Formation and Evolution of Pakistan : The Real Story

[ramana]

X-posted...

a number of people have been talking about India, the West and Islamism above. There is no doubt that the West ignored Islamism and then supported it against the Soviets. They turned the other way when it was directed at India, but only to appease Pakistan, which was 'an ally' in the anti-Soviet fight. they never cared about the indian perspective, because it was of no consequence then. it is of consequence now, that india is an economic power and directly impacts western interests.

But the more I read about islamism, the more i see that their agenda is and always has been much larger than India. In that respect Pakistan has always been on the peripheries of their thinking. The pakistanis though have managed the situation so that they are much more to the forefront - by force rather than ideology.

the core islamist focus remains on the arab heartlands, to cleanse and purify them. return them to a wahabbi interpretation, depose the pro-western munafiqs of egypt and the traitors of the house of saud. the west ignored their ideology thinking it to be inconsequential and unlikely to raise up. that was a mistake. because a 150 years ago, the same ideology, the same jihad was underway and the west crushed it. before that they beat the ottomans (who had taken the mantle over from the arabs), and before that the crusades.

India is the unfinished conquest of islam, like spain. the islamists see it as their 2nd order priority. the pakistanis have hijacked that agenda and tried to make it the #1 priority

the taliban are only secondarily attracted by khilafat, their primary goal is still pashtun nationalism, and they are likely to stay that way unless external forces (al quaeda and/or pakistan) acts on them. they are the unwitting fools/tools who are caught up in the middle, the TSPA is the gangster trying to take over the mob, whilst the keedas are still trying to finish the grand project. All are dangerous, but they are not all the same.

in the scenario where talibs take over pakistan, who and what do we mean? pashtuns? don't think so. it will be punjabi islamists and possibly some mohajirs. what will that mean? more civil war? baluchistan and sindh and pashtunistan will not hold together in a jehadi federation for long - unless there are external forces.

the right strategy for India would probably be to make the walls stronger and a very big stick ready and visible. the pakistanis can then drown in their own sewage. we'll deal with whatever survives.

and

It would seem that within the core commanders group, there is a crore commander group which consists of the COAS, Xth core commander, ISI Chief and a few more. This group along with either the navy chief or the Airforce chief, depending on the nature of the purchase, appropriate any monies that are coming in from any defense contracts / aid money.

Along with the crore commanders would be several 'enablers' - officers who do the dirty work, who would be trusted aides / relatives / belong to the same village, caste or sect, who also get their share. I guess a few civilian beuareucrats from the finance ministry, and the political leadership and his trusted aide also get their share.

The Job that the ISI is foremost entrusted with is to keep the army in good standing, well funded. All its actions can be seen from this prism.
Weather it is maintaining a certain degree of hostility towards India - gets them moolah from the chinese/western countries, keeps the huge jihad fauj engaged, and the ordinary abdul on the streets staunchly behind the pak fauj, because of the threat of Indian retaliation.

The other aspect of its functioning is internal. It prevents the politicians from acquiring a power base that has the potential to upsurp the army's hold onto pakistan's decision making, funding decisions. Towards this end, those politicians who have been co-opted by external powers are untrustworthy and the ISI indeed goes to great lengths to keep them away from power, unless these guys cut a deal with the army leadership itself.

Afghanistan seems to be a job that is potentially a money spinner for the Army's senior bosses. Everyone from the Chinese to the Americans to the Indians are vying for a peaceful afghanistan that is under their respective control so that access to CAS is possible and is in their favour. Afghanistan is the classic example of what happens to a country when it is strategically located - when major foreign powers will intervene and make a kichri out of it. Sooner of later this intervention will spread into CAS itself if afghanistan gets stabilized and we will see another round of superpower and regional power battles going on in Khazakhistan and other CAS, with islamization thrown into the mix.

The US and Indian goal in afghanistan is to keep it quiet and have access via pipelines to CAS, Russia and China's intentions are the opposite, to keep it boiling so that while they continue to have access, the same is denied to the americans. Pakistan is caught in between or is benefiting from both sides. It takes money from the US to try and keep Afghanistan from going overboard, and it surely benefits from the chinese supply of arms to keep afghanistan boiling at the right temperature. I don't believe in strategic depth so much, because pakistan army's main base if pakistani punjab. If that is lost, all is lost for them. What will strategic depth do to help them there?

India is into afghanistan to get a favorable route to CAS and to maintain pressure on pakistan's backdoor. For now it seems indian and american interests are similar.

JMTs

Good summary of the situation. Now put this on charts and spread the message.

[ramana]

x-post..

Folks here are juicy bits ( a long long whine from a Paki belonging to Yale ). I don't know if it was posted earlier.
To Understand Pakistan, 1947 Is The Wrong Lens - The hurt that moves Pakistan is from a wound more recent—1971

(The author is with the Religious Studies Department at Yale University. He is also a member of the MacMillan Initiative on Religion, Politics and Society at Yale and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University.)


On a recent trip to India, I was moved by the genuine concern people have about Pakistan. As a Pakistani living in the United States, I am subjected daily to serious exasperation, courtesy the American media. Americans do not understand Pakistan because they do not care. And there is no real knowledge without caring. Indians certainly do care. Pakistan has been on the Indian mind since the moment of their co-creation. India and Pakistan are like two ends of a thread tied in a fantastic Gordian knot; their attachment magically survives their severance. And how the love grows! The recent Jaswant Singh controversy over Jinnah only partially unveiled how Pakistan is critical to the ideological coherence of Indian nationalism in both its secular and Hindutva varieties. But behind this veil, Pakistan has always been internal to Indian politics. It should come as no surprise then that establishment Indians (bureaucratic and political elites, intellectuals, media types, and the chattering classes) are well-versed in the nuances of Pakistani society. Indians understand Pakistan like no one else does, or can.

Still, there is this curious blind spot: no one in India appears to remember 1971. Worse, no one seems to think it relevant. For all their sophistication, Indian elites continue to understand Pakistan primarily with reference to the events of 1947. Anything else is incidental, not essential. The established Indian paradigms for explaining Pakistan, its actions and its institutions, its state and society, have not undergone any significant shift since the Partition. The tropes remain the same: religion and elite manipulation explain everything. It is as if the pre-Partition politics of the Muslim League continues to be the politics of Pakistan—with slight non-essential variations. More than 60 years on, the factors may be different but little else has changed.

This view is deeply flawed. It reflects a serious confusion about the founding event of contemporary Pakistani society. The Partition has a mesmerising quality that blinds the mind, a kind of notional heft that far outweighs its real significance to modern South Asian politics. The concerns of the state of Pakistan, the anxieties of its society, and the analytic frames of its intellectual and media elites have as their primary reference not 1947 but the traumatic vivisection of the country in 1971. Indians have naturally focused on their own vivisection, their own dismemberment; but for Pakistan, they have focused on the wrong date. This mix-up has important consequences.

First, Indians tend not to remember 1971 as a Pakistani civil war, but rather as India’s “good” war. It is remembered as an intervention by India to prevent the genocide of Bengalis by Pakistanis. The fact that the Bengalis themselves were also Pakistanis has been effaced from the collective memory of Indian elites. This makes 1971 merely another Kargil, or Kashmir, Afghanistan or Mumbai—an instance of Pakistan meddling in other people’s affairs, and of the Pakistani military’s adventurism in the region. This is why mention of Balochistan at Sharm el-Sheikh created such a stir in India. It was literally incomprehensible to Indians that Pakistan could accuse India of meddling in its internal affairs. Surely, this is the pot calling the kettle black. But what the Indian mind perceives as Pakistan’s ongoing divorce from reality is in fact Pakistan’s most fundamental political reality. The Pakistani establishment has internalised the memory of 1971. In all things, and at all times, it must account for India. Dismemberment has the requisite effect of focusing the mind on existential matters. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Second, the Indian establishment routinely misconstrues as ideological schizophrenia the Pakistani intellectual classes’ complicated responses to India. The nuances of the Pakistani experience of India are the very picture of incoherence to them. Worse, Pakistanis often frustrate the project of creating a common South Asian sensibility to bridge the political gaps between the two communities.

But again, no one in India accounts for 1971 when making such grand universalising (and, if I may add, genuinely noble) plans for the future of the region. Pakistani intellectual elites share with their Indian counterparts the normative horror of what the West Pakistani military did in the East. How can anyone in their right mind not deem such behaviour beyond the pale? But horror does not preclude abiding distaste for the Indian state’s wilful opportunism in breaking Pakistan apart. It is for this reason that while the intellectual classes in Pakistan, especially the English language press and prominent university scholars, have almost always condemned their state’s involvement in terrorist activity inside India proper, they have remained largely quiet concerning Kashmir. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Kashmir does not seem so different to them than East Pakistan. {hahahaha - This is what I learnt from Yale - let us call it as Yale spin }

It is for this same reason that there was no great outcry about the isi’s supposed involvement in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. The general sense among the educated elites was that India deserved it for trying to “encircle” Pakistan through Afghanistan. Indians process this either as paranoia or as a visceral hatred of India that blinds Pakistanis to facts. Perhaps there is some of this too. But it bears appreciating that Pakistan is a post-civil war society. Fear and anxiety concerning India’s intentions in the region are hardly limited to the so-called ‘establishment’ in Pakistan. It is a general fear, a well-dispersed fear, a social fear. And a relatively coherent fear at that.

