Sunni Terrorist Fragments of Unstable Pakistan-Nov 21, 2015

[ramana]

Rudrak welcome. Looking forward to similar posts in future.

[Peregrine]

Indeed, like when I said Indian govt, and ModiJi himself must approve kirket, and thats where we are today, it was frowned on through all kinds of mumbo jumbo arguments and personal insults were hurled at me.

But coming to the point, Rudrak, there is a climb-down, please go and read what BJP had said prior to the election. And contrast that with what the policy is today.

My own opinion (articulated through several posts) is that the climb down is not a bad thing if no Indians are killed from TSP terror, India's core national interests are preserved, and TSP is no longer a constant irritant, and TSP's 3.5 are happy at the developments and investment into India continues unhindered. Hopefully, these talks will achieve that. And in fact, I would go further and add that ModiJi has exhibited exemplary statesmanship on 2 counts: 1) Alliance with PDP in Kashmir to bring some semblance of normalcy, and 2) Throwing a few dog bones to TSP in his latest salvo.

CRamS :

I couldn't agree MORE.

May your TRIBE INCREASE!
Cheers

[abhijitm]

By talking, we are in no way compromising our interests. A 24/7 hot border is not in our national interest nor in the interest of our border population who faces the brunt.

If these talks yield visible progress on a ceasefire and terror, its good. Else we will go back to status quo of no talks and a hotter border. :/

Politicians dictating retaliatory actions on the border should be stop once for all. Whether to keep border cold, warm, hot or popping hot should be left to the BSF and Army. Draw a threshold and intervene only if the situation reaches to war-like.

My point was yours should not be a good argument to hold talks with pakis.

[A_Gupta]

The "Joint Statement on India and Japan Vision 2025: Special Strategic and Global Partnership Working Together for Peace and Prosperity of the Indo-Pacific Region and the World" says that the Prime Ministers of the two countries:

...affirmed the importance of bringing the perpetrators of terrorist attacks including those of November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai to justice.

It is of significance to this thread, because of Japan's significance as a 0.5 friend of Pakistan.

As a reminder, from the BRF glossary:
https://sites.google.com/site/brfdictio ... lf-friends

Three and a Half Friends
These are countries who have, for various reasons, been the main contributors to propping up Pakistan through its entire history. The three friends refer to the United States of America, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and China. The half-friend refers to Japan because they usually do contribute aid money into the bottomless Pakistani drain, but only with US prompting.

"Three and a Half Friends" is sometimes abbreviated to "3.5" on the forum.

[A_Gupta]

The first post of the STFUP thread contains this link:

Whither Pakistan ? Growing Instability and Implications for India: an IDSA e-Book, July 2010
http://idsa.in/book/WhitherPakistan

The book is from 2010. It views Pakistan as a security-seeking state.
E.g., chapter IX

Thus Pakistani perception and policies are conditioned by a convoluted insecurity complex on the one hand and an exaggerated self-importance as an Islamic power with a manifest destiny on the other.

Chapter IX does note that:

It is rather strange that, even after acquiring nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any probable all- out Indian attack, Pakistan continues to be plagued by a sense of insecurity.

We come to 2014, when C.C. Fair publishes her "Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War". She writes and says that the idea of Pakistan as a security-seeking state is wrong.
""...I argue in the book that Pakistan's issues with India are ideological, they are philosophical, they are basically - its a civilizational conflict that Pakistan has set up, and therefore how can you resolve a civilizational conflict by resolving a contentious border?" (via my blog page http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2014/0 ... about.html which includes SSridhar's summary. )

I think views on BRF have been (even prior to C.C. Fair) that Pakistan is in a civilizational conflict with India; its behavior is not adequately explained by it being a security-seeking state.

I think NSA Dovalji understand the civilizational conflict aspect, at least from all the videos that have been posted on BRF of his speeches. IMO, the difference between MMS and Modi is this difference in viewpoint about Pakistan.

I think "Confidence Building Measures", CBMs, are appropriate with a security-seeking state. The idea is that a continuous lowering of the perceived threat leads to better behavior by the security-seeking state; and it spirals into a self-reinforcing cycle of better relations -> reduced perceived threat -> better relations. Among these CBMs would be greatly reduced covert operations.

The question is how does one deal with a state that is in a civilizational conflict?

IMO, a civilizational conflict is not resolvable until one or both parties are destroyed; or else, one party changes its nazariya. IMO, short of a final resolution, a cold peace is the best one can hope to achieve in a civilizational conflict. IMO, India wants to focus on development and not have conflict at this time (true of both MMS, Modi). IMO, on the surface, the steps to achieve this cold peace with a state in civilizational conflict look pretty much the same as the steps to achieve peace with a security-seeking state. So what Modi/Doval do, on the surface, look very much like what MMS did.

On the not-visible side, the actions will be quite different in the two cases. Here we have to accept on faith that the different understanding is resulting in different actions.

PS -- tuned the grammar and fixed typos.

[shiv]

Arun that is a thought provoking post and I will mull over it overnight and post any thoughts that might be provoked

[KLNMurthy]

Hello all..My first post here.
I am not really sure what the whole sell out logic of the talks with Pakistan is.... Ufa statement said border must be quiet and NSAs should meet to discuss terrorism. Once terrorism is addressed, composite dialog will resume. The borders are quieter as per recent news. The only sell out was meeting outside of India of the NSAs but the Ufa statement never said where the meeting would be.

Now SS in Pakistan essentially said the same thing. Terror should end and accordingly composite dialog will begin. In fact Pakistan assured of speedy Mumbai trials.

Where is the back tracking?

As a trainee, you should learn that making sense on this thread is frowned on.

A_Gupta, are you serious or are you sarcastic? Should we take a cafeteria approach or should we go for the whole SDRE Muniyandi Vilas, Meals Ready approach? Please explain.

[A_Gupta]

As Shiv wrote previously, depending on your perspective, it is sarcasm or it is serious.

[Hitesh]

Why are we humoring Sukhish? He is a Gandhi stooge in disguise, trying to brush over Gandhi family's perfidy and failures and pinning all the blames on Modi.

gandhi stooge really, what has ur 56 inch chest achieved so far in hard core substance ?, last thing I know was ur advani sitting next to terrioist in a plane and handing them over to khandhar. well where were all these folks at that point ? time for someone to do some start talking. i'am sorry I do not get aroused by speeches alone, I need to see lot more substance and result on ground, which I'am yet to see.

Oh really?? Did you forget MMS' speech of "giving a befitting reply" and it was all noise and no substance came out? It was actually MMS' pathetic attempt of puffing at 56 inch chest that did nothing. Modi actually brought tangible results that MMS could not even hope to dream about. Modi stared down President Xi when he came to visit India while Chinese troops were up to their hijinks and made President Xi take the troops back. Ever since we have hardly heard about Chinese intrusions since then.

When the Pak Army (rats) did their usual artillery, instead of being handicapped and hands tied behind backs, the IA was able to unleash its full fury against the Paki rats' nests and brought the incident under IA's terms.

You are so stupid and blind that it is hardly worth my time to debate you further. Enjoy being an asskisser of Gandhi who will always stoop to lick the feet of Gandhi.

[nirav]

Politicians dictating retaliatory actions on the border should be stop once for all. Whether to keep border cold, warm, hot or popping hot should be left to the BSF and Army. Draw a threshold and intervene only if the situation reaches to war-like.

My point was yours should not be a good argument to hold talks with pakis.

Okay.

Let BSF/IA decide to keep border hot and ask then to come to politicians only when situation is war like. Why include the politicos even then ? Might as well allow BSF/IA to start a war on their own cause if left to politicians, they will try their best to avert a war via "talks".



Going by the approach adopted by this govt I'm convinced that our core interests won't be compromised. I dont see a need for pre mature dhoti shiver.

PAjis have been given countless jhapads by BSF/IA in the past 18 months and spoken to in a language they understand best.
That they are begging for talks indicates that India is going into the talks from a position of strength.

I understand that these talks being held are much to the chagrin of a lot of members here.
Would like to request members who advocate no talks and continuous hot border onlee - try spending a day or two in border village areas fired upon by pakis.
Its easy to yell 'no talks only war' from the comfort of your homes. Pretty sure one would sing a different tune if those mortars were landing on your own homes.

The govt thankfully is trying to get a diplomatic solution.a ceasefire is much needed.

[Karan M]

The first post of the STFUP thread contains this link:

Whither Pakistan ? Growing Instability and Implications for India: an IDSA e-Book, July 2010
http://idsa.in/book/WhitherPakistan

The book is from 2010. It views Pakistan as a security-seeking state.
E.g., chapter IX

Thus Pakistani perception and policies are conditioned by a convoluted insecurity complex on the one hand and an exaggerated self-importance as an Islamic power with a manifest destiny on the other.

