The terror connection

PAKISTAN: DO A ‘CIVIL SOCIETY’ AND A ‘PEACE CONSTITUENCY’ EXIST?

2006-08-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

In India there does undoubtedly exist a sizeable ‘civil society’ which is a product of its politically liberalized society, democratic institutions and a general level of religious tolerance in a traditionally historic multi-racial society. It also emerges from a well educated middle class and an enlarging one fuelled by its high rate of economic growth. Credit also needs to be given in this regard to the growth of political liberal institutions established during the British rule and further nurtured in the last 60 years of independent India.

There is also a sizeable ‘peace constituency’ in India, spurred more by political idealism than political realism that advocates peace with Pakistan. Both taken together are then flaunted as icons by India’s political parties and the intelligentsia (including the media) to reinforce their strategies of ‘political secularism’ as opposed to the existential societal secularism.

In this context, a major question that calls for an answer is that whether a corresponding ‘civil society’ and ‘peace constituency’ exists in Pakistan. Why this question is important and calls for an answer is because in India it is assumed that such societal segments do exist in Pakistan and such segments have similar aspirations for peace with India. If it existed then such segments would have emerged as strong pressure groups on Pakistan’s governing establishment and restrained them from use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy and the strategies of confrontation with India.

On July 17, 2006, in the wake of the Mumbai 7/11 bombing incidents in which more than 200 innocent lives were lost and 700 wounded, this author was co-opted by Pakistan’s GEO TV channel in a live show along with a former Pakistani Ambassador to review the impact of these Mumbai blasts on the ongoing India-Pakistan peace dialogue.

The main thrust of this author’s participation in the Pakistani TV show was as under:

India’s public opinion encompassing an extraordinary wide political spectrum outpaced the initial muted responses by the present Indian Government. Public opinion forced the establishment to come out with stronger political responses against terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
India at large expected Pakistan’s President to honour his pledges to restrain terrorism, Mumbai 7/11 blasts were an indicator to the contrary and would therefore impact the ongoing peace process.
The future of the India-Pakistan peace dialogue and its substantial success would depend heavily on the emergence of a sizeable civil society and peace constituency in Pakistan. This can only come about with such groups pressing strongly for restoration of democracy in Pakistan.

However, this author prefaced his participation in the Pakistani GEO TV show with the remarks that India at large today expected that the ‘civil society’ and the ‘peace constituency’ in Pakistan would come out with strong and vocal condemnations of the Mumbai 7/11 bombings (whose trails led to Pakistan's ISI and its protégé terrorist organisations) as ‘wanton destruction' of innocent lives were a crime against humanity.

In the succeeding weeks, this author eagerly and hopefully awaited such responses from Pakistan’s ‘civil society’ and ‘peace constituency’. Scanning the English language Pakistani media there does not seem to have been any evidence of any heartfelt forthright condemnation forthcoming.

It is this which leads one to ponder whether in reality a ‘civil society’ and a ‘peace constituency’ exists in Pakistan?

Pakistan: The Absence of a ‘Civil Society’

Some may be able to discern a semblance of a ‘civil society’ in Pakistan from a handful of objective political commentators, intellectuals and human rights activists, Pakistan otherwise seems to be devoid of an effective and a widely established 'civil society'.

The Pakistan nation-state projects the following deficiencies of a ‘civil society’ in Pakistan:

Liberal political institutions are not visible in Pakistan.
Pakistan has in the last 60 years regressed from the liberal political institutional framework left by the British and down-slided into an autocratic Pakistan Army – Islamist Mullah gridlock. Liberalism stands snuffed out.
Pakistani society stands polarized between a feudal extravagantly rich ruling establishment and a vast economically weak lower strata of society.
Lack of any sustained economic growth, as a result of exorbitant expenditure on military buildup has retarded the emergence of a sizeable and vocal middle class.
Pakistan is totally devoid of representative and responsive political structures and mechanisms.
The Pakistan Army has always strongly reacted to any signs of emergence of ‘civilian supremacy’ in Pakistan’s governance.

A Pakistani intellectual Iftikhar H. Malik in a work on ‘State and Civil Society in Pakistan’, makes the following observations:

The Pakistani State has successfully refurbished itself at the expense of vital civil institutions – Constitution, pluralism, political parties, independent judiciary, free press and activist groups.
The imperatives for establishment of a civil society in Pakistan have been side lined.
Totalitarianism, elitist monopolization, majoritarian coercion and ethnic fascism which normally stand rejected by a ‘civil society’ are all pervasive and predominant in Pakistan.

The Pakistani author also makes an important observation that a ‘civil society’ cannot be taken as a given reality, it has to be created and strengthened. Sadly, Pakistan even after 60 years of independence is bereft of a ‘civil society’ – an essential prerequisite of any modern and progressive state.

Indian policy planners and its thinking elite have therefore to take it as a given in their planning and formulations, that a ‘civil society’ does not exist.

As a corollary to the above, India cannot count on an India-Pakistan peace dialogue to be carried forward on this premise.

Pakistan’s ‘Peace Constituency’ as a Reckonable Political Force: A Mistaken Indian Notion

India’s political compulsions for peace with Pakistan, for whatever external or internal reasons, has been fed with the assumption that an appreciable ‘peace constituency’ exists in Pakistan and that this political segment is an enlarging one.

That a sizeable number of average Pakistanis aspire for peace with India is conceded. People on both sides have wanted peace. But what cannot be conceded is that a sizeable ‘peace constituency’ exists in Pakistan. And why it cannot be conceded is that there are two very good reasons for it.

Firstly, when we talk of ‘peace constituency’ the term has political connotations. It implies that within the Pakistani governing elite and establishment and whatever passes for representative political opinion in Pakistan, a sizeable segment exists, which as opposed to rhetoric, has a genuine and abiding investment in a peace process with India. It does not exist.