This leads to the third, and perhaps the most important point. The Indian establishment does not see Pakistan as a ‘normal’ society. The substance of this abnormalcy is religion, which is also the irreducible difference between the two societies. It is the original sin and a foundational incoherence that is ultimately inescapable. And it has tremendous explanatory power. It explains both the ideological nature of the Pakistani state’s hatred of India and, simultaneously, the state’s manipulation of the zealous masses for its own ends. That these two explanations do not hold together coherently is besides the point to most Indians. This is an old story and is as such sensible. In the Indian imagination, Pakistan is endlessly regurgitating the politics of Jinnah and the erstwhile Indian Muslim League. While Indian politics moves on, Pakistan’s holds eerily still. I am certainly not one to deny that there are some obvious asymmetries between India and Pakistan. The nature of the relationship between religion and politics is certainly one of them. But it bears mentioning that perhaps the most relevant asymmetry concerns the repeated defeats suffered by the conventional Pakistani forces at the hands of their Indian counterparts. This asymmetry is neither that complicated nor particularly abnormal. It illuminates the actions of the Pakistani state as essentially strategic and only incidentally ideological. And in that sense, it allows an interpretation of Pakistan as a fairly pedestrian, even ‘normal’ post-conflict society in its relations with its much larger neighbour. {full of spin and and justification of the Paki behaviour. Good job... }


Ultimately, this is the real value of a renewed focus on 1971 rather than 1947. It normalises Pakistan. It allows for discussion of real differences between the two societies and the two states, rather than of reified stereotypes that have little political relevance any more. This is not to justify the actions of the Pakistani state, which are in many cases entirely unjustifiable on both moral and political grounds. It is merely to hope that a mutual comprehension of normalcy may lead to peace and progress. Certainly, no one will deny that there is value in that.


Added later:

A reply blog by K.V.Bapa Rao

http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.a ... 126&eid=20

This article is a perfect example of what is really wrong with what is sadly, an example of perhaps the best and most thoughtful brains that Pakistan has to offer--they can't, or won't, come to terms with the fact that there is something wrong with being focused on their loss to what they consider an inferior "Hindu" India, all the while having no interest to speak of in examining what it is about their civilizational mindset that makes it all right for them to blithely gloss over one of the most sickening crimes against humanity their country committed in 1971.

Most Indians, and certainly those that were alive in 1971, understand this instinctively (and this understanding is not just conveniently confined to the Indian "state" either but extends to the people), but are generally too polite or otherwise inhibited to say it out loud. That reticence probably accounts for what I'll charitably call this author's confusion. Others might see it as classic Pakistani sophistry that is meant to manipulate a generation of young Indians who might be unfamiliar with the historical and human realities of what happened in 1971.

[RayC]

Sir!!

Please do not belittle the effort of Sardar Mohan Singh in INA. He was the chief leader who got all the Punjabis together into INA, which included Shahnazaz Sehgal and Dhillon, do you remember the famous LAL Qila Trial?

Please do remember that Sardar Mohan Singh started the INA before he handed over to Netaji. He was responsible for getting the Pakjabis (pre partition muslims are also Pakjabis to me) in to INA.

Any links that it was Mohan Singh who started the INA and handed over to Netaji?

Why did Mohan Singh hand over and not continue to be the leader himself? That would also be interesting to know.

Good thread!

The whole thread is a powerhouse of info and this bit on Mohan Singh is equally interesting.

[RayC]

I did a check on Mohan Singh and this is what came up:

Although Pritam Singh was involved to a large extent, it was Fujiwara who, with his sincerity of purpose and belief, [4] convinced Mohan Singh to betray his oath to the Crown by uniting with the Japanese mission for the greater motive of Indian freedom.[5] This included the promise that he would be treated as an ally and a friend, and not a PoW. Initially helping Fujiwara to take control of the situation of looting and arson that had developed in Alor Star, Singh was in December 1941, after meeting with the Japanese commanding general, convinced of the feasibility of raising an armed Indian unit. Between himself, Pritam Singh and Fujiwara, Mohan Singh set about contacting Indians in the British Indian Army in South-east Asia, and also began recruiting from amongst those captured by the Japanese in Malaya. All Indian prisoners of war and stragglers were placed under his charge and he was asked to restore order in the town of Alor Star. Thus the nucleus what came to be the Indian National Army was born.[6][7] Kuala Lumpur fell on 11 January 1942 with 3,500 Indian prisoners of war, and Singapore on 15 February with 85,000 British troops, of whom 45,000 were Indians. Mohan Singh asked for volunteers who would form the Azad Hind Fauj (Free India Army) to fight for liberating India from the British rule.

Mohan Singh

Thanks.

[ramana]

Sandeep Bajwa is right. It was Mohan Singh who first formed the INA and handed over command to SC Bose as it needed political leadership, as the idea was much larger than just an insurrection.

INA History thread

In the Military Forum.

[ramana]

I have been reading this very illuminating thread for some time now with so many insight into our subcontinent's past and present situations. ....... It's been bothering me for quite some time :
Whatever policy is deviced, isn't it a losing situation for India as a non Islamic country. Whether we contain TSP or BD or Taliban for 10-20 or 30 years? Inspite of all Chankian moves whether by brits/US or India, aren't Ullemas winning the whole game by the simple strategy of population. I mean today let's see:
1.) TSP population = 17 crore
2.) BD population = 18 crore
3.) Indian muslim population = 14 crore
So we have here 49 crore population practicing an expansionist religion very very rigidly. Now taking the example of last 60 years in all the three above places this population has doubled. So if we take the year 2070 we will have this figure doubled to 98 crores. Also this is the only religion which remains as rigid as IT WAS 1000 years before inspite of advances in thinking, technology and globalisation, while other religions have become moderate or not so rigid.

.......

In other words the % of Muslims in Indian sub-contient now =
49/(120+17+18) = 49/155 = 31%

What was the % at partition?

[Prem]

Military Suepriority of Indics will fix the population anomaly . Under no circumstances RIP like Khalidi kind be allowed to succesfuly dilute this. More than islamists , its the P-secularism which might become detriment for statrting the Dwapar Yug earlier than ordained by nature.

[Manish_Sharma]

I have been reading this very illuminating thread for some time now with so many insight into our subcontinent's past and present situations. ....... It's been bothering me for quite some time :
Whatever policy is deviced, isn't it a losing situation for India as a non Islamic country. Whether we contain TSP or BD or Taliban for 10-20 or 30 years? Inspite of all Chankian moves whether by brits/US or India, aren't Ullemas winning the whole game by the simple strategy of population. I mean today let's see:
1.) TSP population = 17 crore
2.) BD population = 18 crore
3.) Indian muslim population = 14 crore
So we have here 49 crore population practicing an expansionist religion very very rigidly. Now taking the example of last 60 years in all the three above places this population has doubled. So if we take the year 2070 we will have this figure doubled to 98 crores. Also this is the only religion which remains as rigid as IT WAS 1000 years before inspite of advances in thinking, technology and globalisation, while other religions have become moderate or not so rigid.

.......

In other words the % of Muslims in Indian sub-contient now =
49/(120+17+18) = 49/155 = 31%

What was the % at partition?

Ramana I am still trying to get accurate figures, but here are three very interesting links:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2075591/
^^This one seems the most reliable regarding TSP which gives the population at its inception + present + by 2035(which it says would be 26 crores).

http://www.islamicpopulation.com/asia/i ... uslim.html
^^ This one puts corrent population of Indian muslims at around 20-25%, with inputs from Justice K. M. Yusuf, a retired Judge of Calcutta high court.

http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/66182
^^This one gives the most comprehensive idea of population % of muslims who stayed in india and TSP + the percentage of land TSP got compared to its population.