Chapter IX does note that:

It is rather strange that, even after acquiring nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any probable all- out Indian attack, Pakistan continues to be plagued by a sense of insecurity.

We come to 2014, when C.C. Fair publishes her "Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War". She writes and says that the idea of Pakistan as a security-seeking state is wrong.
""...I argue in the book that Pakistan's issues with India are ideological, they are philosophical, they are basically - its a civilizational conflict that Pakistan has set up, and therefore how can you resolve a civilizational conflict by resolving a contentious border?" (via my blog page http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2014/0 ... about.html which includes SSridhar's summary. )

I think views on BRF have been (even prior to C.C. Fair) that Pakistan is in a civilizational conflict with India; its behavior is not adequately explained by it being a security-seeking state.

I think NSA Dovalji understand the civilizational conflict aspect, at least from all the videos that have been posted on BRF of his speeches. IMO, the difference between MMS and Modi is this difference in viewpoint about Pakistan.

I think "Confidence Building Measures", CBMs, are appropriate with a security-seeking state. The idea is that a continuous lowering of the perceived threat leads to better behavior by the security-seeking state; and it spirals into a self-reinforcing cycle of better relations -> reduced threat -> better relations. Among these CBMs would be greatly reduced covert operations.

The question is how does one deal with a state that is in a civilizational conflict?

IMO, a civilizational conflict is not resolvable until one or both parties are destroyed; or else, one party changes its nazariya. IMO, a cold peace is the best one can hope to achieve in a civilizational conflict. IMO, India wants to focus on development and not have conflict at this time (true of both MMS, Modi). IMO, on the surface, the steps to achieve this cold peace with a state in civilizational conflict look pretty the same as the steps to achieve peace with a security-seeking state. So what Modi/Doval do, on the surface, look very much like what MMS did.

On the not-visible side, the actions will be quite different in the two cases. Here we have to accept on faith that the different understanding is resulting in different actions.

In a polite, well referenced and documented way, (which the guardians of thought we have in our establishment can't rebut easily) you have basically said the p-sec approach of looking at TSP as a "poor boys they need reassurance", the same theory as the one which was used/extended locally, is a failure and it takes a gora mem to tell the guardians of secoolarism that their thought process is incorrect.

IMHO, I came to that realization when i saw a video from 1965 war of their famous nur jehan or some singer singing a song about cowardly lalajis. That kind of poison is not insecurity, it is hatred of the other.

[A_Gupta]

Karan M,

Yes, but what I want to focus on "what is the visible policy difference between dealing with a security-seeking state and a state with a civilizational conflict?" Bringing up the IDSA book and C.C. Fair's work was simply to be specific about the two different points of view.

Some clearly visible policy differences might be -
1. Support for separatists in the state - e.g., give Balochi, Gilgit separatists a platform to speak.
2. Diplomatic encirclement (i.e., make clear to 3rd parties that their friendly gestures to Pakistan are unfriendly to India).

Some subtler, but visible policy differences might be -
1. More covert operations (invisible) which nevertheless increase the Pakistan's publicly stated fear of covert operations (visible).
2. Different "body language" and conditions for diplomatic talks, but the talks themselves may look pretty much the same.

etc.

[A_Gupta]

BTW, this train of thought was provoked by this essay, on a different topic,
http://witness-to-our-times.org/2015/12 ... n-freedom/
Since this topic in this essay is bound to be contentious, please, please separate discussion of it from the above question, which is "what is the visible policy difference between dealing with a security-seeking state and a state with a civilizational conflict?"

However, despite all similarities, the Paris attacks took on a dimension that did not and does not exist in reactions to the Mumbai attack. While India and the rest of the world were horrified by the violence and terror caused by these criminals, the self-description of the terrorists – as avengers for the repressed Muslims of India, particularly in Kashmir – was hardly discussed, let alone accepted. There was no talk of a ‘War of Civilizations’, except by the American press. Barring a few exceptions, no columnist or commentator, no eyewitness, Mumbaikar or otherwise, described 26/11 as an attack on something integral and abstract. There are hardly any descriptions to be found of 26/11 as an attack on Indian values, or as an assault on the Indian way of life – not in 2008, and not in the seven years since.

On the other hand, the Paris attack is described as exactly that: an assault on European values, on the ‘universal values’ Europe has given to humankind, on the European way of life, and on the freedom that Europe embodies.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's address to the nation after 26/11 can be found here:
https://www.indianembassy.org/archives_ ... hp?nid=952

"We are not prepared to countenance a situation in which the safety and security of our citizens can be violated with impunity by terrorists."

"We will take up strongly with our neighbours that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there would be a cost if suitable measures are not taken by them."

"We will go after these individuals and organizations and make sure that every perpetrator, organizer and supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays a heavy price for these cowardly and horrific acts against our people. "

The Indian response is about the safety and security of Indian citizens.

Compare with the statements by Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, which are all about freedom. E.g., even the King of the Netherlands

...Together with France, we will continue to steadfastly defend freedom against those who use terror to try and undermine it. We will never give up our values of freedom and solidarity....

The argument of the above cited essay is that the Indian response is different & superior to the European response.

When I read the essay, I said - it must be wrong, Indians have been writing about a civilizational conflict with Pakistan for a long time. Searching for citations, I went through the material on the 1st post of the STFUP thread, and by and large, the material is largely about a territorial dispute or else about Pakistan as a security-seeking state. The theme of civilizational conflict is at a very low key.

So, the next question - has the Indian understanding of the conflict with Pakistan evolved since then? How does it become visible in policy?

[Dipanker]

Creation of Pakistan itself based on the notion of civilisational conflict, Jinnah stated it in his two nation theory. I think Indian by and large know it, and have known it for a very long time.

Congress response to it has been contrived due to "Nehruvian" legacy and "electoral" politics.

[A_Gupta]

Dipanker,

By and large Indian thought has been along the lines of "the two-nation theory was drowned in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 by Indira Gandhi". After that, IMO (but my memory is poor) even recalcitrant IMs understood that they have to make their home in India; there is no Islamic Paradise waiting for them in Pakistan. IMO (again my memory fades, maybe I know it but it was not covered widely?) the well-publicized plight of Pakistani Muslims of Bihari extraction stranded in Bangladesh, with Pakistan refusing their repatriation to (West) Pakistan kind of hammered the nails in the coffin of the two-nation theory.

IMO, not holding a war crimes tribunal after 1971, which would have seared that into Pakistani memory, is a mistake that India made that permits the two-nation theory to raise its head again. There used to be a great article by Bapa Rao that I cannot find, that argues this.

[ramana]

Arun Here you go:

http://www.outlookindia.com/article/thi ... ght/211145

Bangladesh
Thirty Years Of Twilight
It's over thirty years now, but the horrors of the genocide in Bangladesh and our bizarre decision to let the Pakistani military criminals go free instead of prosecuting them for crimes against humanity remains a karmic millstone around the collective neck of the people of the subcontinent.
K.V. Bapa Rao

When the sun sinks in the west
Die a million people of the Bangladesh

--Joan Baez, Song of Bangladesh, 1972

The … totalitarian [Pakistani military] government was incensed and gave vent to its fury on the black night of 25th March [1971]. …Jagannath Hall [a predominantly Hindu students’ hostel in Dhaka University] too faced the fury of the Pakistani Army.
United Pakistan ended on March 25-26, 1971 when the Pakistani military launched its genocide of Bengalis; Indian participation in delivering the coup de grace was a mere implementation detail.



These past thirty years we have remained callously indifferent to our obligation to invest the memory of the martyrs of 1971 with lasting meaning.



Incessant [shelling] and blood-letting continued [there] throughout the night of the 25th and the day of the 26th. After the shelling, the soldiers went from room to room and brought out all the students and bearers to the field in front of the hall. There they were forced to dig their own graves. Subsequently they were all shot and buried in the graves they had dug themselves.


-- Excerpt from eyewitness account of Professor Rafiqul Islam, Dhaka University, appearing at http://www.virtualbangladesh.com)

Thirty years after the actual event, I think of the Bangladesh holocaust as a drama that plays on in the twilight regions of the collective psyche of the subcontinent.
They boasted that they would reseed, through mass rape, the "inferior" Bengali stock with the "superior" Punjabi and Baluchi genes of Pakistani military personnel.



The horror of the genocide itself lurks in the shadows, never quite acknowledged by the main actors Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, let alone the world at large. Lurking, it has continued to be a karmic millstone around the collective neck of the people of the subcontinent, stretching all the way from Afghanistan to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, from Kashmir to Sri Lanka.


