Latest Updates: Pakistan RSS

  • johnpi 1:25 pm on March 7, 2010 | 26 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: adam gadahn, , Azzam al-Amriki, Azzam the American, , Pakistan,

    Adam Gadahn arrested: Al Qaeda’s American spokesman arrested in Pakistan.

    Enemy combatant or American citizen?

    Military tribunals or civil courts?

    The charge against him, treason, is a death penalty offense for which no one has been executed since the 60s. This is going to be high in the news for a long time and will prompt some major constitutional questions.

    Gadahn was just in the news yesterday for a new tape calling on Western Muslims to attack their own countries and suggesting targets. It will also probably feature prominently in media coverage.

     

  • thabet 12:56 am on March 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan,

    A five-year-old British boy, of Pakistani origin, has been kidnapped while in Pakistan:

    Pakistani police have arrested a man described as a “prime suspect” in the kidnapping of a five-year-old British boy being held to ransom for £100,000.

    Sahil Saeed from Oldham, Greater Manchester, was taken from the Punjab region this morning after the family was held captive and robbed by five men armed with guns and hand grenades.

    Sahil had been staying with his grandmother in the city of Jhelum and was due to return home today, the British high commission in Islamabad said.

    Sahil’s father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, described today how his family were beaten and kicked during a six-hour ordeal that began when men broke into the house last night.

    “They took me into the separate room and they tortured me,” he told Sky News. “They said: ‘We will take your son and you will have to pay £100,000.’

    “They took my son. They were fully loaded with guns and hand grenades. All Pakistan police know about this, and the British Council.”

     

  • thabet 9:23 pm on February 25, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , hockey, , , Pakistan,

    Pakistan-India meeting a ‘total sell out’.

    (Hockey, rather than this.)

     

  • abunoor 1:53 pm on February 25, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Marriage contract, , Pakistan, ,

    Ayesha Nasir publishes a piece (for Slate’s XX) about being discouraged from reading or discussing her marriage contract before her marriage in Pakistan. I was happy to learn more about problems around the culture of marriage in Pakistan, and I hope people will work for solutions. I don’t know Ms. Nasir’s background, but she makes some statements about Islamic law that I think are confused and although in general she makes it clear she is talking about her own experience and culture in Pakistan at times she seems to be making claims about Islamic practice that are not true universally.

    It’s safe to say that although there are many deep problems with Muslim marriage in the United States, the problems are generally different than those in Muslim cultures although I’m sure among some recent immigrants there must be more overlap.

     

  • aziz 12:34 pm on February 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Pakistan

    Larison talking about US drone strikes and the Dubai assassination:

    Reliable “pro-Israel” advocates cannot seem to grasp this, but almost all Western objections to this action have nothing to do with any sympathy for Mabhouh or his cause. Just as objections to drone strikes in Pakistan have nothing to do with sympathy for Al Qaeda or opposition to U.S. objectives in the region, Western protests over the manner in which Israel fights it enemies is almost always motivated by an interest in keeping Israel from making counterproductive blunders that empower its enemies and isolate it from those states that would otherwise be willing to support Israel. There is probably no better ally of genuine anti-Israel sentiment than the reflexive apologists for every mistake and crime the Israeli government commits. As the old proverb goes, “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.”

     

  • arif 8:01 pm on February 19, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan, ,

    Contradictory?

    Centuries ago the greatest poets of Persia, like Hafiz and Rumi, stripped away the mullahs’ religious pretensions and exposed their stupidity. Today, however, those same mullahs have taken control of the Iranian republic. The answer lies just as much in the domain of world politics as in theology. Khomeini developed the doctrine known as “guardianship of the clergy,” which gives the mullahs much wider powers than they generally exercised in the past.

    —

    Ayatollah Khomeini was quite content to keep science and Islam separate—unlike Pakistan’s leaders who have made numerous absurd attempts to marry the two. Khomeini once remarked that there is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. Nor did he take a position against Darwinism. In fact, Iran is one of the rare Muslim countries where the theory of evolution is taught.

    Hoodbhoy hardly provides any better answers.

    http://www.meforum.org/2593/pervez-amirali-hoodbhoy-islam-science

     

  • abunoor 10:32 am on February 18, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Abdul-Ghani Baradar, , , , Mullah Baradar, Pakistan,

    Ahmed Rashid was on Fresh Air discussing recent developments in Afghanistan.

