Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan (TSP): 31 Oct 2011

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 05:06

2004 UNESCO Pakistan (PDF document)
http://www.unesco.org.pk/education/docu ... 0Books.pdf

It is about gender and education. Section 4 has statistics on the personnel who prepare the textbooks (some 2073 persons in all).

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 14 Nov 2011 05:08

Is the idea that USAID would fund Nebraska to write the textbooks in Urdu but have no inputs on what was in the textbooks? Only way that would be is if the Uty Nebraska knew the mission ahead and needed no further guidance. Maybe the Uty of Nebraska was the one that came up with the project to jihadifi elementary education in Afghanistan and adjacent areas in Pakistan?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 14 Nov 2011 05:09

From available information it is the RAND Corporation which has been the lead think tank in the social engineering project for the last 30 years primarily in Pakistan and Muslim world at large.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 05:15

The world has changed.
Here is a RAND report by Francis Fukuyama from mid-1980.
"The Security of Pakistan - A Trip Report"
http://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N1584.html

At this time, India was a "Soviet client". The abstract:

This Note, a companion to N-1579, is based on a trip to Pakistan in mid-1980 and reflects conversations by the author with numerous high-ranking Pakistani military officers and civil servants. Pakistan faces a severe threat on its eastern border as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both as a result of Soviet support for ethnic separatism and from conventional Soviet operations against Afghan guerrillas based in Pakistan. This comes at a time when Pakistan is falling far behind India in terms of military capability, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The American aid offer of March 1980 was deemed insufficient to begin to meet the spectrum of threats posed by the Soviets and their clients, while at the same time provoking Moscow and India. Nonetheless, the Pakistani military remains strongly pro-Western and would like to play a role in a larger American security arrangement for South Asia and the Persian Gulf.

A quote or two from the text:

Few Pakistanis believe that India wants to undo the 1947 partition altogether and absorb the Punjab and Sind in an enlarged Indian state; there is a general recognition that New Delhi has little interest in accepting responsibility for feeding that many indigent Muslim mouths.

The most commonly expressed fear was that India hoped to exert its hegemony over the entire region and reduce Pakistan to the status of a satellite or dependency, on a level with Bhutan, Nepal or Sri Lanka. Pakistan would retain responsibility for its own internal economic and political problems, like Bangladesh, but would be deprived of any independence in foreign policy.

One should not underestimate the present Pakistani government's ability to mishandle what will be a rather delicate political situation and alienate the Baluchis.

{In FATA} Regular Pakistani law is applied only on the highways, in order to keep open vital lines of communication. As a result, the roads become places of refuge: A tribesman escaping a bloodfeud will occasionally sit on the highway, knowing that only there will he be protected by the Pakistani authorities.

At times it has seemed that Pakistan was underoing a slow-motion version of the Iranian revolution.

With the loss of East Pakistan, Islamabad has tried to define itself more as a Middle Eastern rather than an Asian nation.

While Pakistani officers are no longer educated in the United States or Britain, their Western orientation is very evident. Everyone down to second lieutenant speaks English, and all written communication in the Army is carried out in English. The officers to whom I was exposed were as a group very impressive, being articulate and very well-informed about global political developments. Numerous British military traditions still survive in the Army, and resentment of the colonial past is much less pronounced than in, say, a country like Egypt.

Footnote: Pakistani officers ceased attending American military academies in 1979 when the United States began to demand payment for such training.

The officers interviewed generally agreed that the United States has allowed the Soviet Union to win a string of victories, beginning with Vietnam and including Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia and South Yemen. The American leadership looked weak and indecisive in support of its traditional allies and unwilling to make its enemies bear the cost of opposition to the United States.

{The Pakistanis rejected Brzezinski's offer of $400 million in aid, as inadequate to meet the strategic threat posed by Soviets + India.} Beyond this straightforward strategic calculation, there was a deeper psychological problem as well. The Pakistanis knew that the US aid offer was as small as it was because of US fears of antagonizing the Indians.

{Discussing possibility of aid to build roads} The one major drawback is that roads designed to carry the Pakistanis north may also serve to drive the Russians south. There is little point in improving naval access to the Baluchistan coast if it is simply to become a Soviet base in a number of years. {Today, Chinese base }

{In response to the Soviet threat} Broadly speaking, the United States could seek to defend Pakistan and use it as a hub for projecting influence westward into the Persian Gulf and northward into Afghanistan, or it could write off Pakistan as either inconsequential or a lost cause (or both) and seek to establish a stronger position in India. After the failure of the Brzezinski mission in February 1980, US foreign policy appears to be drifting in the latter direction. A final choice is yet to be made.... {we know how that turned out!}

Discussing the pros of a pro-Pakistan policy:

Whatever Pakistan's positive value to the United States, it has considerable negative value as a Soviet client or ally.

The second advantage of closer ties to Pakistan would be the possibility of providing direct American aid to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.

The third advantage that Pakistan holds for the United States is its geopolitical position at the head of the Persian Gulf.

The final advantage of a credible defense of Pakistan would be its effects on American prestige in a broad sense, or more exactly, the avoidance of the negative consequences of a failure to keep Pakistan out of the Soviet orbit.

{China is} presently looking to the United States to assist in the defense of a common ally.

Drawbacks of US support for Pakistan:

...include negative consequences for US-Indian relations, the effect on American non-proliferation policy, economic considerations and the problem of Pakistan's internal stability. The last two factors are probably the most important.

...it may be that the threat of arming Pakistan substantially will buy more Indian cooperation rather than less. The Indians over the years have not been made to pay a price for their closeness to the Soviets....

