Jaffor Ullah shouldn't ignore the obvious when writing about fresh
blood from an old wound. Here's how a veteran Pakistani journalist has
described it in DAWN:
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20080312.htm
Facing the truth
By Irfan Husain
Even in my remote bit of paradise, news of distant disasters filters
through: above the steady sound of waves breaking on the sandy beach
in Sri Lanka, I was informed by several news channels about the
sickening attacks on Mumbai. My Internet connection is erratic and
slow, but nevertheless, I have been bombarded with emails, asking me
for my take on this latest atrocity.
Over the last few years, I have travelled to several countries across
four continents. Everywhere I go, I am asked why Pakistan is now the
focal point of Islamic extremism and terrorism, and why successive
governments have allowed this cancer to fester and grow. As a
Pakistani, it is obviously embarrassing to be put on the spot, but I
can see why people everywhere are concerned. In virtually every
Islamic terrorist plot, whether it is successful or not, there is a
Pakistani angle. Often, foreign terrorists have trained at camps in
the tribal areas; others have been brainwashed in madressahs; and many
more have been radicalised by the poisonous teachings of so-called
religious leaders.
Madeline Albright, the ex-US secretary of state, has called Pakistan
`an international migraine', saying it was a cause for global concern
as it had nuclear weapons, terrorism, religious extremists,
corruption, extreme poverty, and was located in a very important part
of the world. While none of this makes pleasant reading for a
Pakistani, Ms Albright's summation is hard to refute. Often, the truth
is painful, but most Pakistanis refuse to see it. Instead of
confronting reality, we are in a permanent state of denial. This
ostrich-like posture has made things even worse.
Most Pakistanis, when presented with the fact that our country is now
the breeding ground for the most violent ideologies, and the most
vicious gangs of thugs who kill in the name of religion, go back in
history to explain and justify their presence in our country. They
refer to the Afghan war, and the creation of an army of holy warriors
to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then they go on to complain that
the Americans quit the region soon after the Soviets did, leaving us
saddled with the problem of jihadi fighters from all over the Muslim
world camped on our soil.
What we conveniently forget is that for most of the last two decades,
the army and the ISI used these very jihadis to further their agenda
in Kashmir and Afghanistan. This long official link has given various
terror groups legitimacy and a domestic base that has now come to
haunt us. Another aspect to this problem is the support these
extremists enjoy among conservative Pakistani and Arab donors.
Claiming they are fighting for Islamic causes, they attract
significant amounts from Muslim businessmen here and abroad. And
almost certainly, they also benefited from official Saudi largesse
until 9/11.
Now that government policy is to distance itself from these jihadis,
we find that many retired army officers have continued to train them
in camps being run in many parts of Pakistan. A few weeks ago, Sheikh
Rashid Ahmed, a prominent (and very loud) minister under both Nawaz
Sharif and Musharraf, openly boasted on TV of running a camp for
Kashmiri fighters on his own land just outside Rawalpindi a few years
ago. If such camps can be set up a few miles from army headquarters,
what's to stop them from operating in remote areas?
Many foreign and local journalists have exposed aspects of the terror
network that has long flourished in Pakistan. Names, dates and
addresses have been published and broadcast. But each allegation has
been met with a brazen denial from every level of officialdom. Just as
we denied the existence of our nuclear weapons programme for years, so
too do we refuse to accept the presence of extremist terrorists.
For years, it suited the army and the ISI to secretly harbour and
support these groups in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan. While
officially denying that they had anything to do with these jihadis,
money and arms from secret sources would reach them regularly. Despite
our spooks maintaining plausible deniability, enough information about
this covert support for jihadis has emerged for the fig-leaf to slip.
And even if the intelligence community has now cut its links with
these terrorists, the genie is out of the bottle.
