Of Terrorists and their proponents

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By Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq

terrorism.gifThe likely threat of military attack by the US and its allies in the tribal areas of Pakistan using the pretext of potential strike like 9/11 and increasing activities of the Taliban is creating fear and panic amongst masses. The main agenda behind this bizarre scheme is to push the armed forces of Pakistan to the wall, get the control of nuclear arsenals and use bogey of ‘Islamic terrorism’ for the containment of China. George W. Bush Jr., now lame-duck President, before leaving the Oval, wants to ensure that the new man taking his place should have no option but to remain engaged in wars in various parts of the world.

Before one tries to understand the recent US military and propaganda outbursts against the Taliban, one must turn one’s mental clock back three decades or so, and recollect the legacy of Bush Senior. It was George Herbert Walker Bush’s ‘New World Order’ that led to the biggest and worldwide economic chaos during the Gulf War. As Vice-President and President, Bush was an unfortunate instance of ‘collateral damage’, or a ‘necessary evil’, flowing from his more primary geopolitical mission: to usher in the post-nation-state “one world order”, first spelled out in the mid-1970s Trilateral Commission studies of Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and first unleashed by the 1977-81 ‘All Trilat’ Jimmy Carter administration.

George Bush remarkable feats include inter alia amongst others:

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TS Picks

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1. Preparing the Battlefield : By Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

2. Coded prejudice is cloaked dagger : By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune

3. Gloom and Doom? Nah; Just for the U.S. : Interview with Peter D. Schiff, Barron’s

4. China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo : By Scott Shane, The NYT

5. Amid policy disputes, Qaeda grows in Pakistan : By Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde - The IHT



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Welcome to the Badlands

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What must never, repeat never, be done is to negotiate a treaty with these elements from a weaker position. A Pathan despises weakness as much in himself as in any one else. Such treaties are not worth the paper these are written on.

By Anwaar Hussain

oie_talibanselected4.jpgThe badlands were not always badlands.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, or FATA as these are more commonly known, are an amazing place with a fascinating history. This unique region of pine-scented vales, tall mountains, deep gorges, harsh topography and even harsher demography has traveled a tortuous path throughout its known history.

Starting from 500 BC to date, the region which includes Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of Pakistan has seen perhaps more invasions in the course of history than any other country in Asia, or indeed in the world. However, during most of this period when the plains surrounding this region had been dominated by great powers of the times, these hill tracts and the tribes that inhabited these remained fiercely independent.

The people of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and FATA as well as the adjacent eastern regions of Afghanistan are overwhelmingly Pathan, or Pashtun as they are alternatively called, with a total population of around 40 million. About 18 million of these are living on the Pakistani side. Within the NWFP province, geographically, FATA runs north to south, forming a 1,200-kilometer wedge between Afghanistan and the settled areas of the NWFP. The Durand Line supposedly divided Pathan tribes between British India and Afghanistan in 1893. Supposedly because the line has never been effectively able to divide these tribes and since then this delineation has been viewed with great contempt and bitterness by Pathans on both sides of the line.

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Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy

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By James Petras

Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy

Picture: The esteemed Reverend Jeremiah Wright sermon right after 9/11. Two full and downloadable (audio) sermons by Reverend Jeremiah Wright: the “911 sermon” and the “God damn, America” sermon.

Introduction

The sustained vituperative attack and the feeble apologetic defense of Reverend Wright’s brilliant, eloquent and substantive sermon [video] in defense of human dignity speaks to the basic ethical, political and strategic issues of our epoch. For Reverend Wright was not merely ‘commenting’ on an ethical omission of our day but raising fundamental principles about the behavior of states, the role of individual conscience in the face of crimes against humanity and the need to give name and take action in the face of evil. The entire spectrum of politicians, the mass media and, in particular, the political parties and two (and a half) of the presidential candidates raise, by their hostile reaction and the substance of their criticism, vital issues of the relation between the State and Religion.

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Stoning of the Songbirds

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By Anwaar Hussain

The story below has been inspired by the news of a recent stoning of a man and a woman in Northern Pakistan. It is a work of fiction.

songbirds.jpgThe first stone whizzed way above her head missing her exposed torso by a wide margin. She was half buried into a hole dug the previous day. Wrapped in a white shroud with her hands tied to her sides, only her face was uncovered. She was able to see the throng of devout people who would stone her till death. She was hysterical with fear and it showed on her beautiful face.

The next one found its mark. She was struck on her chin. It was a medium sized, sharp stone thrown by the lead mullah, the man who had passed the verdict on them. Pain shot through her body forcing a whimper of agony from her dry lips. With that, she started crying uncontrollably. Crimson drops of blood started to drip on to the white cotton shroud on her chest. “God is great!” shouted the mullah and waved on his followers with a renewed fervor. The crowd reached for the stones lying in heaps in front of them. Collected a day earlier, it was made sure that these would be of just the right size; neither too small as to be ineffective, nor too large as to finish the person with just a few hits. The barrage would start soon.

