'Progressive' Fundamentalism of Musharraf

Without paying any heed to the opposition's hue and cry, the Senate of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on Thursday approved the so-called Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2006 to amend an Islamic law. The National Assembly had done the same on November 15. Now the bill will be sent to General Musharraf for his signatures.

He will certainly affix his approval stamp to it because he was the force behind this bill’s ramming through both houses of the parliament. In fact, he had been itching, for a long time, to push the circle of morality wide enough to accomodate a Playground of Passions where he and the people of the same hue, can play out their orgies unhindered. By passing and signing this bill into law they will try to convert Pakistan from an Islamic state to a "Free-Sex Zone" for lust-bitten, sex-crazy demons of debauchery who will be free to follow the dictates of their unfettered sensual pleasures.

The secularists and progressives liberals of Pakistan who want to be known as the champions of women rights are, in fact, haunted by the Islamic laws and practices, which they believe to be restrictive and thus harsh, subjugating and inhumane.

Their mental-cousins in Europe have the same Islamophobia. Every week new headlines announcing moves to crack down on Islamic norms such as veil pour from almost all European countries. The Europeans think, according to the Time magazine, veil to be the “most alienating symbol of Muslim faith” and “subjugation of women”, “a subordination of women”, which challenges or threatens "more progressive Muslim women who decline the veil”. They don’t want the Muslim women to wear their Hijab or Niqab or Burqa in French public schools, British government buildings or out in public in the Netherlands or in certain German states. Belgium is preparing a similar ban on veil.

The Time magazine exposes the “hypocrisy” and “subtle bigotry” of the European liberals who attack Islamic laws and practices, saying, that,

“Beneath all the reminders of secularist tradition and progressive discourse cited in Europe's headscarf debate lies … a broader sentiment wafting across: it's fine to be Muslim, just don't remind us about it by the way you dress.”

The real message to all Muslims is to start acting more like Europeans "and less Muslim".

The magazine writes:

“The promised Dutch ban is only the most recent and bizarre in a spate of assaults by European democracies that appear to be targeting the veil as a proxy for what they see as a dangerous spread of Islamic culture in Western Europe. In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw last month groused that the niqab created unnecessary barriers between people, and prevented communication because meaningful exchange ‘requires that both sides see each other's face’. Prime Minister Tony Blair later added that it created a divisive ‘mark of separation’.”

The problem with the secularists and liberals and progressives of Pakistan is that they look at Islamic laws and practices as they are “interpreted, characterized, and frequently skewed from non-Muslim perspectives” of Europeans.

Time magazine calls the reverse fundamentalism of secularists and liberals of Europe “progressive fundamentalism”. They in their fervor to free Muslim women from socio-cultural coercion of veil presume that “they can dismiss as misguided or deluded the conviction of women who say they wear hijab by choice and who argue that the only coercion they feel is coming from opponents of these symbols of their faith”.

Are Musharraf and his cronies Progressive Fundamentalists? I think they are.

Indian Army Opposes Expected Siachen Demilitarization

The Indian newspaper,The Hindu, has reported that the Indian "has set its face against the demilitarisation of the Siachen Glacier, arguing that India would lose its strategic advantage if the troops are ordered to vacate the icy heights" because "the power which controls Siachen will have military advantage since it looks over the Shyok and Nubra valleys of Ladakh" and the Indian "military presence would eliminate Pakistan's design on Ladakh" and "it projects our military strength and capability in operating in such a difficult terrain. It also shows our national resolve to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity," .

"The Army said maintaining a full-scale presence in the Siachen Glacier — wedged between Shaksgam Valley (China) and Baltistan (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) — could govern future boundary talks with China on the Shaksgam Valley.

The Army articulated its views a few days before the Indo-Pakistan Foreign Ministers' meeting to discuss, among other issues, dates for the Defence Secretary-level interaction on demilitarising the glacier.

