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..waiting for the other shoe to fall?…its in Xinjiang China

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We wrote six years ago that Iraq and Afghanistan was mere foreplay. The real target was China as defined in our most popular article on this site The CIA connection….. The events of the past few weeks have shown that to be true. After a decade of RAW involvement in Tibet, the Indians now wating for the other shoe to fall in China.

The other shoe of course has been created, trained and polished in India’s Airforce base in Tajikistan. Has India been thrown out of Tajikistan? Why was Russia angry at India? All American and Indian media has now jumped on the bandwagon on Tibet and Xinjiang.

India vs. Pakistan–Gwador vs. Chabahar. Spy vs. Spy: Kabul, London, Delhi, Islamabad and Swat. Taliban prepare for Spring. This story will continue. After the attempted destabilization of Pakistan, now the forces will concentrate on Iran and China.

We wrote this article in 2008, and are recently updating it. The Anti-China forces have had years to coordinate the events. The actual rioting was supposed to have been coordinated with the the Tibetian terrorists. The Rebya gang is a few months too late but surely she was able to put on a good show.

In 2008 this was news–not reported in the mainstream media. Today it is simply a reflection of multiple stories posted on the front pages of Indian and American newspapers. However the main theme of our article still remains the same. The focus on the Ughuirs is part and parcel of the US policy to attack Iraq, occupy Afghanitan, marginalize Iran, destabilize Pakistan and then threaten China. This was the PNAC–the plan for a new American century. The name fell into disrepute and the PNAC has now changed it to the non-sensational name of Foreign Policy Institute. However the moves put in motion by the Neocons are on autopilot.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are hostage to plans made a decade ago. President Obama wants to change US policy towards China is self evident. However RAW is playing its game. Bharat has two bases in Tajikistan. From the loft it has been sowing seeds of dissent in China.

We have put together an anthology of Anti-China articles to emphacize the fact that the Western media has been planning the Xinjiang riots for years.

April 17, 2008, Restive Xinjiang: China’s Next Trouble Spot After Tibet? By REUTERS Filed at 8:10 p.m. ETKHOTAN, China (Reuters) – The two young women trying on headscarves at a dusty market stall have heard of the recent unrest in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, but they say the same could never happen here in China’s border region of Xinjiang.

A suicide bomb attempt on a plane from the restive western region of Xinjiang in China en route to the home of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing highlights a key security dilemma for Beijing: the Olympics have become a stage to showcase political grievances and a challenge for the host to combat violent political agendas.

While the Tibetan riots capture the attention of the Western media, Chinese officials say Uyghur militants are entering the far western province of Xinjiang – particularly across the isolated Pamir Mountains in the south that separate China from Tajikistan and Afghanistan – from training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The well-funded and well-schooled militants allegedly obtain money and plans directly from sponsors and from their involvement in smuggling opium and heroin from Central and Southeast Asia.

Uyghurs are the majority ethnic group in Xinjiang and also have a large diaspora community in the Central Asian republics, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the West. While there is no uniform Uyghur agenda, the desired outcome by groups that use violence is broadly a separate Uyghur state, called either East Turkestan or Uyghuristan, which lays claim to a large part of western China and some territory in neighboring Central Asian republics. As with many of these disputes, the root causes of the problem are a complex mix of history, ethnicity, and religion, fueled by poverty, unemployment, social disparities, and political grievances.

Tajikistan map Indian base-Indian Consulates-dens of Inequity

The Uyghur Diaspora community portrays the ongoing incidents as the oppressed Uyghur community versus an oppressive and unaccountable Chinese government, but reality lies somewhere in between. While it is true that Uyghurs are at a disadvantage in China, it is also a fact that a small number of Uyghur militants are linked into the transnational Islamist network contaminating the image of the majority of the Uyghur movement. The Chinese government’s aversion to giving media attention to terrorism is a reaction to the modern media obsession with covering terrorist events, which – like many experts – Beijing believes contributes to terrorism’s effectiveness.

There are also well-known links with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and perhaps lesser known links to current camps north of Kabul. Unfortunately, some Uyghur militants in Xinjiang and the diaspora community have linked into the Islamist network, which operates within a corridor that overlaps drug trafficking routes and facilitates the movement of militants, weapons and explosives.

Some in the Uyghur community see the Beijing Olympics as an opportunity to draw attention to their causes, whether it is nationalist activists nonviolently or violently agitating for a Uyghur state, or the cultural community asking for more opportunities within the Chinese state or the militant community looking to the Islamist network to further their cause – this is a thin but bold line to draw between these groups for the Chinese government. The Jamestown Foundation . China confronts its Uyghur threat By Elizabeth Van Wie Davis

After controlling most of Afghanistan, the insurgents target supplies from  Tough lessons in geography

AfPak countercurrents beyond the Oxus to AfPakAzUzbKazTurkKyr-istan

No Chinese can forget the history of China during the dark ages of colonialism. The land was broken up into little pieces and were it not for Sun Yet Sen and Mao Ze Dung, China would never have become one country. Manchiria would be a Japanese client state, and the areas bordering Hong Kong would continue to be a British domain. Eastern Turkistan would have either been taken over by Russia or become independent as a subservient or client state. In either case Ughuiristan would not be part of China. Similarly if Pakistan had not helped China by giving it 5000 square miles of territory it liberated from Bharat, Tibet would either have become part of Bharat of it too would have been independent like Bhutan. When Deng Xio Peng opened up China, he knew well that there were certain risks of trading with the West. The return on investment looked good a few decades ago. Prosperity versus integrity should never be a zero sum choice. But for China it seems that prosperity and growth have created problems for the Middle Kingdom.

