BY SHEMREZ
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Religion as a deliberate enterprise to seize the ultimate principle of value, and thereby to reintegrate the forces of one’s own personality, is a fact which cannot be denied.
- Sir Dr. Allama Mohammad Iqbal
I am not an Islamic scholar, but I am a Muslim. I believe, but my belief has run into lots of troubles recently. Some say that I am too much of a Muslim, that everything or the other has something to do with Islam or Allah; some say I am a heretic and apostate, who comes up with his own examples and facts and metaphors to suit a certain argument or discourse. Well, maybe both are right, or maybe both are wrong; I am least bothered, because the true value of this judgment – to me at least – can only be revealed once Allah Almighty makes this Judgment Himself. For the time being, I would let Pakistanis make the judgments that only Allah is supposed to make, because that is the kind of Islam that prevails in Pakistan. It is when people have a problem with me being Muslim – although my choice of identity is totally up to me – that I call myself a Pakistani, even though I am the same person and my religious and national identities are not exclusive to each other. I am a Pakistani Muslim, and I am a Muslim Pakistani; apparently that is too hard for a lot of people to understand.
Most of Pakistan’s problems today stem from the fact that Pakistanis – and the country’s legal structure in particular – find/s its legitimate roots in the notion of Pakistan being an “Islamic” state. But what does this mean? Today, this question haunts us as much as terrorism, deprivation, crises, inflation, marginalization, corruption, ineptitude, misgovernance, insensitivity and poverty does. Does an Islamic state mean that Pakistan was ordained by Almighty Allah Himself? Or is Pakistan an Islamic state because the majority of its population – at the time of independence and even today – are Muslims? And if it indeed is an Islamic state, then what does being an “Islamic state” entail? Does it imply that the Holy Qur’an is the national political constitution? Does it imply that prevention of vice and promotion of virtue should take place according to the transcribed Traditions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH? Does the state govern the people according to Islamic laws and administers these laws, or is the state itself subject to Islamic law? And in a modern circumstance, where does all this leave the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan? Are they equal citizens of the nation-state, or are they supposedly ‘second-class’ citizens in the form of protected “dhimmi”s?
Much of these questions have been answered many many times, but the diversity of the answers themselves leads to new problems, and new complexities that a nation-state in transition finds hard to cope with. To most commentators – who evidently belong to educational institutions following the Western model of instruction – an “Islamic” state means regression to the State of Medina that existed 1400-odd years ago, i.e., the time of the Holy Prophet PBUH Himself. The next image that is painted to all and sundry is one where all men will have beards, all women will wear burka’s, all theives will have their hands amputated, and so forth. But 1400 years ago, Muslim society was more concerned with processes of equality and justice; to medieval Arabia, Islam brought peace and stability in a landscape wrought by tribal, ethnic, religious, internecine and economic struggles. Enforcement of Islamic law is often seen as an exercise in the repression of women – and in its modern manifestation, it may as well be – but when the Islamic “revolution” was successfully completed by the Prophet PBUH, girls were no longer buried alive when born, and women experienced newfound equality among men as citizens of the nation-state, as integral parts of home and family, as inheritors of property, and so on. After a sinusoidal history of 1400 years, the perception of discourse has completely changed, as Islam has become distorted to fit into circumstantial, political and economic motivations since the use of Islam as a religion is monopolized by clerics and self-proclaimed proselytes of faith. What we all forget is that the most important revolution brought about by Islam was in destroying the structural institution of religion itself; Islam revealed true faith to be complete surrender by man (or woman) to the Will of God – certainly not to that of a cleric or militant waiting for you to try out his suicide vest. This faith was not to be administered by priests or rabbi’s, to determine who would go to Hell and how one could obtain redemption and achieve Heaven, but it would become a coherent part of a human being’s own physical, psychological and spiritual essence – the faith of a Muslim and his connexion with God are both inalienable. In Islam, a Muslim is answerable directly to Allah, not to middlemen with flowing beards and shalwar’s above their ankles. In Islam, causing the premature death of any innocent human being is sacrilege and strictly forbidden; Islam does not allow the killing of anyone – Muslim or non-Muslim – who may have been accused of anything without admissible evidence and tried without a juridically robust process. But when one presents this view to another – one Muslim to another – a surprising yet obvious reply is, “Who’s Islam is this? Yours?”.
Which brings us to another thing we Pakistani’s all share – that I am a Pakistani, and you are a Pakistani, but we aren’t Pakistanis. Our national identity remains restricted to our own individual self, as we are unable to extend our national identity to other conditions and other experiences. Again, like our own little “Islam”s, we also have our own little “Pakistan”s where the definition of being Pakistani changes from person to person. Ethnic, linguistic, religious, locational, and institutional identities have surpassed the common denominator that binds approximately 180 million people of the subcontinent together. To some, being Pakistani means ultranationalistically supporting the nation-state no matter what; to others, it means acknowledging all the shortcomings and taking ownership of all mistakes so that they can be rectified and the country can progressively move ahead. Yet, these two kinds of Pakistani’s seem to have nothing in common with each other – if they do, they themselves don’t see it. Ardeshir Cowasjee rightly stated that in 1947, Pakistan was a nation in search of a country, and today, it has become a country in search of a nation. Nobody, no Pakistani, is willing to own up to Pakistan. We have absolved ourselves of our responsibility to each other, to our fellow citizens, and to our country. When we exercise our responsibility as citizens of Pakistan in criticizing the country, we forget crucial elements of this responsibility insofar as we forget that we must also suggest rectifications and means to make the situation better – that we must acknowledge our strengths and successes, but we must also not be bogged down by our failures and shortcomings, which we must correct and over through sheer perseverance and hard work. Having said that, Pakistan is still looking for Pakistanis, only to find Muslims and non-Muslims, Punjabi’s and non-Punjabi’s, etc.
Sadly, in the only avowedly Islamic Republic of the world, which has often claimed to be the Bastion of Islam, the very concept of Islam has become a divisive and taboo subject. And rightly so, because everyone’s religious beliefs (I would hesitate to call them Islamic beliefs) are different, even if minute and seemingly inconsequential.