[ramana]

X-post from khan's link in mil forum.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ntPage=all

Defending the Arsenal
In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?
by Seymour M. Hersh
.............
A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will ****** us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”
..............
Musharraf also confirmed that Pakistan had constructed a huge tunnel system for the transport and storage of nuclear weaponry. “The tunnels are so deep that a nuclear attack will not touch them,” Musharraf told me, with obvious pride.
..............
Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said, a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai.
.............
Zardari spoke with derision about what he depicted as America’s obsession with the vulnerability of his nation’s nuclear arsenal. “In your country, you feel that you have to hold the fort for us,” he said. “The American people want a lot of answers for the errors of the past, and it’s very easy to spread fear. Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security? A mutiny would never happen in Pakistan. It’s a fear being spread by the few who seek to scare the many.”
.............
The article quoted Major General John Custer as saying, “The older military leaders love us. They understand American culture and they know we are not the enemy.” The General’s assessment provoked a barrage of e-mail among American officers with experience in Pakistan, and a former member of a Special Forces unit provided me with copies. “The fact that a two-star would make a statement [like] that . . . is at best naïve and actually pure bullshit,”
.............
I have met and interacted with the entire military staff from General Kayani on down and all the general officers on their joint staff and in all the services, and I haven’t spoken to one that “loves us”—whatever that means. In fact, I have read most of the TS [top secret] assessments of all their General Officers and I haven’t read one that comes close to their “loving” us. They play us for everything they can get, and we trip over ourselves trying to give them everything they ask for, and cannot pay for.
.............
Some military men who know Pakistan well believe that, whatever the officer corps’s personal views, the Pakistan Army remains reliable. “They cannot be described as pro-American, but this doesn’t mean they don’t know which side their bread is buttered on,” Brian Cloughley,
..............
The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. “If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he’s lying,” he said. “The Pakistanis wouldn’t share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away.”
.............
A $7.5-billion American aid package, approved by Congress in September, was, to the surprise of many in Washington, controversial in Pakistan, because it contained provisions seen as strengthening Zardari at the expense of the military. Shaheen Sehbai, a senior editor of the newspaper International, said that Zardari’s “problem is that he’s besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him,” and, as a result, “he’ll open his pants for them.”
.............
A retired senior Pakistani intelligence officer, who worked with his C.I.A. counterparts to track down Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said that he was deeply troubled by the prospect of Pakistan ceding any control over its nuclear deterrent. “Suppose the jihadis strike at India again—another attack on the parliament. India will tell the United States to stay out of it, and ‘We’ll sort it out on our own,’ ” he said. “Then there would be a ground attack into Pakistan. As we begin to react, the Americans will be interested in protecting our nuclear assets, and urge us not to go nuclear—‘Let the Indians attack and do not respond!’ They would urge us instead to find those responsible for the attack on India. Our nuclear arsenal was supposed to be our savior, {in case of a terror strike in India, good to see that this much is admitted} but we would end up protecting it. It doesn’t protect us,” he said.
..............
I flew to New Delhi after my stay in Pakistan and met with two senior officials from the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s national intelligence agency. (Of course, as in Pakistan, no allegation about the other side should be taken at face value.) “Our worries are about the nuclear weapons in Pakistan,” one of the officials said. “Not because we are worried about the mullahs taking over the country; we’re worried about those senior officers in the Pakistan Army who are Caliphates”—believers in a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state. “We know some of them and we have names,” he said. “We’ve been watching colonels who are now brigadiers. These are the guys who could blackmail the whole world”—that is, by seizing a nuclear weapon.

The Indian intelligence official went on, “Do we know if the Americans have that intelligence? This is not in the scheme of the way you Americans look at things—‘Kayani is a great guy! Let’s have a drink and smoke a cigar with him and his buddies.’ Some of the men we are watching have notions of leading an Islamic army.”

As I was saying in other threads the brigadiers getting killed by "Taliban" in safe areas of Lahore/Islamabad are the moderate ones to ensure there is no en-mo option for promotion to higher ranks.

[ramana]

X-posted as it gives the evolution of the TSPA:

"Akshut"
The calpihate and caliphatees need to be nipped in the bud, otherwise everyone will be praying to Allah, in heaven onlee.
-----------------

might be too late already

It is too late. By all and I mean _ALL_ accounts the Pakistani armed forces have been changed deeply. If you read serial accounts of Pakistani behavior - leave alone armed forces behavior - you will see that things have been changed drastically. A link of this forum right now states that all of Pakistan has just about 120 theaters and Pakistan is making 12 movies a year. All accounts of the armed forces say that even drinking - which was allowed in the 1960s, became private by the 1980s and is now completely disallowed as far as I can tell.

Again - all accounts state that the Pakistan army was actually afraid to confront India in an all out conventional war - bluster aside. Yes - afraid, and I am not using that in a jingoistic sense - I am saying that as what I suspect was a Pakistani army realistic assessment of their chances. Zia recognized this as early as 1972-3 and understood that ONLY Islamic radicals would have the guts to fight and die for Pakistan - not the army and decided that more Islam was needed in the armed forces. Besides, it was a uniting factor in a fissiparous state. I suspect that nobody in Pakistan really suspected that those Islamic radicals would go out of control.

Pakistanis have a tendency to gloss over realities. They consistently speak of "moderate Pakistanis" and a Pakistan that is far "wealthier the India" without actually counting the rural poor or the radicals. They have also tended to think "Oh we are Muslims - so our devout Muslim brothers will not harm us". So whan radical Islam comes near them Pakistanis don't see what is coming. And when it comes there is denial and an insinuation that Christians, Hindus, Jews, US, India , Israel are causing all the problems.

I have also noticed a change in the international behavior of Muslim states towards Pakistan, but they too have a problem. They all realize that Pakistan is going down shit creek and is getting their beloved Islam a bad name - but no Muslim state has the balls to stand up and say that what Pakistan is doing is not Islamic probably because their own mullahs will agitate.

So we already have a radicalized Islamic army with nuclear weapons and not the "Moderate secular Army" that the US with their phenomenal blindness tend to see. The only silver lining here is that India now becomes only one of the enemies. The US and Israel become co-enemies. IMO it will be difficult for the US to direct fire way from itself without pulling out. If the US pulls out it will be an Islamic nuclear armed army in Pakistan versus India. But while nobody might believe it - this was exactly what we had in 1998. They are better equipped now from US funds - but their character is the same.

It will be in India's interest now to kowtow to the US and bandwagon with the US. This will direct the ire of Pakistan at the US for "siding with India".

Whichever way you look at it the US has a responsibility and the US must be forced to take its share of responsibiliy by chankiannss and not by needless chootiyapanti on India's part. They (US) gave money and arms to Pakistan and looked the other way when Pakis got nukes, so if India is going down we must pull the US down with us. Or else we cooperate to gradually chip away at Pakistan and make it weaker and weaker and weaker from infighting. And it is essential to cooperate with the US to squeeze all further nuclear development in Pakistan. The US itself needs to be given Hobson's choice - or else they will face most of Pakistan's nukes.

For a moment drop your jingoism and imagine that India allows itself to be radicalized and allows parts of North and central India to be occupied by Islamic radicals making an extended Pakistan. Guess who will face the music when that happens? It will be the west. So the US has a role to ensure that Indians don't capitulate and Pakistan doesn't get stronger.

In many ways this is just the game India has played - much to the disgust of many jingos. India has appeared to capitulate to Pakistan so many times by inaction and olive branches that the Islamic radicals think that they are getting into a winning situation. If they are in a wining situation, it is the US that will get in trouble next - so India now has an opportunity to negotiate with the US by holding a gun to its own head. India needs to tell the US "Unless you stop arming Pakistan and start helping to disarm her - we (poor country) are going to capitulate. without a fight.

If India looks strong to the US, the the US has more sympathy for Pakistan. India should appear weak and pliable to the US. It is Pakistan playing the "We are so weak card" that wins over the US. India needs to play that card too.

[ramana]

Two X-posts from Anujan.

Interesting conversation with Pakistani equivalent of ex dilli-billi (Pindi-Prince ?) types and now a business owner in vilayat. His statement of Pakistani takleef with US was quite lucid and succinct. Nothing that Rakshaks dont know, but bears repeating.

Apparently Pakis were instrumental in Balkanization of SU and the victory of Amri-Khan idealogy of capitalism and democracy over competing SU idealogy and raisin dieter. A fair remuneration of services should have been Balkanization of India and victory of Paki IEDology over Indian Idealogy and raisin dieter. Anything short of that means "Unkil abandoned Pakis after their work got done".

Bad news for those who think 7.5B$ will buy loyalty.

and

Anujan,
This is why the physical and metaphysical liquidation of Paki animal is pre-requisite for creating peaceful South Asia rooted in soil.

What came out of it was quite funny and pathetic at times (whatever I remember of whiskey clouded evening). The reason Paki takleef is MAJOR is because everyone at Paki higher echelons were convinced by by Amri-Khan psy-ops types (atleast from what I gather) that Paki Madrassa-Mujahid IEDology was a perfect partner and complement to Amri-khan Capitalism-democracy ideology. Regan sipped zam zam cola with Mujahids and and once Unkil won and Balkanized SU, then came the junior partner's turn for the Madrassa-Mujahid IEDology to win against SDRE's pathetic sekularism-pluralism ideology.

So someone showed a carrot and took Pakis down the garden route. Except when that someone suddenly left after his job got done, Pakis were bewildered like a jhappad across their face. (This is a slight change to the narrative of Paki chanakyans milking all money from clueless Amri-Khans during the Soviet jihad days. The deception seems to have been mutual. The story of chanakyan pakis seems to have been spun to save--what else ?--H&D)

Anticipating heavy losses of Pakistani mujahids, I wouldnt be surprised if there were a Khan psy-ops types working in Pakistan to keep the Paki Jernail, Politician and Public opinion favorable to the Mujahid cause.

[SBajwa]

1948 - 1965 = 17 years (if you count partition riots as a war then 18 years) of peace.
1965 - 1971 = 6 years of peace
1971 - 1999 = 18 years of small wars (only in Punjab and Kashmir) culminating in one major war in 1999.
1999 - 10+ years of small wars all over india.. major war.. when...?

so India has not seen peace since 1971.. we have been at war with napakistan since 1971., ever since they lost Bangladesh.