Four recent incidents highlight the problem for China regarding Uyghur groups: First, a January 5, 2007, Chinese raid on a training camp in Xinjiang that killed 18 militants and one policeman and led to the capture of 17 suspects and the seizure of explosives. The raid seemingly provided new evidence of ties to “international terrorist forces” [1]. Apparently an hour-long video entitled “Jihad in Eastern Turkestan” was found in the operation. Mentioned in the video was the book The Call for Global Islamic Resistance by al-Suri, which includes China as a target for jihad. The Jamestown Foundation . China confronts its Uyghur threat By Elizabeth Van Wie Davis

The map shows the Indian Consulates i Afghanistan that are responsible for much of the terror in Pakistan and China.

Indian Consulates-dens of inequity in Afghanistan supporting terror in Pakistan

 The propaganda about Al-Qaeda notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is that RAW has been active in Afghanistan and running the show under the nose of Mr. Karzai.

The video, believed to be the work of the overseas-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), now internationally identified as a terrorist group, illustrates Uyghur militants displaying their weapons and combat training prowess with rocket-propelled grenades, M-16s, AK-47s, detonators and small rockets. It was obviously inspired by the transnational Islamist network.

In a dramatic conclusion, the video showcases the faces of their enemies – the Chinese leadership [2]. Moreover, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the prominent al-Qaeda leader, also mentioned China in a speech he made in December 2006. Clearly there are some militants that have decided to take an extremist stance against China and it is not a great stretch for them to look at the Olympics as a possible venue to showcase their cause.

In the second incident, almost exactly a year later, the Chinese police raided an apartment in Urumqi and killed two Uyghurs during the ensuing shoot-out on January 27, 2008. Fifteen Uyghurs were arrested and, according to the official report, five police officers were injured when three homemade grenades were thrown. Chinese authorities claim that the raid had uncovered materials indicating plans to attack the Beijing Olympics. More facts on this raid will likely be forthcoming over the course of the next year.

The third incident involves a failed female suicide attack apparently planned and implemented in a Uyghur diaspora community. China Southern Airlines Flight CZ6901 left Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on March 7, 2008, and made an emergence landing in Lanzhou, Gansu, where two passengers – a man and a woman – were taken into custody, both carrying Pakistani passports. The Jamestown Foundation . China confronts its Uyghur threat By Elizabeth Van Wie Davis

Uzbekistan and the Central Asia Republics Uzbekistan pressured the IMU is scared of Taliban reprisals on supplies to Kabul Anti-Occupation forces choke US Afghan war Reality check on War in Afghanistan The implications of the IMU activity in Pakistan

There are long term implications of Bharat’s actions in Xinjiang. It will push China closer to Pakistan. These actions will surely deter US and European companies from doing business in Bharat. The fraying US Bharati relationship may be exacerbated by Delhi’s whining. Russia and Brazial certainlywill not want to deal with Delhi. Washington has a choice between Delhi and Beijing. Beijing holds about $1 Tirllion worth of US T-Bills. Delhi owns none. While Tata may own names that lose $500 million per year, it has nothing to show for the name. If push comes to shove, Washington will not antagonize China. Neither will Russia. Japan has been neutral all these years, and will stay that way. Delhi’s absurd policies  may even push the US closer to China.

Nineteen-year-old Guzalinur Turdi, an ethnic Uyghur woman who spent a significant amount of time in Pakistan, confessed to attempting to ignite a flammable substance, perhaps petrol, syringed into a beverage can, in an attempt to blow up the plane. She aroused the suspicions of the crew and passengers when she came out of the toilet smelling of petrol to pick up a second can after the first can failed to ignite. The man arrested with her is from Central Asia and his age is estimated to be in the 30s. A third suspect, a Pakistani, detained a week later, admitted that he had masterminded, instigated and helped carry out the attack.

Pakistan is one of several key locations for militant diaspora communities and has also seen the assassination of Chinese nationals by Uyghurs. For instance, three Chinese nationals working just outside of Peshawar were killed and another seriously wounded as militants fired at the Chinese nationals from two cars, while fellow militants in the third car filmed the action shouting religious slogans; the film was sent to Chinese authorities by Uyghur militants warning that attacks would continue against Chinese in Pakistan if it did not change its policy in Xinjiang.

Pakistani officials suggest that nearly a thousand Uyghur militants from Xinjiang region have made their way to Waziristan [3], not far from where US intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden is sheltered. The airliner suicide attack, by no means coincidental, occurred on the eleventh anniversary of a bus explosion claimed by ETIM, in Beijing near Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and both happened during the National People’s Congress (NPC) annual session. The carefully planned attack, from using a young Uyghur woman to boarding through the less scrutinized first class, was designed to deliver a clear warning to the Chinese government as the world watched the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.

The Grand Bargain? Pakistan key to Afghan Great Game

The fourth and most recent incident was a pair of protests in the market town of Hotan, Xinjiang, around March 23. One protest was apparently sparked by the death in custody of a prominent local businessman, Mutallip Hajim, and the other protest centered on a proposed headscarf ban in the workplace. While the original protests were based on specific incidents that have widespread appeal among the Uyghur cultural community, the government alleges that several dozen Uyghur militants distributed leaflets calling for demonstrators to follow the lead of the Tibetans in protesting on the eve of the Olympics.

Some of those arrested were released after being “educated”, according to Fu Chao, a local government spokesman, but those determined to be agitators were kept in custody. The demonstrations are indicative of the widespread dissent in Xinjiang’s Uyghur community and how quickly that dissent can become explosive with only a little agitation, although it is not clear in this set of protests whether the agitators were Uyghur militants or Uyghur national activists.

The incidents, while indicative of both a small but dedicated number of Uyghur militants and a wider sense of oppression and discontent among the Uyghur community, are countered by the most heavily protected Olympics yet. The International Olympic Committee is overseeing the Beijing Games, where the security force will be large. Beijing has nearly 100,000 police, supplemented by paramilitary outfits, private security guards and the country’s military.

The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) new Olympics unit, comprising army, navy and air force personnel, is responsible for border control – to prevent terrorists and others infiltrating during the Games – as well as responding to terrorist attacks. It is enlisting a citizens’ force of a half million civic-minded Beijing citizens, either wearing red or blue Olympic security armbands, who will monitor streets, neighborhoods and public places.

