Gravity

by
May Rostom


An apple falls from a tree. It didn’t want to fall. It wasn’t sure someone would be down there to catch it. It wasn’t sure the fall would be worth it all. It wasn’t optimistic about the change that would eventually take place, and the bruises it would have from the freefall. The apple fell anyway; the tree didn’t push it though.


Gravity sucks you right where you should be, right where destiny wants you. Right in the middle of the classroom that is life. Gravity and nothing but gravity.

You can’t stop gravity from pulling you down, even if you tie a rope around your waist, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope to God that this fall won’t break you. That this lesson is one you haven’t learned before; that even though gravity is working against you, deep down inside you want to be drained into this whirlpool of love. The downside of it though, is once the apple falls from the tree, it can’t go back where it used to be. It can’t be tied back to the branches like before but can be glued together to resemble itself in an earlier state prior to falling.

That apple is you and me.

You and me in a temporary madness called love. A series of ups and downs that create a bittersweet symphony referred to as infatuation. A life threatening disease that alters the most delicate organ in your human body; your heart. An unexpected blow to the head that will leave you light-headed whether you like it or not. The one thing that I'm sure of though, the apple falls from the tree only when it’s ripe and hard enough to hit that ground without shattering into pieces. And if the apple is lucky enough, it’ll find someone to pick it up and appreciate its existence.

This my friend, is what gravity is all about.

NOT A MUSLIM MONOPOLY

''All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.'' This comment , frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.

[ALL CHRISTIAN PEOPLE ARE NOT BAD PEOPLE, BUT ALL CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MOST DEATHS WORLWIDE CAUSED BY DROPPING THE BIGGEST BOMBS IN THEIR ARSENAL]

First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy . World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria . These terrorist attacks were not Muslim.
Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons. Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed. Nothing Muslim about them.
In Palestine , after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians. The British, who then governed Palestine , rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel - Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon. Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.
In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatisation agency. In Italy , the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo m etro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In Europe , the Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organisation for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation.
Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labelled terrorist. They stretch across the continent. Possibly the most notorious is the
Lord's Salvation Army in Uganda , a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors.


In Sri Lanka , the Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable terrorist groups in the world. They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus. Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis, but the Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale. One such suici de bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.


In India , the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs. The United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets Muslims rather than the other way round. Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups, and so have Bodo strongholds in Assam . Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades, and Christian Nagas are still heading militant groups.
But most important of all are the Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of India 's 600 districts. They have attacked police stations, and killed and razed entire villages that oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader Meinhof Gang or Red Brigades). In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists.
In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly.
There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the biggest killers.
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly follows the western media, and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups. Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims, yet the subway bombings in London and Madrid are what Europeans remember today. The Baader Meinhof Gang, IRA and Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat, but after 9/11 Americans and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere anytime. So they focus attention on Islamic mi litancy. They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India : these pose no threat to the West.
Within India , Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150 districts, one-third of India 's area. But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware that this is an elite phenomenon.

India Defeated In The First Round

It is best to win without fighting- Sun Tzu

With India and Pakistan standing eyeball to eyeball, it was India that blinked first, with its media and officials admitting defeat on the diplomatic front.

Times of India writes:

“While the de-escalation should soothe the tense nerves of the international community, it was being feared that Islamabad, by raising the bogey of war, may have edged out India’s concerns. By feeding fears of an imminent conflict between two nuclear-armed rivals, it had ensured that the focus would shift towards conflict prevention. Indian security experts noted that Gilani made it a point to mention that “our friends are persuading India against aggression”.

While the government persisted with reminders to Islamabad about unkept promises, independent security experts said Pakistan may have got away with almost no cost at all. “As of now, Pakistan has managed to divert attention from the Mumbai attacks to an India-Pak conflict,” said K Subrahmanyam.

It was diplomacy by fear, and Pakistan played it effectively. As it allowed passions to run high and let known terrorists join in the show of national belligerence, it was also playing victim. As part of the script, its foreign secretary, it now turns out, even summoned the Indian high commissioner in Islamabad, Satyabrata Pal, on Friday to lecture him on the need for India to bring down tensions.

The U.S. and China had on Friday asked India - in a clear sign of Pakistan’s success - to engage in a dialogue with Pakistan. It’s becoming increasingly evident that India has so far nothing to show for its diplomatic offensive in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks.”

How could things have gone so wrong, wonders Vir Sanghvi of the Hindustan Times:

“I am now coming round to the view that they’ve only gone wrong for us. They’ve gone very right for Pakistan. Islamabad has got exactly what it needs, and what it always wanted.

Consider what’s happening today. The operation in the tribal areas has stalled. The Taliban have sworn to back the Pakistan army against India. Troops have been moved to the Indian border. The incoming Obama administration is talking about appointing a special envoy for India and Pakistan.

And forget about acting against those who organized the Bombay attacks. Pakistan isn’t even willing to hand over Dawood Ibrahim or Masood Azhar [Editor: Not in Pakistani custody anyway]. Moreover, Washington seems largely content with this state of affairs.

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist or a warmonger — especially since I have always applauded New Delhi’s moderation and restraint — but it is beginning to seem to me that Pakistan has out-maneuvered both India and America.”

M. K. Bhadrakumar writes at Asia Times Online:

“By gently holding out the threat to the U.S. that the Afghan operations would grievously suffer unless Washington restrained Delhi from precipitating any tensions on the India-Pakistan border, Islamabad seems to have neatly pole-vaulted over Rice to appeal straight to the Pentagon, where there is abiding camaraderie towards the Pakistani generals.

With Pakistan’s recalcitrance and Mullen’s veiled threat of reopening the Kashmir file, a sense of frustration is gripping Delhi. Pakistan has ignored India’s tough posturing. The faltering Indian security agencies, which have been in a state of appalling decline in recent years, seem to have failed to put together any hard evidence of a Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

All indications are that Pakistan is not impressed by the Indian rhetoric. It seems to think Indian politicians are grandstanding in an election year. But, just in case Delhi may spring a surprise, Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has warned that the armed forces would give an equal response “within few minutes” if India carried out any surgical military strikes. “The armed forces are fully prepared to meet any eventuality, and the men are ready to sacrifice for their country,” he reportedly said.

Just as we predicted, an all out war seems to have been averted and Indian media and officials are admitting defeat.

China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have come out strongly in the last couple of days which saw an intense diplomatic effort by all parties to make it clear to India that they not only remain unconvinced of Delhi’s allegations, but also that any attack could have serious consequences for India and the region as a whole.

Pranab Mukherjee was made to do an embarrassing u-turn on India’s previous stance previously, admitting that terrorism - a global issue and not a bilateral one - should be fought jointly.
The Indian officials have also been made to backtrack from their earlier claims of deploying troops along the border with Pakistan.

Times of India, December 22nd:
Even as India refused to take the military option off the table while asking Pakistan to rein in the terrorists, the Indian Army’s and IAF’s quick reaction teams (QRTs) were deployed along the borders in the Western Sector.

“Runways, hangars, main roads, ammunition stores and other sensitive places have been provided with additional cover. Sophisticated radars are installed at a few air bases and we are keeping watch on each and every cross-border activity,” said an IAF personnel.

Indian forces were on regular firing exercises at locations like Lathi Firing Range in Jaisalmer, Mahsan in Bikaner, Suratgarh and Ganganagar.

India Today, December 27th:
India has informed Pakistan that it has not engaged in any sort of troop build-up along the frontier.

In response to the ‘deadline’ set by India and the threats from Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee, Pakistan had gone on a diplomatic counter-offensive, briefing world powers and countries in the region on the deteriorating relations with India and the steps taken by it to address Indian concerns. Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir met the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the U.S., Britain, China, France and Russia. He also met ambassadors of Italy, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey soon after returning from France where he had gone for annual bilateral consultations. However, his most crucial meeting was with Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal at the Foreign Office when he said that India should defuse the tension.

Mr. Pal was accompanied by his deputy Manpreet Vohra. The Indian side was categorically told that any ‘surgical strikes’ would be considered a declaration of war. India was urged to respond to Pakistan’s proposal for joint investigation into the Mumbai attacks.

According to sources, the Indian diplomats looked somber when they came out of the meeting.
As things stand, the possibility of war has been averted for now, which is being seen as a massive diplomatic victory for Pakistan.