    Mr. RASHID: Well, I think the very big question is why now? I mean, why have the Pakistanis now arrested him? Because his whereabouts were certainly known to the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, for many, many years. And if it means that the Pakistanis are now serious about reining in the Taliban, well, of course, that’s a very positive step. That’s something that NATO and the Americans have wanted all along.

    However, speculation from Kabul – and I’ve been speaking to officials in Kabul – their speculation is somewhat different. The first is that, you know, the Americans, the CIA could have discovered his whereabouts and then, you know, insisted that the ISI arrest him.

    The second thing is that it was very well-known for several months now, and I knew this personally, that Mullah Baradar was actually in touch with the Kabul authorities, holding talks with them through not directly, but indirectly through his representatives. They were meeting in Saudi Arabia, and he was also meeting with Kabul representatives in Kandahar, the major – the second city in Afghanistan.

    Now, one speculation is that these talks were moving forward, and perhaps the Pakistanis arrested him because he was talking to the Kabul authorities above and beyond the Pakistanis, who are very keen to make sure that any dialogue that happens between the Americans and President Karzai and the Taliban take place with Pakistani mediation, Pakistani brokership, if you like.

    GROSS: So what kind of information do you think that interrogators are trying to get now from Baradar?

    Mr. RASHID: Well, you know, I don’t think that I mean, obviously, there’s going to be a mild sort of interrogation, if he knows where Mullah Omar is or Osama bin Laden or anyone else. But I think he’s going to be treated very well because I think in the long term, what both the Americans and the Pakistanis would want out of him is to use him in negotiations with the Taliban leadership.

    I mean, one speculation is that now that he’s been arrested, he could be used much more effectively to negotiate with Mullah Omar and others because he could be allowed to meet with the other Taliban leaders, he could meet with Kabul authorities, he could meet with the Americans, et cetera. So I don’t think he’s going to be, you know, tortured or anything like that. I think he’s going to be kept in a safe house. He’s probably going to be interrogated about, you know, other leaderships, et cetera, and certainly the Americans will pursue him about the whereabouts of al-Qaida.

    But I think this arrest will mean that we may well see a speeding-up of the negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans and others.

     

  • johnpi 9:46 pm on February 12, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Hazaras, , , , Marjah, Pakistan, , , , Tajiks, , , ,

    I am so completely unsympathetic to Pakistani criticism of America for its conduct in Afghanistan as represented in this Imran Khan documentary.

    Early in the video a group of “young cosmopolitan” Pakistani women at a pop music concert are portrayed razing America for imperialism and terrorism.

    My response as an American is to just throw it right back in their faces.

    The lack of self-awareness or self-examination is just amazing. America left the region after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan in 1989. Gone. And in that time until 2001 Pakistan decided to play ‘masters of the universe’ and support the Taliban throughout its campaign to take over Afghanistan. Pakistan provided unlimited military equipment and supplies, it provided military intelligence and advisors that traveled with the Taliban forces, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis volunteered and fought with the Taliban in Afghan campaigns that had the character of ethnic violence in parts of the country largely inhabited by the Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc. And these educated middle-class Pakistanis are sitting around getting all indignant about America’s conduct?

    Please…I wonder if any Pakistani veterans of the Afghan campaigns brought captive Hazara concubines with them back to Pakistan…

    Related: Speaking of foreign fighters marines and Afghan troops have started their attack on the Taliban-held city of Marjah. A tribal elder reports most of the Afghan Taliban have already fled the area, but

    Militant commanders from the Middle East or Pakistan have stayed on “and they want to fight,” he said.

    I guess it will be foreign fighters versus foreign fighters then. Too bad the Pakistani and Middle Eastern fighters in Marjah won’t allow Afghan civilians to flee the city, thereby putting them potentially in the line of fire.

    How nice of the Pakistani volunteers to come to Afghanistan and take the Afghans hostage…

     

  • johnpi 8:42 pm on February 10, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Pakistan, ,

    Pakistani reporter’s father disowns son, denounces him as a ‘blackmailer.’