Tellingly, Xi Jinping, heir apparent to President Hu Jintao, is in charge of the overall Olympic effort, signaling how seriously the government takes the success of the Games. Professor Zhang Jiadong, counter-terrorism expert at Fudan University, suggested that it is not unexpected for small Uyghur groups based in Xinjiang to undertake some limited action. Interpol’s secretary-general, Ronald Noble, indicated in Beijing in September 2007 that the absence of a terrorist incident or serious criminal activity would be an “important measure” of the success of the Games, and the agency’s website says that the Beijing Games are a “prime theoretical target for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups”.

The folly of the UKs “Charge of the Light Brigade” in Afghanistan AGAIN reminds us of Britian’s previous defeat in Afghainstan. Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838–42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students.

But both Interpol and the International Olympic Committee have said thus far that they are satisfied with China’s security preparations, and the incidents so far indicate a tangible threat and a real counter effort.

Notes
1. Kenneth George Pereire, “The East Turkestan Islamic movement in China: Uighur discontent must be addressed to stem the tide of the jihadi movement in China,” Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (June 23, 2006).
2. Realities of the Conflict – Between Islam and Unbelief Full Transcript of Zawahiri Tape December 20, 2006 As-Sahab Media, Dhu Qa’dah 1427 AH/December 2006 CE, obtained by Laura Mansfield International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
3. Fong Tak-ho, ‘Terror’ attack a warning shot for Beijing, Asia Times Online, March 14, 2008.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation . China confronts its Uyghur threat By Elizabeth Van Wie Davis

Despite their confidence, tensions have bubbled to the surface in Xinjiang, much to the dismay of China’s leaders who are anxious to maintain stability in the oil-rich region which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to about 8 million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people. “All the ethnicities in China are one big family,” said one of the women, 19, as she studied herself in an orange headscarf in the mirror, debating whether to buy it.

It’s a line that echoes the statements of China’s Communist leaders in Beijing, but the sentiment felt hollow when the wave of anti-government protests erupted in its ethnic Tibetan areas last month.

Then came a demonstration in Khotan, an Uighur-majority town on the edge of Xinjiang’s forbidding desert, where hundreds marched through the weekly bazaar in late March in a protest the city government blamed on ethnic separatists.

The demonstration, which was by all accounts a peaceful and isolated incident, nonetheless touched on the worst fears of China’s leaders: the prospect Tibet’s unrest could have a contagion effect on Xinjiang, its other sensitive border region, ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.

But analysts say Xinjiang is not likely to be the next Tibet despite distrust between Han Chinese and Uighurs and disgruntlement among Uighurs over restrictions on their religion and culture.

“The broader perspective on this is that these kind of local demonstrations happen all over China — if the security figures are to be believed, by the tens of thousands every year,” said one Western analyst, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

“It’s become almost a standard way of dealing with local issues, a pressure release, but of course it’s much harder for Uighurs to do this because they’re branded separatists.”

REPRESSION

The road to Khotan, flanked on either sides by unbroken stretches of desolate desert, is free of the kind of security personnel that has flooded into Tibetan areas since the protests began there in March.

At its weekly market, merchants flog everything from sides of mutton to delicate threads of saffron, much as they have for generations.

Residents say there is plenty of discontent, but not many outlets to express it.

“I could guarantee that kind of thing couldn’t happen here,” said Ahyiguzai, a 17-year-old Uighur resident, referring to the Lhasa riot.

“People have those feeling of dissatisfaction sometimes, but they wouldn’t dare do anything. Those kinds of things are resolutely not allowed,” she said.

Analysts say fears of separatist sentiment and the prospect of radical Islam making inroads have meant that Beijing’s grip on the region is especially tight.

In its annual report, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China said that religious restrictions on Uighurs remained “severe” and cited increased control over Muslim pilgrimages and vetting of the content of sermons.

But rather than having the assimilationist effect the government seeks, those policies could be having the opposite impact, driving the Uighur community to close ranks.

“The policies are actually widening the gap between Uighurs and the rest of the population,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“People build up barriers to protect their ethnic identity from the attempt by the state to remodel it.”

Everywhere in Khotan and nearby towns there are signs of a community that is increasingly devout, an anomaly in officially atheist China.

Uighur women wear headscarves and, once married, many also cover their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.

Many residents in Khotan, as well as Yarkand and Kashgar, Uighur towns stretching along the ancient Silk Route, express a desire to make the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, and unhappiness with government restrictions on the number of pilgrims permitted to do so.

TERROR THREAT?

China says the community poses a significant terror threat, and points to a January raid on a group that Xinjiang’s Communist Party boss described as a “terrorist gang” as well as a foiled plot to attack a jet from the region bound for Beijing.

Last week, Chinese authorities announced the detention of 45 East Turkestan “terrorist” suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bombings and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Olympics. Uighur activists say the terror plots have been fabricated.

The United States listed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which advocates for a separate state in Xinjiang, as a terrorist organization in 2002.

Rights groups say China exaggerates the threat of militant activity in the region to exert greater control, and analysts say those exaggerations mean that Beijing’s intelligence on the issue tends to be unreliable.

Still, global fears about Islamic radicalism may limit the kind of international support that has helped the Tibet protests.

Uighurs also lack a figurehead such as the Dalai Lama to press their cause abroad, or an obvious catalyst for protest, such as the March 10 anniversary of the uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet that sparked the marches there.

But most of all there simply may be no space in Uighur society for widespread dissent to bubble to the surface.

“Even for small things you hear about people being taken away,” said Ahyiguzai. “So any kind of bigger incident I don’t think could happen here.” (Editing by Megan Goldin)

 When the 2008 Summer Olympic Games were awarded to Beijing seven years ago, hope arose that China’s new-found status as a modern, world power and position in the world media spotlight would prompt increased tolerance and democracy nationwide. Clearly, that optimism has been dashed by the turmoil in Tibet.

