For me, that's one more reason to want to work together with as many people as possible on finding and implementing effective ways of dealing with the most important issues.
--- In Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com, Kisan <mailbhejna@...> wrote:
>
> The state-nurtured bigotry over the decades has created an extremist mindset
> across all sections of the population in Pakistan. The military that is drawn
> from the same population cannot remain immune to extremism. Shahzad’s finding
> that al Qaeda has infiltrated the Pakistani security forces aligned with the
> ground reality that has come into being as a result of the jihad policy in
> pursuit of foreign policy objectives. ‘Jihad fi sabil Allah’ is the slogan of
> the Pakistan Army, the Taliban as well as al Qaeda.
> -63% of the population are sad that Bin Laden was killed as opposed to 10% who
> approve of his killing and the Pak establishment having sheltered Bin Laden in
> Abbotabad have now gone after all those who helped in his trekking down and
> killing whilst the ISI is now kidnapping and killing journalists writing of the
> Army double game like Saleem Shahzad.
>
>
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\06\25\story_25-6-2011_pg3_3
>
>
> ANALYSIS: A reflection on Saleem Shahzad â€"Farhat Taj
> ll kinds of colonial stereotypes were invoked to deceive the world into
> believing that al Qaeda militants, ‘state guests’ in the words of many tribal
> leaders, have been hosted by the tribes against the will of the Pakistani state
>
> Saleem Shahzad, an investigative Pakistani journalist working for Asia Times
> Online, was brutally murdered in Pakistan. Some weeks before his tragic murder
> he wrote two articles about Waziristan in Asia Times Online, ‘Taliban and al
> Qaeda: Friends in Arms’ and ‘Kicking Around in Waziristan’. Some people of
> Waziristan who had read the articles conveyed to me their reservations about
> some parts of the two articles. The tribesmen who wish to remain anonymous due
> to the prevailing insecurity where they live, informed that Shahzad’s articles
> are part correct and part misleading. They are of the view that probably being
> a casual visitor to Wana, South Waziristan, Shahzad was unable to discern what
> was really going on behind the façade of seemingly innocent activities, like
> the football match he was referring to. They asked me to question Shahzad
> through my Daily Times column for providing misleading information about their
> native land. I was in the middle of writing a response to Shahzad’s articles
> when the news of his tragic murder came in. Out of shock at his assassination,
> I could not complete the response and thought to wait for an appropriate moment
> before I critically analysed the two articles.
>
>
> But two days ago a fellow columnist, Dr Mohammad Taqi, wrote a review of
> Shahzad’s book, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 in
> this newspaper (‘A thousand and one tales of terror’, Daily Times, June 23,
> 2011). Dr Taqi also noted that it might not be easy to objectively critique
> this book in the emotionally and politically charged environment around
> Shahzad’s assassination, especially the journalists’ demonstrations across
> Pakistan. Nevertheless, Dr Taqi wrote a fine critique of the book highlighting
> its strengths and weaknesses.
>
> Today I would like to only refer to the strength of Shahzad’s writings. Two
> important conclusions come out from Shahzad’s writings: one, al Qaeda, the
> Afghan Taliban, Punjabi Taliban and the local Waziristan Taliban are deeply
> allied, and two, al Qaeda has infiltrated Pakistan’s security institutions.
> Both conclusions are close to the security-related reality in Pakistan.
