The Peoples Daily of China is the voice of China. Nothing appears in it unless it is sanctioned by the Communist Party of China. The front page of the Peoples Daily published an article which in a round about but not so subtle manner blamed Bhrat for the rioting in Xinjiang. Several articles in the Peoples Daily mentioned foreign forces for the troubles in Xinjiang. Bharat has been in the forefront of the battle for Tibet. When the Peoples Daily publishes several article blaming the same foreign forces that caused trouble in Tibet, the finger clearly points at Delhi.

• Government and Communist Party departments at all levels in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region should rely on the people of all ethnic groups to build a “steel wall” for the region’s stability to safeguard the interests of the people, senior Chinese leader Zhou Yongkang said in Hotan Saturday.
• It is not surprising that Rebiya Kadeer is in the spotlight. If not for what happened in Urumqi last Sunday, most Chinese people knew little of the former businesswoman who built a fortune in Urumqi and became a rising star on the country’s political arena, got jailed for stealing national secret, and fled to the United States in 2005.
• People continued to bombard Kadeer Saturday: some said the World Uygur Congress leader was seeking to become a Dalai Lama much needed by the East Turkestan, while others made a mockery of her photo with the exiled Tibetan monk.

The riots in Urumqui and Bharati involvement there has long term consequences for the Sino-Indo relationship which could have taken off after the BRIC meeting. However continued interference by Delhi in the internal affairs of China does not bode well for any improvement in relations. Both countries have been trading and plan to get the trading number to $60 Billion. However the political problems overshadow any trade advantage that could be garnished from the Silk Road. Here is one of the articles in the Peoples Daily.

The riot in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Sunday had been well planned and organized by foreign forces behind the scenes, a Pakistani newspaper chief said on Saturday.

“We saw riots in Tibet last year. It was expected that the Tibet scene would be replayed in Xinjiang though it is late. According to my assessment it was going to happen before or around the Beijing Olympics,” Baber Makhdoom, editor-in-chief of the English-language Daily Mail newspaper, told Xinhua.

“While the Chinese government was already doing a lot for the natives of Uygur Autonomous Region, these clashes erupted, now one can easily understand who is behind it. It is not the people who are living there, it’s someone from the outside, who is pursuing them, who is forcing them, or misguiding them,” he said.

Makhdoom said the hands behind the Xinjiang riot were the same as those behind the Tibet riot last year.

He said anti-China forces have been creating troubles, including terrorism, for China.

Some terrorist groups want to engage certain ethnic groups like the Uygur people in China and brainwash them, and use them to fulfill their political goals, he said.

Makhdoom has kept visiting China for the past seven years, almost four or five times a year. “Every time I go to Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, I see tremendous harmony among the Uygurs and non-Muslim Chinese,” he said. “There have never been any hatred between them. They were enjoying a peaceful life.”

Makhdoom said he had met many Uygur people who are peace-loving citizens. “They were very happy, they were having complete religious independence and religious freedom,” he added.

Makhdoom said the Chinese government has always been smart in responding to such unrest.

“The Chinese government has shown great governance and its love for its people, and for the unity of the nation, and they have taken the right steps at the right time and I think that every government should be doing the same thing,” he said.

He said the Chinese government has been paying special attention to improving the living standards of the Uygur people with a lot of development projects being initiated in areas of minority ethnic groups.

Sunday’s rioting in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region, has killed at least 184 people and injured more than 1,000 others. Peoples Daily. Xinjiang riot well planned by foreign wire-pullers: Pakistani newspaper chief

UK Defeat in Afghanistan: Battle of Maiwand

The UK seems to be losing its penchant for empire and war. Afghanistan is just messy and too bloody for the British. That added to the fact that the ghosts of Maiwand and Lord Curzon’s ignomonious defeat at the Oxus conjures up bad nightmares for those Britishers who still read history.

Afghanistan defeat: British Failures of “the White Man’s burden”

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Rudyard Kipling

The story of Afghanistan and colonialism begins a long time ago. British tried to take up White Man’s burden in Afghanistan. It suffered badly in Kabul and could not hold it. NATO Lessons: 1880 UK defeat at Maiwand-Afghanistan. Today ISAF is making the same mistakes as the British did a century again. Is NATO committing suicide in Afghanistan? There is a powerplay going on. …the CIA assassination. The US has considered every possibily. However the most obvious one escapes the $80 Billion think tank industry in the USA. Saving the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan. Eradicating the Pashtun plight and ending occupation.

Some level of alterity is in order. When the British last general left the Subcontinent, Pakistanis and Afghans believed in the cynosure chimera that “the goras” had really left. The world thought that Asia would remember the Brits for the trains bequeathed by Lord Delhousie’s. The West Asian aviary must have apocryphal magnetic powers over Englishmen. The Union Jack keeps coming back to the Middle East and South Asia, this time piggbacking on the naive Europeans and the gullible Americans.

• Top generals have been frustrated by being ordered to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Thw UK budget is one of the lowest among leading Western nations, at 2.5 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product.
• With 110,000 regular soldiers, the army is only a fraction of its historic size, yet, critics say, it faces demands more suited to the days when Britain was still a major power.
• Gen. Charles Guthrie, who led British forces as chief of the defense staff until 2001, said on Friday that Mr. Brown’s rejection of the army’s request for 2,000 more troops in Helmand Province this spring
• “It is time for Gordon Brown to put his money where his mouth is,” General Guthrie

Defeat in Afghanistan: Battle of Maiwand

LONDON — Just as President Obama’s plan to sharply increase American troop strength in Afghanistan gets into high gear, Britain’s involvement in the war has come under the fiercest criticism yet at home as a result of a steep increase in British casualties, including the deaths of 15 soldiers in the past 10 days.

The latest losses are the heaviest British forces have suffered in any comparable period since the 1982 Falklands war. With the Defense Ministry’s announcement of eight soldiers’ deaths on Friday, Britain’s toll in Afghanistan is now 184 killed, five more than its total losses in Iraq, where Britain’s combat commitment ended this spring.

The deaths have generated grim images that have led the nightly television news, of slate-gray transport aircraft carrying coffins landing at a military air base in Wiltshire and being driven slowly in hearses past crowds lining the high street in Wootton Bassett, a nearby town. When five coffins passed down the street on Friday, on their way to a mortuary in Oxford, women wailed.

The Empire is gone but incredulously the Brits keep coming back. Why is it so? Is there an eschatologically obsessed version of Christianity that tries to make British foreign and domestic policy conterminous with their biblical worldview?” Is it because there were no lessons learned and the pusillanimous Kiplingish “White Man’s Burden” keeps on raising it’s ugly head every few decades. How many times will bitian try to civilize the Afghans and the Pakistanis?

Defeat in Afghanistan: Remember Maiwand

Britain’s casualties are far lower than those suffered by American forces, who have lost 732 troops in Afghanistan and 4,322 in Iraq, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that monitors the military losses in both wars.

But with Britain’s far smaller population and troop deployments, the latest deaths — from a force of 9,000 that makes Britain’s the second-largest troop presence in Afghanistan after the United States’ — have been as much of a shock here as the heavy American troop losses in Iraq at the height of that conflict were in the United States.

Partly because of Britain’s 19th-century history of catastrophic military ventures in Afghanistan, when it sought to secure the outer defenses of British imperial rule in India, the government faces an uphill task in rallying public opinion to the current conflict.

So far, however, the reaction in Britain has not run to the kind of popular groundswell for withdrawal that President George W. Bush faced when the war in Iraq worsened after his re-election in 2004.

Take up the White Man’s burden–

Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Like Mr. Bush, and now President Obama, Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, has argued that Britain has to fight on in Afghanistan as a way of preventing terrorist attacks at home. The Conservatives, the main opposition party, have so far agreed.

But Mr. Brown is facing an outcry from those who say the government must answer for the growing number of soldiers killed because of what they describe as an underfinanced defense budget, $55 billion this year. Critics say that the insufficient budget has led to a failure to deploy enough troops and to equip them with enough helicopters and enough blast-resistant armored vehicles.

Many British soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs, which critics say have taken an unacceptably high toll because the troops have had to track down the Taliban in vehicles, instead of going into combat aboard helicopters.

There have been recriminations, too, about the British troops’ reliance for transportation on aging, poorly protected Land Rovers from the time of Britain’s military involvement in Northern Ireland.

Even in the 19^th century technology was not the panacea that prevented defeat. Are there any lessons learned from the “Charge of the Light Brigade“.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The criticism has come from the opposition leaders in Parliament and retired British commanders who oversaw earlier stages of the Afghan conflict. American generals, too, have spoken privately about the mismatch between Britain’s military commitments and the British forces’ manpower and equipment.

The Americans say this situation has often contributed to decisions by British commanders in the field to back off from confrontations with the Taliban, or yield ground the British forces have lost soldiers in gaining.

But perhaps the most damaging recriminations have come from the families of the dead.

“They continue to allow the army to operate in those ridiculous tin- can Land Rovers when they should have been equipped three years ago with American Humvees,” Tony Phillipson, father of a 29-year-old army captain killed in 2006, told the BBC on Friday. “The Afghan Army has 4,500 Humvees. Why haven’t our soldiers got them?”

How many times will you “To veil the threat of terror“?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,

Last week, the political consensus fragmented when Nick Clegg, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, used a House of Commons speech to say the government should either finance the war properly, giving the troops the force numbers and equipment they need, or withdraw. “We can’t give them the worst of both worlds — put them in harm’s way, but not give them the backing they need,” he said.

It has been an open secret at Whitehall for years that top generals have been frustrated by being ordered to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as handle overseas peacekeeping commitments, with a budget that is one of the lowest among leading Western nations, at 2.5 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product.

