Alternative theories to the Mumbai attack

[TOPGUN]

Let the jews come too let them all come bastar_s !! we shall show them.

 

[fatman17]

Dec 6, 2008

Pakistan follows its own path

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Visiting United States officials Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week presented Pakistan with "difficult to deny" proof of the involvement of officials of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Pakistani militant groups in last week's Mumbai attack.

They have demanded direct action, such as the arrest of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the chief of the Jamaatut Dawa, formerly the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), the group with which the 10 attackers of Mumbai were connected. They also want the LET's Zakiur Rahman apprehended, as well as the ISI officers involved in plotting the Mumbai attack.

But the Pakistani military command, the Corps Commanders Conference, agreed on a principled stand on Thursday that Pakistan will confront the threat of militancy through its own course of action, not at the dictates of anybody else. This position has been relayed to Washington, Asia Times Online contacts familiar with the security apparatus say.

The danger is that the US will see the Pakistani stance as a stalling move and take matters into its own hands. Already over the past few months, the US has stepped up unmanned Predator drone attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan in its frustration with Islamabad for not doing enough in clamping down on militancy.

There is no immediate indication of how Pakistan will react, although it clearly has to do something, given the evidence of communication intercepted between Rahman and the Mumbai militants and the confessions of the only militant to have survived - Ajmal Amir Kesab. He is reportedly said to have detailed how the militants were trained in Pakistan.

In an excerpt from his interrogation handed to Pakistan by Indian authorities, Kesab is reported to have said, "I thought, why should I die when I have a chance to kill more people. Then I was surrounded and captured, but no problem. I will spend some time in prison and then some of my comrades will hijack an [Indian] plane and get me released."

Despite this, there is skepticism among the general masses, the military cadre and Pakistani media over the authenticity of anything coming from Delhi. This is a major hurdle preventing Islamabad from taking "direct" action.

Asia Times Online described on November 19 how high-level meetings between US intelligence and the ISI at different levels devised plans to cripple the support systems of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan. (See Taliban, US wrestle for the upper hand.) Two prominent names came up for discussion - retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul and a former ISI official, retired Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja. Tightening the noose around people such as Gul and Khawaja and the like is one way to cut off support for the Taliban.

Now the US has given the names of four former ISI officials, including Gul, to the United Nations Security Council to put them on a list of international terrorists.

Gul, who once headed the ISI, has confirmed this, saying that if Pakistan does not protect him he will contact different international forums. "This is because I am vocal about American imperialist designs in the region. I can read their mind and have the capability to expose them. And this is because they want to malign the Inter-Services Intelligence," Gul told Asia Times Online.

Khawaja, a middle-level former ISI official, also confirmed to Asia Times Online that his and Gul's names "had been put on the ECL", Pakistan's Exit Control List. This could not be independently confirmed with the Federal Investigation Agency Airport immigration desk.

This could be the beginning of the tightening of the noose around the ISI and elements in the armed forces, possibly even leading to the ISI being declared a a rogue organization.

Already, under US pressure, the government has taken some steps to clip the wings of the ISI. Several months ago, it was placed under the Ministry of Interior, rather than the military. However, due to a fierce reaction from the army and from then-president and retired General Pervez Musharraf, the decision was reversed.

Recently, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced the closure of the ISI’s political cell. Nevertheless, the ISI has a deep-rooted history as a secret service with successful operations against the Soviet Union, India, Israel and in Eastern Europe and its structure makes such steps superficial.

Further, the political government is weaker than the military institution, which makes it difficult for it to take telling action against the ISI.

The Americans realize this, so they will adopt their way of doing things, while the Pakistan army will decide on how to deal with Pakistan's jihadi outfits. These approaches won't necessarily be in harmony, and there is always the possibility of another attack on India that could set the region on fire.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

 

[fatman17]

PERISCOPE: Eyes wide shut —Mahmud Sipra

It is incomprehensible how — despite intelligence warnings — the authorities that were in possession of such specific information failed or refused to share it with their counterparts in Pakistan, who they are now holding responsible

Amidst the shards of glass, bullet-strewn walls, the blood on the floor and the carnage of what was once the iconic Taj reception and lobby, television cameras picked up the surreal image of a lone porcelain vase — resolutely standing intact and upright — a silent sentinel to the mind-numbing havoc that had visited the hotel only hours earlier. It became the defiant symbol of a wounded but courageous city.

