There is a debate going on in the west on the issue of a possible threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba – A Jihadi group fighting against Indian occupation of Kashmir and blamed for Mumbai attacks in 2008 – to the western interests. There is no doubt Lashkar hates United States for a number of reasons. Apart from the widespread anti-America resentment in almost all Islamic groups across the globe, the group has some of its own reasons to dislike US. US declared Lashkar-e-Taiba a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) a few months after 9/11 without any substantial reason. The group until then never attacked or planned any attack on US interests. Its focus was totally on Kashmir against Indian forces.
The group believes that by declaring it terrorist organization US wanted to please India and press Pakistan to back off from freedom struggle in Kashmir. Despite its anger the group refrained from attacking US interests in the region but US was not satisfied with its own measures by putting Lashkar on FTO list of the State Department and went to UN Security Council in 2005 for international sanctions against the group. Eventually UNSC put the group in the list of Al-Qaeda and Taliban affiliates and asked the member countries to freeze its assets and impose embargo on purchase of weapons while its members were banned from international travelling. These sanctions could not affect the group in Pakistan as technically it was not active in Pakistan anymore after January 12, 2002 when the then president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf banned the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Sipa-e-Sahaba, and Tehreek-e-Jafria.
Is it finally light at the end of the Afghan tunnel, or an oncoming express train? Total confusion erupted last week as the US, NATO, the UN and the Kabul government all issued differing views on new plans to end the nine year Afghan war by bombarding Taliban with tens of millions in cash instead of precision bombs.
One thing is clear: the US and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan in spite of their fearsome arsenal of high tech weapons and war chests of billions of dollars.
Lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen are living up to their legendary reputation of making Afghanistan the graveyard of empires.
So Washington and London, both in dire financial straits, say they are now ready for a possible peace deal with the Pashtun Taliban and its nationalist allies. But, in spite of a $1.4 trillion deficit, President Barack Obama is asking Congress for an additional $33 billion more for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
If you can’t bomb them into submission, then try buying them off.
Kabul’s Western allies want to pay Taliban fighters to quit the insurgency. Lots of luck.
Ron Moreau
Representatives from nearly 70 countries showed up in London on Jan. 28 for a one-day conference on how to save Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai was there, gamely offering “peace and reconciliation” to all Afghans, “especially” those “who are not a part of Al Qaeda or other terrorist networks.” He didn’t mention why the Taliban would accept such an offer while they believe they’re winning the war. Others at the conference had what they evidently considered more realistic solutions—such as paying Taliban fighters to quit the insurgency. Participants reportedly pledged some $500 million to support that aim. “You don’t make peace with your friends,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. True enough. But what if your enemies don’t want peace?
My NEWSWEEK colleague Sami Yousafzai laughs at the notion that the Taliban can be bought or bribed. Few journalists, officials, or analysts know the Taliban the way he does. If the leadership, commanders, and subcommanders wanted comfortable lives, he says, they would have made their deals long ago. Instead they stayed committed to their cause even when they were on the run, with barely a hope of survival. Now they’re back in action across much of the south, east, and west, the provinces surrounding Kabul, and chunks of the north. They used to hope they might reach this point in 15 or 20 years. They’ve done it in eight. Many of them see this as proof that God is indeed on their side. The mujahedin warlords who regained power in the 2001 U.S. invasion have grown fabulously wealthy since then. The senior Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani could have done the same. Now he and his fellow Taliban are gunning for those opportunists.
A human rights group in Indian Kashmir said Tuesday it had found unmarked graves containing several thousand bodies in the revolt-hit region during a three-year survey of dozens of villages.
International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, which calculates 8,000 people have gone missing in the 20-year separatist insurgency, said it had found the unidentified bodies buried in villages bordering Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The independent Srinigar-based group said that its report to be released on Wednesday documented 2,700 ‘unknown, unmarked, and mass graves’ containing at least 2,900 bodies.