Those same twilight shadows also serve to offset the brighter regions, dimly visible but distinctly present in the light of the sun poised just beyond the horizon.
A people who witness the law promptly and effectively upholding the values of decency and humanity would be unlikely to resort to, or even acquiesce in, any kind of tyranny.



India, as an idea that embodies all that is true and free and good and just, has survived in our minds and hearts, transcending--though barely at times-the murk of indifference, intolerance, cynicism, venality,
The Pakistani military murdered a million people in a span of 9 months: their "kill rate" exceeded that of the Nazis by at least 33%

stupidity and disparagement.
The Pakistani military murdered a million people in a span of 9 months: their "kill rate" exceeded that of the Nazis by at least 33%


For a generation that came of age during the
searing months following the break of the Spring of 1971, the tale of rampant evil, horror, compassion, resistance, unmitigated heroism and brilliant victory of good over evil continues to be the cornerstone of an undying faith that the world can be made right.


Are we forever doomed to languish in the twilight where we remain generally protective of India but continue to acquiesce in flagrant insults to the ideals and values that India stands for? Or could those ideals and values be brought forth into the light of day to take root, flourish and flourishing, liberate us? I believe that attempting to understand 1971 and the fate of its martyrs will help us tackle this question.

Midnight to Mid-day, or Good Triumphs over Rampant Evil

The events of 1971, from the start of the holocaust on the midnight of March 25-26, to victory on December 17, unfold like a grand Manichean conflict between consummate heroes and villains.
Yet there was no outraged protest from the world when Indira Gandhi effectively told the Pakistani military that they could commit genocide with impunity.



If an overwrought imagination were to have conjured up a villain for this drama, it could scarcely have matched the real-life monstrosity of the Pakistani military and their surrogates the razaakaars, stormtroopers of religious fascism. Together, they trampled on the people’s democratic verdict for freedom and justice, with atrocities that beggared the imagination, carried out on a scale that boggled the mind. They were driven by a heinous agenda that was quite open-senior Pakistani military officers boasted to western media about their project to render the populace of Bangladesh hindurein, rid its Islam of its liberal element, and to re-seed, through mass rape of its women, the "inferior" Bengali stock with the "superior" Punjabi and Baluchi genes of Pakistani military personnel.


The dystopic reich that the Pakistani military sought to impose was resisted with ferocity by the people of Bangladesh, who emerged as larger-than-life heroes. Not just the leaders like Sheikh Mujib, Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin, Majors Zia and Jaleel, but just ordinary folks, Hindu and Muslim, fighting it out with the villains under the banner of the Mukti Bahini when they could, and when they couldn’t, making the perilous trek, with families, to India’s safe refuge.

It was then the turn of the Indian people to find the hero within their collective self.
Good triumphed over Evil, and India was Good, undeniably so. Out of such brightly shining memories is formed a lifetime of optimism about the rightness and possibility of India.



Proving that theirs is not a poverty of spirit, Indians took in over 10 million Hindu and Muslim Bangladeshis fleeing the holocaust with the meagrest of possessions. Everyone chipped in, the poorest disproportionately so, through the uniform 5 paise refugee surcharge levied on all postage. Everyone, it seemed, understood; no one complained. Compassion and sympathy for the travails of the refugees were everywhere evident.


The political front, amoral by definition, witnessed a rare alignment of righteousness and pragmatic goals. It was a political goal for India to repatriate the 10 million-plus refugees under safe and honorable conditions. The Pakistani military had stubbornly lodged itself in the Devil’s camp as it were, and its sponsors-Mao’s China and the Nixon-Kissinger United States--were indifferent or hostile to India’s goal; this meant that India had to go to war on the side of the angels. (Be it noted here that the notion, often bandied about, that India merely fished in troubled waters to bisect its old enemy Pakistan, is entirely without merit or substance: United Pakistan ended on March 25-26, 1971 when the Pakistani military launched its genocide of Bengalis; Indian participation in delivering the coup de grace was a mere implementation detail.)



It matters not what religious label they usurp—Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist—they are all the same villain in different garbs.



General A. A. K. Niazi, signing the instrument of Surrender in front of General of Officer Commanding in Chief of India and Bangladesh Forces in the Eastern Theatre, Lt. General Jagjit Singh Aurora. 16th December, 1971">


Thus was added to the ranks of heroes in this tale the Indian political leadership and the armed forces. In a brilliant joint military campaign with the Mukti Bahini, the Indians moved with efficiency and dispatch, and made the bad guys surrender, 93,000 officers and troops, soft in actual battle though doubtless weary from nine months of murdering civilians by the million. This, despite Chinese threats on land borders and US threats by sea, on the side of the villains. The gods, it seemed, sided with the good guys for once.

The Indian military helped liberate Bangladesh, saw to the repatriation of the refugees, and, returned to India, all in record time, making the cynics look foolish. Looking back after 30 years, it was as grand a moment to be Indian as any in living memory. Good triumphed over Evil, and India was Good, undeniably so. Out of such brightly shining memories is formed a lifetime of optimism about the rightness and possibility of India.

The Twilight, or What Might Have Been But Wasn’t

Would that this tale had ended here. If it had, I fancy that the subcontinent today would have been a place of sunlight, not the place of shadowy twilight it is now.
When a huge monstrous crime goes unacknowledged and unpunished, a million smaller crimes flourish in the cynical shadow of its impunity.



In this fond alternate reality, the drama spanning March 25-26 through December 17 would have been a living metaphor for the ineffable will of the people of the subcontinent, set firmly against tyranny and evil of the kind represented by the Pakistani military. The people’s armed might, arrayed decisively on the side of liberty, justice, pluralism and democracy, would have freed up the culture’s genius to reassert itself.


That did not happen. Bigotry, misogyny, and totalitarianism are alive and operating with impunity in the subcontinent today. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, they can boast of owning militaries (with nations tagging along in their wakes, it sometimes seems), but elsewhere in the subcontinent, and certainly including India, these villainous tendencies that starred in the 1971 drama possess powerful and flourishing constituencies. It matters not what religious label they usurp-Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist-they are all the same villain in different garbs.

What has happened instead is a non-event: the twin facts that millions died, and the forces of good achieved a remarkable military victory over their murderers, have been kept from being invested with a deep and lasting significance. This failure was the direct outcome of a deliberate decision by Indira Gandhi’s government to not pursue the trials of the Pakistani military prisoners on charges of crimes against humanity, a decision to which Bangladesh acquiesced, and the politicians and people of India barely paid attention.

In hindsight, this was an incredible and tragic omission.
Words have great power, especially when they are righteous, and enough people from our billion-plus population speak them with one voice.



Consider that, conservatively speaking, the Pakistani military murdered a million people in a span of 9 months. If we go by the reputed number of 6 million murdered in the Nazi holocaust over a period of at least 6 years, it follows that the Pakistani military’s "kill rate" exceeded that of the Nazis by at least 33%. Yet there was no outraged protest from the world when Indira Gandhi effectively told the Pakistani military that they could commit genocide with impunity.


Surprisingly, even India’s own political factions failed to appreciate the partisan political gains to be had from protesting this impunity. Despite the Pakistani military’s deliberate targeting of Hindus, the Hindu Right showed no particular interest in making the criminals answer to their crimes. Nor was the self-styled Progressive element (from the Communist parties to the Naxalites) moved to denounce to the failure to punish the fascist murderers of innocent Bengali peasants. Incredibly, there was no voice of consequence anywhere demanding from the Pakistani military even so much as an acknowledgement of, and apology for, their atrocities. Needless to say, the question of forcing Pakistan to make reparation to Bangladesh was not seriously considered either.

It seemed that practically everyone in India was content with the atavistic pleasure of defeating an enemy in war, and no one thought to seize the history of the moment, and put it through the judicial system and other apparatus of civilized society.
We Indians have brought India and the subcontinent to this wretched pass by our bizarre decision three decades ago to let the Pakistani military criminals go free



Had they done so, I believe that it would have been much less thinkable in the subcontinent for anyone to flaunt retrograde values of the kind embodied by the Pakistani military.


In the highly publicized Nuremberg trials following the Allied triumph in World War II, Nazi officials and members of the Wehrmacht, the regular German military were tried on charges deriving from the holocaust of the Jews, Gypsies and other minorities in Nazi-occupied areas. Many of the accused officials were executed, and several imprisoned. (Many escaped to South America, only to be hunted down by celebrated Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal, and many were brought to trial, convicted and punished. )

One consequence of the Nuremberg trials and the Allied occupation of Germany was that the public value system of the former West Germany was systematically purged of Nazi sentiment. The proverbial "good Germans" were made to take responsibility for the atrocities that took place with their acquiescence and participation. This process was less in evidence in the case of Communist East Germany, where the Commissars deemed that it was extirpation enough for the State to embrace Socialism. Tellingly, today in unified Germany, there is a neo-Nazism that appears to have far less social acceptance in the former West Germany.