It is not difficult to relate to the anger and the emotional backlash of Mumbai’s civic and societal leaders at the monumental systemic failure of the intelligence and security agencies that had been entrusted with the responsibility of protecting this great Indian city. Mumbai has suffered grievous assaults on its person many times before. But nothing in its recent history compares to the shock and awe of the one carried out last week.

In a few swift clinically executed chilling manoeuvres, a band of armed men devastated the pulsating rhythm of one of the world’s most vibrant cities, holding its unsuspecting inhabitants hostage, leaving dead, dying and mourning, hundreds of tourists along with Mumbai’s cosmopolitan elite and the polyglot population that make up this great city. True, Mumbai has been violently traumatised many times before but this multi-pronged attack was unparalleled in its scope and its single-mindedness to indiscriminately kill, maim and terrorise a city gifted with the bravest of hearts.

Not surprisingly, its outraged populace has openly come out to lay the blame on its politicians and thugs that hold sway for having callously pandered away Mumbai’s security, integrity and its pluralistic well-being at the alter of narrow-mindedness and self-interest.

That “enough no more” rallying cry has found resonance across a wide spectrum of Mumbai’s citizenry and marks an end to the eyes wide shut attitude they have stoically put up with while enduring the insidious, the parochial, the bigoted and the violent.

Its politicians, predictably, are quick to point the finger at neighbouring Pakistan for this horrendous act, ignoring the fact that Pakistan itself is reeling from the savagery of similar attacks in its own cities and suddenly finds itself on the back-foot struggling to defend itself from the relentless finger pointing, to say nothing of the merciless venom of some of India’s defence analysts and commentators.

Beyond the jingoistic chest-thumping and the blame-game that follows every such Indian tragedy suffered at the hands of perpetrators of different hues — Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Hindu — there is the unmistakable and rising spectre of India’s ethnic divide.

As the pall of gloom slowly lifts and Mumbai gets back to picking up the threads of its life, the blame-game starts taking on a different cadence as new facts start to surface.

It is now almost certain that warnings of an imminent terrorist attack had been circulating for almost two months before the 26/11 attacks took place. The chairman of the Tata Group, which owns the Taj in Mumbai, was informed — as was probably the management of the Oberoi — to expect an assault on his hotel and that the threat was imminent.

Mr Tata admits that he took measures to augment the security in and around the hotel but as the expected attack did not materialise around the expected date, the terrorist alert was in all probability scaled down. Terrorists unlike hotel guests, rarely announce the exact date and time of their arrival.

It is incomprehensible how — despite these warnings — the authorities that were in possession of such specific information as to which areas were to be hit were unable or unwilling to take adequate counter-measures to thwart the attacks or to safeguard their unsuspecting populace. Even more surprising is the utter lack of initiative on the Indian Government’s part of sharing that intelligence with their counterparts in Pakistan, who they are now holding responsible for this reprehensible act.

The Pakistani Foreign Minister was in New Delhi on that fateful day, ostensibly to further plans to “work together” with his counterparts. Why was he not informed of the “chatter’ the Indian authorities were picking up? Or did they think that he was a security risk as well?

In the days and weeks to come as more facts surface or are allowed to surface, the flawed rationale of “these terrorists being Muslims” alone is not going to fly. Pakistan is a Muslim country and its biggest nightmare is that it is being torn apart — its people terrorised, its armed forces attacked, not by some heathen horde but by people who call themselves Muslims as well.

The religious persuasion of a merchant of death has little to do with his programming and more to do with his misguided motivation. Everybody wants to go to heaven. It’s just that there are some who are willing not just to kill but to die trying to get there.
It is easy to take the moral high-ground and “demand” the unacceptable of your adversary simply because you are the aggrieved party and have a larger orchestra to sound off from. But in the final analysis it is not just the size of the orchestra but the fidelity of the sound that matters.

Once the sound and the fury have subsided somewhat, perhaps the hawks and the jingo janta in India grasp the wisdom of the truism: where diatribe won’t work, dialogue might just.

Nothing that the two countries do will diminish the morale of the perpetrators of such barbaric acts than to deny them the satisfaction of holding two great nations hostage.
I am human enough and perhaps even sanguine enough to still “see things not as they are but as they ought to be”.

Mahmud Sipra is a best selling author and an independent columnist. He can be reached at sipraindubai@yahoo.com

 

[fatman17]

Why does they sound scared to you?. Do you think Muslims are not nationalistic?.

