Qadri case: Battle for the soul of Pakistan

 By Aftab Zaidi:
The reverberations of Justice Munir verdict in Maulvi Tameez uddin case are being felt even today. Every military coup was sanctioned and given a legal cover based on this faulty decision. The long lasting ill effects of this judgment were not realized at the time of its announcement. Similarly the outcome of the Mumtaz Qadri case will have profound impact on the future of this nation. The fact that an ex – Chief Justice of Lahore High Court has come forward to argue in favor of a self confessed killer is likely to put further strain on the judges. It appears that anything wrapped in a cloak of religiosity will even blind our arbitrators of justice. After the proclamation of the sentence; the anti terrorist court judge was hurriedly transferred to Lahore after his office was ransacked by a section of lawyers. There have already been violent protests all around the country condemning the verdict and calling for its commutation by the President. Clearly the protestors through their threats and aggressive gestures are trying to mould outcome of the case in their favor. Lately the courts have also been accused of releasing terrorist suspects. However the judges have defended the acquittals on the basis of lack of evidence provided by the prosecution. The Supreme Court in July ordered the release of Malik Ishaq; a dreaded sectarian killer. . He is the founder of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), which is aligned with al Qaeda along with Jandullah and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. He was implicated in 44 cases of culpable homicide and was acquitted in 34 of those cases. He was also allegedly accused of plotting terrorist plots from the confines of his jail room and indicted in planning and executing the terror attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team. It has already been reported that Malik Ishaq had in October 1997 admitted to an Urdu daily to being involved in the killing of over a 100 people. The sectarian temperature has also shot up in the aftermath of his release. There have already been two attacks on Shia Hazaras. On September 19, near the town of Mastung gunmen forced 40 Hazaras to disembark from a bus through which they were traveling to visit Holy sites in Iran; shot them at close range and fled the scene of the crime. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi later claimed responsibility for this attack. Ironically, Malik Ishaq has very close links with this sectarian organization. The releases of terrorist suspects by courts have been a recurring theme. This has happened despite the fact that mostly ordinary Pakistani citizens have bore the brunt of terror related causalities. A US State Department report in 2010 criticized Pakistan for failing to outlaw militant Islamic groups. It further complained that Pakistan’s acquittal rate of prosecuting suspected terrorists was approximately 75% culminating in release of three out of four defendants. The courts have also been instrumental in the release of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed; the controversial Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s Ameer who was also banned by a UN Security Council resolution. It is pertinent to mention that Mr. Saeed also led the funeral prayers for Osama Bin Laden after his death through a US Navy Seals operation. The Qadri case presents a very clear evidence of inherent flaws in religiously inspired laws. It also provides the courts with an opportunity to absolve them of the perception that the judges hold a soft corner for the Islamic militants. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear and cogent. However the stay of the sentencing by the Islamabad High Court has again sent the wrong signals. The fight is for the soul of Pakistan. Release of Qadri will have very serious ramifications for the coming generations. This will provide an explicit justification to commit such acts of brute violence in the name of religion. There is still time. The virus of religiously sanctioned killing is still in its embryonic stage. It should be nipped in the bud before it turns into an inferno and engulfing the entire society.

Aalu Andey vs Gandey Andey: A Tale of Two Videos

Raza Habib Raja
In the past few days, I have had the privilege of seeing two extraordinary videos, one of which spanned barely 3 minutes, and the other was a real brain tester, which lasted for over 30 minutes. The formats were very different, as one was a song, and the other was a television talk show. The schism and the contrast ran much much deeper than the formats, and yet in a strange paradoxical way, there were similarities and an ironical linkage between the two videos.
The thing which connected the two videos was that  in the first video, in just breath-taking three minutes, three aspiring musicians gave very credible reasons for what exactly was wrong with the second video. Both the videos were linked in another way: First featured a totally raw rock and roll band, and the second one had Pakistan’s premier vocalist, who once belonged to the most famous rock and roll band Pakistan has ever produced. Two set of musicians, belonging to the same genre, vastly different in experience, but furthest apart in their take on the socio-political scenario of Pakistan.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have posted the links so that you can independently judge yourselves also. The second video has not been posted in its entirety as I have only posted the most “important” portion
Aalu Anday
Ali Azmat with Luqmaan on Khari Baat
Regarding the first video, well I have never in my life seen a video in Pakistan, which within a span of merely three minutes, bares all the hypocritical instinctive foundations of our parallel universe. In those pulse fastening, bewildering, amazing three minutes three youngsters (one of them I happen to know personally also) beat the crap out of the whole right wing narrative. In lyrics, which were simple yet incisive, in a tone which was humorous yet dead serious, and in a video that had innuendos and yet was also so head on, the new group named as “Baighairat Brigade” (Dishonourable Brigade) showed everyone a mirror and showed what in essence honour meant. It showed us that honour is not delusional and misplaced self importance, which in essence is an outcome of our humongous failures in life to achieve anything in economic, cultural and development spheres, but it lies in acknowledging our shortcomings. The group did not try to indulge in some kind of pseudointellectual analysis through some heavy nonsensical words but in a simple intelligible language just sang through the plain facts. Yes, in order to bring out the absurdities they made sure to contrast between what was actually happening and what should actually happen. The following lyrics take the cake:
“Aithe Qadri Baran Nawab hai ithe Hero Ajmal Qasab hai, Mullah nasseya wich Hijab hai, ithe Abdul Salam nu Puchda Koi Nayee “
( Here the Mumtaz Qadri is treated like a Royal, Ajmal Qasab is a hero, the Mullah- the lal Masjid priest who preached about Jihad and yet was coward enough to run veiled as a woman when his own life was under threat- and yet Dr Abdul Salam, Pakistan’s only nobel laureate is being totally ignored just because of his Ahmedi faith)
All these sentences merely state the obvious and yet often denied facts, with the onus being as to how much misplaced heroes we have. In this regard, the contrast between terrorists, murderers and the completely disowned Doctor Abdul Salam was amazing. In merely ten seconds, the group said something which is so obvious and yet never acknowledged. Then the singer went on to poke fun at the rampant conspiracy theory culture particularly the Black Water obsession.
The video was made even more potent by some placards, one of which read: This video is funded by Zionists.
The second video is of a talk show where ace Pakistani singer- solo now- but once the part of the legendary Rock n Roll band Janoon, gave his unique “insight” as to what was wrong with Pakistan. I have over the time become quite accustomed to nonsense, which these talk shows utter but even by their standards, this was “exceptional”. God, Ali Azmat made even Zahid Hamid look like a credible commentator.
Mr. Ali Azmat’s thesis was that West had conspired against us to impose their cultural imperialism and in order to do that had rearranged their music frequency in such a way that it would create mass hypnotism. Mr. Azmat, claimed that everything, including Wall Sreet protest movements, were some sort of a grand conspiracy to take over the world with the ultimate objective to bolster consumerism to help struggling capitalism. And then, under active encouragement from Mubashir Luqman, the fiery host of the program, Ali Azmat went on to declare that everything happening in Pakistan was being directed by the imperial powers with the eventual aim of helping consumerism.
What was mocked at the first video was on full display in the second video. Yet both the videos were humorous though the latter only in its irony. First was a satire, and the second could only be termed as some sort of a black comedy, whch depicted as to how delusional we have become.
But despite everything, the first video has given a faint hope that may be some of us are realizing and therefore articulating of whatever is wrong with the content and intellectual thrust of the second video. And some how or the other, I want to hope because I have still not given up. As the torch of Political Rock N Roll passes to younger blood, some of whom have the nerves to finally say that should have been said long ago, there is every reason to believe that though in fringes, sanity still exists. Well Done Baighairat Brigade..You have  given us hope..And yes Daniyal, you have made me proud!!!!