With 110,000 regular soldiers, the army is only a fraction of its historic size, yet, critics say, it faces demands more suited to the days when Britain was still a major power.

And work another’s gain Unfortunately the lessons of unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838-42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students. Perhaps Blair and Brown never saw Lady Butler’s famous painting of Dr William Brydon, the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad. This painting epitomized the limits of the British Empire and focused on Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul and established Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Gen. Charles Guthrie, who led British forces as chief of the defense staff until 2001, said on Friday that Mr. Brown’s rejection of the army’s request for 2,000 more troops in Helmand Province this spring — a request that was strongly backed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American allied commander in Iraq and Afghanistan — was one reason more soldiers were dying.

“It is time for Gordon Brown to put his money where his mouth is,” General Guthrie said. “We have to get serious about this conflict if we’re going to do it.”

Speaking at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy on Friday, Mr. Brown said the increase in British casualties during an offensive in Helmand, where Taliban fighters have concentrated a summer offensive of their own, was part of a mission that aimed at breaking “a chain of terror” that ran from southern Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain, and contributed to the transit bombings in London in 2005. “Britons today are safer because of the courageous sacrifice of British soldiers in Afghanistan,” he said.

Bring all your hopes to nought The lessons learned from the defeat of Lord Curzon’s (1878-1893) “On to the Oxus” policy are not taught to the Eaton and Harrow graduates. “Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred

But his faltering voice as he predicted further casualties reflected a political reality he could not avoid. Although Mr. Brown voted for Britain’s involvement in Iraq in 2003, when he was chancellor of the Exchequer, he made no secret in following years of his profound discomfort with the war, and he moved decisively after he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007 to lay down a schedule for British withdrawal, which will be completed later this month.

But like Mr. Obama, a vigorous opponent of the Iraq war during the Bush years who has become a proponent of a more vigorous American military commitment in Afghanistan, Mr. Brown has made the Afghan conflict his own. On Friday, as often before, he made an unequivocal commitment to staying the course. “We knew from the start that defeating the insurgency in Helmand would be a hard and dangerous job, but it’s a vital one,” he said. NeW York Times. By JOHN F. BURNS, Published: July 11, 2009

The lessons of the Peloponnesian war when Athens lost its democratic roots and it’s independence, because of her prolonged war with Sparta are very appropriate in our current times.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

The lessons of the British defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan should be codified.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead. Will Britannia learn her lessons ever?

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Does no one in Britain read Robert Fisk anymore?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

The minority Northern Alliance led non-Pashtun government has been a total failure. The worst is yet to come in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last allied or NATO troop will be reminded to “turn the lights off”..

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

Images of the last American helicopter leaving Saigon is etched into the collective memory of political scientists around the world

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

The only way out of the Afghan quagmire for NATO is to negotiate with the Talibaan and the Pashtuns. Pakistan’s vital interests in Afghanstan have to be taken into account, and the Hindu Kush mountains cannot be used to launch terrorism into Pakistani Baluchistan.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

An American led “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan and Afghanistan will reduce tensions, and provide employment to the disaffected youth of the area.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | новости рупии | 卢比新闻 | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ルピーニュース | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | پاکستاني کھاتا | Moin Ansari | معین آنصآرّی | DefensebriefsIntellibriefs Translate to: RSS feed: | RUPEE NEWS | November 30th, 2007 | Moin Ansari | معین آنصآرّی | اخبار روپیہ |

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil is one of those enigmatic figures that became the Foreign Minister of the Taliban. During the US bombing of Afghanistan, Mr. Muttawakil was the the only window into Afghanistan and the mind of the Talibs. Since his arrest that window was closed. Right after the US attack on Afghanistan, he was arrested and deported to Afghanistan where he spent 2 years in the Bagram prison. He has now appeared in the Business Standard, a Bharti paper known for its biased reporting. Here is an excerpted version of his interview that gives more insight into the Bharati mind than anything else. The leading questions do not allow Mr. Muttawakil to speak his mind. However the excerpts do give us some idea of what he is trying to say.

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister when the Indian Airlines plane, IC-814, was hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandahar in December 1999, tells JYOTI MALHOTRA that India should not look at Afghanistan through the Pakistani lens.

I would like to ask you about the hijacking of IC-814 almost ten years ago.

Yes, I was present in Kandahar. I can tell you the problem was resolved according to the wishes of the Indian government. The deal was struck between the hijackers and the government. The fact that the hijackers disappeared into Pakistan, well, that was not within our jurisdiction. The people who hijacked the plane killed one person, but our aim after the plane landed in Kandahar was that no one should be killed on Afghan soil. We succeeded in that. The Taliban were not involved in the hijacking.

Did you approve of the deal?

We did not approve of it.

Why did you allow the hijackers to escape into Pakistan?

That was part of the deal with the Indian government. We did not want such people on our soil. If they went to Pakistan, it was not our business.

The plane was in Kandahar for one full week and you couldn’t take action against the hijackers

The key actors wanted to take the plane to another destination, but we didn’t allow that.

You sound as if you were surprised by the hijacking. Why not?

There were rumours of ransom being paid, about $20 million, to the hijackers

I don’t remember these details very well. I was in the Bagram prison for two years (after the Americans took him prisoner). For us, this hijacking was something very new. I remember that when we offered the passengers food, many of them did not want to eat because they were vegetarian. They wanted cereals instead.

What else do you remember?

That it was something very stressful because it was during Ramadan. We told the hijackers, in front of the diplomats, to release the passengers. We also played a role in reducing the demands of the hijackers. They wanted ransom money, but it was our effort to finish it (the episode) as quickly as possible.

Was ransom paid?

As far as I know, no ransom was paid.

Do you think the Indian government should be grateful to you for the help?

They should be grateful, no doubt, but I don’t think they are. After I was released from Bagram, I happened to meet some Indians. When they found I was there in Kandahar, I thought they would be grateful. But their behaviour was not proper. However, the hijacked passengers, when they were released, were very polite and thankful to us and to the Indian foreign minister (BJP’s Jaswant Singh, who went to Kandahar to negotiate with the hijackers).

Was Pakistan involved?

It is natural, because the hijackers seemed to be Pakistani and also Masood Azhar, who was released by the Indians under the deal, is a Pakistani. But I don’t know if the Pakistani government was involved.

However, I want to say that India should look at Afghanistan through its own lens, not through the Pakistani lens. One of India’s biggest mistakes was to support the puppet Soviet regime in Kabul because the mujahideen were based in Pakistan. India’s second mistake was not to recognise the Taliban.

Even today, the Indian government should accept the presence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and support the peace process. After all, the Taliban are a part of Afghan society.

How is the situation in Afghanistan today? There are rumours of a reconciliation process between the Karzai government and the Taliban

Discussions are going on. There is hope, but no result yet. I am not a representative of the Taliban. So far, these are only talks about talks.

Is it a good idea to engage the Taliban in talks?

Yes. For example, I suggested to the Afghan government that it should convince the foreign forces that peace is the only solution. There should be confidence-building measures. The Taliban are saying, first get the foreign forces out. The government is saying, accept the Constitution and then we’ll talk. The government needs to build confidence with the Taliban instead of bombing them all the time. But no doors have been left open.

Is there a difference between the ‘moderate’ Taliban and the ‘hardline’ Taliban?

These terms need to be defined. Foreign forces also bomb people and kill them, they can also be called “hardliners.” One thing is clear that non-Afghans should be excluded from the conversation.

Non-Afghans would also include the Al Qaeda

Yes, the Al Qaeda and the foreign forces. Reconciliation is purely an Afghan conversation.

And if the Al Qaeda doesn’t go?

Don’t speak of the Al Qaeda as if it’s a country. It is all over West Asia, Africa, etc. It has an international agenda while the Taliban have a national agenda.

How would you assess the Taliban years?

We managed to integrate the country and provide security and justice to people, but could not convince the international community to support us. We wanted segregated schools, yes, but there was also a lot of media propaganda. The image of the Taliban was distorted.

In fact, the first article of the Constitution that is being discussed today says it should be based on the Sharia. The only difference is that the Sharia has not been implemented yet. But when it is, capital punishment will be allowed because it is allowed in the Sharia.

There were so many human rights violations, especially with women. And then you destroyed the Buddhas…

There were lots of problems at that time. We were economically weak, the country was badly divided. But I want to tell you that Mullah Omar did say that it was not the job of the Taliban to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Why were they destroyed?

There were differences…the cultural affairs ministry said they should be preserved, while the religious affairs ministry said they should be destroyed. Mullah Omar was asked…once he approved, it could not be stopped. This act definitely affected the Taliban image internationally.

Do you think they should have been destroyed?

I personally felt that they were already mutilated over centuries. I told Mullah Omar, but he had taken a decision.

Today, it is said that the Afghan Taliban are taking shelter in the Pakistani city of Quetta? Leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, etc?

I have heard that they are in Quetta, just like you have, but I don’t really know if they are there.

What about the attack against the Indian embassy in Kabul last year? The Jalaluddin Haqqani faction is supposed to be responsible?

Pakistan blames India for supporting the Baloch insurgency in Pakistan. One has to be very careful in coming to any conclusion about anything. In this history of India-Pakistan rivalries, Afghanistan should not be involved. My suggestion to (President) Karzai has been that we should not sacrifice Afghanistan to the rivalry between India and Pakistan but serve our own interests. ‘India should recognise the Taliban’. Business Standard. Q&A: Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister. Jyoti Malhotra / New Delhi July 12, 2009, 0:51 IST

To listen to Europe’s far right, it would be easy to conclude that the continent is poised for another round of bitter conflict with a centuries-old adversary. “The first Islamic invasion of Europe was stopped at [the battle of] Poitiers in 732. The second was halted at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Now we have to stop the current stealth invasion,” argues Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, which claims that Islamic doctrine encourages terrorism.