The roots of the Indo-Pakistani conflict lie in the non-demarcation of the ceasefire line on the map beyond a coordinate known as NJ 9842. While signing the Karachi Agreement on the ceasefire line in 1949 and later during the Shimla Agreement in 1972 both sides felt that it was not possible to conduct military operations at such heights.

Army officers also referred to the prognosis that half a century later wars would be over water to argue for a continued military presence in the region. "The Siachen Glacier is basically a 5,000 square km water reservoir. We already have problems with Pakistan over the Kishanganga barrage. This could become another trouble spot if we vacate the area."

The Army said it occupied the surrounding heights in 1984 to thwart Pakistani designs on the area. Since then the saga of "Operation Meghdoot" continues in which 600 soldiers have died due to bad weather and enemy firing. One of the longest sustaining operations by the Indian Army and also the costliest ever.

The region has seen several instances of super-human feats in a place where walking is a challenge. In 1987 soldiers scaled a 1,500-foot ice wall at night to dislodge the Pakistanis from a 21,753-foot post that had made it difficult for the Indian Army to survive and sustain operations at the lower heights. The post has since been named Bana Post after the leader of the platoon which was the first to engage the Pakistani soldiers. Since retired, Bana Singh was awarded the Param Vir Chakra.

An officer cited an old Ladakhi saying to make his point about the region: "The land is so barren and the passes so high that only the best of friends or fiercest of enemies would like to visit us."

Are Pakistanis ready for more bloodbath?

Musharraf's agreement with Taliban-friendly tribesmen has proven to be just as bad as Afghanistan warned.

The Los Angeles Times said in its November 6, 2006 editorial.

There is no doubt in my mind that Afghanistan is going to be soon upgraded from a back-burner to a center-stage issue once Bush succeeds in camouflaging American defeat in Iraq into a face-saving, gradual retreat and call it a "victory" under the cover provided by James A. Baker III's bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Preventing Pakistan's western neighbor from falling into the hands of a resurgent Taliban will become a top priority for the Bush administration. To succeed, Bush will demand more and more cooperation from General Pervez Musharraf.

Even though Musharraf is trying his best, by killing innocent Pakistanis and destroying madrassahs, to prove to his masters that he is their trusted ally the editorial still casts a lot of doubt on Musharraf's claim that he had "stopped supporting the Taliban after its 2001 ouster". Citing Jane's Intelligence Digest, the editorial says that

Musharraf's agreement with Taliban-friendly tribesmen has proven to be just as bad as Afghanistan warned. The evidence is now overwhelming that the Pakistani security service — the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI — and probably the senior military leadership are tolerating, if not backing, Taliban forces. Washington has been turning a blind eye to this problem, reluctantly concluding that there is no alternative but to support the flawed but friendly Musharraf as the only practical bulwark against a radical Islamist takeover of a crucial nuclear state. Islamabad is clearly hedging against what it sees as a hostile, pro-India government in Kabul and an inevitable Western abandonment of Afghanistan by keeping its old Taliban ally as a viable option.

It confirms

what Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been fuming about for months, that ISI sponsors Taliban training camps and jihadist madrasahs have multiplied along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The editorial blames Musharraf for selling "out Afghan and U.S. interests" by signing an agreement with tribal leaders in North Waziristan on Sept. 5.

The editorial also mentions that Musharraf has not told Washington the truth about the other party in the deal.

Perhaps he didn't expect his Western friends to read the agreement in the original Urdu. According to those who have, Islamabad's official representative signed an agreement not just with Waziristan tribal leaders but with the "local mujahedin" — a vague term — and with the Taliban. The agreement spells the plural of the word "Taliban," which means students, in the Arabic way, as "Talaba".

The editorial is urging Bush that if he

has any red lines left, he should be furious that Pakistan is legitimizing the very Taliban it has pledged to eradicate

and

the Taliban has not kept its part of the bargain. Attacks have multiplied since the deal was signed.