This of course does not mean that we should let our guard down. In addition to the diplomatic counter-offensive, it was Pakistan Army’s seriousness that put India on the back foot.

Once the realization set in that any further attempts to enter Pakistan Airspace will be punished severely by the PAF, the Indians had gone to plan B, with Mullen asking for a guarantee that PAF will not respond to Indian surgical strikes.

General Kayani is said to have responded with showing Mullen a photograph of an IAF Mirage-2000 locked by Pakistan Air Forces’ F-16 taken on December 13th. ‘Next time, we’ll bring it down’, Mullen was told.

To make sure the message was loud and clear, Pakistan Air Force jets started patrolling the skies in hot mode and a red-alert was issued throughout the country.

Failing to get that guarantee, the chance of an Indian strike was reduced significantly. For them it was never about a full war. A few surgical strikes on pre-agreed locations would have been enough to relieve some of the pressure the Indian Government faces domestically. Pakistan Army on the other hand made it clear that any action from India would be taken as a declaration of war, and the response would be swift and decisive.

India faces humiliation now on the diplomatic front having failed to achieve anything from this standoff.

In its attempts to isolate Pakistan by building what it saw as a definitive case, it is India that stands alone on the diplomatic front and is left with begging the Iranians and Chinese to put pressure on Pakistan.

We can now expect an intense and sustained terrorism campaign in Pakistani cities in an attempt to destabilize the country along ethnic / sectarian lines - New Delhi’s time-tested method.

On the diplomatic front India will be lobbying hard to have the ISI (and Pakistan Army) declared as terrorist organizations.

We can also not rule out another false flag attack in the next few weeks.
Pakistanis need to stay united.
It’s not over yet.

Interview with Eqbal Ahmed in 1998

Editor's Note: Eqbal Ahmad, the Pakistani scholar-activist who died on May 11, 1999, gave a prescient interview to David Barsamian in the November 1998 issue of The Progressive. What follows is an excerpt from that interview:
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Q: You were in Pakistan when the United States bombed Afghanistan and the Sudan. What did it look like to you?

Ahmad: The United States is a superpower that claims to be judge, accuser, and executioner. You don't allow that in your system. We don't allow it in our system. But we are allowing it on a world scale. Why didn't the United States go to international forums and present the evidence that it had against bin Laden before bombing Afghanistan and the factory in Khartoum? There is increasing evidence now that the factory was not producing any chemical weapons. The camp they hit in Afghanistan I visited in 1986. It was a CIA-sponsored camp. The United States spent $8 billion in producing the bin Ladens of our time.

Q: What do you mean by that?

Ahmad: He was socialized by the CIA and trained by the Americans to believe deeply that when a foreigner comes into your land, you become violent. Bin Laden is merely carrying out the mission to which he committed with America earlier. Now he is carrying it out against America because now America, from his point of view, is occupying his land. That's all. He grew up seeing Saudi Arabia being robbed by Western corporations and Western powers. He watched these Saudi princes, this one-family state, handing over the oil resources of the Arab people to the West. Up until 1991, he had only one satisfaction: that his country was not occupied. There were no American or French or British troops in Saudi Arabia. Then even that small pleasure was taken away from him during the Gulf War and its aftermath.

Q: What is the background of the CIA role in Afghanistan?

Ahmad: After the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, an Islamic fundamentalist dictator in Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq, promoted, with the help of the CIA, the mujahideen resistance. Now what you had was Islamic fundamentalists of a really hardcore variety taking on the Evil Empire. They received $8 billion in arms from the U.S. alone. Add another $2 billion from Saudi Arabia under American encouragement. And, more than that, American operatives went about the Muslim world recruiting for the jihad in Afghanistan. This whole phenomenon of jihad as an international armed struggle did not exist in the Muslim world since the tenth century. It was brought back into being, enlivened, and pan-Islamized by the American effort. The United States saw in the war in Afghanistan an opportunity to mobilize the Muslim world against communism. So the United States recruited mujahideen from all over the Muslim world. I saw planeloads of them arriving-from Algeria, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine. These people were brought in, given an ideology, told that the armed struggle is a virtuous thing to do, and the whole notion of jihad as an international, pan-Islamic terrorist movement was born.

They were trained and armed by the CIA. The militants of the Islamic movement almost everywhere have all been trained in Afghanistan. The CIA people now call it "Islamic blowback."
Q: Why do you think the West is so ready to treat Islam as the enemy?

Ahmad: After the Cold War, the West had no viable threat around which it could organize its policies. All powers, all imperial powers-especially democratic ones-cannot justify their uses of power only on the basis of greed. No one will buy it. They have needed two things: a ghost and a mission. The British carried the White Man's Burden. That was the mission. The French carried la mission civilisatrice, the civilizing mission. The Americans had, first, Manifest Destiny, and then found the mission of "standing watch on the walls of world freedom," in John F. Kennedy's ringing phrase. Each of them had the Black, the Yellow, and finally the Red Peril to fight against. There was a ghost. There was a mission. People bought it.

Right now, the United States is deprived of both the mission and the ghost. So the mission has appeared as human rights. It's a very strange mission for a country that for nearly 100 years has been supporting dictatorship, first in Latin America and then throughout the world. And in search of menace, it has turned to Islam. It's the easiest because the West has encountered resistance here: Algeria, then Egypt, Palestinians, the Iranian revolution. And a portion of it is strategically located: It's the home of the oil resources for the West.

Q: What is your view of the Taliban of Afghanistan?

Ahmad: The Taliban is as retrograde a group as it is possible to find. Last year, I spent two weeks in Afghanistan. One day, I heard drums and noises from the house where I was staying. I rushed out to see what was going on. There was a young boy who couldn't have been more than twelve years of age. His head was shaved. There was a rope around his neck. He was being pulled by that rope. There was one man behind him with a drum. He slowly beat the drum.
I asked, "What has the boy done?"
People told me he was caught red-handed.
"Doing what?" I asked.
"He was caught red-handed playing with a tennis ball."
I went off to interview one of the Taliban leaders. He said, "We have forbidden boys to play with balls because it constitutes undue temptation to men." So the same logic that makes them lock up women behind veils and behind walls makes them prevent boys from playing games. It's that kind of madness.

These people are anti-women, anti-music, anti-life, and some of the highest officials of the United States have been visiting them and talking to them. The general impression in our region is that the U.S. has been supporting them.

Q: Why would the United States do that?

Ahmad: When the Soviet Union fell apart, its constituent republics became independent. The Central Asian republics, whose majority population is Muslim, happen to be oil-rich, gas-rich states. Their gas and oil used to pass through the Soviet Union. Now a new game starts: How is this oil and gas going to get out to the world?

At this point, American corporations move in. Texaco, Amoco, Unocal, Delta Oil-all of these are now going into Central Asia to get hold of these oil and gas fields. They don't want to take any pipelines to Iran because Iran is, at this moment, boycotted. It's an enemy of America. So Afghanistan and Pakistan become the places through which you lay pipelines. And you cut the Russians out. Just look at the story here: President Clinton makes personal telephone calls to the presidents of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, urging them to sign pipeline contracts. And the pipeline has to go through Afghanistan. In this game, both Pakistan and the U.S. get into the business of saying who will be the most reliable conduit to ensure the safety of the pipelines. And they pick the most murderous, by far the most crazy, of Islamic fundamentalist groups, the Taliban, to ensure the safety of the pipelines.

In this situation, the U.S. concern is not who is fundamentalist and who is progressive, who treats women nicely and who treats them badly. The issue is, who is more likely to ensure the safety of the oil and gas resources.

Q: What's behind the rise of fundamentalism not just in the Islamic world but also in the United States, Israel, Sri Lanka? What gives power to these movements?

Ahmad: There are a number of factors. The first is the fear of-and reaction to-homogenization. Globalization of the economy, the shrinking of spaces through modern technology, the power of the media in creating common tastes, everybody eating McDonald's hamburgers or wearing jeans-all this has made a whole lot of people uncomfortable with what is receding from their own way of life. That discomfort is used by rightwing ideologues to say, "Come to us. We will return you your old-time religion. Come to us. We will give you back your old ways, your old memories." And people who don't know any better often follow.