What matters here is that there is probably nothing the United States can do at this point to prevent Pakistan from acquiring a nuclear capability.

Some Pakistani economic realities recognized:

The Pakistani economy was severely crippled by Bhutto's arbitrary nationalizations, which caused a good deal of capital and entrepreneurial talent to leave the country. This came on top of a decade {the 1960s!} of mismanaged economic development programs which made many classical mistakes of overinvestment in large, capital-intensive projects.....the United States would necessarily be held accountable for the country's substantial economic problems as well.

...it is necessary to take into account the possibility that the security arrangement itself might be the cause of domestic instability. However pro-Western the Pakistani military may be, it represents an extremely narrow segment of the population as a whole and is only one contending voice among several within the Pakistani elite. {we've seen how that has played out.}

...the Pakistani military has a clear pro-business ideological bias...

The United States has historically had great difficulties in managing purely strategic alliances. Such relationships require, among other things, avoidance of both extravagant assurances and criticism of human rights violations and the maintenance of contacts with both the existing government and the opposition. A strategic alliance will require working with a series of regimes whose character Americans will find suspect - and this includes both right-wing military and left-wing civilian governments. China is able to be relatively indifferent to such concerns because its foreign policy is insulated from domestic pressures of the sort that operate in the United States. Unless the United States can emulate this behavior in some fashion, the liabilities of an alliance with Pakistan may well exceed the benefits.

We know the US has tried very hard to emulate this behavior, and we know the results.
Objectively Pakistan is now a huge liability for the US {whether they admit it or not}.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 14 Nov 2011 05:18

>>Maybe the Uty of Nebraska was the one that came up with the project to jihadifi elementary education in Afghanistan and adjacent areas in Pakistan?

Probably this is what happened. If I remember correctly (and someone may prove me wrong here), it was a professor at Nebraska (Goutierre or something) who started this idea and pushed for it, and that was latched on to by the appropriate agencies when the time came and it took off. But these were only meant for Afghanistan in Dari and Pashtu as A_Gupta said. Now we have the 15 million print run in 2000s, but here the printing was actually done in Pakistan... so it is easy to speculate viably that some may have stayed in the border areas, just like the previous print run.

However, this is different from the American producing the Pakistani textbooks in Urdu. Discovering something like that would be a major "Bingo" moment. On the other hand, it is doubtful the Americans could have made anything more vicious than what the Pakis have done...

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 14 Nov 2011 05:19

So who printed the texts in Urdu? And when?

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 14 Nov 2011 05:22

>>"The world has changed"

Indeed, boss, and how! The Americans are actually bombing Pakistan almost daily; and these days you'll have to physically beat a blatantly anti-India comment out of US politicians...once it was routine.

>>So who printed the texts in Urdu? And when?

Who knows... It would be interesting if we could find that it was the Americans... The Pakistanis probably did the necessary themselves. They did not need the Americans to write the anti-Hindu texts. Plus money was flowing in freely in those days. Could have been the Saudis even. There was no shortage of anti-India sentiment then, but the focus was on Soviets. The American textbooks, so far as we know, were destined for Afghanistan. The people used up in the war were Afghans (from the refugee community and within Afghanistan).

I'm fairly certain that if the Americans had prepared and produced those Urdu textbooks, the Paks would be shouting that from the rooftops by now. On the other hand, maybe they haven't thought of it yet. Maybe they will start soon. And we will have the datapoint we need.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 14 Nov 2011 05:38

Ok here from Kudremukh:

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/wow ... ro&ddlC=61

Background

The University of Nebraska at Omaha is home to the Center for Afghanistan Studies, which was established in 1972 and is currently the only academic program in the United States exclusively concerned with Afghanistan affairs. It receives almost all of its funding from outside sources; the university pays for several employees' salaries.

From its start until 1978, UNO participated in an exchange program with Kabul University. But after the 1978 pro-Soviet coup, the Afghanistan programs stopped.

It wasn't until 1984 that the Center received its first USAID contract to provide educational training programs and facilities to Afghan refugees. The Center continued the educational programs until the mid 1990s, receiving more than $60 million from USAID.

Although USAID funded the Center's educational and training efforts in Afghanistan, the CIA helped to design and implement the overall program in an effort to strengthen resistance against the Soviet occupation.

"The CIA was involved in a kind of covert assistance to the resistance to fight against Soviets," Raheem Yaseer, assistant director, told the Center for Public Integrity.

The Center, with USAID funding, established offices in Pakistan to train and educate Afghan refugees, who had formed seven mujahedeen resistance groups. Yaseer said the Center's educational work helped the resistance against the Soviet occupation.

"We helped all of these seven parties with school supplies, developing curriculum, paying teachers, teacher training and manpower training," Yaseer said. "They were taught about love for the country, love for freedom, hating the Soviet occupier."

The Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989.

In October 1997, Gouttierre told the Omaha World Herald that the CIA was involved in the overall program but did not directly provide money to him or the Center.

For 10 years, the Center received most of its Afghanistan education project funding from USAID. But after Congress ended government-sponsored aid to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, USAID stopped funding the Center. Still, it wasn't without funding for long.

In 1997, Unocal, an American oil company, stepped in with an offer.

Unocal hoped to facilitate a business relationship with the Taliban in order to promote a natural gas pipeline project. The company was the development manager for the seven-member Central Asia Gas pipeline consortium that also included Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, Indonesia Petroleum, three other companies and the Turkmenistan government.

Unocal offered the Center an up-to-two-year contract worth as much $1.8 million to train Afghan men to build pipeline, which would run from Turkmenistan through a Taliban-controlled portion of Afghanistan to Pakistan, where it would be marketed. The pipeline could also be extended into India.