India's Muslims

By Barbara Crossette

December 3, 2008

India and the United States have blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist group based in Pakistan, for the horrific terrorist attack in Mumbai. But we cannot rule out the involvement of local people, and there are in fact major rifts in Indian society between Muslims and Hindus.

As Martti Ahtisaari receives the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, it is clear that the hard work of peacemaking does not guarantee universal acclaim.

India's Muslims have deep grievances. Reports by Indian experts substantiate these grievances with statistics; Muslim victims of Hindu attacks fill in the anecdotal evidence; outsiders concur. A Council on Foreign Relations study concluded in 2007 that Indian Muslims are "marginalized" and that the government was dealing only "to some degree" with the problem. A United Nations report further suggested that such conditions could spark serious unrest.

The most recent, most unvarnished survey of Indian Muslim life was carried out by a panel led by Rajindar Sachar, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court. The findings of that survey were published in late 2006 and sent to Parliament. It has been a touchstone for debate ever since.

The Sachar report acknowledges that Muslims enjoy religious freedom in India, but it paints a grim portrait of their daily lives and chances for advancement, even as India's economy flourishes. The report concludes that "not all religious communities and social groups...have shared equally the benefits of the growth process. Among these, the Muslims, the largest minority community in the country, constituting 13.4 per cent of the population, are seriously lagging behind in terms of most of the human development indicators."

Among other findings that point to low development in many Muslim communities, the report said that Muslims have the highest rate of stunted growth and the second-highest rate of underweight children. Their literacy rate in 2001 was 59 percent, compared with the national average of 65 percent. The report also found that as many as 25 percent of Muslim 6-to-14-year-olds have never been to school or have dropped out, the highest rate in the country.

Although individual Muslims have gained prominence as craftspeople, athletes and entertainers, as a group their poverty rates are close to those of the lowest Hindu castes and outcast communities. Muslims make up only 4 percent of students at top universities and hold only 5 percent of government jobs.

Muslims in India often complain that they are used as "vote banks" by political parties, which pander to them when elections approach (India was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses); then at other times they are marginalized, distrusted and harassed by law enforcement officers. "In general," the Sachar report concludes, "Muslims complained that they are constantly looked upon with a great degree of suspicion not only by certain sections of society but also by public institutions and governance structures. This has a depressing effect on their psyche."

After visiting India earlier this year, Asma Jahangir, a respected United Nations rights monitor and leading Pakistani human rights lawyer, said presciently that the country could face more deadly violence between sectarian communities if much more was not done to deter religious hatred and prevent politicians from exploiting tensions.

Progressives applauded the Sachar report. Mainstream, a magazine of the Indian intellectual left, wrote in 2007 that the Sachar report had "nailed the long-touted Right-wing disinformation about Indian Muslims as a skein of lies."

The left in India--within the Communist parties as well as among independent thinkers and academics--has been steadfast and clearheaded in its opposition to religious nationalism of any kind. The left has fought, for example, efforts by the anti-Muslim propagandists of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and numerous fascistlike Hindu-based movements to rewrite textbooks to glorify a mythological Hindu history and downplay the enormous role of Muslims.

"Drawing on every conceivable data source, governmental and other, and interacting widely across 15 Indian States where Muslims live in high concentrations, the Sachar Report records, on the basis of facts that few dare refute, a litany of exclusion, alienation and immiseration," Mainstream said. Culling statistics from the report, the magazine added, "Among India's Security Agencies...Muslim representation is 3.2 per cent." It also noted that only 2.1 percent of Muslim farmers owned tractors and a bare 1 percent had hand pumps for irrigation.

In recent decades, Muslim communities in India have been attacked, Muslim weavers have been blinded to destroy their livelihoods, Muslim homes and businesses have been burned and Muslim women have been sexually assaulted with extreme brutality. In 2002 as many as 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat were massacred by Hindu mobs with the acquiescence of the state government and the police, after Muslims were accused, without evidence, of setting fire to a train full of Hindu pilgrims. That death toll, in the home state of Mahatma Gandhi, is ten times the number of those who died in the tragedy in Mumbai.

Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.

...and she is not a pakistani or muslim supporter!!!

 

[Mihir]

Since you bring up Syed Saleem Shazad,


Al-Qaeda 'hijack' led to Mumbai attack
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

MILAN - A plan by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months - even though official policy was to ditch it - saw what was to be a low-profile attack in Kashmir turn into the massive attacks on Mumbai last week.