[SBajwa]

Any links that it was Mohan Singh who started the INA and handed over to Netaji?

Why did Mohan Singh hand over and not continue to be the leader himself? That would also be interesting to know.

And also to add to the Ramana's reply.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was a popular leader known all over India, who had recently resigned (due to the policies of the leaders in charge) from the Indian National congress and was put in house arrest by British at Calcutta. He escaped and went over to lead the Independent Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj). Mohan Singh was a soldier and knew about his own political limitations. He later did became a politician (Rajya Sabha) and lived upto 1989 in Independent India.

Who else would have served the INA at this time in point?

[SBajwa]

Also this is the only religion which remains as rigid as IT WAS 1000 years before inspite of advances in thinking, technology and globalisation, while other religions have become moderate or not so rigid.

so all we actually need is to get as many Fatwas out as possible that make the following list as totally Haram against the pious Abdul.

movies, books, computers, modern medicine and doctors, cars, planes, bombs, guns, etc.

Fatwa should declare that All a modern muslim Jihadi needs is a Quran, Horse, Damascus Sword from 760 A.D.

[ramana]

Damascus Sword is made from iron from Al Hind.

[Prem]

As usual, nothing belongs to them . and rightfully need to go back to the original owners> Its the law of nature .

[Yayavar]

Damascus Sword is made from iron from Al Hind.

The word for sword is 'Muhannad' which means 'from Hind' (as per 'Discovery of India' by Nehru).

[SBajwa]

Fatwa should declare that All a modern muslim Jihadi needs is a Quran, Horse, Damascus Sword from 760 A.D.

Since the only solution to win any battle with kuffar is to have more purer islam
The fatwa should address

"All a modern Muslim Jihadi needs is Quran in his heart, purebred Arabian horse on his ass and Muhannad in his hand to confront Yahudis, Hindus or Americans."

Then islamic state can be established under the Arabian ummah across the world.

[ramana]

Two x-posts from Understanding Punjab thread...

Punjab partition was grevious blow for it separated historical places forever. Those who agreed did not have an idea of hisotry and culture. They made permanent what could be a temproary loss.

All the early losses were from a era when India wasn't together and was fragmented. There was a chance in modern times to reclaim the lost areas eventually. By agreeing to a Westphalian construct (two states) they gave away the advantages that the masses had restored to the Indian polity. For first time in Indian history the masses were with the elite thanks to the freedom struggle. Those massacres have poisoned the well for a long time making it difficlut to reverse the Partition and maybe that was the goal.

Those massacres have poisoned the well for a long time making it difficlut to reverse the Partition and maybe that was the goal.

Funny that you mention that. The more I dig into partition saga, a very curious fact emerges: The British realized that for the idea of Pakistan to be firmly grounded, expulsion of Hindus/Sikhs population from Pakistan was a must. Otherwise there was a risk that a 25% Hindu/Sikh in Pakistan---and a bigger percentage in Paki Punjab---would either cause Partition could be undone, or would make Pakistan weak & fragile.

So what they did was they deliberately looked the other way when Partition violence errupted, not making the slightest effort into stopping it---as a matter of fact they put their entire effort, along with military manpower, into transferring the Hindus/Sikhs to India, but not ensuring that they stay in Pakistan. This was a silent, but a deliberate British policy. They had to do this to ensure that Pakistan survives & flourishes & becomes a defacto reality. A huge Hindu/Sikh population in Paki Punjab (especially close to Indian border) would have meant an effective death knell of Pakistan. This I think was understood by them quite clearly.

The sad thing while many Indians instinctively know this, or may be even consciously know this, we have not made this one of the "accepted" fact of our public consciousness. We Hindus/Sikhs on side, and Musliams on the other curse each other for the Partition riots, we forget the real instigator behind this sordid drama.

[A_Gupta]

Well, here is what happened in Punjab, Feb-Mar 1947.
http://sites.google.com/site/cabinetmissionplan/punjab-february---march-1947

[Atri]

http://www.chowk.com/ilogs/65736/47736

One of the very good appreciation of history and genesis of Pakistan by a Paki historian.. Very balanced and neutral appraisal of history... a must read...

[ramana]

Two posts

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... ith-honour
Peace, but only with honour ( What honor , in begging or being born of incest)
Musharraf. Ahmak Nazi .

Peace is a very beautiful concept, but Indian and Pakistani conceptions are different. Pakistan sees India as just another neighbour, while India sees itself as a great power in its neighbourhood, its hegemonic position accepted by all. While Pakistan, by its very nature as a new state, has been trying to find a role for itself, India sees itself as the inheritor of the British legacy of the Raj, with the difference that many of today’s states did not exist, or were British colonies controlled from London through the India Office. The Indian task, to rule in the region and establish a true Hindu society, is made all the more difficult. Because of this disconnect, India has always looked askance at Pakistan, even after splitting it in 1971 and managing the secession of Bangladesh, and has always been suspicious of what is the second largest power on the subcontinent and in the region, even though much smaller than India.

and

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... ith-honour
Peace, but only with honour ( What honor , in begging or being born of incest)
Musharraf. Ahmak Nazi .

....The Indian task, to rule in the region and establish a true Hindu society.......

I've read all the links at the first page of this thread and followed this thread for years. But I still can't fathom how the heck the pukis can be so dense. It is not some village idiot educated by an insular mullah but a seemingly 'english' educated person in a city and with access to information from all over the world as to how things work in India. And yet, they don't seem to have the ability to wrap it around their head that that is just not how India sees its future. Is it just a case of severe mental retardation over multiple generations that has led to this?

Its mirroring. They formed their identity based on their religion hence see others thru the same prism. It all goes back to Nazariya-e-Pakistan.

[ramana]

X-post...

The Indian task, to rule in the region and establish a true Hindu society......

Is it just a case of severe mental retardation over multiple generations that has led to this?

See it is a case of cognitive dissonance brought on with the inability of ego to coexist with shame. The typical thought process when a human is caught in an indefensible position is "If I convince myself of some convoluted lie, everybody will be convinced by my lie". Like homer simposon says "Its not a lie if you yourself believe it". So if caught with your pants down, first invent a lie. Next convince yourself that the lie in fact true. Next since you believe it is true now, preach it to everyone with vigor !

This happens with all the time with amreeki public figures caught cheating. Let this Ted Haggard guy, who was caught sleeping with a man (he was caught with some man's d1ck in his mouth, all the while condemning gay people and preaching that gays go to hell. Well, nobody has a problem if a man has another man's d1ck in his mouth, it is just rip roaringly hilarious that a guy who built his fortune and career preaching hate against gays, was caught swinging the other way) - His reply ? "Media is sensationalizing the event. Only people involved will realize that there are several layers of truth".

Now the same thing with Pakis. They are tall, fair with a tight musharraf. They belong to the glorious martial conquering race with a superior religion than the dark, weak thin rice eating neighbors. But their country is going down the pakistan day by day! But on the other hand, the small, dark, ugly, thin, rice eating neighbors seem to be doing just fine. So how do they reconcile their begging bowl with their TFTA ego ?

Start the fantastic self delusion engine.

See the fact that they failed is not because they dug themselves into a pakistan by being obsessed about breaking up India. After all, India Pakistan-equal equal. Indians were hegemony bania conquerors seeking to spread hinduism through hindoo jihad (leave alone the fact that the guy who built our missiles was a muslim, the guy who led our army to victory in 71 was a Parsi, and his theater commander was a Sikh, the president of the ruly party is catholic and the PM is sikh). Just like Pakistan, purely out of self defence, did Jihad too. The fact that Indians succeeded and Pakis didnt is entirely due to fate. It cannot be the case that Indians were morally superior, better in governance or industrious and hard working. They are equally bad, and it is just a cruel trick of face.

Ego saved !!!

Cognitive dissonance my friend. Brought on by denial, shame and a begging bowl taped on to a TFTA ego.

[ramana]

x-post...
TSPA needs to get a harder line image after the beating the took from the TTP folks if they still want to command the kabila.
I expect they will become more overt about their relationship to Al Q. I see no other alternative. IOW they need more hardline position than the rebels.
What this will mean to the rest of the world is another thing. One thing is they wont seize power directly anymore as that will cut off US aid. So if Zardari gets replaced it will be by another of their puppets.

[ramana]

We should work on mapping the various interests of the different players in TSP. Its not as simple as the 3As:Allah, Army and Amrika.
Its more complex and varied.

[ramana]

Up. Use this thread to discuss naming the TSP threads for the morphing of TSP is documented here.

[ramana]

Op-Ed from Deccan Chronicle, 7 April 2010...


Bhutto's folk Islam

Bhutto’s folk Islam

April 6th, 2010
By Nadeem F. Paracha

The majority of Muslims in Pakistan are ensconced in the popular Barelvi creed of Islam that is the mainstay of Muslims in the subcontinent. It reassures the enshrinement of the traditional Sufism that prevailed due to a long period of interaction between Islam and the esoteric strains of Hinduism and other faiths of India.

