Sunday, June 19, 2011

Reading Al Qaeda In Karachi

In the preface to his book Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, the late Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote:

“I have never worked for any well-funded international news organizations. Nor have I worked for the mainstream national media. My affiliations have always remained with alternative media outlets. This has left me with narrow options and very little space to move around in… However, independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond “conventional wisdom”. ”

Available outside Pakistan



Before it led him to a tragic death, Saleem Shahzad’s quest for that elusive truth beyond conventional wisdom took him from walks on Clifton Beach with a military officer-turned-Al Qaeda strategist to nights spent in mud huts with Taliban militia men as helicopters passed overhead and drones struck in the distance. It took him from Pakistan to Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan and back to North Waziristan to meet raw recruits and hardened militants. Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban, however, is not a book about one man’s fascination with other men who like guns. It is a well-researched, cogent argument for the need to recognize that a common tactical goal – death to America the 'Great Satan' – “does not make the two a single entity. Theirs is a unique relationship, in which Al Qaeda aims to bring the Taliban and all Muslim liberation movements into its fold and to use them to forward it’s global agenda.”


The creation and uses of the mujahideen – who helped defeat the Soviet Union – as a strategic asset to be deployed at will by the Pakistani military to help actualize its regional ambitions, has already been well documented. Shahzad’s book does, however, flesh out how exactly the transformation of some of them from idealistic Muslim youth seeking to repel invaders from Muslim lands into uber-violent jihadis thirsting for the blood of their former handlers, came about. Consider the story of Bin Yameen, also known as Ibn-e-Ameen, who the author identified as the actual enforcer behind the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) movement to declare Sharia law in Swat in 2009.

“Bin Yameen was 6 feet 2 inches tall, had a broad chest, was fair in complexion, and had a full head of hair. His looks were God’s gift, but his short temper was not inbuilt.… Born as a Behloolzai, a subtribe of the Youzufzai tribe, Bin Yameen was never the playboy of his village or a poet. He was a school dropout at the matric level. While he was still in his teens he went to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud. He was arrested in his first battle and then spent seven long years in the inhuman jails of the Northern Alliance. Bin Yameen often remembers how his fellow Taliban detainees died in the jail. Sometimes he witnessed their swift deaths while they were talking or cooking. After the Taliban defeat, he was released by the United States.

“But it was not his seven years in the Northern Alliance jails that embittered him. After his release from [a Panjsheri] prison, his manners were still extraordinarily polite. He always stood up to welcome any guest. The marriage and love life of any Pashtun has always been a very private business. No Pashtun from a village background would ever confide in anyone over matters of the heart. But Bin Yameen used to proudly say that his wife (also his relative) had fallen in love with him and that before their marriage, when they were only engaged during his prolonged imprisonment in Afghanistan, all the family members had pressed her to break her engagement to him and marry someone else. But against all Pashtun traditions, the girl defied her family and said that her name would be tied to Bin Yameen’s forever, whether he lived or died. When Bin Yameen was released and went back to his village the first thing he did was to marry her, proud that this was the girl who had steadfastly stood by him despite all the pressures put on her by her family to forget him.

“Bin Yameen always said that all the pain and agony of his days in the Afghan prison disappeared after the marriage. It was as if nothing had happened. He started his new life with a loving wife. His wife delivered a son and they moved to Peshawar.”

The turning point for this man, according to the author, came after the December 2003 attempt on then President Musharraf’s life. In its aftermath, security agencies starting rounding up the jihadis they had till then supported.

“On August 21, 2004, Pakistan’s security agencies raided Bin Yameen’s house in Peshawar. He was sleeping with his wife. In the next room were two prominent jihadis.” The two managed to escape but the police who had broken into the house captured both Bin Yameen and his wife and “literally dragged them to their vehicles. Bin Yameen was half asleep and half awake, but he saw strangers touching his wife. He attacked them like a wounded lion. He tried to snatch their guns. It took dozens of security personnel to overwhelm him... Later his wife and son were released but Bin Yameen never forgot the humiliation suffered by his wife at the hands of Pakistan’s security personnel.”