There is a second factor, and that is a disappointment with modernism, a sense of disillusionment with life as it is constructed in our time. It seems empty, void of meaning. It feels like families are breaking up but there is no substitute for the proximities, the comfort, the security of family life. These are changes that occur from technology and from the expansion of the tentacles of capitalism into every aspect of human life. In many ways, advertisers are deciding the color of underwear that we wear, the kind of sexual advances that we make to our wives and lovers. Once that starts happening, people feel a loss of individual autonomy. In search of autonomy, we look for some specific, unique way of relating to ourselves. Fundamentalism offers that. Old-time religion offers that. New-time religion also offers that.

Q: The media critique of fundamentalism seems to be very selective in its targets. What about Saudi Arabia?

Ahmad: This is a very interesting matter you are raising. Saudi Arabia's Islamic government has been by far the most fundamentalist in the history of Islam until the Taliban came along. Even today, for example, women drive in Iran. They can't drive in Saudi Arabia. Today, men and women are working in offices together in Iran. In Saudi Arabia, they cannot do that. Saudi Arabia is much worse than Iran, but it has been the ally of the U.S. since 1932, and nobody has questioned it. But much more than that is involved. Throughout the Cold War, starting in 1945, the U.S. saw militant Islam as a counterweight to communist parties of the Muslim world.

Q: You mentioned the Iranian revolution. Is there a parallel between Iran in the 1970s, which looked like an impregnable U.S. fortress, and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s?

Ahmad: I think it was 1981 or 1982 that a fairly senior CIA official who had either retired already or was on the brink of retiring wrote a very interesting article in the Armed Forces Journal. The article was entitled "The American Threat to Saudi Arabia." His argument primarily was that the policies that the U.S. government and corporations were pursuing out of greed were going to turn Saudi Arabia into a model of Iran, a totally dependent state and extremely vulnerable to revolution.

Osama bin Laden is a sign of things to come. The U.S. has no reason to stay in Saudi Arabia except exploitation and greed. Saudi Arabia is not threatened with invasion by anyone that we know of. Any potential aggressor, such as Saddam Hussein, has already been knocked out from any capability of invading Saudi Arabia. And the Americans demonstrated in 1991 that they are capable of mobilizing against any attack on an ally in the Middle East. So what's the justification of an American military presence, an intelligence presence, a massive presence in every other area in Saudi Arabia? Every ministry is infiltrated with American advisers. It's creating deep discontent there.

The answer is money. Money in ten different ways. The Saudis' oil is essentially controlled and marketed by American interests. Saudi wealth is invested in the U.S. and Europe. And the Saudis, since the early 1980s, went into the arms market, so the U.S. dumped something like $100 billion worth of armaments in that place.

The Saudi people are going to be discontented. But Saudi discontent shouldn't be seen only as Saudi. Unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia is an Arab country, part of an Arab world. The Saudis are the guardians of our Muslim holy places, and they have been unable to guard them. The Arabs are, at the moment, an extremely humiliated, frustrated, beaten, and insulted people. If you look at the situation from the standpoint of the Arab as a whole, this is a most beleaguered mass of 200 million people. What is actually uniting them at the moment is a sense of common loss, common humiliation.

This people has only two choices now, as its young people see it: It's either to become active, fight, die, and recover its lost dignity, lost sovereignties, lost lands, or to become slaves. Terrorism is not without a history. All social phenomena have historical roots, and nobody here is looking into the historical roots of terror.

Musharraf had handlers in Mossad-US Agency at least since the 80s

By
Abid Ullah Jan

It is possible that Musharraf could be under the control of these handlers even now? If you are aware of WTC-Building 7 controlled demolition on September 11, 2001, then you know there is something fishy – that it was an inside job . Like the other two towers, Building 7 came down in seconds defying gravity (100 metres in 4.5 seconds) which was a controlled demolition and BBC read the demise of the Building 20 minutes before it happened.

However, how does it connect to Musharraf and him being the agent of foreign intelligence agencies long before he even thought that he would be the Commander in Chief? Here are some tips for thoughtful, resourceful and brave researchers to find the truth about the real Musharraf and bring him to justice for treason and betrayal under his own Army Act: - Question: Why was Musharraf fired in Oct. 1999?

Tip –1 : Musharraf's illegal foreign contacts are not so hidden either . Some were revealed, but no one will talk. They became state secrets. See the case of Javed Hashmi, for example.

Tip – 2 : In the 80s, there was a Journalist John Doe and his wife Agent Jane Doe, in Rawalpindi. John Doe was divorcing his wife. It was in court. Musharraf was the representative of the lady Jane Doe in the court. Divorce happened but Mush made sure that John Doe did not open his mouth about the real reason behind the divorce in Public Court. The real reason behind the journalist John Doe divorcing his wife was that she was an agent of a foreign intelligence agency. As John Doe discovered it, he no longer wanted to continue the marriage. Interestingly, journalist John Doe's wife was a very close relative of Musharraf.

Tip – 3: This is authentic story. But to find out about the journalist John Doe and his wife Jane Doe in detail, one has to check the family court record in Rawalpindi. During the divorce proceedings Musharraf was the representative of the lady Jane Doe. It shows that as an Army officer, Pervez Musharraf covered the connection of a lady to a foreign intelligence agency. Normally one is supposed to tell the authorities. That gives credence to the well founded allegations that he also had, and still has, foreign handlers.

How is it connected to 9/11? When I was doing my research into the ISI connection to 9/11, I gave General Musharraf a huge benefit of the doubt in the book, From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues. However, the deeper one goes, the more he realizes that it is almost impossible that ISI would be using its human assets; its human assets will be linked to the CIA, M16 and others; the human assets will be meeting Osama and the foreign agencies at the same time; the Chief of the ISI will also be meeting his human assets as well as the high level officials in the US around the same time and also wiring money ($100,000) to the lead "hijacker” in the Operation 9/11.

Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad was never questioned by 911 commission, is a Tableeghi Jamaat member with a long beard now. He maintains a house at Mai de Khoi, Faisalabad and one in Islamabad. He was chairman of a government entity like fertilizer corporation. Musharraf was never asked as to why he said," Daniel Pearl got over intrusive......".

Why Omar Sheikh was never produced in an open court? And why Benazir talks of Omar Shiekh as the murderer of Osama with David Frost on November 2,2007? Musharraf was the Director Military Intelligence when the CIA supported the creation of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Brig. Gen. Ejaz Shah was the handler of Omar Sheikh per Benazir. This shows Musharraf was very much part of 911 and cover up (of it being inside job with Dick Cheney at Command. [1]

Musharraf's connections to foreign intelligence agencies since the early period of his carrier suggests that he is not out of the loop when it comes to operation 9/11. He is one of the main culprits. If any other individual had sent even a dime to Atta, he might have died of waterboarding and other torture techniques by now. However, General Mohamoud is a free main in Pakistan. So despite deep connections to the alleged hijackers to the ISI, nothing happens to the Pakistani Generals or Pakistan as such. To the contrary, remember how former CIA director James Woolsey tried to prove Atta met Iraq security officials, but could not. That was the time when they were looking for justifications for the war of aggression on Iraq.

Eqbal Ahmad in 1998 said that Osama was just the excuse to go into the Oil lands......Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan. And his observation seems true. The warlords needed time. They needed moles at the highest positions, such as the Chief of Pakistan armed forces. Musharraf had to kill the Chief of Air staff Mushaf Ali Mir because he won't agree with Musharraf's policy and planning(Mushaf was a patriot). He had to depart. Mushaf died in a plane crash in clear weather in the most safest plane, along with his wife and closest confidants.

Controversial author Gerald Posner implies that all of these events are linked together and the deaths are not accidental, but have occurred because of the testimony of captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida in March 2002 (see Early April 2002).

The deaths all occurred not long after the respective governments were told of Zubaida’s confessions. This simply confirms foreign hand in Mushaf’s murder. Benazir did not agree to Musharraf policies. Note that Musharraf says that she was "very unpopular in the Army". Musharraf thinks he alone is the Army. Benazir would not budge on his uniform issue. She had to go. Musharraf has violated his Oath five times. It is up to the Patriotic Army men to understand the situation and use the Army Act on Musharraf to protect Pakistan from internal aggression.

The Legacy of Pakistan!!