"For its land-locked Central Asian neighbors, Afghanistan is a strategically located ‘commerce corridor' to the Arabian Sea," Marty Miller, Unocal's vice president, said in prepared testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997. He testified at a hearing before the subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asia Affairs when the CentGas project was still underway.

"They [Unocal] wanted to pave the road and create a good feeling," Yaseer told the Center for Public Integrity. "They gave us about $900,000 [up to $1.8 million for two years] to conduct man power training and train people in crafts, carpentry, masonry, electric and building."

As the Center for Afghanistan Studies began training civilian men, it also invited key Afghan officials to visit the university. In December 1997, Unocal sponsored a meeting that brought Taliban ministers to the United States, including the minister of mines and industry, the minister for culture and information and the minister for planning. The Taliban's U.N. representative also joined the visiting group. During their stay, they went to Unocal's facilities in Texas, visited the State Department and toured the University of Nebraska at Omaha. In May 1998, two Taliban ministers again visited the university on a Unocal-funded trip. Public outrage over the partnership soon erupted.

On June 1, 1998, women's rights organizations, including the Feminist Majority, the National Organization for Women and the Women's Alliance for Peace and Freedom in Afghanistan, voiced their concern at a Unocal stockholders meeting. Newspapers nationwide covered the issue. Four days later, Unocal announced it would not renew its contract with the Center.

On Aug. 7, 1998, al Qaeda operatives bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. Soon, Unocal announced that it would put the pipeline plan on hold.

In a press release announcing the withdrawal from the project, Unocal said it would, however, continue to provide "humanitarian support and skills training to Afghanistan through CARE and the University of Nebraska at Omaha." The oil company added that neither program was designed to provide pipeline construction skills training.

The Center trained 400 Afghan men before Unocal unexpectedly pulled out of the contract.

"They were hot for it then, but they gave up," Yaseer said of Unocal. "But [the 400 Afghan men] all have their own businesses now, so it was a useful program."

Yaseer said the Center hopes to work with whomever ends up building the pipeline by training Afghans in vocational skills. He said the pipeline project is very complicated now because more companies are interested in being part of the consortium.

"If American companies get it, probably we will have a chance," he said. "We will just be interested in training in vocational skills and increasing their chances of getting employment with the pipeline."

Although the 1997 contract with Unocal ended, public scrutiny and questions about the university's connections to the Taliban continued, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.

On January 29, 2002, as the U.S. bombing campaign on Afghanistan slowed down, USAID awarded the Center $6.5 million to provide books and training for Afghanistan's interim government to resume schooling. The Center, which has a textbook publishing operation in Pakistan, was to print 8 million books and train 4,000 teachers for an estimated 750,000 students by the schools' starting date, March 23.

USAID employee Chris Brown told the Omaha World Herald that the Center was uniquely positioned to meet the textbook challenge. After USAID stopped funding the Center in 1994, Thomas E. Gouttierre, dean of International Studies and Programs and director of Afghanistan Studies at UNO, had continued to raise money privately in order to keep the Pakistan publishing operation open. Thus, in 2002, the Center was already prepared and ready to start printing the textbooks.

However, the content of the books, which UNO developed in the 1980s with USAID funding, had to be censored. Critics contended the books' content, which included drawings of guns, bullets and mines, promoted and strengthened an era of jihad violence. So before distributing any more of the books to Afghan students, workers at the Pakistan operation started a "scrubbing" effort to remove violent pictures and references.

Yaseer said the Center printed and delivered about 15 million books on time.

But even without the violent images, the content of the books sparked controversy because they still contained Muslim tenets and verses from the Koran. Organizations that receive USAID funding must prove that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. A U.S. federal appeals court had previously ruled in a 1991 case that taxpayer funds could not be used for religious instruction, even overseas. But according to the Washington Post, the Bush White House defended the religious content, saying its presence was necessary because Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture. USAID officials also publicly defended the religious material.

In 2003, the Center lost the USAID contract for Afghan educational textbooks and teacher training. The money went, instead, to Creative Associates International Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based, private company.

"We were very disappointed," said Center director Thomas Gouttierre, whose organization has been involved in Afghanistan education projects since 1973. "We invested our hearts in Afghanistan over a long period of time.

"Maybe it's possible that AID was looking for a different approach that they thought would be provided by a for-profit. The trends seems to be in favor of for-profits."

Yaseer said efficiency and quality are secondary to politics in the process of selecting companies and organizations to perform work in Afghanistan. "It depends on who knows who in the administration, USAID and the State Department," said Yaseer, who worked as an English professor at Kabul University during the Soviet occupation.

"Universities try their best to recruit professionals, but these belt[way] bandits look for surcharges and just grab anybody that comes in handy."

Though the Center did not get a new contract, Yaseer said it had money left over from the 2002 contract and received a no-cost extension from USAID to continue training teachers from its office in Afghanistan.

"I don't think that we're going after that particular [contract] again," Gouttierre said. "Afghanistan is going through some changes."

Gouttierre, the Center's director, lived and worked in Afghanistan for 10 years as a Peace Corps volunteer and Fulbright fellow. He also coached the Afghan National Basketball team and served as senior political affairs officer for the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission to Afghanistan in 1996 and 1997. Gouttierre met Yaseer in Kabul in 1964.

Gouttierre was also a member of the Afghanistan Relief Committee, a private, tax-exempt group founded by former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs' wife, Mary Ann Dubs, in 1980 to help Afghan refugees.