When I heard that “Your Islam My Islam” remark for the first time, and when I found out that Islam – like your mobile phone, or wallet, or X-Box – has become a personal endowment and not an element of being that pervades all our rational and experential faculties, I was instantly reminded of a powerful phrase about the tragedy of Karbala that was ominously repeated in Aitchison College’s Urdu declamation competitions by our Head Boy from 2001-02: “We killed 72 Muslims and created 72 Islams”. Beyond the martyrdom of the Prophet PBUH’s kin, and beyond the sectarian divide that Pakistan is especially subject to, the practice, belief and version of Islam is different from person to person. The point is that nobody should expect them to be similar or perfectly congruent in the first place; while we are all Muslims, we are all answerable ourselves for our own actions and our own intentions. Nobody will intercede for anyone or on anyone’s behalf in front of Allah’s Judgment, except when Allah permits, as the Ayat ul Kursi tells us. We cannot all have our own Islam’s: but we must have our own individual faith in Almighty Allah if we are to qualify as Muslims in this life and the hereafter.
Today, “Islam” has been distorted beyond compare, and Muslims in other countries seem different from Muslims in Pakistan. When I say Islam, I mean Islam the religion – which it was never supposed to be in the first place – and not Islam the faith, which we practice and experience during every single sentient moment of our daily lives. That is because we have ended up following our imam-e-masjid’s version of Islam, or our maulvi sahib’s version, or that of our pir, or any other intermediary that we feel more comfortable to – we forget the One intermediary that permeates all life and reality, Who is the “bridge” between our mortal consciousness and the real world as we see and experience it. One does not need to go further than the late great Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s couplet from “Wohi Khuda Hai”: that which you cannot see, but is still visible – that is God.
My father always told me that I should have faith in myself and in what I am doing; that I should believe in Allah and always do good; that life will not be easy or fun, but hard work and dedication to righteousness will definitely make life meaningful and, well, easy to live. He also said one more thing: “When the going gets tough, one should not expect Almighty Allah to don a white shalwar kamiz and come down on earth to solve one’s problems. One must take heed of what Allah has already revealed to us, and one must consistently seek guidance and mercy from Allah, because we are all mortals and despite limited or expansive perceptions, we all make mistakes”. Islam is not in danger, not at all, but Muslim society is in danger because we have surrendered our mosques and madrassa’s to vested interests. The mosque – as the center of civic life in the Muslim world – must be reclaimed in Pakistan, by the Pakistani people, because it is the most potent institution of the community, yet it is only used for specified and ritualistic purposes by those clerics and proselytes who have tried – and succeeded – in monopolizing the One True Word – and its interpretation(s) – that gathers dust in our respected bookshelves. Allah has already sent us the True Faith; He will not come down to earth to give us our mosques back, or correct the distorted interpretations of our clerics and preachers. We must reclaim our religious spaces ourselves. Our so-called religious leaders are human beings too; when they make mistakes, they must be reminded of their humanity as well as their mortality, because whether we are Muslim or not, we cannot escape death. And if we are Muslims, then we cannot escape Judgment. We must end the religious marginalization of moderate Muslims who consider the mosques to be the bastion of radicalization instead of an institution that is supposed to promote and maintain communal harmony.
It looks like Pakistan is paying the price for the mistakes that generations of Pakistanis have – willingly or unwittingly – made, and our collective suffering continues to exacerbate because we continue to make those mistakes – apart from coming up with completely new mistakes to make.
The mistake – or sacrilege rather – that I am most concerned about is the misuse of religion that goes on in Pakistan. This kind of misuse is not found anywhere else in the world. Extremism, marginalization and exclusivity – things completely alien to Islam – have been borne out by the unique cultivation of our religious experience (and by the ways in which Pakistanis are indoctrinated to be “good Muslims”), whereas in other countries, extremism and exclusivity are religious concepts that prevail only on the fringes. The overlapping of political, economic, social, security, educational and other discourses have made it more difficult for Islam – true Islam, not any distorted version portrayed by an opportunistic evangelist – to eliminate these structural divergences and perceptual divides. The methods of Islamic indoctrination that have long been prevalent in Pakistan’s education system, social structure, and basically all facets of practical life, have aggravated divides instead of bringing people closer; it has created more uncertainty and confusion when it was supposed to generate visions of clarity; it has led us all to create our own little “Islam”s – people call it a one-and-half-inch (or one-and-half-brick) mosque in colloquial Urdu – because Islam was always meant to be a faith and never a religion. We all woke up to this reality on January 05, 2011, a day after the brutal murder of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer by a self-proclaimed protector of Islam, who was actually supposed to protect the Governor in the first place. The assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, who is hailed by certain segments of the Muslim population as a hero and saviour of Islam, has actually passed a judgment on Salmaan Taseer that only Allah is allowed to pass on human beings – a Tradition of the Holy Prophet PBUH reveals how perturbed the Prophet was when one of His Companions slayed an enemy after the latter had recited the Kalimah – the Companion slayed the enemy anyway. The Holy Prophet PBUH, when told that the enemy only accepted Islam under fear of the blade, the Prophet PBUH replied “Did you tear open his heart to see what was in it?”, implying that even a Companion would not be able to judge whether anyone’s acceptance of Islam was true or not. The notion of takfir – of one Muslim declaring another Muslim an apostate – has been explicitly prohibited – The Holy Quran (4:94) states that whenever a person says “Assalam o Alaikum”, that person cannot be called a non-Muslim (no matter what creed he or she adheres to). And essentially, the “people of the Qibla” cannot be declared kafir (unbeliever) or murtad (apostate) as per strict instruction of the Holy Prophet PBUH and subsequent Traditions and juristic interpretations handed down over the centuries. Abu Dawud’s Book of Sunnah, published by Quran Mahal in Karachi, relates another extremely relevant Tradition in Volume 3, page 484: “Ibn Umar related that the Holy Prophet said: If a Muslim calls another kafir, then if he is a kafir let it be so; otherwise, he [the caller] is himself a kafir.” A similar Tradition is found in Abu Dawud’s Book of Jihad (15:33). Bukhari’s Book of Ethics has another relevant Tradition in Book 78, Chapter 44. Tirmizi, in his chapter on “Iman” (faith), relates a warning – also referred by Bukhari – from the Holy Prophet PBUH as follows: “Whoever attributes kufr [unbelief] to a believer, he is like his murderer”. It seems like Mumtaz Qadri was not satisfied with mere attribution, and had to actually become the murderer in order to become a “pious” Muslim.