Imagine that, thirty years ago, the people of the subcontinent had an opportunity to witness, in a public courtroom, an accounting of the horrors perpetrated by the Pakistani military, along with the sheer depravity of the value system underlying their deliberate choice to commit these crimes against humanity. Imagine further that the trials culminated in at least a few of Pakistan’s military officers hanging by their necks from the gibbets of Tihar prison.

I believe that such a consummation would have sent a powerful and profoundly transformative message to the collective psyche of the subcontinent. Firstly, the people of Pakistan would have been spared three decades of shameful moral degradation resulting from their country’s military-dominated establishment denying outright, or inventing silly alibis (such as "Hindu conspiracy") for, the loathsome social values they had espoused, and the monstrous crimes they perpetrated in defense of those values-all in the name of the Pakistani people and Islam. The moral clarity that would have resulted from having been forced to confront and exorcise the evil represented by their military guardians, might have better equipped those hapless people to stand up to the pernicious brand of militant Islam that General Zia-ul-Haq inflicted on them.

In India itself, a trial would have meant that organizations like the Shiv Sena and leaders like Bal Thackeray would not have been allowed to perpetrate, let alone get away with, anti-Muslim pogroms of the kind they carried out in 1993.

Given that Thackeray and his followers espouse a value system that is more or less the mirror image of the Pakistani military’s value system, it is hard to imagine his kind flourishing in a public space that is imbued with an abhorrence of such values, and is possessed of a well-founded confidence in the effectiveness of the law in interdicting the criminal pursuit of those values.

A Nuremberg-like trial might have spared Bangladesh too, of the pain and suffering of seeing its founding father brutally murdered and their society’s subsequent descent into a protracted period of dictatorship and growing bigotry. A people who witness the law promptly and effectively upholding the values of decency and humanity would be unlikely to resort to, or even acquiesce in, any kind of tyranny. In particular, they might have avoided the repression unleashed on the Chakma people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a repression ironically reminiscent of their own repression at the hands of the Pakistani military.

The social climate engendered by placing the Pakistani military in the dock might also have shamed Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority out of their openly racist attitude towards their Tamil compatriots. In turn, it might also have curbed the drift of the Tamil resistance into reactionary fascism.

An open airing of the crimes of the Pakistani military would also have engendered in the Indian public a greater sensitivity to the evil consequences of failing to respect the electoral verdict of a people, thus making it politically harder for Rajiv Gandhi’s government and Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference to get away with stealing the Jammu & Kashmir elections in 1987, an act widely acknowledged to be the root cause of the present insurgency in that state.

Reality today is that every one of these undesirable, but avoidable, outcomes has come to pass. Instead of a chastened and enlightened Pakistani populace, we have a society in the thrall of a triumphant military that has effectively annexed Afghanistan and bids fair to do the same with Kashmir. Never having repudiated the disgusting social value system for which they slaughtered the Bengalis in 1971, the Pakistani military and their surrogates have only grown more sophisticated and self-assured in employing the propagation of such a value system as both the instrument and goal of their expansionist project

In India, Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena have been rewarded with legitimacy and electoral success for their achievement of replicating the Pakistani military’s values and crimes. In Bangladesh, razaakaar leaders like Golam Azam have attained respectability and influence, and the minority Hindus have been relegated to the terrorized margins. Sri Lanka has been unable to break out of its bloody ethnic stalemate, with neither the Sinhalese nor the Tamils being compelled by humanistic social values to break out of their respective sectarian cocoons.

Perhaps the most tragic outcome of failing to remember and understand 1971 is in Kashmir. Having squandered the opportunity to affirm the values on which it was founded, the Indian State and society have failed miserably to articulate a moral dimension to their stand against the secessionists of Kashmir. Instead, they have relied solely on an unimaginative, on again, off again repressive campaign against the people of the Valley, a campaign that has been hurtful and destructive to the Kashmiri people, though it bears no qualitative resemblance to the Pakistani military’s Bangladesh campaign. No matter, the failure of Indians everywhere to take an affirmative moral stand on Kashmir has meant in effect, that India had ceded the moral high ground to, astonishingly, the Pakistani military. By nurturing in this manner the Pakistani military’s illusion of legitimacy, India has helped sustain the morale of the retrograde social forces of Pakistan that thirst to annex Kashmir. In turn, this has sustained the conflict and spread the shadows of nuclear destruction over the whole subcontinent.

All this is Indians’ own fault for failing to force prosecution of the Pakistani military’s crimes against humanity in 1971, and in effect, sweeping the crimes under the carpet with their own hands. We have let the evil monster live and flourish, and simultaneously let our civilization’s values rot away from sheer indifference at the very moment that they shone the brightest after having triumphed militarily over the monster. Is it any wonder that today we are hard put to find any but the most outrageously trivialized travesties of these values in our public sphere, and forces inimical to those values threaten our nation’s very future?

Conclusion: From Twilight to Daylight, or Can we Redeem Our Values?

We Indians have brought India and the subcontinent to this wretched pass by our bizarre decision three decades ago to let the Pakistani military criminals go free; furthermore, during these past thirty years we have remained callously indifferent to our obligation to invest the memory of the martyrs of 1971 with lasting meaning. Can we make up for our past indifference now, and honor the memory of the dead by endeavoring to bring Indian values of freedom, democracy, pluralism and justice out of the twilight of indifference into the daylight of credibility?

I believe we can do this. Although the challenge seems daunting, even rather unrealistic, on the surface, we can make a start by noting that often, when a huge monstrous crime goes unacknowledged and unpunished, a million smaller crimes flourish in the cynical shadow of its impunity. Conversely, by calling to account a visible, egregious mega-criminal, society vests its value system with the needed weight of authority to confront and deter smaller criminals.

Based on this principle, the obvious course of action is for Indians to proclaim, loudly and often, and in all the right places, the grotesque offences against decent human values that the Pakistani military continues to get away with thirty years after March 25-26, 1971, and demand incessantly that, as an institution, the Pakistani military be made to pay for its crimes. This may seem a quixotic enterprise, likely to generate only a lot of words that would be apt to be ignored by the Pakistani military and the rest of the world. But not so--words have great power, especially when they are righteous, and enough people from our billion-plus population speak them with one voice as it were. And they discomfit the guilty; I recall with pleasure the full-page advertisement exposing the villainy of the Pakistani military that was taken out in Western papers by an Indian group during the Kargil conflict and the resultant foot-stamping outrage of the supporters of that noisome institution.

On the domestic front, we must begin to question the rightness of all commerce with the Pakistani military. That would mean asking the Indian government what it means to be talking of making peace in Kashmir with the unreconstructed sword-arm of all that is abhorrent to Indian values, and demanding to know from the Hurriyet Conference why they believe it is moral to fight India with the backing of the anti-human Pakistani military.

Starting this project by starting in on the Pakistani military has several key benefits: (1) it is a non-controversial choice as that institution is obviously guilty, even going by their own wishy-washy Hamoodur Rahman Commission report; (2) it would undermine the Pakistani military’s sense of legitimacy and righteousness, thus weakening their campaign to occupy Kashmir; (3) best of all, it may, at long last, help strengthen the long-suffering decent folk of Pakistan in their resolve to rid themselves of the yoke of their military and the inhuman value system that it represents

Naturally, given the reality of Indian sectarian politics and the fact that the Pakistani military can boast a goodly number of Indian acolytes of all religious stripes, bashers of the Pakistani military can expect to find themselves facing charges of hypocrisy in rather short order. This is to the good of course, since it would impel a broad-based national conversation on the extent to which Pakistani military values have been allowed to infect Indian society because we failed to learn the lessons of 1971. After all, our project is to bring credibility to Indian values, which are really human values, of course.

After World War II, many Nazis escaped after having defied those human values and participated in the slaughter of over 6 million humans. People like Simon Wiesenthal pursued those fugitive monsters, with the intent of bringing quietus to the souls of the dead and affirming the values the Nazis had violated so egregiously. The souls of the victims of the Pakistani military are no less deserving of the peace of knowing that they have not died meaningless deaths. By speaking out on their behalf, and refusing to let their murderers get away, I hope Indians will help bring those souls home, out of the chill twilight of indifference that has lasted thirty long years.

It was rather hard for me to write this piece; one might say it took 30 years. I humbly dedicate this effort to the memory of the martyrs of 1971.