A Double Whammy for the Cyber Army General

Slowly but surely the cyber army general, more popularly known as Zaid Hamid or “Sir” Zaid by his army of silk mustached self styled patriots or the bevy of monikers that circle around his red beret is clawing his way back to the limelight after his Yusuf Kazab association related lull. Yes, we’ll never let anyone forget of that shady association. Of late he’s been making all sorts of nasty waves by appearing on two high profile talkshows where he, in his inimitable audacious style, declares SAFMA as being funded by RAW and understandably enough invites a lawsuit for slander coming his way.
The blithe declaration came forth on that loud mouthed, attention hoor (feel free to use a w before hoor), khala kutni of an anchor Meher Bukhari’s hot show on Duniya TV. That particular show was dedicated to Nawaz Sharif expressing his amicable intentions towards the Indians and recognizing the possibility of a peaceful and prosperous future for Pakistan in the remote possibility of mending fences with India. Understandably, this scandalized the maulvi, fauji and red bereted guests on Meher Bukhari’s show to no end. Of course, Ms Bukhari has to maintain her loudmouthed image on TeeVee that warrants in them big fat pay cheques. All she has to do is pander to the lowest common denominator in the exceedingly conservative right winged populace by invoking the two nation theory mantra, the rattafied ideology of Pakistan in an inordinately high volume and practiced glares. The shrieks led on to Zaid Hamid do his slanderous act and playing the ham fisted defender of Iqbal’s Pakistan.
Here’s the unnecessary value added clip from youtube:
watch?v=LkWvsq53PQ0
The SAFMA slander got Zaid Hamid another gig at Shahid Masood’s latest reincarnation on ExpressNews, ever so modestly titled Shahidnama. As an aside, have you noticed how steadily self referential the title of each new version of his shows are becoming; Views on News (decent enough), Merey Mutabiq (inflated ego alert) and now Shahidnama (what’s next Shahid ki Shahid Dunya?)
Moving on, Dr Shahid invited Zaid Hamid to defend his position as Mr Slander Extraordinaire as well as Marvi Sirmed to provide the other perspective (read common sense) to the firebrand foil. Now it made for 45 odd minutes of rousing entertainment on TV but not without some reservation. For the moment let’s not talk of Zaid Hamid….he’s a stark raving loon. Dr Shahid on the other hand, as opposed to Meher Bukhari’s hysterical antics comes across as a mild mannered, genial enough individual. We are only speaking of appearances here.  At the start of the said show, he bemoans the lack of tolerance amongst the highly educated in our culture and the need for basing and argument over facts and reasoning. Very noble of him to acknowledge so but later on he keeps on egging the guests, steering and reducing the argument to a Raw agent vs ISI agent debacle. This isn’t anything new considering Dr Shahid’s track record for understated manipulative dishonesty.
Kudos to Marvi Sermad for whipping Zaid Hamid’s ass. Needless to say this was a gratifying TV moment. Yet I am not so sure if her choice of attire was any tactful in front of a bigot who’s looking for whatever minuscule excuse to label the opponent as the RAW/CIA/Zionist/Capitalist/Hindu/Buddhist/Communist etc etc agents he so clearly endears himself to. More importantly Marvi Sermad’s choice, while living up to her Baghi credentials, wouldn’t bode well with a significant section of the masses who lap up every word of history according to Nawa-i-waqt and Pak Studies curriculum.
You can see the whole splendorous episode starting from this clip thanks to our “choron sey hoshyar” friends on youtube.
watch?v=ENlWhhySHuU&feature=related

Are we innocent?

I.A Rehman 

The world’s conscience. It has also posed some extremely tough questions for European societies, the world’s Muslims in general, and the people of Pakistan in particular.

Europe will do itself and the world at large great injustice and harm if it dismisses the matter as the isolated work of a deranged mind. It must look deep into the factors that led to Anders Behring Breivik’s reliance on perverted intelligence.
The unpardonable doings of Al Qaeda, the other so-called jihadists and Muslim megalomaniacs have certainly contributed to the spread of Islamophobia in Europe and other parts of the western world, but it would be wrong to limit the list of culprits to them. It may be necessary to probe the extent to which the tone and tenor of the war on terror may have contributed to the growth of both militancy in parts of the Muslim world and reckless Muslim-bashing in the West. The idea is not to shift blame from one party to another, it is only a plea for keeping the indigenous sources of terrorism in Europe also in mind.
The world cannot possibly forget the rise of European fascism that built its power by fanning racism and persecuting certain religious and ethnic communities (Jews and Blacks). Nazism is a disease many parts of Europe are still afflicted with. The Norwegian people themselves have had anxieties about neo-Nazi and other extreme-right gangs for more than a decade.
These facts make it necessary for European societies to take note of elements who may be exploiting the public sentiment against terrorists and immigrants to impose on them new and more horrible forms of right-wing tyranny.
The leaders of Islamic thought and Muslim public opinion on their part cannot shun reality by simply telling the Europeans to put their house in order. Nor can they get away by declaring that terrorists constitute a small minority among Islamic scholars and lay Muslims both, however true this statement may be.
They must not ignore the high percentage of Muslims among the terrorists, nor the flurry of edicts issued by recognised Muslim authorities that not only condone and justify acts of terrorism, including the killing of innocent people in suicide bombings, but also exhort the believers to take part in such acts and win a place in paradise.
Regardless of the degree of the Muslim people’s involvement in terrorism that their ulema and political leaders may be prepared to concede, they have a duty to contribute to a solution to the problems created by groups and individuals claiming to be soldiers of Islam. The most important fact to be realised by the Muslim peoples is that they and their next generations will be the biggest losers if the mischief spread by their fanatic fringe is not quickly suppressed.
The people of Pakistan have to do more soul-searching than others because Breivik has blamed this country as the cause of his heinous crime. They should be shocked because besides being a responsible promoter of peace in the world, Norway has consistently been good to Pakistan. For many years, Norway has been helping Pakistan significantly in all areas of economic development, electoral reform, education, culture, heritage, women’s empowerment and human rights. It has been fair and generous to Pakistani immigrants who have been able to achieve distinction in Norwegian society and have been remitting sizeable funds to Pakistan year after year.
All this makes it necessary for Pakistan to make sure that the people of Norway are not influenced by the vitriolic outpourings of Breivik and the like. The critical question is: are we innocent? Can we say that we the Pakistanis have done nothing to offer neo-Nazis or other right-wing extremists an excuse to go out and massacre people?
One of the greatest ironies in the Pakistani people’s collective behaviour is that while the state is engaged in a grim battle with militants in religious garb and we keep telling the world of the number of lives we have lost, Pakistan has never challenged the so-called jihadis at the intellectual or even theological level. On the contrary, state institutions, political parties and the media have been promoting, some of them partly and casually and others wholly and by design, accommodation with terrorists, if not outright collusion with them. Is this not grist to the mills of hate the neo-Nazis are running across the globe?
Breivik has made a distinction between Pakistani immigrants who have integrated themselves with their host communities and those who haven’t. There is a need to look at the conduct of the latter. There have been occasions when Pakistanis have shocked the Norwegian authorities and citizens by killing a woman for ‘honour’, by abducting and forcibly marrying their daughters against their will, and by cheating Norwegian and Pakistani girls. The Norwegians, or any other host society for that matter, will have cause to consider such crimes as an abuse of hospitality and brand the whole Pakistani community as a pack of criminals and swindlers.
There is also need to take a look at the doings of Pakistani visitors to Norway who claim to be on religious missions. We have seen the havoc done in England by the so-called religious preachers. They have divided Muslim immigrant communities, fought battles to capture mosques, exploited the credulous ones and set up extortion rackets. Are Pakistani missions in Europe charged with the task of monitoring such unsavoury activities or with taking steps to ensure that Pakistanis in European countries respect the hosts’ laws and culture instead of propagating their dreams of world conquest?
Recently, the Norwegian public was considerably incensed when one of their nationals, Ehsan Arjumandi, was picked up, allegedly by security agencies in Balochistan, and all efforts by the Norwegian government to have him recovered failed to elicit from Pakistani authorities a response the matter warranted. The publicity this case received in Norway could not have presented Pakistan and its people as friendly, or even responsible, actors. These matters not only bring a bad name to Pakistan, they frighten away investors and traders and materially affect its economic interests.
Of course, the agent of death on the small Norwegian island was not a Pakistani; nor were his weapons of Pakistani origin. But it is very difficult to say that Pakistanis have made no contribution towards making the world increasingly unsafe for the human family. Will history pronounce us innocent? Let all Pakistanis ponder and find a way to avoid being treated as international pariahs. There are quite a few lessons we may learn from the spirit of discipline and forbearance the Norwegian people have demonstrated in their hour of unmitigated tragedy.