Each time an atrocity like Mumbai occurs, and Pakistan is accused of
being involved, the defensive mantra chanted by the chorus of official
spokesmen is: "Show us the proof." The reality is that in terrorist
operations planned in secret, there is not much of a paper trail left
behind. Nine times out of ten, the perpetrators do not survive to give
evidence before a court. But in this case, one terrorist did survive,
and Ajmal Amir Kamal's story points to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. The
sophistication of the attack is testimony to careful planning and
rigorous training.
This was no hit-and-run operation, but was intended to cause the
maximum loss of life.
Pakistan's foreign minister said that Pakistan, too, is a victim of
terrorism. While this is certainly true, the rest of the world wants
to know whey we aren't doing more to root out the training camps, and
lock up those involved. Given the vast un-audited amounts from the
exchequer sundry intelligence agencies lay claim to, their failure to
be more effective against internal terrorism is either a sign of
incompetence, or of criminal collusion. Benazir Bhutto's murder, after
an earlier attempt and many warnings, is a reminder of how poorly we
are served by our intelligence agencies.
And while the diplomatic fallout from the Mumbai attack spreads and
threatens to escalate into an armed confrontation, the biggest winners
are those who carried out the butchery of so many innocent people. It
is to their advantage to prevent India and Pakistan from coordinating
their fight against terrorism. Tension between the two neighbours
suits them, while peace and cooperation threatens their very existence.
The world is naturally concerned about the danger posed by these
terror groups to other countries. However, the biggest threat they
pose is to Pakistan itself. Until Pakistanis grasp this brutal reality
and muster up the resolve necessary to crush them, these killers will
tear the country apart.
--- In mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com, "Jaffor Ullah" <jhankar@...> wrote:
>
> New York Times
>
> Op-Ed Contributor
> Fresh Blood From an Old Wound
>
> By PANKAJ MISHRA
> Published: December 1, 2008
>
> MIDWAY through last week's murderous rampage in Mumbai, one of the
suspected gunmen at the besieged Jewish center called a popular Indian
TV channel. Speaking in Urdu (the primary language of Pakistan and
many Indian Muslims), he ranted against the recent visit of an Israeli
general to the Indian-ruled section of the Kashmir Valley. Referring
to the Pakistan-backed insurgency in the valley, and the Indian
military response to it, he asked, "Are you aware how many people have
been killed in Kashmir?"
>
> In a separate phone call, another gunman invoked the oppression of
Muslims by Hindu nationalists and the destruction of the Babri Mosque
in Ayodhya in 1992. Such calls were the only occasions on which the
militants, whom initial reports have tied to the Pakistani jihadist
group Lashkar-e-Taiba, offered a likely motive for their
indiscriminate slaughter. Their rhetoric seems all too familiar.
Nevertheless, it shows how older political conflicts in South Asia
have been rendered more noxious by the fallout from the "war on
terror" and the rise of international jihadism.
>
> Pakistan, a nation-state founded on Islam, has long claimed
Muslim-majority Kashmir, and has fought three wars with India over it
since 1947. In the early 1990s, as an anti-India insurgency in Kashmir
intensified, groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba became the Pakistani
government's proxies in its war of attrition with its neighbor.
>
> American pressure after 9/11 forced Pakistan's president, Pervez
Musharraf, to ban Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had developed links with the
Taliban and Al Qaeda. With General Musharraf's departure from office
in September, it would be no surprise if this turned out to be the
Muslim group's first major atrocity since 2001.
>
> Pakistan's new civilian government is too weak to control either the
extremist groups within the country or the various rogue elements
within its military and intelligence. The American military was
reported to have started bombing supposed terrorist hideouts inside
Pakistan's borders even as General Musharraf stumbled to the exit. As
its increasingly desperate pleas to the Bush administration to stop
the attacks go unheeded, Pakistan's government appears pathetically
helpless to its own citizens.
>
> The sense of humiliation and impotence that this loss of sovereignty
creates in Pakistan, a country with a strong tradition of populist
nationalism, cannot be underestimated.