What is the legacy of Pakistan? Pakistan is in the throes of severe and aberrant conflict and the center of world attention at the moment. Stuck in a precarious geographical location with the medal of being a nuclear state around its neck, it has put the US and its allies on edge with its internal strife, its supposed harboring of terrorists and an overall political situation that refuses to be abided. But assessing the situation analytically even if this past decade was taken out of the life of the country, there is still little in its history to prove that things have ever been what could be deemed peaceful or even conducive to the social, economic or political advancements of any country. Education, basic civic amenities, clean water and health is a continuing woe for the vast majority of the 165 million. Why has Pakistan never been able to settle down?

Perhaps this predicament can be put in context with the following hadith: Umar al-Khattab narrates that the Prophet (saw) said, ‘Deeds are [a result] only of the intentions [of the actor] and an individual is rewarded only according to that which he intends. Therefore, whosoever has emigrated for the sake of Allah and His messenger, then his emigration was for Allah and His messenger. Whosoever emigrated for the sake of wordly gain , or a woman [whom he desires] to marry, then his emigration is for the sake of that which [moved him] to emigrates’. In the case of Pakistan, it suffers because the key person responsible for its acquisition, Jinnah never had a Muslim state in mind in the true sense of the word. No doubt he wanted a separate land for the Muslims but according to many historians exploited Islam as the means to gain the end. The niyaat was political gain not religious autonomy; the weapon was religion. Since Islam and Muslims were outwardly proclaimed as the sole reason, though it was not the case, the end result of the act has been jeopardized. In other words Pakistan suffers as a direct fallout of this discrepancy in niyaat.

Jinnah was a modern Muslim and a secularist by every definition that one uses to define the word.

He was a brilliant lawyer with a sharp wit, tongue and an even sharper mind. It is true that he was bothered by racial prejudice but it wasn’t simply the racial prejudice towards the Muslims that irked him but it was inequality of any kind. He did not envision a Muslim state for the Muslims but a separate state where they, and people of all religions for that matter, would have freedom of religion. In his inaugural speech as the first governor general of Pakistan he said, ‘You will find that in the course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state’. He wanted a democratic state but one in which the ‘church was separated from the state’. He was divided on his views. He had to have the vote of the Muslims to gain this state but did he really wish the new country to be an Islamic country? He talked about an Islamic country but the underlying truth is that he never really intended it. Nothing less than religious fervor could have convinced people to support Jinnah en masse for the creation of Pakistan and the subsequent migration to the new country to constitute what has been called the greatest migration in human history.

If Jinnah was a secularist, it was perhaps in his blood and his family background is of much interest in this milieu. Jinnah was born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai on 25 December, 1876, the eldest of seven children of Mithibai and Jinnabhai Poonja. His father was a prosperous Gujarati merchant who had moved to Sindh from Kathiawar, Gujarat shortly before his birth. Some sources suggest that his ancestors were Hindu Rajputs from Sahiwal, Punjab. Though the family had Hindu, Shia, Ismaili and Sunni ancestry his family was primarily Ismaili. Although he was born a Khoja, disciples of the Ismaili Agha Khan, Jinnah moved toward the Sunni sect early in his life and later evidence given by his relatives and associates establishes that he was firmly a Sunni Muslim.

His first marriage was a traditional one when he was barely sixteen to Emibai who was merely a child. She died a little while after the marriage. The second time around he fell in love with a Parsee girl named Rattanbai or Ruttie Petit around 1916. The daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, a successful businessman, she was also known as the ‘flower of Bombay’. Needless to say Dinshaw Petit was furious and refused to consent to the marriage as Jinnah was not only of a different faith but also twice her age. Shortly before the ceremony Ruttie converted to Islam and their only daughter Dina was born in 1919. Dina was the apple of her doting father’s eye until she decided to marry the Parsi born Christian, Neville Wadia. It is also known that when Dina married Neville she was told by Jinnah that ‘she was not his daughter anymore’ and the relationship between the two became strained. Dina had two children, a boy and a girl. Her son Nusli Wadia was born a Christian but converted back to Zoroastrianism and settled in the industrially wealthy Parsi community of Bombay.

Though Jinnah died a Sunni Muslim there is little evidence that would insinuate his connection to Islam to the extent that would suggest that his intention in fighting for Pakistan was for the procurement of an Islamic state. His family background, his lifestyle and everything in between only proposes the presence of disparity between the niyyat and the action. The social and political condition of the country ever since it emerged on the map of the world is evidence enough of this hypothesis. Yes he wanted a state that allowed maximum freedom of religious beliefs and practice and treats all its citizens equally. But this ticket and this promise was not enough to rally the Muslims behind him. He had to push the ‘Islamic Country’ theme and he did that relentlessly. Given the fact that he had the support of millions of Muslims of pre-partition India, it is not too difficult to assume that he had not made his plans very clear to the majority of them. This division of thought, of whether Jinnah envisioned an Islamic state or a secular democratic one, still remains the major bone of contention between the millions in Pakistan today.

Dr. Hassan Askari Rizvi, the former chairman of the Political Science Department of the Punjab University, Lahore writes, ‘Jinnah definitely was a secularist who viewed Islam as an instrument of identity formation and political mobilization for the Muslims of South Asia. Whenever he talked of Islam, he also talked about the modern notion of state, constitutionalism, civil and political rights and equal citizenship irrespective of religion or any other consideration. This means that he was neither for a religious or orthodox Islamic state nor for a secular system in the classical Marxist terms. His view was that Pakistan would be modern, democratic state which derives its ethical formation from Islam’.

Dr. Mubarak Ali, former Chairman of the History Dept. at the Karachi University writes, ‘Jinnah used to be a perfect secularist as far as this private life was concerned, (According to Akbar S. Ahmad nearly every book about Jinnah outsides Pakistan mentions the fact that he drank and some sources even hint at his consumption of pork. Several sources indicate that he gave up alcohol only near the end of his life) yet he believed in using religion for public consumption to achieve his political ends. The propelling slogan during the struggle for Pakistan was to establish a distinct identity of Muslims as a nation. And Jinnah used Islam as a motivating force to rally the Muslims to the cause of Pakistan politically. But the state they aimed to create was to be secular, not a theocracy. And the method to achieve the goals was not a religious movement but political agitation’.

In his concluding speech in Karachi at the All India Muslim League session on Dec. 26, 1943 he said, ‘What is it that keeps the Muslims united as one man, and is the bedrock and sheet-anchor of the community. It is Islam. It is the Great Book, Quran, that is the sheet-anchor of Muslim India. I am sure that as we go on there will be more and more of oneness, one God, one Book, one Prophet and one Nation’. One wonders, being so staunch in his ideas for the new country he was seeking for the Muslims why did he not establish Islamic democracy as the rule right from the very beginning? When affairs are run according to the Quran they are automatically democratic. There is no need to specifically separate religion and democracy as was done with Pakistan. Especially when he said in 1945, ‘Every Mussalman (Muslim) knows that the injunctions of the Holy Quran are not confined to the religious and moral duties. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, says Gibbon, ‘the Holy Quran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but of civil and criminal jurisprudence, and the laws which regulate the action and the property of mankind are governed by immutable sanctions of the will of God’.

Everyone, except those who are ignorant, knows the Holy Quran is the general code of the Muslims’.

So why the Quran wasn’t made the general code when the founder of the country so staunchly believed in it? Why weren’t these rules made clear from the beginning when they were stated to be the very reason why this new land was sought? Did the niyyat change after the goal was achieved? Was Islam really just an instrument of power to seek the goal at hand? And is it this grave discrepancy in niyyat that Pakistan has forever remained in an abysmal state of political and social chaos? Samuel Butler said, ‘God cannot alter the past, historians can’. Maybe now when people ask questions like, ‘why is all this happening in Pakistan? We thought it is a Muslim country?’ they can be answered with, ‘It wasn’t meant to be a Muslim country; it was only meant to be a piece of land for the Muslims’.

US Wish List !!!

Pakistan has given them bases and logistic support as well as intelligence sharing but what the US is now demanding from Islamabad has shocked the Defence and Foreign Ministries and the initial reaction has been a rejection of what are highly intrusive demands for the US military and auxiliary personnel in Pakistan.

This scribe has learnt of the latest set of 11 demands the US has put to the Government of Pakistan through the Ministry of Defence. As one goes down the list of the demands, they become increasingly untenable.

