Brutality of Syrian Rebels Posing Dilemma in West – New York Times

By C. J. CHIVERS

The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men. The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.

Read more » The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/middleeast/brutality-of-syrian-rebels-pose-dilemma-in-west.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

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Via – News adopted from Facebook

Manto and Sindh – Excellent write up of Haider Nizamani, it helps to understand why Sindh is tolerant and secular society in nature.

Punjab at the time of partition in 1947.

Manto and Sindh

By Haider Nizamani

SINDH has no equivalent of Saadat Hasan Manto as a chronicler of Partition. And the absence of a Manto-like figure in Sindhi literature on that count is good news. It shows the resilience of Sindh’s tolerant culture at a time when Punjab had slipped into fratricidal mayhem.

While Amrita Pritam called out for Waris Shah to rise up from the grave to witness the blood-drenched rivers of Punjab, Sindhi woman writers such as Sundari Uttamchandani were not forced to ask Shah Latif to do the same.

The tragedy of Partition inflicted different types of pain on the Punjabi and Sindhi communities and these peculiarities shadowed and shaped post-Partition communal relations between people of different faiths who traced their roots to these regions. What Manto endured and witnessed in 1947 and afterwards, became, through his eloquent writings, simultaneously an elegy and indictment of Punjab losing its sense of humanity at the altar of religious politics. The political air in Sindh was filled with religious demagogy but it did not turn into a communal orgy.

Urdu literati and historians interested in Partition and its impact on the subcontinent have used Manto’s birth centennial, that was recently observed, to remind us of his scathing sketches of lives destroyed by Partition. Ayesha Jalal in her essay ‘He wrote what he saw — and took no sides’ published in the May issue of Herald, writes Manto “looked into the inner recesses of human nature…” to “fathom the murderous hatred that erupted with such devastating effect” …in “his own home province of Punjab at the dawn of a long-awaited freedom”.

There was no eruption of murderous hatred between Sindhi Hindus and Muslims. They did not lynch each other en masse as was the case in Punjab. The violence against Sindhi Hindus and their mass migration to India was a tragic loss scripted, orchestrated and implemented by non-Sindhis in Sindh. As result of varying trajectories of interfaith relations during the Partition period, the intelligentsia of Sindh and Punjab evolved and adopted different views towards Hindus and India.

The collective memory of the Partition days in Punjab is marked more by the stories and silence of the victims and perpetrators of violence. Even the journey towards the safer side was fraught with danger. People who survived had bitter memories of the ‘other’.

The Sindh story is not the same. Ram Jethmalani, a leading lawyer in India today and a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was a young advocate in Karachi in 1947. His senior partner was none other than A.K. Brohi, a right-wing Sindhi lawyer who became federal law minister during the Zia period.

Jethmalani has no compunction in saying that there was no love lost between the two because of Partition. Jethmalani stayed back in Karachi and only left for Mumbai in 1948 when Brohi told him he could not take responsibility for his safety as the demography of Karachi had changed with the arrival of migrants from the northern Indian plains. That arrival was accompanied by violence against Sindhi Hindus.

Kirat Babani, a card-carrying communist, chose to stay in Sindh after 1947 and was thrown in prison in 1948. Released 11 months on the condition of leaving Karachi within 24 hours, Kirat took up a job with Comrade Hyder Bux Jatoi, pioneer of the peasant struggle in Sindh. The administration pressured Jatoi for harbouring an atheist. Jatoi advised, much against his desire, Kirat to go to India. Even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that groomed L.K. Advani, a native of Karachi who later became India’s deputy prime minister, acknowledges that Sindhi Muslims did not push Hindus out of the province.

Pakistan and America – To the bitter end

– Growing concerns about a difficult relationship

THOUGH America’s relations with Pakistan grow ever more wretched, it remains hard to imagine either side daring to break them off. Military types, diplomats, analysts and politicians in Islamabad describe a mood more poisonous than at any time for a generation. Links between the intelligence agencies, the core of bilateral relations for six decades, are worst of all, notably since America caught Osama bin Laden hiding amid Pakistan’s apron strings. Pakistan felt humiliated too by the way the al-Qaeda leader was killed.