Pakistan’s identity crisis

by Shafqat Aziz

Flawed and imaginary Arabized identity has become the biggest curse for Pakistani nation. The sickening ideologies emanated from this flawed identity are now posing grave threats to world peace and the very existence of the country itself 
“These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so depended on them. That's institutionalized.” --Morgan Freeman as Red in Shawshank Redemption
Pakistan is the primary and worst victim of institutionalized falsehood. How ironic is the fact that the ‘fabrication gurus’ had to concoct so-called ‘Ideology of Pakistan” long after the inception of Pakistan. The chauvinistic and undemocratic mindset, right from the beginning, had a realization the powers will have to be conceded to people if a genuine democracy takes root in newly emerged state.
To keep a tight grip on power and to keep the masses enslaved, a mind control strategy was sought through systematic and institutionalized indoctrination by the crooks at helm of the affairs, especially feudal cum politicians and civil bureaucracy. At that particular time, the military and mullah were ‘dragged into game’ as junior partners, where the later was to act us ‘paid propagandist’ to divert people from real to ‘non-issues’.
The unscrupulous feudal cum politicians had to rely on the ‘muscle power’ of military while confronting the challenge of growing dissenting voices. Thus, it provided an opportunity to military establishment to take the plunge and modify its role from a ‘junior partner’ to a ‘big boss’.
The civil and military establishments both resorted in appeasing the mullah to consolidate their illegitimate regimes. Consequently, the mullah exploited the situation to advance his own agenda. This agenda was (is) based on pan-Islamism and it was the very reason that the mullah had opposed the separation of the Sub-continent earlier. Furthermore, he deemed it a perfect opportunity to avenge his earlier defeats.
However, it was not only typical mullah who played religious cards to advance his agenda. It was a great irony of the history that Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of the nation and a man with all the secular credentials and liberal in life style resorted in religious rhetoric to popularize his movement for a separate Muslim state. The history repeated itself when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, another man in modern outlook betrayed his progressive supporter and thus, opened ‘hell gates’ of extreme religiosity, inflicted on the people by then military dictator Gen. Zia.
While refusing to learn a lesson from the separation of Bangladesh which was also a big blow to the notion that religion can be a binding force of diverse ethnic and cultural groups, the Pakistani establishment thus intensified its institutionalized efforts of carving out a flawed and concocted identity of the country as well as its people.
The establishment was desperate to paint a false identity fearing that the flourishing democracy on the other side of the border may ultimately devour their hegemonic rule. The power hungry establishment was also aware of the fact that the religious euphoria could not really cater to the needs of the all ethnic and cultural groups living in its territory.
Therefore, it was decided to instill this false identity by means of all sorts of coercion and manipulation, including enactment of discriminatory and draconian laws against the minorities and women, changing curricula with infusion of hate speeches, violence and extremely bigoted and intolerant worldview and patronizing violent extremist religious groups.
Besides, the state initiated ruthless Arabization (as newly found identity) of society on the cost of the Baloch, Sindhi, Pashtoon, Punjabi, Saraiki and other indigenous identities. The new imposed Arabized identity had some distinct features i.e. 1-detachment from South Asia and attachment with Middle East, 2-self-hatred (showing distain towards South Asian ancestry and obsessed efforts of tracing genealogy in Arabia, Central Asia or Iran) and love for foreign invaders of the past and sympathies with global jihadists of the present.
Today, this flawed and imaginary Arabized identity has become the biggest curse for Pakistani nation. The sickening ideologies emanated from this flawed identity are now posing grave threats to world peace and the very existence of the country itself. But the people of Pakistan are still not ready to determine who their real enemy is. They are totally oblivious of the history of Sub-continent prior to Arabian invasion on this soil led by Mohammad bin Qasim.
This flawed identity is one of the biggest contributors in widespread confusion in the society about the real enemy. The people of Pakistan, in general, have developed sympathies for Jihadist terrorists as they have a feeling of shared identity with them. Thus, the nation is fighting this battle half heartedly. This identity crisis has produced a population which is falling fast into hypocrisy and double standards.
The people of Pakistan want to emulate Arabs in every sphere of life but at other hand, their social ethos, family system and values all are deeply rooted in their South Asian identity and they have a strange love-hate relationship with this identity. The collective guilt of living “immoral” or un-Islamic (on South Asian ethos) lives is pushing them towards more religiosity and thus more isolation and self-hatred.
As a result of this identity crisis, deliberate disconnect with the past, twisted and biased history and being part of illusionary ‘Umma’, majority of the Pakistanis are living in a state of deep confusion and denial. Thus, they resort in supremacist religious ideologies and glorification of the invaders, just to soothe their bruised but inflated egos. This persistent state of denial, bigotry and confusion is resulting as irrational, extreme and violent behaviors.

The inability to comprehend the concepts of a nation state, modernity, equality and pluralism has made the perplexed Pakistani nation incompatible with modern world. Hence, the only areas where they are far ahead of other nations are massive corruption, extremism, violence and terrorism. The feature scenario also seems bleak as any critical thinking is immediately threatened with life. There is a serious and dire need to revive local (South Asian) identities and to return to a pluralist society which has a history of thousands of years in the Sub-continent.

Shafqat Aziz a socio-political analyst based in Islamabad. He is founding member of the online community “Liberal Pakistan”.

Our collective psychosis

 

 

By Raza Rumi

Pakistan’s right wing has flourished on the crutches of a national security doctrine: A world view, which prioritises paranoia and ‘security’ of ideological and geographical frontiers. Never mind if the majority of Pakistanis have no access to water and sanitation or the public education and health systems have virtually collapsed. The events of May 2011 cast a long shadow over the merits of investing in security institutions and fuelling patriotism with conspiracies.
First, the poster-Shaikh of anti-Americanism has been ‘eliminated’ when the mighty guardians were asleep. The new round of WikiLeaks cables reveals anecdotal evidence of civil-military acquiescence to the grand designs of ‘evil’ America, including the nasty drones that kill civilians. And now, the latest attack on a well-guarded naval base and destruction of high-value military equipment has jolted us all.
During May, the militant networks ostensibly inspired by the nihilistic al Qaeda ideology have stepped up acts of terrorism across the country. Yet, the response of the Pakistani right remains locked in the folds of ‘foreign conspiracy’ and fails to review what really ails the polity. The enemy within is still far from being recognised. Even the politicians who are calling for military accountability have little to say about the jihadis waging war against Pakistanis.
It does not matter much when we find out through WikiLeaks that the brotherly countries — Saudia Arabia and United Arab Emirates — and their rich citizens finance terrorist networks. Worse, when the UAE proceeds to hire Blackwater for security, few ‘patriots’ complain. Until yesterday, Blackwater was responsible for all the terror attacks in Pakistan according to the media mujahideen. Even the former chief justice of the Lahore High Court directed the Punjab Police to investigate the role of Blackwater in perpetrating suicide attacks on the widely revered Data Darbar.
I guess Blackwater is kosher now, since a brotherly Arab country has hired its service. Our collective habit of finding bogeys and imagining enemies has turned into a deep psychosis. Many Pakistanis believe that Osama was not there in the Abbottabad compound. Urdu press and TV channels augment this world view and politicians play up the insecurity mantra. The parliamentary resolution of May 12 is another exercise in this collective search for sovereignty, glory and honour. Alas, these days glory is achieved through human development, through trade and investment and not empty rhetoric citing the glorious past of the Muslims.
It is therefore understandable that the oracles on TV sets are blaming the US-India-Israel axis for the attacks on the Mehran Naval Base by chanting the ‘who benefits’ mantra. Now, the Pakistani mind is convinced that the May events are a prelude to a forthcoming attack on our nuclear assets. We are gifted with too many assets: Dozens of militant groups, two Taliban streams and, of course, the nuclear weapons, which will have to be guarded. Never mind the people of this country. They are dispensable as long as honour is preserved. It is time to address the mythologies we have constructed and deal with ourselves before we ‘defeat’ the enemies.

The writer is consulting editor, The Friday Times. 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2011.

Meet the new apologists on Pakistan TV channels

By Zia Ahmad
We are already familiar with the rants and tirades of Taliban apologists on TV screens and Op-ed pieces. Enter the Pak Army apologizers. Since the May 2 Abbottabad incident, this lot has come to fore defending, justifying and making excuses for the khakis.
Hasb-e-Haal has been a well received TV show which has enjoyed more than two years of popularity with the masses, owing more to Sohail Ahmed’s alter ego Azizi than the trite and self righteous antics of the respective host. Sure the show’s funny and offers a searing indictment of the social ills and the frustrating corruption and ineptitude of our public institutions and politicians, though it retains a mindset that is borderline reductive and xenophobic.
Of late, since the May 2 Abbottabad incident to be specific, the host Junaid Saleem has been unusually touchy with the fingers pointing at the efficiency of our armed forces. Consider the opening clip from last night’s show where he broached the accusations hurled at khakis after the PNS Mehran attack:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REulLJ90m8I

Observe how the host coyly starts offering his opinion on the Mehran attack. A certain convention of the show is to have Azizi refer Junaid Saleem as a Danishwer (scholar) whereas Mr Saleem is expected to play the straight foil to Azizi’s jester. Being the writer of the show himself, the self serving antic may seem rather bloated but since “public” enjoys it so why should I be a spoil sport.
So Azizi cajoles the host to offer his take on the debacle. Mr Saleem prances around for a good two minutes (doing his weakest best to appear neutral) before really saying what he wants to say or what his phantom handlers want him to say demonstrating all the requisite shrieks and bouts of hysteria.