“Folk” Islam became the dominating creed of the rural peasant, the urban proletariat and the semi-urban petty-bourgeoisie. It incorporated the anti-clergy elements of Sufism, and a more relaxed fiqh, fusing these with accommodating forms of worship and the concept of overt religious reverence of people it considered divine. The result was a sub-continental Muslim ethos that was socially tolerant and repulsed by the puritan dogma.

Though agrarian in its worldview, “folk” Islam did not negatively react to modern Islamic reform initiated by rationalists like Syed Ahmed Khan, and consequently (by the 1960s) it became the chosen expression of populist (secular) politics in Pakistan.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) became the first Pakistani political party to set the tone of its rhetoric according to the populist imagery of “folk” Islam, in the process managing to attract the urban working classes and the rural peasantry towards its social-democratic programme.

Not only did the PPP chairman, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), become one of the first major Pakistani political figures to start being seen indulging in rituals associated with “folk” Islam (such as visiting Sufi shrines), PPP rallies too started radiating an aura of the colourful activity found at many Sufi shrines. The 1970s in Pakistan thus became an era of populist extroversion.

With “folk” Islam adopted as a populist political expression by the ruling PPP, this form of expression eventually became the tool that culturally connected the country’s secular political parties with the spiritual and political moorings of the working classes and the peasants.

The cultural synthesis emerging from such a connection was one of the reasons behind Bhutto’s image, graduating from being that of a “brave patriot” (1967-68), to becoming a people’s messiah (1970s) and the embodiment of a Sufi saint posthumously.

The ZAB regime was a vibrant mix of rural and urban populism (such as through the promotion of folk and proletariat art and music), and of modern bourgeois liberalism that helped urban society maintain a liberal aura. Night-clubs, horse racing and cinemas continued to thrive; religiosity largely remained a private matter, or manifest itself in a display of passion at shrines through dhamal, qawali, etc.

However, lurking within this mix was also an awkward anomaly. As the popular variation of Islam in Pakistan peaked in the 1970s, the modern variation (tied to the Aligarh thought) started to erode when things started to change within some state institutions after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle. A move was seen afoot in the Army towards puritanical strain of Islam, especially those advocated by renowned Islamic scholar and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief, Abul Ala Maududi.

The JI was an early advocate of what came to be known as Political Islam. It first emerged as an opponent of secular/socialist Muslim nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s and was also opposed to the more populist strains of the faith. The JI was eventually successful in converting a sizeable section of the urban middle class to its cause after the former stopped resonating with the modern, reformist tradition of Syed Ahmed Khan. The populist “folk” Islam they began to associate with “Bhuttoism” or a “vulgar” populism, supposedly aimed at undoing the hold on society of bourgeois politics and economics.

Thus, the urban bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie became the main players against the Bhutto regime during the 1977 Pakistan National Alliance movement, led by the JI and its allies. But it wasn’t until the arrival of the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship and the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad that political Islam managed to find state approval.

As the US and Saudi Arabia pumped in millions of dollars of aid for the “jihad”, the more aggressive and puritanical strains of Islam that were largely alien to the region’s Muslims began finding official sanction as well. But in spite of the rapid proliferation of the jihadi mindset and penetration of puritanical Islam in the workings of society that Zia initiated, Bhutto is still remembered as an icon in the devotional sense of loyalty to the culture of “folk” Islam.

Thus, it is not surprising that his death is not seen by his supporters as martyrdom gained through the puritanical concept of “jihad” against an infidel. Instead, his execution by the Zia dictatorship is embroiled in the kind of folk imagery that would leave the Islamists cringing. It is remembered more as a murder of a modern Sufi saint who danced to the gallows in defiance of a usurper and his malicious, scheming team of puritan clerics.

{Shades of Ali's martyrdom that led to Shia-Sunni rift?}

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged at Central jail, Rawalpindi, on April 4, 1979

[ramana]

X-posts...

"SSridhar"

Indian Islamic Scholars accuse LeT of conspiring against Islam

Indian Ahl-e-Hadees scholars accused their ideological peers in Pakistan on Wednesday – the banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT) group and its parent body, Markaz Dawa al-Irshad – of being part of a global conspiracy against Islam. “We believe Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the LT chief, is a khawarij (rebel) and needs to be punished under the law,” declared Maulana Asghar Ali Imam Mehdi Salfi, secretary general of the Markazi Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadees.

The Ahl-e-Hadees sect is often criticised for sharing its ideology with the LT or Dawa al Irshad, headed by Hafiz Saeed. Clarifying his stance, Maulana Salfi said both Hafiz Saeed and the Taliban were part of an international conspiracy. He called these groups marauders and said their struggle was nowhere near jihad. He questioned why these groups did not oppress America when they had aligned with it to fight against the Soviet Union?

Claiming that a majority of Ahl-e-Hadees followers in Pakistan were also “up in arms” against Hafiz Saeed for taking over their mosques and establishments, Maulana Salfi said Islam does not endorse extremism. Maintaining that bomb blasts and suicide attacks were forbidden in Islam, he said there was no justification whatsoever for such acts of terrorism and wanton killings.

Quoting a mutual edict of 36 Ahl-e-Hadees scholars, Maulana Salfi said such acts of violence were more critical than robbery. He, however, said a full and fair investigation was imperative under judicial supervision to ensure that innocent people were not punished in the name of terrorism.

Maulana Salfi said the khawarij, who first emerged in the late seventh century AD, also observed all Islamic tenants strictly, but actually created waywardness and rebellion. “Islam does not believe in extremes,” he added.

---------
"SSridhar"

Where Sipah-e-Sahaba Rules - by Khaled Ahmed in TFT

Please read it completely to understand the emerging menace. PA is willing to let Seraikistan become the new FATA on the eastern borders.

The UN-banned Sipah Sahaba is now clearly the dominant political force in South Punjab. The dreaded militia declared terrorist by the UN, Jaish Muhammad, based in Bahawalpur and under state ‘protection’, is an offshoot of Sipah Sahaba because its leader Maulana Masood Azhar revered his mentor Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of Sipah Sahaba. So is the more or less moribund Harkatul Mujahideen whose leader Fazlur Rehman Khaleel was last seen in 2007 at the time of the crisis of Lal Masjid and probably lives in Islamabad also ‘under protection’. Yet another offshoot of Sipah Sahaba, Lashkar Jhangvi, is the wing that kills Shias. Its terrorist leaders are about to be exonerated and freed from jail. Notorious Akram Lahori has already been let off from Karachi. Expect more mayhem in the days to come.

Tacit acceptance of Sipah supremacy: The dominant political party in Punjab – the PML-N – was always inclined in favour of the religious parties, but its solicitation of support from the dominant Sipah in South Punjab has been noted recently. This is a realistic direction because South Punjab has become de-politicised in favour of the increasingly state-supported Deobandi-jihadi elements. Jaish is directly connected to Al Qaeda, as intelligence reports steadily report. As relations with India worsen and Jaish is primed for ‘use’ in the coming days – together with the other jihadi organisation Lashkar Tayba – the hold of Sipah over South Punjab will push all political parties out of contention. Therefore both the PML-N and the PPP are courting it for electoral support. {Khaled Ahmed foresees dire days for India}

Reported in daily Express (9 March 2010) PML N leaders were courting the banned terrorist party Sipah Sahaba – renamed Sunnat wal Jamaat- in South Punjab to win in by-elections. PML N Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah was seen together with the Sipah leader Maulana Ahmad Ludhianvi who claimed that all politicians who won their seats in South Punjab in 2008 had approached Sipah for help. One federal minister of state had even invited Ludhianvi to his house. Daily Islam (10 March 2010) reported that Maulana Ahmad Ludhianwi said that his party should not be called terrorist as saying so would be in contempt of the court of law. He said a case in this regard was sub judice at the High Court. {Pakistan banned it as a terrorist organization on Jan. 12, 2002} He said the PPP election candidate in Haroonabad was supported by his party and this support was announced by member Javed Iqbal in the presence of Governor Salmaan Taseer.

Taliban vision is Sipah’s vision: The state has always backed the Sipah. {As simple as that}The last time it did so overtly was in 2006 when, to the shock of all who thought Musharraf was opposed to terrorism, it allowed the banned outfit to hold very large congregation in Islamabad, complete with sectarian CDs sold from its stalls. The following year the crisis of Lal Masjid in Islamabad overtook Musharraf. It was another sectarian transplant from South Punjab (Dera Ghazi Khan) which was the meeting place of elements aligned with Al Qaeda. After Musharraf attacked Lal Masjid, Al Qaeda issued the most forceful message against him, triggering the war in the tribal areas through its Taliban proxy.

What the Taliban did to the population of the tribal areas and Malakand-Swat after 2007 was long envisioned by Sipah Sahaba. After being empowered by the exclusively Deobandi jihad unleashed in Afghanistan and Kashmir by the state agencies, its leader Maulana Azam Tariq declared, at an international Difa-e-Sahaba (Defence of the Prophet’s Companions) conference in Karachi in October 2000, that he planned to convert Pakistan’s 28 biggest cities into ‘model Islamic cities’ where television, cinema and music would be banned. Because of Sipah’s alignment with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, its influence among the Orakzai Pashtun tribes in the upper Miranzai Valley in Hangu and Tal became palpable. Today, as the air force pounds Orakzai, Pakistan is close to re-capturing a tribal agency after five years of rule by Taliban and their South Punjabi warriors.