It’s rabble-rousing stuff. But underlying Wilders’s polemic is an argument shared by many more mainstream right-leaning thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe, its will sapped by secularism and anything-goes tolerance, has allowed decades of mass immigration without serious challenge. Too feeble to defend their own values, governments have been ready to appease Muslim opinion and must expect the worst. The argument has been gaining ground for some time—fed by alarmist and highly speculative projections from writers like the Canadian Mark Steyn, author of the bestselling America Alone—that immigration and high birthrates could mean that Muslims will make up 40 percent of Europe’s population by 2025. Similar and very public warnings have come from American diplomat Timothy Savage, who claimed that forecasts of a Muslim majority in Western Europe by midcentury “may not be far off the mark” if present trends continue, which would heighten the risk of conflict. The British historian Niall Ferguson has written that “a youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize—the term is not too strong—a sene-scent Europe.” And the American journalist Christopher Caldwell forecasts that an “anchored” and “confident” Islam looks likely to impose its will on an “insecure” and “relativistic” European culture. The gloomiest commentators, including Steyn and the conservative Ameri-can writer Tony Blankley, talk of an emerging “Eurabia” hostile to American interests and in thrall to Islam.

These warnings chime with public fears that Europe has already become an incubator for worldwide terrorism. After all, the September 11 hijackers plotted in Germany, and homegrown terrorists were involved in the Madrid and London attacks. Concern is growing that a swelling immigrant population resistant to assimilation or integration will steal jobs and strain public services. Last year a Pew poll found that about half of respondents in Spain and Germany held negative views of Muslims. In Spain the figure had climbed 15 points, to 52 percent, since 2004. In the June elections to the European Parliament, Wilders’s party won 17 percent of the national vote in the Netherlands. The anti-immigrant British National Party, which warned of the “creeping Islamification” of British society, won its first two seats. In Austria the right-wing Freedom Party almost doubled its share of the vote, at 13 percent.

Alert to the public mood, European governments, which are now almost entirely center-right, have been slamming doors to further immigration from Muslim countries and elsewhere, and have reinforced the message that Muslim Turkey is not welcome in the European Union. Italy is now in the process of approving a bill that will jail landlords for leasing properties to undocumented immigrants. Last month French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared the burqa to be “a sign of subservience” that “would not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

But all this obscures a simple fact: the rise of a Eurabia is predicated on limited and dubious evidence. A much-cited 2004 study from the U.S. National Intelligence Council outlines a number of possible scenarios. Its most aggressive is that the number of Muslims in Europe could increase from roughly 20 million today—about 5 percent of the population—to 38 million by 2025. But that projection turns out to be attributed to “diplomatic and media reporting as well as government, academic, and other sources.” In other words, it’s all speculation based on speculation—and even if it’s accurate, it would still mean the number of Muslims will represent just 8 percent of the European population, estimated by the EU to be 470 million in 2025. Indeed, if there is a surge ahead, its scale looks overstated. “There is a quite deliberate exaggeration, as has often been pointed out—but the figures are still being cited,” says Jytte Klausen, an authority on Islam in Europe at Boston’s Brandeis University.

Coming up with a reasonable estimate for the percentage of Muslims now living in Europe, let alone making projections for the future, is a virtually impossible task. The number of illegal immigrants is unknown and, in a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, many countries including France and Germany do not even tally census data on the religion of legal residents. It is true that the Muslim minority is destined to grow steadily in Europe, especially given the youthful profile of today’s immigrants. Fertility rates remain higher among Muslim immigrants than among other Europeans, and Muslims may continue to arrive in Europe in large numbers. But the alarmists assume that past patterns are sure to hold. “The worst of the scaremongering is based on the assumption that current behavior will continue,” says Grace Davie, an expert on Europe and Islam at the University of Exeter in Britain.

For the number of Muslims to outnumber non-Muslims by midcentury, it would require either breeding on a scale rarely seen in history or for immigration to continue at a pace that’s now politically unacceptable. More likely, new controls will slow Muslim immigration. The birthrate for Muslim immigrants is also likely to continue to decline, as it has tended to do, with greater affluence and better health care. There is no Europewide data available, but one study says fertility rates among Turkish-born women in the Netherlands fell from 3.2 in 1990 to 1.9 in 2005, barely above the figure for native-born Dutch. Over the same period, the equivalent figure for Moroccan-born women in the Netherlands dropped from 4.9 to 2.9. Also, fertility rates are edging upward in some Northern European countries, which would offset some of the Muslim growth. Bottom line: given the number of variables, demographers are loath to make predictions about the number of Muslims in Europe in the years to come. “You would almost have to make it up,” says Carl Haub, the senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. And the idea of a Muslim majority any time soon? “Absolutely absurd.”

Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action. The truth is that there are no powerful Muslim political movements in Europe, either continentwide or at the national level, and the divisions that separate Muslims worldwide, most obviously between Sunnis and Shiites, are apparent in Europe as well. Each major nation in Europe has drawn Muslim immigrants from distinct regions of the Islamic world, often former colonies, with different traditions and outlooks. A British Muslim from Pakistan would struggle to communicate with a French Muslim from Algeria. A second-generation Muslim from Turkey living in Germany will have little in common with a newly arrived Moroccan across the border in Belgium. Sharp differences exist even within national frontiers. In Germany, more than one in 10 Muslims are Alawites, who aren’t even recognized as coreligionists by the more orthodox.

In areas of personal morality, attitudes vary markedly, too. One recent Gallup poll found that more than 30 percent of French Muslims were ready to accept homosexuality, compared with zero in Britain. Almost half of French Muslims believed sex between unmarried people was morally acceptable, compared with 27 percent of German Muslims. And violent zealotry is for the tiny minority: polls repeatedly reaffirm that Muslims overwhelmingly disapprove of terrorism. In some countries, the mood is broadly secular. “The majority of Muslims in France are, in fact, decoupled from their religion. They just blend into an amorphous mass of brown or black people,” says Ali Allawi, the former Iraqi defense minister and author of the The Crisis of Islamic Civilization. Jochen Hippler, a German political scientist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says he has had young Turks come up to him to ask what Islam is all about. “They have lost any connection with the religion of their parents and grandparents,” he says. A recent government survey showed that 40 percent of Iranians living in Germany identified themselves as having no religion, as did 23 percent of North Africans. In the Netherlands, the proportion of Muslims who regularly attend the mosque—27 percent—is lower than the proportion of Protestants who go to church.

For that matter, there’s little evidence that Muslims themselves see any contradiction between allegiance to the state and their religious faith. An overwhelming majority of Muslims in France and Germany told Gallup’s pollsters that they believed Muslims were loyal to their country. British and German Muslims were more likely than their countrymen to say they were confident of the judicial system and financial institutions and the honesty of elections. It seems that if Europe is in the throes of revolution, many of the supposed combatants appear strangely content with the established order. Newsweek. Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong

Analyzing the forecasts of an emerging ‘Eurabia,’ hostile to America and western values. By William Underhill | NEWSWEEK, Published Jul 11, 2009, From the magazine issue dated Jul 20, 2009

SRINAGAR (IHK): In occupied Kashmir, the Chairman of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has urged people to massively participate in Lal Chowk March on Monday, the Kashmir Martyrs day, reports KMS.

The APHC Chairman who remained under house arrest for the second day, today, in a statement issued in Srinagar, pointed out that the day will also be observed as Yaum-e-Istaqlal to convey to the world that no amount of state terrorism would deter Kashmiris from pursuing their right of self-determination.

He said, a mammoth rally will be held in Lal Chowk on the day and the Ambassadors of all the countries based in New Delhi have been invited to attend.

In Srinagar, the students of Islamia College held a protest march against Indian state terrorism. Indian police personnel subjected people to severe torture after they came out of a mosque in Gow Kadal. The business markets in Maisuma, Lal Chowk, Red Cross Road, Hari Singh High Street and Polo View remained closed in protest against the incident.

Occupied Jammu and Kashmiris want to sell their produce in Azad Kashmir. Northern Areas are not part of Kashmir and Azad Kashmir

Complete strike continued in Kupwara and Hindwara for the third consecutive day, today, following the molestation of an orphan girl by Indian troops and her subsequent death. Agitation continued for the 42nd day, today [Saturday] in Shopian.

People in IHK urged to massively participate in March, ‘Pakistan Times’ Kashmir Desk

The Americans bomb the tribal area at will, not caring a hoot for the civilian lives. The Turks cross over into Iraqi Kurdistan and bomb the terrororsts. The Israeli fly over Lebanon, Syria,  the West bank and Gaza to fire at Anti-israeli suspects. Rehman Malik has identified the Kunar area of Afghanistan where the terror is being directed against Pakistan. If the PAF is unable and unwilling to stop the drones, then the questions is, when will the PAF live up to its obligations and begin eliminating the terror camps across the border.

Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country’s interior minister.

“If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching.”

He added: “According to our information Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar.” The UK Times.

Rehman Malik’s statement is profound. He is not one who blames others lightly. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence in Wagah and Islamabad, Rehman Malik did not accuse Bharat. He has done so now, and in a big way. Pakistan is now paying back Delhi and the onslaught is unrelenting and lethal. The comments by Mr. Rehman and General Kiyan were followed up with an in-depth ISPR interview with CNN. Here is what Mr. Abbas said.