Pakistan’s State of Nature

By AA Khalid
The Hobbesian Narrative
Hobbes is perhaps the most important political philosopher Pakistanis concerned about their country should be reading. Of course it will require a ‘’Desification’’ (or ‘’Pakistanization) of the man’s central work, ‘’The Leviathan’’. The Islamic tradition too has works of political philosophy, we think of Al Farabi, who applied the utopian understanding of Plato’s Republic (the rule of the Philosopher King) to the prophetic experience of the Prophet of Islam as a pre-eminent example.
Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajja were more realistic if not pessimistic about politics than Farabi’s enthusiastic application of political Platonism. In fact Tufayl and Bajja seek to return to another strand of the Platonic tradition which is more pessimistic and realistic. For Plato knowledge was power and that is why the Philosopher the individual who possessed that greatest of intellect should rule and be king. However, in another tradition of Platonic theorizing, it is realised the great Philosopher is corrupted by the machinations of politics and inevitably his ideals are sacrificed at the altar of political power. Ibn Bajja’s The Governance of the Solitary is such a work, which is concerned about securing the happiness and integrity of the philosopher in the midst of corruption and strife. Or what about that great philosophical novel, ‘’Hayy ibn Yaqazan’’, where the hero of the philosopher Hayy realises that the greatest and most profound truths of philosophy and faith can never find practical application in the real world because as is the case in modern politics the politican will always manipulate simplistic and populist emotion against the beautifully constructed systems of the philosopher. Both Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Bajja conclude that the philosopher must isolate himself from the world and inevitably the great truths of the sages, philosophers, mystics and rationalists will never find true expression in the real world. To pursue the ‘’Platonic Ideal’’ is a vain pursuit.
There are other great philosophers to consider such as Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina. Likewise, we should consider the Islamic tradition as part of the Greek tradition of political philosophy.
But Hobbes’s work speaks with a profound resonance that one can find etched into Pakistan’s political history. Hobbes ‘’philosophical anthropology’’ shaped his pessimistic consideration of human nature and gave the moral substance of his liberalism. Whereas liberalism is always associated with an optimistic faith in human progress and reason, Hobbes’s liberalism is born out of the trials and tribulations of human suffering and existential pessimism.
This passage that Hobbes wrote in the Leviathan postulating about the existence of mankind in a ‘’State of Nature’’ has profound meaning for Pakistanis struggling to make sense of the anaemic civic and democratic organs of the Pakistani State:
‘’Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’’
And:
‘’ Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.’’
But we can take issue with Hobbes’s assertion that life is ‘’solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’’. Life in Pakistan is anything but solitary, in a country where clan, tribe and ethnicity as well as feudal and class status (not to mention the existence of the Pakistani caste system) life is a constant trial of membership and trust that one must invest with their respective social group to make any sort of living. Life therefore is poor, nasty, brutish and short but it is not solitary. In Pakistan life is communal and it is from this communality that we derive the brutality, the destruction and the conflict. It is a constant conflict between different groups of the social structure rather than individuals.
As such with the absence of the modern nation state and the rule of law these groups operate virtually in a state of war as seen in the ethnic sectarianism tearing apart Karachi. Pakistan internally is in a neo-Hobbesian state of war. Neo-Hobbesian because the communal dimension of Pakistani public life is something not touched upon by Hobbes, but it is a perfectly logical extension to make.
Absence of Ideology
The failure in Pakistan is a failure of ideology – because there never has been a free exchange of ideas in Pakistan, there never has been any ideological contestation. The major sources of party conflicts in politics are found in family feuds, feudal rivalries and ethnic division. The major conflict in Pakistani politics is between the Zardari/Bhutto clan and the Sharif brothers. There is no universal ideological narrative – everything is constructed on the basis of family name, feudal affiliation and ethnic status. In Pakistan civil war is played out in the democratic process – it is perhaps the formality of the electoral process which prevents outright intra-warfare between different social groups. The party system in Pakistan reflects the essentially tribal nature of Pakistani political culture.
As such labels such as ‘’secular’’, ‘’liberal’’, ‘’progressive’’, ‘’democratic’’ and other categories of modern political philosophy make no sense when applied to Pakistani politics. It is fruitless to talk about ‘’liberals’’ v ‘’conservatives’’ because that was never the conflict in Pakistan.
As such the reductive and simplistic schemes put forward by some commentators on the role of religion in Pakistani public life is unfounded. The great strife and crisis of the Pakistani State has never been to do with religion directly but rather the failure to establish a civic identity and a workable nation-state. It is the machinations of clan, tribe, ethnicity, feudalism and class that determine the major urban conflicts in Pakistan. Religion has been fused with the Machiavellianism of the Pakistani Army to stay in control – religion has always been used cynically in Pakistani society. But if we even imagined a Pakistan without Islam the same problems would still exist today. That is because religious extremism in Pakistan is something not organic to traditional Pakistani society – it has taken a generation of social engineering by the Pakistani Army to produce the sort of religious extremism we see today and still the religious parties in this country do not have any success in the political process. Observers such as Tariq Ali have noted that it is amazing that a theocratic Islamist revolution has not taken over Pakistan given the socio-economic crippling of the Pakistani state, the theological depravity and social engineering of the Army.
Religious radicalism in Pakistan is anarchic it simple exists not only to overthrow the State but undermine the whole structural logic of the Pakistani Hobbesian scheme. The religious radicals can never be successful in taking over Pakistan because of the culture of feudal, ethnic politics and patronage that not only acts as a buffer against religious extremism but also against liberal reforms.
From Geneva to Islamabad
Pakistan is neither a theocracy, a democracy nor any other discernable modern political organism. It is a neo-Hobbesian creature that trundles along with the social glue provided by ethnicity, provincialism, feudal patronage, Army intervention, tribal affiliation and all the associated pre-modern forms of deliberation, negotiation and conflict that defines everyday Pakistani life.
The real crux of the matter in Pakistan is not the unsustainable and in many ways imported religious radicalism from the hard shores of the House of Saud – because this form of extremism is anarchic and in many ways resembles the untenable experiments of European puritans such as Calvin.
Today we see the city of Geneva as the quintessential embodiment of European secularism and social democracy. But Geneva was once the theocratic stronghold of the Protestant Reformation under Calvin. Calvin’s new and charismatic brand of Protestant faith challenged the clerical authority of the Catholic Church but only so that he could implement his vision of clerical rule.
In Calvin’s theocracy we find the same sort of puritanical measures carried out by the modern day Taliban and Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia. A ban on the arts, culture, freedom of expression and an emphasis on strict religious observance which was forced and an insistence on keeping to laws of blasphemy. Calvinism too was based on an absolute and literal understanding of the sovereignty of God and in many ways this deviated from classical Christian understanding as does the understand of the Wahabbi theologians today which echoes the anarchistic theology of the early Kharijites.