Abandonment of South Punjab to Sipah: Maulana Azam Tariq was killed in 2003. So were many potentates of Karachi’s Banuri Mosque in the following years because of its patronage of the extremist clergy trained in the madrassas of South Punjab. The single most prominent of these madrassas is the one at Kabirwala which trained the founder of Sipah, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. The latest casualties in the Karachi sectarian killings – Maulana Jalalpuri and Maulana Nadim – were both transplants to Karachi from South Punjab.

But Sipah never lost its political appeal even after the ban in 2002. It had its political record: Azam Tariq was elected to parliament four times from the Sipah stronghold in Jhang. He won the National Assembly constituency in 1990, 1993 and in October 2002. The 1990 election was a particularly big success when Azam Tariq defeated the government-backed candidate by a big margin. In the 2002 election under Musharraf, he contested the election from jail. The government, first let him contest the elections, then filed a petition in the Lahore High Court challenging the Pakistan Election Commission’s decision to allow him to stand despite the cases against him. Sipah even became a part of the Punjab government when it succeeded in getting its two MPAs inducted into the Punjab cabinet of the Muslim League chief minister Sardar Arif Nakai in 1995.

Distant dream of Saraiki Province and Sipah: South Punjab has a population of 27 million and comprises 13 districts - Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahimyar Khan, Layyah, Lodhran, Khanewal, Muzaffargarh, Bahawalnagar, Rajanpur, Bhakkar, Vehari, Jhang and Dera Ghazi Khan. (Jhang may not be strictly located in the South but is claimed as part of South Punjab for two reasons: because of the dominance of Sipah Sahaba and because of its linguistic nexus with the rest of the area through Saraiki.) South Punjab has lately become more active in pursuing the objective of a separate province. The campaign has acquired an edge because of two influential TV channels – Rohi and Waseb. Since the campaign is language-based, many districts lying outside South Punjab are likely to be demanded by it, but a realistic estimate would allow districts like Mianwali to remain in rump Punjab despite the recent mild Saraiki advocacy by maverick politician Sher Afgan Niazi. The Saraiki province however remains a distant dream.

A new perspective of the Saraiki Movement is gradually coming to the fore, reflecting the political dominance of Sipah Sahaba and its offshoot, the Jaish. No one from among the backers of the movement – known traditionally to be secular – is willing to even speak of the presence of the jihadi-terrorist organisations. One reason is that most of them want to lean on them to win the elections; the other may be the simple fact of intimidation and the subliminal acknowledgement of state patronage to the terrorists. A Saraiki Province in the coming days will be exclusively the domain of Sipah Sahaba and its friends. It will be for the first time that terrorists posing as Islamic warriors against India and against the Shias of Pakistan will possess an entire province and its resources under the new constitutional dispensation of real autonomy. {The Islamic Emirate of Seraikistan. The Seraiki movement has been hijacked}

Al Qaeda and South Punjab: It is said that the Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, after being injured, was taken to South Punjab before he allegedly died. South Punjab as a separate province will be ripe for use by the state against India. (TV discussions have actually considered the latest Saraiki Movement as orchestrated by the state agencies.) It is quite possible that using the ‘non state actors’ from an independent province will be more convenient for the agencies. But the state may not have taken into account that the new province will also become the domain of Al Qaeda through its close contacts with Jaish Muhammad. The presence of Lashkar Tayba in South Punjab may also add to the facility of the agencies, but its trans-border actions will certainly attract international attention.
{Pakistan is perfectly willing to destroy itself 10 times if it can destroy India even patially once}
Pakistani analyst Syed Saleem Shahzad representing Asia Times On Line (31 March 2010) has traced the latest Moscow attack by terrorists from North Caucasus to Pakistan: ‘Monday’s twin suicide attacks by female bombers in the Moscow metro system in which at least 38 people were killed and 64 injured were most likely planned and executed by people trained in Pakistan’s tribal areas’. South Punjab is expected to intensify its campaign to become an independent province, with its political direction in the hands of Sipah Sahaba, benefiting both Al Qaeda and the state agencies.

-----------------

"SSridhar"

This issue of TFT analyses the emerging situation in Southern Punjab (Seraikistan). Here is an excerpt from an interview with Taj Muhammad Langah, Chief of Pakistan Saraiki Party (PSP).

The Friday Times: South Punjab is engulfed in numerous problems, with extremism on the rise, how do you see the situation in South Punjab at the moment?

Taj Muhammad Langah: Extremism in the Saraiki region is far less as compared to Lahore, Islamabad and some parts of upper Punjab. {This is either denial-mode or under intimidation from the terrorist tanzeems, as Khaled Ahmed has said} There is no denying the fact that the people in South Punjab have religious inclinations, but extremist tendencies are lower as compared to those in Lahore or Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa. The headquarters of Lashkar-i-Taiba is in Mureedke – located in the suburbs of Lahore. The chief of erstwhile Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, is wandering freely on the streets of Lahore and the judicial, business and academic elites of Lahore openly finance this militant organization.{Let's note the reference to judiciary with respect to LeT. The farce in the Lahore High Court over the arrests of Hafeez Saeed and the reactions of the judges clearly proved which side the judiciary was.}

During Nawaz Sharif’s previous government, the state minister for foreign affairs told me personally that one of the jihadi organisations possess 6 lakh Kalashnikovs. The financial headquarters of religious organisations such as Sipah Sahaba, Sipah Muhammad (Shia organization) and Jammat-i-Islami are also located in Lahore. What other evidence do you want from us to prove that extremism is more rampant in Upper Punjab and not in the Saraiki Region?

The jihadi culture has two facets: one has its roots in Kashmir and the other dates back to the Afghan Jihad. The religious extremist organizations that I have just mentioned are the off-shoots of these two facets and are extremely active in Islamabad. Who does not know about the mushrooming of Madaris in Islamabad, and who is unaware of what happened at Lal Masjid? The extremists have their main centres in Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar. On the other hand, militants in the entire Saraiki region cannot outnumber the extremists in any one of these centres. It is unfortunate that despite all these realities, the newspapers, the TV channels and the Awami National Party have painted the Saraiki region as a breeding ground for terrorism and extremism. They are trying to provide an excuse for an operation in our region so that they could siphon off more funding from abroad. At the moment, Talibanisation does not pose any threat to the Saraiki belt. {Deliberate denial. A lay reader should correctly infer that the entire state of Pakistan is breeding ground for terrorism and extremism since Pakistanis themselves are fighting among themselves about which area is more extremist and which is less.}

The Friday Times:Most of the terrorist attacks carried out in Lahore have been orchestrated by militant groups operating in the Saraiki region. How do you respond to this?

It is a false accusation and a mere concoction. Saraikis are peace loving people and oppose suicide bombings.{They only support fidayeen attack !} They have a deep cultural association with Sufism and abhor violence and terrorism. Moreover, they possess a liberal orientation and strongly believe in democratic norms. The terrorists involved in Lahore attacks are either of Pushtoon or Punjabi origin. These people have established their base in South Punjab in the form of Madaris. The high-ups of Madaris set up in the Saraiki region are Pushtoons and Punjabis such as Samiul Haq, Fazalur Rehman, Sajid Mir or Qazi Hussain Ahmad. Saraikis have no involvement in their nefarious designs.

The Friday Times:How do you comment on the movement for a separate Saraiki province?

The Saraiki province has been buried by the Prime minister and his allies for the time being. There was not a single Saraiki-speaking member in the so-called Constitutional Reform Committee. Some Pushtoon and Sindhi speaking members of the committee raised this issue, but faced stiff resistance from the head of the committee Mian Raza Rabbani, who is a street boy from Bhagbanpura, a Punjabi chauvinist and a known enemy of the Saraiki movement. Similarly, Premier Yousaf Raza Gillani is a street boy from Multan who is just dancing to the tunes of Mian Nawaz Sharif and is acting against the core interests of the PPP. All of them have suppressed us and our voice for the time being by eschewing the demand for a new province for over 60 million Saraiki speaking people. This is tantamount to exclusion of millions of Saraikis from the federation by the entire Constitutional Reforms Committee.

There are now only four nationalities recognized in Pakistan i.e. Punjabis, Sindhis, Pukhtoons and Balochs. Along with Prime Minister Gillani and Nawaz Sharif, I hold responsible the smaller provinces for betraying the Saraikis. Sindhis, Pushtoons and Balochis have bargained with Punjabis and have won their rights. President Asif Zardari personally supervised the protection of rights of the three smaller provinces whereas Saraikis are again left at the mercy of Punjabis. [{One would think that everyone in Pakistan was at the mercy of the Punjabis} Now we have to secure our rights by ourselves. We will chalk out a new strategy and a new plan of action. Lahore and Larkana have struck a deal that they will rule the country on alternate basis whereas they will keep on sharing their power in the Punjab. The 18th amendment does not contain any mechanism as to how the new provinces can be chalked out.