Yet the ties still bind, amid fears of far worse. Last month, America’s departing chief of staff, Mike Mullen, said Pakistan’s army spies ran the Haqqani network, a militant outfit that has killed American men in Afghanistan and attacked the embassy in Kabul in September. The chatter in Pakistan was of frenzied preparation for military confrontation.

Many Pakistanis seemed jubilant at the idea, with polls suggesting over 80% of them are hostile to their ally, and chat shows competing to pour scorn on America as the root of all evil. Instead relations have been patched up. Last week Barack Obama said mildly that the outside world must “constantly evaluate” Pakistan’s behaviour. In what may signal a conciliation of sorts, a new CIA chief has been installed in Islamabad, the third in a year after Pakistani spies outed his predecessors.

American policy is contradictory. On the one side are defence types, eager to fight jihadists and angry at Pakistani meddling in southern and eastern Afghanistan. On the other side are diplomats, anxious about losing tabs on Pakistani nukes or having to do without Pakistani assistance in stopping terror attacks in the West. Many also fear the spreading failure of the Pakistani state (see article). A senior American official in Islamabad starkly describes how the relationship seemed lost last month, with “huge numbers of people trying not to let it go over the edge”.

For the moment ties persist, though they are loosened. America has suspended military aid, supposedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars (Pakistanis say Americans inflate the figures). It has not paid its agreed dues to Pakistan’s army for several months, nor have its trainers returned. America is also readier than before to back things that Pakistan despises, such as India’s blossoming relations with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who last week swept through Delhi to laud India’s growing role as a donor.

Pakistan’s army has responded by giving a little ground. It still refuses America’s call for a war on militants in the border area of North Waziristan—“it’s bad strategy to ignite everything at once” sniffs a gloomy Pakistani official—but it has, apparently, nudged Haqqani leaders from their hiding places over the border into Afghanistan. At the same time Pakistanis complain of impossible American demands over jihadists: they say Mr Obama’s strategy of “fight and talk” in Afghanistan requires Pakistan’s army to handle insurgent fighters by killing, capturing and bringing them into negotiations all at the same time.

Afghanistan, where the two countries fumble and fail to accommodate each other, will remain the crux of Pakistan’s relations with America. Pakistan’s leaders long derided what they saw as America’s vain “transformative” struggle to make Afghanistan modern, democratic and united—perhaps they also feared a similar push to refashion the role of the army in Pakistan. The head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Ashfaq Kayani, in particular, is said to dismiss America’s understanding of the fractured country next door as naive and simplistic, a doomed effort to make Afghanistan into something it is not.

But as America’s ambitions there have shrunk to little more than extracting its soldiers fast and leaving behind a minimally stable territory that is not dominated by Pushtuns, concerns in Pakistan have grown anew. It now fears being abandoned, losing aid and relevance, and becoming encircled by forces allied with its old foe, India. Several commentators in Islamabad suggest that, sooner than have a united neighbour that is pro-India, Pakistan would prefer more war and division in Afghanistan—“let Afghanistan cook its own goose” says an ex-general.

A crunch could come in the next few months, as foreigners gather for a pair of summits on Afghanistan, first in Istanbul in November, then in Bonn in December. What should have been a chance to back domestic peace talks (which have not happened) could instead be a moment for recrimination, with Pakistanis to take the blame. Worse yet for Pakistan would be if its ill-starred performance as an ally becomes a prominent issue in Mr Obama’s presidential re-election campaign. Afghanistan is sure to dominate a NATO summit to be held in Chicago in May.

Afghanistan may, or may not, recede in importance after 2014, when America is due to cut the number of soldiers it has in the region. Yet even without the thorn of Afghanistan, a list of divisive, unattended issues infects Pakistan’s relations with America. On their own they would be more than enough to shake relations between most countries.

Pakistan is a known proliferator, and is more hostile than almost any other country to America’s global efforts to cut nuclear arsenals and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. America is fast expanding its economic and military ties with Pakistan’s great rival, India. And Pakistan’s domestic rule would set most American diplomats’ hair on end—venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot opponents for being liberal. With a friend like Pakistan, who needs enemies?

Courtesy: The Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/21532322

Seeds of a bitter harvest

by Waseem Altaf

As for Muslims, they were to associate themselves with the Arabian Peninsula and not the subcontinent, with Mohammad Bin Qasim and not Raja Dahir, with Mecca and Medina and not Moenjodaro and Harappa. The relationship with the soil and the soul of the subcontinent was buried forever.