    I therefore, announce, while addressing the entire journalist fraternity, owners of newspapers, government and semi-government officials, including police department, FATA Secretariat and other government departments with whom my son Fawad Ali Shah is in contact, that my son is a blackmailer, who is using media as a blackmailing tool and those who are in contact with him or are involved in any kind of dealings with him will be responsible for their own losses. I also announce that I disown my son and expel him from the ownership all of my transferable and non-transferable property.

    Pakistan Media Watch comment:

    The question for The Nation is why, with all of this evidence against Mr. Ali Shah, they chose to publish his claims of being threatened by Blackwater and American diplomats including the US Ambassador to Pakistan – claims that were presented with no evidence other than his word, and which are immediately suspect given allegation by other journalists and even his own father of his manufacturing stories for attention and personal gain.

     

  • abunoor 5:30 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan

    Fatima Bhutto describes the brutal murder of a 12 year old maid in Pakistan and goes on to make the case that Pakistan is a country whose laws “cater only to the rich and powerful.”

    As grim as her killing may be, it will not be all that surprising if her murderer goes free. In a country where the entire top echelon of government, from the president to the prime minister, have been granted amnesty from corruption charges, murder cases, narcotics smuggling, kidnapping, and extortion so that they may lead Pakistan and pave the way for an obsequiously pro-American cooperation in the war on terror, why is anyone surprised that the rich and powerful are unaccountable? Why is anyone particularly horrified by the monstrous VIP culture that denies justice to the majority of the country and celebrates the injustices of the dominant, moneyed tastemakers?
    We know that employing a child of school age in such demanding labor is cruel. We know that there is such a thing as minimum wage—even in Pakistan. We know that one can’t, shouldn’t be able to, get away with murder, but those things don’t really matter when one is above the law.

     

  • thabet 1:47 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Pakistan, , ,

    Jeremy Scahill on the ‘expanding US war in Pakistan’.

     

  • johnpi 11:58 pm on February 8, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Khmer Rouge, Pakistan, , , , , , Vietnam analogy

    Could US drone strikes push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge type genocide?

    A more provocative — and perhaps more ominous — analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

    Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk — until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

    The Taliban sure hope so…

     

  • johnpi 8:01 am on February 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Pakistan, ,

    Thousands pack funerals for Pakistan bomb victims.

    Beating their chests with hands, thousands of minority Shiite Muslims attended a mass funeral Saturday for those killed in a pair of bombings in Pakistan’s largest city.

    At least 33 people died and 170 others were wounded in Karachi on Friday when suspected Sunni militants targeted a bus carrying Shiite worshippers and then attacked a major hospital treating victims of the first bomb, said government spokesman Jamil Soomro.

     

  • johnpi 7:36 pm on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan, , , sipah-e-sahaba, SSP, , ,

    Karachi bombings: Ulema rally Pakistanis to call for restraint.

    Ulema from different schools of thought have condemned the two blasts on Friday, appealed to the people to exercise restraint and pointed out that terrorists are trying to distort the image of Islam and the country.

    The Islamic scholars said the perpetrators of the incidents of terrorism were neither Muslims nor Pakistanis, adding that they were trying to divide the people of the same faith.
    ….

    Maulana Hassan Zafar Naqvi ruled out any sectarian aspect of the tragedy, recalling that Shias and Sunnis lived together and would not allow any such conspiracy to succeed in future. However, the series of attacks on mourners was a bad omen, he said, adding that conspiracies were being hatched to distort the image of Islam across the world.

    He said the terrorists were enemies of Islam, Muslims and Pakistan, but, the government could not be absolved from its responsibility. “The government should tell people how many of the criminals arrested in the past had been sentenced to death,” he said.

    Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, the chief of the Central Ruet Hilal Committee, had the same views to share. He said those behind the tragedy were bringing a bad name to Islam, Muslims and Pakistan. He asked the people to keep their sentiments under control, as violence would only strengthen those who were trying to destablise the country.

     

  • arif 11:52 am on February 5, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Pakistan

    -excerpts:

    ..this is not a discussion of Dr Aafia’s guilt or innocence or the morality or justice of her detention. Instead, it is a dissection of the belief held by many Pakistanis and other Muslims that being a Jewish American automatically leads to bias against Muslims in general and Muslim Americans in particular.
    –
    even as Dr Aafia casts aspersions on the Jewish Americans that may have been present in her jury, it is Jewish Americans who are working at the request of her own brother to monitor the fairness of her trial and the condition of her mental state.