The first demand is for granting of a status that is accorded to the technical and administrative staff of the US embassy.

The second demand is that these personnel be allowed to enter and exit Pakistan on mere National Identification (for example a driving licence) that is without any visas.

Next, the US is demanding that Pakistan accept the legality of all US licences, which would include arms licences.

This is followed by the demand that all these personnel be allowed to carry arms and wear uniforms as they wish, across the whole of Pakistan.

Then comes a demand that directly undermines our sovereignty – that the US criminal jurisdiction be applicable in Pakistan to US nationals. In other words, these personnel would not be subject to Pakistani law. In territories of US allies like Japan, this condition exists in areas where there are US bases and has become a source of major resentment in Japan, especially because there are frequent cases of US soldiers raping Japanese women and getting away with it. In the context of Pakistan, the demand to make the US personnel above the Pakistani law would not be limited to any one part of the country! So the Pakistani citizens will become fair game for US military personnel as well as other auxiliary staff like military contractors.

The next demand is for exemption from all taxes, including indirect taxes like excise duty, etc. The seventh demand is for inspection-free import and export of all goods and materials. So we would not know what they are bringing in or taking out of our country – including Gandhara art as well as sensitive materials.

At number eight is the demand for free movement of vehicles, vessels including aircraft, without landing or parking fees!

Then, at number nine, there is a specific demand that selected US contractors should also be exempted from tax payments.

At number ten there is the demand for free of cost use of US telecommunication systems and using all necessary radio spectrum.

The final demand is the most dangerous and is linked to the demand for non-applicability of Pakistani law for US personnel.

Demand number eleven is for a waiver of all claims to damage to loss or destruction of others’ property, or death to personnel or armed forces or civilians. The US has tried to be smart by not using the word "other" for death but, given the context, clearly it implies that US personnel can maim and kill Pakistanis and destroy our infrastructure and weaponry with impunity.

Effectively, if accepted, these demands would give the US personnel complete freedom to do as they please in Pakistan – in fact, they would take control of events in areas of their interest. It is no wonder then that Pakistan's Defence Ministry, the Foreign Office and the Law Ministry have reacted with complete rejection. But, as one official source feared, "This is just the opening salvo of demands and the US can be expected to bargain in order to seek the most critical of these demands." As he put it, "Any hesitation or weakness that the US senses on part of Pakistan will put us on a fatal slippery slope to total submission.

This would result in increasing instability in the country." So, for those who feel there is bonhomie and complete understanding between the Pakistan military and the US military, and the trouble only exists at the political level, it is time to do a serious rethink.

The first step in dealing rationally with our indigenous terrorist problem holistically and credibly is to create space between ourselves and the US. As the US adage goes: "There is no free lunch". For Pakistan lunching with the US has become unacceptably costly. When US embassy in Islamabad was approached for reaction to this report, Elizabeth Colton, US Embassy Spokesperson, said, "We will not dignify this attack with a comment."

US Wish List Confirmed.

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=13458

A Pakistani view of U.S. nuclear weapons !!

By Hugh Gusterson 5 February 2008

"The [U.S.] Air Force has made substantial changes in its handling of nuclear weapons in the wake of a B-52 flight last August during which the pilots and crew were unaware they were carrying six air-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads."

-- "Air Force Alters Rules for Handling of Nuclear Arms," Washington Post January 25, 2008.
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, JANUARY 25--At a press conference in Islamabad today, Pakistani Brig. Gen. Atta M. Iqhman expressed concern about U.S. procedures for handling nuclear weapons. Iqhman, who oversees the safety and security of the Pakistani nuclear force, said that U.S. protocols for storing and handling nuclear weapons are inadequate. "In Pakistan, we store nuclear warheads separately from their delivery systems, and a nuclear warhead can only be activated if three separate officers agree," Iqhman said. "In the United States, almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons still sit atop missiles, on hair-trigger alert, and it only takes two launch-control officers to activate a nuclear weapon. The U.S. government has persistently ignored arms control experts around the world who have said they should at least de-alert their weapons."

Iqhman also questioned the adequacy of U.S. procedures for handling nuclear weapons. He expressed particular concern about the August 29, 2007, incident in which six nuclear weapons were accidentally loaded under the wing of a B-52 by workers who did not observe routine inspection procedures and thought they were attaching conventional weapons to the B-52. The flight navigator should have caught their mistake, but he neglected to inspect the weapons as required. For several hours the nuclear weapons were in the air without anyone's knowledge. "The United States needs to develop new protocols for storing and loading nuclear weapons, and it needs to do a better job of recruiting and training the personnel who handle them," Iqhman said.

Iqhman added the Pakistani government would be willing to offer technical advice and assistance to the United States on improving its nuclear weapons handling procedures. Speaking anonymously because of the issue's sensitivity, senior Pentagon officials said it is Washington's role to give, not receive, advice on nuclear weapons safety and surety issues.

Iqhman pointed out that the August 29 event was not an isolated incident; there have been at least 24 accidents involving nuclear weapons on U.S. planes. He mentioned a 1966 incident in which four nuclear weapons fell to the ground when two planes collided over Spain, as well as a 1968 fire that caused a plane to crash in Greenland with four hydrogen bombs aboard. In 1980, a Titan II missile in Arkansas exploded during maintenance, sending a nuclear warhead flying 600 feet through the air. In a remark that visibly annoyed a U.S. official present at the briefing, Iqhman described the U.S. nuclear arsenal as "an accident waiting to happen."

Jay Keuse of MSNBC News asked Iqhman if Pakistan was in any position to be lecturing other countries given Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's record of selling nuclear technology to other countries. "All nuclear weapons states profess to oppose proliferation while helping select allies acquire nuclear weapons technology," Iqhman replied. "The United States helped Britain and France obtain the bomb; France helped the Israelis; and Russia helped China. And China," he added coyly, "is said by Western media sources to have helped Pakistan. So why can't Pakistan behave like everyone else?"

Iqhman's deputy, Col. Bom Zhalot also expressed concern about the temperament of the U.S. public, asking whether they had the maturity and self-restraint to be trusted with the ultimate weapon. "Their leaders lecture us on the sanctity of life, and their president believes that every embryo is sacred, but they are the only country to have used these terrible weapons--not just once, but twice. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane that bombed Hiroshima, said he never lost a night's sleep over killing 100,000 people, many of them women and children. That's scarcely human."

While Iqhman glared reproachfully at Zhalot for this rhetorical outburst, Zhalot continued: "We also worry that the U.S. commander-in- chief has confessed to having been an alcoholic. Here in Pakistan, alcohol is 'haram,' so this isn't a problem for us. Studies have also found that one-fifth of U.S. military personnel are heavy drinkers. How many of those have responsibility for nuclear weapons?"

John G. Libb of the Washington Times asked if Americans were wrong to be concerned about Pakistan's nuclear stockpile given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Colonel Zhalot replied: "Millions of Americans believe that these are the last days and that they will be raptured to heaven at the end of the world. You have a president who describes Jesus as his favorite philosopher, and one of the last remaining candidates in your presidential primaries is a preacher who doesn't believe in evolution. Many Pakistanis worry that the United States is being taken over by religious extremists who believe that a nuclear holocaust will just put the true believers on a fast track to heaven. We worry about a nutcase U.S. president destroying the world to save it."

U.S. diplomats in Pakistan declined comment.

Country of Dwarfs

The Pakistani Contractor !

Three contractors. . . . . .one from Pakistan, another from China and the third from England are bidding to repair the White House fence.

They go with a White House official to examine the fence.

The English contractor takes out a tape measure and does somemeasuring, then works on some figures with a pencil.

"Well," he says,"I figure the job will cost $ 900- $ 400 for materials, $ 400 for labourand $ 100 profit for me."

The Chineese contractor also does some measuring and figuring, thensays, "I can do this job for $ 700 . . . .$ 300 for materials, $300 for mycrew and $ 100 profit for me."

The Pakistani contractor doesn't measure or do any figuring, but leansover to the White House official and whispers: " $ 2,700.

"The official incredulously says, "You didn't even measure lik theother guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"

"Easy," the Pakistani explains, "$ 1,000 for you, $ 1,000 for me and we hire the guy from China to do the work!"

