Hillary Clinton put in Hot Seat by Pakistani Media

[parihaka]

Thank you for the insight - I shall take that as complimentary.

I'm sorry, obviously my natural reticence failed me in conveying the full measure of my contempt

 

[SeaGull]

I'm sorry, obviously my natural reticence failed me in conveying the full measure of my contempt

Oh go right ahead - you might be surprised to see my resilience.

 

[SeaGull]

Any rationalists here?
Please help her out - our Parihaka is in trouble.

Oh damn!! I do not even know if it is a he or she or it.

 

[Awesome]

See here's the thing. It's difficult for me to talk about the prevailing situation in Pakistan because I'm at various times referring to two totally separate entities.

Hence my basic point that your western paradigm isn't capable enough to figure this situation out.

On the one hand, there's the actual people of Pakistan, the true Pakistanis, long suffering basically since the partition and now suffering constant internal attacks to rival Iraq at its worst.

On the other we have the 'ruling elite' or ’intelligentsia’ (of which I’m sure you count yourself as one) of Pakistan, imposed on the locals since the partition, with overseas bank accounts, overseas education and often living overseas while dictating where any monies should be spent.
As we all know, virtually all excess revenue goes to the Pakistan army rather than to improve living conditions, all other services maintained at bare minimum if even that. Whenever it looks as though true local rule might be established, another coup resets the balance of power. You’re probably guessing by now which category I place you and AgM in.

Nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The Raison d'être for this of course has been the big bad bogeyman to the south, perfidious India, ruled by the former servants of the Mughal Empire, now made their own masters by the British and not wanting a bar of their former masters. Whenever a new tool is devised or comes to hand such as the Taliban which may be used to advance the aspirations of the intelligentsia, it’s utilised for that purpose irrespective of what damage it may cause to the land and people of Pakistan or it’s neighbour Afghanistan.

Oh yeah and our fight against the Taliban, the entire Swat Operation, the entire Rah-e-Nijat is a big scam?

Conspiracy nuts, much?

So to enable the continued servitude of the Pakistanis as providers to maintain the intelligentsia and their army, a constant condition of fear and oppression must be maintained.

Not the topic as well...

India must be demonized and portrayed as the evil aggressors, the west must be portrayed as the same, any offers of assistance must be diverted to the southern army and if questioned the very countries that offer and give help must likewise be demonised. Above all else, the ‘intelligensia’ must never be faulted and all failures must be rationalised as the actions of the evil foreigners.

We're talking about whether to attack AQ or not? Stop ranting. India is not demonized, rather Indian culture is appreciated in many corners of Pakistan. We maintain two issues with them, that of Kashmir and support to terrorists within Pakistan.

Of course you know this as well, but you need to compensate for your weak debating skills and need to resort to character assassination in your desperation to seem intelligent enough to comprehend the issues within Pakistan.

Hence we have the contradiction of the good and bad Taliban, those who attack Pakistan as bad, those who attack Afghanistan as good.

No we don't. We have the Taliban which is our problem and the Taliban which is your problem. You deal with yours and we'll deal with ours. Problem is, you guys are not committing to the war with the Taliban which is costing us the war with the TTP.

We have the PA with the very latest technology that can be donated while the Frontier Corps had to make do with whatever they could scrounge from the rubbish heap, despite the obvious dangers to the people of Pakistan.

The PA is involved. The PA is fighting Rah-e-Nijat not FC.

We have ‘treaties’ ceding control of what is nominally ‘claimed’ Pakistan territory to insurgents and fundamentalists because those areas have no financial benefit to the ‘intelligentsia’ while at the same time those same ‘intelligentsia’ claiming that they still have ‘sovereignty’ over those areas and refusing permission to the ISAF to hunt down the terrorists resident in those areas.

Again treaties were a bad idea. Pakistan has made mistakes in the war, treaties was one of the bigger ones. Anyway, which treaties do you see being signed now? Did you just wake up from an year long hibernation?

I'm pretty sure you the ISAF is trying out some treaties with the Taliban though.

When the terrorists attack assets within the ‘intelligentsia’s’ realm of interest we have the PA attack the areas as retribution, but no attempt to continue to hold, pacify and develop those areas.

Actually, rather than trying to sound intelligent, please get some intelligent information down. Swat and many surrounding areas have been repulsed and we're holding it.

We have outrage when accountability is asked for the funds and materials meant to help prosecute the war against those terrorists.

Again a typical western propaganda. Actually a breakdown of the bills is given to the US. That is not aid, those are BILLs for the money you owe us. That's our accounts receivables. Its pretty stupid to assume that the west actually pays us lump sum amounts just on our whims.

We have excuses that the attacks against the people of Pakistan are in fact engineered by outside forces, either RAW, or the CIA, or Blackwater, or any other agency, rather than a fundamental failure by the ‘intelligentsia’.

It's a valid accusation. If found guilty, you gotta pay for the crimes. How many people have we hung for it yet? You're such a weakling that you can't take a few prying questions?