Abbas: What we see as a concern is an over-involvement of Indians in Afghanistan that becomes a concern — particularly if one is watching the security calculus in that. If you find a [indistinct] Pashtun, or if the Pashtun are not given their due representation in the government and the military… that causes concern. If you see an over ingress of the Indians into these areas, like their government, their ministries, their army. The fear is, tomorrow what happens if these Americans move out and they’re replaced by Indians as military trainers? That becomes a serious concern. So these kind of apprehensions are there, and they are talked about and they are consulted.

There is clear evidence that the Indo-US relationship has taken a turn for the worst, and the US cannot play China against Bharatwith a neutral Japan. The problems in Eastern Turkistan could be a spill over of the Afghan war. The are is linked by many grids. The IMU is a major player that has caused headaches for Uzbekistan. AfPak countercurrents beyond the Oxus to AfPakAzUzbKazTurkKyr-istan.

There are six parts to this story. One part deals with the improving US-Pakistani relations (drone bombing not withstanding) after the coming to power of Mr. Obama. The other part deals with the stagnation in the US-Bharti nexus. The third part is the Iranain situation which makes Pakistan ever more valuable to Western interests. The fifth part is the Urumqui rioting and the distance ms. Kadeer has created between China and the West. The sixth dimension is Russia and the SCO. The improving Russian Pakistan relations and Paksitan’s desire to join the Shanghai Club lets the US know that it is not the sole superpower.

There is news now that the Pakistanis have publicly offered to mediate the war in Afghanistan and prepare for an exit strategy from Afghanistan. For the ISPR to publicly announce the help to the USA simply attests to the fact that the deal has already been consummated. It is pedagogical  to note that the announcement to mediate with the Taliban comes at the heal-of a the victory in Swat which routed the RAW agents who had tried to create problems for Pakistan.

The new found confidence of the Pakistani spokesman tells us reams on how the war went in Swat. The ISI has concrete evidence in terms of arms, ammunition and personnel of Delhi’s involvement in Swat. The Army has chosen to take concrete action on these matters rather than to make a fuss about it at the UN and other “cry baby” forums.

With denials and counter-charges, we thought it import to publish the entire transcript of the CNN interview with the Pakistani ISPR and its spokesman Mr. Abbas.

Ware: So what can Pakistan do to protect its interests in the face of these concerns in Afghanistan? What can you do?

Abbas: We keep talking, we keep informing them that these are our concerns…

Ware: Informing India?

Abbas: Informing the coalition there and these are our concerns and they have to have a line because if [it] goes beyond them, beyond the line then of course the situation would take an ugly turn…

Ware: But sir, talk is so very cheap, I mean what sanctions or what leverage can you hope to have?

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Pakistan says Taliban leader will talk to U.S.

Abbas: Well, every state has options, the states do not run out of options. We have our options also in this regard.

Ware: Such as what sir?

(Abbas laughing)

Ware: Come on, tell me something here sir.

Abbas: Well the states do not disclose their options also, but there are options of how far you can go in supporting the coalition there. How far you can go accepting the Indian ingress there etc. So the states work out their own options in this regard. But the concern is the other side has to see the legitimacy of the concern. If the concerns are not legitimate then the other side would not buy. But this… if there are concern… take example of we have been informing the coalition that our situation in Baluchistan is a result of somebody working out of Kabul. We have informed them that this group is creating an uncertainty, an instability in Afghanistan and it is residing in Kabul.

When historically you sit back and you look — and you see that America, in Afghanistan, is now fighting against a number of its former allies from the 1980s. It was the Pakistani intelligence services that was so instrumental in assisting the American relationship in fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And in that regard, it was groups such as Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaladdin Haqqani — the Noorzai tribes of the south, the Pashtun tribes, indeed the tribe of Mullah Omar himself, these were very valuable partners — American allies — through the friendship of Pakistan. Now America finds itself fighting these exact men and these groups. How complicated is that? And how does that make Pakistan’s situation more precarious?

Ware: Must be difficult for you sir, being in the middle of all of this?

Abbas: Yes certainly, yes certainly, we are in the eye of the storm. And as you said there is a history. Since last over 30 years this whole area is mobilized, it is on the move. The youth has grown, seen nothing but the bloodshed, fighting, and all this movement has caused them, deprived them of any education. They are only in the business of fighting, so therefore this has made the situation more complex. That the allies of the past have turned into enemies.

Ware: And yet you’re still in the middle between all these allies?

Abbas: That’s right. And that’s what makes it difficult to understand others’ position. That can only happen when you have an intense, uh, negotiations and engagement only then you can understand the real difficulties of operating against those people who were the allies in the past, and in the area which were the sort of a training centers of the past.

Ware: Well those the exact same areas, are they not? The same red lines, the same sanctuaries… that America once supported them.

(Abbas laughs)

Abbas: Yes, that’s right. You see, in this area of the freedom fight against the Soviets was converted into the holy war, or the holy jihad though American literature which came from Nebraska.

Ware: They were publishing the holy Quran from America and distributing it even in Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and…

Abbas: Now that situation has reversed. It is we find these tribes on the other side, and it is difficult for their recruits or their people also to understand, why once we were allies are fighting against each other. So it is difficult to make them realize that look, there is a state, the state has some constraints of operation. The state has to take into account the national interest and therefore it cannot be allowed that you create all those centers here and cross over to Afghanistan and start killing the other side. So therefore these kinds of things is understandable to some but difficult to convince some of the other groups.

Ware: Absolutely, and trying to explain this to the American public is an entirely different thing. I mean, to what degree can Pakistan’s relationships with both sides — both with the formal Mujahedeen fighters and with America, be a value today in trying to broker a solution? I mean, Pakistan’s long had relationships with Hikmatyar, Haqqani, with the Pashtun tribes. To some degree, those relationships of course naturally continue. How can you use those relationships with these forces who were once friends of America, and now fighting America, of value to bring a solution?

Abbas: Now we are getting into the politics of war. What the ISI [the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate] in the past had a very intense relationship because all – the whole coalition of the past were using them in Afghanistan.

Ware: While America in fact turned to the ISI to have these relationships.

Abbas: That’s right, the ISI was in the forefront of the whole struggle against the Soviets. Now by maintaining the contact with the organizations like what you have mentioned of Hikmatyar and Haqqani, doesn’t mean that the state as a policy is providing them the physical support or the funding or the training. It doesn’t mean that. Because, you know after 9/11 the state had realized it is no more possible to sustain a policy of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. And therefore there was a U turn, and the state followed, the army followed, the ISI followed. But having said that, no intelligence organization in the world shuts its last door on any other organization. So therefore the contacts are there. The communication remains. But it doesn’t mean that you endorse what they are doing in Afghanistan. You know you have nothing to do with it because your plate is full. You have enough in your plate. These all local Talibans and militants and terrorists who have turned inward on to the state is enough for the state to take care of and this is exactly what we are engaged in: Baujour, Waziristan, Moman, Kabar, Swat, this is enough for the state. Looking at our capacity, we have limited capacity we are not a global power. We have very small army and we have some gaps in technology also. We do need modern technology to fight this kind of war. And we have created our defense forces India specific, a conventional war specific. For this unconventional war we do require help, assistance, support in specific areas.

Last year, the representatives of the Karzai government as well as the emissaries of the Taliban met in Saudi Arabia. This was disclosed by none other than the Bruce Reidel one of President Obama’s advisors. We have already calculated that the US president had two years to resolve Afghanistan. The Briish and the Canadians are withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2011 and the Europeans have lost all enthusiasm the perpetual warfare in the Hindu Kush. 

Now Pakistan has offered an escape hatch to the sinking ship of the US Army. Pakistan has publicly stated that it can leverage the Taliban for a peace deal if the US reduces and eliminates Indian influences in Afghanistan. Based on the statements emanating from the White House and the State Department America is not only amenable to such a deal, it is acitvely encouraging the Pakistani government on taking the initiative.

Ware: In terms of Afghanistan, what is the solution, from the Pakistani point of view, what is the best way forward? Is there room for negotiation between America and the forces it’s in conflict with? How does America get its way out of the situation in Afghanistan?

Abbas: You know again we will get into the statecraft of this whole affair, but…

Ware: Militarily? Because America cannot win militarily? Can it? Can America win with guns and bullets?

Abbas: I think no counterinsurgency can be won only by the application of force. It has to go along with the political strategy, the political instrument; the development and the reconstruction also along with that. The military can create an environment, it can create temporary stability, it can bring back security but that would be temporary. It has to have the major stakeholders — that being the administration, the civilians, the notables, the representatives, and the civilian police agency etc. who have to police the area. To take control of the security on the long-term basis, the military would give them a temporary security situation. Now we are very clear about this when we are operating in Swat, the military will provide them a temporary stability in the area. It would help also the civilian agencies, including administration and police, but then — unless and until the major stakeholders, the people themselves, they have to take control of the area along with the police and the administration. Only then a lasting peace will return. Otherwise, it would keep on creating fighting in this area. The peace would not return on a permanent basis.

Ware: General, I am getting the wind-up from your aide, just one last question. We saw great success in the Iraq theatre, where America engaged the insurgents it was fighting against and eventually put 103,000 Sunni insurgents on the American payroll that assisted them in their fight against al Qaeda, and it assisted America in its challenge to curb Iranian influence. Is there room for such negotiation here? In the Afghan-Pakistan theatre? Can America negotiate with the groups it’s currently fighting with?

Abbas: Certainly — I think that you can’t use one formula in dealing with various groups. This is not a monolithic organization. How we look at Pakistani-Taliban is not a monolithic organization.

Ware: And how you look at Afghan-Taliban is totally different.

Abbas: Absolutely, they are totally different.

Ware: But can America talk to these groups? Can America… is part of the solution, America negotiating with these forces?