The Boston Globe reported in 2001 that "The Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha has longstanding ties with Washington policymakers and collaborates regularly with intelligence." Gouttierre told the paper in a Nov. 25, 2001 interview, "We're at war. I'm an American, and the American government is leading this war. If we have some knowledge or analysis that could be of advantage, we should be forthcoming."

In 2001, UNO spent a total of $60,000 lobbying Congress, the White House and other agencies on budget and appropriations, science and technology, and education. In 2002, UNO spent a total of $120,000 lobbying Congress, the White House and other agencies on the same issues. For its lobbying efforts in both years, UNO hired Washington, D.C.-based firm Van Scoyoc Associates Inc.

Afghanistan contracts

The State Department is funding two of the Center's current projects in Afghanistan.

Under a $512,000, 11-month State Department contract, the Center is bringing female Afghan teachers to the United States for training. In October 2002, a group of 13 Afghan teachers, all women, spent five weeks in Nebraska and one week in Washington, D.C. A second group of 12 female teachers is expected to arrive in the States October 29, 2003.

The State Department also gave the Center $60,468 in July 2003 to re-establish the Afghan Fulbright exchange program, an international educational exchange program that President Harry Truman signed into law in 1946. The contract calls for the Center to recruit and prepare 20 to 40 Afghan college graduates who will come to the U.S. to study at various universities for six months to one year. It has been 24 years since Afghans had access to the Fulbright program.

The Center for Afghanistan Studies is also using USAID money, remaining from a $6.5 million contract it received in 2002, to continue its field office in Kabul, which "has a small staff which can be readily incorporated into projects intended for reconstruction of Afghan education at the present or in the future," according to the Center's Web site. Currently, the field office staff is training teachers.
Government ties

Thomas E. Gouttierre, the director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies, is an old friend of Zalmay Khalilzad, President's Bush's nominee as ambassador to Afghanistan and a former paid adviser to Unocal. While working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analysis for Unocal for the proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. Gouttierre also coached Khalilzad's basketball team at Habibia high school in Afghanistan. That team, as well as teams from various Afghan colleges, helped to form the Afghan National Basketball Team in the early 1970s.

During the December 1997 Taliban visit to the United States, Khalilzad joined the group for its trip to Unocal's facilities in Texas. In 1997, Khalilzad, Gouttierre and Marty Miller, Unocal vice president, testified together before the Senate Foreign Relations Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee.

In July 1999, Gouttierre gathered with a dozen Afghan leaders for a confidential meeting, after which he submitted the first of eight classified reports to the State Department.

Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. ambassador to Armenia who teaches courses in American foreign policy and Eurasia at UNO, was President George W. Bush's special envoy on Afghanistan with the rank of ambassador from 1989 to 1992. He was also the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the State Department, United States deputy chief of mission to China from 1986 to 1989 and the director of the State Department's Office of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldive Affairs from 1983 to 1985.

In October 2001, Tomsen told the Chicago Tribune that when UNO hosted Afghan and sometimes Taliban officials' visits, it served as a neutral ground where Afghan leaders, who often disagreed with one another, could informally give information to the U.S. government. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Since 1986, spanning the early years of post-Soviet occupation to the oppressive regime of the Taliban, the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the Omaha commuter campus has served as a back door for U.S. intelligence efforts to expose Afghan leaders to American ideas and democracy."

Thomas E. Eighmy, research associate for the Center for Afghanistan Studies, is a retired USAID officer.

Ronald Roskens, who is a former UNO chancellor , was the director of USAID in the first Bush administration.

—Brooke Williams

Enjoy....

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 06:11

a. I've excerpted a lot from Fukuyama, my above post is updated.
b. ramana, I read that, having a publishing set-up in Pakistan to fill Afghanistan with Dari and Pashto books is different from publishing Urdu (and Punjabi, Sindhi) books in Pakistan for Pakistani consumption.

arun · Post by **arun** » 14 Nov 2011 07:56

Proliferation attempt by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan blocked by Australia:

Powers enforced to deal with insecure Pakistan

by: Sean Parnell
From:The Australian
November 14, 201112:00AM

DEFENCE Minister Stephen Smith has blocked another shipment to Pakistan, in a sign Australia's intelligence analysts regard the country as an increasing threat to global security.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction (Prevention of Proliferation) Act gives Mr Smith the power to block exports not prohibited under any trade laws or sanctions if there are concerns the goods will be misused.

The powers were used only twice in their first decade of operation, but have been used every few months since late 2009. They were first used to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions before tougher trade sanctions came into force and now, it appears, as a means of dealing with Pakistan's lingering domestic security issues.

Mr Smith blocked a shipment of industrial equipment to Pakistan earlier this year and three weeks ago blocked a shipment of scientific equipment. Another shipment of scientific equipment from a different company was also blocked last year. ……………………………..

The Australian

Airavat · Post by **Airavat** » 14 Nov 2011 08:45

Pakistani Banks refuse to provide guarantee for Afghan trucks

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 14 Nov 2011 09:03

http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/America ... aliban.htm

In the 80s, the mujahideen ran an Educational Center for Afghanistan that had “children's books designed for it by University of Nebraska under a $50 million USAID grant ... A third-grade mathematics textbook asks: ‘One group of mujahideen attack 50 Russian soldiers. In that attack 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled?’ A fourth-grade textbook ups the ante: ‘The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second. If a Russian is at a distance of 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian’s head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the forehead.’ The program ended in 1994 but the books continued to circulate: ‘US-sponsored textbooks, which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs, are still widely available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in their original form.’”[13]