International human rights groups have in the past called for a probe into whether the unmarked graves held bodies of civilians who have ‘disappeared’ as Indian security forces struggle to contain the Muslim-majority region’s revolt.
A junior commissioned officer of India’s Marine Commando (MarCo) Force and atleast a dozen commandos were killed in a 4-day gunfight in Rafiabad forests in north Kashmir’s Varmul district, which ended on September 23rd after four days of intense gunbattle with Kashmiri mujahideen.
Sources from occupied Kashmir say the operation was a ‘Fidayeen’ attack carried out by two local mujahideen who attacked the MarCos camp located near Wullar, home to the contentious Wullar barrage project that India has been using to control and limit the flow of water to Pakistan’s Jehlum river.
The highly trained Indian commandos were held up for four days by two lightly armed Mujahideen who managed to kill over a dozen commandos as well as injuring many more – some said to be in serious condition – before embracing Shahadat due to fatigue and running out of ammunition.
And on Sunday, LA Times reported, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying, “US-led forces must gain ground against militants in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid a public perception the war is un-winnable.”
While noting that the Taliban would not be defeated within a year, Mr Gates told the newspaper it was critical that the US military and its allies showed they were making progress. Defense Secretary also said that “Troops are tried and American people are pretty tired”.
Puppets like Hamid Karzai and his drug dealing warlords are proving of zero worth in US interests and as a matter of fact, US forces are loosing ground fast with European allies, even staunch ones like UK, are desperate to withdraw troops support to USA in the war USA is just about to loose – insha Allah.
USA is in acute need to bring “John the Rambo” to life because he is the only one-in-all fighting machine that used to destroy Soviet bases and checkpoints in Afghanistan single handed – now only Rambo can save highly trained and hi-tech equipped US Marines having unimaginable severe resistance from Afghan mujahideen.
One of the Marine says, “All scenes of secured zones you watch on T.V. are from one big city and few bases only, scenes at outposts like this, are entirely different”.
Another marine says, “it is almost, almost (repeating) the same that Soviets ran into” and in response to question “who is gaining the ground” – with looks of despair – he responds “it is them (Taliban) gaining the ground”.
In this must watch real life action, we are sure you would have never seen American Marines cursing and whining themselves (from ninth minute onwards)
Concerned by “religion inspired violence”, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has shot off a letter to 13 Muslim organizations requesting them to issue a fatwa declaring India as a friend of Islam, ‘Dar-Ul-Amn’, against which ‘jihad’ should not be waged.
This is the story of a stateless nation that has become a tragic and deadly war zone, a land enveloped in a night of terror for 60 years, and a people born with no choice but revolution or despair.
The people in Kashmir live under a terrible and unprecedented military occupation, which denies its own existence and remains invisible to the world. Before 1943, Kashmir was a distinctively peaceful region characterized by harmonious religious coexistence between its Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities. But today, divided between India and Pakistan, and labeled as terrorists and fundamentalists, Kashmiris are trapped in the middle of a tense and bitter conflict that has already exploded in three full-scale wars, leading to the nuclearization of India and Pakistan.
This film tells the story of a new generation of young Muslims that, inspired by the Sufi culture and Kashmir’s long history of ethnic and religious coexistence, started a non-violent movement in the hopes for a new peace in this land of mythic beauty that straddles between two anxious and volatile nuclear powers.
Israeli director’s film on Kashmir earns Indian ire
Srinagar, Feb 09: Indian authorities have taken umbrage at Kashmir: Journey to Freedom and are refusing to allow American-Israeli director Udi Aloni to return to India, after his film was premiered in Panorama section, at the Berlin Film Festival which showcases independent and arthouse cinema.
Aloni tells how a new generation of young Muslim Kashmiris, after years of armed resistance, decide to lay down their arms and start a nonviolent resistance movement – in the hope of finally achieving peace and independence.
“Thousands of people remain victims of enforced disappearances in Jammu and Kashmir. The practices of “disappearances” and extrajudicial executions violate basic human rights, including the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to a fair and public trial, as well as the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. Under international law, an enforced disappearance is a continuing crime until the “disappearance” is resolved.”