Abbas: There are reconcilable elements in these whole, in this whole Taliban groups etc. and one has to identify those and they are reconcilable and when there is no harm in negotiating…opening a negotiation with them.

Ware: Just a dialogue.

Abbas: That’s right, dialogue. Eventually one would have to return to the dialogue table.

Ware: And that’s where Pakistan can perhaps provide valuable assistance to the American mission.

Abbas: I think yes that can be worked out, that’s possible.

With Swat sanitized of the RAW infestation, the situation in the Hindu Kush is getting a bit more clearer. China and the West are driving towards a chasm, and the divide between Iran and the US has never been wider. In these circumstances there is a respite in the the vitriol from the Murdock press against Pakistan. Even the New York Times,  the Washington Post and the worst Pakistanibhobic newspaper the Guardian is discussing Islamabad in measured tones. 

The US is leaving Afghanistan. Only the details of the withdrawal and the schedule of the return is to announced. A massive campaign will be launched to obfuscate the defeat with face saving measures like the ones implemented in Iraq.Uzbekistan pressured by IMU is scared of Taliban reprisals on Supplies to Kabul. The NATO allies are reluctant to commit more troops.  The outgoing NATO commander estimated that 400,000 troops were needed to defeat the Taliban. An optimal troop level is impossible to be met. The US and its NATO allies simply do not have the capacity to deploy the troops necessary to force a military settlement or to pacify and occupy Afghanistan. Tick Tock Tick Tock-2011: Obama’s shrinking Afghan timeline.

The Drone attacks remain a big stickler in US Pakistani relations with many claiming a complex web of deceit and secret approvals.

Washington does not directly acknowledge its missile attacks on Pakistani territory by unmanned drone aircraft but Pakistani officials say the US has carried out more than 40 attacks inside its borders in the past 10 months, killing hundreds of people.

CIA officials claim these attacks have been highly effective in disrupting Al-Qaeda’s ability to operate. However, Malik insists they are a waste of time because the Al-Qaeda leadership is on the other side of the border in eastern Afghanistan.

“They’re getting mid-level people not big fish,” he said. “And they are counterproductive because they are killing civilians and turning locals against our government. We try to win people’s hearts, then one drone attack drives them away. One attack alone last week killed 50 people.”

The removal of Bharati agents in Swat has baffled Delhi which thought that it could continue the procy war in Swat for a decade like it did in Sri Lanka. The new found confidence of the Pakistani spokesman tells us reams on how the war went in Swat. The ISI has concrete evidence in terms of arms, ammunition and personnel of Delhi’s involvement in Swat. The Army has chosen to take concrete action on these matters rather than to make a fuss about it at the UN and other “cry baby” forums.

The army has not yet caught the leaders of the Swat Taliban though the interior minister claims that the main leader, Maulana Fazlullah, has been hit twice and is badly wounded. “I’m quite confident we’ll get them,” he said.

“Not only have we killed most of them but we’ve also destroyed their hideouts and arms depots,” he added. “We discovered long, wide tunnels they were using for weapons.”

According to Malik, the families of the militant leaders had been discovered hiding in the refugee camps. Fazlullah’s family was found in a camp in Haripur and taken into custody.

Troops will remain in Swat to prevent the Taliban from returning but the army’s main focus is switching to the tribal areas of Waziristan, home to one of the area’s fiercest tribes. South Waziristan is the headquarters of Mehsud, and the north is also a base of Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan warlord with close links to Al-Qaeda believed to be responsible for the capture of an American soldier last week.

“Wherever these militants are, we’ll get them out,” said Malik. “The decision of the government is very firm – no mercy, no negotiation. They must surrender or die.”

For all Washington’s talk of an “AfPak strategy”, he said, Pakistan’s efforts to take on the Taliban their side of the border are being hampered by the failure of American and British troops in Afghanistan to monitor their side.

“Two years ago we were being criticised by the West for our ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence agency] helping the Taliban cross into Afghanistan,” he said. “We have stopped the border crossing. Now we’re finding the same situation – they’re coming from the other side, bringing arms and fighters from Helmand into Baluchistan and into Waziristan. Should we say it’s Afghan or western intelligence helping them?”

He argued that Nato troops in Afghanistan should have first sealed the border before stepping up the fighting. “If we can’t seal it totally we should seal it as much as possible,” he said. “If we can’t have a wall, at least let’s put up barbed wire.”

“They should replicate what we’ve done,” he added. “We have 1,000 checkpoints on our side – they have only 100, of which only 60 are working. It makes no sense to both be fighting either side of the border without stopping the militants crossing.”Stop bombing us: Osama isn’t here, says Pakistan Christina Lamb in Karachi

There is no military solution to the Afghan quagmire. We have been advocating a more comprehensive solution for a decade. Replacing Mr. Karzai with Zalmay Khalilzad is like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The whole game is over. The US and European media too busy with the US elections has still not caught up with the reality of the fiasco in Kabul. The end is near.

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy has banned the scarf aind burqa. Many were wondering if he plans to continue the banning ’till all women in France (un)dress like his wife Carlo Bruni. Carla Bruni is known for here lewd poses and her frontal nudity before she married Sarkozi. The world knows that Mr. Sarkozi does not mind. The issue is not Islam, but Mr. Sarkozi’s sagging popularity. The poor and vulnerable populations of France’s former colonies are a great victim to make the world think that he is a tough guy. 

Carla Bruni nude sketch

PARIS- It’s been almost three weeks since French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that burqas imprison women and would not be tolerated in France. In a speech at the Palace of Versailles, Mr. Sarkozy said that the head-to-toe Islamic garment for women, the burqa, “is not a sign of religion”, but rather “a sign of subservience.”

The burqa is the most concealing of all Islamic veils as it covers the entire face and body, leaving only a mesh screen to see through. It should not be confused with the niqab which is a face veil that sometimes leaves the eyes clear and is sometimes worn with a separate eye veil.

French legislators in Paris had recently begun to look into the spread of Muslim women wearing these full-body robes and veils, such as burqas and niqabs, with a debate ensuing ranging from an immediate ban to a gradual one. Sarkozy’s statement served to escalate the debate into a burqa polemic with politicians and analysts all over Europe weighing in for and against it, effectively eclipsing a multitude of other issues of more immediate concern in France, such as the economic crisis, rampant unemployment and a bloated system of social services. Human Rights Watch, and several Muslim groups and clerics have criticized the ban and asked Sarkozy to reconsider his statements citing that the proposal “stigmatized” Islam.

France is home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim population of about 6 million.
In 2004 the country passed a controversial law purportedly introduced to support the Republic’s principles of Laïcité, with which France insures separation of church and state. This argument was considered a disingenuous one whose real purpose was to forbid female Muslim students from wearing headscarves, designated to be a “conspicuous” display of religious affiliation, while other symbols, such as the wearing of crosses and stars of David were seen as “discrete” and therefore exempted from the ruling’s enforcement. As a result, Muslim students were overwhelmingly impacted.

By framing the wearing of burqas and other body veils under the guise of showing concern for women’s rights, Sarkozy has also found a roundabout way of targeting Muslims and putting them in the human rights’ defendant’s seat, engendering another religious debate. The number of French Muslim women who wear the burqa or the niqab is minuscule, and one would have to go out of his way to visit les banlieues(Paris’s poor suburbs) to spot one or two. So why is Sarkozy proposing the ban and stirring all these emotions?

Perhaps Mr. Sarkozi wants all women in France to dress like his wife Carla Bruni

Many critics to Sarkozy’s proposal claim that he deliberately initiated a burqa polemic to distract from his low approval rating of 32 percent down from 60 percent for the six months following his election. The burqa is Sarkozy’s nationalistic prop, and its emotional appeal temporally outweighs his unfulfilled promises on such issues as guaranteeing workers five weeks of paid leave annually and the 35-hour workweek which Sarkozy had to get rid of once the economy started to sink. All the while maintaining a flashy lifestyle, which have earned him the title, “le Président Bling-Bling.”

“It is my choice alone,” said Aamina (her name was changed per her request), “when did I ask Sarkozy to liberate me?” she added.

Aamina, a soft spoken Afghan widow, immigrated to France in 2005 to join her brother who works as a janitor in the Métro after her husband was killed in an attack by the Taliban. She said that she had not expected that her burqa would become the subject of controversy in France.

“Ou est la Liberté, Égalité, et Fraternité?”
“Sarkozy has turned me into a freak of nature…that I’m not” she sobbed.

Many Muslim women have been complaining that these new laws have been driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments. In June 2008, the Council of State — the country’s highest administrative court — refused to grant French citizenship to a Moroccan woman wearing a burqa, because it went against “the values of a democratic society and the principle of equality of the sexes.”

Meanwhile, Huda Benkaran, a French Algerian social worker who has been involved in helping Muslim women to integrate in France thinks that outlawing the burqa is a “stupid proposal” made by a “an imbecile.”

“What does Sarkozy think? Outlawing burqas is going to make these women walk outside in a sundress? They just won’t leave home as often. He is sentencing them to prison!” Benkaran says in anger. Follow Jamal Dajani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamaldajani

Various news sources, including the BBC and the Military spokesman of the Pakistan Army are claiming that the RAW terrorist Fazullah is seriously injured and is near death. The demise of Fazullah is as important as the death of LTTE leader Parbakan. This elimination of Fazalullah is a semianl event in eliminating RAW from Swat and FATA. RAW will continue to spread terror in Pakistan, as it has been doing for the past 50 years, but their huge base in Swat has been eliminated and RAW agents will not be able to ply Pakistani roads with impunity. With the imminent withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the victory for the Pakistanis is even more sweet.