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 14 Nov 2011 09:28

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDe ... 7397&Cat=2

Railways land worth Rs245.8 bn grabbed by Army, Rangers, others

The cash-starved Pakistan Railways possesses 1,67,690 acres of land valued at Rs245.817 billion but it is illegally occupied by a number of government institutions such as the Pakistan Army, Rangers, the Frontier Corps, provincial governments and individuals, which hinder its commercial utilisation

Also remember that the TFTA army has a habit of conducting "exercises" near fertile canal-irrigated land and then never moving out. They have occupied a lot of fertile land in Pakjab this way, which is then allocated to retired and serving jernails.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 09:28

shiv wrote:http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/America ... aliban.htm
In the 80s, the mujahideen ran an Educational Center for Afghanistan that had “children's books designed for it by University of Nebraska under a $50 million USAID grant ... A third-grade mathematics textbook asks: ‘One group of mujahideen attack 50 Russian soldiers. In that attack 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled?’ A fourth-grade textbook ups the ante: ‘The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second. If a Russian is at a distance of 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian’s head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the forehead.’ The program ended in 1994 but the books continued to circulate: ‘US-sponsored textbooks, which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs, are still widely available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in their original form.’”[13]

That reference 13 is to this from Pervez Hoodbhoy, that I cannot locate.

Hoodbhoy, Pervez (2002): The Genesis of Global Jihad in Afghanistan Online paper presented in November 2002 to conference at School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/REGIONA ... ypaper.doc

Hoodbhoy repeats that claim here, in 2004,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... ?page=show

It is not clear whether the texts were Pashto & Dari only, or Urdu also.

PS: why I want to check Hoodbhoy is because of statements like this (2010)
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/602/transcript.html

PARVEZ HOODBHOY: If you were to say, where does the genesis of global jihad I will point it squarely at the United States. It had made the fight against the Soviets a religious war. The fact is CIA distributed hundreds of thousands of Korans to madrasas, to those it was seeking to influence in Afghanistan. It succeeded brilliantly, but look at what enormous cost.

This, IMO, is increasingly the Pakliberals' alibi (i.e., Pakistan is inherently **not** jihadi, the US made it so), and so needs extreme scrutiny.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 14 Nov 2011 09:34

This is from an earlier blog post by Ayesha Agha

According to official records, the army has illegally occupied 99, 865 acres of Cholistan land and 5,000 acres belonging to the forest department. Moreover, the army has 2,07,992 acres legally leased to it by the provincial government for operational purposes such as for building firing ranges. A large chunk of the legally-leased land was given to the army in 1978. In the larger Bahawalpur division (Cholistan is part of Bahawalpur), the army only has ownership of about 8,700 acres that were sold to it out of which 8500 acres were purchased by the army to build the new cantonment in Bahawalpur city. However, the illegal acquisition of land and its illegal subletting started mainly after 1999. These activities coincided with the tenure of three army officers who were made in charge of the Cholistan Development Authority (CDA) and had the power to allocate land. The first one was a serving major general, S. Zaidi who served for a year to be followed by a retired major general Razzak and later a retired brigadier. Brig. (retd) Tiwana also acquired personal stake in the illegal subletting of the illegally occupied land. The brigadier is now a cultivator of hundreds of acres. The tenure of the three officers spanned nearly a decade 1999-2008.

A lot of the illegally occupied land is used for commercial purposes. According to official records, the army has illegally leased out 17, 063 acres of the illegally occupied land and 3,000 acres of its legally leased land. The subletting activity means leasing the land to big local landowners and businessmen of the area or non-locals who have acquired this land. In a lot of cases, land is leased out in the name of some senior army personnel who then sublet it to others. The illegal water outlets are meant to provide uninterrupted supply of water. It is a very clever scheme because the cultivators don’t have to pay any water rates or agricultural and other taxes levied by the provincial government. The land tends to be more productive then others because it is virgin land and has ample supply of water.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 10:16

"A" Is for Allah, "J" Is for Jihad Author(s): Craig Davis Source: World Policy Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 90-94

available here
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54934790/A-is ... -for-Jihad

may be the primary source of Pervez Hoodbhoy's stuff.

Excerpts:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Education Center for Afghanistan, located in Shakir Peshawar, Pakistan,and operated by the Afghan mujahidin (holy warriors), published a series of primary education textbooks replete with images of Islamic militancy.

...
Alif is for Allah, Allah is one.
...
Ti is for Rifle (tufang), Javed obtains rifles for the Mujahidin...
...
As in this passage, the promotion of violence for the sake of Islam is the predominate them throughout the mujahideen textbook series in both mathematics and language arts for grades on through six.

Although these violent images were officially edited out of the schoolbooks in 1992, my fieldwork in Afghanistan and among the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan in 1999 and 2000 revealed that the unedited versions of these textbooks were still in use in both countries. {and in Peshawar's second hand bookshops}.
....
When I visited Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, in May 2000, I discovered that the stores stocking Taliban-approved textbooks were selling freshly printed copies of the old, unrevised mujahidin texts.....
...
However, such messages and images of violence aimed at children are by no means a recent phenomenon. Consider this poem from a first-grade language arts textbook, published in 1970:
....
If, with designs on our land,
Our dirty enemies
Come forward one step,
We will cut off their feet,
We will cut off their legs....
.....
We will pluck out his eyes.....
....

A joke in a fifth-grade language-arts schoolbook from the same period displays a macabre sense of humor. A boy returning from war was asked "What did you do in the war?" He answered, "I cut both legs off an enemy at the knees." When asked why he did not cut off the enemy's head, the boy answered, "Someone else had already cut it off".

...The hostile imagery was a part of the official curriculum during the reign (1933-73) of King Zahir Shah....