We have claims that any attempt to bring to heel any terrorism outside Pakistans territory are plots to undermine Pakistan itself.

Rant... No factual argument here.

We have claims that despite America and the other countries of the ISAF spending both cash and blood to make Afghanistan a better place that all of it is a failure, the failures have nothing to do with Pakistan except that Pakistan could do it soooo much better, and at end result it’s all really just a plot to undermine Pakistan itself.

If you guys are spending cash and blood, we're spending it more! We have a small region like Waziristan that is messed up, you guys have an entire Afghanistan. Yet compare the number of forces committed to the war?

You need to send in 100,000 more soldiers perhaps to crush the Taliban. This is not Iraq where there is a significant urban population that will go along with it all.

Meanwhile, the actual people of Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to suffer and die in ever increasing numbers, Pakistans allies become further removed and more suspicious as the fantasist rhetoric expands to ever greater heights in an attempt to deflect criticism, and the terrorists gain ever greater hold over swathes of territory and people, all in the name of restoring the Mughal Empire, the greatest fantasy of all.

Actually Pakistan is winning the war... So don't club us with the war in Afghanistan. You guys are losing territory and we're gaining it. Big difference.

In 8 years, the joke still remains that the Afghanistan government doesn't go beyond Kabul...

It ain’t gonna happen. Pakistan is not a cantonment for the eventual re-establishment of Muslim rule over India, it is the last refuge of the ‘intelligentsia’ and is getting smaller and weaker by the day, despite the best efforts of the rest of the world to save you.

Again let me demonstrate your ignorance... Pakistan was founded by people who rejected the idea of taking over India under Muslim rule. The Muslims who wanted to do that opposed the creation of Pakistan.

Nobody in Pakistan wants any part of India. We just want to free Kashmir, the rest of India is inconsequential

Go educate yourself a little more before you even begin talk on these topics you know squat about.

What, and leave the Afghan people to your tender mercies? When you can’t even secure 2/3’s of the territory you currently claim? I don’t think so.

Haha, as opposed to leaving them to the mercy of the Taliban as you currently have.

At whose mercy are you guys at in Afghanistan?

At worst, as S-2 suggests, the ISAF may withdraw: reassess, realign and come back with new priorities as to who the enemies are: not the Pakistani people, but more than likely the countries ‘rulers’.

Yeah right, Pakistan's rulers are protected and cajoled by you guys. All you need to do to empower Pakistanis is to break the American, Army, Allah (the so called Islamists) combo that rules Pakistan. In that order.

Everything that happens in Pakistan is either in the name of America, in the name of the Army or the name of Allah. With each's proponents vying for the same thing. Power hold onto Pakistanis.

You see your paradigm is so narrow, so weak, so ignorant and so pathetic that just because we reject American influence, the little intellect that you have on Pakistanis forces you to believe that the alternative is that we support either Army or the Allah component.

American control has to be removed from Pakistan
Army shouldn't be allowed any more coups
Allah based politics and parties need to be shut down

I fear you have too small a mind to really comprehend what I've written up there. We humans are creatures of habit. Your Islamophobia and Muslimophobia would compel you to lay labels of convenience on everything that opposes you.

Carry on, we've stopped caring about it.

I base my assessments of you from years of reading your anti-western truthspeak: from glorying in the deaths of Iraqi’s at the hands of your heroes as a demonstration of western evil, to making ever more fantastical claims about your own cliques capabilities and deriding those of your foes.
You on the other hand merely flame, posit strawmen and abuse whenever I can be bothered shining the light of reason on your claims.

I know you have personal scores to settle from the years of your attempts at actually winning a debate... But out here... here... we do things a little professionally and do not engage in personal attacks, or talk about the person we're debating with. We pick a topic and stick to it. It has helped us from not following suit of other now insignificant corners of the web.

So shape up or ship out.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

As usual, you misrepresent the original quote to realign the argument in your own favour.
To wit


Like I said, why on earth would ABCA allow the destruction of their armies?
And why on earth would you attempt to support this idiot?

I did not misrepresent the quote - I clarified to you exactly what my point was, and if you had issue with it you should have pointed it out back then, instead of now when your argument has been shot down:

"And for clarification, I don't agree with the posters comment about body bags and whatnot, only that without Pakistani cooperation eliminating AQ and assorted groups is not possible."

"Hence my point - the US cannot eliminate AQ/Taliban etc without Pakistan's assistance, as a viable state. "

Surely you were actually reading my posts? I made quite clear in all of them what my point was.

But lets for a moment consider the argument that a cut-off of supplies means that NATO can no longer operate properly militarily, the arguments in my last post still hold - why would NATO not withdraw from Afghanistan laving behind a relatively small problem in Afghanistan, instead of attacking and destroying Pakistan and ending up with an almost insurmountable problem?

It won't happen - if supplies are cut and NATO cannot operate, NATO will withdraw so long as Pakistan has not deteriorated to the point where a NATO invasion will have little impact on the stability of the country and its security institutions.