Sadly, His Eminence the Prophet Muhammad PBUH is not around to tell us whether the Pakistani killed on January 4th this year was an innocent Muslim, or an apostate. The divisive opinions that separate previously similar segments of society became even more evident after this ignominious event, and nothing has healed these wounds so far. Religious leaders failed to openly condemn the brutal murder, and some so-called clerics even refused to attend the funeral prayers – there was a commensurate ruckus over arranging an imam to lead the funeral prayers, as the regular imams shirked this duty because of ill health or because they were not in Lahore. Evidently, these imams fear the bullet and bomb more than they have faith in Allah and His Prophet PBUH.
But Dr. Allama Mohammad Iqbal, the Poet of the East and the Philosopher of Pakistan, had already seen Muslims reaching such a state in their collective consciousness and religious experience. In his magnum opus, he questioned whether religion was possible or not, developing on Kant’s original inquiry on whether metaphysics was possible or not, and made the following note which seems pertinent – and is exceedingly relevant to Pakistan’s sociopolitical circumstance even today:
Surely the present moment is one of great crisis in the history of modern culture. The modern world stands in need of biological renewal. And religion, which in its higher manifestations is neither dogma, nor priesthood, nor ritual, can alone ethically prepare the modern man for the burden of the great responsibility which the advancement of modern science necessarily involved, and restore him to that attitude of faith which makes him capable of winning a personality here and retaining in hereafter. It is only by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a society motivated by an inhuman competition, and a civilization which has lost its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religious and political values.
- The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Sang-e-Meel Paperbacks, p. 165.
Also published by Zimmedar Shehri
By Nadeem Sajjad
The Pakistani Army and ISI have recovered from deliberate attempts to needlessly malign them, and are concentrating on taking out the real threat to regional stability and world peace
After former TTP commander Fazal Saeed Haqqani said he disagreed with attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians, and parted ways with the terrorist organization, the Pakistan Armed Forces said on Monday that a coordinated air and ground offensive in the Kurram region – on the Afghan border with Nangarhar, Khost and Paktiya – has been launched. While the TTP itself suffers defections every now and then, this is apparently the first time that the Pakistan Army has capitalized on such an act – when Qari Zainuddin Mehsud rebelled against then-leader Baitullah Mehsud, he was killed by a suicide bomb within three months of openly declaring his opposition to Baitullah and the TTP. The Kurram operation would constitute Pakistan’s first major military maneuver since the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden – by what many see as a violation of international law, and a deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan in the process. Despite psychological setbacks and what pundits call “threats” and “disdain” from the ISI to journalists like Najam Sethi, Hamid Mir and Ejaz Haider – a charge “eloquently” laid out by TIME Magazine’s Omar Waraich – as a prelude to another Saleem-Shahzad-like incident, Pakistan’s security forces have decided to not seriously attend to the propaganda war being conducted against the nation-state and its armed forces – instead, they will redouble their efforts and focus on enhancing existing security parameters in the FATA tribal areas and its adjoining settled districts.
Major General Athar Abbas, Director-General of the ISPR, gave a few details of the operation in Kurram that commenced on July 3rd – a tribal region that, according to foreign media sources, had become “increasingly used” as a refuge for al Qaeda-linked militants. It is reported that the Afghan Taliban faction, and more importantly the Haqqani network, had been involved in securing a peace deal for Kurram last year between militants and local Shi’ite tribesmen; that deal fell apart as locals complained of growing attacks and isolation from the rest of the country, as Shi’ite Hazaras continued to be targeted along with security personnel. With army convoys traveling between Parachinar and the provincial capital, Peshawar, even coming under attack, local people had been forced to travel in and out via Afghanistan.
The Pakistan Army has been battling militants in the Mohmand agency for the past three months as well; 58 soldiers were martyred and 300 were wounded, while Corps Commander of Peshawar, Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik, stated that 200 militants were killed during this period as the military took them on in their strongholds in the Safi and Baizai tehsils close to the Afghan border. With the incursion in Kurram, the Pakistani military appears to have lived up to its claim of having cleared seven tehsils, or sub-divisions, of the militants. Ground reports suggest that while the Army and FC have obtained full control, fighting was continuing for the possession of the Safi tehsil. The tribesmen of Mohmand agency have been complaining that the civil and military authorities have been forcing them to raise lashkars, or voluntary armed groups, to fight the militants and defend their own villages. There is no real peace and stability, and the Army seems to have decided not to use privatized security forces, even lashkars (tribal militias), to institute peace and enforce writ of the state. However, it would be feasible to study whether these lashkar members can be recruited into paramilitary forces and levies forces that should be raised anew, in order to complement the existing deployment in the area. These troops can be dedicated to one agency, and be permanently stationed there. Their operating procedures and rules of engagement can be prescribed by the cultures and traditions of the tribes, however formalized. The Mohmand militants, led by Abdul Wali, commonly known as Omar Khalid, still occupy certain places close to the Pakistani-Afghan border and are able to easily cross into Afghanistan whenever under pressure from the Pakistani security forces. They are also capable of striking back as they did by carrying out deadly suicide bombings twice in Mohmand Agency at Ekkaghund and Ghallanai and once at the Frontier Constabulary Training Centre at Shabqadar in neighbouring Charsadda district. More than 200 FC soldiers, government officials and anti-militants tribesmen were killed in these attacks and several hundred were injured. In fact, the Mohmand Agency militants have been able to track down pro-government tribesmen in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and even Karachi to attack and kill them. Hence, it is not only important to uproot the Abdul Wali network – it is also necessary to continuously keep it outside Pakistan, and keep both tribesmen and settlers safe.