The editoria is not satisfied with Musharraf trying

to make amends by ordering airstrikes on one Taliban-run madrasa last week, triggering a bloodbath

and insists that

it will take far more to persuade the American public and Congress of the wisdom of providing Pakistan with $3 billion in military and other aid each year while Pakistani territory, tribal or not, gives sanctuary to Taliban fighters who kill U.S. and NATO soldiers and destabilize the Afghan government.

Are Pakistanis ready for more bloodbath?

People power prevails in America - Give it a chance in Pakistan!

What an eerie silence? Musharraf and all his spokesmen, military and civilian, are conspicuously and strangely mum about the stunning defeat Bush administration has received at American voters' hands in the midterm elections on Nov. 7. Whole world is abuzz with greetings, jubilation or a sense of relief. But not a whispering sound uttered by political spin masters of Musharraf. Not even a comment on the defeat after deafeat: the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bush had fired him and by doing so had implicitly admitted that he had followed failed policies for six long nightmarish years.

Does the absence of any sound from any government quarter in Pakistan also mean an implicit admission of its own failed policies? He was, as he has admitted after denying first, coerced into adopting those anti-Pakistan policies by American president. After all you don't need to be threatened to be bombed back to stone age if you want to do good to your own people and country.

Bush arrogance, belligerence and cockiness melted overnight in the heat of American people's votes. Sacking Rumsfeld was the first thing he did after his party lost both houses of Congress. Before the elections Bush had stubbornly refused to show him the door. But once the votes were counted and Bush found out that the people had rejected his coercive ways to wage wars in Iraq and in other parts of the world he was sensible enough to at least make suitable noises and go through appropriate motions to ensure Americans that he had gotten the message.

But then America is a democratic country and American people have the constitutional right to voice their opinions through ballot at regular intervals already determined by the constitution. They wait for elections and use them to force their leader to change the course if they don't like it. Or change their leaders.

And Pakistan is in the life-threatening grip of dictatorship - military dictatorship: the worst kind imaginable. The people constitution has been mutilated and mangled. The poverty is pushing people to ever diminishing circle which starts at hand and ends at mouth and does not leave any energy or time for voicing their opinion. The whole society is polarized into preys and predators. Extortionism has become the best business. Thugs and murderers, protected by those in high places, are running rough shod scaring citizens into paying ransom or face death. Those who have wherewithal to leave Pakistan for those places where they think their lives, lives of their loved ones and their hard earned money are safe have already left, or are at the verge of leaving.

They can neither change the course of the country nor the leaders who have usurped power to empower the powerful and kill the powerless and those who speak up and try to expose their deeds. Their voice are stifled, their votes denied, or rigged. The only way out of their miserable lives is death by suicide, death by starvation.

Do you wonder why the otherwise vocal spokespersons have lost their voices all of a sudden? They want the people of Pakistan to get infected by the ballot virus. They don't want them to know that in the same world they live in there are some nations which have un-mangled constitutions. They have the right to vote. The most powerful man on earth cannot them their votes or rig them.

The glib spokespersons of military government are mute because they don't want the people of Pakistan to rise up for their rights. They know if people power can prevail in America, if given chance it will also prevail in Pakistan and then dictator and his cronies has to go.

What a dream! May be not!!

From Chingai to Dargai to Civil War?

The suicide attack on the army training camp in Dargai is really a very dangerous and worrisome sign. In fact it should be taken as a wake up call that the strategy or lack thereof adopted by Musharraf is rapidly unraveling. It is imperative that generals around Musharraf pay attention. They should make him shed off all his pretentions. Instead of enjoying his role as a mercenary in America's war he better think of Pakistan and its people first.

This carnage in Dargai and one in Chingai are clear and vivid symptoms of the fatal course the country has been put on since 9/11. Now things have started spinning out of control at a mind-boggling speed. I am afraid they are on their way to spiral downward to a civil war if the generals don't take heed to the sirens going off all around them. It is a shame that the Pakistani military is losing its respect and prestige, it once held in the civilian eyes, due to junta's policy of kowtowing to every item on every wish list they are handed by the foreigners.