“While previous governments have admitted that many persons are missing, it was claimed that they had crossed the border into Pakistan to become militants. Yet, as you are aware, unmarked graves of those deemed to have been unidentified foreign militants are scattered all over Jammu and Kashmir. Many believe that these graves contain the remains of their loved ones who were picked up by security forces, killed in custody, and then falsely identified in police reports to be foreign militants, usually Pakistani citizens. In many cases, when relatives have succeeded in their demand to have graves exhumed, their claims have been found to be correct.”
Read the Full Letter from Human Rights Watch Executive Director Brad Adams to the Chief Minister of Occupied Kashmir, Omar Abdullah – Dated February 9th 2009 [LINK]
The people, young and old, have not closed their eyes and ears to what happens in the twin cities and elsewhere in the country and the world. Never neglectful of daily chores, they do discuss events of the past and the present in homes, offices, restaurants, shops and tea stalls. The arduous role of the print and electronic media — and, of course, the radio — in re-awakening the once-dormant masses cannot be underestimated in any sense.
What, besides the food price situation, occupies the front space of the common man’s mind is the awaited restoration of the real Supreme Court chief justice and other judges to their working position. And what heartens the silent observer of the social, economic and cultural life in Rawalpindi and Islamabad is the curiosity of the teenagers to know what the Kashmir Solidarity Day means and what has so far happened in the Jammu and Kashmir forcibly occupied by India.
“Those whose faith only increased when people said, ‘Fear your enemy: they have amassed a great army against you,’ and who replied, ‘Allah is enough for us: He is the best protector.” Al-Imran, 3:173
Introduction
Pakistan since its inception has faced one crisis after another. It has continued to stumble from one problem to another due to never having a leadership with the capability or the will to tackle Pakistan’s problems head on. Today, Pakistan faces a situation which is unprecedented in its history. From some perspectives Pakistan’s inability to deal holistically with its problems has compounded its current woes. US plans for Pakistan are fast reaching boiling point, with the Mumbai attacks accelerating attempts by the US to weaken Pakistan.
What should be clear is that Pakistan is in no position to shape the geopolitics taking place in front of its very eyes. India is playing a very prominent role with the US in order to shape what happens to Pakistan. Both India and the US have successfully created international public opinion against Pakistan for having so called ‘rogue elements’ within its security services that say are a menace to the world due to their support for Jihadi groups. Such claims are eerily similar to the case the US built against Iraq and should confirm to every Muslim that we are in the early phase of the world gathering against another Muslim nation. The question remains that is Pakistan fast descending into the next Iraq? This paper attempts to analyse US historical interests in south Asia, the problem Pakistan represents for the US and what options remain open for Pakistan.
A member of an elite Indian army unit has shot dead six other soldiers in a shooting incident in the north-eastern state of Manipur, the army says.
The soldier from the Assam Rifles elite paramilitary force shot a comrade dead after an argument, a spokesman said.
He said the killer then shot dead five other soldiers who tried to disarm him, before fleeing the scene.
It seems more Indian Army soldiers commit suicide (or kill each other) than die in battle.
Since 2004: 392 Indian soldiers have been killed in militant attacks. Since 2004: 652 Indian Army Soldiers have either committed suicide or have been killed by their colleagues.
Out of these 652, 521 committed suicide.
These numbers have gone up from around 40 a year in the late 90s and early 00s to nearly 150 in recent years.
Psychology lessons as well as Music therapy has apparently failed to stop Indian Soldiers killing themselves and their colleauges. To be honest we can’t really blame them if it is Himesh Reshamiyya being blared on massive speakers – used as therapy.
Some analysts say the incidents reflect battle fatigue amongst the soldiers fighting Kashmiri Mujahideen as they continue to face humiliating losses on a daily basis.