For information on the depredations of the Pakistani military in Bangladesh in 1971, see http://www.virtualbangladesh.com.

K.V. Bapa Rao
26 March, 2001

[Anujan]

This was from 4 years ago:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/cricket/a ... mxNpM.html

A handshake that 'nauseated' Imran

“When Imran saw Modi, a feeling of nausea hit him as he took his seat on the panel. It was overpowering and worsened when, to his dismay, he noticed Modi sprinting towards him,” states the book in the chapter titled — Beyond Borders.
“The Gujarat chief minister stood right in front of him, and Imran tried to look away, but Modi wasn’t deterred. He took Imran’s hands and shook them warmly....It was a difficult moment and gradually Imran became mute,” the author noted.

Nausea got cured now?

[Gagan]

Guys
That 3.5 friends theorum needs modification.
India is at least a 0.5 friend of Pakistan, or atleast some clearly identified and some hidden entities are.
Massa's, Japan's behaviour towards Pakistan often takes measure of how India behaves with Pakistan.
Some of our netas in the past have provided the much needed oxygen to Pakistan by their acts of commission, or at the very least treating Pakistan as an equal all these years thus emboldening them to become reckless in their haramigiri!

India and many Indians by their dhimmitude act as the 0.5 friend !!!

[shiv]

It is rather strange that, even after acquiring nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any probable all- out Indian attack, Pakistan continues to be plagued by a sense of insecurity.

BTW, this train of thought was provoked by this essay, on a different topic,
http://witness-to-our-times.org/2015/12 ... n-freedom/
Since this topic in this essay is bound to be contentious, please, please separate discussion of it from the above question, which is "what is the visible policy difference between dealing with a security-seeking state and a state with a civilizational conflict?"

My first reaction is Oh shit.

Oh shit. You have hit upon something here and I am unable to put my finger on it.

I believe we have actually looked at some of these questions from different angles, and indeed, India as a civilization has sort of intuitively handled it as a civilizational conflict from an era long before anyone commented on it. Any contemporary observer of this conflict who recognizes it as one also needs to recognize that Indians have collectively viewed and responded to this as a civilizational conflict, and those earlier responses have scarred Pakistan in ways that have changed Pakistan and modified their responses.

In other words Pakistani actions and responses today are the result of civilizational conflict that has hurt them and scared them in some ways, and they can actually see no way out without losing the conflict. They may have responded in a way that seeks to aggravate the conflict and somehow squeeze out victory, proving the superiority of what they are trying to show as "Pakistani civilization"

That is where the crux of the problem lies and we all know it even if no one else does. "Pakistani civilization". There is no such thing. Pakistanis. as a subset of Indian Muslims tried to subtract all elements of their language, culture and behaviour that they dubbed as "Hindu"/Kaafir leaving themselves with a restricted bunch of "allowed behaviours" which is basically what is allowed in Islam. Pakistanis, while ostensibly attacking Indian Hindus and Sikhs were fundamentally attacking themselves akin to Voldemort destroying some of his own horcruxes.

Unfortunately, for survival and acceptance Pakistanis time and again had to depend on showing the old kafir culture as their own and claiming to be Indian and of Indian ancestry when the need arose. This gambit was moderately successful until 1971. In the Zia era, Zia ul Haq who I think was a low IQ plodder - the "son of a mullah" - ie mullahnic tendencies without insight tried to forcibly wipe out everything and keep only Islam as per the book.

One question that arises from this is as follows: "Is a Muslim a pure practitioner of Islam as per the book, or is a Muslim a more variegated and complex person who has a layer of culture that is not directly taken from the book". It turns out that a lot of Indian and Pakistani Muslims were the latter - that is colourful/variegated people who had a layer of culture not directly taken out of Islamic texts. Oh yes they called themselves Muslim and did everything that Muslims were supposed to do - including murdering Kafirs, but they did not know how much they had imbibed as a culture from India. Trying to subtract that element from their own behaviour left a void and that void was sought to be filled by the Quran and hadiths because of the idea that Islam is a complete way of life. Whether islam is a complete way of life or not is a separate subject and I will post a relevant image later. But clearly Islam had not filled the void for Pakistanis. Increasing Islamization has only led to conflict, murder and war.

For us Indians who constantly excoriate ourselves on our alleged lack of courage and totally subservient secularism, I think we need to recognize that we were the first in the world to break free from the politically correct demand to fail to name Islam as a problem. Indians, under the surface have been open and voluble about Islam being a problem leading to murder and violence.We never blamed it on poverty, illiteracy or madrassas. We did not have to do that. That Islam had a problem was clear to us even as we were asked to shut the fuk up up and be secular. I think it was that realization that made everyone on BRF accept readily that the best thing that Pakistan could get was "more Islam". Secular Indians have attempted to ask Pakistanis to be "normal". But to be normal they have to get back to their culture that they left behind. Since Pakistani founding fathers voluntarily left behind that kaafir culture and embraced Islam, pure Islam is what they must have and must enjoy.

Indians are watching Pakistan's rejection of Indian culture and embracing of pure Islam with a sense of schadenfreude. Indian culture never demanded that anyone should give up Islam. Indian culture never demanded that prayers should not by hollered out of a minaret five times a day. Indian culture never demanded that people should or should not wear any particular type of clothes. Indian culture only demanded that everyone be allowed to do his own thing. It is the latter demand that threatens Islam. Pakistanis pulled out to escape from that. Now they must enjoy what they have.

[arun]

Green on Green Intra-Mohammadden violence as the Un-uniformed Jihadi’s of the Taliban take on the Uniformed Jihadi’s of the Punjabi dominated military of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to prove who is more green. RFE/RL affiliate Radio Mashaal reports that the Un-uniformed Jihadi’s of the Taliban have taken responsibility for two attacks targeting present and retired member/s of the Uniformed Jihadi’s :

Taliban Claims Responsibility For Two Pakistan Attacks

[Falijee]

Islamic school founder a mystery

MISSISSAUGA - Controversial Islamic scholar Farhat Hashmi, who teaches that a Muslim wife should be “obedient” to her husband, is a woman of mystery.
We know she has schools around the world, including the Al-Huda Institute of Canada in Mississauga.
We know Tashfeen Malik — the female assassin in last week’s massacre in San Bernardino — studied at Al-Huda’s branch in Multan, Pakistan, for two years and left without completing a diploma.
Although on her website she distanced herself from Malik, we don’t know where Hashmi is.
Some media reports say she lives in Canada. Others say she was ordered deported in 2006.

Apparently, she is back now, in the "Land Of The Pure", preaching her message of "love and peace"

What we also know is woman after woman in niqabs or hijabs, some with infants, came and went cordially from the Mississauga madrassa on a routine Monday.
The ones I met all knew the name Farhat Hashmi.
“Everyone knows her name,” said one woman.
“She is our founder,” said another. “A very nice woman. Very humble.”

So let’s talk with her. Is she here?
“She has visited here but she is in Pakistan,” said one student.
There was a suggestion she hasn’t been in Mississauga since 2009, but no one seems to be able to say for sure.

She is likely under the "protection" of the "Deep State", until this latest terrorist episode gets off the media headlines; it will be interesting to note if the FBI is allowed to interrogate her to establish a link between her and the lady terrorist .

[arun]

In the Green on Green Intra-Mohammadden struggle in North Waziristan dubbed Zarb-e-Azb between the Uniformed Jihadi’s of the Punjabi dominated military of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Un-uniformed Jihadi’s of the Pathan / Pushtun dominated Taliban to determine who is the Greenest of them all, the Uniformed Jihadi’s claim losing 488 of their own with 1,900 injured while killing 3,400 of their erstwhile strategic assets:

Pakistan: 3,400 Militants, Nearly 500 Soldiers Die in Counterinsurgency Operation

[A_Gupta]

^^^ shiv, I think our Indian forefathers on the whole saw the jihadis as a bunch of bandits with a death ideology, not as bearers of a competing civilization. The encounter that really bruised the Indian spirit was with the Europeans who indeed represent a conquering alien civilization.

[ramana]

^^^ shiv, I think our Indian forefathers on the whole saw the jihadis as a bunch of bandits with a death ideology, not as bearers of a competing civilization. The encounter that really bruised the Indian spirit was with the Europeans who indeed represent a conquering alien civilization.

they saw them as a kabila that would melt away.