Western interpretations of the truthfulness of intentions of Pakistan’s governing military establishment for peace with India are politically motivated to serve their own strategic interests. They cannot be taken as ‘givens’ in India’s policy formulations.

Secondly, having conceded that a sizeable number of Pakistani average citizens aspire for peace with India, however, does not obliterate the reality that this aspiration of such Pakistani citizens is not ‘translatable’ to a determining political force to impel the Pakistani governing establishment to forge a viable peace with India.

Hence, it is a mistaken notion for the Indian Government and the Indian media to constantly flaunt that a sizeable peace constituency exists in Pakistan and that it is an enlarging one. Further, that India as the larger country can be generous and accommodative on contentious issues as a contributory factor towards growth of a ‘peace constituency’ in Pakistan. This argument is untenable. It is the people of Pakistan that need to be politically vociferous for peace with India and towards that end organise a mass political mobilisation which brings about a transformation of Pakistan's political landscape in which a 'civil society' and 'peace constituency' emerge as strong determinants of Pakistan's policies.

India can hope for that whenever democracy is restored in Pakistan, such a ‘peace constituency’ will emerge there. Currently it cannot be taken as a determinant for India’s peace dialogue policy formulations.

Concluding Observations

Policy planners and decision- makers in India, or even elsewhere, must resist the common failing of applying the templates of political and social conditions existent in their own country to other countries while devising policy formulations and responses. In the instant case while India does have a ‘civil society’ and ‘peace constituency’ the same cannot be said of Pakistan.

It is in India’s interests that such segments emerge on Pakistan’s political firmament. But for these to emerge, India will have to actively espouse and be pro-active in the cause for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, Democracy in Pakistan is an imperative for India’s national security interests and the surest way of ensuring this imperative is to make the ‘India-Pakistan peace dialogue’ contingent on the return of democracy to Pakistan. There cannot be a purposeful peace dialogue with Pakistan in the absence of representative and responsive political governance.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)

Can Pakistan Govt. still say that it is not Anti-India?

2006-08-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

For those still are startled by what is being taught in Pakistani schools as exposed by Amir Mir, this could be too much.

'Hindu, Enemy Of Islam'
These are extracts from government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education.

"Before the Arab conquest people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists & Hindus." "Before Islam people lived in untold misery."

"European nations have been working during the past three centuries...to subjugate countries of the Muslim world."

Class IV

The Muslims of Pakistan provided all facilities to the Hindus and the Sikhs who left for India. But the Hindus and the Sikhs looted the Muslims in India with both hands and they attacked their caravans, buses and railway trains. Therefore, about one million Muslims were martyred on their way to Pakistan.

The Hindus treated the ancient population of the Indus Valley very badly. They set fire to their houses and butchered them.

The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, Hindus did not respect women.

Class V

After the war of 1965, India with the help of Hindus living in East Pakistan, incited the people of East Pakistan against West Pakistanis. In December 1971, the Indians themselves also attacked East Pakistan. As a result...East Pakistan separated from us. We should all receive military training so that we can foil the designs of the enemy in the future.

The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.

Class VI

In the middle of the city of Deebal (Sindh), there was a Hindu temple. There was a flag hoisted on top of it. The Hindus believed that as long as the flag kept flying, nobody could harm them. Mohd bin Qasim found out about this.... The Muslims began to catapult stones at the temple and at the flag, ultimately making it fall to the ground. The whole city became tumultuous and the Hindus lost heart. Some Muslims clambered up the walls of the temple and forced open the door. Qasim's army entered the city and after conquering it, announced peace. The Muslims treated the vanquished so well many Hindus converted to Islam.

Before the Arab conquest the people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists and Hindus.

The foundation of the Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty.

The Hindus who had always been opportunists cooperated with the British.

The Hindus used to please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions.

Class VII

Some Jewish tribes also lived in Arabia. They lent money to workers and peasants on high rates of interest and usurped their earnings. They held the whole society in their tight grip because of the ever-increasing compound interest.

History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the Crusades.

European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies or naked aggression, to subjugate countries of the Muslim world.

w Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilisation.

The Hindus too wished to ruin Muslim civilisation and culture by destroying Urdu which has been closely associated with the Pakistan Movement.

Class VIII

During the Khilafat Movement Hindus and Muslims were completely united and like brothers and they started to cooperate and live in peaceful togetherness. But as soon as this movement ended, Hindu hatred of the Muslim re-emerged.

Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world.

Class IX

The Hindus and the Muslims...could not amalgamate each other's way of life to become one nation. The main reason for this difference of cultures, civilisation and outlook was the religion of Islam which cannot be assimilated in any other system as it is based on the principle of...oneness of God....On the other hand, Hinduism is based on the concept of multiple Gods....There lies the difference between the Hindu and Muslim way of thinking.

In connivance with the (British) government the Hindus started communal riots and caused loss of life and property. At the time of prayers the Hindus tortured the Muslims by playing music in front of the mosques. Before the commencement of classes the students saluted the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim students were also forced to do so.

Muslims promoted equality and social justice as against the division (created by) the (Hindu) caste system.

Class X

(The ideology of) Pakistan...was a revolt against the prevailing system of India in which Hindu nationalism was imposed on the Muslims....

Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood.... There is no such concept in Hinduism. Moreover Islam preaches brotherhood, equality and justice.... On the other hand, the Hindu society is based on caste system which downgrades the entire mankind.

After the establishment of Pakistan the Hindus and Sikhs created a day of doom for the Muslims in East Punjab.

The Hindus were encouraged by the (British) government to force the Muslims to join the Congress.

(These extracts have been translated from Urdu which is the standard medium of instruction in government schools in Pakistan.)