In his April 2011 bi-annual report on Afghanistan, President Barack Obama highlighted the ineffectiveness of Pakistan’s military in FATA. The report stated that the 147,000 Pakistani troops involved have been unsuccessful fighting the tribal belt militants and that the Pakistani government needs to commit more resources to FATA. However, still reeling from devastating floods last year – which only added to the numbers of IDPs caused by military operations – Pakistan’s Army is over-stretched and under-resourced. A significant number of families from the conflict area are still displaced, living in makeshift camps in Mohmand Agency and in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and elsewhere, longing to return to their homes. And, in addition to all of this, Pakistan is being blamed by many (including Brad L. Brasseur of the Foreign Policy Journal) for not focusing on terrorism as the principal and existential threat. Around 4,000 families have already been uprooted in Kurram Agency, adding to the number of internally displaced persons from South Waziristan, Mohmand, Bajaur and other places waiting to be compensated and rehabilitated. Over the past few years, the military cleared some tribal agencies of militants in FATA only to lose the territory shortly after, due to the lack of troop strength. A fraction of the militants were killed, wounded or captured; the rest retreated, or melted away into the countryside and/or populace. An even smaller fraction surrendered themselves and absolved themselves of the twisted ideology as well as illegal actions the TTP militias engage in. Still, many blame continuing militancy on Pakistan’s troop deployment at the eastern border with India, but the fact of the matter is that an increasingly polarized society has exacerbated the troubles that have been nurtured over decades; these ‘troubles’ include poverty, illiteracy, extremism, militancy, deprivation, intolerance, bigotry, marginalization, and many others. Pakistan has been shaken to its core by terrorists, who plot and plan dastardly attacks that cause panic and massive embarassment, along with militants, whose actions amount to eliminating the writ of the state and establishing parallel state structures that are arcane, unjust, immoral, and ironically, un-Islamic as well.
The enormousness of the task of tackling the militancy can be judged from the three major cross-border attacks launched since April 2011 by the Pakistani Taliban, based in Afghanistan, in the Lower Dir and Upper Dir districts and Bajaur Agency with support from some Afghan militants. The lack of government control – or tacit/clandestine support – in the border areas across the Durand Line in Afghanistan enables the militants to set up bases and operate with impunity in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistani security forces had to retaliate against the retreating militants as they (militants) inflicted significant human losses in the attacks on border posts in Dir manned in most cases by ill-equipped and poorly-trained Levies and police personnel and some of the artillery shells and rockets fired by them landed in border villages in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, killing and injuring civilians and causing material damage. In a spectacular attack on villages and checkposts in Pakistan, hundreds of militants wore Afghan security uniforms as they attacked civilians and security forces – they were halted and repulsed by army troops backed by FC forces.
In June 2011, the Pakistani military claimed that Orakzai Agency was clear of extremist militants after hundreds were killed. However, it appears that the recent assaults on Mohmand and Kurram will not be the only ones – further operations will also be launched, as the Pakistan Armed Forces has decided to take the fight back to the militants, and to show the world that Pakistan is willing to fight them as much as they can with the resources at their disposal. Terrorists continue to target and attack Pakistani cities, and personnel of both armed forces and police, along with the civilians who have become critically insecure since 2007. Analyst Imtiaz Gul shares the perception that the Armed Forces have decided “it’s about time to do something”.
As far as Kurram is concerned, it is strategically important for Pakistan, the militants and also the United States. It borders three important Afghan provinces, and is also next to the volatile North Waziristan agency, where the US has been pressuring Pakistan to launch a military operation and eliminate Taliban sanctuaries. Parachinar, the main city in Kurram, is just over the mountains from Tora Bora, Afghanistan, which U.S. and Afghan forces assaulted after the September 11, 2001, attacks in pursuit of bin Laden. The isolation of Parachinar had been attracting increasing media attention in recent weeks and local tribesmen had staged several demonstrations last month in front of parliament in Islamabad.
Washington had in particular pressed Pakistan to target the Haqqani network, which has deployed a formidable fighting force in eastern Afghanistan – with an assault in Kurram under way, this demand must be kept in mind. However, Pakistan has made a firm commitment to pursue national interest first and foremost; the Pakistan Army had said it would give priority to targeting militants killing its own people, because that is the primary responsibility of Pakistan in the War on Terror. Pakistan continues to man checkposts along the Afghan border, but free inflow of militants from Afghanistan is witnessed (and now checked at the territorial limits of the Durand Line). This is in addition to recent upsurge in the military exchange between Pakistan and Afghanistan: cross-border raids in Pakistani territory and retaliatory strikes by Pakistan’s security forces have caused tension on the border and inflamed passions, particularly in Afghanistan, where members of parliament, government officials and sections of the media have tried to exploit the situation to whip up anti-Pakistan sentiment. A protest rally staged in Kabul against Pakistan was peaceful, but it reminded one of the violent attacks on the Pakistani embassy in the past. An Afghan general, Aminullah Amarkhel, commanding the border troops in eastern Afghanistan, resigned while protesting the inaction of the Afghan government and the NATO forces in the face of cross-border shelling and rocketing by the Pakistani military. And in a tit-for-tat response, mortar shells fired by Afghan forces are now landing in Pakistani territory and causing harm to civilians. Despite working together, Afghanistan and Pakistan are now actively working against each other, and thereby benefitting the militants.
For this reason, Pakistan has strategically focused on an orientation whereby internal security is given more precedence than immediate regional security – the US and Afghan governments are keen to engage the “Taliban” in talks, and are also keen on keeping Pakistan out of a settlement (abandoning it like the yesteryears, and using the Abbottabad raid as justification). Therefore, it is in Pakistan’s best interest to deploy all possible resources – both in land forces and air forces – to push militants out of its sovereign territory. While the West blames Pakistan for differentiating between “good” and “bad” Taliban, it has become obvious that the US and the Karzai government are talking to a select and amenable coterie of Taliban commanders, who may not have been sanctioned by their Amir, Mullah Omar (hence the quotation marks). This essentially drives a wedge between Taliban elements, and may be more significant than the apparent characterizations drawn by Pakistani defense analysts between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban (both on the basis of where they operate, and not on the basis of where they ‘belong’ or where they came from). However, if terror attacks in Pakistan increase, and the US and the Karzai government keep on talking to the “Taliban”, then the narrative of the TTP being an element propped up and supported by the US, or Afghanistan (or even India or Blackwater/Xe) will gather steam in Pakistan. Such a situation may bring public opinion to the level as being seen in Kabul – and may pit both countries against each other in a military context. By focusing on the Pakistani Taliban – i.e. any and every militant who operates in Pakistan to destroy peace and the writ of the state – the Pakistani security forces aim to create more space for negotiating a peaceful settlement to the Afghan conflict – because these militants conduct attacks in Afghanistan as well, despite the fact that many of these militants would be solely deployed against the Pakistani state and security forces.