Although the Two-Nation theory did suit the interests of some, it was a total negation of the concept of pluralism and mutual coexistence. …

Read more → ViewPoint

Pakistan is suffering from a disease known as Gangrene and AIDS

– Reasons for disastrous situation of Pakistan

By Altaf Hussain

The factual reasons for the present disastrous situation or the root cause of the present weak scenario of Pakistan

Unfortunately, Pakistan is suffering from a disease known as gangrene. The common cause of either wet or dry gangrene is loss of an effective local blood supply to any tissue. Loss of blood supply means tissues are deprived of oxygen thus causing the cells in the tissue to die. The most common causes of tissue/blood supply loss are infections, trauma and diseases that affect blood vessels (usually arteries). Gangrene is a potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of the body tissue dies (necrosis). As a result of reduced blood supply, the organisms (the saprogenic microorganisms) causes wet gangrene which produces toxins. They spread throughout the body and as a result more parts of the body develop gangrene. And finally a time comes when the total blood flow of the body or blood supply system of the body collapses resulting in the collapse of the body as well. In early stages of gangrene, if diagnosed, could be treated through medicines keeping the fact in mind that you may not expect 100% success results. If any part or area of the body has suffered a lot from gangrene, it is advisable to cut that part of the body or that area of the body completely just to save and protect the remaining parts of the body for survival. This phenomenon of cutting a part is like a bitter pill to swallow. If you want the body to survive and remaining parts of the body which are not affected to be safe then it is better to cut that part or parts whether one or more hands, one or two legs or any other affected part or parts. This occurs within the body.

AIDS: The AIDS virus after entering inside the body through any means multiplies and multiplies. The body has three natural self defence mechanism. HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) produces AIDS. HIV is not a disease but it is a virus that causes AIDS. The three natural defence mechanisms are (1) Skin, (2) Under the skin (hypodermis/subcutaneous) which is second line of defence and (3) when the organism enters into the blood, meaning inside the body, as it enters inside the body simultaneously body starts producing immune army. If the immunity is not present then human being cannot survive. Viruses are around us always and because of our immune system we don’t get affected.

In AIDS, HIV overcomes immune system that is the defensive system and destroys it and as a result it weakens the immune system. And that is why it is called AIDS and so the reason that a person having AIDS is not safe from any other disease because the auto system of the body collapses.

Without the immune system nobody can survive because cascade of organism are present everywhere around you in abundant and you intake continuously but you don’t get sick. The immune system saves us from bacteria, fungi and viral diseases. Unfortunately, our institutions are also suffering from gangrene and AIDS. When one has gangrene then it is advisable to save the rest of the body. One has to cut of the effected part of the body as there is no other treatment. If one has the finger, legs, hands or any other part of the body and thinks that as this is his or her part of the body and it can be cured then the entire body will get affected with gangrene. Our institutions, say that those that are affected, are our part and have been misguided and can be convinced to return are not aware of the fact that there is no treatment for gangrene. One can only save the institutions by cutting off the affected gangrene parts to save the rest of the body. Now if you cut off the leg then you can still walk with a limp but will certainly remain alive and if not then you will not even be able to walk and also will not survive. If you want to save the institution then drastic and ruthless actions are needed and one has to take the bitter pill. For example, if the gangrene-affected part touches a piece of cloth then it has to be burnt and cannot and must not be washed. Again the affected part has to be cut off and no other solution. Similarly, in case of other such diseases, like chicken pox, it is also advisable to burn the piece of cloth that has come into contact with the affected person.

It is your duty to decide whether you want to cut gangrene part and save the body or keeping the gangrene part and destroying the whole body. This is not my decision – it is your decision.

Bahrain protests will go nowhere while the US supports its government

by Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Al-Khalifa family, who control Bahrain, has cracked down on dissent with little condemnation from the west

History and geography explain why Bahrain’s peaceful uprising was the early exception to the “Arab spring”, which began with high hopes in Tunisia and Egypt but now faces bloody uncertainties in Libya and Syria.