After all these extracts, which clrealy shows how the hate is being instilled in the minds of pakistanis on India and Hindus, pakistan still has the cheeks to say that they aren't Anti-India.... who are the fools here, they or those who are willing to buy pakistans stupid stories.

India on Lebanon Issue.

2006-08-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

ISRAEL: INDIA’S CONDEMNATION OVER LEBANON OPERATIONS WAS AVOIDABLE

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

India’s condemnation of Israel over its current military operations in Lebanon through a resolution in Parliament was avoidable. It has arisen from the Leftists pressure in the Coalition Government and the other disparate political groupings that masquerade as “secularists” but in reality pander to Indian Muslim vote banks.

Strangely, a press report (The Tribune, August, 2006) states that there is strong pressure also within the Congress Party that a Working Committee Resolution should be passed by the Party separately. The arguments advanced in support of such a move is that with UP Assembly elections coming up early next year a strong political message needs to be sent out condemning Israel’s military strikes in Lebanon.

More strangely, this report indicates that within Congress Party circles, linkages are being drawn that the Party’s silence on Lebanon would indicate a pro-US stand and that when added to the Indo-US nuclear deal (also seen as a pro-US step), a wrong political message to the minorities would be conveyed.

India’s Doubtful Foreign Policy Attitudes: Questions

Such stances of the Congress Party, the Leftists and those of the “secular brigade” raise the following questions:

Is India’s foreign policy going to be determined by Leftists and Indian Muslims?
In what way Israel’s military operations against the Islamic militias, adversely affect India’s security or strategic interests?
Is such condemnation of Israel balanced, politically?
Why is there no parallel condemnation of Syria and Iran which are providing the Hezbollah in Lebanon with heavy military hardware and long-range rockets which daily endanger Israeli civilians security?
Is it not high time that Indian Governments learn to use restraint in their foreign policy pronouncements, irrespective of doubtful domestic pressures?
If Indian domestic pressures count so much, then why in the wake of 7/11, the Congress Government, the Leftists and the “secular brigade” were tongue-tied in condemning Pakistan for terrorism attack against Indian civilians resulting in the loss of 200 lives?
Why are we running to support Palestinian Hamas and the Hezbollah in Lebanon and condemn Israel? Did the Hamas and Hezbollah or the entire Arab community come out vociferously to condemn Pakistan’s religious terrorism ongoing against India?

Sadly, India’s foreign policy has been hijacked from its institutionalised care-takers, the Indian Foreign Service. India’s foreign policy presently is communised and communalised as surveyed in the author’s last paper (SAAG Paper No. 1892 dated 26.07.2006).

Foreign policy today stands divorced from India’s strategic and security determinants and overtaken by the domestic electoral compulsions of political parties.

Coming back to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, the following need to be analysed:

Israel’s Military Operations in Lebanon: The Genesis of the Case.
Israel’s Present Military Strikes are Against Proxy War Militants Infrastructure in Lebanon.
United Nations Resolution No. 1559: Why Lebanon Has Not Implemented it?
Crucial Questions for International Community on Counter-Terrorism Operations Against Proxy War and Religious Terrorism Outfits/Militias.

Israel’s Military Operations in Lebanon: The Genesis of the Case.

The Hezbollah has been involved in terrorism violence and asymmetrical armed warfare against Israel for years. Its military hardware and rocket artillery are being supplied by Syria and Iran. Over the years it stands entrenched in Southern Lebanon bordering Israel, which has served as a base for its violent operations and rocket attacks on Northern Israel communities. Till 2000, for a number of years, Israel had occupied a strip of Southern Lebanon as a “buffer zone” to preclude Hezbollah attacks. Under international pressure and on the assurance that Lebanon would not allow Hezbollah to operate in Southern Lebanon, the Israeli forces withdrew.

In the last six years, not only has Hezbollah been made to withdraw by Lebanon, on the contrary they have established a fortification line with concrete bunkers and a network of underground tunnels to make their positions unassailable. It is from here that they have continued their operations against Israel. The latest incident which sparked the present conflagration was the Hezbollah attack on an Israeli patrol, within Israel territory, killing three soldiers and abducting two Israeli soldiers.

Israel as a consequence, against this act of terror, launched military strikes in Southern Lebanon and other sites in Lebanon housing Hezbollah rocket sites, infrastructure and facilities. This has continued for the last three weeks now.

The present military conflict, it must be noted is between Israel and the Hezbollah militia. The Lebanese Army is not involved and nor has Israel targeted Lebanese Army positions or military infrastructure.

It also needs to be noted that the Hezbollah today is a “state within a state”, defiant and unmindful of Lebanon’s government writ, secure as it is with the powerful backing of powerful external Shia patrons.

Israel’s Present Military Strikes are Against Proxy War Militia and Infrastructure in Lebanon

Hezbollah’s operations against Israel from Southern Lebanon and other places in Lebanon stand reported in the international media for a number of years. It appears that besides the Islamic fundamentalist urges and motivations, the Hezbollah is fighting a proxy war against Israel and the United States on behalf of Syria and Iran.

Seemingly, Syria uses the Hezbollah as a proxy to gain bargaining leverage over Israel for return of Golan Heights. Iran in the present context would welcome a Hezbollah escalation as it would divert American and international focus on its nuclear weapons programme. Such a preoccupation would pre-empt a joint US-Israel military strikes against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

As stated above Israeli military strikes are primarily against Hezbollah as the proxy war militia, its infrastructure and the arteries and means which support this heavily armed militia operating against Israel. It is not aimed at the Lebanese Army or the Lebanese State.

As far as collateral damages in civilian casualties, one would tend to believe Israel that these are not deliberately targeted. These arise as the Hezbollah rocket artillery uses civilian population centres as human shields for their rocket strikes against Israel.

United Nations Resolution 1559: Why Lebanon Has Not Implemented It?