In any case, I did point out in my last post that I did not believe the cutoff of supplies was a possibility at this stage - I would prefer the GoP charge more for the transit of those supplies, but there the questions I raised in my previous post about transit charges pop up.

 

[Patriot]

Parihaka on WAB mentioned Taliban control ISI.. That should explain the intellectual level shown in Parihaka's posts.When you can't win a debate..start abusing the other guy (Asim_aquil)...Asim who is a common citizen of Pakistan just like me and has no links with ISI and Parihaka thinks he is Pakistani Elite!..Anyway, I hope he does not consider me Pakistani elite and i second what Asim said.Asim who is a very liberal guy as i have observed from his posts is being accused of anti Americanism..lol just because Parihaka does not have any other point to make to win the debate..Man this is hilarious.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Here's an idea though: since you're so convinced that the PA could do sooo much better at controlling Afghanistan, how about moving some of the PA off your southern borders, ally with the ISAF and set about hunting the Talibunies and AQ side by side with your western 'allies'.

Close co-operation with NATO, the very best in equipment, fighting alongside western allies against a common foe, close integration with other armies, upgrading of command and control, and ringing endorsements and kudos from around the world.
Hell, once you'd updated your doctrine and ROE's you could even have Pakistan generals commanding NATO troops. AAAnnnd, the elimination of a very real threat to Pakistan's continued existence.

Sure .. as soon as you can get the Indians to agree to move a bulk of their offensive troops, not needed for controlling cross-border and cross-LOC movement, away from the LoC and IB.

Typically the howls of protests at that suggestion come from Indians and some of their American apologists.

 

[Solomon2]

You are also right in that if the US didn't come into Afghanistan, we would not have had this problem. Instead we would continue to have the Taliban and jehadis in our country and remained the epicentre of terrorism. Even if the jehadis don't attack us and we don't kill them, it won't mean that we have all of a sudden become a terror free country. The jehadis are attacking us because we have been forced to give up our old ways.

I think one of the reasons why Hillary is upset is because of what she learned during her visit. Have you been looking at reports of radical madrassas sprouting up in Punjab? Of schools and clinics built with U.S. funds used by terrorists as indoctrination centers or prisons? Yes, Clinton learned, or pieced together, that the GoP looks upon the current batch of Taliban as "good" terrorists gone bad, and plans to raise a new crop of them in a couple of years, this time in areas previously not afflicted with terrorists.

There is a fundamental conflict going on here. The U.S. sees Pakistan aid as capital investment: infrastructure, training, etc. to be funded for a couple of years with a defined end in sight. Pakistan, however, sees the U.S. as a cash cow to be milked forever and such aid to increase in the future - as long as any inadequacy of Pakistan or its government can be blamed on the Americans. The more money the U.S. provides, the more it can be blamed publicly, while the more villas and luxury automobiles can be purchased and built in private.

The only way to maintain this endless gravy train is to keep the U.S. convinced that Pakistan, a self-proclaimed nuclear power, will fall into the hands of terrorists if the Americans stop spending money - and just to make sure the threat is credible, the GoP may either openly or secretly fund the militants. The GoP is refusing to invest in schooling and infrastructure to support its burgeoning population - atomic bombs and terrorists are much preferable!

I am now very strongly in support of tight restrictions and conditions on aid to Pakistan, and I hope the Pakistanis will find the strength to either shape up to the required standard or reject the bill entirely.

If they reject U.S. aid, Pakistan's politicians and military can then turn to China for support. The Chinese certainly have the money, and there won't be any public battles as to how it is spent. Of course, Chinese funds come with their own strings attached, such as settlements of Chinese technicians, merchants, and military enclaves. And, of course, zero tolerance for attacks on such by terrorists.

 

[deathfromabove]

FYI Soloman2

US seeks Pak, Saudi support in dialogues with Afghan Taliban

Sunday, 1 Nov, 2009 5:11 pm

ISLAMABAD : The United States has decided to initiate dialogue with Afghan Taliban, and requested Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for their support in dialogue process, Aaj news reported.

Diplomatic sources told the channel that the US has decided to dialogue with Taliban in Afghanistan.

Main commander and Naib Amir Mullah Akhund from Taliban side is taking part in dialogue process with the US.

Source said Mullah Akhund has made it clear to US for not creating rift among the Taliban on the basis of money.

He also asked the US to take its forces out of Afghanistan as soon as possible so that government as per with the wishes of Afghan people could be formed.

AAJ TV : Pakistan Ki Awaz

 

[Solomon2]

Corrected link

So?

 

[deathfromabove]

Marvi Memom refused to meet Mrs. Clinton

Dear Secretary Clinton,

Whilst the message from you and your government is that of peace and friendship, the Kerry Lugar Bill passed by your legislative branch has been one of the main stumbling blocks in this mission. The assumption that Pakistanis have misunderstood the bill is equally faulty. Pakistanis have read the bill and understood your intent to micromanage Pakistan, to curtail Pakistan’s nuclear expansion program and to direct the war against extremism in Pakistan from White House.