The Kharijite understanding was shunned by the classical tradition of Islamic philosophy and law but it nevertheless has had influence on the modern theocratic Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and Maududi. Where else did the popular slogan of, ‘’ ‘La hukm illa lillah’’come from, which was the essential creed of the Kharijites. This completely went against the teaching on human agency, human fallibility and the imperfection of human nature taught not only by the Sufi mystics, later Islamic philosophers but also by legal theorists like Abu Hanifa who always accepted that his judgements were only fallible opinions and that people could always challenge his legal rulings.
This brief comparative illustration indicates that modern Islam is undergoing a crisis of authority and many of the actions and beliefs seen today in the Muslim World go against the conclusions and scholastic method of the classical Islamic tradition.
From Utopian Ashes To Religious Secularism
Today we are seeing a total breakdown of classical Islam and we should accept that the classical Islamic tradition is all but dead. What has replaced it is a scary and shallow populist charisma espoused by the likes of Maududi and Qutb who never received rigorous classical Islamic training. In many ways the memberships of the theocratic Islamist followers surprisingly come from secular backgrounds. The vast majority of Islamist movements today are not made up of clerics but rather from Muslims with a secular background who are doctors, lawyers and middle class professionals.
But out of the failures of Protestant utopianism and I believe out of the ashes of Pakistan’s unusually violent brand of anarchic theocratic Islamism will arise a religious secularity. American theologians like Roger Williams and European religious intellectuals like John Locke realised out of experience and applying Hobbes philosophical anthropology that Church and State had to be separated to save religion from power hungry tyrants. In the end what can and what is emerging throughout the Muslim World is a distinctly religious understanding of secularism.
A religious logic of secularism arises out of the ashes of religious utopianism. The European experience and more so the American experiences document how religious traditions articulated the powerful moral intuitions associated with liberty, democracy and secularism. It was the success of the theologians and religious intellectuals of America particularly that popularised an accessible understanding of democracy, secularism and liberty.
It is a fact of life as Bertrand Russell said, ‘’ The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.’’
The social contract theory of the Enlightenment theorists and philosophers is not the reason why most Americans have a deep moral attachment to democracy and liberty. It is because the religious traditions of American have powerfully articulated the moral values required for democratic practice, citizenship skills and given ideas of liberty and secularism a deep moral significance for many Americans. For many like de Tocqueville in his work ‘’Democracy in America’’, it is the biblical theory of Covenant rather than social contract theory which affirms democracy in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
Fundamentalism – A Product of Modernity
As Ashish Nandy has remarked modern day religious fundamentalist movements mark a total break from the scholastic and theological traditionalism of classical religious learning. Hindutva, Zionism , theocratic Islamism are all expression of identity politics couched in religious imagery by individuals who essentially come from secular backgrounds.
Theodor Herzl (the father of Zionism) and Maududi (father of Pakistani theocratic Islamism) were both journalists who came from secular backgrounds but gravitated towards being amateur theologians who mixed powerful religious imagery with clearly secular political goals. Fundamentalism as Khaled Abou El Fadl remarks is a an ‘’orphan of modernity’’.
We are passing through a period of breakdown in the history of Islam in the Pakistani region of the sub-continent. In India and other parts of the Muslim World the story is completely different. In other parts of the world such as Tunisia we have liberal theology flourishing with the likes of Rachid Al Ghannouchi who promote a form of Islamic liberalism. Egypt is more complex – because there are competing theologies such as the Salafis, Islamic liberals, Islamic constitutionalists, legalists, conservatives, pragmatists, reformers and followers of televangelists such as Amr Khaled. The conclusion is that every Muslim society is experiencing some sort of transformation but there are no grand sweeping narratives that can be imposed on each one. Pakistan is in many ways an anomaly in the Muslim World – there is only a crude form of religious anarchism, because the religious liberals and moderates have been persecuted through the instruments and proxies of the Army.
The Army’s State of Nature
The real problem in Pakistan is the role of the Army in public life. This is the elephant in the room that not many Pakistanis talk about. In the English press there are plenty of articles found on criticising the religious establishment but you will not find many criticising the Army directly.
The clerics and madrassas have marginal influence on the daily political discourse in Pakistan. The areas of concentrated political power do not reside with the clerics but within the fierce competition between different social groups. The decline and decay of Karachi is testament to this fact where ethnic sectarianism has destroyed the civic fabric of that city.
We have been looking at the wrong things. The powers of the clerics today, the rise of religious radicalism are all symptoms not causes. The causes lie in the peculiar logic of Pakistani political culture that frustrates and blocks any liberal reform, the causes lie in the failure of the political parties in Pakistan which are nepotistic and despotic, the cause lies in the failure of Pakistani democracy and with the fantastical success of the Pakistani Army that has managed to stay in power through any means necessary. The brutish and neo-Hobbesian nature of the Pakistani political and social fabric is the cause. The reason for today’s ills is because Pakistan has been in a ‘’State of Nature’’, where the sovereignty of the State has been replaced by the Machiavellian logic of Pakistani Army. The Army has played its role in staying in power magnificently by clearly understanding the social logic of the Pakistan and by manipulating the Islamist movements. But of late that tightrope of deceit that the Army tread along has unravelled but for all intents and purposes it seems the Army will consolidate its position again.
The sort of religious thinking present in Pakistan is a symptom of what has gone wrong rather than a cause. It is symptom of the post-colonial failures in Pakistan. When we speak to the older generation they remark with great astonishment the social transformations that have taken place when it comes to faith in Pakistan. The Army’s social engineering has fundamentally altered and distorted religious discourse in this country. Add to this new information from the Wikileaks cables which suggest that clerics in the Punjab have received millions of dollars of funding from the Saudis and UAE and you realise that much of the social transformations that have taken place with regards to faith have been all imported rather than the result of indigenous organic evolution.
The new Wikileaks Pakistan Papers documents the neo-Hobbesian nature of this nation in its full and unrelenting glory. Kayani calls for more drone attacks, Zardari treats the PPP as a play-thing and whoever pleases can come and buy up the allegiance of the Army for the right price of course. How else can we explain the millions of dollars pouring in from the Saudis and UAE into clerical institutions – this can only happen under the auspices of the Army.
Questioning needs to be directed at the centres of concentrated power in Pakistan – it is only recently that the clerics have become such a centre after decades of being sponsored by the Army. Pakistan is a hard country where the real dynamic forces are those of manipulation, ruthless power grabbing and cold calculated political consolidation. The Army and its Generals are ruthlessly utilitarian when it comes to how many Pakistani lives are lost – for them Pakistani lives are mere pennies in the grand calculus of profit.
Beyond the chaos there is a frightening control exerted by the Army, with General Kayani sitting as the unquestionable Pharaoh of Pakistan, who merely chuckles at the bickering of the civilian politicians and humours the democratic system. For all those calling for the Army to enter into a political settlement with civilian there is absolutely no incentive for the Army to do such a thing.