This UN Resolution under which Israeli forces withdrew from Southern Lebanon gave the following guarantees which Lebanon had to implement.

Lebanese Army would occupy Southern Lebanon.
It would ensure that the Hezbollah militia is uprooted from Southern Lebanon.
Lebanon was to disarm all religious militias and establish a secure Southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah was to re-invent itself as a political entity.

The position in 2006 is just the opposite. Hezbollah is in full military control over Southern Lebanon and its militia now equipped with much more potent military hardware. It has now politically managed to be a part of Lebanon’s Government Lebanon stands powerless against Hezbollah. Nor has it in these six years sought international assistance to ensure UN Resolution 1559 is implemented.

So logically Lebanon has invited the present conflagration by its inactivity to rein in the Hezbollah. No extenuating reasons exist to absolve it from the blame and its losses, however tragic.

Crucial Questions for International Community on Counter-Terrorism Operations Against Proxy War and Religious Terrorism Outfits/Militias

The present conflict in Lebanon throws up some pertinent questions for the international community.

Can the United Nations or UN Resolutions control proxy war and religious terrorism?
Can a self-respecting nation with its security endangered and civilian lives lost await international condemnation and support to counter proxy war/ religious terrorism?
Does the UN or the international community have the moral right to condemn counter-terrorism military operations against proxy war/ religious terrorism entities undertaken by nations which become a victim of such asymmetrical warfare?
Can states who by reasons of state failure (incidently or otherwise) be absolved from harbouring proxy war/ religious terrorism entities?

All of the above, infirmities are presently being found in the Israeli military operations against Lebanon. Lebanon’s state failure to neutralize Hezbollah as a combined proxy war/ religious terrorism entity is inexcusable. So is the international community which should have stepped in much earlier to preempt the proxy war raging against Israel.

India also needs to ponder seriously on the above questions as similar challenges are emerging to confront it.

Concluding Observations

Israel is well within its rights to use military force against the Hezbollah to neutralize it. The right of self-defence is enshrined in the UN Charter. It is unfortunate that the whole world reacts when 50 civilians are killed in Qana in a collateral damage in Israeli strikes, but nobody whimpers when Israeli civilians in scores die every second day by religious terrorism strikes. The silence is also similarly deafening when 200 lives were lost last month in 7/11 bombings by Pakistan controlled and based Islamic religious terrorist organisations.

The Indian condemnation of Israel in political forums and by the Government is singularly unfortunate. Israel has been a staunch friend of India for nearly two decades now. Its military aid to India during this Kargil War is unparalleled in terms of speed and response. Calls for breaking of military relations with Israel by the Leftists are politically motivated by reasons other than India’s national interests.

The least that the Indian Government could have done in recognition of Israel’s special relationship with India was to have been reticent, like the Pakistani Government or followed President Putin of Russia in his measured response to the Saudi Foreign Minister that : “The State of Israel has the right to and should live in security.”

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)

Hezbollywood? Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged

2006-08-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

By Reuven Koret July 31, 2006

It was to be a perfect Hollywood ending for Hezbollah. Just as the Israeli bombing of the village of Qana in 1996 brought a premature end to Israel's Operation "Grapes of Wrath," so too a sequel of Qana II could change, once and for all, the direction of Israel's current summer blockbuster, "Change of Direction." Ten years ago, world condemnation of an errant Israeli shell that hit a civilian compound forced then-PM Shimon Peres to curtail the offensive against terror bases.

The setting was also perfect: Kana was again being used as a primary site for launching rockets against Israeli cities. The IDF reported that more than 150 rockets had been launched from Qana and its vicinity at Israeli civilians, wreaking destruction in Kiryat Shmona, Maalot, Nahariya and Haifa. It was only a matter of time before the Israeli Air Force would come for a visit, using pinpoint targeting of the sites used to launch rockets, Hezbollah logistical centers and weapon storage facilities.

On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually collapsed.

Brent Sadler of CNN reports that the Israeli ordnance did not even hit the building but landed "20 or 30 meters" from the structure.

There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away, according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came only around 8 am.

Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear."

Gen. Eshel appeared genuinely mystified by the gap in time. He "I'm saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

The army's only explanation was that somehow there was unexploded Hezbollah ordnance in the building that only detonated much later.

"It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel said.

Eshel reported that as recently as two days ago, military intelligence reported the building area had been used by the terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to cram dozens of women and children.

There are other mysteries. The roof of the building was intact. Journalist Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a larger crater next to the building, but observed that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack? They just went back to sleep and had the bad luck to wait for the building to collapse in the morning?

National Public Radio's correspondent reported that residents of that building had left and the victims were non-residents who chose to shelter in the building that night. They were "too poor" to leave the down, one resident told CNN's Wedeman. Who were these people?

What we do know is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they did, in droves.

While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN's Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping -- sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. While medical examination clearly is called for to arrive at a definitive dating and cause of their deaths, they do not appear to have died hours before. The bodies looked like they had been dead for days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting -- reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue -- place them in the basement, and then engineer a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked footage -- from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes from Jenin of "dead" victims falling off gurneys and then climbing back on -- have merited the creation of a new film genre called "Palliwood."

There is increasing evidence that the Kana sequel is another episode in this genre, a variety which might be called Hezbollywood. The Hezbollah have evidently learned their craft well.

The current suspension of Israeli military air activity is supposedly intended, among other things, to be used for the investigation of what really happened at Qana. It is to be hoped that there are real journalists on the scene, and unbiased medical examiners, who will have the courage and intelligence to sort out the anomalies and contradictions, and get to the buried truth of what happened.

There is no shortage of victims in Lebanon and Israel these days. From this vantage point, at this time, it looks like in the case of Qana, the world's media was duped in a cruel and colossal hoax by a terror organization that knows no moral bounds in its exploitation of suffering and anti-Israel hatred. But, as usual, the only party expected to pay the full price will be Israelis.