    Undoubtedly, many questions can be raised about the flawed mechanisms through which Dr Aafia and many others accused of terrorism have been treated by the US authorities.

    But this has little to do with being Jewish American. It is a myth that all Jewish Americans are against the two-state solution and to feel strongly against the community obscures Jewish American efforts to stand up for the rights of those detained in Guantanamo and Bagram.

    Dawn.com column by Rafia Zakaria

     

  • johnpi 1:10 am on February 5, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Pakistan,

    Militant supporters urge Pakistan government not to create hurdles for Kashmir jihad.

    “As long as Jammu and Kashmir is under Indian subjugation, jihad must continue… Pakistan should continue political, diplomatic and moral support for the Kashmiris seeking freedom.

    If Pakistani rulers cannot help Kashmiris, they should let the field open for the Kashmiri militants, instead of creating any obstacles in their way,” said a declaration adopted at the “Solidarity with Kashmir” conference.

    Problem here is that the Kashmir liberation movement is only tangentially about Kashmir anymore since it’s been assimilated into the global-caliphate-seeking borg. For example, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s “director of transnational operations” running terrorist operations in Australia, Denmark and elsewhere to address concerns that have zero relation to Kashmir.

    And a separate but related point: the Indians have no reason to come to the negotiating table and sue for peace since elements of the militant movement have made it abundantly clear that they won’t rest until all 150 million Muslims in India are ‘liberated,’ and other extremists go still further and speak of the glory days when large parts of the subcontinent and its vast non-Muslim populations were under Muslim rule…in short, the Kashmir separatists can’t deliver a peace dividend, so why should India bother with them?

     

  • abunoor 10:07 am on February 4, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Pakistan

    Thousands of Pakistanis have staged rallies against the conviction of a Pakistani scientist found guilty of trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan.

    Protests were held on Thursday in several cities in Pakistan, where many believe that Aafia Siddiqui is innocent.

     

  • johnpi 1:47 pm on February 3, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Pakistan, , , ,

    More info on that blast in Pakistan this morning that killed 3 US soldiers outside a girls school that was celebrating opening day.

    Two US army trainers were also amongst the 131 wounded, most of who were school children. Two journalists accompanying the convoy were also wounded.
    ….

    Condemning what it called vicious terrorist bombing, a US Embassy statement said the Americans were US military personnel in Pakistan to conduct training at the invitation of the Pakistan Frontier Corps.

    They were in Lower Dir to attend the inauguration ceremony of a school for girls that had recently been renovated with US humanitarian assistance, the statement said.

    Amongst those killed were four school girls and a paramilitary soldier. “Our teacher was teaching us Islamic education when the explosion caused the roof of our class to cave in”, Samina, a 5th grade student of the school said.

    The official said that the American soldiers were trainers training the Dir Scouts of the Frontier Corps in Dir.

    “They usually wore Pakistani dress, shalwar qameez, and Chitrali caps to conceal their identity”, the official said.

    The Americans were traveling in an armoured vehicle with electronic jammers.

     

  • johnpi 8:06 am on February 3, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Pakistan, , , , ,

    Pakistan blast kills US troops, children, say local officials.

    Three U.S. soldiers traveling with Pakistan security force members were killed Wednesday and one wounded in a roadside bombing in northwest Pakistan that also injured dozens of schoolgirls, officials said.

    The soldiers were in the region as part of a small, little-publicized U.S. mission to train members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps to better fight al-Qaida and Taliban militants, Pakistan’s army said.

    The U.S. Embassy declined to comment. If the deaths are confirmed by American authorities, they would represent a major victory for militants close to the Afghan border who have been hit hard in recent months by a surge in U.S. missile strikes and a major Pakistani army offensive.

    The attack, which killed at least four other people and wounded 70, will draw attention to the presence of U.S. troops on Pakistan soil at a time when anti-American sentiment over perceived violations of sovereignty is running high. U.S. and Pakistani authorities rarely talk about the training program out of fear it could generate a backlash.