Myth-busting the Bangladesh war of 1971

An author discusses her new book about the historical narratives of the 1971 civil war that broke up East Pakistan. Sarmila Bose

Guerilla fighters of the Mukti Bahini prepare to bayonet men who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during East Pakistan's fight to become the independent state of Bangladesh [GALLO/GETTY] Last month, Al Jazeera published an article entitled Book, film greeted with fury among Bengalis. Here, Sarmila Bose, author of Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, responds to the criticism levelled at her work. In all the excitement about the "Arab spring" it is instructive to remember the 1971 war in South Asia. Then too there was a military regime in Pakistan, easily identified as the "baddies" -  and a popular uprising in its rebellious Eastern province, where Bengali nationalists were reported to be peacefully seeking freedom, democracy and human rights. When the regime used military force to crush the rebellion in East Pakistan, India intervened like a knight to the rescue, resulting in the defeat of the bad guys, victory for the good guys and the independence of Bangladesh... Or so the story went for forty years. I grew up with it in Calcutta. It was widely repeated in the international press. Several years ago I decided to chronicle a number of incidents of the 1971 war in-depth. I observed that many Bangladeshis were aggrieved that the world seemed to have forgotten the terrible trauma of the birth of their nation. Given the scale of the suffering, that lack of memory certainly appeared to be unfair, but there did not seem to be many detailed studies of the war - without which the world could not be expected to remember, or understand, what had happened in 1971. My aim was to record as much as possible of what seemed to be a much-commented-on but poorly documented conflict - and to humanise it, so that the war could be depicted in terms of the people who were caught up in it, and not just faceless statistics. I hoped that the detailed documentation of what happened at the human level on the ground would help to shed some light on the conflict as a whole. The principal tool of my study was memories. I read all available memoirs and reminiscences, in both English and Bengali. But I also embarked on extensive fieldwork, finding and talking to people who were present at many particular incidents, whether as participants, victims or eye-witnesses. Crucially, I wanted to hear the stories from multiple sources, including people on different sides of the war, so as to get as balanced and well-rounded a reconstruction as possible. As soon as I started to do systematic research on the 1971 war, I found that there was a problem with the story which I had grown up believing: from the evidence that emanated from the memories of all sides at the ground level, significant parts of the "dominant narrative" seem not to have been true. Many "facts" had been exaggerated, fabricated, distorted or concealed. Many people in responsible positions had repeated unsupported assertions without a thought; some people seemed to know that the nationalist mythologies were false and yet had done nothing to inform the public. I had thought I would be chronicling the details of the story of 1971 with which I had been brought up, but I found instead that there was a different story to be told. Product of research My book Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, the product of several years of fieldwork based research, has just been published (Hurst and Co. and Columbia University Press). It focuses on the bitter fratricidal war within the province of East Pakistan over a period of a little more than a year, rather than the open "hot" war between India and Pakistan towards the end. It brings together, for the first time, the memories of dozens of people from each side of the conflict who were present in East Pakistan during the war. It lets the available evidence tell the stories. It has been described as a work that "will set anew the terms of debate" about this war. Even before anyone has had the chance to read it, Dead Reckoning has been attracting comment, some of it of a nature that according to an observer would make the very reception of my book a subject of "taboo studies". "Myth-busting" works that undermine nationalist mythology, especially those that have gone unchallenged for several decades, are clearly not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted. The book has received gratifying praise from scholars and journalists who read the advance copies, but the word "courageous" cropped up with ominous frequency in many of the reviews. Some scholars praised my work in private; others told me to prepare for the flak that was bound to follow. One "myth-busting" scholar was glad my book was out at last, as I would now sweep up at the unpopularity stakes and she would get some respite after enduring several years of abuse. Scholars and investigative journalists have an important role in "busting" politically partisan narratives. And yet, far too often we all fall for the seductive appeal of a simplistic "good versus evil" story, or fail to challenge victors' histories. So far the story of valiant rebels fighting oppressive dictators in the so-called "Arab spring" has had one significant blemish - the vicious sexual attack and attempted murder of CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan by dozens of men celebrating the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square in Cairo. It initially vanished from the headlines and has still not led to the kind of questioning of the representation of such conflicts that it should have generated. "Tahrir Square" became shorthand for freedom and democracy-loving people rising up against oppressive dictators. People in other countries started to say they wanted their own "Tahrir Square". Logan has given a brave and graphic account of what happened to her at the hands of those supposedly celebrating the fall of a dictator and the coming of freedom, democracy and human rights. Her life was saved by burqa-clad Egyptian women and she was rescued by soldiers. Her account endows "Tahrir Square" with an entirely different meaning. It should caution us against assuming that all those opposing an oppressive regime are champions of non-violence, democracy or human rights. It should alert us to the complexities of political power struggles and civil war, and stop getting carried away by what we imagine is happening, or would like to happen, rather than what the evidence supports. Such was the impact of the 1971 war on South Asians that the year has transformed into a shorthand for its particular symbolism: 1971, or ekattor, the number 71 in Bengali, has come to stand for a simple equation of a popular nationalist uprising presumed to embody liberal democratic values battling brutal repression by a military dictatorship. But was it really as simple as that? Over time, the victorious Bangladeshi nationalist side's narrative of Pakistani villainy and Bengali victimhood became entrenched through unquestioned repetition. The losing side of Pakistani nationalists had its own myth-making, comprising vast Indian plots. Pakistan had been carved out of the British Empire in India as a homeland for South Asia's Muslims. It was a problematic idea from the start - a large proportion of Muslims chose to remain in secular and pluralistic India, for instance, and its two parts, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, were separated by a thousand miles of a hostile India. In 1971 the idea of Islam as the basis of nationhood came apart in South Asia along with the country of Pakistan, after a mere 23 years of existence. What went wrong? And what do the memories of those who were there reveal about the reality of that war? The publication of Dead Reckoning has spoiled the day for those who had been peddling their respective nationalist mythologies undisturbed for so long. Careers have been built - in politics, media, academia and development - on a particular telling of the 1971 war. All the warring parties of 1971 remain relentlessly partisan in recounting the conflict. As the dominant narrative, which has gained currency around the world, is that of the victorious Bangladeshi nationalists and their Indian allies, they stand to lose the most in any unbiased appraisal. Unsurprisingly therefore, the protests from this section are the shrillest. Mixed reaction The reaction to the publication of Dead Reckoning by those who feel threatened by it has followed a predictable path. First, there has been an attempt to damn the book before it was even available. Apart from random rants on the internet - which provides opportunity for anyone to rail against anything - reports have been written by people who haven't read the book, citing other people who also haven't read the book. The reason for this may be summed up as the well-founded fear of "knowledge is power". When people read the book they will be far better informed as to what really happened in 1971. Hence the desperate attempt by those who have been spinning their particular yarns for so long to try to smear the book before anyone gets the chance to read it. A few people also seem to be trying to laud the book before reading it, an equally meaningless exercise. These commentaries are easy to dismiss: clearly, those who haven't read the book have nothing of value to say about it. Second, detractors of the book claim that it exonerates the military from atrocities committed in East Pakistan in 1971. In reality the book details over several chapters many cases of atrocities committed by the regime's forces, so anyone who says it excuses the military's brutalities is clearly lying. The question is - why are they lying about something that will easily be found out as soon as people start reading the book? The answer to this question is more complex than it might seem. Of course the detractors hope that by making such claims they will stop people from reading the book. Part of the answer lies also in that the book corrects some of the absurd exaggerations about the army's actions with which Bangladeshi nationalists had happily embellished their stories of "villainous" Pakistanis for all these years. But an important reason for falsely claiming that the book exonerates the military is to distract attention from the fact that it also chronicles the brutalities by their own side, committed in the name of Bengali nationalism. The nature and scale of atrocities committed by the "nationalist" side had been edited out of the dominant narrative. Its discovery spoils the "villains versus innocents" spin of Bangladeshi nationalist mythology. A key question about the "controversy" over Dead Reckoning is why this book is stirring such passions when other works do not. One reason for this is that there are precious few studies of the 1971 war based on dispassionate research. This is the first book-length study that reconstructs the violence of the war at the ground-level, utilising multiple memories from all sides of the conflict. Two eminent US historians, Richard Sisson and Leo Rose, published the only research-based study of the war at the diplomatic and policy level twenty years ago. Their excellent book, War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (University of California Press, 1990), challenged the dominant narrative, but their work does not seem to be known among the general public as much as within academia. However, a crucial reason for the special impact of Dead Reckoning has to do with who the author is. I am a Bengali, from a nationalist family in India. As Indians and Bengalis our sympathies had been firmly with the liberation struggle in Bangladesh in 1971. The dominant narrative of the 1971 war is the story as told by "my side", as it were. My reporting of what I actually found through my research, rather than unquestioningly repeating the partisan narrative or continuing the conspiracy of silence over uncomfortable truths, is thus taken as a "betrayal" by those who have profited for so long from mythologising the history of 1971. It is important to note that not all South Asians subscribe to the myth-making. One eminent Indian journalist thought that my "courage, disregard for orthodoxy and meticulous research" in writing Dead Reckoning made me "the enfant terrible of Indian historians". A senior Bangladeshi scholar has found it "fitting that someone with Sarmila's links with Bengali nationalism should demonstrate that political values cannot be furthered by distorting history." South Asians are prone to conjuring up all manner of conspiracy theories when faced with unpleasant realities, but those looking for one for Dead Reckoning are at a loss, as the only explanation for what it contains is that it reconstructs what really happened on the basis of available evidence. The process of dismantling entrenched nationalist mythologies can be painful for those who have much vested in them, but the passions stirred by the publication of Dead Reckoning has sparked the debate that the 1971 war badly needed - and set on the right course the discussion of this bitter and brutal fratricidal war that split the only homeland created for Muslims in the modern world. Sarmila Bose is Senior Research Fellow in the Politics of South Asia at the University of Oxford. She was a journalist in India for many years. She earned her degrees at Bryn Mawr College (History) and Harvard University (MPA and PhD in Political Economy and Government.) Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War is published by C. Hurst and Co. and Columbia University Press. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Pakistan's Yuppies in Danger

by Lorraine Adams

Pakistan’s small middle class is vulnerable and exposed to the growing violence between al Qaeda and the government. Novelist Lorraine Adams on why this vital group cannot be forgotten by the U.S.
Ever since Osama bin Laden’s demise, I’ve been worried about PUPPies—Pakistani Upwardly Mobile Urban Professionals. They’re a vulnerable and endangered species, despite their Twitter accounts, iPhones, and Facebook pages. College-educated Pakistan (roughly 4 percent of the country’s 170 million people) may be much smaller than Egypt’s, and may have different gripes with their government, but its members share many values with their Arab counterparts. As the news broke over Twitter last week, PUPPies had plenty to say about the death of the man hiding in an ugly house in a town most of them remembered as a decidedly uncool childhood vacation spot. (Think of the Adirondacks or Catskills, if you’re a New Yorker.) They know that terrorists keen on retaliatory strikes for bin Laden’s killing will be looking for them.
Rizwan Tabassum / Getty Images Some writers—among them my friend the novelist Mohsin Hamid and the Guardian’s Declan Walsh and Jason Burke—are familiar with this sliver of Pakistan’s middle class. But most, including Salman Rushdie, who called for declaring Pakistan a terrorist state, sometimes seem to believe in a monolithic Pakistan sympathetic to terrorism, intolerantly Islamic and anti-West. They say the military, which represents the largest component of the middle class, is guilty of harboring bin Laden. If they have their way, the Pakistanis who are most like Westerners—English-speaking folk who carry Blackberries, watch Fashion Week on YouTube, twittered against the murder of anti-blasphemy law crusader Salman Taseer, and obsess about grades for college or medical school—will be thrown to the terrorist pack.
Since 2006, I’ve been traveling to Pakistan to research my last novel and the novel I’m currently writing. I’ve spent time in the border town of Torkham, the Swat Valley, the garrison town Ralwapindi, but mostly in cities—Peshawar, Islamabad, and Lahore. When I first started visiting these were tranquil places. But in 2008, Lahore exploded with its first suicide bombing. Pakistanis from all walks of life became vulnerable, but terrorists have targeted places where tolerant Muslims gather, such as urban shopping centers, Sufi shrines, and cricket fields.

“This day marks mixed feelings of triumph and fear—triumph over the death of a common enemy but fear that darker times marked by fundamentalist backlash and the withdrawal of American support may have begun.”

