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India-Pakistan
God will destroy America, says Hamid Gul
2003-08-30
“God will destroy the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever it will try to go from there,” General Hamid Gul, identified as “strategic adviser” to the MMA, was quoted saying on Friday. Gen Gul, known for his colourful language and what many consider “imaginative theories,”
In other words, he's a nut...
went on to declare, “The Muslim world must stand united to confront the US in its so-called war against terror which is in reality a war against Muslims. Let’s destroy America wherever its troops are trapped.”
And in return, perhaps we'll get around to destroying as many Pakistani generals, retired and otherwise, as we can...
If President Pervez Musharraf concedes President George Bush’s demand to send 15,000 Pakistani peacekeeping soldiers to Iraq, it would amount to “political suicide,” according to The Washington Times. The report alleges that jihadi organisations are once again actively recruiting in the name of ending US aggression in the two countries where US forces are battling Iraqi and Afghan terrorists. Gen Musharraf is conceding ground to the extremists now crowding the Pakistani government. Anyone who tries to crack down on extremist activities is told to stop, says the report by Arnaud de Borchgrave.
We've noticed this...
According to him, “The latest example came in Balochistan where the governor, Gen Qadir Baluch, a former corps commander in Balochistan, attempted to curtail anti-US demonstrations called by the MMA. The president asked Gen Baloch to back off while Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) negotiated with the MMA. Gen Baloch flew to Islamabad to confer with Gen Musharraf. The president urged him to follow the new rules or resign, which he did.”

The Washington Times claims that the new governor, Awais Ghani, a former federal minister of labour and religious affairs, has proven to be “a pliant instrument that heeds the advice of ISI and lets the MMA (now derisively known as Musharraf-Mullahs-Army) consolidate its hold on Balochistan’s regional government. Pakistani moderates are shocked by Gen Musharraf’s appeasement of the religious extremists who are now in charge of the province under the guidance of Gen Gul and his former ISI colleagues.” Borchgrave writes that Quetta, the provincial capital, is now a “vast privileged sanctuary for former Taliban officials and their fighters.

They are known locally as new mohajirs. They possess Pakistani identification and are free to conduct business and buy properties all over Balochistan. The MMA, with generous subsidies organised by the ISI, is now free to hold constant rallies and processions against ‘the US, desecrator of Islam’.” He claims to have been told by his “informants in Islamabad and Quetta” that US agents are unable to tell the difference between Balochis, Pathans and Taliban, and that most people are convinced Osama Bin Laden and Mulla Omar, the former Taliban chief, are hiding safely somewhere in Balochistan under the protection of the ISI and its extremist allies in the provincial government.
I think that possibility's been mentioned here a time or two, as well...
“Hamid Gul’s agenda – which he barely conceals – is to create a deadly nexus between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who know Gen Gul say his objective is to widen the nexus to include Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia,” the report adds.
That'd be Qazi's Grand Islamic Alliance...
The report alleges that the Pakistani nuclear establishment is, to a large degree, of the fundamentalist persuasion, adding “from these geopolitical building blocks, it is not too much of a stretch to conclude, as the US intelligence community now seems to believe, that Pakistani nuclear know-how has found its way, not only to North Korea, but also to Iran. The CIA has also identified Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria as the leading supporters of the Sunni insurgency against the US military in Iraq. The Saudi government is clearly not involved, the CIA concluded, but Osama’s Saudi followers and members of the Wahhabi clergy, harassed for the first time by the government, have evidently organised desert crossings for volunteer guerrilla fighters.”
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#10  which has spared them destruction for the sole reason that they are cooperating, is a bad idea.

I expect we have a logistical trail set up by now in the Northern 'stans. Perhaps we can do without the Paks.
Posted by: Shipman   2003-8-30 8:52:54 PM  

#9  If Hamid keeps this up, Musharaf is going to put a bullet in his head. Why? Because having a General incite anger in the worlds only superpower, which has spared them destruction for the sole reason that they are cooperating, is a bad idea.

Cruise missles also have a habit of suddenly appearing around Government buildings.
Posted by: Charles   2003-8-30 2:09:45 PM  

#8  Hamid's been on my particular list since around 9-11-01.
Posted by: Fred   2003-8-30 10:31:50 AM  

#7  Oooooooh! Pakistani general's are mouthing off!
Could we stifle the giggles please?
...and add Hamid to the list. It get's bigger every day.
Posted by: tu3031   2003-8-30 10:17:12 AM  

#6  Almost makes a massive nuke exchange with India sound like a good thing, huh? Except most of the effects won't reach NWFP
Posted by: Frank G   2003-8-30 10:14:40 AM  

#5  
God will destroy the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever it will try to go from there

Got a time-line on that, Hamid baby? We're waiting. (And you know how impatient we Americans are.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2003-8-30 9:37:30 AM  

#4  There are days when I wish the Mushy had blown us off and Pak Land was declared part of the problem.
Posted by: Hiryu   2003-8-30 8:57:31 AM  

#3  Allah, as has been the case for the 1424 Islamic Calendar years since he supposedly had a series of talks in Aramaic with Little Mo [7 centuries later mistranslated to Arabic and declared the "literal" and "absolute" Word of God (sic)... Ed] had no comment, yet again, as he could not be located, yet again.

