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India-Pakistan
Jihad and loss of internal sovereignty
2003-12-26
According to a Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad, investigations show that “certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed” in facilitating possible nuclear technology transfers from Pakistan to Iran. The government says it will take to task anyone found involved in such activity. In another interesting report, we learn of a top Chinese ‘terrorist’ by the name of Hasan Mahsum who was shot dead in Pakistan’s South Waziristan area during a military operation last October. Two conclusions can be immediately drawn from these news items. First, that the sale of our nuclear secrets was probably more a result of lack of state control over individuals working in our nuclear establishment than any conscious or permitted state policy. Two, the killing of Hasan Mahsum should surprises us about the extent of penetration of our country by persons accused of terrorism by the countries of their origin. Both cases point to a lack of internal state control and jurisdiction in the past decade.
Three fifths of Pakistan — i.e., most of Baluchistan, most of NWFP, all of the FATA — loudly proclaims its autonomy, to the extent that government writ doesn't extend to its territory. Allegiances through all of the country extend to religion first, tribe second, and the nation a remote third. What the hell did they expect?
Pakistanis often bemoan the lack of sovereignty in our foreign policy. But the truth is that no foreign policy is entirely free in the world. External sovereignty is always under constraints for one reason or another. But it is internal sovereignty that a state must guard at all cost. In our case, Pakistan adopted a policy of proxy wars on two fronts at the cost of internal sovereignty. Internal control was lost after the compulsion of importing warriors led to their immunity from the law inside Pakistan.
Members of the Arab Master Race aren't subject to the same laws applying to mere mortals, even the rickety laws of Pakistan...
Once such immunity was granted through special agencies handling jihad, larger sections of the state began to be included in it. Jihad, when it is not declared by the Islamic state, tends to eat at the fabric of the state’s sovereignty.
The fact that the jihadis deny the legitimacy of the state doesn't help, does it?
Just as foreign mujahideen had a free run of the country, the personnel involved in the strategy of jihad gradually assumed immunity. In this context, the nuclear programme became an integral part of the strategy of deniable proxy jihad. In 1999, for example, when scientists from our nuclear establishment were decorated on Pakistan Day, most of them were proud to sport flowing beards, overtly displaying their political and religious viewpoint!
They were regular guests of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s mammoth annual conventions, alongside Hamid Gul and Islamists from all over the world. These conventions have been toned down a lot since 9/11, but prior to it, it was probably the biggest annual terrorist convention in the world.
News always trickled in about tactful Chinese protests at the mujahideen linking up with the insurgents of Sinkiang and helping them seek refuge and training inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Islamabad acted slowly and with not a little confusion, given the diarchy between the ISI and the Foreign Office. But it is this year for the first time that Pakistan has clearly acknowledged what has been going on in the days of jihad. During his recent visit to Beijing, General Pervez Musharraf minced no words when he said that Pakistan would not tolerate any organisation interfering in Sinkiang or giving shelter to terrorists fleeing from there. We recall how, in 2000, Tajikistani terrorist Juma Namangani and his hundred soldiers were active in Kyrgyzstan when they took a number of Japanese nationals hostage.
Actually, I think he was an Uzbek, but go on...
It was alleged that some Pakistanis too were among his fighters, but this was not proved. Nonetheless, the Japanese government did hold parleys with Namangani’s representatives in Islamabad, after which the hostages were released. But in 2001, Namangani was reported as entering Tajikistan clandestinely from Karachi on a chartered plane! In due course, the Uzbek president Karimov was to complain bitterly to Pakistan after Namangani tried to kill him.
This was back in the day when Pakistan had managed to alienate every country in her region, except for Afghanistan, and was on the edge of bankruptcy, kept affloat only by charity from Saudi Arabia.
In her second tenure, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto got the ISI to register the ‘foreign’ mujahideen in Peshawar in the wake of Egypt’s complaint that Mohammad Shawky al-Islambouli, a brother of the killer of President Anwar Sadat, was being sheltered there. The ISI came up with 5,000 names: 1,142 Egyptians, 981 Saudis, 946 Algerians, 771 Jordanians, 326 Iraqis, 292 Syrians, 234 Sudanese, 199 Libyans, 117 Libyans and 102 Moroccans. The world now knows how Pakistan became the bridge between Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the ‘takfir’-based Algerian-FIS breakaway organisation called the GIA whose terrorists had lived in the guesthouses in Peshawar. There is also an established connection with Iraqi Mulla Krekar’s Kurdish organisation whose members also came to join the jihad in Peshawar. Krekar, originally Najmuddin Feraj Ahmad, taught at Islamabad’s Islamic University where he also met Abdallah Azzam, Osama’s man in Peshawar. The University routinely employed Egyptian fundamentalist clerics in its faculty. Ramzi Yusuf, the first bomber of the Trade Center in New York, frequented the hostel of the University and this appeared in the Pakistani press. Similarly, one can explain how the Indonesian terrorist Hambali, the Bali bomber, and his brother wound up in Karachi. There are hundreds of examples of how the country simply gave away its internal sovereignty. Pakistani scientists and doctors began going to Afghanistan and meeting Osama bin Laden in the wake of the international terrorists. Just like the jihadi leaders who vowed divine rage, most of them were in it for money. Doctors were found in Lahore with huge amounts of dollars in their possession.
In ’Who Killed Daniel Pearl’, a Saudi businessmen in Dubai told the author that most of the financiers and leaders of the Jihadi movement don’t give a damn about Islam, and are simply in it for the money, in Pakistan above all else. But there are enough true believers around to be highly dangerous.
If 9/11 had not happened and the UN Security Council had not forced Pakistan to reimpose internal controls, more and more Pakistanis would have found their way into the toils of global terrorism. We already have our plate full. We have to clean up and return to normalcy after years of chaos. But first we must correctly grasp the enormity of the task ahead of us.
I doubt it'll happen. The words "secular state" are enough to set off rounds of explosions throughout Pakistan, while Qazi and his fellow travellers go into orbit.
Posted by:Paul Moloney