    The blast hit a convoy close to a girls’ school celebrating its opening in the Shahi Koto area of Lower Dir district, which like much of the northwest is home to al-Qaida and Taliban militants. It was unclear where the convoy was heading.

     

  • johnpi 10:16 pm on January 30, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Pakistan, , , , ,

    Suicide bomber kills 17 Pakistanis at market in Bajaur.

    The attack took place at a bazaar in the agency’s main town of Khar. The suicide bomber detonated his vest as paramilitary soldiers confronted him at the checkpoint. Three soldiers and 14 civilians were killed in the blast, and more than 40 Pakistanis were wounded. Several buildings were destroyed.

     

  • johnpi 10:30 pm on January 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Pakistan, , ,

    In wake of US supreme court decision allowing unlimited corporate cash in elections, progressives highlight Saudi Arabia as a country that will take advantage.

    Saudi Arabia’s economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions. “It’s one of the biggest threats that we are facing,” said Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change and a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry. [...] Climate talks posed a bigger threat, Sabban said, and subsidies for the development of renewable energy were distorting market economics in the sector, he said.”

    Presumably because of the Citizens United ruling, Saudi Arabian-owned subsidiaries operating in the United States can now spend unlimited amounts advocating the defeat of candidates who support clean energy legislation. According to a ThinkProgress investigation, foreign-oil backed lobbyists in America are already instigating efforts to kill clean energy legislation.

    Juan Cole takes this apart a bit, pointing out some interest in Saudi Arabia for green energy, but I’m skeptical of his skepticism. It wasn’t long ago that he belittled the extremist threat in Pakistan as largely limited to the ethnic Pashtun regions of that country, and that certainly turned out to be wrong (though wrong in service of the greater good of puncturing inflated rhetoric at the time about the Taliban being poised to overthrow the Pakistan government).

     

  • johnpi 8:43 am on January 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Pakistan,

    Books: I’ve just started ‘Husband of a Fanatic” written by Vassar academic Amitava Kumar, who married a Pakistani Muslim woman in 1999. So far as I’ve read, it’s a nonfiction account of his attempt to explore Hindu fanaticism, but in later chapters he goes to visit his wife’s relations in Pakistan so there might be some exploration of the other side.

    Kumar, who grew up in India, wrote some articles about his marriage and later found his name and address had been posted on an Internet hit list of Hindu ‘traitors.’ (a topic that resonates since we’ve been discussing Internet death threats so much recently (here, here and here).

    The book starts with him sitting down to interview the man who likely put him on that list, a retired office worker living in Jackson Heights.

    Like Mr. Barotia, I was born in the provinces and grew up in small towns. For me, the move to the city meant that I learned English and embraced secular, universal rationality and liberalism. Mr. Barotia remained truer to his roots and retained his religion as well as a narrower form of nationalism that went with it. His revenge on the city was that he also became a fanatic. I do not envy him his changes, but I can’t think of those changes without a small degree of tenderness.

     

  • johnpi 11:01 am on January 26, 2010 | 9 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan, , ,

    The bad Sufi.

    It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong. Sufism and Wahhabism, in fact, share a fatal characteristic – they are religions of the status quo. In Pakistan, Sufism legitimises barbarities of inequality and starvation – ‘do nothing, it’s god’s will’ – while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Contemporary Sufism, rather than being a solution to Pakistan’s problems, is the cause.

     

  • johnpi 7:56 am on January 26, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Afghan surge, , eikenberry, , , Pakistan,

    The New York Times has “dropped a bombshell” and published Ambassador Eikenberry memos opposing Obama’s Afghan surge.

    The cables — one four pages, the other three — represent a detailed rebuttal to the counterinsurgency strategy offered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who had argued that a rapid infusion of fresh troops was essential to avoid failure in the country.

    Eikenberry was deeply concerned about Karzai’s ability to create a viable government that doesn’t require massive foreign support in perpetuity.

    And then there’s Pakistan and the Taliban sanctuaries across the border, about which Eikenberry wrote:

    More troops won’t end the insurgency as long as Pakistan sanctuaries remain. Pakistan will remain the single greatest source of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain, and Pakistan views its strategic interests as best served by a weak neighbor. There is reason to be encouraged by Pakistan’s current military offensive in Waziristan, but the lasting result of this effort is still unclear. Nor does the Pakistan military action address the role of the Quetta Shura, which has the most influence over the insurgency in southern Taliban strongholds, or the Haqqani network, the most lethal killer of allied troops and Afghan civilians. Until this sanctuary problem is fully addressed, the gains from sending additional forces may be fleeting.