Pakistan must reorient itself for a peace settlement among the Afghan people, and the political mainstream as the United States and Hamid Karzai want to shape it. If all Afghans – including the 3 million refugees whose numbers have only increased since 2001 – are taken on board in a broad political consensus, a non-violent and democratic outcome may be witnessed in 2014 and confirmed in 2015 if it can effectively make Afghan secure and at peace with all its neighbors. Such a peace settlement would not only look at Pakistan’s interests, but would also be more attuned to regional security by effectively taking the Pakhtun population of Afghanistan on board. This must also create conditions which will restrict militant movements in FATA – though this remains the prerogative and sole jurisdiction of the Pakistan Armed Forces, whether such operations can be launched in settled areas is a moot question. It is still important to prioritize internal security as a strategic interest, when compared with security in neighboring countries, as well as propaganda tactics and fourth-generation warfare (or claims thereof). It is also expected that if the militants are flushed out of FATA, they may also seek “refuge” in Balochistan – where a simmering insurgency may cause untold havoc if presented with a military operation that targets one phenomenon but is faced by many more. The lessons of 1971 become more and more evident with the daily downslide in the Balochistan situation. This is how increasingly worrying the military tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are, and this offers a grim picture of how they may play out in terms of the Afghan “endgame”. Pakistan must take cognizance of these developments at the highest levels of national security discourse and policymaking.
A stable security environment in the western part of Pakistan will allow it to rebuild its economy and devastated infrastructure, while focusing economic and political benefits into Balochistan to lessen their deprivation and marginalization. This will promote peace not only in Pakistan, but also in Iran and Afghanistan as well. The long conflict facing Pakistan has created problems that will take years to resolve. But this is perhaps the process of making a new Pakistan, where security is guaranteed not only by the elimination of militancy, but also by greater trust between diverse and multi-characteristic people, by emphasizing the importance of peace and tolerance, and by enhancing both the effectiveness and the capacity of state institutions. Afghanistan must also make strategic decisions, and do so wisely, because its current trajectory seems to put it on a collision with Pakistan, and if this acquires the proportions of a wide conflict, not only will the Taliban acquire more room to breathe and operate, but regional powers like the US, China and India will also be brought in, along with Iran. This is because Afghanistan will not be able to bring peace if it talks to some Afghan Taliban and not all Afghan Taliban – despite the American “promise” to keep some troops and bases beyond 2014, peace with the Taliban is not possible without Mullah Omar, who has said that no talks will take place while foreign troops are in Afghanistan. While Pakistan cannot decide for the sovereign nation of Afghanistan – and also cannot abandon the region like the US and their NATO allies will do in 2014 – Pakistan can do as much as it should to insulate itself from the worst possible scenario(s).
How Al-Qaeda’s Spokesman Advances the Israel Lobby’s Gun Control Agenda
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
On June 3, in an al-Qaeda video rather loftily titled “You Are Held Responsible Only for Thyself,” al-Qaeda’s California-born spokesman, Adam Gadahn, urged followers to commit violent acts of jihad by exploiting alleged weaknesses in U.S. gun laws and the gun background check system. “America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” he said. “You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and, most likely, without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?”Around the same time, a “hit list” of American executives, officials and companies appeared on jihadist websites. “Security analysts,” reported FoxNews.com, “believe the two messages are related and underscore a shift in terror strategy—from top-down, mass-casualty events to smaller-scale attacks taken up, in some cases, by freelancing, lone-wolf jihadists.” According to one of Fox’s security analysts, Aaron Weisburd, the founder and director of the revealingly namedInternet Haganah, the discussion originated on a password-protected, members-only site, to which he has access, known as the Shumukh forum. Describing Shumukh—which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Yiddish word for “idiot”—as “the number-one Al Qaeda-supporting website on the Internet today,” Weisburd suspiciously added that it was “most frequented by Palestinians.”
On the very same day that Gadahn’s video was released, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) coalition issued a press release in response. New York City Mayor and MAIG founding co-chair Michael Bloomberg said that Gadahn’s statement was “absolutely accurate,” adding that the video “may help Washington understand that weak gun laws aren’t just a crime problem, they’re a national security threat.” Helpfully pointing out that legislation had already been introduced to address the problem, Bloomberg, an uncritical supporter of Israel’s seemingly unlimited “right to defend itself,” urged Congress to pass the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011 and the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2011. Then on June 16, Ben Rattray’s Change.org breathlessly alerted subscribers to its MAIG-sponsored “Stop Al-Qaeda From Exploiting Gun Law Loopholes” online petition. This was followed by a June 17 editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times entitled “Terrorists buying guns? There ought to be a law.”
In fact, it was Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition that had initially proposed the legislation to fix gun background checks. On February 23, Bloomberg and his New York Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, had joined Israel’s self-described “guardian” in the Senate, Charles Schumer, toannounce the introduction of legislation that would provide greater reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for individuals with mental illness, domestic violence records, and drug abusers, by increasing the penalties for states that fail to adequately turn over records for those who are prohibited from owning a gun. The legislation would also require that all gun sales, including those by private sellers, be subject to a background check, effectively ending the so-called “gun show loophole.”
On May 12, the 550-member Mayors Against Illegal Guns (more than three-quarters of whom come from California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York) issued a statementdecrying the House Judiciary Committee’s vote that day against an amendment to close the “Terror Gap” by giving the Justice Department discretion to deny gun and explosive sales to terrorists. “Hopefully, last night’s arrest in New York City of two terrorists plotting an attack using guns and explosives,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement, “will help convince Congress that this is a national security issue and they need to do the right thing and pass this legislation.”
On that same day, at a high-profile City Hall news conference, the New York Mayor and hissteadfast NYPD Commissioner accused Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh of “planning to blow up the largest synagogue in Manhattan and to kill as many Jews as possible.” The FBI, however, had their doubts about the police undercover who investigated the two alleged “lone wolf” terrorists and refused to get involved in the case. Those doubts were confirmed on June 15 when a grand jury rejected the top terrorism charge against the two Muslim immigrants from North Africa. “This is a political case, brought by political people, for their own political purposes,” Elizabeth Fink, a lawyer for Ferhani, said outside court.“You will see that this case is bogus.… It’s total entrapment.” She added that Ferhani had a history of mental illness and had been institutionalized up to 30 times, and that the police were aware of this because of 911 calls his mother had made to subdue him.