#9  It is Cargo Cultish. Perhaps we need to remind the priests that John Fromm drives an Ohio now.
Posted by: Shipman   2003-12-26 8:45:22 PM  

#8  Tony - I cut a comment about 'cargo cult' out of the post, but it is very cargo cult like. Their thinking goes some like - we got the oil cos we are good muslims. All religions are prone to this thinking.

Its sheer bad luck that most of the worlds oil is under moslem countries.
Posted by: phil_b   2003-12-26 6:28:40 PM  

#7  phil_b, that's an interesting comment. We're really into 'cargo cult' land here to an extent.

The figures show that if you exclude oil revenues, the Arab world is in trouble;

"The GDP of all Arab countries combined ($531.2 billion) is less than that of Spain ($595.5 billion)"

http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/ahdr1/presskit1/PR2.pdf (PDF)

Now then, .com - what was it about a certain 40k strip of land on the eastern side of SA?
Posted by: Tony (UK)   2003-12-26 4:27:13 PM  

#6  I don't buy the Disconnectedness defines danger thesis. Excluding infectious diseases a poor peasant in burundi or where ever is zero threat to me becuase he doesn't have access to money and technology needed to impact my life. The problem with islamoterror is they do have access to money and hence technology. Its like greenies not seeing the paradox of flying to conferences to worry about global warming. The Islamoterrorists don't see that if they start to win the cellphones, lancruisers, antibiotics and lamb chops will stop coming. Allah may be all powerful and all knowing, but he don't know sh** about keeping a Lancruiser running.

I've worked in 3rd world communities totally dependent on food, healthcare and technology from outside. They all want things but they have no clue how they are made or where they come from. Cut the arabs off from the money they will sit around in the sand watching people die and wondering why nothing works any more. Or they will modernize the old-fashioned way through education and hard work. They will have to figure out how to make things other people want.

The oil is the problem! The only way out of the god gave them the oil so they don't have to modernize mindset they have is to either stop buying the oil (not an option in the foreseable future) or take it away from them.
Posted by: phil_b   2003-12-26 3:06:56 PM  

#5  Very cool link T(UK)

Some favorite quotes

In sum, it is always possible to fall off this bandwagon called globalization. And when you do, bloodshed will follow.

And

If you are lucky, so will American troops

Ranks and files of Luckies!

The problem with the Core countries is PC-ism. Some of the Core countries need to grow up.
Posted by: Lucky   2003-12-26 12:46:41 PM  

#4  4thInfVet - yes we are up to the task.

We may well 'lose' some countries from the 'Core' to the 'Gap' (see this article http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/ThePentagonsNewMap.htm for much more information on this concept that some in the Pentagon are taking seriously) - most people who read this blog can take a guess at what those countries may be. However, there are other countries that are moving into the 'Core' at the same time as we lose others.

My personal feeling is that it will take another attack along the lines of 9/11 before the majority of people realise what it is we are up against. In effect. In fact, it would be 'better' if that attack was not on the US as then other countries would realise what the situation is. (I feel a horrible feeling in my stomach just writing these words)

There are many ways that this war could end, see The Belmont Club for instance. But it will end, and the 'Core' countries (however they may be defined) will be victorious.

The only question in my mind is whether that old joke about why aren't there any Arabs in 'Star Trek' remains a joke - or becomes a fact.
Posted by: Tony (UK)   2003-12-26 8:41:11 AM  

#3  phil_b: You're not talking about "stuff" like big turbines, are you? I'm reminded of WWII, Pacific. Oil-thirsty Japanese sweeping through the East Indies, very pleased until Royal Dutch Shell engineers torched the refineries at the last minute.
Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds)   2003-12-26 4:06:47 AM  

#2  4thInfVet - for a while I wondered whether we would win or not. Now I am quite convinced we will. The reason is simple. The arab world is fed and gets all its technology from the West. If they start to seriously harm our capacity to run our societies then the result will be that they start to starve surrounded by stuff that doesnt work anymore.

Now if we can only a way to stop all those oil revenues flowing into arab pockets. The arab world will just become another third world basket case.
Posted by: phil_b   2003-12-26 2:18:56 AM  

#1  more and more Pakistanis would have found their way into the toils of global terrorism

The fight against wahhabism/islamofascism will be long, it will be bitter at times, and in the end we may not even win. That should never, ever stop us from taking this course and fighting this fight. I hate to sound melodramatic, but we have been burdened with as much of a world war as our fathers and grandfathers faced in the 40s.

Are we up to the task?
Posted by: 4thInfVet   2003-12-26 1:35:08 AM  

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