[DAWN] THIS last week witnessed the gathering of the great and the good in Riyadh to pay their respects to the recently departed King Abdullah, and to suck up to King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... , the newly crowned monarch. Next month, many of these same worthies will meet in Washington to discuss measures to counter terrorism. How many lives have to be lost before Western leaders finally connect the dots between the Wahabi/Salafi ideology being pumped out by the desert kingdom and the killing fields of Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistain?
It was no coincidence that many of the 9/11 jacket wallahs and planners, as well as the late Osama bin Laden
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Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] AS though caught in a grotesque time loop, the same spectacle plays out over and over again. This time in an imambargah in Shikarpur, where yesterday's bomb kaboom after Friday prayers killed around 50 people and injured scores, many of them critically.
The intensity of the blast can be gauged by the fact that the building's ceiling collapsed from the impact, trapping many underneath the debris. It was the second major sectarian attack to take place since the beginning of this year.
The earlier one, responsibility for which was claimed by a TTP faction, occurred in a Rawalpindi imambargah, killing seven people and injuring nearly 20. But the attack in Shikarpur is significant for several reasons.
It is the first large-scale sectarian attack in interior Sindh, the traditional home of Sufi Islam, underscoring the need to expand the war against extremism beyond the tribal areas to cities and smaller towns.
It is also damning evidence of how misgovernance compounded by state inertia can provide space for krazed killer elements to insidiously widen their influence. Over the past few years, critical, telling signs of the drift towards radicalisation and religious disharmony in Sindh have been ignored.
A number of Hindu temples have been desecrated and there is a rising crescendo alleging forced conversions of Hindu girls. Deobandi sectarian groups have become increasingly assertive in what is traditionally a Barelvi ethos.
Exploiting the wilful neglect of the education sector, madressahs have proliferated, enrolling droves of children from poor families and enabling them to absorb their divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... ideologies. The vacuum of governance that exists in Sindh does not bode well for controlling the sectarian forces that have entrenched themselves there, and the Shikarpur bombing may mark the trajectory of a yet deadlier chapter in krazed killer violence in Pakistain.
A recent Human Rights Watch ... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge.... report has castigated the government for failing to protect religious freedoms and prevent violence against minorities.
There appears little hope of a change in this situation with the government seemingly unable to ride the crest of an unprecedented public consensus in favour of a robust response to counter the scourge of extremism. It was significant perhaps that when the attack took place, the prime minister was chairing yet another meeting on law and order, this time in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... .
What has been the substance of its response apart from repeatedly going into a huddle with trusted aides in the aftermath of the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. attack, and hanging some death row inmates in rapid succession? Where is the evidence of the National Action Plan being put into practice?
While religious groups have appropriated the Charlie Hebdo ...A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe... issue to seize the initiative and demonstrate their street power, the state appears to be on the retreat, taking recourse to a timorous, fire-fighting approach that is far from what is needed at this desperately difficult hour.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] PAKISTAN'S national security obsessions and the utter contempt for dissent and diversity of opinion are threatening its existence now as at no time in the past.
Although so many in Pakistain raised their voice against it over the years, in 2011 the then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Edmund Randolph ... put it rather succinctly: "It's like that old story -- you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard."
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Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2015 00:00 ||
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"Emboldened by Obama's obsession with the nuclear negotiations, which are set to resume next month, Iran's leaders apparently trust that the Obama Administration is prepared to turn a blind eye to whatever they do." Gee, ya' think?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
[DAWN] PAKISTAN'S national security obsessions and the utter contempt for dissent and diversity of opinion are threatening its existence now as at no time in the past.