Stellar economic performance and reforms, viewed sanguinely by the West as a sure route to liberalization, have occurred in China devoid of political reform. China’s use of brutal force and massive arrests against Tibetan protestors bear witness to this lack of progress. Indeed, China today stands revealed as one of the worst perpetrators of human rights violations and religious repression in the world.

Among those singled out for similar harshness and violence is a portion of China’s 30-million-strong Muslim community: the Islamic jihadists of the northwestern province of Xinjiang and surrounding areas. With Tibet in mind, the West may be tempted to view this decades-long unrest in Central Asia as yet another example of Chinese aggression and expansionism against a beleaguered population seeking independence. Yet, such a view is shortsighted and dangerous. For, in truth, the Islamic Jihadists of China’s Xinjiang are linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. Their terrorist methods and ideology are of a piece with the larger Islamic Jihadist goal to overthrow existing governments and install a religious theocracy. They, in fact, represent the Chinese battlefront of the worldwide Islamic Jihad.

China’s Muslim Population
Inaccessibility to China’s far flung regions and the exclusion of questions about religion in the last three national censuses make it difficult to obtain accurate figures about the Chinese Muslim population. But it is estimated at around 30 million, the second largest religious group in China after Buddhists. About 20 million are Hui, concentrated mostly in northwestern China. Another 8.5 million are Uyghurs who reside in Xinjiang province.
The Hui, culturally similar to the majority Han Chinese, follow Islamic dietary laws and some customs of Muslim dress but have engaged in only limited jihadist activity. Evidence exists of uprisings in two Hui villages, as well as some protest activity against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. However, discrimination and economic deprivation against the Uyghurs and their push for a separate state have made for more extensive and organized jihadist activities by the militant, Uyghur Muslims throughout Central Asia. The nature of this activity — the extent to which it is an uprising for a separatist state or supports a pan-Islamist agenda — is difficult to assess given Communist China’s history of repression of religious groups, rampant human rights abuses and lack of a free press, but some conclusions can be made.
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The Uyghurs
The desire for an independent Uyghur state is a fairly recent development, dating from the 1930′s, but the Uyghurs themselves are a historically nomadic people of Turkic Indo-European origin who can be traced back to the 700s.

The province in which they live, Xinjiang, is large and sparsely populated, representing one-sixth of China’s total land mass. It borders Tibet, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyryzstan, Tajikstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Indian state of Kashmir. Xinjiang is rich in oil, gas and mineral deposits. It also has numerous military installations and, until 1996, nuclear testing facilities, giving it significant and strategic military importance to China.
The Uyghurs have a separate language, culture, religion and identity from the dominant Han, who are deemed the “true,” ethnic Chinese. Uyghurs hold a multiplicity of identities, including Muslim, Uyghur, Turk or Chinese and have historically been opposed to Han or majority Chinese rule. The Uyghurs in Xinjiang maintain an informal ethnic apartheid. They view the Chinese as inferior occupiers, equate Confucianism and Buddhism with idolatry, and frequent their own stores and restaurants. An estimated 23,000 mosques exist in the region, with many small neighborhood facilities, some financed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

According to Igor Rotar, a Central Asia correspondent for The Jamestown Foundation, Uyghurs “tend to be more zealous Muslims than their Central Asian neighbors. The majority of local, married women wear burqas, which is quite rare in Central Asia, and middle-aged men prefer to have beards.”[1] Rotar says a Uyghur Muslim in Xinjiang explained to him that “In the Quran it is written that a Muslim should not live under the authority of infidels, and that is why we will never reconcile with the Chinese occupation.” China’s restrictive policy on family size is also a point of contention in this community.

In direct contrast to this view, visiting Associated Press reporter, William Foreman, recently observed, “Most Uighurs practice a moderate form of Islam. The men wear ornate skullcaps, or “doppi,” while most women favor head scarves but rarely cover their faces. Many can be seen dressed in tight skirts or stylish hip-hugging designer jeans and high heels.”[2]
As a non-Han people, Uyghurs have been viewed by the Chinese as inferior and portrayed as untrustworthy, shiftless, warring troublemakers. They have been discriminated against in employment and are victims of economic deprivation in an underdeveloped area. Drug use, particularly opium and hashish, is rampant and has added to the hopelessness and poverty. A high incidence of AIDS due to heroin injection appears to have attracted little government intervention to combat the problem.

The Push for Uyghur Independence
In the 1930s, Uyghur separatists proposed a constitution for a Uyghur republic that referenced Islam and shariah law but focused primarily on economic development and political freedom. The occupation of northern Xinjiang in 1949 by China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, was viewed as a hopeful sign because China’s leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, pledged an end to “Great Han chauvinism.” In reality, Chinese Communists valued Xinjiang, not for egalitarian reasons, but as a strategic and natural, resource-rich asset. Meanwhile, the Han-dominated, Communist Party asserted a unified, Chinese identity and sought to eliminate the distinct

Uyghur culture and history.
During the Cold War, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, surrounded by the Chinese and the USSR, had limited options for self-determination. In the 1980s when restrictions eased in China against ethnic minorities and religious practices, the Uyghurs spoke out about discrimination and injustice. They reasserted their demands for a homeland, which continue to this day. An active Uyghur exile community in Central Asia, estimated at 400,000, has sought to draw attention to the plight of the Uyghurs and their quest for a separate state.

The Uyghur-Jihadist Link
Motivated by legitimate desires for independence, militant Turkic Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang have, since the 1970′s, engaged in terrorist activities. These include killing police and military officers, robbing banks, rioting and bombing. The Uyghurs in Xinjiang, members of the 400,000-strong Uyghurs in the diaspora and other Islamist groups in Central Asia have become part of a pan-Islamic movement that developed since the mid-1980′s and includes terrorist activity that intensified after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Islamists in Xinjiang have reportedly received financial support and training from the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and the Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan.