Yes, it would be a Hollywood ending for it all to end in Qana, exactly as it did a decade ago. But perfect endings, and perfect crimes, are rarely pulled off in real life.

Israelis will not be able to investigate this claim directly. The question remains whether honest men and women of other nationalities will let this likely lie stand or press for the revelation of the improbable and inconvenient truth.

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Here are some startling evidences from photograps taken at Qana & other evidences that raises serious doubts about the authencity of hezbollah [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

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Primers Of Hate

2006-07-31T10:10:00.000-07:00

The following is an article written by Amir Mir, a prominent journalist of Pakistan on its educational system.

Primers Of Hate
History or biology, Pakistani students get anti-India lessons in all their textbooks

- Amir Mir [A prominent Pakistani journalist]

When Mohammad Qasim stepped out to participate in the declamation contest held to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day, the topic he was to speak on was: 'Why Islam and Pakistan are integral to each other'. Instead, this Class XI student of Lahore's Government Central Model School lashed out against the Hindus, giving vent to inexplicable anger and hatred. This was particularly shocking because the Hindu community, constituting an infinitesimal percentage of Pakistan's population, hasn't been an aspect of Qasim's life. Asked to explain his outpouring in the contest, the 14-year-old boy said, "We hate Hindus because they are Hindustanis and the number one enemies of both Islam and Pakistan.

Quote:
How is it that no one asks why jehad and references to Quran should find mention in bio textbooks?

We know it all through our history and Pakistan Studies books. We learn what happened years ago all the time at school."

Qasim's explanation illustrates vividly the inimical impact of school textbooks, where history is manipulated to foster national
chauvinism, where knowledge becomes a vital tool in the construction of national identity, where the sense of nation is promoted through veritable lessons in bigotry, hatred and gross misrepresentation of history. The extracts (see box) culled out from textbooks taught in government schools demonstrates how the ruling establishment, under the aegis of President Pervez Musharraf, is misusing books to develop an anti-India, anti-Hindu mindset—and also fan sentiments against Christians, Jews and the West. The regime's control over the education system is exercised through Lt Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who heads the federal education ministry.

Head of the ISI between 1993 and 1995, Qazi supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistan's madrassas for constituting the extremist Taliban militia.

These textbooks came under the scanner following a story in the Los Angeles Times highlighting the tilt against non-Muslims. "Thousands of Pakistani children learn from...

Quote:

LA Times expressed surprise that such lessons were being taught in schools of a country whose leader was an ally of the US.

....history books each year that Jews are tight-fisted moneylenders and Christians are vengeful conquerors," the newspaper said. It expressed astonishment that such lessons are taught not in madrassas but in government schools of a country whose leader (Musharraf) is an ally of the US in the war against terror. The LA Times report prompted the US administration to voice its grave concern over the textbooks to Islamabad. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing last August, "The issue is a matter of serious concern for Washington and the Bush administration would like the Pakistani leadership to effectively address it."

Minister Qazi subsequently claimed efforts were afoot to revise and reform the public school curriculum. But the gargantuan nature of the task can be illustrated through the mindset dominant in the Islamabad-based National Curriculum Wing (NCW). Functioning directly under Qazi's ministry, the NCW sets the guidelines for the four provincial textbook boards which publish course material for government schools. The NCW issued a directive in 2002 laying out the following objectives: nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being a Pakistani and regard Pakistan as an Islamic country and acquire deep love for it. Ignored was the possibility that a child in school could be non-Muslim and might feel alienated because textbooks equate the Pakistani with Muslim. Although the subject of Islam, or Islamiat, is compulsory only for Muslims, the directive awarded an extra 25 per cent marks to a non-Muslim student should he or she opt for the course. The 2002 directive was issued a month after then education minister Zubaida Jalal had directed the NCW to revise history books taught in public schools.

Scientist and educationist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy feels the ongoing redefinition of education, first initiated under President Zia-ul-Haq, will have profound illiberal implications for Pakistan.

"A new concept of education now prevails, the full impact of which will probably be felt when the present generation of schoolchildren attains maturity."

Not only have the Pakistan rulers divorced education from liberal and secular ideals, they also view it as essential for Islamising society and forging a new national identity. Hoodbhoy explains, "Important steps have already been taken in this direction: enforcement of chador in educational institutions; organisation of congregational afternoon prayers during school hours; compulsory teaching of Arabic as a second language from Class VI onwards; introduction of reading the Quran as a matriculation requirement; alteration of the definition of literacy to include religious knowledge; establishment of an Islamic university in Islamabad; introduction of religious knowledge as a criterion for selecting teachers; and the revision of conventional subjects to emphasise Islamic values."

Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali says the westernised liberal elite, which had inherited power from the British, had given to education a basically secular and modern character.

Quote:

The NCW under Qazi ignores that a non-Muslim student could feel alienated.

"However, the self-seeking and opportunistic elite in independent Pakistan simply abandoned liberal values because of political and economic exigencies," explains Dr Ali, adding that this trend has impacted adversely on the education system.

The debilitating role of the political class in Islamising
the education system can best be illustrated through an example. In March 2004, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the fundamentalist alliance of five religious parties, disrupted the National Assembly proceedings and staged a walkout claiming that a certain reference to jehad as well as other Quranic verses had been excluded from the new edition of a state-prescribed biology textbook. The MMA threatened to launch a protest movement if the Quranic verses were not reinstated. However, then education minister Zubaida Jalal clarified that no chapter or verses relating to jehad (holy war) or shahadat (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbooks, and that the particular verse referring to jehad had only been shifted from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI and XII, that is) to the matriculation level course (Class X).