[Prem]

Pakistan’s external debt set to grow to whopping $90b
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1009032/in- ... pping-90b/

SLIMABAD: Pakistan’s external debt is projected to grow to a whopping $90 billion in the next four years and the country will need $20 billion a year just to meet its external financing requirements amid concerns that all constitutional arrangements put in place to manage debt have become ineffective.The external debt figures compiled by renowned economist and the country’s former finance minister Dr Hafiz Pasha are about $14 billion higher than the projections made by the International Monetary Fund.Dr Pasha’s projections are based on official data. The $14 billion difference was mainly on account of foreign loans that will fly in to finance China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects. The government is not including CPEC loans in total public debt.“At the moment, we do not have details about the loans that will be taken under the CPEC,” said Ehtesham Rashid, Director General of the Debt Office at the Ministry of Finance, while responding to these projections.There is enormous support for the CPEC in Pakistan but this game-changing corridor has financial implications for the country that have to be highlighted for better management of debt, said Dr Pasha. His comments come after State Bank of Pakistan governor Ashraf Wathra in an interview last week said there was a need to divulge more details on the debt and investment portions of CPEC, stressing the need for more transparency on part of the government.
Dr Pasha said by 2018-19 amortisation payments would double to $8.3 billion. The current account deficit – the gap between external payments and receipts – will exponentially widen to 4% of the total size of the economy against this year’s level of just under 1% of GDP, he said.The current account deficit will widen due to import of machinery and plants for CPEC projects, in addition to imported fuel like Liquefied Natural Gas and coal.As against IMF’s projections of just $8.6 billion requirement, Dr Pasha said that total external financing needs, including bridging the current account deficit and repayment of loans, will alarmingly triple to $20 billion by 2018-19.“This will push the total external debt to $90 billion by 2018-19, showing a growth of 38% over current volume of the foreign debt of over $65 billion,” said Dr Pasha.He said Pakistan’s exports would have to improve to at least $36 billion if the alarming increase in debt was to be arrested. The country’s exports currently hover around the $24-billion mark.Sakib Sherani, former Principal Economic Advisor to Ministry of Finance, said that the government was playing with debt numbers. His comments come after the government’s decision to exclude non-plan loans from public debt.He said the debt-to-GDP ratio has become irrelevant in case of Pakistan as the country lacks the capacity to repay the debt even at its current 65% level of debt-to-GDP ratio.“In case of Pakistan, the debt-to-revenue ratio is more relevant. 350% would be the limit, beyond which it wouldn’t be sustainable. Currently, this ratio stands at an alarming 523%,” said Sherani.“By 2018-19, the debt-to-revenue ratio will be over 750%,” said Dr Pasha.In order to ensure transparency, there must be a law requiring government to take parliamentary approval of any deal signed with the foreign governments and lending agencies, said Dr Kaiser Bengali, an economic consultant to government of Balochistan.

[Karan M]

Arun saar, the problem is the moment anyone would say TSP has a civilizational conflict, the next step would be an attack on the person postulating it as being a proponent of the two nation theory. There are none so blind as those unwilling to see, and since many Indians conflate any mention of civilizational issues being equivalent to criticizing Islam (which would be verboten) and endorsing the 2 nation theory, that is that. We have done self taqqiya and unless that veil is lifted..only CC Fair (and you) can say what is what. But sincere folks like you will be ignored or (as is usual) name called and forced to self censor

You would have seen these two links before, but I just post them to point out how thinking has been forced into a certain direction.
http://rashtravarta.blogspot.in/2008/09 ... th-if.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand190412.htm

This is a national level effort on making sure thought only goes into a certain direction. It was done in an organized fashion with an entire ecosystem set up to propogate that thought process.

Only once that is removed can harsh measures against a civilizational opponent be undertaken. Otherwise, even covert operations if they go public, the next duffer who gets into a position of authority, will be so brainwashed he will stop them. eg Gujral.

IMHO to deter Pakistan

This is the most important. Elect nationalist Govts which accept there is a civilizational conflict and India must win. Not muddle around.

Then:
1. Conventional build up & periodic usage (eg LOC fire assaults/local dominance). This also means continued focus on local MIC. No country won a long term war by relying on imports
2. Strategic Build up (deters TSP adventurism or thoughts they can win by a sudden strike)
3. Ties with 3.5 states to ensure their support to TSP declines or reduces.
4. Economic growth continues.
5. Covert ops accelerated
6. Support for TSP centrifugal elements - Balochis, Sindhis, Mohajirs
7. Out & out acts which constantly "suppress" aspirations of Pak deep state aka military state. Appeasement won't work. We'll just pander to a monster. Eg we should sanction any firm which supplies weapons to TSP or tie it to broader ties as a matter of policy.
8. Strong internal security. No excuses accepted coordination between state/central agencies to go after the jihadi-overground worker nexus.

[johneeG]

^^^ shiv, I think our Indian forefathers on the whole saw the jihadis as a bunch of bandits with a death ideology, not as bearers of a competing civilization. The encounter that really bruised the Indian spirit was with the Europeans who indeed represent a conquering alien civilization.

they saw them as a kabila that would melt away.

Interestingly the same central asian kabilas keep coming back under the flag of different religions. I think this pattern started after the drying up of Saraswathi river thereby opening up the western flank.

India has two options:
a) build a huge wall or canal or artificial river and hope that it stops the nomads.
b) take the civilization to the nomads.

I think option (a) is defensive and will not work because these central asians directly or indirectly depend on India and they become desperate at some point if they are completely cut off. It is better to build trade and civilizational ties.

[rohitvats]

It is rather strange that, even after acquiring nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any probable all- out Indian attack, Pakistan continues to be plagued by a sense of insecurity.

BTW, this train of thought was provoked by this essay, on a different topic,
http://witness-to-our-times.org/2015/12 ... n-freedom/
Since this topic in this essay is bound to be contentious, please, please separate discussion of it from the above question, which is "what is the visible policy difference between dealing with a security-seeking state and a state with a civilizational conflict?"

My first reaction is Oh shit.

Oh shit. You have hit upon something here and I am unable to put my finger on it.

I believe we have actually looked at some of these questions from different angles, and indeed, India as a civilization has sort of intuitively handled it as a civilizational conflict from an era long before anyone commented on it. Any contemporary observer of this conflict who recognizes it as one also needs to recognize that Indians have collectively viewed and responded to this as a civilizational conflict, and those earlier responses have scarred Pakistan in ways that have changed Pakistan and modified their responses.

In other words Pakistani actions and responses today are the result of civilizational conflict that has hurt them and scared them in some ways, and they can actually see no way out without losing the conflict. They may have responded in a way that seeks to aggravate the conflict and somehow squeeze out victory, proving the superiority of what they are trying to show as "Pakistani civilization"

That is where the crux of the problem lies and we all know it even if no one else does. "Pakistani civilization". There is no such thing. Pakistanis. as a subset of Indian Muslims tried to subtract all elements of their language, culture and behaviour that they dubbed as "Hindu"/Kaafir leaving themselves with a restricted bunch of "allowed behaviours" which is basically what is allowed in Islam. Pakistanis, while ostensibly attacking Indian Hindus and Sikhs were fundamentally attacking themselves akin to Voldemort destroying some of his own horcruxes.

Unfortunately, for survival and acceptance Pakistanis time and again had to depend on showing the old kafir culture as their own and claiming to be Indian and of Indian ancestry when the need arose. This gambit was moderately successful until 1971. In the Zia era, Zia ul Haq who I think was a low IQ plodder - the "son of a mullah" - ie mullahnic tendencies without insight tried to forcibly wipe out everything and keep only Islam as per the book.

One question that arises from this is as follows: "Is a Muslim a pure practitioner of Islam as per the book, or is a Muslim a more variegated and complex person who has a layer of culture that is not directly taken from the book". It turns out that a lot of Indian and Pakistani Muslims were the latter - that is colourful/variegated people who had a layer of culture not directly taken out of Islamic texts. Oh yes they called themselves Muslim and did everything that Muslims were supposed to do - including murdering Kafirs, but they did not know how much they had imbibed as a culture from India. Trying to subtract that element from their own behaviour left a void and that void was sought to be filled by the Quran and hadiths because of the idea that Islam is a complete way of life. Whether islam is a complete way of life or not is a separate subject and I will post a relevant image later. But clearly Islam had not filled the void for Pakistanis. Increasing Islamization has only led to conflict, murder and war.

For us Indians who constantly excoriate ourselves on our alleged lack of courage and totally subservient secularism, I think we need to recognize that we were the first in the world to break free from the politically correct demand to fail to name Islam as a problem. Indians, under the surface have been open and voluble about Islam being a problem leading to murder and violence.We never blamed it on poverty, illiteracy or madrassas. We did not have to do that. That Islam had a problem was clear to us even as we were asked to shut the fuk up up and be secular. I think it was that realization that made everyone on BRF accept readily that the best thing that Pakistan could get was "more Islam". Secular Indians have attempted to ask Pakistanis to be "normal". But to be normal they have to get back to their culture that they left behind. Since Pakistani founding fathers voluntarily left behind that kaafir culture and embraced Islam, pure Islam is what they must have and must enjoy.