No Comments!

The Washington Post

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 21, 2008

U.S. Payments To Pakistan Face New Scrutiny
Little Accounting for Costs To Support Ally's Troops

Once a month, Pakistan's Defense Ministry delivers 15 to 20 pages of spreadsheets to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. They list costs for feeding, clothing, billeting and maintaining 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistani troops in the volatile tribal area along the Afghan border, in support of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

In response, the Defense Department has disbursed about $80 million monthly, or roughly $1 billion a year for the past six years, in one of the most generous U.S. military support programs worldwide. The U.S. aim has been to ensure that Pakistan remains the leading ally in combating extremism in South Asia.

But vague accounting, disputed expenses and suspicions about overbilling have recently made these payments to Pakistan highly controversial -- even within the U.S. government.

The poor showing in Monday's parliamentary election by the party of President Pervez Musharraf, whose government has overseen local disbursement of the money, may make Congress look closer at all U.S. financial assistance to the country. Questions have already been raised about where the money went and what the Bush administration got in return, given that pro-American sentiment in Pakistan is extremely low and al-Qaeda's presence is growing steadily stronger.

In perhaps the most disputed series of payments, Pakistan received about $80 million a month in 2006 and 2007 for military operations during cease-fires with pro-Taliban tribal elders along the border, including a 10-month truce in which troops returned to their barracks.

The Bush administration has acknowledged some problems, but still says that the program -- part of a costly military effort known as the Coalition Support Fund -- is worth every penny. "Yes, we may have overpaid, but it's still a good deal," said a senior administration official involved in Pakistan policy, noting that more than 1,000 Pakistani troops have been killed while assisting Operation Enduring Freedom.

"Padding? Sure. Let's be honest, we're talking about Pakistan, which has a legacy of corruption," added another U.S. official familiar with past U.S. payments. "But if they're billing us $5 billion and it's worth only $4 billion, the question is whether it's worth nickel-and-diming it if it's such a top national security objective. If it's in the ballpark, does the bigger picture call for continuing on with a process that does generate significant progress on the war on terror? They do get their hands on people we can't."

U.S. officials say the payments to Pakistan -- which over the past six years have totaled $5.7 billion -- were cheap compared with expenditures on Iraq, where the United States now spends at least $1 billion a week on military operations alone.

"My sense is that the Pakistani military would not be out on the border if not for the Coalition Support Funds. That's the baseline cost of getting them out on a mission that is really our mission," said Craig Cohen, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a recent study on U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Yet the Bush administration has recently begun to scrutinize Pakistan's bills more closely.

Washington delayed payment of about $78 million of $360 million for the March-June 2007 quarter now working its way through the reimbursement process. Pakistan will receive only $282 million later this month, U.S. officials said, with additional payment once it provides more detailed accounting.

It recently rejected a Pakistani bill, officials say, for "roads and tracks" -- for its Navy operations, U.S. officials said.

Some regional specialists question whether the Pentagon's money is being well spent. "The amount that's been spent on the Coalition Support Fund, given the results, is a reminder that the Pakistani will just might not be there," Cohen said. "Most Pakistanis see this as America's war."

Congressional officials and others are concerned that the administration has been so eager to prop up Musharraf that it overlooked U.S. foreign aid and accounting standards. A congressional oversight subcommittee is also set to begin an investigation next month, while the Government Accountability Office plans to finish its own inquiry in April.

"We have had an enormous amount of money going out there since 9/11, and I'm not satisfied that we're getting the kind of accounting that would warrant a determination that this is money well spent, or whether we should change the direction of the money and get more bang for our buck another way," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) chairman of the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee of the oversight committee looking into the program.

In a closed-door hearing in December, for example, Hill staffers pressed Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South Asia, to provide receipts for every Pakistani expense over $1 million, a request the State Department has not yet met. The U.S. government generally requires receipts when it reimburses entities for expenses.

A payment process that looks too loose in Washington is seen as too tight in Pakistan, however. Over the past four months, Musharraf complained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte about delays in Washington's payment, which can take five to eight months, U.S. officials said.

The process is laborious, officials acknowledge, with many players blaming one another for allowing the Pakistani bills to move through the system without stronger oversight.
After the spreadsheets are delivered, officials at the U.S. Embassy try to verify that Pakistan incurred expenses in support of combat activity on the Afghan border. "It's a big job to go through and figure out what the Pakistanis have spent. The State Department doesn't know the toys," said the second U.S. official familiar with policy.

He added: "The embassy doesn't have the manpower or expertise to tell whether an aviator widget doohickey costs 50 or 50,000 rupees, or to find out if they really burned out four aviatics packages in an Apache helicopter and, if so, could we see them because maybe they only need maintenance." This first review takes about a month, officials say.

The spreadsheets then go to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, where officials evaluate claims and recommend reimbursement if the expenditures meet U.S. strategy. But the U.S. Embassy's initial approval greases much of the rest of the process, U.S. officials said. This second review takes about six weeks, the sources said.

The Pakistani bills then go to the Pentagon, where comptrollers determine whether they are reasonable and credible, based in part of the costs of fielding U.S. troops, a senior Pentagon official said. That third review takes about five weeks, U.S. officials said.

The bills are then sent to the Office of Management and Budget, where officials have expressed concern about poor documentation but have little leverage at this stage of the process to challenge them, several U.S. officials said. The undersecretaries of defense and state then formally concur that the operations are consistent with U.S. policy and that they do not change the regional balance of power.

The Pentagon next notifies the four Senate and House defense oversight committees. If no congressional holds are issued within 15 days -- and none have been so far in six years -- the Pentagon issues a check five days later.

Administration officials insist that the U.S. arrangement with Pakistan is unique. "Don't compare it to an audit," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "They are a sovereign government assisting us rather than someone who works for us. They are an ally. They are acting on our behalf to go after terrorists in support of Operation Enduring Freedom."

Added a senior Pentagon official: "The last thing we'd want is boxes and boxes of crumpled receipts."

To resolve tensions over the program, Congress, the State Department, and the Office of Management and Budget have all argued for the money to be tied to specific counterterrorism programs, rather than general military support. But some officials still worry that adding conditions would lead Islamabad to reduce cooperation on the most pivotal frontline in fighting extremism.

"We don't want to offend the Pakistanis," said the second U.S. official familiar with the policy. "What if the balance of their calculus changes and they decide that cooperation is more than it's worth? We do have to take that into account."

An Eyewitness account of the brutalities of Islamabad Police by a SAC member

Riyad-us-Saliheen!

Chapter 27

Reverence towards the Sanctity of the Muslims

237. Anas (May Allah bepleased with him) reported:

Messenger of Allah(PBUH) said, "Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or is oppressed".

A man enquired: "O Messenger of Allah! I help him when he isoppressed, but how can I help him when he is an oppressor?''

He (PBUH)said, "You can keep him from committing oppression. That will be yourhelp to him".

[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

Commentary: This Hadith contains a very comprehensive injunction toeliminate disturbance and tyranny in the Muslim society. It not onlyordains helping the oppressed but also encourages people endowed withmoral courage to stop the oppressor's oppression. Doing so requiresgreat courage and boldness, but Muslims would be able to do full justiceto their duty of wishing well to their fellow Muslims when they developthe moral courage to stop the oppressor from tyranny, or at leastprotest against it verbally.

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"It's just a rock, I'm fine. Don't worry." I said to my friend standing next to me, blinking from the pain, as a broken piece of a brick hit me square in my shin. We were at the capital of our country, trying to reach the house of our Chief Justice held captive by a brutal dictator. The extent of his brutality, we were just beginning to get a taste of.

This was a procession of over 1500 lawyers, students, civil society members, gathered to protest against the blatant usurpation of our judicial institution, our media, as well as our fundamental rights. There were around 150 of us who had come from Lahore to join in today's protest. Marching on to the judge's enclave, we were chanting slogans, singing songs "na mera Pakistan hay, na tera Pakistan hay; yeh uska Pakistan hay jo sadr-e-pakistan hay…" [This not my Pakistan, this is not your Pakistan; this is that person's Pakistan, who calls himself the president of Pakistan…] followed by proclamations of our struggle to get our country back. "Freedom is ours, if you don't give it to us upon asking we will take it..." Wherever you looked, you saw people who had come together, united to fight for the collective good. Stating it was enough, we will no longer be silenced. We will no longer hold back, or bow our heads low.