THE leader of Taliban militants in Swat Valley has been critically wounded and is close to death, the BBC has learned. The information about Maulana Fazlullah confirms statements from senior government and security officials.

A former village cleric, Fazlullah founded the branch of the Taliban movement which eventually took over the Swat Valley.

After a recent offensive, the Army said it had almost defeated rebels in that sector of the northwest. It had been battling Taliban militants there for about two months and the government said it had regained control of the region. The information about Maulana Falzullah was gathered from interviews carried out by the BBC in his heartland in the northwest of Pakistan.

“Maulana Fazlullah was actually hit in two airstrikes, and is critically wounded,” Wasif Ali, a resident of Mingora told the BBC during a trip to Swat. “He is now stranded in Imam Dehri without any access to medical assistance and is close to death.”

Ali has close contacts with the militants and has been keeping a close watch on their movements in the area. He confirmed that another senior Taliban leader, Shah Duran, was also killed in an airstrike as earlier stated by the Army.

Interviews with other locals corroborated claims that Maulana Fazlullah had been seriously injured.

Earlier on Wednesday, Pakistan’s top military spokesman, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said that Maulana Fazlullah had been hurt in an airstrike. “But we cannot confirm his exact condition at the moment,” he said.

Ali and his family stayed in Swat through the entire operation. He said the fiercest fighting took place during the first three days of the military’s assault on the urban areas. “It was when they pushed the Taliban off the emerald mines,” he said.

“The gunships were right on top of my homes when they opened fire on the militants. “We hid in the bathrooms and prayed for it to end.” He said many of the Taliban were killed in that onslaught, while the rest melted away.

Currently, Swat’s urban centres are being strictly patrolled by the military. Mingora remains largely deserted as the military seeks out the remaining Taliban and arrests suspects.

Armoured vehicles and heavily armed troops patrol the city streets to ensure they retain total control of an area which remains volatile.

Online adds: Soon after the announcement made by the government with regard to return of internally displaced people, Chief of banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Swat Chapter Maulana Fazalullah breaking his silence after many months has vowed to continue his mission for imposition of sharia.

Maulana Fazalullah in a video message received by a private TV channel strongly criticised the government for launching offensive against them in Swat and vowed to continue movement for enforcement of sharia in Malakand division.

He said he along with top leadership of Taliban is alive and only one commander Abu Jindal has lost his life so far. He said his mission is imposition of sharia and it would be continue till enforcement of sharia in Malakand. He asked residents of Malakand division especially Swat to chose punishment themselves if they continue to support government.

Peace cannot be restored in Swat without the enforcement of sharia and jihad is necessary in this respect, he said. He also refuted the army and Government claims that the leadership of Taliban has been eliminated and he is critically injured.
Fazalullah also vowed to resist security forces if Government tries to establish its writ in Swat, saying that he and the leadership of Taliban is in Mangora. It is worth mentioning that ever since the launch of operation Rah-e-Rast by the army in Swat, Fazlullah had gone into hiding

The US is leaving Afghanistan. Only the details of the withdrawal and the schedule of the return is to announced. A massive campaign will be launched to obfuscate the defeat with face saving measures like the ones implemented in Iraq.Uzbekistan pressured by IMU is scared of Taliban reprisals on Supplies to Kabul. The NATO allies are reluctant to commit more troops.  The outgoing NATO commander estimated that 400,000 troops were needed to defeat the Taliban. An optimal troop level is impossible to be met. The US and its NATO allies simply do not have the capacity to deploy the troops necessary to force a military settlement or to pacify and occupy Afghanistan. Tick Tock Tick Tock-2011: Obama’s shrinking Afghan timeline

“wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult”. US Central Command, David Petraeus,

NATO needs 400,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. According to British and American General, even that would not be enough to defeat the Taliban. No country or group of countries have that amount of manpower to spare. The financial crisis in America and Europe makes it virtually impossible for the UK to send in an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The Europeans and NATO is unable and unwilling to continue the war in Afghanistan.

David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has given the administration a one-year deadline on Afghanistan; this tells me that House Democrats could turn on that war–and U.S. involvement in the region, generally–if public support for it slips, and if significant gains aren’t made.May 11 2009, 10:25 am by Chris Good, Zardari: U.S. Shares Blame For Taliban Threat.

There is no military solution to the Afghan quagmire. We have been advocating a more comprehensive solution for a decade. Replacing Mr. Karzai with Zalmay Khalilzad is like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The whole game is over. The US and European media too busy with the US elections has still not caught up with the reality of the fiasco in Kabul. The end is near.

Over the years, we have always maintained that the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, was also a war of choice. The vengeance for 9111 could have taken many avenues to secure American. Carpet bombing Afghanistan into the stone age was not a real solution. The Daisy Cutters acted only to create a surge of Anti-Americanism which will take decades to nullify. Afghans were friendly to the USA and remembered the support that the US had given them against the USSR. The fondness for Washington over Moscow was evident in the attitude of the Taliban and the ordinary Afghans. The Daisy Cutters, the Reapers and the B-52 bombed the goodwill away. The Daisy Cutters did satisfy the lust for blood for those who aspired and worked for the Plan for a New American Century (PNAC) but ti did nothing to secure America. The Daisy Cutters did nothing to win the war in Kabul. Justifying the Banality of Occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Thinktanks attempt to complete the circle of complicity between a sycophantic press, and a non-inquisitive servile public. The nation is forced to accept the only argument that it is being repeatedly inundated with. More than 80% of Afghan territory is in the hands of the 38 insurgents groups collectively known as the “Taliban” in the Western media.

In 2001 Pakistan advised the US to station about 5000 marines in Tarbela and negotiate the exile or capture of Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were fully amenable to this idea, and issues statements like “we don’t know where Osama is” and “he is a guest” and “his status as a guest is not compatible with the attack on another country’. The Taliban claim that they have always been involved in their own affairs–namely the liberation of Afghanistan. The Taliban has fought NATO, ISAF and the US forces on Afghan soil–a right given to them by the United Nations. According to the Taliban they have not attacked America or its interests anywhere else. 

The Obama camp has been split between the Surgers and the Exiters. Obama’s “Surgers” vs. “Exiters”: Exit strategy now or scrambled hasty retreat later. It seems that the surgers are losing and the Exiters are winning. Fixing Afpak: Inability to define exit strategy spells inevitable US military catastrophy in Kabul

There is clear evidence that the Indo-US relationship has taken a turn for the worst, and the US cannot play China against Bharatwith a neutral Japan. The problems in Eastern Turkistan could be a spill over of the Afghan war. The are is linked by many grids. The IMU is a major player that has caused headaches for Uzbekistan. AfPak countercurrents beyond the Oxus to AfPakAzUzbKazTurkKyr-istan.

There is news now that the Pakistanis have publicly offered to mediate the war in Afghanistan and prepare for an exit strategy from Afghanistan. For the ISPR to publicy announce the help to the USA simply attests to the fact that the deal has already been consummated. It is pedagogical  to note that the announcement to mediate with the Taliban comes at the heal of a the victory in Swat which routed the RAW agents who had tried to create problems for Pakistan.

The new found confidence of the Pakistani spokesman tells us reams on how the war went in Swat. The ISI has concrete evidence in terms of arms, ammunition and personnel of Delhi’s involvement in Swat. The Army has chosen to take concrete action on these matters rather than to make a fuss about it at the UN and other “cry baby” forums.

LONDON: Pakistan’s military has declared that not only is it in contact with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar but that it can bring him and other commanders to the negotiating table with the United States.

The acknowledgment of on-going communication with Taliban forces using sanctuary in Pakistan to launch military strikes against US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan is part of a new diplomatic overture to help the Obama administration find an end to the long-running conflict.

In an exclusive CNN interview, Pakistan military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said in return for any role as a broker between the United States and the Taliban, Pakistan wants concessions from Washington over Islamabad’s concerns with long-time rival India.

And senior US officials have told CNN the Obama Administration is willing both to talk to top Taliban leaders and to raise some of Pakistan’s concerns with India.

With Nato’s Afghan force commanders conceding the military fight against the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan is at a ‘stalemate’ and that a recent influx of American combat troops is hoped to break the deadlock, the consensus among military and diplomatic figures in the region is that the United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan militarily. Dawn

Here are some lessons of history:

“In the interests, then, of peace; in the interests of commerce; in the interests of moral and material improvement, it may be asserted that interference in Afghanistan has now become a duty, and that any moderate outlay or responsibility we may incur in restoring order at Kabul will prove in the sequel to be true economy.” The exact assumptions were made in 1868 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, a celebrated and experienced member of the council of India, concerning the threat of a Russian presence in Afghanistan

In 1868, Rawlinson’s views were defeated. Sir John Lawrence, the new viceroy, persuaded Lord Derby’s government that Afghanistan was less important than it appeared, that our resources were limited, and that we had other more pressing priorities. Here, in a civil service minute of 1867, he imagines what would happen if the Russians tried to invade: “In that case let them undergo the long and tiresome marches which lie between the Oxus and the Indus; let them wend their way through poor and difficult countries, among a fanatic and courageous population, where, in many places, every mile can be converted into a defensible position; then they will come to the conflict on which the fate of India will depend, toil-worn, with an exhausted infantry, a broken-down cavalry, and a defective artillery.”