The potential for the Islamization of the region and the ability of Islamists to capitalize on the existing conflict between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government is a real concern to the Communist government.
The strongest militant Islamist groups in the region include the East Turkistan Liberation Organization (ETLO), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), allegedly linked to Al Qaeda. The IMU renamed itself the Islamic Party of Turkistan and publicly declared that it seeks to create an Islamic state across Central Asia and expand its recruitment efforts throughout the region. For traditional Uyghur separatists, these groups represent a source of wealthy supporters who offer funding, weapons support and terrorist training. They also help buttress and reinforce the global Islamist movement into China. For example, in 1989, Al Qaeda set up a base in China with links to the ETIM and the IMU.

Xinjiang’s porous border with Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan facilitates the conducting of terrorist training just outside of China, as well as the movement of weapons, explosives and terrorist operatives. It also enables the indoctrination of Muslims in extremist ideology out of the reach of China.

China reports that the ETIM has ties to Central Asia Uyghur Hezbollah in Kazakstan and that 1,000 Uyghurs were trained by Al Qaeda. They maintain that 600 of them escaped to Pakistan, 300 were caught by U.S. forces on the battlefield in Afghanistan and 110 returned to China and were caught. At the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan, U.S. forces did, in fact, report that 15 Uyghurs were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

According to B. Raman, former head of the Counterterrorism Division of India’s external intelligence agency, the Uyghurs have been approached by the Hizb ut-Tahrir, a political party whose goal is to unite all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state. The Hizb ut-Tahrir in Pakistan and in other parts of Central Asia, has sought to use the Uyghurs to set up sleeper cells in Xinjiang.

Home-Grown Uyghur Terrorism
However, it would be inaccurate to characterize the Uyghurs as completely influenced by outside jihadists, for, their own history is rife with violence in the name of Islam. The first major uprising of Uyghur Muslims took place in Northwestern China in 1990 with a series of protests. As a result, China deployed troops and began to conduct military exercises in the region.
In 1996, following the first meeting of the countries that would later form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), China began clamping down on the Uyghur Muslims. In an effort toward political stabilization, the Chinese implemented measures to improve the economy of the area and built roads, rails and pipelines connecting Xinjiang with Central Asia. But an unanticipated result of this economic expansion was the establishment of alliances in border states for Islamic terrorist training and the smuggling of drugs, arms and people.

In 1997, Uyghur Islamists were responsible for several bombings, including a bus bombing in Beijing. Although an Uyghur terrorist group claimed responsibility for the Beijing bombing, Chinese media covered up this fact as they did with many other terrorist attacks prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.

China’s Position on Terrorism – Pre & Post 9/11
This attitude began to change just prior to 9/11, when Taliban fighters from Afghanistan began incursions into Xinjiang. The activities prompted formation in June of 2001 of the China-initiated, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO was designed to combat Islamism by setting up a terrorist monitoring center, promoting economic development throughout the region and establishing Chinese and Russian hegemony over the area.

At its first meeting, it reached an agreement calling for cooperation to prevent terrorism and insurgency, mutual identification of terrorists and terrorist organizations, suppression of terrorist activities and extradition of terrorists. Member states also agreed to create rapid deployment forces, conduct joint military exercises, investigate sources of terrorist financing and exchange information on illicit WMD manufacturing, purchase, storage and movement.

This represented a huge step forward because, up to 9/11, the Chinese government was not open about the existence and extent of jihadist activities within its country. Chinese authorities viewed acts of terrorism as a police, law-and-order issue rather than a global jihadist effort and believe that disseminating public reports on crime spreads the activity and increases unrest.

After 9/11, China changed its position to show that it, too, was a victim of the Islamist jihad. The government admitted the proliferation of terrorist activities over the previous decade, listing explosions, assassinations, poisonings, rioting and vehicle fires. At the time, they claimed to have uncovered links between Uyghur Muslim groups and Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and Hizb ut-Tahrir.

At a press conference in Pakistan in 2002, Chinese government officials publicized the arrest of a high-level Uyghur terrorist by Pakistani authorities. The Chinese also requested that the United States repatriate 300 Uyghurs captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, who were alleged fighters for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In 2003, China signed an extradition treaty with Pakistan to remand terrorists from the ETIM and the ETLO, whom they believed were affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and who had received training and funding from Osama Bin Laden. The Chinese government pressured Pakistan, known for its alliance with the Taliban and its promulgation of jihadist ideology, to turn over known Uyghur militants who had escaped to Pakistan. This appeal has not produced significant results.

Recent Uyghur Violence
Jihadist violence has continued to escalate over the last few years. In 2004, Uyghurs trained by the IMU were suspected of involvement in an explosion in Balochistan, Pakistan, in which three Chinese engineers were killed. The following year during the Eid-al-Adha religious celebrations, two explosions from suicide bombings near the Kazakstan border in Xinjiang killed 13 people and injured 18.

In January of 2007, the Chinese raided an ETIM terrorist training camp close to the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders. The raid, in which 18 terrorist suspects died, yielded a large explosives and weapons cache. Also seized was a 32-minute video urging Uyghur Muslims to make use of key public events as a platform to publicize their grievances worldwide. It contained references to a “World Islamic Resistance Book” and the establishment of China as a jihad zone, plus included an impressive display of weapons and explosives and a demonstration of vehicle bombings.

On March 7, 2008, two men believed to be Pakistanis and a Uyghur woman who was trained by a Pakistan-based terrorist group attempted to sabotage a China Southern Airlines flight from Xinjiang to Beijing. The woman, who traveled first class, carried flammable liquids onto the aircraft that but failed to ignite them in the plane lavatory. All three terrorists involved carried Pakistani passports.