What follows below is an understanding of the bill which needs to be amended if relations between US and patriotic Pakistanis have to be established. Your assertion that if we have issues with the bill we don’t need to take the money is ‘spot on’; patriotic Pakistanis have rejected your mere $1.5 billion. We will not negotiate on our country’s sovereignty and defence. And these are not mere slogans. They are based on facts which we read out of your conditionalities which do exist. And here are the facts Secretary Clinton:

1. The most controversial clause in the bill pertains to giving US ‘direct access to Pakistani nationals associated with such networks’. The explanation given in the note is equally unacceptable because it wants ‘cooperative efforts’ to combat proliferation to continue. This cooperation mentioned is intrusive since it demands ‘direct access’. Secretary Clinton, we have already handled our proliferators and believe in non priliferation. This we consider a breach of our sovereignty.

2. The reference to Pakistan military and intelligence agencies being involved in giving support to terrorists in the past is equally offensive. This is a clause which enables the Indian lobby to target Pakistan and hold it responsible for all future terrorist acts in the region.

3. The other issue pertains to the fact that President Obama’s regional security strategy will include working with ‘relevant governments and organizations in the region and elsewhere.’ The strategy which could include RAW and Mossad would be imposed on Pakistan for US national interest not Pakistan. And as such we cannot give the authority of making Pakistan’s security strategy to a US President.

4. There are references to expansion of Container Security Initiative at various Pakistani ports which we consider a security hazard.

5. The term sanctuary for terrorism implies that Pakistan is a failed state as is included in intelligence reforms and Terrorism Prevention Act 2004.

6. Bill allows ‘irregular forces to be used for US combat operations in Pakistan’ as stated in the Ronald Reagan Act 2005. This in effect gives legal cover to the Dynocores and Blackwaters which we Pakistanis have major issues with and consider a threat to our security.

7. The bill micromanages Pakistan’s important federal government agencies from education, madrassah’s to trade, to judiciary, to natural resources. All aid given will be to NGOs and if more than $100,000 is given those NGO files will become classified. As such Pakistan will not have access to such operations. This we consider an attempt by US to create its own financial political power bases for future.

8. Approximately $860 million of the aid will go back to US in the form of administrative expenses etc. This truly reflects badly on the actual impact on an average Pakistani’s life.

Here were some of the issues with the bill. Now let’s examine what aggravates Pakistani sensitivities with regards to current US policies. And why you are not welcome in Pakistan by patriotic Pakistanis. This might help you understand why over 80% of Pakistanis have issues with your policies as per certain reliable surveys.

1. Firstly, the US stance in the war against extremism is biased towards protecting Indian and Afghan interests. The TTP and Baloch terrorists have been using these two countries and their resources as bases for their operations inside Pakistan as is proven by Pak military evidence. Whilst you consider Pakistan to be sovereign our aid is linked to these two countries which we find distasteful.

2. Whilst Pakistan’s nuclear program is an issue for US, the Indian nuclear program (civil nuclear technology agreement) is being allowed to expand without any blockades.

3. Whilst you have personally complemented Pak military efforts in your recent visit, at the same time there are conditionalities in giving aid to Pakistan to strengthen its military against terrorists. Certainly these terrorists are linked to India and as such conditionalities are one sided. Moreover, if Pakistan military is being complemented why can’t it be trusted with drone technology? Additionally US policy wishes to strengthen Pakistan’s parliament and yet it ignores the resolution passed by Pakistani parliament against drone attacks.

4. Whilst Pakistan is a frontline state which has paid dearly in terms of men lost in battle with terrorists, US considers India and Pakistan to be equals. Where is the advantage Pakistan should get for cooperating on terrorism? $1.5 billion is a joke compared to the billions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, even in Turkey and Egypt. As well as the fact that no where with other allies has US imposed intrusive conditionalities.

5. Whilst Pakistan is blamed for terrorist sanctuaries how many infiltrators coming from India and Afghanistan specifically have you managed to stop?

6. The commitment for ROZs looks like its dithering. Where is the actual support for the tribals who have suffered the most in the war being fought to destabilize Pakistan?

7. What effort has the US played in cutting drug money which is destabilizing Pakistan and funding terrorism considering its source of entry is US backed Afghan territory. UN report confirms that after US entry into Afghanistan opium production has increased manifold. This is impacting Pakistan’s security since it’s ready financing for terrorism inside Pakistan.

Secretary Clinton,

If you wish to improve Pak-US bilateral, a more productive approach would have been to not justify the bill on arrival but rather to give an open ear to the criticisms with a commitment to amending it. Since there have been no such commitments it seems fruitless to meet with you. This is even more disturbing considering that you have been given plenty of evidence of Pakistani uproar on the bill before your arrival. It’s a pity that the bill was executed minus real Pakistani input. This has no doubt created a diplomatic fiasco for the US. Instead of underestimating the fiasco or considering it a result of Pakistani lack of comprehension, it would have been better to deal with it head on: amending the bill being the only viable option.