The original plan was highjacked by the Laskar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani militant group that generally focussed on the Kashmir struggle, and al-Qaeda, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 people in Mumbai as groups of militants sprayed bullets and hand grenades at hotels, restaurants and train stations, as well as a Jewish community center.

The attack has sent shock waves across India and threatens to revive the intense periods of hostility the two countries have endured since their independence from British India in 1947.

There is now the possibility that Pakistan will undergo another about-turn and rethink its support of the "war in terror"; until the end of 2001, it supported the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. It could now back off from its restive tribal areas, leaving the Taliban a free hand to consolidate their Afghan insurgency.

A US State Department official categorically mentioned that Pakistan's "smoking gun" could turn the US's relations with Pakistan sour. The one militant captured - several were killed - is reported to have been a Pakistani trained by the LET.

A plan goes wrong
Asia Times Online investigations reveal that several things went wrong within the ISI, which resulted in the Mumbai attacks.

Before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the ISI had several operations areas as far as India was concerned. The major forward sections were in Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which were used to launch proxy operations through Kashmir separatist groups in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The next major areas were Nepal and Bangladesh, where both countries were used for smuggling arms and ammunition into India and for launching militants to carry out high-level guerrilla operations in Indian territory other than Kashmir.

After 9/11, when Islamabad sided with the United States in the "war on terror" and the invasion of Afghanistan was launched to catch al-Qaeda members and militants, Pakistan was forced to abandon its Muzzafarabad operations under American pressure. The major recent turn in the political situation in Nepal with the victory of Maoists and the abolishment of the monarchy has reduced the ISI's operations. An identical situation has happened in Bangladesh, where governments have changed.

The only active forward sections were left in the southern port city of Karachi, and the former Muzzafarabad sections were sent there. The PNS Iqbal (a naval commando unit) was the main outlet for militants to be given training and through deserted points they were launched into the Arabian sea and on into the Indian region of Gujarat.

At the same time, Washington mediated a dialogue process between India and Pakistan, which resulted in some calm. Militants were advised by the ISI to sit tight at their homes to await orders.

However, that never happened. The most important asset of the ISI, the Laskhar-e-Taiba (LET), was split after 9/11. Several of its top-ranking commanders and office bearers joined hands with al-Qaeda militants. A millionaire Karachi-based businessman, Arif Qasmani, who was a major donor for ISI-sponsored LET operations in India, was arrested for playing a double game - he was accused of working with the ISI while also sending money to Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area for the purchase of arms and ammunition for al-Qaeda militants.

The network of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which was a major supporter of the ISI in the whole region, especially in Bangladesh, was shattered and fell into the hands of al-Qaeda when Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of Harkat, a hero of the armed struggle in Kashmir who had spent two years in an Indian jail, was arrested by Pakistani security forces in January 2004. He was suspected of having links to suicide bombers who rammed their vehicles into then-president General Pervez Musharraf's convoy on December 25, 2003.

He was released after 30 days and cleared of all suspicion, but he was profoundly affected by the experience and abandoned his struggle for Kashmir's independence and moved to the North Waziristan tribal area with his family. His switch from the Kashmiri struggle to the Afghan resistance was an authentic religious instruction to those in the camps in Kashmir to move to support Afghanistan's armed struggle against foreign forces. Hundreds of Pakistani jihadis established a small training camp in the area.

Almost simultaneously, Harkat's Bangladesh network disconnected itself from the ISI and moved closer to al-Qaeda. That was the beginning of the problem which makes the Mumbai attack a very complex story.

India has never been a direct al-Qaeda target. This has been due in part to Delhi's traditionally impartial policy of strategic non-alignment and in part to al-Qaeda using India as a safe route from the Arabian Sea into Gujrat and then on to Mumbai and then either by air or overland to the United Arab Emirates. Al-Qaeda did not want to disrupt this arrangement by stirring up attacks in India.

Nevertheless, growing voices from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and from within India for the country to be a strategic partner of NATO and the US in Afghanistan compelled al-Qaeda, a year ago, to consider a plan to utilize Islamic militancy structures should this occur.

Several low-profile attacks were carried out in various parts of India as a rehearsal and Indian security agencies still have no idea who was behind them. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda was not yet prepared for any bigger moves, like the Mumbai attacks.

Under directives from Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani, who was then director general (DG) of the ISI, a low-profile plan was prepared to support Kashmiri militancy.That was normal, even in light of the peace process with India. Although Pakistan had closed down its major operations, it still provided some support to the militants so that the Kashmiri movement would not die down completely.