Quote:

American math for Pak kids: 'If a man has 5 bullets and 2 go into heads of Russians, how many are left?'

The education ministry never bothered to inquire—as most people familiar with the discipline of biology logically would—why there were references to jehad in the biology textbook in the first place.

The illiberal nature of Pakistan's education system was brought out in pitiless detail by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, in its report 'The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan'. Authored jointly by A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, the 140-page SDPI report illustrates, through examples, how the education system is contributing to the culture of sectarianism, religious intolerance and violence.

Some of the important findings of the SDPI are: the current curriculum and textbooks are "impregnating young and impressionable minds with seeds of hatred" to serve a self-styled ideological straitjacket; substantial distortion of the nature and significance of actual events in Pakistan's history; insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation; promotion of perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities and other nations; a glorification of war and the use of force; and incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of loaded concepts like jehad and martyrdom.

The SDPI report, however, also exposes America's hypocrisy.Claiming that the concepts of jehad and martyrdom were incorporated into the Pakistani curricula after the start of the so-called Afghan jehad against the Soviet occupation troops, the SDPI report says, "At that point, it suited the US and its most allied of allies, Pakistan, to encourage and glorify the so-called mujahideen, or holy warriors, in the war against the Russians. An American institution of higher education was asked to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly. The University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a center for Afghan Studies, was subsequently tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new textbooks included hate material even in arithmetic books. One question asked, 'If a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left'?"

But the context changed dramatically post-9\11. A research thesis exposed in 2002 the role of Americans in writing pernicious textbooks. The SDPI report states, "Since the Soviets are no more, the mujahideen have not only mutated into Taliban but have also outlived their usefulness, the same American University (the University of Nebraska at Omaha) has been given an additional grant by the Bush administration to re-re-write textbooks, taking out material on jehad, etc."

America's hypocrisy apart, it is in Pakistan's interest to delete from textbooks hate material and ensure today's schoolchildren are groomed into liberal, democratic, secular Pakistanis, harbouring hatred for none and love for all.

SOURCE

A chilling message for the infidels

2006-07-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

Just six weeks before last Saturday's terrorist atrocity in Bali, in a jail cell in Jakarta, I interviewed Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), al-Qa'eda's main ally in the region, and the group on which western attention is focused in the hunt for culprits.

Bashir was celebrating the news that an Indonesian court had agreed to reduce his 30-month sentence for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings by more than four months, meaning that he will soon walk free.

Ever since the first bombings, in which 202 people died, Indonesian authorities have been woolly in their response to terrorism for fear of alienating a largely anti-American population. Nothing illustrates this better than the appeal court's judgment on Bashir's early release - they took the decision even though he was implicated in a JI plot to

overthrow Indonesia's previous government, and despite independent testimony from senior JI operatives in custody that he had approved the 2002 bombings.

At 66, Bashir is a lanky, bespectacled Hadrami, who, like Osama Bin Laden, traces his family back to the Hadramawt region of Yemen. Surrounded by acolytes - including known JI bombers - serving him dates, he answered questions with a strong voice and easy laugh.

Scott Atran: What are the conditions for Islam to be strong?

Abu Bakar Bashir: The infidel country must be visited and spied upon. If we don't come to them, they will persecute Islam. They will prevent non-Muslims converting.

SA: What can the West, especially the US, do to make the world more peaceful?

ABB: They have to stop fighting Islam. That's impossible because it is sunnatullah [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Koran. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam.

SA: What if they persist?

ABB: We'll keep fighting them and they'll lose. The batil [falsehood] will lose sooner or later. I sent a letter to Bush. I said that you'll lose and there is no point for you [to fight us]. This [concept] is found in the Koran.

SA: Have you met Osama Bin Laden?

ABB: No, no. I want to though. After my release, I hope I can meet him.

SA: Where will you find him?

ABB: If he still exists - but how could I? I have sympathy for his struggle. Osama is Allah's soldier. When I heard his story, I came to the conclusion that he's mujahid, a soldier of Allah.

SA: You will always be on his side?

ABB: His tactics and calculations may sometimes be wrong, he's an ordinary human being after all. I don't agree with all of his actions. Osama believes in total war. This concept I don't agree with. If this occurs in an Islamic country, the fitnah [discord] will be felt by Muslims. But to attack them in their country [America] is fine.

SA: So this fight will never end?

ABB: Never. This fight is compulsory. Muslims who don't hate America sin. What I mean by America is George Bush's regime. There is no iman [belief] if one doesn't hate America.

SA: How can the American regime and its policies change?

ABB: We'll see. As long as there is no intention to fight us and Islam continues to grow there can be peace. This is the doctrine of Islam. Islam can't be ruled by others. Allah's law must stand above human law. There is no [example] of Islam and infidels, the right and the wrong, living together in peace.

SOURCE: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=2&subID=46

2006-07-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

Maximum Terror and its mechanics

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Mumbai

Evidence points to a Lashkar-e-Taiba role in the serial explosions on trains in Mumbai on July 11.

SANTOSH VERMA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

AT MATUNGA, AFTER the terror strike on July 11.

RAHEEL ABDUL REHMAN SHEIKH, reads the title of a classified dossier on India's most wanted terrorist. There is no photograph. For all of his adult life Sheikh refused to have one taken on the grounds that Islam forbade graven images.

Justice for the more than 200 innocent people killed in the July 11 serial bombings in Mumbai will depend on whether India's covert services and the police in three States will be able to fill the blank space in the dossier. Sheikh, along with Aurangabad resident Zabiuddin Ansari and Beed-based Zulfikar Fayyaz Qazi, is thought to be the principal author of the maximum terror inflicted on what the author Suketu Mehta described as the "Maximum City".