After his release three years later he went on to become Al Qaeda’s secret mole in TNSM. They recognized the value of his “unbelievable” hatred – his politeness had become an insatiable thirst to slit the throats of Pakistan army personnel – and recruited him precisely because of it. Interestingly, this is the only time a woman (Bin Yameen's wife) makes an appearance in the book as anything other than a suicide bomber, Osama Bin Laden's daughter, or a purdah-observing student of the Lal Masjid seminary. The world Shahzad wrote about is clearly a world of men, for men, and the lives of women do not in any way figure in the anecdotes, conversations, analysis or vignettes that peppers its pages.


The militants in Swat were eventually pushed back into the Hindu Kush mountains, but Shahzad suggested there was another way to look at this apparent military victory.

“Pakistan’s secularists then boldly stood up against the Islamization of Pakistan. They called for the wings of Islamic seminaries in the country to be clipped. The government arranged religious conferences led by Sufis who spoke out against the Taliban. The Taliban retaliated by killing prominent Islamic scholars like Sarfaraz Naeemi. It seemed at first that the situation had turned against the militants, but behind the scenes Al Qaeda had succeeded in exploiting the ideological contradictions in Pakistan’s society, and deepened the ideological divide.

“In pursuit of this, Al Qaeda’s dialectical process, thousands of people were displaced, hundreds of people were killed, the national economy of Pakistan was on the verge of collapse, and Pakistan became completely dependent on US aid.”

Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban offers many other examples of Al Qaeda’s ideological opportunism. Shahhzad sketches with forensic skill the way the movement capitalized on the growing disillusionment of operatives like Ilyas Kashmiri, the brothers Captain Khurram and Major Haroon, Major Abdul Rahman (three of whom were instrumental allegedly in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks), and Lal Masjid's Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, with the institutions that had once fostered them. Any questions or doubts anybody has about the chronology or motivations for the Lal Masjid incident might well be addressed by reading his take on life beyond the soundbites, the still images, the regurgitated narrative of revolutionary fervor meeting arrogant military might.


Shahzad also establishes chronologically, in detail, the character and purpose behind the umbrella group of what is today known as the TTP or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. He traces how Al Qaeda, the heart of which is a philosophy held sacred by mostly foreigners who are relatively few in number, has over time infiltrated, influenced and started controlling these 'Neo Taliban.'


According to Shahzad, both the Masjid and the TNSM takeover of Swat were meant to divert attention from the tribal areas and buy Al Qaeda more time to consolidate its position there. Its ultimate goal? Expand the theater of war to include all modern day parts of ‘ancient Khurasan’, where the prelude to the “End of Times” battles were prophesied to begin. Khurasan today includes parts of Iran, the Central Asian republics, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Ghazwa-e- Hind, or the battle for India, is also supposed to happen. After this the Muslim armies will march to the Middle East to join forces with the promised Mahdi and do battle against the Antichrist and its Western Allies for the Liberation of Palestine.


Essentially, Al Qaeda recognized Af-Pak way before the American and Pakistani establishment did. This is because, according to Shahzad, the organization has – thanks to the inspired use of its ‘human resources’ – always remained one step ahead of the great game.

“Before October 7, 2001 – when the United States attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, most of Al Qaeda’s top minds had already left the country, their mission focused on several targets:
• to ideologically cultivate new faces from strategic communities such as the armed forces and intelligence circles
• to bring in new recruits and establish cells
• to have each new cell assigned to raise its own resources and devise a plan, but have only one cell implement the plan, while the others served as decoys to 'misdirect' intelligence agencies”

Methods for ‘raising resources’ have included robbing banks and kidnapping Hindus and Ahmedis for ransom.