{Under the Communist regime} In "Martyrs", a poem printed in a fourth-grade textbook, the students learned that they were the "martyrs of Western oppression". Martyrdom and sacrifce were stressed as necessary components of the communist revolution and resistance against the enemy: "agents of the British", "agents of colonialism", and "agents of Western oppression". These were all euphemisms for the mujahidin....This series was still in limited use in May 2000 in some Afghan schools....including in the Estiqlal Lycee, a small coeducational Afghan elementary school in Islamabad, Pakistan.
....
....

Far more violent, religiously oriented, and potentially damaging to Afghan children was the next generation of textbooks, developed in Peshawar in the late 1980s by a committee of Afghan educators under the auspices of the seven-party alliance of mujahidin..... {These textbooks contained e.g, mujahiden attacked 50 Russian soldiers,killing 20. How many Russians fled? and
The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second, if a Russian is at a distance of 3200 meters...., etc.}

Another irony is that this textbook series was underwritten by US grants. One of the responsibilities of the mujahidin-operated Education Center for Afghanistan was to write, print and distribute textbooks. The ECA was funded by the Education Program for Afghanistan at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), under a $50 million grant from the US Agency for International Development that ran from September 1986 through June 1994. The Univ.NO program staff chose to ignore the images of Islamic militancy in the children's textbooks during the first five years of the program.

Raheem Yaseer, an Afghan educator who worked at the Univ.NO office in Peshawar during the early years of the program and now acts as campus coordinator for the program in Omaha, defends the decision to allow the mujahidin parties to develop the violent contents of the textbooks free from outside intervention. The staff, he says, was acutely aware of Afghan "religious and cultural sensitivities" during the war with the Soviets. Moreover, the University of Nebraska did not wish to be seen as imposing American values on Afghan educators.

After the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Education Program for Afghanistan- under increasing pressure from Afghan parents and teachers, and various aid organizations- decided in 1991 to remove the militant images from the mujahidin textbook series. The revision process was completed by 1992. Educators commonly refer to the edited versions as the revised UNO textbooks, which are widely used in Pakistan and Afghanistan today.

However, two years ago, Joyce Gachiri, a project officer on education for the Afghanistan Country Office of UNICEF located in Islamabad, reported seeing many unrevised mujahidin books in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as well as in the province of Badakhshan, which was then in the hands of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. During my visit to Kabul in May 2000, I purchased an entire series of the unrevised textbooks.

According to Ahmad Shah Durani, the printing press manager at the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) in Peshawar - the organization responsible for printing the revised UNO textbooks- the unedited mujahidin textbooks were not printed by ACBAR after 1992. When I confronted him in June 2000 with new copies of the violence-filled unrevised textbooks I had purchased in Kabul, he said that the inferior quality of paper and ink used pointed to an independent printing press in Peshawar.

The appearance of these unedited textbooks freshly printed in Peshawar and sold at textbook shops in Kabul some eight years after they were to have been replaced suggests that the Taliban wished to inspire a new generation of militants with the message of jihad. But the Taliban, who came to power in 1996, may not be entirely to blame. Between 1992 and 1996, militant factions of mujahidin ruled and battled over Kabul. Thus it is likely that these textbooks never fell out of favor with the mujahidin leadership, who were responsible for the militant content in the first place......

So, when Hoodbhoy says: "US-sponsored textbooks, which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs, are still widely available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in their original form", if Craig Davis was the source, the correct statements are : "US-sponsored textbooks {which teach violence} are still widely available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in pirated form" and "Textbooks which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs date from the 1970s".

PS: as you may guess, I want to get Hoodbhoy's 2002 paper, so I can check whether he is citing Craig Davis, in which case he is mis-citing him, and thus new "truths" are born, repeated ad nauseam.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Nov 2011 11:26

BRF wisdom spreads (even if arrived at independently)
http://sonaliranade.wordpress.com/2011/ ... overt-war/

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 14 Nov 2011 12:07

^^^^
Slightly skeptical about that writer.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 14 Nov 2011 12:53

Is it possible to get the books in digital or scan format, the ones that US sponsored?

rajanb · Post by **rajanb** » 14 Nov 2011 13:12

self -deleted duplicate

rajanb · Post by **rajanb** » 14 Nov 2011 13:13

rajanb wrote:From the Nutcase Nation and posted in full

Taqleef for the Abduls

Pakistan a paper MFN of India
By: Salman Abduhu | Published: November 14, 2011

LAHORE – Indian exports to Pakistan are on the rise though it has yet to be granted Most Favourite Nation (MFN) status whereas Pakistani exports to India have downward trend despite its earning MFN status years back from New Delhi.

The real problem, experts say, is that Pakistani exporters cannot get access to Indian markets because of the non-tariff barriers created by Indian bureaucracy. ‘You are MFN on paper but an outcast actually’ is the impression the Pakistani exporters are getting form New Delhi.

The Pak-India bilateral trade, particularly through Wagha border route, is only benefiting to India as 31,897 trucks carrying goods worth Rs21 billion reached Pakistan while only 4,664 trucks having goods of Rs1.33 billion were sent to the nuclear rival state during fiscal year 2010-11.

According to available data, India exported goods of Rs5.27 billion to Pakistan in the four months (July to Oct) of fiscal year 2012, while Pakistan exported products of Rs770.35 million to the neighbouring country in the same period. Figures revealed that as many as 8,643 trucks crossed Wagha border to reach Pakistan from India in this period.