>
>
> Both conclusions are the fruits of the policy of strategic depth that promoted
> religious bigotry at all levels of the state to address the security threats
> perceived by the Pakistani generals. According to the Peshawar Declaration, a
> declaration unanimously adopted by over 1,000 tribal leaders and political
> activists across FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in December 2009: “The strategic
> depth policy of the Pakistan Army has a complete background. The ideology of
> nationhood on the basis of religion served its foundation. Cantonments were
> labelled with the slogans of ‘Jihad fi sabil Allah’ [jihad in the name of
> Allah]. Big crossings and turnabouts in cities were furnished with tanks,
> fighter planes and replicas of the Chaghai hills to make a war-like
> environment. Instead of a welfare state Pakistan was made a security state.â€
>
>
> Our generals have made Pakistan a security state but the tragedy is that the
> generals are most reluctant to directly confront the regional power they have
> defined as the enemy of Pakistan: India. They have created private militant
> groups driven by religious ideology to fight India as well as in Afghanistan. I
> was thus not surprised when several tribal leaders in FATA told me that the
> Taliban are irregular units of the Pakistan Army. I kept saying to them that
> several of the militant groups are now out of the establishment’s hands, but
> they never agreed. One of them, who suffered injuries in a Taliban suicide
> attack on a tribal jirga that he was part of, told me this story to
> metaphorically explain that no militant group is out of the establishment’s
> hands.
>
> Once there was a pir (holy man) whose abode was daily visited by all humans as
> well as all kinds of animals. Once a mouse requested the pir to make him a cat
> for a few days so that could see how it feels to be a cat in terms of the power
> that a cat has over a mouse. The pir lifted his stick in the air and the mouse
> was turned into a cat the next moment, who promised to come back to the pir
> after some days. When it returned, the mouse, now a cat, pleaded with the pir
> to make him a dog, a more powerful creature than a cat for a few days. The plea
> was granted and the ‘dog’ promised to come back in a few days. When it came
> back again, it requested the pir to make him a lion to enjoy the power wielded
> by this beast for some days. The request was again granted, but the next moment
> the ‘lion’ attacked the pir, who immediately lifted his stick in the air and
> the ‘lion’ was turned back into a mouse again. “So this is what happens to the
> militant who slips out of control of the establishment â€" he becomes a worthless
> mouse again,†said the tribal leader.
>
>
> The state-nurtured bigotry over the decades has created an extremist mindset
> across all sections of the population in Pakistan. The military that is drawn
> from the same population cannot remain immune to extremism. Shahzad’s finding
> that al Qaeda has infiltrated the Pakistani security forces aligned with the
> ground reality that has come into being as a result of the jihad policy in
> pursuit of foreign policy objectives. ‘Jihad fi sabil Allah’ is the slogan of
> the Pakistan Army, the Taliban as well as al Qaeda. For Pakistani extremists,
> whether in uniform or civvies, links with al Qaeda provide ideological
> legitimacy, vigour as well as financial resources to the former’s religious
> causes. How does one separate the two or could they even be separated? Did the
> security establishment ever intend the separation? Why were the foreign
> militants even allowed on Pakistani soil some decades back? Why were they not
> sent back to their countries of origin after the Soviet withdrawal from
> Afghanistan or brought under the ambit of Pakistani law? Why was the false
> propaganda circulated around the world that the foreign militants have married
> women in the tribal areas of Pakistan and cannot be sent back because they are
> now ‘sons-in-law’? All kinds of colonial stereotypes were invoked to deceive
> the world into believing that al Qaeda militants, ‘state guests’ in the words
> of many tribal leaders, have been hosted by the tribes against the will of the
> Pakistani state. The tribal culture has been humiliated all over the world as a
> culture of violent jihad and yet key al Qaeda terrorists continue to emerge one
> after the other from the big urban centres of Pakistan.
>
>
> From FATA to Karachi the whole country has become the home of al Qaeda. As long
> as the generals’ fascination with jihad in terms of abuse of the Islamic notion
> of jihad continues, Pakistan will continue to be a jihadi state, where the
> likes of former jihadi General (retd) Hamid Gul will roam around safely and
> those who dare to expose the jihadi connections of the generals with hard
> facts, be it journalists like Saleem Shahzad or tribal leaders in FATA, will
> continued to be silenced with brute force.
>
> The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently
> writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Army
>
>
> Flag of the Pakistani Army
> FoundedAugust 14, 1947
> CountryPakistan
> Size612,000 active troops (Center for Defense Information)[1]
> Part ofPakistani Armed Forces
> HeadquartersRawalpindi, GHQ
> MottoIman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah.[2]
> ColourGreen and White
>
>
>
>
> Kisan.
>
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