What for many in Islamabad had become common at protests, for us from Lahore was a first. Treatment meted to us from the police in our city is worlds apart. The recognition that the police itself is oppressed and exploited is adamant amongst the students of Lahore. A suo moto notice had to be issued by a pco-judge in Lahore to get the police to arrest us-the students. The police here was something else.

I was towards the front of the procession, when we saw smoke, and ran backwards thinking it was tear gas. Soon we realized it was fire trucks positioned to hose down protestors with cold water in this chilly weather. They kept hitting us with cold, high pressure water in vain. When it became evident that we would keep going nevertheless, the police started shelling us with tear gas. Most of us smelled CS gas for the first time as we ran backwards experiencing its excruciating effects. A friend had held my hand and almost dragged me along as we ran backwards. Don't breathe. Don't fall. Don't stop. I kept repeating to myself as my throat, eyes, and nose lit on fire. I ran as far back as possible. The spoiled, protected and sheltered girl that I was, nothing even close to this viciousness had touched me before.

It was a surreal feeling as I stood on the very periphery, panting through my scratched throat and rubbing my burning eyes. This was only the beginning. I saw people coming back, drenched. Saw an Auntie who had fallen in a puddle. Saw a girl about my age screaming at the top of her lungs at the police meant to protect us, the people. I found myself craving to be up there, at the front, with my fellows, facing the onslaught. I did not come here as an audience to watch the show from the sidelines, a voice from deep within asserted. And I advanced. Whilst screaming GO MUSHARRAF GO at the top of my lungs. Who was where, who was who; nothing mattered.
While everyone was trying to regroup, some other girls and I started chanting louder than we had ever known our voices to reach, "LATHI GOLI KI SARKAAR, NAHI CHALAY GI NAHI CHALAY GI; YEH DEHSHET GARDI KI SARKAAR, NAHI CHALAY GI NAHI CHALAY GI" [this government of brute force and coercion, we do not accept we do not accept; this terrorist government, we do not accept we do not accept] and we marched. Amidst tear gas, amidst burning and itching throats, amidst pelting stones; nothing was going to stop us.

It was a battle field. It was us the people against them the colonizers—our military state. A broken piece of a brick hit me, I shrugged it off. A much bigger brick hit the girl next to me on her hip and left her limping for a while, she didn't stop. There were lawyers who would come in front of us whenever stones would be thrown our way. Yes, many of our serving police specifically targeted the women. We went on. There were students who would pick up the falling gas bombs spewing the poisonous gas, run to the police as close as possible and drop it back on them. Many would come back staggering almost falling from the effects of the gases, whom we would have to hold up and give salt to, and back they would go to do more.

The police would retreat as tear gas bombs hit them, and the people would cheer and dance. Then many more would be thrown at us, and back to work for all of us. For over two hours the police could not advance on us.

As the situation intensified, so did our chants. "Musharraf ka jo yaar hay, ghaddar hay ghaddar hay; biknay ke liye jo tayyar hay, ghaddar hay ghaddar hay. YEH POLICE BHI GHADDAR HAY, YEH POLICE BHI GHADDAR HAY, YEH POLICE BHI GHADDAR HAY" [Whoever is a friend to Musharraf, is a traitor, is a traitor; whoever is a willing to sell out, is a traitor, is a traitor. This Police is traitor, this police is a traitor, this police is a traitor]. Ultimately the police stormed us. A certain police officer who was especially targeting women ran after me full force. I took cover inside a house to save myself. Never have I run so fast in my life. Many were beaten up, some had to be hospitalized.

Today was more than just another protest. In the midst of raw emotions, hurt limbs and hoarse throats, the only thing that mattered was the wrong being done to us. Indignant, and offended at this treatment; our protest very much was for human dignity. And more than anything else, the sensitivity that this now offended dignity of ours cannot even compare to the years of torment and subhuman treatment that most of our people in this country have endured. Well no more. Passivity that translates into consent and complicity, never again!

The beard, the veil and the enlightened fools

Tuesday, February 05, 2008
By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: I never thought my beard and my wife's veil would become an obstacle for any of our children's right to excel. But it did happen and that too in our enlightened Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

"Sir if you don't mind we are looking for some moderate faces," was the first words of an organiser that pierced through our ears as soon as we sat on a sofa in the school's office where the crew of a private television channel had arrived to interview parents of three short-listed students, including my child, for some sort of show/competition in Karachi.

Before we could believe our ears, a suggestion came, "If we can go on camera without the veil." The headmistress of the school, who too was present on the occasion, was stunned. But that was perhaps too much.

"Shame on you and hell with you and your competition," was my spontaneous reaction, which served as a counter shock for the organiser, who though was not a journalist.

There was no ambiguity in our mind that there was no point wasting our time in the disgusting environment. My spouse, who is otherwise a soft, modest personality, was quick to suggest that we withdraw ourselves from the competition that humiliates our pride -- the socio-religious values of our society.

As we stood up to leave, the organiser apologised and offered the explanation that he was conveying what he had been asked to do by his seniors. Indeed some strange people were pulling his strings from Karachi.He said in some of his previous interviews, objection was raised on the veil so he got the directions to interview only moderate looking parents.

The school headmistress snubbed the organiser for coming up with such a stupid idea. She said she would not allow such things to happen in her school. We were perhaps never as dumbfounded as a nation as we are today - thanks to the policy of enlightened moderation. And the organiser later admitted that he too was in favour of the Islamic dress code but was helpless before his seniors, who, he said, were dancing to the tune of the TV programme sponsor.

At the intervention of the headmistress and following unconditional apologies from the organiser, we hesitantly consented to give an on-camera interview but with the condition that our views on their attempt to pick "moderates" would be recorded and conveyed to the management of the television channel. Apparently it was done but it is not clear if the views reached the quarters concerned though the clear message was "shame on you".

Later in the afternoon when I went to the school to pick my children, my son's first question was, "Baba, how was your interview?" Before I could give him my reply, he wondered: "If I am selected." I told him he would not take part in the competition in Karachi, whether he was selected or not. "Why," the innocent soul asked.

I told him that the interviewer was interested only if his parents looked like "moderates". I asked if he would want his father to shave his beard and his mother remove her veil to get him selected. "Baba forget it. I am proud of what you are." And for the enlightened but silly lot, we are proud of what we are and this is how we should be.

Geo Musharraf !!!

The FATE

News paper may surprise you by not mentioning single suicide blast news. You find the nation divided, half of the nation is favoring the government’s policies and half the nation is sloganning against the present government. People are queuing up for their basic needs (though in vain), petroleum prices are getting higher day by day. People are now just fading up of even protesting against the non availability of basic utilities. People are now used to live without electricity. Government is getting pressurized to meet the ever increasing demands from foreign ‘friends’. Political instability of the country is at its peak, citizens are unaware of the fate of their country. Country is at a brisk of war. Government is getting threads from civilized countries for giving up their war heads to them. A plan has been plotted to enter into the country making use of the excuse “unsafe warheads”.

If you think I am talking about the current situation of Pakistan, then you are definitely wrong. I am actually remembering the situation faced by Iraqi people just before the war on terror fell upon them. Yes, a very same strategy is again being used on Pakistan. The only difference is that before Saddam Hussain was ‘used’ and ‘discarded’, and now our government is being used, the later is planned. In Iraq the excuse was ‘The weapons of mass destruction’ and this time the slogan being used is ‘The unsafe nuclear warheads’. Before the nation was divided on the based of religion (Shiya-Sunni) and now the base is regional/political conflicts (Swat, North and South Waziristan, Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP, FATA etc). Before the intentions were to secure the vast oil fields. Now the intensions are to secure the cheapest and shortest route to transport the Oil from Middle East, Asia to US and Europe i.e. Iran – Afghanistan – NWFP – Balochistan - Gwadar.

Statements are being given about Pakistan’s nuclear warheads. Hillary Clinton has said that “she will put Pakistan Government under pressure to safeguard Pakistani Nuclear warheads by giving them under US and UK supervision.” Presidential Candidate Richardson has said that “Pakistan is a failed state with nuclear warheads and Pakistan Government has not done much against Al Qaida, provided that we have granted 11 Billion USD for that.”