The most important item which Pakistan imports from India is soya oil. As per statistics, during last fiscal year Pakistan imported soya oil of Rs13.14 billion, tomatoes of Rs4.31 billion, garlic worth Rs670.46 million, cotton worth Rs2.7 billion, green chilli and capsicum worth Rs260.61 million, ginger of Rs320 million and some other vegetables, including bitter gourd, lady finger and cucumber, of Rs220 million. During the first four months of the current fiscal year, India exported to Pakistan tomatoes of Rs1.73 billion, soya oil of Rs2.9 billion and cotton of Rs470.95 million.

On the other hand, during the last fiscal year, Pakistan exported to India dry dates (chhohare) of Rs400.61 million and onions of Rs370.32 million. In July 2011 to Oct, Pakistan sent dry dates of only Rs310.12 million and gypsum worth Rs190.64 million to India.

Experts say that before approving the MFN status for India formally, Islamabad has already granted the status of the Most Favoured Nation to India informally as the bilateral trade is largely benefiting India while Pakistan has been a loser. Despite having restricted trade with India, they said, the trade balance by Indian Commerce Ministry shows that Pakistan exports to India, during 2008-09 and 2009-10, stood at $370 million and $276 million respectively, whereas Indian exports to Pakistan without MFN status stood at $1,439 million and $1,573 during the same period respectively.

As a whole the business community in Pakistan is divided on the issue of MFN status to India as interests of the industrialists and traders run in absolutely different directions. However, some business community representatives have reacted seriously to increasing volume of trade with India, saying it should not be at cost of local manufacturers. They criticised the government for its lack of support for local industries. They said that it is very unfortunate that Pakistani delegations have always failed to safeguard the interest of local manufacturers whereas they have advocated the Indian interests.

Some businessmen are highly sceptical of the haste shown so far on the questing of giving India MFN status and have advised the government officials to remain cautious at every level in order to protect national economic interests and encourage local industry to be more competitive and forward looking. They hoped that Pakistan team would safeguard their interests in India during next week’s talks.

All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers said local manufacturers have had no benefit of MFN status given to Pakistan by India in 1995 due to tough procedure and shrewd planning by the Indian authorities. Industrialists said that the Indian exports are rising without MFN status whereas Pakistani exports dropped despite having MFN status. They said, because of the non-tariff barriers created by Indian bureaucracy, the Pakistani exporters could not get access to Indian markets.

Pakistan’s delegation will discuss issues of non-tariff barriers with Indian officials and give it top priority on its agenda aimed at enhancing trade ties with neighbouring country, said president of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He said that it is high time that Pakistan demand India remove all non-tariff barriers. He further said that Pakistani manufacturers have been waiting for the equal treatment since 1995, when Pakistan was granted MFN status by India.

Looks like our chai biskoots are laced, hain ji?

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 14 Nov 2011 13:18

^^
You cannot fight the babus. Not even GOI can.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2011 14:08

Thimphu 'spirit' has given way to Addu 'hope' : Ms. Khar

Asked to comment on Dr. Singh's remarks that he would visit Pakistan only if there was forward movement on the Mumbai terror attack case, and that another such strike would be a setback to the accident-prone India-Pakistan relationship, Ms. Khar preferred to go by what he said in Addu in front of domestic and global media.

“Some statements are made for domestic consumption, but we also heard what he said before the international media. Prime Minister Singh was exceptionally positive. We have managed to create the space we needed to pursue issues meaningfully.”

I think Ms. Khar is right about the 'domestic consumption' issue.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 14 Nov 2011 14:27

rajanb wrote:The most important item which Pakistan imports from India is soya oil.

F-16s!! Pakistan is importing F-16s from India!

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 14 Nov 2011 15:08

Pilot dies in PAF jet crash

ATTOCK: A Pakistan Air Force (PAF) aircraft JF-17 Thunder, crashed in Attock Distrct also killing its pilot, Geo News, reported Monday.

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 14 Nov 2011 15:17

You have to buy 3 jf-17s for one f-16 because the three will crash even before the f-16 goes for an MLU, thats why the pakis have made jf-17 so affordable

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 14 Nov 2011 15:22

Buy 1 get 2 phree

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 14 Nov 2011 15:24

suryag wrote:You have to buy 3 jf-17s for one f-16 because the three will crash even before the f-16 goes for an MLU, thats why the pakis have made jf-17 so affordable

Only 1 has crashed so far, that still is a good record. But I am really suprised is the speed at which all weapons, radar, flight envolope etc got qualified. All the more it seems to be analog airframe with a russian engine and F-7pg type WVR radar and capability of dropping dumb bombs, with no data link capability.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 14 Nov 2011 15:33

Aditya_V wrote: Only 1 has crashed so far, that still is a good record.

"Good record" is a judgment reached from hours flown and serviceability. At one extreme, if you keep an aircraft on the ground it will never crash and that would constitute a "fantastic" record , so such a judgment cannot be arrived at without the missing data.

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 14 Nov 2011 15:37

I agree as you can from the rest of my post I don't have high regard for the aircraft simply because there is not much information about it, we don't have details about basic stuff how many flights what tests for IOC, FOC etc. let alone how many hours the sqaudrons operate etc. Just a 10000 sorties from the Musharaf of an TSP airforce marshall. My wish is a few more crash and PAF can have these as Hanger and Runway kings without taking to the air.

sum · Post by **sum** » 14 Nov 2011 16:52

Was this posted earlier?

Four Pakistani intelligence officials found dead

Four intelligence officials along with a civilian have been found dead after they went missing following an attempt to nab a leader of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan's Punjab province, a media report said Sunday.