Chinese Counter-terrorist Measures
To curtail incidents like those cited above of a potentially burgeoning Islamist threat, the Chinese government maintains strict supervision over Xinjiang and has dealt harshly with terrorist activity. China has successfully altered the demography of the region by repopulating it with Han Chinese, now the majority. To curb the influence of Islam, the government engages in surveillance of mosques, restricts the participation of youth and women in mosque activities, monitors the content of services and curtails participation in the Haj. Muslim clerics or imams who serve in the region must complete their training at a state-controlled seminary and teach “moderate” Islam under the leadership of the state.

A heavy police presence around the mosques and the military exists at the border to prevent smuggling of people and weapons. Police routinely cordon off areas in which terrorist incidents or rioting occurs and remove and imprison the agitators before they reopen the area.

Potential Threats to U.S. Security
The Xinjiang-inspired violence is not restricted, however, to attacks just against the Chinese. In May of 2002, a planned attack by the ETIM on the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Kyrgyzstan was thwarted. At the time, Pakistani authorities found blueprints indicating the location of the embassy, the American military base and a synagogue.

In view of the strategic military and economic importance of Central Asia, the need to protect its interests in the region and pressure from the Chinese, the United States agreed to classify some local groups, like the ETIM, as terrorist organizations and freeze their American assets. Of course, geopolitical concerns over maintaining good, Sino-U.S. relations played a major part in the State Department’s classification. The United States wants to ensure continued U.S. military presence in Central Asia in the midst of China’s growing economic and political power in the region and any Chinese attempts to check U.S. influence in the region.

Politics is also playing a larger role as the Olympics draw closer and the international spotlight focuses on China’s oppression of Tibetans, Falun Gong and other repressed groups. While some may be prone to view the Uyghur Muslims through the prism of China’s historical crackdown on religious groups and ethnic minorities, the record of historical, jihadist terrorist activity, listed above, would argue against it.

Despite the Unites States’ own grievances with China, serious questions should be raised to better understand the global jihad, its role in China and our fight in the war against Islamic terrorism.

We should ask: how much of the Uyghur separatist struggle has been co-opted by the Islamists and is being used to breed fellow travelers for the jihadist agenda? Who are victims — the Uyghurs, China or both? Is it realistic for China to fear Islamic extremism, territorial expansion and the spread of insurgency to other aggrieved groups? Is China using the excuse of terrorism as an excuse for a crackdown on the Muslim Uyghurs or is China a victim of the extensive network of Islamic terrorist groups in Xinjiang and Central Asia? Have the Islamists joined forces with Uyghur separatists to capitalize on the struggle in Tibet? Is the West failing to differentiate between radical Islam and legitimate human rights grievances? Is China’s “Strike Hard” policy serving to radicalize the Uyghurs and causing them to find common cause with the Islamists? Finally, how can the United States assist China in the mutual fight against global Islamic terrorism and, at the same time, successfully address issues of religious repression and civil rights?
As China faces world scrutiny and the threat of disruptions and boycotts against the upcoming Olympics for its ruthless civil rights violations, we should be mindful of the growing Islamization of the Xinjiang province under the Uyghur conflict. Clearly, jihadist groups are active in the region and have coordinated terrorist actions, recruitment, training and financing. They are dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic state in Central Asia, related to the worldwide Islamic jihad.

As has been evident in other parts of the world, Islamists deftly graft their agenda onto regional political struggles to form unholy alliances and advance their pan-Islamist agenda. We should not be deceived by our zeal to focus on human rights abuses in China or focus entirely on Tibet and the separatists. Instead, this important component of unrest in Central Asia needs its own specific analysis, political action and focused response.

 China’s Olympic hurdles: The three ‘evils’

..waiting for the other shoe to fall?…its in Xinjiang China

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US again offers peanuts in aid. Reject and negotiate up

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Triple Aid to Pakistan is not enough. Aid should be 20 times that number. Compensation for lost opportunities is separate.

Pakistan has lost about $10 Billion per year (DOD calcualtion) plus opportunity costs. That alone in lost money is $100 Billion. The lost opportunity costs is 10 times that amount.

Invoice for Defeating terror, Securing Pakistani Nukes $150 Billion per annum.

Pakistan was unfairly sanctioned during the 80s and this allowed Korea and others to get ahead. Wish list of Pakistani people. More than 1000 Pakistanis have been killed. Pakistani Cheese for Western “Whine”

This aid deal is inadequate. Turkey was offered $38 Billion for attacking Iraq. Egypt’s $35 Billion debt was forgiven. Israel gets Billions.

The USA should wipe Pakistan’s $38 Billion debt, and confirm Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Pakistan needs 1000 hospitals, 100,000 shools, 1000 new universities, 5 new dams, freeways, and nuclear power plants. This open ended war is bad for the country.

Let us hope the PPP and the PMLN does not sell the country’s soul for a few Dollars.

On deconstructing the wrong paradigm of the USA media

Pakistanis want to hear “Thank You” from the ingrate Americans. Nothing is good enough!

Pakistanis to USA: We want “Friends Not Masters”

Pakistan US Relations should be normal not transactional

On inadequate US Aid to Pakistan

US offers Pakistan government $7bn in non-military aid to fight terrorism
· Civilian cabinet told drone air strikes will be curbed
· New strategy marks break with Musharraf and army

This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday April 17 2008 on p17 of the International section. It was last updated at 00:02 on April 17 2008.

The US has promised to curb air strikes by drones against suspected militants in Pakistan, as part of a joint counter-terrorism strategy agreed with the new civilian government in Islamabad, the Guardian has learned. That strategy will be supported by an aid package potentially worth more than $7bn (£3.55bn), which is due to go before Congress for approval in the next few months.

The package would triple the amount of American non-military aid to Pakistan, and is aimed at “redefining” the bilateral relationship, US officials say.

Pakistan will also be given a “democracy dividend” of up to $1bn, a reward for holding peaceful elections and forming a coalition government. Of that, $200m could be approved in the next few days.