Since Musharraf first allied Pakistan to the US post-9/11 and the inevitable crackdown on jihadis began – the author’s thesis goes – Al Qaeda has waited, watched, and selected the, if not brightest, at least most committed former children of the US/Pak military machine to turn on their parents. On one level, it is Freudian: kill your mother (Pakistan), kill your father (the army, any army, dates are fluid, and which parent remembers the exact moment of conception anyway?). On another level, it is frightening: we are not even targets, we are collateral damage, and the suicide bombers' strings are being pulled by a parasitic entity that spreads from host to host in less time than it takes for Ansar Abbasi to go from ‘ISI good’ to ‘ISI bad.’


Other points that the book makes:


• Al Qaeda wants to keep the US in the region, engaged and off balance, till such time as the world’s mightiest ‘military machine’ has been bled dry


• Al Qaeda does not wish for a peace deal between the US and the Afghan Taliban because they want to continue to use US occupation of ‘Muslim lands’ as a rallying call for Muslims around the world. The creation of the TTP, the ‘Neo Taliban’, could also be seen as a move to woo fighters away from purely Afghan Taliban interests, which have more to do with ending the US invasion than they do with waiting for the Mahdi


• Al Qaeda feels – correctly as it turns out – that Pakistan’s tribal areas, with their virtually impregnable mountain ranges, are the perfect bases for the global Islamic insurgency. (Sadly, the book was completed before the ‘Arab Spring’, and any opportunity for the author to comment on how that changed the propaganda context.)


• Al Qaeda accomplished what no one had been able to do in Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies before: break the back of the local sardar/ jirga system


• Al Qaeda’s “Egyptian camp” of core ideologues can be perceived as the ‘intelligentsia of fundamentalism.’ This can either mean they are highly intelligent, learned, well read scholars of history, religion, philosophy and warfare. Or that every third Friday after lights out they regroup in a forest wearing all black to drink wine, smoke cheroots and debate existentialism. Probably the former.


• Saudi Osama Bin Laden might have been the face of Al Qaeda, but Egyptian Ayman Al Zwahiri was always the brains


• Zwahiri’s strategic vision has been to divide and rule, create splits between establishment/ ruling elite and the ordinary citizens of Muslim countries, discord between rulers and people being fertile recruiting ground for pan-Islamic ideals as well as yet another way to diffuse energy that might otherwise be directed at tackling Al Qaeda itself


Like the title suggests, Shahzad’s book is more about the growth and spread of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and tracing the patterns of diversion and consolidation contained therein than it is about the merits and demerits of the policies of the United States of America. It assumes that anyone reading it already has a cursory grasp of recent history. There is, therefore, only the occasional reference to the ‘cowboy’ nature of the American state (throw a rock at it and it will charge you in a tank). It is pretty much assumed that that a particular nation’s role in getting itself into the situation it finds itself in today is understood. Similarly short shrift is paid to Pakistan’s political leadership. Despite the role of the Jamaat-e-Islami, members of PML(Q), Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman in giving militants legitimacy in the eyes of the public, they come across as a bunch of non-entities, attached like remoras to the sharks in the water.


It is also pretty much assumed that the reader understands that the Pakistani establishment’s official policy towards the spread of pseudo-Islamic fascism is dictated largely by the aforementioned American cowboys.

“Benazir Bhutto’s murder had undone the US scheme for Pakistan. Washington was compelled to change its entire roadmap. Under the new arrangement General Musharraf was an irritant and he was bade farewell. The United States then welcomed Zardari as the new president… it was now Admiral Mullen and General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani who were central to the Pakistan-US equation.”