Nearly a thousand confirmed deaths, over four thousand wounded and nearly 500 battling for survival in hospitals – the Israeli massacre is at full speed using high-tech weaponry by Navy, Air Force and Ground Forces.
Despite the shamefully muted response from the leaders of Arab world, whole world has started to speak against Israel – a haughty and criminal nation that has been blindfolded by its power.
Successful portrayal of Muslims as “terrorists” by Zionist controlled mainstream media has led many of the people to believe that all Muslims are terrorists and Islam is its root cause. This view has been strengthened since the 9/11 attacks in the US.
We would like to share an old video which shows Israeli massacre in a masjid (mosque) in town of Hebron during the holy month of Ramadan, a few quotations by Zionist Jew Rabbis and hatred of Jews settlers towards Arabs.
This is the Video Evidence of Evil Beliefs of Zionists and their Ugliest Conspiracies to Achieve their Satanic Goals. In this video, Jewish preachers are openly speaking that muslims have no right to live and they should be brutally killed (including their children and women and all civilians). Also it includes the evidences of Goldstein Massacre.
In order to achieve peace along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the US should help resolve the dispute over Kashmir
Until the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, the incoming Obama administration might have been tempted to push the Kashmir dispute to the back burner. That is no longer possible. Kashmir is at the centre of the spreading web of crisis that now threatens to destabilise the subcontinent. As long as this conflict remains unsolved, there will be little hope for tranquillity in India, peace in Afghanistan or stability in Pakistan.
The standoff in Kashmir has for years been filed in the world’s “frozen conflicts” drawer, along with others in places like Nagorno-Karabagh andTransdinistria. Obama should pull it out of that drawer and place it near the top of his foreign policy priority list.
Since its earliest days as a nation, Pakistan has focused on what its leaders consider their single overwhelming security threat: India. Fear of India shapes all of Pakistan’s security policies. Why has Pakistan worked so hard to promote pro-Pakistani groups in Afghanistan, including a host of pro-Taliban warlords? Not simply because of Afghanistan itself, but because it wants to assure that Afghanistan does not tilt toward India.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who is deeply unhappy with Pakistan’s refusal or inability to crack down on militants in the border region, appears to be tilting just that way. He has allowed India to open consulates in several cities, and suggested that he might invite India to train Afghan troops or build dams near the Pakistani border. This drives Pakistan, and especially the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, to paroxysms of fear and outrage. Many in the region believe the ISI was connected to the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last July, in which more than 40 people were killed. Disturbing evidence ties the ISI to terrorists who staged the recent Mumbai attacks.
The ISI, for its part, believes India is using Afghan territory and assets to foment trouble inside Pakistan. It sees India’s hand, for example, behind ethnic upheaval in its western province of Baluchistan. Pakistan and India have turned Afghanistan into the scene of even more spy-versus-spy intrigue than it was during the days of the Great Game, when two different powers, Britain and Russia, jousted to control it.
Kashmir is the single greatest flashpoint in the troubled Pakistan-India relationship. The two countries fought wars there in 1947-48, 1965 and 1999. They and their proxies are still engaged in a relentless conflict amid the region’s magnificent lakes and hills. Bombings, assassinations and disappearances have been part of life for as long as most Kashmiri people can remember.
Both Pakistan and India claim that Kashmir is rightly theirs. Both support militant Kashmiri factions while insisting publicly that they do nothing of the kind. Each fears that the other wants to use Kashmir for hostile purposes.
No country can fairly be expected to make security concessions unless it feels safe. Pakistan will not move decisively to crush Taliban and al-Qaida forces as long as it sees those forces as part of its defence against spreading Indian power. That makes reshaping India-Pakistan relations a key priority for the US – and they cannot be reshaped without some resolution in Kashmir.
Untangling the Kashmir conflict will not be easy, but the stakes are high. Intensive diplomacy involving Washington, Islamabad and New Delhi might produce a formula for peace. Accords that have ended other communal conflicts, perhaps including the Belfast Agreement of 1998, could serve as models.