Sitting astride the faultline between the Shia and Sunni worlds, the small Gulf island state lies at the heart of a strategically sensitive region that is dominated by bitter rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia – both very tough neighbours. …

Read more: guardian.co.uk

Mercenaries for the Middle East – Dr Mohammad Taqi

The Saudis know that it is nearly impossible for any political uprising there to physically coalesce, due to the population centres being geographically far apart, to cause direct threat to Riyadh.

Foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of domestic policy, for it is conducted by the same ruling class and pursues the same historic goals”. — The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky

In his 1983 masterpiece, Can Pakistan survive? The death of a state, Tariq Ali opens the section on Pakistan’s foreign policy during the Z A Bhutto days with the above quote from Trotsky. After duly recognising the limitations of generalising this aphorism, Tariq Ali had noted that many third-world capitals pursue a foreign policy closely mirroring their domestic economic and political policies but perhaps none has done so more grotesquely than Islamabad. Tariq Ali had written:

“One of the commodities exported was labour, and the remittances sent back by migrant workers provided nearly 20 percent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. It was also reported that 10,000 Pakistani prostitutes had been dispatched to the Gulf states by the United Bank Limited (UBL), to strengthen its reserves of foreign currency. Soldiers and officers were also leased out as mercenaries to a number of states in that region. In some ways it was telling indictment of the Pakistani state that it can only survive by selling itself to the oil-rich sheikhs.”

The Pakistani military establishment’s cooperation with Arab dictators obviously dates back to the Ayub Khan era and the UK and US-sponsored Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) or Baghdad Pact of 1955. However, the surge in the export of mercenaries that Tariq Ali was alluding to was not because of the western sponsorship of such legions but because Pakistan, in 1971, had declared a moratorium on repayment of its foreign debt and had to look for financial aid elsewhere while the IMF would again agree to a loan (which it eventually did). While one cannot confirm the veracity of the claim about the UBL’s venture, the events of the last several months show that somehow the grotesque mediocrity of the Pakistani establishment keeps repeating its antics, as far as the export of the mercenaries goes.

The Arab spring has created unique geopolitical scenarios where old alliances are falling apart — or at least are no longer trustworthy — while new realities are taking shape much to the discontent of regional autocrats. I have repeatedly stated that Barack Obama’s instinct is to side with the democratic movements in the Middle East and North Africa, without intervening directly, even though cliques within his administration have been able to drag him into the Libyan morass. Obama’s handling of Hosni Mubarak’s fall did not go well with Saudi king Abdullah and the bitter exchange between the two, during a phone conversation, is rather well known. The wily Saudi monarch subsequently concluded that if there were to be an uprising in his courtyard, the Americans would not come to his rescue. And unless a smoking gun can be traced to Tehran, Abdullah is right. With Obama getting re-elected — yes I said it — in 2012, the Saudis have chosen to exercise other options that they have heavily invested in, for decades, to protect their courtyard and backyard.

The Saudis know that it is nearly impossible for any political uprising there to physically coalesce, due to the population centres being geographically far apart, to cause direct threat to Riyadh. But they also know that the democratic contagion can spread at the periphery of the Kingdom, with the oil-rich Eastern province slipping out of control quickly or the disquiet at the Yemeni border keeping Riyadh distracted (the latter was tested by both Gamal Nasser and Iran). The Saudi plan, just as in the 1969 bombing of Yemen by Pakistani pilots flying Saudi planes, is to use the trusted Pakistani troops to bolster the defence of not only the Saudi regime but of its client states like Bahrain.

It is not a surprise then that before Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain on March 13, 2011, the chief of Saudi Land Forces, General Abdul Rahman Murshid visited Pakistan and before that, on March 9, met General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Bahrain had already requested and received assurance for military help from Pakistan in late February 2011. In fact, a leading Urdu paper carried an advertisement from the Fauji Foundation Pakistan on February 25 and March 1, seeking men for recruitment to the Bahrain National Guard. The qualifications sought were the following: age 20-25, height of six-feet or taller and military/security service background especially in riot control, which suggest that enrolment was not exactly for the Manama Red Crescent Society.

After the Saudi army brutally crushed the uprising in Bahrain, the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, met with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the State Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. While the Bahraini media splashed pictures of the handshake between Ms Khar and Sheikh Khalid, announcing Pakistani support to Bahrain, the actual backing had been pledged by the Chief of General Staff, General Khalid Shamim Wayne, whom the Bahraini minster met on March 29.