The aid package, being put together by the Democratic senator Joseph Biden, will mark a decisive break in US policy on Pakistan, which for much of the past nine years focused on President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military as Washington’s primary partners in the “war on terror”. Officials in Washington said yesterday that the shift had already been made.

“Senator Biden wants to show the relationship is much broader than a military one, and that we are willing to sustain it over time,” one of the senator’s senior aides said yesterday.

A US administration official said: “Each day Musharraf’s influence becomes less and less. Civilians are in control. People aren’t meeting with Musharraf any more … we are very pleased with the new civilian government.”

Pakistani officials say much of the new counter-terrorism aid will be spent on civilian law enforcement institutions, such as the interior ministry, the intelligence bureau and the federal investigation agency, rather than being channelled almost exclusively through the army and the military-run Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organisation.

The new government says it has also won American support for its policy of opening a dialogue with Pashtun tribes along the Afghan border, led by an ethnic Pashtun group, the Awami National party, that is part of the government coalition.

The new understanding on air strikes by US Predator drones is seen in Islamabad as a critical benchmark for the new relationship.

In January senior US intelligence officials flew to Islamabad and struck an agreement with Musharraf to give the American military a freer hand in the use of Predators against targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become havens for al-Qaida and other foreign jihadists as well as Taliban forces fighting Nato forces and the government in Afghanistan.

The subsequent increase in Predator strikes – estimates of the number range up to eight – caused outrage in Pakistan. Britain also broke with Washington over the reliance on air strikes often guided by uncertain intelligence.

Pakistani officials say they have been given assurances by Washington that there will be close consultation with the civilian government, not with Musharraf, before any future strikes.

However, the use of Predators is held as a closely guarded secret and US intelligence is reluctant to share information about targets, and there is some scepticism in Islamabad over whether the deal will stick.

“We’ll have to take them at their word, won’t we,” said the new information minister, Sherry Rahman, in an interview in Islamabad. She added that Washington’s previous emphasis on ties to Musharraf and the Pakistani military “hasn’t provided the results that were supposed to happen on the ground”.

The US has given Pakistan about $10bn in military aid during the past seven years, but it has not diminished the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, while Pakistani extremism is also on the rise. Some officials in Washington believe most of the money has been used to build up Pakistan’s conventional forces for use in a possible future conflict with India, rather than spent on counter-insurgency.

Furthermore, much of the money being used for counter-terrorism is being misspent, both Pakistan and US government officials say. As an example they say that Musharraf distributed the $25m reward money for capturing or killing “high value” al-Qaida targets in the form of an “inverted pyramid”.

“A few thousand would go to the police constable on the ground who actually spotted the guy, but the millions go to the generals up the chain,” a Pakistani official said. No wonder, he added, that the tip-offs stopped coming in and the number of high-profile arrests dropped.

The New Deal
· $1.5bn a year in civilian aid for at least five years

· $1bn “democracy dividend” as a reward for holding elections and forming a coalition government

· Counter-terrorism aid will be performance-based

· The Pakistani government will be consulted before any further air strikes against militants on Pakistani soil by US unmanned “Predator” aircraft

· More counter-terrorism assistance will be given to civilian law-enforcement and intelligence organisations

US again offers peanuts in aid. Reject and negotiate up

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Is this "Democracy"? You get what you deserve! 27 days have passed and counting.

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Project Promoting Polyarchy in place in Pakistan has been completed. An illiterate population, an obsequious and partisan press, a bigoted leadership and gaggle of self-centered politicians who believe in “Cest Le estat me moi” ( I am the state) are now all working for profit and their Swiss bank accounts.

God helps tholeader of the PMLNse who help themselves.The Quran says, God will not change the condition of a people, ’till they change themselves. A nation is led by the leader that they deserve.

The Pakistanis voted for the PPPP and the PMLN….now after 30 days, the people are asking…”what about”…we say “Hore Chumpow”

If they can nominate a Neocon as an Ambassador they can do anything. We suggest hiring the real thing, why settle for a cheap Pakistani imitation of Dr. Emerson, Dr. Spencer or Peter King. Hire them as Ambassadors also.

The prices of flour are at an all time high in Pakistan. No more general to blame! The PPP is silent about the 5Es and the PMLN does not even mention the 5Ds. Flour prices despite the increase to Rs 625 per mound is half the international rates for wheat. This will place tremendous pressure on the smuggling supply chain to sell the wheat to other countries outside the borders.To keep pace with the international price of oil, the government will have to eliminate the subsidies on oil, and quadruple the prices. This will be political suicide, so the government will resort to deficit financing, a hall-mark of Darnomics (VooddooSupply Side economics). Enter the IMF with strings attached to roll back the Nuclear program etc. The IMF will also impose harsh edicts to take away the financialpowers of the central government and hand it over to the provinces. This is exactly what happened in Yugoslavia.

The 30 days have passed the judiciary has not been restored. Maulana Faslul Rehman said is best. We do not believe in “ulti ginntee”. He said 18 days have passed and counting.

The new government claimed that they would bring down the prices to 50% of the levels of 2007. Mr. Nawaz Sharif and the PPPP claimed that the electricity shortage was a result of incompetence and they would instantly fix the issues of energy and water shortages. They also claimed that the price of “atta” would go down and that the government would not increase the price of oil. All these were empty promises. Inflation is going up unabated, the shortage or food items is at crisis level.

The leaders of government incessantly complained about the growing role of American armed forces in Pakistan.

The New York Times is reporting the US trainers plan to “accompany” Pakistani troops to where the action is (point of contact). This is the South Vietnam and South Korea model now being followed in Iraq. The purpose of the model is to outsource the killing to Pakistan, while management sits behind the bunkers.

The “United States trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions “to the point of contact” with militants, as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq, a senior American military official said. Britain is also considering a similar training mission in Pakistan..

The new government with all its Anti-American rhetoric, tall claims of sovereignty, and the supremacy of the parliament has apparently acquiesced to the American demands and decided to roll over and play dead while the forces pour down carnage on the people of FATA and NWFP.