Pakistan might have a government which is beholden to you for its future longevity, but there are patriotic Pakistanis who will defend the soil before accepting your policies of creating a US fiefdom in Pakistan. As a young parliamentarian, I would only welcome you to Pakistan once we have evidence of your shift in policy so that Pakistan is dealt with as a sovereign country.

MARVI MEMON
This letter was first published by The Nation.

 

[parihaka]

Again let me demonstrate your ignorance... Pakistan was founded by people who rejected the idea of taking over India under Muslim rule.

While your comment is disingenuous on several levels I'll limit myself to the simple comment; that was then, this is now....

Pakistan: Divided by Faith

A few weeks before Abdul Rashid Ghazi died in a shootout with Pakistani special forces, he told me about a young woman who had asked him to make her a suicide bomber. I was drinking tea with Ghazi, the deputy leader of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, in his small office just off the mosque's main entrance. Outside, a man — a boy really, with barely a beard — paced nervously, an AK-47 gripped tightly in his hands. Inside, one of Ghazi's assistants updated the mosque's website, which promoted his campaign to spread Shari'a, or Islamic law, throughout the land. Another assistant was affixing labels to a stack of newly burned DVDs portraying American "aggression" in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was these heinous acts, said Ghazi, that inspired his young female acolyte to seek martyrdom. "Had I wanted to use her, I could have, because she was completely ready. But I sent her back, saying we don't need her, inshallah [God willing]."

On July 3, Pakistani forces laid siege to the mosque complex, which had housed some 5,000 students, teachers and clerics — plus a host of heavily armed militants. On the eighth day, after many had fled or surrendered, the soldiers raided the compound. Ghazi was killed, along with 11 soldiers, some 80 militants and a dozen women and children who may have been used as human shields. (The Red Mosque remains a magnet for violence: last Friday, a suicide bombing at a restaurant behind the mosque killed at least 13.) After the July 11 assault, the President, General Pervez Musharraf, addressed the nation. This was not a day of celebration, he said: "We have been up against our own people ... They strayed from the right path and became susceptible to terrorism." Then Musharraf posed wider questions meant for Pakistan but relevant, too, to the rest of South Asia: "What kind of Islam do these people represent? What do we want as a nation?" Today, 60 years after partition created Pakistan and India, Islam on the subcontinent is in the grip of a crisis whose central dilemma is the religion's place and role in modern society. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.

On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment in Barrackpore, near Kolkata, attacked his British lieutenant with a musket, then a sword. At his trial Pandey swore that he acted alone, but his hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and Bahadur Shah, the last Indian Emperor, was exiled to Burma. Five hundred years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent was brought to a halt.

Following the 1857 war, Muslim society in India collapsed. The British imposed English as the official language for both education and communication. The impact was cataclysmic. Muslims went from near 100% literacy in Urdu to 20% within a half-century. The country's educated Muslim élite was effectively blocked from administrative jobs in the government. Between 1858 and 1878, only 57 out of 3,100 graduates of Calcutta University — then the center of South Asian education — were Muslim. In the 1880s, only one Muslim was enrolled for every 25 students at the British-run colleges. While discrimination by both Hindus and the British played a role, it was as if the whole of Muslim society had retreated to lick its collective wounds.

From this period of introspection two rival movements emerged to foster an Islamic ascendancy. Revivalist groups blamed the collapse of their empire on a society that had strayed too far from the teachings of the Koran. They promoted a return to a more pure form of Islam, modeled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Others embraced the modern ways of their new rulers, seeking Muslim advancement through the pursuit of Western sciences, culture and law. From these movements two great Islamic institutions were born: Darul Uloom Deoband in northern India, rivaled only by al-Azhar University in Cairo for its teaching of Islam, and Aligarh Muslim University, not far from New Delhi, a secular institution that promoted Muslim culture, philosophy and languages, but left religion to the mosque. These two schools embody the fundamental split that continues to divide Islam in the subcontinent today. "You could say that Deoband and Aligarh are husband and wife, born from the same historical events," says Adil Siddiqui, information coordinator for Deoband. "But they live at daggers drawn."