Shahzad listed some of the salient features of the new relationship. They included: The Pakistan Army being in sole charge of military operations while “parliament and the civil administration were there simply to provide coordination and moral support ”, a US$1 billion plan to expand the US presence in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, private security firms (DynCorp aka Blackwater) setting up offices in Islamabad “where they had already rented 284 houses, besides setting up bases in Peshawar and Quetta. In addition, Pakistan was to provide land in Tarbela to the United States for its operations ”, and the ISI setting up a “syndicated intelligence service under a proxy network to provide information to be transmitted to the CIA predator drones used to target the top Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”


That plan never came to fruition though. Shahzad established how often the Pakistani national security apparatus was outmaneuvered, sabotaged or made to just look plain stupid. This ranged from things like assuming the US would be defeated in Afghanistan in five years, after which ties with militants it wanted dead could be quietly resumed, to not predicting that the deadly cadres would turn their attention to Pakistan’s cities, to not knowing Musharraf's security officer Major Farooq was a member of Hizbur Tahrir and helped Major Haroon bring night vision goggles into the country from China, to not preparing adequately to fight a guerilla war, to mistreating the wrong prisoners during interrogation, to pampering the wrong prisoners during detention, to not knowing militants were about to utilize a shelved ISI contingency plan for a terror attack in India in the tragic events in Mumbai in 2008.


To this we can now add, not knowing Osama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad, and not knowing who killed Syed Saleem Shahzad.

Syed Saleem Shahzad: writing with his blood


We are left to draw our own conclusions about, on a policy level, how much of that failure to recognize an enemy within was deliberate or unwitting. Khaled Ahmed, in this excellent piece for The Friday Times, lists what some of those conclusions might be: TTP does nothing without approval from Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda killed Benazir, Pakistan army has ex-officers in Al Qaeda as well as serving officers collaborating with these ex-officers, and Islamic radicalization of Pakistani society and media mixed with fear of being assassinated by Al Qaeda agents - who include ex-army officers - have tilted the balance of power away from the state of Pakistan to Al Qaeda.


The book also examines the ideological and literary inspirations behind Al Qaeda, and compares and contrasts it with other ‘Muslim liberation’ movements across the globe. These brief chapters, and the few times Shahzad felt compelled to romanticize mountain warriors as Iqbal’s shaheen(s) “Swooping, shocking, then retiring, pouncing on the prey/ I do all this to keep my blood warm”, are the only times the author’s voice deviates from the dispassionate narrator position he inhabits for most of the book.


It takes a particularly courageous, or particularly foolish, person to probe the murky world of terror outfits and ambiguously-oriented militaries in the way that the late author did. Those who do tend to either be accused of fulfilling someone else’s agenda, or dismissed as conspiracy theorists because most of what they write cannot be verified immediately. This dilemma, and the narrative sensitivity Syed Saleem Shahzad displayed when discussing abstract philosophy and human psychology, only makes one more curious about who he was, how he was able to experience people and places others have been unable to access, and which of the exceedingly dangerous positions he put himself in was responsible for his horrific murder.

51 comments:

gibran ashraf said...

When I was on my Hajj in KSA in late 2009, we met a group of Egyptians. Big strong burly fellows. As we scuffled with the merciless Shrutas or religious police of KSA, the Egyptians said to us "you are bakistani (arabic pronunciation of Pakistani), you are so strong fighting against America"

I did not know what to make of that comment then, and don't know what to make of it now, if anything at all!! Somehow, somewhere, with what you quote from comrade Shahzad's book (a man today I can say I have had the pleasure of meeting when in the Daily Star) that comment makes some sense.

Anonymous said...

Excellent analysis, where can I find this book or I can download it??

Carol Anne Grayson said...

“I have never worked for any well-funded international news organizations. Nor have I worked for the mainstream national media. My affiliations have always remained with alternative media outlets. This has left me with narrow options and very little space to move around in… However, independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond “conventional wisdom”.

The above is exactly why I loved working alongside Saleem on our website Asia Despatch, he was independent, had integrity...and couldn't be bought... Carol Anne Grayson

Ahsan Ali said...

"Despite the role of the Jamaat-e-Islami, members of PML(Q), Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman in giving militants legitimacy in the eyes of the public, they come across as a bunch of non-entities, attached like remoras to the sharks in the water."