The grand jury’s rejection of the NYPD’s exaggerated claims of a dastardly anti-Semitic plotcame just days after the White House announcement of the Jewish Federations’ new partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (a post 9/11 goldmine for the Israeli security industry) “dedicated mainly to the state of threats posed to American Jewish institutions.” Notwithstanding the strong evidence pointing to FBI entrapment as the source of earlier media-hyped “synagogue terror” plots, Michael Gelman, chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of The Jewish Federations of North America, said: “The American Jewish community and the places we gather are, unfortunately, often targets for terrorists. This new partnership with the Department of Homeland Security will empower us to counter this threat as we become more actively involved in our own protection.”
And given Mayor Bloomberg’s support for legislation to prevent the mentally ill from buying guns, it’s also worth noting that the “Manhattan synagogue” plot is far from being the only instance in which the NYPD has used people suffering from mental illness to make terrorism cases. In 2004, police arrested a Pakistani immigrant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, and charged him with plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station on the eve of the Republican National Convention at nearby Madison Square Garden. After paying an informant $100,000 to spend more than a year encouraging Siraj in the plot, the police persuaded his schizophrenic co-defendant, James Elshafay, to testify against Siraj. Despite being described by acquaintances as “borderline retarded,” Siraj was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In spite of the fact—or perhaps because of it—that investigators couldn’t find a connection between Siraj and Elshafay and any terrorist organization, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence, David Cohen, later described the mentally ill pair as “lone wolves” who were “homegrown, but inspired globally.” After a brief 2001 stint at insurance giant AIG (a $40 billion beneficiary of the increased demand for bonds in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks), Cohen had been tapped for the newly created position at the beginning of 2002. Despite his extreme unpopularity and a less than reassuring record in a 35-year career at the CIA—he once wrote a report, later dismissed by an internal CIA review, blaming the Soviet Union for the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II—Cohen’s appointment was warmly endorsed by Mayor Bloomberg. Describing his role as chief of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, Cohen later said, “It’s like starting the CIA over in the post-9/11 world.”
Indeed, it seems that Cohen set about starting over not only the CIA but the FBI as well—the latter’s investigations on occasions being frustrated by his Intelligence Division’s “Lone Cowboy behaviour.” But cowed by post-9/11 criticism from Congress and the media, the Feds passively watched the creation of a troublesome rival. Early on, Cohen suggested to Commissioner Kelly that New York police officers be assigned overseas. By 2005, NYPD Intelligence had seven detectives deployed in cities around the world, including London, Singapore and Tel Aviv, which perhaps predictably received the NYPD’s first foreign liaison. While Cohen’s man in Tel Aviv, Mordecai Dzikansky, had virtually no contact with his American counterpart from the FBI, which opposed the creation of the post, the Orthodox Jew and former IDF volunteer enjoyed close relations with his Israeli hosts. A few months before her 2005 “resignation,” Judith Miller wrote in the New York Times: “[A]s the New York detective walks through the corridors of police headquarters in Jerusalem, home to Israel’s 27,000 police officers, he is invariably greeted as Morty, in the Hebrew he now speaks fluently, with a quip and a smile.”
***
Although most liberals would be inclined to support calls for tighter gun control, the source of those calls should give them pause for thought. It’s more than a little ironic that the most ardentadvocates of gun control for Americans such as the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League are thevery same people who demand that American taxpayers continue to lavish Israelis with as much weaponry as they desire “to defend themselves,” i.e. by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians with impunity. Leaving aside arguments over the relative legitimacy of state terrorism versus non-state terrorism, one can hardly imagine the likes of Bloomberg and Schumer advocating background checks as passionately for Israeli settlers to prevent a Jewish extremist like Baruch Goldstein from acquiring a gun to massacre Palestinian civilians.
So, how do we account for such blatant double standards? Could it be that Israel’s fifth columnists are worried that if enough Americans ever become aware of how much their “unbreakable bond” with Israel has cost them in blood, treasure and credibility, they might have an American Intifada on their hands? Better, then, to preempt the possibility of such “domestic extremists” coming up with their own “hit list” by closing the “Terror Gap” now, while they still can. In the meantime, the fear and loathing of America’s maligned Muslim community engendered byscary tales of “lone wolf” jihadists ensures the perpetuation of America’s wars for Israeli hegemony in the Greater Middle East for the forseeable future—or at least till they completelybankrupt the country.
Even if Adam Gadahn had become a board member of the ADL like his beloved paternal grandfather, Carl Pearlman, he could hardly have served their gun control agenda better.
Drawing down troops from Afghanistan is the right move. Now it's time to focus on the real threat in the
neighborhood: the one coming from Pakistan. John KerryBlame game must end, all peace initiatives must come from Afghanistan. Salman Bashir
By Raja G Mujtaba
Arrogance is American character, bullying the weak is her hobby and retreating in chaos is her fate accomplice.
Trilateral talks were held on June 26 in Kabul. For the first time Pakistan has been assertive of its role and demands as a partner in this War On Terror that broadly has been rejected by the world at large and Pakistani public in particular. Since its inception, Pakistan governments over this decade long war have been just silent compliant partners. “Do more,” had been the cry from Washington, always complaining that Pakistan is not doing enough.
Participation in this war was Musharraf’s need who wanted legitimacy to his rule that was not forthcoming. Finding this as an opportunity, Musharraf opened all gates to help the US in this unjustified war that primarily has been Washington’s own creation, of course not without the active participation of Israel. Since at the core, this was a war against Islam, India became a major partner of the US and Israel by default.
In this wretched war, Pakistan has lost over 5000 soldiers and more than 30000 civilians. Keeping the count of civilians casualties is not an easy task therefore it is assumed that it could be much higher than this figure, here wounded, maimed, disabled are not being counted both in military and civilian population.
The US concedes but does not pay off about 70 billion dollars of war losses where as in reality, Pakistan has suffered over 100 billion dollars as a price of this war. Prior to 9/11, Pakistan was a much peaceful country, economy was gaining, people were happy and contented to quite an extent. 9/11 has ruined all this, now our city and town is subjected to terrorist attacks, life is not safe or at least not comfortable.