The campus at Deoband is only a three-hour drive from New Delhi through the modern megasuburb of Noida. Strip malls and monster shopping complexes have consumed many of the mango groves that once framed the road to Deoband, but the contemporary world stops at the gate. Lost, my translator and I wander the campus in search of the guesthouse that Siddiqui indicated would be our meeting point. The courtyards are packed with bearded young men wearing long, collared shirts and white caps. The air thrums with the voices of hundreds of students reciting the Koran from open-door classrooms. My translator's requests for directions are met with averted eyes, vague gestures and mumbled responses. Finally we get an answer, but as we turn a corner, a voice calls out, "You are not supposed to be here; women are not allowed." That's not entirely true — later that day Siddiqui takes me on a tour through the same courtyard — but Deoband practices strict segregation between the sexes, and does not offer education to women. "They have their own institutions," says Siddiqui, waving vaguely in the direction of the gate.
Founded in 1866, the Deoband school quickly set itself apart from other traditional madrasahs, which were usually based in the home of the village mosque's prayer leader. Deoband's founders, a group of Muslim scholars from New Delhi, instituted a regimented system of classrooms, coursework, texts and exams. Instruction is in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, and the curriculum closely follows the teachings of the 18th century Indian Islamic scholar Mullah Nizamuddin Sehalvi. Graduates go on to study at Cairo's al-Azhar and Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, or found their own Deobandi institutions. Today, more than 9,000 are scattered throughout India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, most infamously the Dara-ul-Uloom Haqaniya Akora Khattak, near Peshawar, where Mullah Mohammed Omar, and several other leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban first tasted a life lived in accordance with Shari'a. Islamabad's Red Mosque follows the same school. Siddiqui visibly stiffens when those names are brought up. They have become synonymous with Islamic radicalism, and Siddiqui is careful to disassociate his institution from those that carry on its traditions, without actually condemning their actions. "Our books are being taught there," he says. "They have the same system and rules. But if someone is following the path of terrorism, it is because of local compulsions and local politics."

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877, studied under the same teachers as the founders of Deoband. But he believed that the downfall of India's Muslims was due to their unwillingness to embrace modern ways. He decoupled religion from education, and in his school sought to emulate the culture and training of India's new colonial masters. Islamic culture was part of the curriculum, but so were the latest advances in sciences, medicine and Western philosophy. The medium was English, the better to prepare students for civil-service jobs. He called his school the Oxford of the East. In architecture alone, the campus lives up to that name. A euphoric blend of clock towers, crenellated battlements, Mughal arches, domes and the staid red brick of Victorian institutions that only India's enthusiastic embrace of all things European could produce, the central campus of Aligarh today is haven to a diverse crowd of male, female, Hindu and Muslim students. Its law and medicine schools are among the top-ranked in India, but so are its arts faculty and Quranic Studies Centre. "With all this diversity, language, culture, secularism was the only way to go forward as a nation," says Aligarh's vice-chancellor, P.K. Abdul Azis. "It was the new religion."

This fracture in religious doctrine — whether Islam should embrace the modern or revert to its fundamental origins — between two schools less than a day's donkey ride apart when they were founded, was barely remarked upon at the time. But over the course of the next 100 years, that tiny crack would split Islam into two warring ideologies with repercussions that reverberate around the world to this day. Before the split manifested into crisis, however, the founders of both the Deoband and Aligarh universities shared the common goal of an independent India. Pedagogical leanings were overlooked as students and staff of both institutions joined with Hindus across the subcontinent to remove the yoke of colonial rule in the early decades of the 20th century. But nationalistic trends were pulling at the fragile alliance, and India, an unruly collection of rival states coerced into unity under Mughal rule, then again under the British, began to splinter along ethnic and religious lines. Following World War I, a populist Muslim poet-philosopher by the name of Muhammad Iqbal began to frame the Islamic zeitgeist when he questioned the position of minority Muslims in a future, independent India.

Once called the prophet of Hindu and Muslim unity for poems espousing intercommunal unity, Iqbal became increasingly concerned with the fate of the Jewish diaspora in Europe. "Iqbal saw the solidarity of Jews crumble under the cultural majority of Christian Europe," says Fateh Mohammad Malik, chairman of Pakistan's National Language Authority and editor of a book on Iqbal's political thought. "He was worried that the same fate would befall the Muslims. He thought that if they sacrificed their culture at the altar of Indian nationhood, slowly they would be absorbed and made extinct."

The solution, Iqbal proposed to a stunned congregation of the All India Muslim League on Dec. 29, 1930, was an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India, a separate country where Muslims would rule themselves. The response was explosive. The then British Prime Minister, James Ramsay MacDonald, declared that "the poet Iqbal has spoiled all our efforts," to keep a united India. The next day, an editorial in the Times of London trumpeted a pan-Islamic plot to create a contiguous Muslim empire spanning the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and now the sensitive regions bordering the Russian empire.

When asked by a Muslim student group the name for this new nation, Iqbal was at a loss, according to Malik. As an afterthought he suggested taking letters from the names of the provinces: Punjab, Afganiyat or the North-West Frontier, Kashmir and Sindh, ending with Baluchistan. The Hindu newspapers derided the composite name, mocking both Iqbal and the idea of a separate Muslim state. But the name stuck, and the idea of Pakistan was born.