Indians are watching Pakistan's rejection of Indian culture and embracing of pure Islam with a sense of schadenfreude. Indian culture never demanded that anyone should give up Islam. Indian culture never demanded that prayers should not by hollered out of a minaret five times a day. Indian culture never demanded that people should or should not wear any particular type of clothes. Indian culture only demanded that everyone be allowed to do his own thing. It is the latter demand that threatens Islam. Pakistanis pulled out to escape from that. Now they must enjoy what they have.

Sir, take a bow!

The bold part of your brilliant post above encapsulates the essence of conflict which societies in the west are now facing. And Afghanistan went through this cleansing process and Mullah in Iran tried to implement exactly this separation. While Afghanistan withered away, the deep civilization roots of Iran are fighting back.

Funny thing is that this phenomenon has not been successful in the heart of Islam - Middle East. Where tribal loyalties and ethnicity hold strong. Bangladesh society has been battling this monster for decades now.

The bold part and explanation towards end of your posts also explains what RSS Chief had said - Each one of us across different religions is a 'Hindu'.

This post from you will remain with me forever. Thanks for your efforts.

[member_28911]

Who is financing the $7.6 billion TAPI pipeline?

[deejay]

Scores for 2015 need updating:

https://twitter.com/Terror_Monitor

Terrormonitor.org ‏@Terror_Monitor now2 minutes ago
#PAKISTAN
Bomb Blast In #Shiite Dominated #ParaChinar Area In West Of #Pakistan, 10 People Killed & Several Injured.

[SSridhar]

A_Gupta & shiv, great discussion.

A_Gupta, thanks for bringing the civilizational aspect of the conflict back into focus. In our day-to-day tactical handling of Pakistan, we sometimes tend to forget the strategic larger issue which is certainly the 'civilizational enmity' of Pakistan with India which is the reason why it is called Pakistan's 'enduring hostility'.

This is a long post.

The gist of my argument is that as A-Gupta reiterated, there are two paradigms proffered by analysts, one 'security-seeking' and the other 'civilizational'. The former is the widely accepted Western construct and the latter, the long held Indian belief among many analysts (there are some exceptions which we shall see later). As far as Pakistan is concerned, the two constructs are not mutually exclusive as it uses them to target appropriate audiences to effectively further its singular obsessive agenda.

The 'security-seeking' model emanated from American analysts, bureaucrats and politicians who wanted to justify to India their military collaboration with the Pakistanis in terms that appear reasonable. The Americans, during the Cold War period were not willing to entirely let go of India and wanted to maintain a relationship with us, however tenuous and hostile it may be. This way, they justified their arms transfer by claiming that all they did was to supply just enough weapons for Pakistan to fend itself off a much larger adversary. This model continues and fine examples of proponents of this model in recent times were Obama, Armitage, Cheney et al.

To understand the 'civilizational' paradigm, we travel a century back to the beginning of the twentieth century. We need to understand the churn amongst the Muslim society in India. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Muslims were acutely aware of the fact that they had seen better days and their glory was on the wane irrecoverably. The previous two centuries had seen the European powers like Great Britain, Russia, and France vanquish Muslim rulers in India, Central Asia and parts of North Africa respectively. By early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. Muslims all over the world, and especially in India, were introspecting and came to the conclusion that their misfortune was because of moving away from Islam. In India, Emperor Akbar’s accommodation of Hindu philosophy had already raised the ire of the fundamentalists. The backlash came swiftly in the form of his successor Emperor Aurangazeb who implemented a strict form of Islam and treated the Hindus as dhimmi. Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi, who was a religious teacher of Aurangazeb, ensured fundamentalist ideas were firmly entrenched in governance. This later led to the emergence of such hardcore fundamentalists as Sheikh Waliullah and Ahmed Berelvi who took his volunteers to Afghanistan border to fight the British and the Sikh kings, in an act reminiscent of Prophet Muhammad’s hijra from Makkah to Medinah. The Afghan borders have never been the same after this emigration by Ahmed Berelvi. While some Muslims raged at their impotence to fight the British, others plotted to regain power through an association with the British. The Indian muslims were thus divided into two groups. The Second War of Independence in 1857 by Indian soldiers (the First War of Independence was in July 1806 when sepoys mutineed in the Vellore Fort) under the flag of the Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar and the ruthless manner it was put down and he was exiled to Burma where he died eventually and his young sons were brutally killed, created revulsion in the minds of Indian Muslims.

Later in c. 1915, a Deobandi cleric Ubaidullah Sindhi was sent to Afghanistan to contact the Turkish and German missions there and organize an uprising against the British in India. However, in c. 1915, the Afghan King, Habibullah Khan, the son of the founder of modern Afghanistan Abd-ur-Rehman, refused to allow any anti-British plots from the Afghan soil. In c. 1920, when the Khilafat Movement in India was at its peak, several thousand Indian Muslims wanted to emigrate from the British-ruled Dar-ul-Harb to Muslim-ruled Afghanistan of Dar-ul-Aman but this time too, the Afghan Government, led by Amir Amanuallah Khan, son of Habibullah Khan, turned them back. Though the British had entered into a long-standing strategic relationship with the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s in order to stop the menace of the expanding Russian empire, especially after the Crimean war of 1877, the British reversed their position by the time of the WW I. The initial friendship with the Ottoman Emperor came at a time of great turmoil among the Muslims of India after the 1857 War of Independence and also the sense of loss of the Mughal empire. The British had generated a great Islamist fervour deliberately among the Indian Muslims during their friendship with the Ottoman Empire in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to pacify their hurt feelings. This also contextualises the 1906 declaration by the Viceroy, Lord Minto, to the elite group of thirtyfive Mussalman who called upon him on October 1, 1906 that the Muslims of India “were descendants of a conquering and ruling race”. However, all these evaporated quickly when the British turned against them a little later.

In the meanwhile, they had instigated King Hussein ibn Ali, Shariff (Protector) of Makkah and Medinah, to assume the Caliphate as a member of the ‘true race’, that being a reference to his Hashemite lineage from the same clan as the Prophet and an Arab. Lord Kitchener, the then Viceroy of the Sudan and Sir Henry McMahon, the then British High Commissioner to Egypt promised the title to Hussein. The British wanted to instigate an ‘Arab Revolt’ to gain independence from the Ottomans in order to dismantle the Ottoman Caliphate. While doing all this behind the scene, the British put on a pretense of ‘neutrality’ in Islamic matters. But WW I changed all that as the British declared war against the Ottoman. However, the Indian Muslims, already angered by the sudden U-turn in British-Ottoman relationship were further angered by the insurgency of the Shariff of Makkah & Medinah, King Hussein ibn Ali, and termed it as apostasy. The way the British had handled the Khilafat Movement in India also added fuel to the Indian Muslim's fire. The behavior of the Indian Muslims in the matter of the Ottoman Caliph was unique among the Muslims at large as Muslims of Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan or Arab were not much concerned about the developments. A Muslim delegation from India played a significant role in the Paris talks after the end of the war in retaining the honour and capital of the Caliphate. Though the Treaty of Sevres (1920) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) retained the Caliphate, and its Capital Istanbul, Hejaz attained independence and several Allied control areas were created in Mesopatomia, the Transjordan and Syria. Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic Of Turkey. Sharif Hussein formally announced himself as the new Caliph on March 5, 1924. While Arabs welcomed it, there was opposition from India (and Egypt and Afghanistan). Hussein's principal adversary Abd-al-Aziz-ibn-Saud sided with the Indian Muslims and opposed Hussein’s greediness in assuming the Caliphate. Great Britain announced strict neutrality on October 1, 1924 and Sharif Hussein capitulated to the forces of ibn Saud two days later. King Abd-al-Aziz ibn Saud refused to take the mantle of a Caliph, having seen the travails of Sharif Hussein, and the position of Caliph was thus extinguished. The Muslim League in India too had become moribund. The Indian Muslims felt rudderless upon the extinction of the Caliph as well local leaders. These incidents left a deep scar in Muslim minds in India, the effects of which have persisted to this day.