He concludes: “I am firmly of opinion that our proper course is not to advance our troops beyond our present border, not to send English officers into the different states of Central Asia; but to put our own house in order, by giving the people of India the best government in our power, by conciliating, as far as practicable, all classes, and by consolidating our resources.” Telegrpah. Afghanistan–A war we cannot win. Rory Stewart

The Britishers know that they have lost the battle in Afghanistan. The “nation of shopkeepers” understands that they have been licked, so they have announced a date for withdrawal. This gives them the fig leaf that they need to get out of the “graveyard of empires“. Mr. Obama should have followed suit, but he could not, perhaps because of domestic pressures. Mr. Obama possibly did not want to be blamed as the President who lost the war in Afghanistan. He probably did not want to be known as the President when the policy to “Cut and Run” was imposed. It is exactly this type of thinking that perpetuates perpetual mimetic war.

80% of Afghanistan is under insurgent control. Taliban sanctuaries around Kabul thumb thier noses at ISAF, NATO & US forces. Why would Taliban need safe havens far away in Pakistan?Last year, the representatives of the Karzai government as well as the emissaries of the Taliban met in Saudi Arabia. This was disclosed by none other than the Bruce Reidel one of President Obama’s advisors. We have already calculated that the US president had two years to resolve Afghanistan. The British and the Canadians are withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2011 and the Europeans have lost all entusiasm for the perpetual warfare in the Hindu Kush. 

Now Pakistan has offered an escape hatch to the sinking ship of the US Army. Pakistan has publicly stated that it can leverage the Taliban for a peace deal if the US reduces and eliminates Indian influences in Afghanistan. Based on the statements emanating from the White House and the State Department America is not only amenable to such a deal, it is actively encouraging the Pakistani government on taking the initiative.

And with the Pakistan military, with its intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), now going public with its offer to act as broker to help initiate talks, this could be the first opportunity for a breakthrough in ending the Afghan war that began with the US invasion in 2001.

Abbas told CNN after its ‘very intense relationship’ with militants during the fighters’ alliance with the United States during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Pakistan military is now still in contact with Taliban commanders such as Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Mullah Nazir and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the militant Hizb-e-Islami group.

‘That’s right, the ISI was in the forefront of the whole struggle against the Soviets. Now, by maintaining the contacts with the organizations like [Mullah Omar’s Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar] doesn’t mean that that state policy is [to be] providing them physical support or the funding or training,’ Abbas said. Dawn

For the bulk of the Indian strategic community, the unthinkable is happening – the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban. From all accounts, the Taliban appear edging closer to the Afghan capital and tightening their control in the provinces ringing Kabul.

Unsurprisingly, Karzai has appealed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to mediate with the Taliban. To request the Saudi king to stake his prestige is serious business. Karzai couldn’t have acted alone. Alongside there are reports that the British intelligence has been talking to Taliban envoys in London.

The influential Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported that senior Taliban functionaries who travelled to Saudi Arabia in the recent days have put forward 11 conditions, which include the withdrawal of foreign forces, political accommodation of the Taliban in key ministries and the drawing up of a new constitution that affirms Afghanistan as an Islamic state.

Indian policymakers, who have been bogged down in the labyrinthine passage of the Indo-US nuclear deal, need to take note that the ground is dramatically shifting. Regional security is set to transform. Several factors call for reckoning. First, there is cause to worry about Washington’s attention span in the period ahead to press ahead with the Afghan war.

After the 9/11 attacks Pakistani policy to support the groups did a ‘U-turn,’ he said.

‘And the state followed, the army followed, the ISI followed. Having said that no intelligence organization in the world shuts its last door on any other organization. So therefore the contacts are there. The communication remains. But it doesn’t mean you endorse what they are doing in Afghanistan. You know you have nothing to do with it because your plate is full.’

And even further, Abbas said, the Pakistani military has the ability to get the Taliban to the table with the United States to broker a cease-fire by jump-starting a dialogue between the warring parties, Abbas said.

‘That’s right. Dialogue,’ Abbas said. ‘Eventually, one would have to return to the dialogue table. I think that can be worked out. That is possible.’

Claude Angeli, veteran journalist of Le Canard Enchaine, got hold of a copy of a coded cable by the French deputy chief of mission in Kabul, Francois Fitou, based on a briefing by the heavyweight. British diplomat, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, servedas ambassador to Afghanistan. What Sir Sherard told Fitou in confidence is worth recalling:

• “The current situation [in Afghanistan] is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the government [of President Hamid Karzai] has lost all trust.”
• “The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them … They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic.”
• “We [NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies] should tell them [United States] that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. In the short term, we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan … The American strategy is doomed to fail.”
• Britain aimed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2011.
• The only realistic outlook for Afghanistan would be the installation of “an acceptable dictator” and the public opinion should be primed for this.

Retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI, Pakistan’s equivalent of the CIA, is known as the ‘Godfather of the Taliban ‘ He, too, said talks can be arranged. In terms of US interests in Afghanistan, he said, there is only one man who can make it happen.

‘Mullah Omar, nobody else,’ Gul said.

He insisted the Obama administration, through the Pakistan military, can access Mullah Omar. ‘Why not?’ he said, ‘Is he a terrorist by any definition? Has he indulged in any act of terrorism?’

Gul added a stated Taliban condition to any discussions, the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan first, was not necessarily a fixed demand and, with concessions from Washington, could be softened and make way for negotiations to begin. Dawn

We have always maintained that the US will have to leave Afghanistan. It can declare victory and leave on its own schedule or it can leave Kabul on the schedule dictated by the Taliban. Once the US leaves, a pro-Pakistan government will come to power in Kabul. This is not conjecture, this is fact. No amount of scheming by Delhi can change the simple fact that Bharat has no grassroot support in Afghanistan. The emerging “Leave Afghanistan to Pakistan” strategy goes mainstream. Extricating the US from the Lost war in the Khyber.One of the major components of this “deal” is the Chinese request that the US should leave Afghansitan. China sets conditions for bailing out US and buying US T-Bills

Beyond US withdrawal from Afghanistan

Fixing AfPakexpedites the inevitable union between Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Rupee News for several years has proposed that the Pakhtun areas of Afghanistan should be handed over to the Pakistani military and NATO and ISAFshould leave Pakistan. Now this is affirmed by some American Thinktanks. Saving the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan. Eradicating the Pashtun plight and ending occupation. (http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/31/saving-pashtuns-of-old-afghanistan-in-afghania-eradicating-pashtun-plight-ending-occupation/)

Alama Iqbal said Aik houn Muslim haram ki pasbani keh liyeh, Neel Keh Sahil ta khak Kashgar

Kashgar of course is in Eastern Turkestan in the land of the Uighurs in China. The Uighurs were taken over by the Peoples Liberation Army and then incorporated into the Peoples Republic of China.

Pakistan liberated 5000 Square kilometers of Kashmir from Bharat (aka India) and ceded the territory to China, so that Chinese could begin to consolidate their national unity and have the ability to link up to Tibet (which was headed towards Bharat). The 5000 square miles of land made the Pakistani-Chinese friendship higher than the Karakorams, deeper than the Arabian Sea, and sweeter than honey. Islamabad should constantly check if the Kashmirs of Aksai Chin are happy under Chinese rule. The Uighurs under Beijing are not happy. The mass migration of the Han into the land of the Uighurs has created unparalleled tension in Eastern Turkistan.

The Chinese press has reported the riots but focuses on things returning to normal.

Mosques opened Friday for prayers in most places in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, except for the capital Urumqi where some were shut for security reasons. The Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar City, China’s largest mosque, received about 3,000 prayers Friday afternoon, with Armed Police and about 20 police vehicles guarding the square.  The main gate of the mosque was closed, while two side doors were open for the congregational prayers who entered at about 2:50 p.m. after going through security checks.

Some others prayed in the sun outside the mosque. The service ended at about 3:50 p.m. Customers swarmed into shops after the ritual. Foreign visitors were seen in the streets. Some mosques in Urumqi were closed Friday and Muslims were told to perform their weekly congregational prayer at home following Sunday’s deadly riot.English CRI

When the Americans moved their troops into Afghanistan, China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to isolate iteself from the IMU and the Taliban. My working with the Pakistani Islamic parties, the When Pakistan faced trouble in Swat, the Chinese made some statements about terrorism that that parallelled the rhetoric emanating from the New York Times and the Washington Post. There was a tinge of arrogance reflected in a few analysts in Beijing. That hubris was shattered when Tibet blew up. Today nothing remains of that thinking which allowed a couple of the Beijing thinktanks to get into lecture mode.

The Tibet riots were definately the workd of RAW and CIA hands in Lhasha and other places. The riots in Urumqi were serious enough to impress upon the Chinese president that cutting short the G-8 summit was the right thing to do. In typical Chinese fashion the rioting will become history. However Beijing needs to realize that now, there is a concerted effort by Washington and Delhi to cause problems for China.

Beijing – Chinese riot police arrested several Uighurs Friday after breaking up a small demonstration in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang Province and the scene of a riot Sunday that killed 156 people and injured more than 1,000.

Authorities arranged extra bus services out of Urumqi after China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, but demand outstripped supply Friday as thousands of people poured into bus and train stations to flee the violence-wracked city. Still, Chinese police this week succeeded in averting a major interethnic bloodbath after initially failing to control Sunday’s riot. Similarly, on the Internet, over the airwaves, and in the written media, Chinese propaganda officials utilized new and more sophisticated tactics to overcome early impressions that the authorities were to blame for the carnage and to paint a more nuanced picture.

“Officials are certainly studying the media-management techniques that are practiced elsewhere in the world,” says Rebecca Mackinnon, an expert on the Chinese media at Hong Kong University. “And they actually don’t work too badly.” A combination of censoring the Internet, providing Chinese readers with a wealth of reportage (however one-sided), and allowing foreign reporters to work on the ground represents a new Chinese model for handling the media, says Ms. Mackinnon.