FYI: Imran Khan condemning Taleban: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Q0iLVOY2s

Also incase you don't know, Imran Khan believe TTP is an ideological movement and you can't bomb out an ideological movement. Even the Irish problem got cured on the table of negotiations and not through bombs.

Oh and btw, just yesterday, karzai confessed that USA is in talks with Taleban. Now are you going to call USA to be a taleban-sympathizer as well?

M Ali Khan said...

Ahsan Ali: we have been hearing about Taliban and USA having negotiations for last 3-4 years now! Each time whenever these talks take place, some incident tends to sabotage them and renew hostilities between the Taliban and USA.

I wonder when will the Taliban realise the hypnotic hold of Al-Qaeda and fight against it without any second doubts.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, good round up and a necessary one.

Unknown said...

@Ahsan Ali: The Irish problem hasnt been cured. In Ireland the political wing of the IRA, Sienn Fien was co opted into the political process. The Real IRA and other dissident groups are still responsible for violence in Northern Ireland, and the primary threat of terrorism in the UK remains from Norther Irish groups. Sienn Fien publicly denounced the use of violence before negotiotions. Something that the TTP or Afghan Taliban are unwilling to do. Stop making false equivalences.

Anonymous said...

May I kindly request people NOT to download this book? Please buy it. The man gave his life for this work, spend $16 to buy it from the book's website so that his family gets the money.

Welcome back Pyalas.... I had seriously thought that one of you was called Shahzad :-(

Noumaan said...

@cpyala: I think that the title of post is wrong and deliberately misleading. The word Karachi is not used inside the post, not even once. Please explain why this post is titled Al-Qaeda in Karachi? A better title could be Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Anonymous said...

i being from swat just want to ask , why bin yameen fighting for his islam felt proud of being pukhtun, these people sees nationalism as kufr, where as they know one ummah...in their rule in swat bin yameen used to drive with a truck full of kids singing an anthem translation...look at bin yamin, sitting like a hero who wears black glasses and he looks like a hero...

Ullta Seedha said...

GREAT work, Pyala. A top notch review, and scary too.

And, please, to keep this debate sane, do try to keep the Imran Taliban Khan fan boys out. They're a mess!

ali said...

let me just say ... WELCOME BACK!
you were sorely missed!

Anonymous said...

Great review, thanks!
Just curious whether SS suggested how Pakistan can (or even whether it should) de-Al Qaeda itself now? - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

PS: Just want to mention that about a month before Bin Laden was killed, one of SSS's articles in Asia Times suggested that Bin Laden had been spotted in one of the tribal agencies.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MC25Df01.html

Bin Laden sets alarm bells ringing
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

It seems to have been deliberate misdirection by his sources? Perhaps he did not even know that it was so at the time. - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

The thing that strikes me about Bin Yameen is that he went on a revenge spree because of how his wife was treated but he apparently had no problem with how the Taliban treated women. Similarly, the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians by various groups of shaheens swooping out of their mountain lairs has never bothered any of these supposedly ideologically committed groups. One wonders what ideology is being talked about - Al Qaeda and its sympathizers appear to be as elitist as any other cowboy group involved in this pseudo-conflict.

TLW said...

Hehe, Al Qaeda as elitist.

Very apt.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back MSS & Cafe Pyala. It's good to see you guys back.

All I can say is Syed Saleem Shahzad was right in this context. Sadly Al Qaeda has been taking advantage of every faultline possible in Pakistan, exploitiing every division it can to cause maximum damage. Which is why, I sometimes politely make requests for Pakistanis to stick together. What any effects for accomodation can have, we know how little or how much they can have an effect. But it is an attempt to *try* and influence the environment beyind what Al Qaeda or its affiliates want.

I think Khalid Ahmed goes a little too far, maybe because in terms of the lost battle of fighting between the Pakistani state and the doctrine of Islamisation, 30 years ago it was the Jamat-e-Islami and the military, now its Al Qaeda mixed with disaffected members of the Jamat-e-Islami and the Pakistan Military.