Officials of the incoming administration are suggesting that they may recommend sending more US troops to Afghanistan. This would be folly. Afghans have always rallied against foreign troops, and every time a US attack kills civilians in a “collateral damage” incident, more outraged Afghans turn to the Taliban. More broadly, no military strategy can work in Afghanistan as long as India and Pakistan use Afghan territory as a stage on which to play out their strategic rivalry.
Afghanistan will remain unstable until that rivalry is calmed. It will not be calmed as long as the Kashmir dispute rages. The road to stability in Afghanistan, then, runs first through Kashmir.
The respected US strategic think tank, RAND Corp, estimated that a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would initially kill two million people, wound 100 million, and send clouds of radioactive dust around the globe.
That was ten years ago. Since then, India and Pakistan have quadrupled their nuclear forces, which are now on high alert as a result of the Mumbai massacre earlier this month.
Fears an enraged India would attack Pakistan in revenge for the Mumbai massacre provoked great alarm here in Washington. So, too, the threat Islamabad would withdraw two Pakistani army corps supporting the US war in Afghanistan and redeploy them to face India.
In fact, India did come very closer to launching retaliatory military operations against Pakistan during the week of 7-14 December, according to sources close to the Pentagon.
Washington quickly forced Pakistan to arrest the leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba that India blames for the attack. Fortunately, India’s commendable restraint and Pakistan’s action in shutting down Kashmiri militant groups defused the military crisis. But this palliative actions did nothing to address the underlying conflict between old foes India and Pakistan.
Lashkar was founded at the end of the anti-Soviet Afghan War to channel jihadist energies into a new struggle aimed at freeing the two-thirds of divided Kashmir ruled by India. Pakistan and India have fought three major wars over Kashmir since 1947 and countless skirmishes along their tense border.
Kashmir is India’s only Muslim majority state. Muslim Kashmiris have sought independence from India since 1947. Most desired union with Pakistan, though an important minority called for total independence of the Himalayan mountain state, a position opposed by both India and Pakistan. Kashmir’s Hindu and Sikh minority, about 35-40% of Kashmir’s 11 million citizens, wanted to remain part of the Indian Union.
In 1989, an anti-Indian uprising erupted. Some 22 Kashmiri Muslim jihadist groups, some secretly aided by Pakistani intelligence, battled 500,000 Indian troops and police in a brutal, dirty war marked by constant atrocities on both sides. In the process, between 40,000 and 80,000 Kashmiris died, the majority, Muslims. Indian human rights groups have repeatedly criticized India’s tactics of repression in Kashmir that have included collective punishment, arson, assassinations, and gang rapes of Muslim women.
I visited many of the Kashmiri mujihadin guerilla camps in the Pakistani-controlled third of Kashmir, clustered around Muzzafarabad, and accompanied Kashmiri mujihadin on their operations against Indian forces, as I recount in my book, `War at the Top of the World,’ which is all about Afghanistan and the 61-year old Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir.
Two jihadi groups, Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, ran the biggest camps. Both were armed and financed until 2002 by ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service which used them as proxies in Kashmir and as a way of keeping India off balance and on the defensive.
India and the US quickly condemned Lashkar and other Kashmiri jihadis of the Mumbai outrage. Delhi accused Pakistan and ISI of being behind the murderous attacks, but has yet to offer proof to outsiders. India routinely blames ISI for violent incidents. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of fomenting violence on its Northwest Frontier and strife-torn Karachi.
Washington also claimed its old ally, former ISI chief Hamid Gul, was involved. General Gul is well known to me from the days of the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad.
Gul is a Pakistani patriot, not a terrorist. His real crime in US eyes: calling Taliban `freedom fighters’ and blaming the US government for the 9/11 attacks, a view 30% of Americans also share.
Pakistan bowed to US pressure and arrested Lashkar’s leaders.
Pakistan is bankrupt. Its cash reserves were stolen during Musharraf’s dictatorship. Pakistan now subsists entirely on American money, a humiliating comedown for a nation founded as a beacon of good government, justice and Islamic rectitude.