After Kiani was promoted to chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj was placed as DG of the ISI. The external section under him routinely executed the plan of Kiani and trained a few dozen LET militants near Mangla Dam (near the capital Islamabad). They were sent by sea to Gujrat, from where they had to travel to Kashmir to carry out operations.

Meanwhile, a major reshuffle in the ISI two months ago officially shelved this low-key plan as the country's whole focus had shifted towards Pakistan's tribal areas. The director of the external wing was also changed, placing the "game" in the hands of a low-level ISI forward section head (a major) and the LET's commander-in-chief, Zakiur Rahman.

Zakiur was in Karachi for two months to personally oversee the plan. However, the militant networks in India and Bangladesh comprising the Harkat, which were now in al-Qaeda's hands, tailored some changes. Instead of Kashmir, they planned to attack Mumbai, using their existent local networks, with Westerners and the Jewish community center as targets.

Zakiur and the ISI's forward section in Karachi, completely disconnected from the top brass, approved the plan under which more than 10 men took Mumbai hostage for nearly three days and successfully established a reign of terror.

The attack, started from ISI headquarters and fined-tuned by al-Qaeda, has obviously caused outrage across India. The next issue is whether it has the potential to change the course of India's regional strategy and deter it from participating in NATO plans in Afghanistan.

Daniel Pipes, considered a leading member of Washington's neo-conservatives, told Asia Times Online, "It could be the other way around, like always happens with al-Qaeda. Nine-eleven was aimed to create a reign of terror in Washington, but only caused a very furious reaction from the United States of America. The 07/07 bombing [in London] was another move to force the UK to pull out of Iraq, but it further reinforced the UK's policies in the 'war on terror'. The Madrid bombing was just an isolated incident which caused Spain's pullout from Iraq."

Pipes continued, "They [militants] are the believers of conspiracy theories and therefore they would have seen the Jewish center [attacked in Mumbai] as some sort of influence in the region and that's why they chose to target it, but on the other hand they got immense international attention which they could not have acquired if they would have just attacked local targets."

Israeli politician and a former interim president, Abraham Burg, told Asia Times Online, "It was not only Jewish but American and other foreigners [who were targeted]. The main purpose may have been to keep foreigners away from India. Nevertheless, there is something deeper. This attack on a Jewish target becomes symbolic.

"I remember when al-Qaeda carried out the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen [in 2000] and then they carried out attacks on American embassies in Africa, they mentioned several reasons. The Palestinian issue was number four or five, but later when they found that it had become the most popular one, it suddenly climbed up to number one position on their priority list. Since the attack on the Jewish institution drew so much attention, God forbid, it could be their strategy all over the world," Burg said.

Al-Qaeda stoked this particular fire that could spark new hostilities in South Asia. What steps India takes on the military front against Pakistan will become clearer in the coming days, but already in Karachi there has been trouble.

Two well-known Indophile political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a coalition partner in the government comprising people who migrated to Pakistan after the partition of British India in 1947, and the Awami National Party, another coalition partner in the government and a Pashtun sub-nationalist political party, clashed within 24 hours of the Mumbai attacks. Fifteen people have been killed to date and the city is closed, like Mumbai was after the November 26 attacks.

 

[EagleEyes]

^It is the same old crap. What is new in this?

 

[roadrunner]

Syed Salem Shazad is pretty funny. Hardly any of his conspiracies come true.

 

[daredevil]

India's Muslims

By Barbara Crossette

December 3, 2008

Although individual Muslims have gained prominence as craftspeople, athletes and entertainers, as a group their poverty rates are close to those of the lowest Hindu castes and outcast communities. Muslims make up only 4 percent of students at top universities and hold only 5 percent of government jobs.

She should research why these people gained prominence while others didn't. It has more to do with Indian muslims looking inward rather than integrating in mainstream. There is no dearth for the opportunities for these people. In fact they have many minority colleges, minority institutes and universities throughout India.

In the end, this article talks about Muslims being/getting marginalized but they didn't say Scared. IIRC, there are no riots since 2002 despite bomb blasts at Mosques, Temples, Prayer halls, which tells that people on both sides have come to conclusion that 'external forces' are at play, so no point in fighting one another, but kick these 'external forces' out.

 

[Kharian_Beast]

The colonel who admitted to being a terrorist is an external force? I agree that Indian army is a foreigner in Kashmir but not Delhi or Bumbai.

 

[daredevil]

The colonel who admitted to being a terrorist is an external force? I agree that Indian army is a foreigner in Kashmir but not Delhi or Bumbai.