For now, I think this quote should be printed and stuck on walls everywhere to keep in mind want an incompetent state the Pakistani people have come to live under:

Shahzad established how often the Pakistani national security apparatus was outmaneuvered, sabotaged or made to just look plain stupid. This ranged from things like assuming the US would be defeated in Afghanistan in five years, after which ties with militants it wanted dead could be quietly resumed, to not predicting that the deadly cadres would turn their attention to Pakistan’s cities, to not knowing Musharraf's security officer Major Farooq was a member of Hizbur Tahrir and helped Major Haroon bring night vision goggles into the country from China, to not preparing adequately to fight a guerilla war, to mistreating the wrong prisoners during interrogation, to pampering the wrong prisoners during detention, to not knowing militants were about to utilize a shelved ISI contingency plan for a terror attack in India in the tragic events in Mumbai in 2008.


At least we're absolved somewhat of Mumbai. All militaries/states have strange contingencies sitting on there shelves.

Here's to Pakistanis living in a more competent state.

Anonymous said...

"At least we're absolved somewhat of Mumbai. "
Which is why no Indian should put his/her faith in Pak 'liberals' - all they are looking for is an escape hatch for their mass murdering state apparatus.

I mean now state policy of jihad in India and Afghanistan and systematic training of fighters at state expense is being passed off as incompetence?- Sadhana

Anonymous said...

Dear Sadhana,

Please go on my blog and look at the list of liberals killed over the last six months. I've lost count of how many PPP people have been murdered, I keep forgetting the number of journalists killed this year, and nobody is even sure of the number of Baloch students, professionals and activists killed since last summer.



TLW

Anonymous said...

TLW
My condolences but Yeah, so? The Pak state still has a jihad policy and trains fighters at state expense. That is policy not incompetence. -Sadhana

Deep said...

The more I read about Saleem Shahzad the more I miss him. A strange thing to say considering I did not know of his existence when he was alive. When you read his pieces, dispassionate is the word that comes to mind and that is rare in a field mired with opinion and scant facts. I am going to buy the book and hopefully the royalty will find its way to Saleem Shahzad's family.

Anonymous said...

A Mumbai comment is always guaranteed to get a pissed of Indian or three out of the woodwork.

If someone wants to say so what, then so what to 200 people killed 3years ago.

Wasn't my fault, it was Ilyas Kashmiri's doing and he's now dead.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that a space reserved for a murdered investigative journalist had to descend into nationalist mudslinging.

There are bigger fish to nuke, and I will buy Mr Shahzad's book. This man's family deserve the public's respect.

Anonymous said...

TLW
You miss the point for unknown reasons. If anyone wants to save future Shahzads' lives, they have to work to end the Pak state policy on jihad and training jihadi fighters, not heartlessly fudge the issue by calling state policy incompetence or national mudslinging. - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

The blindly nationalist Indian bloggers are becoming an annoying and very boring occupational hazard for all those thinking people commenting on the more serious Pakistani blogs. Too full of patriotic zeal to understand the nature and type of comments on a particular site, they barge in parroting cliches straight from their country's propaganda handbook mirroring the kinds of super-patriots in Pakistan we come here to escape. The only winners in this unthinking game of nationalist one-upmanship are the militaristic hawks on both sides who profit from hostility. Nuance please, my friends, and far less of this smug, moralistic hectoring. And I am talking of you Sadhana!

Y Khan said...

Great analysis. I called Waterstones here in London and they said they sold all copies on the first day. I had been reading Saleem Shehzad's pieces on Asia Times on Line for many years and honestly I thought how does this guy know this stuff in so much detail; obviously I thought he must either be making that stuff up or he is one of "them". Anyhow, now I know the guy was genuine. Definitely buying the book.

Anonymous said...