In her article titled ‘Bahrain or bust?’, Miranda Husain writes: “Chomsky believes Pakistani presence in Bahrain can be seen as part of a US-backed alliance to safeguard western access to the region’s oil …The US has counted on Pakistan to help control the Arab world and safeguard Arab rulers from their own populations… Pakistan was one of the ‘cops on the beat’ that the Nixon administration had in mind when outlining their doctrine for controlling the Arab world.” Ms Husain and the American Baba-e-Socialism (Father of Socialism), Chomsky, conclude with the hope that Pakistan should not meddle in the Middle East.

I believe that Chomsky’s reading of the situation in the Persian Gulf is dead wrong. It is the divergence — not confluence — of US-Saudi-Pakistani interests that is the trigger for potential Pakistani involvement there. The Pakistani brass’ handling of the Raymond Davis affair and now its insistence — through bravado, not subtlety — on redefining the redlines with the US indicates that just like the 1971 situation, an alternative funding source to the IMF has been secured. The Pasha-Panetta meeting has raised more issues than it has solved. Pakistani-Saudi interests are at odds with the US and are confluent with each other.

From the Kerry-Lugar Bill to the Raymond Davis saga, the mullahs have been deployed swiftly to create an impression of public support for the establishment’s designs. Last Friday’s mobilisation of the religious parties in favour of the Saudis is the establishment’s standard drill and will be repeated as needed. The Pakistani deep state apparently has decided to keep selling itself to the oil-rich sheikhs. The domestic policy of coercion and chaos will be continued in foreign lands too.

Courtesy: Daily Times

Instead of becoming angry on the role of establishment and its agencies, Imran Khan, Jamaat-e-Islami & the rightious TV anchors are getting furious on the poor politicians!?

– Judiciary, Establishment and its pawns in the media

by Yousuf Nazar

It was not surprising that the Chief Justice of Lahore High Court did not even entertain an application against the release of Raymond Davis. If it was Sherry Rehman who had been acquitted from some trumped up charges, I wonder they would have taken suo moto action suspending the acquittal decision.

The ISI-CIA’s deal should highlight one thing to our TV channels and their anchors. The establishment and the ISI work very closely with America, more closely than the PPP government. And the judiciary works very closely with the establishment. If you are someone like Salmaan Tasser, who is not liked by the establishment, you risk losing your life and Islamic law would be cited in favor of the killer. But if one is really a CIA agent, “true Islamic law” is observed and he is released after paying money from a slush fund.

Would all TV anchors concede that all their anger at either the government or Americans misses the biggest link; the security establishment which has been and continues to be the biggest protector of American interests in Pakistan. If they have some ‘ghairat’ and true courage, they should interview Gen. K~~~i and Gen, Pa~~~a and ask questions about the nature and the extent of CIA’s operations in Pakistan and billions of dollars of arms purchases, their rationale, and their purchase mechanism, and commissions paid and received. These ‘super patriots’ should also be asked if they don’t want drone attacks, why don’t they shoot them down? But can they do that with the F-16s bought from their masters in Washington? It is about time we face the most bitter fact: the security establishment cannot protect national interests because it has compromised them by its old and huge dependence on American money and arms. Would people like Kamran Khan, Talat Hussain, Kashif Abbasi, Shahid Masood, and the rest of their colleagues ever muster the courage and acknowledge that or would continue to mislead the people of Pakistan?

Courtesy: Pakistani e-lists/ e-groups, Mar 18, 2011

IndianLeaks : If one Julian Assange is suppressed more Assange’s will be born world wide.

Julian Assange is arrested. But his influence can’t be arrested. Freedom of Press can’t be suppressed. Truth should be exposed, no matter how bitter it is.

A team of youngsters is launching this new web site ‘IndianLeaks’ to protest the arrest of Julian Assange. If one Julian Assange is suppressed more Assange’s will be born world wide. This website is proof for this.

Hereby we call all the Indians to expose the documents related to corruption, crime and other issues where Government, Politicians and Corporate world are in nexus. As it was mentioned in WikiLeaks, we also accept restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance. Please don’t send the documents which are not credible, or which are based on rumour, opinion, other kinds of first hand accounts or material that is publicly available elsewhere. Your documents should not have been published anywhere else in India or the world. Upload the documents you have. ….

Read more : IndianLeaks