Prolly counting & conserving his raisin allotment.
Posted by: .com   2003-8-30 8:32:27 AM  

#2  "America will destroy Hamed Gul wherever he tries to go," God was quoted saying on Friday.
Posted by: Mike   2003-8-30 7:44:24 AM  

#1  "The Washington Times claims that the new governor, Awais Ghani, a former federal minister of labour and religious affairs, has proven to be “a pliant instrument that heeds the advice of ISI and lets the MMA (now derisively known as Musharraf-Mullahs-Army) consolidate its hold on Balochistan’s regional government. Pakistani moderates are shocked by Gen Musharraf’s appeasement of the religious extremists who are now in charge of the province under the guidance of Gen Gul and his former ISI colleagues.”

This is part of what I have been saying for years, that there is essentially no difference between the Mullahs and the military in Pakistan. The top Generals and the top Mullahs have way more in common than their differences. They both oppose any attempt by both Liberals and Conservatives to moderate Pakistan and cut down on the Talibanisation that has been occuring there since before there was a Taliban. They both desire India to go the way of the Soviet Union, and Pakistan becoming the heart of a new Moghul Empire stretching from Central Asia to Bangladesh.
In the months leading up to the election in Pakistan last year, it is a well known fact that the ISI political division did everything possible to weaken the mainstream parties - the PPP and PML, from disqualifying their candidates, to paying off the members to switch sides to a pro-Musharaff party. At the same time, the same people did everything possible to bring about the MMA, the first time in Pakistan's history that the fractured Islamist parties were able to form an electoral alliance. To facilitate this, hundreds of criminal cases against MMA politicians were lost, the pro-Musharaff PML-Q party entered into a coalition government with them in Baluchistan, and due to other manipulations, the MMA got around a third of the seats in parliament, even though they only received 11% of the popular vote.
It is inconceivable that the ISI did all this without the knowledge and permission of Musharaf, so obviously he wanted the MMA to come to power in the provinces bordering Afghanistan. It is also obvious from the activities of the members of the MMA, that despite all their tough rhetoric, Fazl, Sami and the rest are just as corrupt as the rest of Pakistan's politicians, and are willing to deal with Musharaf.
Only Qazi's party is hardline enough to be causing problems with this arangement, and may lead the ISI to create a split in the MMA to alleviate these problems.
Musharaf may well be willing to turn over al-Qaeda Arabs and tone down the level of Jihad going on in Kashmir, but the only real difference that seperates him and Fazl from people like Qazi and Hamid Gul is that the former are pragmatic and will do what they can to stay in power, while continuing the business of Jihad which has worked so well for the army and Mullahs for the past two decades; while the latter are hard core ideologues who are against any sort of collusion with the Infidel west.
The one thing that consumes all of them, is the dispute with India, which is at the source of everything that Pakistan's military does. The reason they supported the Taliban was to give themselves "strategic depth" in a future war with India. The reason why the ISI has been giving covert aid to the regrouped Taliban and Hek is because they feel the Northern Alliance, which dominates the Karzai government, is a puppet of India. The reason they allow Hafiz Saeed and Massod Azhar to openly recruit hundreds of young men and turn them in AK wielding fanatics, before sending them to the deaths in Kashmir year after year after hear, is a low cost Proxy war that serves to bleed the Indian army. The reason that the Madrassas are allowed to continue brainwashing millions of kids, and the training camps are allowed to train Jihadis throughout Pakistan's hinterlands, and the reason why members of the puratanical Deobandi sect have been put in charge of 80% of the countries mosques, despite being only 10 or 15% of the population, is that in war with India, Pakistan will have a huge resovoir of committed Jihadis which will be able to even the odds against the much large Indian population.
Just like Hamid Gul, Musharaf was promoted by General Zia, the former dictator of Pakistan who ordered the Islamisation project in the country which has continued ever since. Musharaf didn't actually bring himself to power in a coup, the former government was actually overthrown by Islamist generals, who then put Musharaf in power because they knew the world would never accept Islamists in charge of a Nuclear state. But although he is a pragmatist, and even secular in his private life, Musharaf has never done anything to end the Mullah-Military alliance, or the Jihad industry in Pakistan in the past 4 years of his reign, and I am confident that he won't do anything to end it in the next 4 years either.
Posted by: Paul Moloney   2003-8-30 7:38:41 AM  

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