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The War of Drones

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By Pervez Hoodbhoy

dynamite.jpgDRONES, machine and human, have drenched Pakistan with the blood of innocents. On the one side are US-made drones such as the MQ-1B General Dynamics Predator - a remote controlled, self-propelled, missile-bearing aerial system. On the other side are the low-tech human drones, armed with explosive vests stuffed with ball bearings and nails.

These lethal engines of destruction, programmed by remote handlers, are very different. But neither asks why it must kill, nor cares about the death and suffering it causes.

On Jan 13, 2006, a bevy of MQ-1Bs hovering over Damadola launched a barrage of ten Hellfire missiles at the village below. They blew up 18 local people, including five women and five children. Such cold statistics say nothing about the smashed lives of the survivors, or the grief of the bereaved. The blame was put on faulty local intelligence.

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The killing of Hezbollah’s Imad Moughniya

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This Hollywood-type approach is not new.

By Raid Khoury

Slain Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniya

Picture: Slain Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniya.

Imad Moughniya’s death, like his life, will remain shrouded in mystery and secrecy, but what few things we can learn for certain about this person’s life we already have. First, the image of the man created in the Western media, especially the US corporate media with its typically superficial, and simplistic “good vs bad” story lines should be dismissed as a largely fictional account.

The focus on a single, elusive, shadowy figure lurking somewhere in the dark preparing to kill Americans and Jews in cold blood is good for ratings, and compatible with the overall anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias that characterizes US news coverage but can hardly be considered reliable journalism. This Hollywood-type approach is not new. Before Moughniya, Carlos “the Jackal” and Abu Nidal were featured stars in the sensational news-entertainment industry. As a result we do not have an accurate picture of Moughniya (which may not be possible anyway), but more importantly, we have been presented with a distorted reality of the decades-long, bloody struggle between Israel and Hizballah.

Second, the history of Hizballah, founded in 1982 soon after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is mainly a history of resistance (Hizballah also has a network of social services catering to the needs of a large segment of society traditionally ignored by the Lebanese state) to the Israeli military occupation of Lebanon, and contrary to prevailing propaganda, was conducted ethically.

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Stopping the Suicide Bomber

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We have to condemn with loud voices, open speech and fearless thinking as much the terrorists as the system that spawns them

By Anwaar Hussain

bloody_hand_print.jpgYoung men, full of youth’s vigor, pumped up and brainwashed by patriotism or religious zeal always have, and always will, kill and be killed. That is a no-brainer. The question is why such sudden spates come in nations’ histories in which atrocities spike up sharply tainting every denizen of that state.

In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty. According to recent studies done by political researchers however, the data does not support this fact any more. Why rich Saudi young men would blow themselves up, they ask. Political researchers now agree that terrorism is more linked to levels of political freedom a nation allows to its citizens, especially in those countries that are experiencing transition from autocracy to political freedom.

There is a flaw in this argument.

The researchers forget that it is in the soil of these politically repressed societies that the seeds of want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness sprout. A single factor of these by itself or any combination thereof can trigger the birth of the hydra-headed monster called terrorism. Pakistan is a case in point.

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The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

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By James Petras - February 2008

The Ashkenazo-zionist Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008

The Israeli Agenda openly defended, publically practiced and aggressively pursued by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) has greatly influenced the US Presidential elections and the likely future course of Washington’s Middle East policy.

Picture:
US Ashkenazo-zionist magazine, ‘Heeb’, shows ‘How to cook a gentile’ cartoons, February 2008.

The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv’s tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of ‘survival’ and ‘existential threats’. The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy. In pursuit of that policy, it invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, bombing neighborhoods and critical infrastructure in Beirut and other cities, bombed Syria as a provocation.

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Battle for God; Battleground Pakistan

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It is a battle for God and the battleground is Pakistan.

By Anwaar Hussain

 

terrorist.jpgThe killing frenzy in Pakistan has reached a feverish pitch. In a rapidly darkening scarlet hue, the extremists are marching on suicide-bombing, beheading and maiming innocent citizens on their bloody path to their murky goal. The naive victims, out of their love for their religion and lack of knowledge of the same, not only cannot tell the difference between the killers and the messiahs, sometimes they indeed sympathize with their executioners. It is a battle for God and the battleground is Pakistan.

Perhaps a time has finally come to call a spade a spade.

By their terror strikes the extremists aim to inspire horror in Pakistan so that she bows her head meekly beneath the brutal yoke of the radicals. It is high time to take cognizance of the fearsome conditions upon which their tyrannical power wants to raise and maintain itself. It is time to see that it is in the name of religion that all oppressors act, only in name. They invoke it, yet they violate it. These extremists are no different.

It is time to tell the killers that they will never succeed because we know who they are and what they stand for. It is time we unmask for all who are watching, the hideous contours of their ghoulish facades.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
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