The embryonic nation might have been given a name, but its identity was still uncertain 17 years later when the idea became reality. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Savile Row-suited lawyer who midwifed Pakistan into existence on Aug. 14, 1947, as leader of the Muslim League, was notoriously ambiguous about how he envisioned the country once it became an independent state. Both he and Iqbal, who were friends until the poet's death in 1938, had repeatedly stated their dream for a "modern, moderate and very enlightened Pakistan," says Sharifuddin Pirzada, Jinnah's personal secretary from 1941 to 1944. But mindful of the fragile and fractious consortium of supporters for the new nation, whose plans for independence from both India and Britain were only finalized on July 18, 1947, Jinnah rarely elaborated on his religious views. "He was a very liberal-minded Muslim," says Pirzada. "He rejected the idea that Pakistan would be ruled according to the righteous caliphs of Islam; he did not want a theocracy. At the same time he was very careful not to make a commitment one way or the other so that Muslims would not be alienated."

Both religious conservatives and secular liberals have appropriated Jinnah's words, actions and manners to prove their claims on Pakistan's identity. Clerics that once dismissed him as an infidel for his secular leanings before partition now embrace him for his borrowings from the Koran in his talks. Liberal newspaper editorials quote fragmented speeches to bolster claims that he was an avowed secularist. Jinnah's own wish was that the Pakistani people, as members of a new, modern and democratic nation, would decide the country's direction. "There is no contradiction," says Pirzada, who has watched the debate rage for 60 years. "An Islamic state can be a fully modern state, unless you say it should be ruled by a theocracy. Jinnah was against theocracy. That is what matters."

But rarely in Pakistan's history have its people lived Jinnah's vision. The nation was barely a decade old when President Iskander Ali Mirza declared martial law in an attempt to save his presidency from growing unpopularity. "That was the blackest day in our history," says Senator Khurshid Ahmad, the deputy chief of Pakistan's largest Islamist party. "Even our elected rulers became despots." Pakistan has been cursed ever since. Only twice in its 60-year history has Pakistan seen a peaceful, democratic transition of power. Pakistan considers itself a democracy, but its governments have rarely had a mandate from the people. With four disparate provinces, over a dozen languages and dialects, and powerful neighbors, leaders — be they Presidents, Prime Ministers or army chiefs — have been forced to knit the nation together with the only thing Pakistanis have in common: religion.

Following the 1971 civil war, when East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, broke away, the populist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto embarked on a Muslim identity program to prevent the country from fracturing further. General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq continued the Islamization campaign when he overthrew Bhutto in 1977, hoping to garner favor with the religious parties, the only constituency available to a military dictator. He instituted Shari'a courts, made blasphemy illegal, and established laws that punished fornicators with lashes and held that rape victims could be convicted of adultery. When the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan was already poised for its own Islamic revolution.

Almost overnight, thousands of refugees poured over the border into Pakistan. Camps mushroomed, and so did madrasahs. Ostensibly created to educate the refugees, they provided the ideal recruiting ground for a new breed of soldier: mujahedin, or holy warriors, trained to vanquish the infidel invaders in America's proxy war with the Soviet Union. Thousands of Pakistanis joined fellow Muslims from across the world to fight the Soviets. As far away as Karachi, high-school kids started wearing "jihadi jackets," the pocketed vests popular with the mujahedin. Says Hamid Gul, then head of the Pakistan intelligence agency charged with arming and training the mujahedin: "In the 1980s, the world watched the people of Afghanistan stand up to tyranny, oppression and slavery. The spirit of jihad was rekindled, and it gave a new vision to the youth of Pakistan."

But jihad, as it is described in the Koran, does not end merely with political gain. It ends in a perfect Islamic state. The West's, and Pakistan's, cynical resurrection of something so profoundly powerful and complex unleashed a force whose roots can be found in al-Qaeda's rage, the Taliban's dream of an Islamic utopia in Afghanistan, and in the dozens of radical Islamic groups rapidly replicating themselves around the world today. "The promise of jihad was never fulfilled," says Gul. "Is it any wonder the fighting continues to this day?" Religion may have been used to unite Pakistan, but it is also tearing it apart.

In India, Islam is, in contrast, the other — purged by the British, denigrated by the Hindu right, mistrusted by the majority, marginalized by society. India has nearly as many Muslims as all of Pakistan, but in a nation of more than a billion, they are still a minority, with all the burdens that minorities anywhere carry. Government surveys show that Muslims live shorter, poorer and unhealthier lives than Hindus and are often excluded from the better jobs. To be sure, there are Muslim success stories in the booming economy. Azim Premji, the founder of the outsourcing giant Wipro, is one of the richest individuals in India. But, for many Muslims, the inequality of the boom has reinforced their exclusion.

Kashmir, a Muslim-dominated princely state whose fate had been left undecided in the chaos that led up to partition, remains a suppurating wound in India's Muslim psyche. As the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan — one of which nearly went nuclear in 1999 — Kashmir has become a symbol of profound injustice to Indian Muslims who believe that their government cares little for Kashmir's claim of independence, which is based upon a 1948 U.N. resolution promising a plebiscite to determine the Kashmiri people's future. That frustration has spilled into the rest of India in the form of several devastating terrorist attacks that have made Indian Muslims both perpetrators and victims.