Until his relationship with the Lashkar-e-Taiba drew the attention of the police and the intelligence services, Sheikh lived in a one-room apartment in a nondescript building near Shalimar Talkies, an old landmark in decline for the last two decades just like the neighbourhood around it on Grant Road.

Growing up in a climate defined by economic despair and the rise of Hindu chauvinist forces, Sheikh appears to have rejected Mumbai's sometimes-aggressive modernity. He turned, in his late teens, to the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, an ultra-conservative religious sect which urges its followers to model their lives on a literalist reading of the times and life of Prophet Mohammad. The Markazi Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, the sect's central body in India, endorses the secular state and condemns terrorism.

Much of the Lashkar's cadre, though, has been drawn from the ranks of the organisation and Sheikh proved receptive to its call. Sheikh is said to have begun working with the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) before its 1999 convention in Aurangabad, where the organisation's linkages with the Lashkar first manifested themselves. So far there is no evidence to show that Sheikh actually joined SIMI, but there is little doubt that he was drawn to the organisation.

If he was indeed at the 1999 convention, he may well have made his first contacts with the Lashkar there. Many of the speeches delivered at the convention were inflammatory. "Islam is our nation, not India," thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad, one of the dozens of SIMI-linked Lashkar operatives who would one day accept Sheikh as their commander. Among those listening to the speech was Azam Ghauri - one of the founders of the Lashkar in India.

Little is known about how Sheikh met the two other men alleged to have played a central role in the Mumbai bombings. However, the three shared an interest in the campaigns for moral purification and proselytising organised by the Ahl-e-Hadis. Sheikh, some say, attended a 2003 convention of the Ahl-e-Hadis in Srinagar, where he met top Lashkar operatives in Jammu and Kashmir. What is certain is this: within three years, Sheikh was at the centre of the largest-ever pan-India terror offensive.

Terror cells

Despite the charge of intelligence failure, there has rarely been a terrorist outrage so predictable - indeed, in fairness to the covert services, predicted so precisely. In late April, the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) learned that a major consignment of arms had entered Maharashtra through India's western coast. Late on May 9, the Maharashtra Police recovered a part of that consignment - over 24 kilograms of Research Department Explosive (RDX) packed in computer cases, along with 11 AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and ammunition - but Zabiuddin Ansari, who was in charge of the Aurangabad cell, succeeded in escaping.

Investigators soon learned that the consignment was just part of a larger wave of explosives the Lashkar was pushing into western India and that the men they had arrested were only foot soldiers. Gujarat Police officials learned that a part of the explosives were intended for Zulfikar Fayyaz Qazi, who had earlier executed a terror strike in Ahmedabad. Of Sheikh, there was no trace.

As Maharashtra Director-General of Police P.S. Pasricha acknowledged, warnings of a large-scale terror strike had flowed in. What worried officials more was the large-scale flow of explosives to parallel terror cells than the escape of Sheikh or his associates. Intelligence Bureau officials learned that mafia lord Dawood Ibrahim - the architect of the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai - had made his network available to the Lashkar to facilitate its operations against India.

Gujarat, like Maharashtra, had been witnessing a flow of explosives, again linked to the Maharashtra-based cells Sheikh was running. One such consignment of 9 kg of RDX was delivered to Sheikh for use in a terror attack on Ahmedabad. Lashkar operative Mohammad Iqbal, a Bahawalpur resident who operated in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002-03 and whom the Delhi Police shot dead in March, had arranged for mafia-linked traffickers to smuggle the RDX across the Rann of Kutch and deliver it to Sheikh.

Sheikh handed over the consignment to new recruits, Feroze Abdul Ghaswala, an automobile mechanic, and Mohammad Ali Chippa, a computer engineer, to carry out the bombing. He had earlier arranged for both men to fly to Teheran, from where they drove across the unpoliced Balochistan border with Pakistan. Azam Cheema, the Lashkar's overall military chief, received the new recruits, who underwent a four-week bomb-making course before returning to Mumbai.

However, the Delhi Police penetrated and broke the Ghaswala-Chippa cell and recovered the 9 kg of RDX. But a part of an earlier consignment of explosives sent through the Bhuj border was used in a bomb that exploded on a railway platform in Ahmedabad on February 19, injuring 25 people. This was the first time an RDX-based explosive was used in Gujarat. Sheikh is believed to have used Qazi to execute the bombing, which could have claimed dozens of lives had the electronic timer on the device not malfunctioned.

Dawood Ibrahim's renewed support for the Lashkar could be out of desperation and also the outcome of the mafia's new ideological affinities with Islamist terror groups. Some members of his mafia have links with the Tablighi Jamaat, a religious organisation that has considerable influence amongst Pakistan's military. During Dawood Ibrahim's long stay in Karachi, these links flowered into an operational relationship. In fact, much of the jehadi leadership is drawn from seminaries like the Jamia Islamia at Binori in Karachi.

Notably, the mafia's role in terror strikes is not restricted to shipping weapons. Dawood Ibrahim-affiliated ganglord `Chhota' Shakeel Ahmad Babu helped ship Ahmedabad residents recruited by the Jaish-e-Mohammad through Dhaka in 2001. Mafia operative Javed Hamidullah Siddiqui, who was arrested in 2004, told Indian authorities that Shakeel had arranged to have the group flown from Dhaka to Karachi on fake passports. Another mafia operative, Rasool Khan `Party', received the recruits in Pakistan.

Dawood Ibrahim's lieutenant Fahim Machmach is also believed to have handled a separate group of terror recruits through Bangkok, including two Bangalore residents who identified themselves using code names `Iqbal' and `Sohail'. Machmach, interestingly, is alleged to have supervised personally a 2003 attempt on the lives of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Bharat Banot and Ashok Bhat, using the services of a long-standing mafia hit man, Vikram Parmar, also known as Ali Mohammad Kanjari.