With the falling economy, people problems are surmounting that’s becoming unmanageable by the government. When in this backdrop, the US blames Pakistan for not doing enough it simply sounds ridiculous and insulting. Pakistan has suffered much more casualties in human lives and virtually a complete collapse of economy due to this war.
Obama talking on his withdrawal strategy said, “now on, Afghanistan would be the host and Pakistan shall be attacked to eliminate the threats emanating from there.” Outgoing Secretary Defense Robert Gates announced that the US could have won this war without Pakistan, Hillary Clinton, the charming viper always comes with strong sting, now she has threatened to stop all aid to Pakistan should it not concede to US demands. To top it all, John Kerry came with yet another threatening statement saying, “Drawing down troops from Afghanistan is the right move. Now it's time to focus on the real threat in the neighborhood: the one coming from Pakistan.” In his paper, The Road Home From Kabul. These statements are a terrorism of a different kind where a sovereign state is being threatened and terrorized to scum to their unjustified demands.
The most recent threat reported by Reuters has come only now when the US refuses to vacate the Shamsi Air Base in Balochistan from where the CIA operates the drones. This is a typical East India Company methodology to bully the host.
Now the US feels that it has enough of Blackwater network in Pakistan to strangulate it at will, but it should not forget that Pakistan has the capacity to launch ‘Naswar Water’ to hit the Blackwater and its operatives anywhere in Pakistan and Afghanistan and get Shamsi vacated. If need be ‘Naswar Water’ would be able to choke US out of Afghanistan.
May 2nd US attack on Pakistan has altered the mindset of Pakistan Military, where General Kayani is becoming more assertive and this he has to be because now he is left with no other choice. The best part is that now such assertive demands are coming from the Federal Government that presents a united front from Pakistan.
The aid money that the US so much drumbeats, is nothing but a few vapours in thin air. Pakistan has given 1.5 billion in a year where as it spends 5 billions a week in Afghanistan, the brunt is being taken by Pakistan and rewards are being given to India for her no active role. India, a country that has no border with Afghanistan is being boosted there only to sandwich Pakistan.
For stability in the region, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan should form a much closer alliance backed with all trust, faith and commitment. The history, culture, threats and destiny of these countries is the same.
On the subject, S M Hali, a respected anchor who hosts a program on PTV News, ‘Defense and Diplomacy’ where he had as his panelists former ambassador Javed Hafiz and Raja Mujtaba. The issues were discussed very freely and with open mind, the clippings have been placed below for the readers to view.
Quantum Note
The United States has never admitted defeat; this is perfectly in line with its self-image. No super power can ridicule the very notion of its “superness” by admitting defeat. This unwillingness, however, does not change the verdict of history: Vietnam was a humiliating affair; Iraq has been a mixed situation, Bush was able to remove Saddam Hussein but that led to the emergence of the first Shia dominated Arab state in modern history and no one knows how this will change the entire Middle East equation.By Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
The United States has never admitted defeat; this is perfectly in line with its self-image. No super power can ridicule the very notion of its “superness” by admitting defeat. This unwillingness, however, does not change the verdict of history: Vietnam was a humiliating affair; Iraq has been a mixed situation, Bush was able to remove Saddam Hussein but that led to the emergence of the first Shia dominated Arab state in modern history and no one knows how this will change the entire Middle East equation.
Afghanistan is, however, neither Vietnam nor Iraq. Thus when President Barack Obama admitted that American involvement in Afghanistan is no more financially viable—though not in these words—he admitted defeat, albeit American style. For an American president to admit what he admitted, after ten long years, is another characteristic American attitude toward the dictates of history: what was said after ten long years, was already known to everyone without the expense of 500 billion dollars: no one has been able to rule that rugged country where the inhabitants fight outsiders as a profession carried from father to son down the centuries. Afghanistan remained defiant to the British colonizers, it proved to be an impossible land for the Soviets and now the Americans are making plans to leave.
President Obama is making no concession to the Afghans in his decision to pull back American troops; he has his second term as the most obvious personal consideration and he has America’s economy as the national consideration. Furthermore, in making his announcement against the desires of his generals, he has proven one more time that America is a country with an army, not an army with a country, as is the case for Pakistan. Wars are hugely costly and after ten years, what America has accomplished in Afghanistan is no more than what any other occupier has accomplished since history started to record the chronicles of that wonderful land where people live with an unquenchable thirst for freedom.
One must admit that the ragtag Taliban have proven one more time that faith is stronger than weapons; that no one, not even the lone superpower, can overcome those who possess faith. All that Taliban have to do now is bid time, continue to do what they are doing and the future is theirs’. What would they make of that future remains to be seen but one thing is clear: the newly trained Afghan army will collapse like a house of cards and they will simply sweep through the country just like they did last time. If they have gained any wisdom, they will make much more of their victory this time around.
Before we get to that point, however, there are numerous “ifs” and “buts”. To be sure, the puppet regime will want to prolong its hold. It will offer permanent bases to the departing occupiers; it will raise a lot of helpless cries about the future of the country, but none of this is unknown to the Americans; they know what could not be achieved with $500 billion and 130,000 soldiers will not be achievable with a fraction of that amount both in money and in troops. In addition, even the most protected military base will always remain an easy target of a resurgent Taliban force.
No matter what decision America eventually makes, the entire equation is about to change because the hen laying golden eggs will depart and with it, a most ludicrous business for the generals in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come to an end; nothing lasts forever, so no one should complain; it was good for as long as it lasted. They must now find another paymaster.
In a world dominated by green buck, no one is going to talk about the human cost of this war, especially for the Afghans. To be sure, the country has been destroyed and its population has been traumatized. No one has been counting non-white dead bodies. So, no one really knows the cost of war to the Afghans, but with their faith stronger than the mighty mountains which enclose this beautiful land, their wounds will heal in good time and their villages will gain a degree of tranquility and stability, although it may take a generation before the delicious Qandhari pomegranates fully recover.
American pullout from Afghanistan has tremendous challenges for Pakistan. If all goes well, by 2014, Pakistan would have already be in the hands of a second civilian government after the long military rule which had Americanized it. The authority of the generals would have further weakened and hopefully, there will be a way to reconfigure Pakistan’s political, economic and military priorities in the wake of American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It has been so long that it is almost impossible to imagine Pakistan’s main security and military agenda without the Afghan war. But one must attempt to foresee possible scenarios.