A mounting sense of persecution, fueled by the government's seeming reluctance to address the brutal anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 2,000 in the state of Gujarat in 2002, has aided the cause of homegrown militant groups. They include the banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was accused of detonating nine bombs in Bombay during the course of 2003, killing close to 80. The 2006 terrorist attacks on the Bombay commuter rail system that killed 183 people were also blamed on SIMI, as well as the pro-Kashmir Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Those incidents exposed the all-too-common Hindu belief that Muslims aren't really Indian. "LeT, SIMI, it doesn't matter who was behind these attacks. They are all children of Musharraf," sneers Manish Shah, a Mumbai resident who lost his best friend in the explosions. In India, unlike most of the time in Pakistan, Islam does not unify, but only divide.

Islam has also proved divisive in Bangladesh, even though the country is overwhelmingly Muslim. There, over the past few years, a similar fight for the soul of the country has taken place, between the secular vision of Bangladesh's nationalist founders, who led the 1971 war of secession from West Pakistan, and a more fundamentalist vision that embraces political Islam. After the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the more Islamic of the two main parties, came to power in 2001 with the support of small fundamentalist Islamic political parties, Western diplomats and intelligence agencies feared that the pro-Islamic grouping was turning a blind eye as Bangladesh became a base for jihadi groups. A series of bombings around the country, including 500 near-simultaneous explosions in August 2005, finally forced the government to round up extremist leaders and jail them. Since then, according to opinion polls, support for fundamentalism, always small, has declined, and the country's problems have centered on its massive corruption and political violence, which led to a de facto military coup in January. Religious tensions, says Najma Begum, professor and chairwoman of the Department of Islamic History and Culture at the University of Dhaka, have been manipulated by mainstream politicians not because they genuinely believe in fundamentalist Islam but for political gain. "They exploit the support of lesser-privileged people so they can get into power and make money," says Najma. "We are not fundamentalist in Bangladesh; we are moderate."

Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to preeminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.

That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the seminal book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena — the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears — reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. Pervez Musharraf asks Pakistanis what they want. But the real question is what they, as well as Indians and Bangladeshis, Muslims and non-Muslims, believe.

— with reporting by indrani ghosh nangia and simon robinson/new delhi and ershad mahmud/islamabad

I know you have personal scores to settle from the years of your attempts at actually winning a debate... But out here... here... we do things a little professionally and do not engage in personal attacks, or talk about the person we're debating with. We pick a topic and stick to it. It has helped us from not following suit of other now insignificant corners of the web.

Sure Asim, whatever you say

 

[parihaka]

I did not misrepresent the quote - I clarified to you exactly what my point was, and if you had issue with it you should have pointed it out back then, instead of now when your argument has been shot down:

"And for clarification, I don't agree with the posters comment about body bags and whatnot, only that without Pakistani cooperation eliminating AQ and assorted groups is not possible."

"Hence my point - the US cannot eliminate AQ/Taliban etc without Pakistan's assistance, as a viable state. "

Surely you were actually reading my posts? I made quite clear in all of them what my point was.

But lets for a moment consider the argument that a cut-off of supplies means that NATO can no longer operate properly militarily, the arguments in my last post still hold - why would NATO not withdraw from Afghanistan laving behind a relatively small problem in Afghanistan, instead of attacking and destroying Pakistan and ending up with an almost insurmountable problem?

It won't happen - if supplies are cut and NATO cannot operate, NATO will withdraw so long as Pakistan has not deteriorated to the point where a NATO invasion will have little impact on the stability of the country and its security institutions.

In any case, I did point out in my last post that I did not believe the cutoff of supplies was a possibility at this stage - I would prefer the GoP charge more for the transit of those supplies, but there the questions I raised in my previous post about transit charges pop up.

If you want to raise strawmen that's up to you, I don't regard there being a time limit on calling them

 

[parihaka]

Parihaka on WAB mentioned Taliban control ISI.. That should explain the intellectual level shown in Parihaka's posts.When you can't win a debate..start abusing the other guy (Asim_aquil)...Asim who is a common citizen of Pakistan just like me and has no links with ISI and Parihaka thinks he is Pakistani Elite!..Anyway, I hope he does not consider me Pakistani elite and i second what Asim said.Asim who is a very liberal guy as i have observed from his posts is being accused of anti Americanism..lol just because Parihaka does not have any other point to make to win the debate..Man this is hilarious.

Have we met?
Personally I tend to use the same name across boards as I like people to know who I am and what I think: Asim, Agnostic Muslim and S-2 do likewise. I can only speculate the reasons you do not....

 

[parihaka]

Sure .. as soon as you can get the Indians to agree to move a bulk of their offensive troops, not needed for controlling cross-border and cross-LOC movement, away from the LoC and IB.

Typically the howls of protests at that suggestion come from Indians and some of their American apologists.

Sure, India's unending hostility toward Pakistan is the reason they nuked you after 1974: oh wait, they didn't...............