Rushdie and others, perhaps rightly, blame the Pakistani military for hiding bin Laden, but side by side with this possibility is the statistical reality that middle-class families have born the brunt of the extremist attacks. Officers and soldiers at military training grounds, employees at the federal investigative agency that probes terrorist attacks (comparable to our FBI), and individual police officers have been victims of fatal bombings. The military is not monolithic. One of my Lahore friends is the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Frontier Corps who is Pathan. If stereotypes were a guide, both her ethnicity and her father’s career mark her family as bin Laden sympathizers. But her uncle, a police chief, was killed by a suicide bomber in Peshawar because of his anti-extremist work.  Plus, her sister-in-law’s family is longtime military, the family patriarch an Army general who hails from Abbottabad. Yet whenever both these young women are on Facebook, their updates decry these attacks.
Monday, less than 24 hours after the bin Laden operation, a couple of my Pakistan friends in their 20s—an orthodontist and a medical school student—were far more sober than their American counterparts. These women are devout Muslims (they adhere to virginity before marriage and never drink), but like their counterparts in Tahrir Square, are enlightened observers. One wrote: “We got Osama! But remember that this justice has come at the cost of a decade of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While America, by virtue of its 'wealth and power' may be relatively immune, for Pakistan, this day marks mixed feelings of triumph and fear—triumph over the death of a common enemy but fear that darker times marked by fundamentalist backlash and the withdrawal of American support may have begun.”
Said another, “It shows that our military is either incompetent or complicit. Either way, the world is unhappy with Pakistan. We're sitting in the corner wearing a dunce cap yet again. The Taliban is unhappy with Pakistan. If anything, we'll be seeing more blasts in the coming months. If they had kept him alive, that would have helped fight them. It's too soon to say for sure what's going to happen next. At the most, this is a moral victory for 9/11 families. But my 2c—it doesn't help fight the terrorists which are multiplying by the day.”
Just how much support Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the military gave to bin Laden or any extremists is the subject of government investigation, and has been debated ad nauseam among analysts. Most American commentators quote the highly respected Ahmed Rashid, who recently wrote in The New Republic that they give terrorists enough help to keep “the pot boiling but not overflowing.” Others such as Anatol Lieven, in his new book about Pakistan, argue that military support for extremists in Kashmir and Afghanistan exists but inside Pakistan is thin.
Either way, life for Pakistan’s educated—because the government is such a corruption-saturated institution—is not much better than it is for its poor. Except for one, yes one, hospital in Karachi, medical care is far below international standards. Country-wide, the lack of utilities, even in urban areas, leads to absurdist predicaments. One of my friends, the mother of a 4-month-old, was trying to give him a hot bath in January. An absence of natural gas for the water heater led her to innovate. She got an electric kettle and plugged it in, transferring a teapot of hot water into the tub. But then, the electricity was cut off—Pakistan doesn’t have enough, and major cities regularly have 16 hours a day without it—and the tub was far from full. “Oh crap,” she said in frustration. I remember looking over at the bedroom bookshelf visible from her bathroom; there was an Orhan Pamuk, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and others. For all her thoughtfulness and spirit, she was living with problems plenty of slum dwellers in the United States rarely face. Later that day, talking about the situation, she told me, “It’s not for me to question. If I question I create problems. Why do that? It’s better to accept it.”
In these days after bin Laden’s killing, I hope her stoicism continues to keep her sane. Whether it keeps her safe is up to leaders, worldwide and in Pakistan, for whom she is largely invisible.
Lorraine Adams, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and reporter, is the author of Harbor and The Room and the Chair. She lives in New York City.

Whither Labour Rights

The Friday Times
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
The 18th Amendment to the constitution was welcomed by all who want to see Pakistan a truly federal, progressive and democratic state where the federating units and the centre are balanced in terms of power and rights. Pakistan vests residuary powers in constituent units but the net thrown by the federation – federal and concurrent legislative lists – was so wide that residuary powers amounted to very little. The abolition of the concurrent list devolves real powers to the provinces.
Be that as it may, the parliament has erred by devolving the very important subject of labour to the provinces without saving any powers for itself. This has come as a significant blow to the workers. In all democracies – including staunchly capitalistic countries such as the United States of America – national labour unions and associations form a crucial political counterweight to the industrial and landed classes. There is a big question mark on the legal position of All Pakistan Trade Unions. Pakistan needs a constitutional left movement, and by devolving the labour sector to the provinces, the narrow-sighted politicians have ensured that the democratic left – already in the ICU – is euthanised immediately. In doing so, the Pakistan People’s Party has dug its own grave at the national level.
Nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in the province of Punjab, where the provincial government, heavily dominated by big business interests, has enacted a patently anti-labour act called the Punjab Industrial Relations Act 2010 (PIRA). Section 3(1) of the PIRA abolishes the right of workers to form unions in an establishment that employs less than 50 workers. Consider, for example, how many workers a single brick kiln employs. Not only is this law ultra vires section 17(1) of the constitution, but is in violation of Pakistan’s international obligations of labour rights. Even the jurisdiction of labour courts is questionable, as they are appointed by the provincial government without any interference of the provincial high court. Under Pakistan’s separation of powers doctrine, a judicial body has to be appointed through a mechanism that gives the higher judiciary a say. Sooner or later, all decisions by the labour courts will be subject to legal challenge on this ground alone.
Even where there are unions, outside representation on a union’s executive body has been reduced from 25% to 20%. Unions have long relied on ideological and academic support from this section and this has been crucial in union politics. By reducing their number, the provincial government has smoothened the jagged edges for employers. Even more serious is the by-passing of the Collective Bargaining Agent – a central feature of the Industrial Relations legislation in the past – allowing the employer to negotiate directly with an individual worker. In other words, the industrial employers of Punjab have been given a ready made device to divide and rule the workers and defeat any and all moves by the workers to organise for their rights.
The cumulative effect of these changes is that labour rights have been read out effectively from law. Not since the Industrial Revolution has the legal position been so bleak in our part of the world as under this law. The law – as it existed under the various Industrial Relations Ordinances promulgated by military dictators – included an elaborate mechanism which allowed the government, workers and employers to resolve disputes. This too has been omitted. Additionally, there is no mechanism for routine inspections, making enforcement of minimum wage in the province next to impossible.
Pakistan’s constitution talks great game about elimination of exploitation (Article 3), making provisions for securing just and humane conditions for work (Article 37 e), ensuring equitable adjustment of rights between employers and employees (Article 38 a), facilities for work and adequate livelihood with reasonable rest and leisure (Article 38 b), social security and social insurance etc (Article 38 c), and food, clothing, housing, education and medical relief (Article 38 d). But everything the PIRA has achieved is the exact opposite.
Sher Shah Suri – who achieved a level of development unparalleled in his time – had famously said that peasants and workers are the backbone of any empire and should be kept happy at all costs. We have failed miserably to live up to that glorious example from our past. Workers in Pakistan in general and Punjab in particular are the most oppressed lot in all of South Asia. Labour unions are a natural pressure valve for societies. Those who allow this valve to operate properly avoid bloodshed, revolutions and social unrest. Great Britain is perhaps one of the best examples in this respect, where the labour class was coopted and made a stakeholder in national progress, politics and governance.

Fond of honor in beggars ........ ??????????

General Ashfaq Kayani runs this country. Let’s not waffle about on this issue. The democratic regime is anemic at best and hapless at worst. What he says carries weight. People listen to him.
When General K says that the nation will not sacrifice its honour for prosperity, he’s expecting people to take it at face value. An unquestioning media will accept it as essential, and will let it lie.
Now, there’s no doubt that honour, or ‘ghairat’ is real. Living your life with dignity and honour is the right of the people of Pakistan. Having their decisions actually count is the right of the people of Pakistan. On that front, I have no issue with his comment.
Similarly, General K is not the first (and he’s unlikely to be the last) Pakistani political personality to make this statement. Rhetoric laden with national honour stretches all the way back to the Two Nation Theory and has been employed by all our rulers. As was pointed out to me on Twitter, the greatest example of honour-over-prosperity rhetoric is ZAB’s infamous “Even if we have to eat grass” speech. It’s an essential, and cheap, political trope that excites people.
What is particularly egregious about this line of argument is that it somehow glorifies poverty, turning it into a virtue. Trying to convince the people of the country that toiling in subhuman conditions is a sacrifice they’re making to ensure that the nation remains honourable. It stakes the nation’s dignity at the cost of the individual Pakistani’s.
The fact that such rhetoric emanates from the military is particularly jarring for me. No single institution has sold out the nation’s “honour” for its own prosperity at the rate that the military has. And none has forced individual Pakistanis to live as undignified, fearful lives as it has.
The army has willingly taken on a mercenary role since the Soviet ‘Jihad’. It has willfully indoctrinated young boys to turn themselves into weapons; in the process snatching away sons from families that would have depended upon them to live a life of dignity in their old age.
The military has appropriated a larger and larger chunk of the national budget to buy itself fancy gadgets at the cost of expanding education and healthcare. Snatching from us the right to education and a healthy life.
And while they may talk of dismantling the feudal nizaam, they themselves have emerged as the largest landowner in Pakistan. Some dignity they’re affording us.
They’ve trampled on our vote time and again. They’ve murdered a Prime Minister through a kangaroo court. They have shown time and again that they care naught for the dignity of our vote.
They’ve treated Pakistanis as second class citizens simply due to their narrow definition of what ‘Pakistani’ is. Which for the uninitiated is basically “Love the army and listen to everything we say without fail.” A genocide in Bengal (yeah, let’s not sugarcoat it), and ongoing repression in Balochistan that barely makes it to our news channels.
In the meanwhile, we have our gleaming Defence Housing Authorities, and our vast Fauji Foundation industrial complex. It would appear that while we ensure the nation’s honour, someone is indeed getting prosperous.
So, General Kayani, allow me to be a little skeptical. Just a tiny bit skeptical when you ask me to forego prosperity for honour.