Without a war in Afghanistan and with a reduced animosity with India, Pakistan can drastically cut its defense spending. A wise and stable civilian government may be able to curtail the power of generals. This power can only be curtailed if there is a strong civilian rule and the judiciary is autonomously functioning. A strong civilian rule requires a very representative parliament not beholden to a lion of Punjab or Sindh and that is exactly Pakistan is lacking since its birth: it has failed to evolve a political culture which is independent of a political lord. Just like Afghanistan cannot function without war lords, Pakistan has never been able to function without political lords.
There is, thus, an urgent need for a few individuals to come forward and attempt to establish a mechanism through which a new political force can come into existence. All the factors are in place for this new force to evolve: a relatively young and educated population, a chronic political disorder; a sense of hopelessness which can be converted into an action plan, and an opportunity the like of which has never existed before as people are now sick and tired of the faces which have dominated Pakistan’s politics for as long as one can remember.
India fools the world, but can the world be befooled?
By Sultan M Hali
Ever since the confession of Swami Asimanand in various terrorist attacks against Muslims in India and his naming serving and retired Indian military officers being implicated in the reign of terror, India has been on the back-foot. On November 19, 2010, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation produced the preacher Swami Asimanand before the court in connection with the Makkah Masjid blast in Hyderabad in May 2007. On January 15, the confession of Swami Aseemanand was published by Tehelka and CNN-IBN implicating various members of Saffron terror outfits in other cases such as Ajmer Sharif Dargah blast, 2006 Malegaon blasts, 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings, 2008 Malegaon and Modasa bombing. The confession was recorded in front of a magistrate citing the guilt he felt after seeing innocent Muslim boys arrested in the case by the police. The case was now open for arresting and trying the various perpetrators of the heinous crimes against Muslims and even Pakistan demanded the extradition of the Indian military officers because 59 Pakistanis were needlessly slaughtered in the Samjhauta Express inferno. The wily Hindu mind yet had a number of tricks up its sleeve. To hide its embarrassment and save itself from further humiliation, India has commenced a very dangerous game. In a desperate attempt to cover up the proved military links to Hindu terror outfits, the Indian establishment has covertly exonerated all the accused belonging to its Army and intelligence who masterminded and executed 2007-Samjhauta Express train bombings in which 68 people were burnt alive, mostly Pakistanis. It has been reliably learnt that the Hindu establishment haphazardly has shelved the strong and growing evidences against indigenous Hindu terrorist organizations, working across Asia under the direct ‘command’ of their military, and intelligence agencies particularly RAW. The National Investigations Agency (NIA) of India has given clean chit to Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit in the Samjhauta case.
It is also important to mention here that Hindu terror groups had closed the chapter of former Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) Chief Hemant Karkare, who was fairly and honestly probing the terror attack to expose the real face of Hindu leaders. On Monday last, just days before the Pak-India Secretary-level talks, the NIA filed the charge-sheet in a Panchkula court against five Hindu terrorists including Swami Aseemanand in the Samjhauta Express train blast case. Apart from the mastermind Lieutenant Colonel Purohit, the co-accused including Colonel (Retd) Hasmukh Patel, Colonel (Retd) Shailesh Raikar, Colonel (Retd) Aditya Bappaditya, Brigadier Mathur, Major Prayag Modak and Major Nitin Joshi have also been exonerated. These Indian military and intelligence officers had not only planned and corroborated the Samjhauta train blasts but were also interrogated in several terror attacks targeting minorities particularly Muslims in India.
During the investigations, the witnesses had told the NIA that the RDX used in Samjhauta train blasts was actually supplied to the terrorists by MI Officer Lieutenant Colonel Purohit who procured it from the Army Ordinance Depot in the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK). Indian media and Central Bureau of Investigation had found ample evidence implicating its military officers in the fundamentalist and extremist Hindu machination to exterminate Muslims. Hemant Karkare, who had painstakingly collected evidence against the Indian military officers and had arrested serving officer of the Indian Army, Lieutenant Colonel Shrikant Prasad Purohit based on hard core evidence he had found. He was under tremendous pressure by the extremist organizations to release the officer. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendar Singh Modi and other BJP stalwarts openly threatened Hemant Karkare and tried to pressurize the government that he drop the cases against the culprits, he had netted. When he refused, Hemant Karkare became the first casualty of the Mumbai attack in 2008 and it is no coincidence that the honest and diligent Indian police officer was eliminated along with his staff.
So evident is the deliberate plot to eliminate Hemant Karkare that he was posthumously awarded India’s highest gallantry award but his widow refused to accept it. Now all the Indian military officers appear to have been given a clean chit, which bodes ill for India, since sweeping the explosive muck under the carpet is not going to make it go away. The Indian military terrorists, who are gaining ground by the day since insurgency has engulfed more than 22 Indian states, are going to create serious law and order problems and may bring India down like a house of cards.
Two years earlier, renowned Indian journal “India Today” had released a detailed and well researched story regarding a terrorist and extremist organization “Abhinav Bharat”, which has penetrated Indian military organizations through preparatory institutions, where young cadets are brain washed to develop hatred for Muslims and indulge in ethnic cleansing. These cadets of yester years have risen to higher ranks and permeated in the Indian armed forces with their venom and hatred for Muslims and can wreak havoc whenever ordered to do so.
It may be of interest to note that the current head of Abhinav Bharat is Himani Savarkar, the granddaughter of Veer Savarkar, the progenitor of the philosophy of Hindu chauvinism, the forerunner of Hindutva and Brahmin supremacy. His philosophy propagated that India was for Hindus alone and the practitioners of all other religions should either convert to Hinduism or leave India. One of his disciples Nathuram Godse assassinated Mahatama Gandhi for condemning the massacre of Muslims by Hindu rioters at the time of partition.
Himani Savarkar married a nephew of Nathuram Godse. Abhinav Bharat undertook a super active and violent programme after the joining of Lieutenant Colonel Purohit as its main protagonist since 2006, who during his stint in Jammu and Kashmir, collected a stock of explosives, particularly RDX, and provided it to extremists. Abhinav Bharat joined hands with other extremist organizations like Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Jagran Munch, providing training and hate speeches to continue their heinous agenda, with the swamis providing religious cover. India has chosen to fool the world by absolving its terror mongers from the military at its own peril.
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