The sense of helplessness in the face of daily growing prices and pitious situation of law and order taking its toll. The demon of poverty and despair is pushing people to think about carrying the gun. Up to now it was blind military might against the people. Only last week Major General Shaukat Sultan was caliming massacring what turned out to be innocnet kid students as young as five years old.

The people have already been pushed too far. What they are supposed to do when they see their lives going up in smoke?

Give them reason to live with dignity. Make them partners in peace instead of casting them as enemy within. Would someone around Musharraf listen?

The Predator General's Predicament

The Monday Massacre in Bajaur was staged to show the destructive and overwhelming power of the state and to raise a smoke screen to hide the true nature of the madrassahs from Prince Charles and through him from the western world. But, in fact, it ended up exposing its haplessness in the face of growing restiveness in Pakistan against the policies of Musharraf and Bush governments.

The carnage of Chingai was also vivid proof of rapidly diminishing options for Gen. Musharraf. His abrupt and sudden shifts in policy towards pro-Taliban Pakistanis in the NWFP, and his vacillation between capitulating peace deals and pitiless massacres also show he is under a lot of pressure and is losing control.

The American news channel ABC has reported that it was the a U.S. unmanned fixed-wing drone aircraft - Predator - that initiated air raid on Madrassah in Bajaur in which 80 innocent young students were killed.

Three Pakistani helicopter gunships joined the operation 15-20 minutes later to mow down 15 men who survived the two hellfire missiles fired by the drone. The rest of the dirty mop up work was done by the Pakistani ground troops. This Madrassah was the only educational institution of any kind in the village of Chingai. The government has refused to release the names of those killed to the public and has thrown a strict cordon around the area, to prevent the mainstream media from knowing the truth. Some local journalists who managed to smuggle out video footage showing burnt copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, desks reduced to rubble, and the charred remains of students and teachers, have been arrested by the army. They had also reported that most of the victims were under the age of 15, including a six years old.

If it was indeed an American operation and the Pakistani forces just joined it to cover up then, I believe, the American target was the nascent peace deal, between Musharraf's military and the Taliban of Bajaur. The attack came only hours before tribal leaders and Pakistani military officials were scheduled to sign the peace agreement. Pervez Musharraf had been under increasing pressure from the United States to to stop the movement of Taliban and al-Qaida militants into Afghanistan whcih had increased threefold after a similar deal was signed by the Pakistani military with the Taliban of North Waziristan back in September. The peace agreement, had it been signed, would have resulted in the grant of a pardon to the two most wanted militants, Maulana Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat. Both had been charged with harbouring and providing shelter to Al Qaeda operatives. The latter was killed in the attack.

Musharraf was under a lot of pressure from within the army to make deals with local militants, whose power is on the rise, to save Pakistan from sliding into the same situation as we have in the southern Afghanistan.

Washington, on the other hand, does not like those deals.

A congressional report was prepared by Alan Kronstadt, an Asian specialist at the Congressional Research Service which does research for the US Congress at the same time when the Madrassah was destroyed and 80 innocent young – some as young as 5 years old – were murdered.

Nato’s top military commander General James Jones at the end of his three day visit to Afghanistan was telling reporters at the Bagram Air Base, two days before the Monday Massacre, that the movement of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan has increased since Islamabad signed a deal with tribal elders along the border last month. ISAF (Nato-led International Security Assistance Force) commanders were due to meet with the Pakistan military in the coming weeks, he said, with the Nato-led force wanting to remove militant sanctuaries in the region and stop the crossborder movement of fighters.

America's ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann, in an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph on October 25 (five days before the attack), was criticizing the British peace deal with the Taliban of Afghanistan in Musa Qala in Helmand province.

How will Musharraf get out of his predicament? Does he want to?