingly referring to.

Talk to me.

Re: # 324
Nem,
"Did you try doing this yourself? I know you are well versed in quran.'

Yes I did! Where were you, walking the chowq dogs?

"On the contrary, (I shall be happy if proved wrong) you did nothing to defend anything and, instead, resorted to calling names and twisting the nicks of those who dared."

What a relief that you don't get upset because you don't read all my posts!

Can't you see the result of the work I did? Just ask those who run this website.