Major Afaq Ahmed and three of his subordinates -- Muhammad Mazhar, Mohammad Amjad, Mohammad Fiaz -- along with a civilian Maqsood Ahmed set out Friday in search of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi leader "Dr Arshad" after getting reports that he was hiding in Pir Chunbbal of Jhelum district, Dawn News reported.

The report, however, did not mention to which department the officials belonged.No organisation has claimed responsibility for the killings.

Police teams from Jhelum and Chakwal earlier launched a joint operation in the area after receiving intelligence reports that a militant group was hiding in the hilly terrains of Pir Chunbbal.

The manhunt was called off at night and no arrests were made.

However, the four officials and the civilian did not report back. A search was launched, and their bodies were found Saturday in the hilly area.

Wonder which agency these worthies belonged to?

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 14 Nov 2011 17:04

there is but one agency, hallowed be its name
kayani's kingdom come, kayani's will be done
on earth as it is in jannat

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2011 17:18

sum wrote:Four Pakistani intelligence officials found dead
Four intelligence officials along with a civilian have been found dead after they went missing following an attempt to nab a leader of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan's Punjab province, a media report said Sunday.
Wonder which agency these worthies belonged to?

These four are 'rogue' officers and are 'bad ISI'. The 'good ISI' would not go after LeJ.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 14 Nov 2011 17:30

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 14 Nov 2011 17:32

Aditya_V wrote: Only 1 has crashed so far, that still is a good record. But I am really suprised is the speed at which all weapons, radar, flight envolope etc got qualified. All the more it seems to be analog airframe with a russian engine and F-7pg type WVR radar and capability of dropping dumb bombs, with no data link capability.

They are still working on the final radar and avionics package. When was it short-listed and qualified on the type?

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2011 17:34

Imran Khan blames current civilian govt. for ISI's upper hand

"The government lacks the moral courage, which has been giving the space to ISI to assert its powers in various affairs of the country"

He said the corrupt practices of politicians had provided the ISI an excuse to meddle in the political arena,

First of all, it is not the ISI but the PA that runs the country. He is afraid of talking about the PA and is making a clever-by-half attempt to depict the ISI as 'angels' and the political class as having willingly conceded space. Everyone knows what would happen otherwise. And, of course, the ISI & PA are completely scrupulous and corruption-free.

sum · Post by **sum** » 14 Nov 2011 17:39

One more report by Xinhua on the same which counts the "civilian" in the earlier report as a intel guy:

Pakistani forces hunt for militants after 5 intelligence men killed

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Pakistani security forces launched on Sunday a major hunt for militants behind the killing of five intelligence officials in the eastern Punjab province, reported local media.

Militants of banned extremist "Lashkar-e-Jhangvi" group had kidnapped five intelligence officials who had gone to trace the militants in the mountainous area of the Chakwal District in Punjab province.

Army and police, backed by military helicopters, carried out the operation to recover the abducted intelligence officials, but the officials had been killed and their bodies had been thrown. A major was also among the slain officials, according to local media reports.

Heavily-armed militants, led by a wanted leader Dr Arshad, alias Mufti, exchanged fire with the security forces, which continued till late Saturday night.

Earlier local media reports said that Dr Arshad and several other militants had been killed during the operation. But officials later denied the report of the killing of Dr Arshad and any other militants.

The District Police Officer in Chakwal said that Dr Arshad and his accomplices had fled late Saturday night after the forces launched the operation.

The government had announced a reward of 500,000 rupees (5,814 U.S. dollars) for the arrest of Dr Arshad. He is accused of involvement in series of attacks on Shiite Muslims and a minority "Ahmadi" group.

Police and security forces launched a major operation against the militants in the mountains surrounding Chakwal district on Sunday morning. Military helicopters are also taking part in the operation, sources in the region told Xinhua.

They said the police also launched a house-to-house search operation in the some area.

The security forces have blocked roads to the areas where operation is underway against the militants.

Police said that Dr Arshad had been involved in kidnapping of people for ransom to fund his banned groups. They had established a base in the mountainous areas of Chakwal and used to keep the abducted people there.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has strong connections with al-Qaida and Taliban, routinely attack the security forces and Shiite Muslims as well as other religious minority groups.

The group was also behind the 2009 attack on the army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, which had killed nearly 10 Pakistani soldiers.

If there are helicopters, door-to-door stakeouts etc trying to get these guys out, they can belong to only one agency..

Dont think civilian agencies like FIA, IB, police etc are able to command military gunships etc if they are ever in trouble.

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 14 Nov 2011 17:56

Trust us, times have changed: Pakistan tells India

Fool me once-shame on you, Fool me twice- shame on me. Your Nation repeatedly fools my nation- shame of my leadership and media.

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 14 Nov 2011 18:18

Aditya_V wrote:Trust us, times have changed: Pakistan tells India

Fool me once-shame on you, Fool me twice- shame on me. Your Nation repeatedly fools my nation- shame of my leadership and media.

They are not fooling anyone. They are "brilliantly" exploiting India's fault lines.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2011 18:24

Aditya_V wrote:Trust us, times have changed: Pakistan tells India

Fool me once-shame on you, Fool me twice- shame on me. Your Nation repeatedly fools my nation- shame of my leadership and media.

And our leaders are fooling us by telling us that 'one more attack, the repercussions will be severe for Pakistan' etc. I agree with Ms. Khar that it is all for internal consumption and Pakistan has been privately assured, under US pressure, that the peace process/dialogue is 'uninterrupted and uninterruptible'. I strongly suspect that MSA is the pointman used by the USA for selling this line to GoI, not that it needs hard selling to, anyway. Pakistan shrugs off such bluster and continues with its terrorism. After this private assurance, it is time to expect a major attack soon.