The Rabbani-led committee did not even bother to amend the article 234(4) inserted by the military dictator Ziaul Haq which puts too many conditionalities on creating new provinces. This article states that.a new prvince cannot be divided until and unless the provincial assembly of that province approves of such a partition by a two-thirds margin. How would the Punjabis sitting in the provincial assembly of Punjab provide a two-third majority to create a Saraiki province? They are forcing us to adopt the path of violence. They are forcing us to approach the world powers. The PPP has deceived the Saraiki voters without whom it could have never acquired a majority in the National Assembly. We ask progressive and liberal publications such as TFT, what should Saraikis do now when the other four nationalities have deprived them of their identity?

The Friday Times:There is a resistance movement emerging in the midst of a feudal society from the peasantry in the Saraiki region. How do you respond to this?

There are two categories of resistance. One is in Khanewal and Okara which are under army occupation. We are in favour of this resistance. I have personally participated in their protest rallies. These are Punjabi tenants and the media and NGOs from Punjab are supporting them as well. It is strange army officers have also occupied lands in the Saraiki region but the media, NGOs or leftist political parties from Punjab are not talking about this occupation. For example, there were millions of acres of state land in District Layyah which were allotted to Punjabi planters but not to local Saraikis, who in fact have the foremost right. Vast lands in Rajan Pur, Rahim Yar Khan and more than 4 hundred thousand acres of land in Bahawalpur are in the illegal possession of the army but no one raises this issue. Shahbaz Sharif often pays visits to Bahwalpur or Rahim Yar Khan to announce such illegal land allotments.

The Friday Times:You are a strong advocate of a new Saraiki province to be carved out of Punjab. What do you think will be the long term political fall out if the government agrees to meet this demand?

The hegemony of elites would certainly lessen if Punjab is divided This would also contribute towards curbing corruption. Before the Sikh rule, the Saraiki region was never part of Punjab. A new Saraiki province would strengthen the federation. The center has satisfied Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP by accepting their demands, now it’s our turn. If Saraikis remain disturbed, dissatisfied, and perturbed then it would be detrimental for the entire province. The youth in the Saraiki region is becoming increasingly impatient because their identity is being eroded. Now Saraikis are in Pakistan as Kashmiris are in the Indian federation.

The Friday Times:How can you compare the situation in the Saraiki belt with that of the Indian-held Kashmir when elected representatives of your region are sitting in the parliament?

The elected Kashmiri representatives are also sitting in the parliament in New Delhi. Then why does Pakistan not recognize them? In fact, they are representatives of the Indian establishment. Across the world, there are representatives of Samraaj (imperialism) in the assemblies. Are the members sitting in parliaments of Iraq and Afghanistan real public representatives? Similarly, representatives from our Saraiki region are also agents of the establishment of Lahore and Islamabad. I call upon them not to vote in favour of the 18thamendment if there is no Saraiki province in the Constitution of Pakistan.

-----------

What these reports indicate is the progress of fundamentalization of rural Pakjabis.

[ramana]

Gives a good vignette on the psyche of middle calss person in TSP

Thanks, jrjr...


Here is the full text. Will leave it to the admins to see if it can stay:

Letter from Karachi
Prospect
March 25, 2010
BYLINE: Jason Burke

Stand on the corner of a Karachi street and the key to understanding contemporary Pakistan passes you every few seconds. It's a small, 796cc car made by Suzuki. Once known as the Alto, the name was "localised" in 1992 to Mehran, after an ancient Persian deity and an alternative name for the nearby Indus river.

The Mehran is Pakistan's most popular car. It costs £4,000 in a country where the average per capita income is £550. Most of those in use were bought secondhand. A trader in the northwest frontier province offered me one last year for £1,000. "A bargain," he told me, "one careful owner."

Mehran drivers are increasingly defining the identity and evolution of Pakistan-an important shift that has gone largely unnoticed. It is the result of urbanisation, the expansion of the lower middle class and the emergence of a new national identity as the last traces of colonial rule disappear.

In Pakistan, the hierarchy on the roads reflects that of society. If you are poor, you use the overcrowded buses or a bicycle. Small shopkeepers, rural teachers and better-off farmers are likely to have a £1,000 Chinese or Japanese-made motorbike. With mum riding sidesaddle behind dad, a kid in front and two behind, these are an effective if dangerous equivalent of a European family's Mondeo estate or Espace.

Then come the Mehran drivers. A rank above them, in air-conditioned Toyota Corolla saloons, are the small businessmen, smaller landlords, more senior army officers and bureaucrats. Finally, there are the luxury four-wheel drives of "feudal" landowners, big businessmen, expats, drug dealers, generals, ministers and elite bureaucrats. The latter may be superior in status, power and wealth, but it is the Mehrans which, by dint of numbers, dominate the roads.
The Mehrans' natural habitat are mega-cities like Lahore or Karachi, as well as smaller cities like Faisalabad and Hyderabad. Over a third of Pakistan's 170m population live in towns and by 2030 the proportion is expected to be over half.
The recent economic boom has been driven by cheap credit, immigrant remittances, foreign aid and economic reforms. As elsewhere, the growth has been slowed by the economic crisis but not before a huge number of lower middle-class urbanites have got richer. At the same time, telecommunications have exploded, with satellite chains penetrating even remote villages (see "The real news from Pakistan," July 2009). The newly enriched are thus also newly politically conscious.

What are the consequences of this new wealth, urbanisation and politicisation? Politically, the Bhutto dynasty's Pakistan Peoples party, mostly based in rural constituencies and led by the feudal landowners, will lose out to the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif with its industrial, commercial, urban constituency. Culturally, the traditional, folksy, tolerant practices in rural areas will decline in favour of more modern, politicised Islamic strands and identities. And as power and influence shift away from rural elites once co-opted by colonialism, the few elements of British influence to have survived will fade faster.

For Mehran man is not a natural ally of the west. He is 30 or older, urban, works as a junior army officer, a middling journalist, a small businessman, a university lecturer, perhaps a headmaster or a lawyer.

Educated outside the elite English-language system, he speaks Urdu or a local language such as Punjabi, Sindhi or Pashto at home and at work. Unless he is a doctor, army officer or civil servant, his English is likely to be limited. This reflects the shift of English from signifier of social status to a tool for professional advancement. When I visited the country in the early 1990s, the middle class apologised for their poor English. On my most recent visit, several elite Pakistanis told me they were ashamed of their poor Urdu.

Mehran man has a satellite television (there are now 43m viewers in Pakistan), likes the occasional Bollywood movie and is not averse to a bottle of cheap whisky, though not at home. This does not stop him being socially conservative and pious. His wife will wear a headscarf or veil, as will his daughters from puberty.

Much of his worldview is close to the "single narrative"-that the Muslim world is under attack from western interests controlled by neo-Crusaders and malevolent Zionist-Jewish lobbies. Like many Pakistanis, he believes that 9/11 was probably the work of the CIA and/or Mossad.

If he can afford a holiday, he takes his family to one of the hill stations in the north. But he dreams of holidaying in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia or Dubai, an indication of the shift in economic, political and cultural orientation of Pakistan towards the Islamic world. A decade ago, the country felt like the western extension of south Asia. Now it feels increasingly like the eastern fringe of the middle east.

Mehran man's sentiments towards India are divided. There is the attraction of the glitzy country seen in films and then there is the India as historic enemy and oppressor. Similarly, there are the freedom fighters of Kashmir or Afghanistan and there are the terrorists: the distinction is based on the identity of their victims. Kill Americans in Afghanistan or get killed by them anywhere and you are a freedom fighter, kill Pakistanis and you are a terrorist. Mehran man is incensed by the drone attacks in the northwest frontier, as much for their infringement of national sovereignty as out of solidarity with poor villagers killed by them.

Mehran man is deeply proud of his country. A new identification with the ummah, or global community of Muslims, paradoxically reinforces rather than degrades his nationalism. For him, Pakistan was founded as an Islamic state, not a state for south Asian Muslims. Mehran man is an "Islamo-nationalist." His country possesses a nuclear bomb that, as one Lahore shopkeeper told me, even the rich Arabs haven't built. The sentiment of self-sufficiency and nascent confidence, hardly justified given Pakistan's dependence on external aid and internal weaknesses, is boosted by the size of the country: in a decade the population will near 200m.

Given the dysfunctional nature of Pakistani democracy, we cannot ignore Mehran man. Apart from anything else, the army is full of Mehran men. During a week I spent with the Pakistani army, the heritage of Sandhurst seemed largely restricted to the whitewashed stones aligned outside segregated messes for senior officers, junior officers, non-commissioned officers and other ranks. The links to America are more material-helicopters, jeeps and ammunition-but no more profound. Conversations with officers reveals that their understanding of Pakistan's best interests differs radically from that which London or Washington would like them to have. As for the other pillar of non-elected power in Pakistan, a lot of bureaucrats drive Mehrans too, or at least did before being promoted.