>
> Meanwhile, India's influence in Afghanistan has grown as it pours
reconstruction money into the country, as have its military ties with
Israel. Add to this the Bush administration's decision to reward India
with an extraordinarily generous nuclear deal and to more or less
ignore Kashmir, where in August Indian security forces brutally
suppressed the biggest nonviolent demonstrations in the valley's
history, and recent attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the
Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, and now in Mumbai begin to appear to be
connected by more than chronology.
>
> Meanwhile, Indian intelligence experts and others suspect that
jihadists and disaffected members of Pakistan's armed forces and
intelligence agencies have forged closer links and, as the string of
recent bomb attacks on Indian cities reveals, are rapidly making new
allies among the 13 percent of Indians who are Muslim.
>
> It is very likely that Barack Obama will take a different tack from
the Bush administration in antiterrorism efforts in South Asia. In an
interview with MSNBC last month, he said that his administration would
encourage India to solve the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, so that
Islamabad can cooperate with the United States in Afghanistan.
>
> The idea that the road to stability in South Asia goes through
Kashmir is as persuasive as the notion that the path to peace in the
Middle East goes through Jerusalem. It is also equally hard to
realize. Mr. Obama could act quickly to stem growing extremism in
Pakistan and strengthen civilian authority by ending American missile
attacks within its borders and shifting the allied strategy in
Afghanistan away from military force and toward political
nation-building and economic reconstruction. At the same time, he will
have to find a solution in Kashmir that endows its Muslims with a
measure of autonomy while pacifying extremists in both India and
Pakistan.
>
> The new president's moral and intellectual authority will be vital
in negotiations with India, which, like China regarding Tibet,
adamantly rejects third-party mediation in Kashmir. Mr. Obama could
point out the obvious to Indian leaders: they have paid a huge price
for their intransigence over Kashmir, with an estimated 80,000 dead in
the valley in the last two decades and a resultant rise in terrorist
attacks across India.
>
> Indeed, the outrage in Mumbai is the latest and clearest sign that
the price of India's uncompromising stance on Kashmir has become too
high, imperiling its economy as well as its security. Indian anger
over the fumbling response to the brazen attacks disguises the panicky
realization that there can be no effective defense against terrorists
in a country with a long coastline and densely populated cities. The
best India can hope for is to improve what Ratan Tata - the country's
leading industrialist and the owner of last week's main terrorist
target, Mumbai's Taj hotel - calls "crisis management."
>
> As the economy falters (Mumbai's stock market has lost nearly 60
percent of its value this year), India can barely cope with homegrown
violent movements like the Maoist insurgency in its central states,
which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as the biggest
internal security threat to India since independence.
>
> Pointing to the Bush administration's vigorous response to 9/11,
Indian commentators lament that India is a "soft state," unable to
defend itself from internal and external enemies. But India cannot
turn into a "hard" state without swiftly undermining its secular,
multicultural democracy.
>
> The government has already experimented with draconian laws like the
Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act of 2002, which among other
measures allowed the police to hold suspects without charge for six
months. It was repealed in 2004 after many abuses against Muslims were
revealed. While these attacks may lead to calls for more tough
measures, Indians cannot lose sight of the peril that 150 million
Muslims would lose their faith in India's political and legal system.
And it is obviously dangerous to threaten Pakistan, a nuclear-armed
state, with war.
>
> As president, Mr. Obama could conceivably persuade India and
Pakistan to see the virtue of a political solution to Kashmir. But he
would first have to set an example by rejecting the false assumptions
of a global war on terrorism based primarily on military force -
assumptions that the elites of powerful countries with restive
minorities like India, China and Russia have eagerly embraced since 9/11.
>
> "The people of India deeply love you," Prime Minister Singh said to
President Bush in September while thanking him for the nuclear deal.
Yet it is President-elect Obama who has the opportunity to create
deeper and more enduring alliances for the United States in South Asia
- and he should start with Kashmir.
>
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