Case is sub-judice. It is yet to be proven that he is involved, how can you believe Indian media.

 

[Anwar2]

Bombay atrocity was ugly and ferocious. Irrational killing spree against civilians in the heart of a vibrant metropolis. Downright irrational. Should be condemned in the strongest words.

The perpetrators were a bunch of educated young men, who had the discipline and the commitment to achieve their objectives; i.e. to inflict the maximum pain and to finally embrace death. No amount of plain vanilla “brain washing” could induce these young men to commit the acts that they did, and that too without remorse. Perhaps these guys had been exposed to similar atrocities on a bigger scale, perhaps they were already desensitized.

What’s unique about Bombay is the non-stop coverage by media, and the iconic status of the landmarks like Taj Mahal and Oberoi. Loss of life about 175, over a period of 60 hours.

Just for comparison, similar atrocities by the State players have been committed by the USA, India and Israel in locales and circumstances where they could onloy make it to a 3-colmn header of a lousy paper (the rest was dehumanized):

1. Gujarat pogrom resulted in about 2800 deaths over a 72 hours period. The perpetrator is now the 2nd time elected Chief Minister of Gujarat, a celebrity and a darling of Indian Corporate.
2. Indian Army has killed as many as 300 villagers in Palwama, Sopor and Kapwara in less than 24 hours.
3. US drone strikes in Bajaur (Damadola) killed 80 people in about 2 seconds. They are almost a routine in Waziristan now, “scoring” about 12 lives with each strike.
4. Israeli rape of Jenin cost about 1600 lives in about 48 hours.
5. US operation in Falluja resulted in about 5000 deaths in one week.

The difference is between Humanization and de-humanization. Every atrocity and massacre inflicts unbearable pain. When they happen in obscure locales without press coverage they are ignored within a few hours. When they happen in made-for-TV circumstances they become a “Challenge to the writ of the free world”.

 

[Anwar2]

Bombay atrocity was ugly and ferocious. Irrational killing spree against civilians in the heart of a vibrant metropolis. Downright irrational. Should be condemned in the strongest words.

The perpetrators were a bunch of educated young men, who had the discipline and the commitment to achieve their objectives; i.e. to inflict the maximum pain and to finally embrace death. No amount of plain vanilla “brain washing” could induce these young men to commit the acts that they did, and that too without remorse. Perhaps these guys had been exposed to similar atrocities on a bigger scale, perhaps they were already desensitized.

What’s unique about Bombay is the non-stop coverage by media, and the iconic status of the landmarks like Taj Mahal and Oberoi. Loss of life about 175, over a period of 60 hours.

Just for comparison, similar atrocities by the State players have been committed by the USA, India and Israel in locales and circumstances where they could onloy make it to a 3-colmn header of a lousy paper (the rest was dehumanized):

1. Gujarat pogrom resulted in about 2800 deaths over a 72 hours period. The perpetrator is now the 2nd time elected Chief Minister of Gujarat, a celebrity and a darling of Indian Corporate.
2. Indian Army has killed as many as 300 villagers in Palwama, Sopor and Kapwara in less than 24 hours.
3. US drone strikes in Bajaur (Damadola) killed 80 people in about 2 seconds. They are almost a routine in Waziristan now, “scoring” about 12 lives with each strike.
4. Israeli rape of Jenin cost about 1600 lives in about 48 hours.
5. US operation in Falluja resulted in about 5000 deaths in one week.

The difference is between Humanization and de-humanization. Every atrocity and massacre inflicts unbearable pain. When they happen in obscure locales without press coverage they are ignored within a few hours. When they happen in made-for-TV circumstances they become a “Challenge to the writ of the free world”.

 

[Munir]

They ask to arrest cause of unrelated info from India?

Well, why shouldn't we arrest condi, Powell, W for destroying Irac and Afghanistan? I think they should make a case against the Neocons. Thes ideas are laughable... Then we can say that their ideas are just as laughable cause there is surely less evidence then what they did... Just look at the speech of Powell in the UN...

Unfortunately as said often here, our politicians are the most stupid in the world.

 

[Kharian_Beast]

Because our politicians are scared to project Pakistan in a dynamic and positive manner by stating our national interests and concerns and not backing down, and mixing other nation's interests with our own due to a gullible nature.

 

[fatman17]

Case is sub-judice. It is yet to be proven that he is involved, how can you believe Indian media.[/QUOTE]

if it serves your interest, you do !