Is jihad against India and Afghanistan Pakistan state policy or not? Yes. Does the Pakistan state train jihadi fighters at state expense? Yes.

If you can't face the above facts, any amount of US patronage, Indian self-depreciation or Pak 'nuancing' will not help you or the next Saleem Shahzad. And I mean you, Pak 'liberals'.

Anonymous said...

- Sadhana

Anonymous said...

work to end the Pak state policy on jihad and training jihadi fighters

I've already said that multiple times.

The PPP have tried to work on that multiple times and ended up with people killed.

The PML-N has come around to it but its still not done.

This Jihadi "tendency" is something beyond state policy. You can call for nuking Pakistan or something, but I think that would be a bad idea. In the meantime, please don't come here to take a wizz on any little silver cloud, like when we say "Thank God we didn't order Mumbai".

We've been talking about stuff you say, but there are 1) Overriding priorities like education, trying to pay the bills, etc. 2) We oppose this crap, but religious extremism is an autonomously moving ideology/movement, regardless of pretentions that Kayani even might have.

So you've just wasted your time and mine. Good day Sandhana. Your pettiness was appreciated.

Anonymous said...

TLW
Thanks for the appreciation, but its not my pettiness it is Pak state jihad policy. My becoming Godlike and hovering around this blog in silent admiration will not change Pak state jihad policy. I suggest you and your compatriots include more vegetables in your diet. - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

Seconding, anon0317.

Anonymous said...

Anonymouses
History will show that Pakistan was presented the most benign options available by the world and India, and given these options repeatedly, to give up its jihad state policy and yet it did not.
If cussing an Indian on a discussion board counts, ah that's where the vegetables come in - Sadhana

Arun said...

As far as I can tell, Pakistani liberals are against the jihad not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with it, but because it is an ineffective policy. As it was back in 1947 when they raised the slogan of jihad and invaded Raja Hari Singh's domain. It is experience, not principle. So if they are liberal I haven't noticed.

Arun said...

Today's New York Times draws links between the ISI and Bhutto's killers; Osama bin Laden and the Harakat ul Mujahideen; and the ISI/Army and Harakat ul Mujahideen. Do note that the linkages are not transitive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/world/asia/24pakistan.html

Anonymous said...

Syed Saleem Shahzad paid with his life to pursue and report the truth but judging from some of the posts on this blog it seems his ultimate sacrifice was in vain. The world can expect nothing of value from Pakistan - a nation with its head stuck firmly in the sand of delusion with its odoriferous rear end prominently exposed to all and sundry polluting its once sacred soil.

Anonymous said...

@TLW: You're a confused kid with a blog, desperately trying to prove you're a) a grown up who should be taken seriously pleasepleaseplease, and b) a liberal.

Money shot: I'm a Pakistani liberal and I hate TLW and his ilk.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous
Do you eat more vegetables than your fellow liberals? (scratching head) Maybe someone can write an academic paper on this. - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

I feel like I am stuck at home with an annoying Indian mother constantly nagging me about eating my vegetables and how bad jihad is and how only Pakistanis fall prey to such evil crap. Ok, ok, ok mother, India is a perfect utopia with a population of perfect,unbrainwashed politically correct angels who eat their vegetables regularly. Now will you PLEASE go away?

Anonymous said...

Well as long as your jihadis were not killing Indians, you could tell us to go away. Too late now, sorry. Another serving? - Sadhana

Anonymous said...

SSS wrote articles which mixed truth with fiction. An example is his article from March 2011 in which his "sources" claimed OBL was seen in tribal areas. SSS could have just as easily made up that article to fill his required quote for the month. He could have easily been discredited and his murder is an example of the sheer stupidity of the Establishment.

On another point, every serious Pakistani blog on the Internet is ruined by Indians who repeat the same statement over and over and over. Its not possible to have an unmoderated Pakistani blog anymore.

Colleague said...