“We’ve moved out of the realm of trying to control everything,” she says, “and into a more subtle realm of manipulation and spin.”CSM

It is now time for Beijing to listen to its friends and beware of its enemies. The religious parties in Pakistan have not jumped on the CIA-RAW bandwagon and are not overtly or publicly criticizing China. However it is a fact that when Beijing cracks down in Kashgar there are reverberations in Kyrgyztan, Kasakhstan and Pakistan. The impact of clamping down on  Eastern Turkistan creates waves in all countries in the region. Pakistan has found Uighurs in FATA and also in Swat. When caught, they have been promptly deported to China. Beijing appreciates the cooperation that Pakistan has offered it. However this private appreciation needs to be translated into a structured forum like the SCO. Pakistani admission into the SCO is no longer a luxury. It is a mandated requirement. Pakistan has been very successful in eliminating the scourge of RAW within the Pakistan borders. China has to learn from this and not go down the slippery road of BRIC.

How Beijing changed tactics since 2008 Tibet unrest

Eighteen months ago, when unrest broke out among Tibetans, the government banned foreign reporters from a huge swath of Tibetan-inhabited western China. Denied the chance to offer firsthand accounts of events, most Western media relied heavily on exile Tibetan sources.

The result was an unmitigated international public relations disaster for Beijing, although at home few Chinese questioned the official version that the Dalai Lama had instigated the trouble that left 18 ethnic Han and Hui Chinese dead.

Last Monday, in contrast, after a demonstration by Uighur protesters had spun out of control, the government invited foreign journalists to visit Urumqi to report for themselves on what had happened. A press center was put at their disposal, and tours of the violence-stricken quarters of the city were provided.

The initial assumption among most Western observers was that most of the dead must have been Uighur demonstrators, cut down by police gunfire. Although the authorities have not given an ethnic breakdown of the victims, reporters interviewing eyewitnesses began to suspect that in fact the majority of the dead may well have been Han Chinese, killed by Uighur rioters.

“We are certainly seeing a more varied and nuanced set of reports out of Xinjiang than we saw about Tibet,” says Ms. Mackinnon.  CSM

Beijing sees the activities of the Ms. Kadeer as secessionist and Anti-China. The Peoples Daily screams of dire consequences for the culprits and complained about the Western bias in media reporting.

“Kadeer’s credentials got the recognition of overseas East Turkestan forces, and her experience is also an advantage to be capitalized on by Western anti-Chinese forces,” said Ma Dazheng, director of the Xinjiang development research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Pan Guang, an expert in international affairs and director of the Shanghai International Studies Center, said, “The East Turkestan terrorist forces portray Kadeer as a figure comparable to the Dalai Lama to promote her international influence.”

“Actually, they just want to follow the road of the Dalai Lama to put the so-called Xinjiang issue into the international spotlight,” he said. Peoples Daily

New Delhi’s RAW powered by the US and the UK analysts are going for the jugular attaching China in its underbelly and coming up with strategies to rip apart China. They attempted to do it in the 40s, setting up Manchuria, Hong Kong, and Tibet as distractions in breaking up the Middle Kingdom into small pieces. Nehru wanted Tibet to be independent and part of Bharat. If Pakistan had not helped China in Aksai Chin, Tibet would have been lost. Today the UK analysts are predicting doomsday for China.

“If Beijing gave them proper autonomy, stopped Han migration, and gave the people the language and religious rights that are guaranteed anyway in the Chinese constitution, they might well find that Uighurs would quite happily remain part of China,” said Joanne Smith Finley at Britain’s Newcastle University.

But for Beijing, genuine autonomy is not really an option because of the precedent it could set for other parts of the country to break away from central control. Reuters

China is a diverse and large land with multiple languages and a huge number of races, ethnicities and religions. This diversity has to be celeberated properly. China should join the IOC and sponsor the Eastern Turskistanis to world evetns. Islam hasnnot be hidden away in Cina or discarded in Ughuristan.

Sun Yat-Sen, leader of the republican movement that toppled the last imperial dynasty of China (the Qing) in 1911, promoted the idea that there were “Five Peoples of China”—the majority Han being one and the others being the Manchus, Mongolian, Tibetan and Hui (a term that included all Muslims in China, now divided into Uighurs, Kazakhs, Hui etc.). Sun was a Cantonese, educated in Hawaii, who wanted both to unite the Han and to mobilize them and all other non-Manchu groups in China (including Mongols, Tibetans and Muslims) into a modern, multi-ethnic nationalist movement against the Manchu Qing state and foreign imperialists. This expanded policy with the recognition of a total 55 official minority nationalities, also helped the Communists’ long-term goal of forging a united Chinese nation.

Cultural diversity within the Han has not been officially recognized because of a deep (and well-founded) fear of the country breaking up into feuding kingdoms, as happened in the 1910s and 1920s. China has historically been divided along north-south lines, into Five Kingdoms, Warring States or local satrapies, as often as it has been united. Indeed, China as it currently exists, including large pieces of territory occupied by Mongols, Turkic peoples, Tibetans, etc., is three times as large as it was under the last Chinese dynasty, the Ming, which fell in 1644. A strong, centralizing government (whether of foreign or internal origin) has often tried to impose ritualistic, linguistic, economic and political uniformity throughout its borders.

The supposedly homogenous Han speak eight mutually unintelligible languages (Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Xiang, Hakka, Gan, Southern Min and Northern Min). Even these subgroups show marked linguistic and cultural diversity. In the Yue language family, for example, Cantonese speakers are barely intelligible to Taishan speakers, and the Southern Min dialects of Quanzhou, Changzhou and Xiamen are equally difficult to communicate across. The Chinese linguist Y. R. Chao has shown that the mutual unintelligibility of, say, Cantonese and Mandarin is as great as that of Dutch and English or French and Italian. Mandarin was imposed as the national language early in the 20th century and has become the lingua franca, but, like Swahili in Africa, it must often be learned in school and is rarely used in everyday life across much of China. WSJ.

Dealing the ethnic diversity of 1 Billion people is a difficult task. Beijing has learned a lot from the tibet riots

Blocking search terms on the Web

Chinese news consumers, meanwhile, both on the Web and at the newsstands, were treated to a steady and unvaried drumbeat of official reports blaming the violence on Uighur exiles, with nary a mention of the economic and social grievances that have been fueling Uighur discontent for years.

Internet portals were ordered by the propaganda department to fix their search engines so that searches for phrases such as “Xinjiang Uighur dogs riot” or “Politburo silence” or “Beijing, assimilation policy” would yield no results, according to a “blacklist” leaked by a search engine technician.

Bulletin boards – often the site of lively debate on the Chinese Internet but which are required to censor their content – either deleted all posts related to Xinjiang or allowed through only those ones conforming to government policy. The only video visible was from official TV stations. Twitter and YouTube were blocked.

The approach appeared to mark a further step in Beijing’s efforts to manage the news more subtly, taking a page from the Western public relations playbook and getting ahead of the news so as to spin it, rather than impose a total blackout.

Internet censorship ensured that there was virtually no independent commentary or reporting of the news, but blanket coverage in official sources (all that Internet portals were allowed to carry), such as the state news agency Xinhua and the state-run China Central Television, gave average Chinese citizen enough news to satisfy them. By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the July 10, 2009 edition

The Muslim response has been muted. However privately most Muslim countries have made their displeasure known to Beijing.

But though individual nations have remained largely silent, or echoed China’s position of “non-interference”, the Saudi-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a league of 57 Muslim nations, condemned excessive use of force against Uighur civilians and urged China to investigate. (Reuters)

The Wall Street Journal has been publishing incendiary articles on the Uighurs. One of the writers is Ms. Kabeer. Last week she wrote.

When the Chinese government looks back on its handling of the unrest in Urumqi and East Turkestan this week, it will most likely tell the world that it acted in the interests of maintaining stability. It will most likely forget to explain why thousands of Uighurs risked everything to speak out against injustice, or why hundreds of Uighurs are now dead for exercising their right to protest.

On Sunday, students organized a protest in the Döng Körük (Erdaoqiao) area of Urumqi. They wished to express discontent with the Chinese authorities’ inaction on the mob killing and beating of Uighurs at a toy factory in Shaoguan in China’s southern Guangdong province and to express sympathy with the families of those killed and injured.WSJ. Rebiya Kabeer heads up the Anti-Chinese groups in Washington

The rhetoric emanating from New York has not gone unnoticed in Beijing.

Why one Chinese editor disavowed the Wall Street Journal

Foreign reporters were allowed to travel around Urumqi and interview local people, which gave rise to a number of stories sympathetic to Han victims of Sunday’s riot, and those articles that raised questions about the official account came in for heavy criticism in the official Chinese press.

“As of today I will no longer be a reader of the Wall Street Journal,” senior editor Ding Gang wrote Friday in the “Global Times,” a tabloid belonging to the ruling Communist party.

“In reporting the Xinjiang riot, the paper stood publicly at the side of the terrorists and became their representative,” he charged. Urumqi unrest: China’s savvier media strategy Taking a cue from Western PR tactics, Beijing moved away from trying to block coverage altogether – and was benefited by doing so. By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the July 10, 2009 edition

A new development that will impact China is Turkey’s support for the Uighurs. Of course this could be American inspired.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that Turkey would grant a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur political activist, if she wanted to travel to Turkey. On Wednesday, Ms. Kadeer said in an interview that her visa applications to visit Turkey in 2006 and 2007 had been denied, an assertion that Mr. Erdogan did not address on Thursday. Turkey has been active in supporting Uighurs in western China, where deadly protests broke out this week between Uighurs, who are Muslim, and Han Chinese. About 300,000 Uighurs live in Turkey, Foreign Ministry figures show. NYT