All this poses problems for the west. Our policy towards Pakistan has long been based on finding the interlocutor who resembles us the most-Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, now her widower-and then trying to persuade them to fit in with our agenda. But the people we are talking to are going to find themselves more and more cut off, culturally and politically, from those they lead, and less and less capable of implementing the policies that we want. Pakistanis are increasingly defining their own interests, independently of the views of their pro-western leaders. And Mehran man will soon be in the driving seat.

The comment about TSP becoming the Eastern Fringe of the Middle East was remarked by Braudel in his "History of Civilizations". I see the same in US, where the TSP expatriates gather with other ME folks and claim to belong to an extended Mediterannean culture, atleast by influence, if not by ethnicity.

[ramana]

X-post....

I took my mother to Paksitan in 2005, she left in 1947 from the village in district Virkgarh (now called Shaikhupura) on the army truck. The conversation went like

Question: "What happened to our Well?"
Answer: We filled it up

Question : "What happened to our garden?"
Answer : We tilled it down.

Question: "What happened to our house"
Answer : We used the bricks to make our own houses.

Question : What happend to our cremation place and Samadhis of our elders?
Answer : We tilled it down.

The Shaikhupura district is so backward that they still use cows/buffalos to walk on the cultivated wheat to separate it from the chaff., while in India current generation does not even know whether cows/buffalos could be used for this purpose.
I asked one of the person about number of tractors in the village and he replied "Two tractors with the house of Chaudhries".

Pakistan is a very gloomy place., 95% of people wear Brown or Sky blue color salwar kameez., and all women wear black. So you only see three colors and urdu everywhere (very very few signs in english). The sewer system runs through the middle of the road (instead of on both sides of the road) and thus it stinks a lot., with brackish/greenish sewer pond every couple of KMs (from Lahore to Shaikhupura and then to Gujranwala). You will also notice that lots of people spit phelgum every few minutes on street, scratching their privates, though they will squat to pee near a wall.

[ramana]

Folks, I am pleased and honored to announce the link to SSridhar's blog on Pak Watch.

http://pak-watch.blogspot.com/2010/04/p ... -from.html

Thanks to SSridhar and Jamawal for seizing the initiative and hope this is the first of many such ring of blogs which will spread our message.

Please visit and be informed.

Thanks,

ramana

[JE Menon]

It would be interesting to investigate the origin of the phrase "non-state actors"... If I remember correctly, it was Zardari who first used this term during 26/11 or just after. It was immediately adopted. In my opinion, the man does not have the intelligence or the linguistic and detailed background knowledge required to come up with this term. It is more likely that he was told to use the term by the Pakistani military establishment, through some ISI officer close to Zardari. It is not impossible that the term was first suggested to the ISI itself from outside Pakistan.

It would be good if we could find previous usage of this phrase in similar or even slightly similar circumstances. Or even to find whether the term was ever used at all.

[ramana]

Its massa speak...

Website on Political Economy of Terrorism

Ethan Beuno De Mesquita

Scroll down in the resources section and find your links. Non State Actors was a term coined in US think tanks.

[Anujan]

JEM-ji

It *is* massa speak. Google news archive shows the usage going back to 1990. However in the Pakistani context, I quite distinctly remember Ayesha Siddiqa Agha using it liberally in her columns in TFT when access used to be free. I guess in 2003 I think.

[ramana]

Perceptive post by Anujan in arty thread

X-post....

Sorry I didn't understand! Are you saying Pokis won the 65' war?

Pakistan had a "Hezbollah victory" in 65 - The rule of the game is that even if the entire pious army gets decimated, if one pious surviving guy with both arms, one leg, one eye gone shouts AoA!! It means that the pure have won and the kafirs have lost.

Many people have had Hezbollah victories. Pakistan in 65, Kargil and Parakram. Pakistan also had a Hezbollah victory in the Baglihar dam dispute, where the arbitrator ruled in favor of India but conceded a minor point to the Pakistanis about some arcane technical issue which India offered in the first place -- essentially means that the one legged, one eyed Pakistani delegation could should AoA!! and claim victory. Afghans won a Hezbollah victory against USSR and ofcourse Hezbollah against Israel recently (after which I was inspired to name this rule as the "Hezbollah victory rule").

It essentially means that there is a tiny string by which H&D is still hanging. Reminds me of what ramanaji posted about the importance of H&D in tribal societies: one way of denying a Hezbollah victory is to dent the H&D in a conspicuous, telling and transparent manner. Rounding up 93,000 people, taking a picture of the signing ceremony and commemorating that day like in '71 is one way.

The flip side of it is the "Argumentative SDRE" defeat. Which means much introspection, hand wringing, debate and blame game to essentially cast a victory as a defeat. Like the SDREs in Kargil -- it was a HUGE intelligence failure, lots of soldiers died, India got a nose bloodied, cashmere was internationalized, coffin scam, krasnopol didnt work, INSAS magazines cracked etc etc and so the SDREs lost. The fact that NLI got wiped out (and had to be mollified by incorporating this into PA), Pakistan got a dictator for 8 years directly & a huge purge of the Jernails because of this, BB probably got killed because of threatening to investigate it & Nawaz had to soil his shalwar and rush to Unkil does not count.

We came dangerously to a "Argumentative SDRE" defeat in '71 too - because Sam Bahadur did not mobilize fast.

[Paul]

It is with a view to deny even this last shred of deniability that the Islamists made their KAffir subjects offer their daughters and sisters to signal their complete ascendence as the victors, on the battlefield and in ideology.

Wish the mahrattas had done the same with the Nizam and the last mughals. This would have put paid to the 1000 year slavery myth.

[svinayak]

It is with a view to deny even this last shred of deniability that the Islamists made their KAffir subjects offer their daughters and sisters to signal their complete ascendence as the victors, on the battlefield and in ideology.

Wish the mahrattas had done the same with the Nizam and the last mughals. This would have put paid to the 1000 year slavery myth.

Cultural hegemony is a slow process from the Hindu/Indian point of view - the mind comes first.
The Islamists will remove all the physical traces of defeated culture and then use brainwashing for the new generation and kill all the grown adult so that there is no trace of the original culture.

In India they tried the Indian process of slow cultural domination and tried to mold their version of Islam into the countryside village society. This process was used from 1200 to 1500AD. Mughals used other coercive methods such as jaziya and killings.
This version of the folk islam and sufi islam is a psy ops inside the Indian landmass. This is what we see in the countryside of Sindh and PakJab even now. Even in India in UP/Bihar etc. Zia wanted to change it to hardcore islam. The hindu roots will not go away from the country side and hence Maududi tried his version of "Islam as a way of life" process which will blend the hindu culture with the Islam.

[ramana]

Night Watch, 12 May 2010

India: Defence Minister A.K. Antony said on 12 May that India remains concerned about Pakistan's militant infrastructure, New Kerala reported. Talks will continue, Antony said, but Pakistan must take steps to dismantle more than 40 militant camps.

Comment: India has accepted a Pakistani invitation this week to resume talks. India's main concern is that Pakistan take action to root out anti-Indian terrorists. Readers would be wise in suspecting US pressure on India to throw a bone to the fragile, elected civilian government in Pakistan by agreeing to talks at least in principle.

The American policy is another rerun of an approach that has failed repeatedly. The theory is that the Pakistani civilian government would have a freer hand in applying military assets against Pakistani terrorists and militants, if India appeared less hostile. Prime Minister Gilani and General Kayani, thus, could better manage pressure from the Army Corps Commanders and the enormous corps of retired senior officers who insist that India is the existential threat to Pakistan, instead of internal fragmentation.

As an aside, Pakistani generals and strategists never seem to come to grips with the fact that India contains twice as many Muslims as Pakistan, handles them better than Pakistan, and has no need of or desire for more Muslims or for an unstable Islamic neighbor state that cannot control its Muslim population.

At US urging, India has exercised restraint in response to terrorist attacks from Pakistan at least four times since December 2001 when Pakistani Muslim zealots attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. India's restraint has not been matched by Pakistani cooperation or even competent police work. Thus Pakistani failures enabled the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, which were launched from near Karachi.

There will be more terrorist attacks against India from Pakistan by Pakistanis. The retired generals' lobby and the defense industrial establishment that is owned by the Pakistan Army must see India as a threat to justify their existence and must deem the terrorists as agents of Pakistan's deterrent strategy against Indian aggression. Without a a threat from India, Pakistan needs only a strong paramilitary constabulary, not a nuclear equipped army. As an ally of China, however, Pakistan must keep that big, expensive army and the weapons China has supplied.

There you go an accurate assessment by an earlier partisan of TSP

[Airavat]

It is with a view to deny even this last shred of deniability that the Islamists made their KAffir subjects offer their daughters and sisters to signal their complete ascendence as the victors, on the battlefield and in ideology.

Wish the mahrattas had done the same with the Nizam and the last mughals. This would have put paid to the 1000 year slavery myth.

The Muslim writer Nizam-ud-din claims that this had already been done by the Rajputs back in the 14th century.

[Paul]

Airavat,notwiithstanding the much beaten example of Shivaji's exampl, even the marathas did this

My Marathi relatives tell me that in the old days it used be a standard practice even with their Hindu kinsmen where they were rulers ( I see cause to for beleiving this amongst the Kanndiga circles).