@Anon June 26, 2011 2:51 PM: TLW is treated in the same way at office by colleagues, baysharm instan hay... Pyala ki na-ja-yiz owlad!

Anonymous said...

Dear Sadhana - please leave this blog alone. If you want to troll - try PKKH. More suited for your talents. Don't waste people's time here by diverting the discussion. It is not needed, neither is it warranted.

Now - Pyalas - what's this guys? No blogging for long time, then something which is not that up to your usual standards? Sab khairiyat?

Anonymous said...

http://pkpolitics.com/2011/06/29/aaj-kamran-khan-kay-saath-29-june-2011/

talking about censorship? or "chaanti"?

Anonymous said...

is it a fair analysis? because i think, saad rafiq and imran khan clips were shown too

http://criticalppp.com/archives/52641

censorship, "the recent press release"

Anonymous said...

Anony
No can do, sorry. Yours is a futile request like Indian govt asking Pakistani govt to shut down jihadi groups. -Sadhana

Anonymous said...

Same anon above..
.
Had to share this link.
.
http://www.bigfishmag.com/mag/issue1/article/2/
.
It's the same idea - but the way it's been laced with humor is fun-tastic. I'm sure even the pyalas wouldn't mind humor.
.
Vande Mataram

Anonymous said...

Can you educate us, what is happening all around in media industry, heard apna gareban is closed and then akks toe line...

http://www.siasat.pk/forum/showthread.php?71305-Bollywood-Stars-about-Pakistan-in-Toronto-at-IIFA.

http://pkpolitics.com/2011/06/30/aaj-kamran-khan-kay-saath-30-june-2011/

confused Anon

Anonymous said...

Anony
People who throw hissy fits when someone mentions Pakistan's state jihad policy are neither sensible nor liberal. - Sadhana

FloridaChristianForPakistan said...

@Ahsan, in case you did not have a chance to read the book, it only quickly mentions the beginnings of Al Qaeda and Taliban, and instead says "This book discusses in detail the period from 1996 to 2010...," so one has to go elsewhere for details on the earlier years.
To me, the main point of the book is: things aren't always what they seem to outsiders, but that AQ has a global plan and is using Taliban to achieve it (while Taliban uses AQ also), and that plan is all about the prophecies that begin with Khurasan. All of the details in the book about the characters and events, just fleshed out the steps along the way. For ex, an apparent setback to some, may be no setback at all from the perspective of AQ, who planned it, and/or used & embraced it all along.

Anonymous said...

Am i the only person to whom the book appears to be a very "haphazard" compilation of thoughts? Many sentences (and sometimes whole paragraphs) are repeated word by word.

FloridaChristianForPakistan said...

@Anonymous of July 6, thought I noticed some repetition, I saw a pattern about that, so that it did not seem haphazard to me, but rather slightly unpolished in the editing. As Shahzad explained, the story he had to tell would be like the famous "A Thousand and One Nights," in the sense that they each had so many characters, places, & "twists" in their stories, that they could be said to be "convoluted" or a "whirlpool" of sagas, rather than a simple linear narrative about one main guy (like Osama) and with just one plot. Shahzad said he tried to "unravel" the overall story & present different threads in parallel, and so a thread's sub-story would proceed chronologically, then Shahzad would go back in time a bit to pick up another thread to tell chronologically, and from time to time, a character that was introduced in one thread of his threads would appear in a new thread, and it was in some of those reappearing character situations, I noticed some repetition of description. In other words, despite occasional repetition, I did see an orderly rather haphazard presentation, the order being a general move chronologically, but a more precise chronological move within the separate threads that were then woven together to present the whole. And it's because of Shahzad's skill in interweaving the subnarratives in a manner that develops so many, many twisting details while simultaneously developing an overall message, that I have no problem overlooking some of the unpolished final editing. Before this book I had never seen the story of these later years of Al Qaeda, Taliban, & their many subgroups & players presented in such a comprehensive yet comprehensible manner.