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) president Mr. Mohammad Al Baradi has given a statement that “Pakistan’s nuclear warheads are under threat. Due to lawlessness and instability in the country, extremists might take the control of the country that have around 40-50 war heads.” Al Bardari further said that “Pakistan will be affected more in case there is an attack, where the situation is very tense after Mumbai Attacks.

Like wise all the US and western media is also busy in propagating falsely against Pakistan’s Nuclear Warheads.

Statements from US Officials, President of IAEA, and western media’s much propaganda is all a part of the Evil plans where all the Islam’s and Pakistan’s enemies are united against Pakistan’s nuclear warheads.

French Revolution

And the show must go on!!!

Year 2007 was a year of paramount significance for Pakistan. Beginning with judicial controversies and then entering into lawyers movement against Musharraf proved that people today in Pakistan are fully aware of there civil as well as judicial rights and can enable a dictoral regime reconsider its illegitimate decisions. Therefore November 3rd would always be quoted as one of the draconian chapters of Pakistan’s history. It was then that the judicial pillar was targeted and soon was completely paralyzed.

The Year also witnessed some of unlike Musharraf altitude towards the political parties. A deal or understanding was observed between PPP and Musharraf and ended with December 27th turbulent event. On the other hand the year was also full of infestations when the same regime ignored the judicial decision and deported Nawaz Sharif from the airport. Amendments in 1973 constitutions were also part of this year’s mega event. General Musharraf doffed his uniform and became a civilian president with the help of constitutional amendments increasing his powers and prolonging his rule further for five years.

Introducing National reconciliation ordinance, Musharraf re-electing himself the president, security lapse resulting in maximum number of suicide attempts, Pakistan being termed as “most dangerous part of the world”, introducing new Swat where militants had come up with a new ideology in the ideological state of Pakistan to restore a new Islam, similar many more were the events which darkened the pages where history of Pakistan would be written.

On the economic side the government claims that year 2007 has made a scalable increase in the income of individuals. The government did forget to mention that income has increased but not the purchasing power of money which keeps diminishing each day. This can be observed by a simple example that smallest denomination of our currency cannot buy a single necessity of life. It is not festive to conclude that the theatrical year of 2007 was echoed by presidential slogan that the show must go on!

Come hell or high waters!!

History is evident that despite ongoing wars within a number of states, they still held the general elections. It must be mentioned here that these were the Third world states such as from African continent. It elaborates that if nations have true ferment about democratic institutions nothing can stop there motivated ambitions.

After the mantra of Come hell or high water the regime in Pakistan reaffirmed the approach of one step forward two steps back which it has been demonstrating since the days of seven point Agenda. In this context should all the claims of developing state, secure command and control of nuclear technology, supporting the right of self determination in Kashmir be taken as hollow sloganeering? The so called third stage of transition to democracy is postponed but the vital question is when the first actual phase of democracy was ever implemented in its true essence under present regime.

Mr. Musharraf has broken his promises very boldly in previous years concerned with doffing his uniform and now the postponing of general elections. It was him stating with his head high that “come hell or high waters” general election will not be postponed. The trust people had in Musharraf when he ceased power in 1999 has been reciprocally lost. It won’t be an exaggeration that today he is the last man to be trusted in Pakistan and if another referendum takes place he sure will make another record like his previous referendum. The difference would be he will make the record by gaining least number of votes this time. The hell has come down on the people of Pakistan the high waters would only wash away the anarchy and totalitarianism in Pakistan.

U.S. Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda

In the Swat region, a member of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 soldiers, stood guard at a bazaar

Published in The New York Times on Nov. 21 2007

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

The New York Times
Militants have extended their reach beyond the tribal areas.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes, some of which are working with Pakistan's intelligence agency.

Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.

[The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recommended late Sunday that the Election Commission call for parliamentary elections on Jan. 8, but he did not say whether emergency rule would be revoked beforehand, Reuters reported early Monday.

“Inshallah, the general elections in the country would be held on Jan. 8,” the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency quoted Musharraf as saying late Sunday.]

The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by the command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used billions of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, to carry out more aggressive military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the sporadic military campaigns Pakistan has conducted there have had little success, resulting instead in heavy losses among Pakistani Army units and anger among local residents who have for decades been mostly independent from Islamabad’s control.

American officials acknowledge those failures, but say that the renewed emphasis on recruiting allies among the tribal militias and investing more heavily in the Frontier Corps reflect the depth of American concern about the need to address Islamic extremism in Pakistan. The new counterinsurgency campaign is also a vivid example of the American military’s asserting a bigger role in a part of Pakistan that the Central Intelligence Agency has overseen almost exclusively since Sept. 11.

Small numbers of United States military personnel have served as advisers to the Pakistani Army in the tribal areas, giving planning advice and helping to integrate American intelligence, said one senior American officer with long service in the region.

Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.

American officials said these security improvements complemented a package of assistance from the Agency for International Development and the State Department for the seven districts of the tribal areas that amounted to $750 million over five years, and would involve work in education, health and other sectors. The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is also assisting the Frontier Corps with financing for counternarcotics work.

Some details of the security improvements have been reported by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. But the classified proposal to enlist tribal leaders is new.

“The D.O.D. is about to start funding the Frontier Corps,” one military official said, referring to the Department of Defense. “We have only got a portion of that requested but it is enough to start.”

Until now, the Frontier Corps has not received American military financing because the corps technically falls under the Pakistani Interior Ministry, a nonmilitary agency that the Pentagon ordinarily does not deal with. But American officials say the Frontier Corps is in the long term the most suitable force to combat an insurgency. The force, which since 2001 has increasingly been under the day-to-day command of Pakistani Army units, is now being expanded and trained by American advisers, diplomats said.

The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some. NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. “It’s going to take years to turn them into a professional force,” said one Western military official. “Is it worth it now?”

At the same time, military officials fear the assistance to develop a counterinsurgency force is too little, too late. “The advantage is already in the enemy hands,” one Western military official said. Local Taliban and foreign fighters in Waziristan have managed to regroup since negotiating peace deals with the government in 2005 and 2006, and last year they were able to fight all through the winter, he said. Militants have now emerged in force in the Swat area, a scenic tourist region that is a considerable distance inland from the tribal areas on the border.
The planning at the Special Operations Command intensified after Adm. Eric T. Olson, a member of the Navy Seals who is the new head of the command, met with General Musharraf and Pakistani military leaders in August to discuss how the military could increase cooperation in Pakistan’s fight against the extremists.

A spokesman for the command, Kenneth McGraw, would not comment on any briefing paper that had been circulated for review. He said Friday that after Admiral Olson returned from his trip, he “energized the staff to look for ways to develop opportunities for future cooperation.”
A senior Defense Department official said that Admiral Olson had prepared a memorandum on how Special Operations forces could assist the Pakistani military in the counterinsurgency, and shared that document with several senior Pentagon officials.

Four senior defense or counterterrorism officials confirmed that planning was under way at the command headquarters.

One person who was briefed on the proposal prepared by the Special Operations Command staff members, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing had not yet been approved, said it was in the form of about two dozen slides. The slides described a strategy using both military and nonmilitary measures to fight the militants.

One slide included a chart that categorized one to two dozen tribes by location — North


Waziristan and South Waziristan, for example — and then gave a brief description of their location, their known or suspected links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their size and military abilities.

The briefing said United States forces would not be involved in any conventional combat in Pakistan. But several senior military and Pentagon officials said elements of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes against senior militant leaders under specific conditions.

Two people briefed on elements of the approach said it was modeled in part on efforts in Iraq, where American commanders have worked with Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province to turn locals against the militant group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.

The success of these efforts, together with the consensus in military and intelligence circles that the grip of the original Al Qaeda in the tribal areas continues to tighten at a time when the Pakistani government is in crisis, led planners at the Special Operations Command to develop the strategy for the tribal areas.

A group of Pakistan experts convened in March by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that empowering tribal leaders could be an effective strategy to counter the rising influence of Islamic religious leaders and to weaken Al Qaeda. But a report on the session found that such successes “would be difficult to achieve, particularly in the north (Bajaur) and south (North and South Waziristan).”One person who had been brief on the proposal cautioned that whether a significant number of tribal leaders would join an American-backed effort carried out by Pakistani forces was “the $64,000 question.”