Kashmir connections

SHASHI ASHIWAL

ABOVE THE BLUE plastic sheet is the third-floor apartment near Shalimar Talkies on Grant Road where Raheel Abdul Rehman Sheikh lived.

Some experts believe that the real impetus for the Lashkar's pan-India war is coming from Jammu and Kashmir - pointing to the eight grenade attacks in Srinagar hours before the Mumbai bombings. The jury is still out on this proposition, for there is nothing to suggest that the explosives used in Mumbai came from Jammu and Kashmir. But evidence exists that for several years the Lashkar has been attempting to establish all-India capabilities.

In December, the Mumbai Police arrested Arshad Badroo, a National Conference-affiliated Municipal Councillor, and two other Jammu and Kashmir residents, Haji Mohammad Ramzan and Khurshid Ahmad Lone, key figures, it turned out, in a Lashkar bombing operation targeting the city. The three had been despatched to Mumbai by the Lashkar's north Kashmir `commander', an elusive 6-foot 6-inch Pakistani national known only by aliases `Bilal' and `Salahuddin.'

While Badroo had been tasked with picking up passports and a Rs.300,000 payment for the Lashkar, Ramzan and Lone had been asked to transport electronic circuits and detonators, essential components of bombs, to contacts in Mumbai. All three men were arrested before they could make contact with their local Lashkar contact, who some believe was Sheikh himself. Investigators are exploring whether the detonators were intended for the Lashkar's Mumbai operations.

Evidence that `Bilal' had contacts in Mumbai is significant in the context of the serial bombings - not least because of his demonstrated expertise in executing such attacks. As second-in-command to his predecessor, a Pakistani national known only by the code name `Abu Huzaifa', Bilal had helped organise the serial bombings in New Delhi last year. While Abu Huzaifa was killed soon after the bombings, the pan-India networks he set up were, for the most part, inherited by Bilal.

Lashkar networks in Mumbai have evolved steadily since the Kargil war. In August 1999, the I.B. succeeded in breaking a pan-India network led by Lashkar operative Amir Khan, which had been tasked with recruiting cadre from amongst communities hit by communal violence. Despite this success, the Lashkar was still able to build offensive capabilities. In November 2000, the police arrested three Lashkar cadre, all Pakistani nationals, who were planning to assassinate Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

By 2004, Bilal's unit was poised to execute even more ambitious operations targeting Mumbai. Shahid Ahmad, a Rawalpindi resident who had served with the Lashkar for several years, was tasked with organising a major attack against the Bombay Stock Exchange. He turned to Manzoor Ahmad Chilloo, a one-time Hizb ul-Mujahideen member who had left Jammu and Kashmir to study medicine in Pune. Chilloo, in turn, turned to former members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) for help. A dramatic I.B. operation led to the detection and exposure of the cell. (The same operation also led to the controversial elimination of Lashkar operative Ishrat Jehan Raza and her lover Javed Sheikh in an encounter.) Few commentators paid attention, though, to the real lessons that emerged. Despite the threat of an India-Pakistan war forcing a reduction of levels of violence within Jammu and Kashmir, the Lashkar was looking to take its jehad to a new level.

Long war ahead

"The Hindu," wrote the Lashkar's founder and spiritual guide Hafiz Mohammed Saeed in 1999, "is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force." Most of the few people who read Saeed's article dismissed it, correctly, as the rant of a lunatic and then made the error of dismissing his repeated promises to deliver maximum terror. It is impossible after July 11 to make that mistake again.

More likely than not Sheikh, Qazi and Ansari will be arrested or killed. The three men are thought to be hiding out in Kathmandu. What is less clear is whether India will be able to act against the real authors of the serial bombings. Sheikh's immediate superior, a Pakistani Lashkar operative codenamed Junaid, who is responsible for pan-India terror operations, is ensconced in Dhaka. Azam Cheema, the Lashkar's overall military chief, in turn, is in Pakistan.

For the most part, Pakistan has dismissed Indian demands for action against terrorists operating from its soil. Journalists like Amir Mir, who exploded the official claim that Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan, were subjected to state-sponsored attack, while affirmations by the United States about Dawood's presence in Pakistan have been met with silence. India's demand for the extradition of at least 20 other terrorism suspects, put forward in the midst of the 2001-2002 near-war, have also been ignored.

Pakistan's repeated denials that it harbours and trains terrorists are starting to wear thin, and not just in India. Shahzad Tanweer, one of the men who bombed the London underground system in July 2005, is thought to have been trained at a Lashkar-run facility.

Assem Hammoud, a Lebanese national arrested in Beirut this April for planning to bomb New York City, has also told his interrogators that he intended to acquire the specialist skills needed for the operation during a four-month terror course in Pakistan.

Incensed with Pakistan's support for Islamist terror groups operating in Afghanistan, the United States is also starting to turn on its long-standing ally. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made no secret of her anger with Pakistan's military regime, choosing not to address a joint press conference with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, at the end of his recent visit to the United States - a gesture of disapproval that left little to the imagination.

Some signs of action are already evident. The police in Kathmandu, generally loath to involve themselves in international contention, arrested two Lashkar-linked Pakistani nationals on June 12. The arrests are reported to be related to the 2001 recovery of RDX from the home of Mohammad Arshad Cheema, a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover. Cheema was expelled from Nepal amidst allegations that he had facilitated the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

But the script that will decide the Lashkar's long jehad will be authored in Islamabad, not Washington. As things stand, the Lashkar and other jehadi organisations have the resources to perpetrate acts of ever-increasing violence, secure in the knowledge that Pakistan's nuclear shield makes war near-impossible.

Poised at a crossroads in its history, the military-dominated establishment in Pakistan will have to decide if the next episode will see a happy ending or just another phase in a war without an end.

SOURCE: http://www.frontline.in/stories/20060728004600400.htm