    (via)

     

  • johnpi 12:55 am on January 26, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan,

    Pakistan’s former spymaster who trained Mullah Omar: ‘US must negotiate directly with Omar to end war.’

    The problem historically with Omar is that he doesn’t negotiate directly. In fact, the last I read, Mullah Omar has never met a non-Muslim.

    During the 1990s when Mullah Omar’s Taliban ruled large parts of Afghanistan, the UN struggled to establish meaningful agreements with the Taliban government but whatever a local cleric agreed to had to be sent back to Kandahar to be approved by Omar who frequently voided or overturned it.

    What Sultan Amir Tarar may mean is that the ISI should play some kind of stepped-up intermediary role between Omar and the US, and that would probably be a bad idea.

     

  • johnpi 12:59 pm on January 24, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Ahmed Qureshi, , , Pakistan

    A compendium of Pakistani conspiracy theories and their rebuttals.

    For example:

    Photobucket

    The picture above has been bandied about by Ahmed Qureshi and the rest of the clown posse as proof that the Indian government is secretly supplying weapons to the Pakistani Taliban in order to destabilize the Pakistani government. The conspiracy theorists have misidentified it as a manufactured-only-in-India weapon. It is actually from Russia:

    PK Machine gun is one of the most common weapons in Afghanistan which is not only used by the Afghan Taliban but used also by the Afghan police and their national army. These guns are available in large supply in Afghanistan mainly because the Russian army left behind large caches of Russian made weapons in after the war in 1980s. Another reason is the drug trade between the Russian gangs and Taliban where the gangs buy cheaper drugs from Afghanistan and pay for it with guns instead of money.

    (via)

     

  • johnpi 8:51 am on January 24, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Pakistan, , Robert Gates,

    US Defense Secretary Robert Gates current trip to Pakistan has been a total disaster.

    The message his mission inadvertently sent was that the US is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated; that he is pressuring Pakistan to take on further counter-insurgency operations against Taliban in the Northwest, which the country flatly lacks the resources to do; and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it.

    In baseball terms, Gates struck out. In cricket terms, Gates was out in the most embarrassing way a batsman can be out, that is, leg before wicket.

     

  • johnpi 8:02 pm on January 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Pakistan,

    Pakistan’s army tried to oust Zardari: Human Rights Watch.

    Pakistan’s powerful military has actively worked to undermine efforts by the elected government to improve human rights in the country, the Independent reported on Friday citing a new report. It also tried to destabilize the elected government, and force out President Asif Ali Zardari.

     

  • johnpi 7:38 pm on January 20, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Pakistan, ,

    Taliban overhaul their image in bid to win allies.

    …as the Taliban deepen their presence in more of Afghanistan, they are in greater need of popular support and are recasting themselves increasingly as a local liberation movement, independent of Al Qaeda, capitalizing on the mounting frustration of Afghans with their own government and the presence of foreign troops. The effect has been to make them a more potent insurgency, some NATO officials said.

    Afghan villagers and some NATO officials added that the code had begun to change the way some midlevel Taliban commanders and their followers behaved on the ground. A couple of the most brutal commanders have even been removed by Mullah Omar.

    I don’t know how significant a development this is in relation to the entire Afghan nation, since the Taliban aren’t going to be growing their presence outside of Pashtun areas any time soon, what with all the hurt feelings about scorched earth property destruction, massacres, taking the local women for concubines, etc. leftover from the 1990s civil war that was really a Pakistan-aided war of aggression against other ethnic and Muslim groups in the country…

     

  • johnpi 2:32 pm on January 18, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 'paki', , , Pakistan,

    A meditation on the evolution of the word ‘Paki.’

    It’s obvious to say that ‘Paki’ is an offensive, catch-all racist term that seeks to attack, offend, and alienate those of South Asian extraction in the UK. Yet in a post-9/11 – or post-7/7 world with regards to the UK – the term is beginning to connote a new prejudice in which Islamophobia takes centre-stage.

     

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