Obama Got Osama

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and four commercial airplanes, was killed in Pakistan in a firefight with U.S. troops, and that’s how finally Osama’s fever is finished among American’s with the dramatic announcement of his death by US President Obama.www.jalaybi.com brings for you the most waited announcement for the Americans and the rest of the world fighting against Alqeada, here is the complete  text of those words by  Obama that Americans have been longing to listen and every president of  US longing to utter since 9/11, finally President Obama got the chance to announce that “I have Got Osama after a decade”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening. Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history.The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory. Hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky, the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground, black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon, the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.
And yet, we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world, the empty seat at the dinner table, children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father, parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.
On September 11th, 2001 in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.
On that day, no matter where we came from, what god we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda, an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocence in our country and around the globe.
And so we went to war against al Qaeda, to protect our citizens, our friends and our allies.
Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense.
In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.
And around the globe, we’ve worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.
Yet, Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world. And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat his network.
Then last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.
It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.
I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside Pakistan.
And finally last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties.
After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad. As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.
I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam, because bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own.
So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years, I have repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.
Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.
The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.
After nearly 10 years of service, struggle and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as commander-in-chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.
So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet, as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are.
And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.
Tonight we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who have worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work or know their names, but tonight they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they’re a part of the generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.
Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.
And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people. The cause of securing our country is not complete, but tonight we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens, our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Let us remember that we can do these things, not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Files reveal what al-Qaida did after 9/11

WikiLeaks releases secret documents on Gitmo detainees

By PETER FINN WASHINGTON POST

April 24, 2011, 10:41PM

On Sept. 11, 2001, the core of al-Qaida was concentrated in a single city: Karachi, Pakistan.

At a hospital, the accused mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole was recovering from a tonsillectomy. Nearby, the alleged organizer of the 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia, was buying lab equipment for a biological weapons program. And in a safe house, the man who would later describe himself as the intellectual author of the Sept. 11 attacks was with other key al-Qaida members watching the scenes from New York and Washington unfold on television.

Within a day, much of the al-Qaida leadership was on the way back to Afghanistan, planning for a long war.

A cache of classified military documents obtained by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks presents new details of their whereabouts on Sept. 11, 2001, and their movements afterward. The documents also offer some tantalizing glimpses into the whereabouts and operations of Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The documents, provided to European and U.S. news outlets, including The Washington Post, are intelligence assessments of nearly every one of the 779 individuals who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002. In them, analysts have created detailed portraits of detainees based on raw intelligence, including material gleaned from interrogations.

Detainees are assessed "high," "medium" or "low" in terms of their intelligence value, the threat they pose while in detention and the continued threat they might pose to the United States if released.

The documents tend to take a bleak view of the detainees, even those who have been ordered released by the federal courts because of a lack of evidence to justify their continued detention. And the assessments are often based, in part, on reporting by informants at the military detention center, sources that some judges have found wanting.

In a statement, the Pentagon, which described the decision to publish some of the material as "unfortunate," stressed the snapshot and incomplete nature of the assessments, known as Detainee Assessment Briefs, or DABs.

"The Guantanamo Review Task Force, established in January 2009, considered the DABs during its review of detainee information. In some cases, the Task Force came to the same conclusions as the DABs. In other instances the Review Task Force came to different conclusions, based on updated or other available information," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell and Ambassador Daniel Fried, the Obama administration's special envoy on detainee issues. "Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by Wikileaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee."

Histories of detainees

Regardless of how detainees are currently assessed, many of the documents shed light on their histories, particularly those of the high-value detainees. When pieced together, they capture some of the drama of al-Qaida's scattering in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. They also point to tensions between certain members of the terrorist group.

Among other previously unknown meetings, the documents describe a major gathering of some of al-Qaida's most senior operatives in early December 2001 in Zormat, a mountainous region of Afghanistan between Kabul and Khost. There, the operatives began to plan new attacks, a process that would consume them, according to the assessments, until they were finally captured.

Four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden visited a guesthouse in Afghanistan's Kandahar province. He told the Arab fighters gathered there "to defend Afghanistan against the infidel invaders."

It was beginning of a peripatetic three months for bin Laden and Zawahiri. Traveling by car among several locations in Afghanistan, bin Laden handed out assignments to his followers, met with some of the Taliban leadership and delegated control of al-Qaida to the group's Shura Council, presumably because he feared being captured or killed as U.S. forces closed in.

At some point, bin Laden and Zawahiri used a secret guesthouse in or relatively near Kabul. The al-Qaida leader welcomed a stream of visitors and issued a series of orders, including instructions to continue operations against Western targets. He dispersed his fighters from training camps and instructed women and children, including some of his wives, to flee to Pakistan.

Meetings in Afghanistan

In October, bin Laden met in Kabul with two Malaysians, Yazid Zubair and Bashir Lap — both of whom are now at Guantanamo Bay - and lectured them on history and religion. On the day that the U.S.-led coalition began bombing Afghanistan, bin Laden met in Kandahar with Taliban official Mullah Mansour.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri also met that month with Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who continues to lead a deadly insurgency against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden, accompanied by Zawahiri and a handful of close associates in his security detail, escaped to his cave complex in Tora Bora in November. Around Nov. 25, he was seen giving a speech to the leaders and fighters at the complex.

According to the documents, bin Laden and his deputy escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001. At the time, the al-Qaida leader was apparently so strapped for cash that he borrowed $7,000 from one of his protectors - a sum he paid back within a year.

In December, al-Qaida's top lieutenants gathered in Zormat. They included Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged planner of the USS Cole attack; and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a key facilitator for bin Laden.

The place was teeming with fighters who were awaiting for al-Qaida to return their passports so they could flee to Pakistan.

U.S., Israeli targets

Nashiri reported that while at Zormat he was approached by two Saudi nationals who wanted to strike U.S. and Israeli targets in Morocco. Nashiri said he had been considering an operation in the Strait of Gibraltar and thought that the British military base there, which he had seen in a documentary, would be a good target.

Nashiri's willingness to approve a plot on his own was later the source of some tension within the organization, particularly with Mohammed.

In May or June 2002, Mohammed learned of the disrupted plan to attack the military base in Gibraltar and was upset that he had not been informed of it.

Nashiri separately complained that he was being pushed by bin Laden to continue planning aggressive operations against U.S. interests in the Arabian gulf region without much regard for his security.

Indeed, Nashiri was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in late 2002.

After the Zormat conclave, Mohammed and other senior al-Qaida figures began to return to Karachi.

The documents state that Mohammed "put together a training program for assassinations and kidnappings as well as pistol and computer training." It was not intended for specific operations but to occupy the bored fighters stuck in safe houses.

At the time, money was flowing into the country for Mohammed, according to the documents, allowing him to acquire safe houses and fund operations.

In November 2002, his nephew Baluchi took a delivery of nearly $70,000 from a courier.

Gradually, Mohammed and the other operatives were picked off by Pakistanis working with the CIA and the FBI. When Ramzi Binalshibh, a key liaison between the Sept. 11 hijackers and al-Qaida, was arrested at a safe house in Karachi on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, there was a four-hour standoff while the Yemeni and two others held knives to their own throats and threatened to kill themselves rather than be taken.

There are few geographic references in the documents for bin Laden after his flight into Pakistan.

He apparently sent out letters from his hiding place through a trusted courier, who then handed them to Libbi, who had provided the secret guesthouse in Kabul immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.

After the capture of Mohammed in March 2003, Zawahiri fled from the house where he had been staying.

The documents state that Zawahiri left on his own and sought out an Afghan, who delivered him to Libbi.

In May 2005, while waiting for bin Laden's courier at a drop point, Libbi was arrested by Pakistani forces.

Zawahiri, in response, moved again. His residence, documents state, "was changed to a good place owned by a simple old man."

He remains at large.