In order to recover the lost ground vis-a-vis the Muslims, the British encouraged the Aligarh group led by Sir Syed Ahmed who was one of the thirtyfive members of the elite Mussalman group which called upon Lord Minto in Simla in c. 1906. This group was overtly very pro-British. Said he, “No Mohammedan can say that the English are not ‘people of the Book’. No Mohammedan can deny this: that God has said that no people of other religions can be friends of Mohammedans except the Christians. . . . Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India, and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis. This is our true friendship with our Christian rulers . . . for we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the people of the Book." They communalized the Indian polity through reserved seats etc. and ultimately bifurcated India for further geostrategic advantages such as protecting the "wells of power" in the Middle East etc. Olaf Caroe told the Americans in the 1950s that the operations in Mesopotamia in WW I and in Iran in WW II were made possible from bases in Imperial India and with the independence of India he suggested replacing Imperial India with Pakistan. The foundations of 'security-seeking state' were laid. The American Cold War requirement of meeting head-on the spread of Communism was another factor and meshed quite nicely with the description of Pakistan as a 'security-seeking state' to equip its armed forces.

In Pakistan, the Pakistani Army and the Establishment represent the 'security-seeking' group while the jihadi outfits represent the 'civilizational-enmity seeking' faction. Each has been using the other to enhance its own power. For example, the project of 'Islamic Bomb' was a clever use of the 'civilizational' aspect by ZA Bhutto to enhance the 'security model'. Conversely, the collusion between 'civilizational' forces such as LeT or JI etc with the Pakistani Army was to enhance themselves with the the help of the 'security' model. Even before the creation of Pakistan, such mutually-reinforcing linkages were amply visible. For example, the iireligious and security-seeking Jinnah took refuge in calls of 'Islam in danger' or in explaining how civilizationally Hindus & Muslims were apart thereby justifying a nation for themselves, or accommodating with Abu Ala al Mawdudi whom the IS today quotes extensively for justifying its actions. However, PA's efforts to marshall the 'civilizational' forces in its projects significantly unravelled after 9/11 when a part of that setup attacked the 'self' itself. The reason was also simple. Until then, the civilizational forces that the PA relied upon were the ones whose enmity was restricted to the most dominant civilization of the Indian subcontinent. However, 9/11 took that to a higher level as Bush spoke [unwisely] of a crusade. The sub-continental civilizational war was subsumed in this larger picture.

Before Zerb-e-azb recently, the civilizational forces were on the ascent and now the Army has regained the lost ground especially with powerful backers such as the US, China and even Russia. However, there is a much more lethal 'civilizational' force on the horizon, the IS. This is a force that the PA would be unable to manouever to its liking because this new entity is talking of Khorasan, Mahdi etc whereas the ISI had so far restricted itself to a narrower interpretation of Ghazwa-e-Hind. That force can overwhelm the PA. That is now the fear stalking the PA.

Of course, Pakistan does not accept the civilizational aspects of its behaviour with us because the 'security-seeking' model is softer, saleable and brings in dividends. There are some Indian analysts who believe in that model too. These are the peaceniks who believe, based on the security model, that if India could assuage Pakistan's fears by giving concessions and act like a forgiving and generous big brother, the enmity would go away. So, the innocuous facade of 'security-seeking model' helps Pakistan in multiple ways including by putting pressure on GoI through some Indians themselves. However, it is only the 'civilizational model' that can explain the 'enduring hostility' of Pakistan towards India.

[SSridhar]

Who is financing the $7.6 billion TAPI pipeline?

TAPI is a dream come true for India: Ansari - Suhasini Haider, The Hindu

While ADB is now a transactional adviser to the project, at least one UAE company, Dragon Oil, is said to be in negotiations to be a project partner {Dragon Oil is owned by the Government of Dubai through Emirates National Oil Company}.. Earlier this month, a senior Pakistani official disclosed that China would soon express its interest in investing in the project to help projects under the $46-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The development could raise red flags for India, which has objected to the CPEC bilaterally, as well as in External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech at the U.N. in September.

[deejay]

SSridhar ji, thank you for that superb post. Brilliant!

May I suggest that a link to that post be part of the STFUP thread 1st post.

[shiv]

Great post Sridhar. The idea of Pakistan being both security seeking and civilizational occurred to me but I would hardly have been able to explain that in the scholarly and erudite lucidity that you have brought it. It is indeed fit for a first post. Let me bring in here what Arun said

^^^ shiv, I think our Indian forefathers on the whole saw the jihadis as a bunch of bandits with a death ideology, not as bearers of a competing civilization. The encounter that really bruised the Indian spirit was with the Europeans who indeed represent a conquering alien civilization.

I have a quibble with the way the word "civilizational" is used. I think the word is a western one that has no direct Indian equivalent that I can pinpoint, but it conveys a sense of the "other"/not us that Hindus certainly felt in India. The birth of the Sikh religion was just one fallout of what was recognized as a civilizational challenge. But earlier today I had a sudden epiphany about that much hated expression "syncretic culture".

It strikes me now that "syncretism" is the extent to which the culture of Islamic invaders was changed in order to survive in India. Syncretism is a set of changes in Islamic society that was probably necessitated by the need to make the kabila in India. Perhaps there were too many Indian to kill. Too long a history to erase and too many temples and artefacts to destroy. Note that some things are not easy to destroy - and in many places the invaders had to be satisfied with "defacement". But syncretism may have been a survival mechanism of Islam living inside dar up harb without total conquest, apart from the fact that Hindu culture allows sensual pleasures that Arabian Islam does not and I can believe that it was easy to "bend the rules of Islam" (as has always been done) to live in India along with kafirs and some aspects of kafir lifestyle. Useful for taqiya also every time they lost a battle perhaps. Syncretism may have been the Islamic civilizational response to Hindu India.

Secularists have tried to use syncretism to wish away hatred and killing, but the point I am trying to make here is that it was a survival mutation in Islam specific to India. Pakistanis have tried to "disappear" that cultural adjustment made by Islam, but the GIGO aspect of that is that they have forgotten if they had any culture to begin with, other than the need to loot and rape.

The British civilizational challenge came over and above the one Islamic one. Islam stayed by adjusting. Britain did not adjust, but made India abide by its civilizational rules, and when that started breaking down, they left. The prediction was that Hindus were fractious and uncivilized and that India would simply break up after the British left. But it is possible to say that there are some core Indian civilizational values that survived and stayed on beyond the Islamic and Euro-Christian challenges.

[member_28652]

^^^^Great posts. Very comprehensive.

[Peregrine]

Who is financing the $7.6 billion TAPI pipeline?

TAPI is a dream come true for India: Ansari - Suhasini Haider, The Hindu

While ADB is now a transactional adviser to the project, at least one UAE company, Dragon Oil, is said to be in negotiations to be a project partner {Dragon Oil is owned by the Government of Dubai through Emirates National Oil Company}.. Earlier this month, a senior Pakistani official disclosed that China would soon express its interest in investing in the project to help projects under the $46-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The development could raise red flags for India, which has objected to the CPEC bilaterally, as well as in External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech at the U.N. in September.

SSridhar Ji :

Turkmenistan + Pakistan + Afghanistan + Dubai + China. A DANGEROUS Cocktail. Indeed!

In addition the Two Transit Costs along with the Insurance Cost via Afghanistan and Pakistan will be sky high.

Cheers

[SSridhar]

Peregrine ji, I completely agree.

Anything through Afghanistan & Pakistan in their present form is a No Go, IMHO. And, China cannot be part of any O&G venture that brings these products to India.

[Peregrine]

At least 20 dead in Parachinar clothes market blast

PARACHINAR: At least 20 people were killed and dozens others wounded on Sunday in a blast at a used clothes market in Kurram Agency's Parachinar area.

Hospital sources told DawnNews that 55 people were injured as a result of the blast out of which more than 15 victims are in critical condition.

Cheers

[Peregrine]

Islamic Leader Resorted to Terrorist Suicide Bombers in the 11th and 12th Century

But we need to go further back in time to examine the death cult that systematically brainwashed young men to assassinate Chris­tian and Arab princes and generals across much of the Middle East in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Established by Hassan al-Sabbah (Born 1050s – Died 12 June 1124) at Alamut, high in Iran’s Alborz mountains, the castle was virtually impregnable.

Here, legend has it, he created a small version of paradise populated by a number of beautiful girls. Young men would be drugged with hashish — and hence, hashashin, or assassins — and when they regained consciousness, they would find themselves in a heavenly garden, surrounded by nubile beauties. After spending the night in their company, they would wake up back in the real world.

They would then be told by the sheikh that if they wanted to return to paradise forever, they would have to obey his orders without fail. Desperate to seek re-entry into what they thought was heaven, these simple young men would eagerly agree to do Al Sabbah’s bidding, and went forth to kill designated targets, never to return. For years, the Old Man of the Mountain was feared by rulers from Baghdad to Cairo, and beyond.

Cheers

[ramana]

My 2007 work:

http://www.slideshare.net/ramana_56/modern-islamism

and

http://www.slideshare.net/ramana_56/und ... istan-2010