Most Pakistanis ardently support the Kashmiri liberation struggle as Pakistan’s national cause and most important strategic concern.
But after 9/11, the US put a gun to Pakistan’s head, forcing Musharraf to both support to the US war in Afghanistan, and denounce Pakistan’s ally, Taliban, and the Kashmiri jihadis, as `terrorists.’
The US and India were delighted. India always claimed the Kashmir uprising was due to `cross-border terrorism’ from Pakistan, though the revolt was a genuine national uprising against Indian misrule.
Pakistanis were outraged by this double betrayal, calling Musharraf an American stooge. Now, President Asif Zardari’s feeble new government is continuing the same policy under US pressure, to the anger and contempt of many Pakistanis. He is seen as being even more subservient to Washington than his hated predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistan has two governments: civilian and military. The generals and ISI have never abandoned their goal of a Pakistani-dominated Afghanistan, or continuing the Kashmir jihad. Both are seen as vital national interests. Pakistan’s generals look with derision and distaste on Zardari, who is dogged by accusations of gross corruption and malfeasance.
Washington has rented 130,000 Pakistani soldiers to wage war against Pashtun tribesmen allied to Taliban on Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier. The US pays their salaries and provides them with food and transport. These rented soldiers, or `sepoys,’ as the British Raj used to call its native troops, detest their mission. The once proud Pakistani army has become a mercenary force.
Now, in response to the deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is putting together a plan to send more divisions of its rented Pakistani Army to fight Taliban and other resistance forces in Afghanistan.
Few Americans understand the growing radicalization of Pakistan caused by Washington forcing its rulers and soldiers to go against the sentiments and interests of the nation.
Instead, the US keeps listening to the westernized Pakistani elite, less than 1% of the population, and left-leaning `experts,’ like Ahmad Rashid, who keep telling Washington what it wants to hear, rather than hard truths.
The festering Kashmir conflict that pits nuclear armed India and Pakistan against each other lies behind the Mumbai massacre. Solving this dangerous business must be as high a priority for the great powers as ending murderous attacks on civilians.
Endlessly repeating the mantra about `fighting terrorism’ will not solve the dangerous conflicts in South Asia or the Mideast.
Strange that none of the media (TV or Print) have picked this up at all. Or have they been deliberately ignoring it?
Have a look at the above picture of one of the terrorists. [Another angle]
Notice the orange thread / band on his right hand.
Tying a red thread or cord around the wrist is a Hindu practice and it is unlikely a Muslim, especially one politicized enough to carry out an attack such as this, would observe it. I think this provides more evidence that this was a false flag operation or at least an attack by a non-Muslim group. For more information about the significance of the red thread see wikipedia and this blog post. [Thanks to Uruk]
Additionally, the terrorists inside the Nariman House Building were reported to have stocked up on supplies on Wednesday evening, buying not just food items but liquor, among other things, from a local store [Source]. Again, it is highly unlikely that a Muslim, let alone a ‘Mujahid’, and especially one politicized enough to carry out such an attack, would consume liquor in normal life, let alone hours before his inevitable ‘martyrdom’.
Don’t let them ignore it. Circulate this to as many people as you can as we strongly believe it wouldn’t have been ignored if the terrorists were carrying a copy of the Qur’an, or a taveez.
Fears an enraged India would attack Pakistan in revenge for the Mumbai massacre provoked great alarm here in Washington. So, too, the threat Islamabad would withdraw two Pakistani army corps supporting the US war in Afghanistan and redeploy them to face India.
Two jihadi groups, Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, ran the biggest camps. Both were armed and financed until 2002 by ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service which used them as proxies in Kashmir and as a way of keeping India off balance and on the defensive.
But after 9/11, the US put a gun to Pakistan’s head, forcing Musharraf to both support to the US war in Afghanistan, and denounce Pakistan’s ally, Taliban, and the Kashmiri jihadis, as `terrorists.’