Salman defends economic strategy of past govt By By our correspondent 4/15/2008

LAHORE: Former federal finance minister Dr Salman Shah has defended the overall economic strategy of the past government, stating that undue pressure created by high oil and commodity rates did put temporary pressures.
He was speaking at a discussion arranged by SAFMAon the State of Pakistan’s economy.Defending the increase in petroleum rates by the interim government, he said that budget deficit would have gone out of hand had these raises not been made. He said the new government in fact should announce similar increases in petroleum rates before the end of the current fiscal.
He said even then the government would be burdened with subsidies on petroleum products. He advised the government to eliminate all subsidies on petrol by the end of next year.He said the government promoted use of locally produced natural gas that has kept the petroleum demand to almost the same level as in 1999. He said now that entire available gas production is being utilized the import of petroleum products is on rise. He said Pakistan would pay $11.5 billion for the same amount of oil it imported in 1999-2000 for $3.1 billion.
He said global wheat rates were at almost the same level as in Pakistan only 16 months back. Today he added even after increasing the wheat support price to Rs625 per maundthe internationalwheat rates are double the local rates.
He said that there is no overshooting of expenses. He said Rs400 billion budget deficit amounts to four per cent of GDP. It would be higher this year due to high oil and commodity rates that burdened the national exchequer.
He claimed that the growth, inflation and debit indicators have improved vastly during past eight years. The GDP he added has shot up from $65 billion to $160 billion. Tax revenues he continued have shot-up from Rs300 billion in 1999 to around one trillion rupees now. He said these increased revenues in fact facilitated the government in accelerating growth and development work.
He said it was wrong to assume that 9/11 facilitated the transformation in economy. He claimed that Ghazi-Brotha hydropower project completed in 2004 added over 1400 MW power in the system. He said the electricity consumption however increased by higher percentage than envisaged by the planners. He added that there was a lapse on the part of the government to neglect further addition in electricity production. However he clarified that 3000MW power projects were initiated by the previous regime that would be operational in 16 months.

U.S. military prepares to train Pakistani forces
US officials have requested $750 million to expand a program designed to assist foreign militaries engaged in counterterrorism.
By David Montero
posted April 16, 2008 at 10:00 am EDT

Suggesting a dramatic shift in Washington’s counterterrorism strategy, the State Department and the Pentagon want to beef up training of foreign militariesand paramilitary troops. The proposal comes as US military trainers are preparing to train Pakistan’s paramilitary forces this summer.

In a proposal to Congress this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested $750 million to train troops around the world who are engaged in counterterrorism operations. That would constitute a 250 percent increase, The New York Times reports.

Mr. Gates said that rapidly building up the armed forces of friendly nations to combat terrorism within their borders was “a vital and enduring military requirement.”

The additional funding is designed to augment the Global Train and Equip program, created in 2006 to assist foreign militaries, The Times reports.

“The current program has paid for parts and ammunition used by the Lebanese Army against terrorist threats in a Palestinian refugee camp as well as for helicopter spare parts, night-vision devices and night-flight training for Pakistani special forces fighting suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, Mr. Gates said.”

Funding for the program expires in about five months, The Washington Post explains. But Gates and Ms. Rice hope to make the program permanent.

Gates and Rice seek to increase funding authority for the program from $300 million a year to $750 million, make it permanent and expand it to allow assistance to police and paramilitary forces. The program is to expire at the end of September….

A third facet of the proposal would make permanent a program that allows U.S. Special Operations Forces to spend $25 million annually to pay or supply equipment to indigenous forces that support their clandestine operations.

The proposal comes as Washington is preparing to send military trainers to Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, an area near the Afghan border where Taliban troops and Al Qaeda have been on the upsurge, CNN reported last week.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed deployment orders that will send U.S. military trainers to Pakistan this summer, CNN has learned.

Their mission: To teach Pakistan Frontier Corps units counterinsurgency skills critical to fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Christian Science Monitor corps against Al Qaeda
Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, as well as the Pakistani Army, have come under increased attack in recent months, suffering several hundreds of casualties in a spate of suicide attacks. And in a battle with Taliban militants in Swat Valley last fall, poorly trained Frontier Corpsmen were killed in large numbers or fled without fighting, prompting alarm from many observers, including the editors of Foreign Policy magazine, who wrote, “Desertion is becoming a serious problem in the ranks of the Frontier Corps, the locally recruited paramilitary force that has been on the front lines of Pakistan’s fight against insurgents in its tribal areas.”

US military trainers on Pakistani soil is not a new thing, The New York Times explained in an article last month. But their numbers are set to rise significantly.

For several years, small teams of American Special Operations forces have trained their Pakistani counterparts in counterinsurgency tactics. But the 40-page classified plan now under review at the United States Central Command to help train the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups on the border, would significantly increase the size and scope of the American training role in the country.

United States trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions “to the point of contact” with militants, as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq, a senior American military official said. Britain is also considering a similar training mission in Pakistan, officials said.

But American troops stationed in Afghanistan’s border region appear to harbor suspicions about the Frontier Corps, The Washington Post reported.

“The Frontier Corps might as well be Taliban…. They are active facilitators of infiltration,” said a U.S. soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Many Pakistani analysts and leaders have warned that a larger US military footprint could lead to a backlash from the public in Pakistan, the British newspaper the Guardian reports.

“They are making a big mistake. With the Frontier Corps they are going to put people to fight against their kith and kin. It will create a greater problem,” said General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s spy agency.

But some Pakistani observers see the proposed new training program as a welcome and vital change, writes Haider Ali Hussein Mullick, a Pakistani scholar and US foreign policy researcher, in Newsweek’s PostGlobal blog.

The current U.S. plan to increase the training of Pakistani troops – paratroopers, Pakistani Special Forces, and Frontier Corps – is a step in the right direction. U.S. training programs must be supplemented by U.S. military hardware and intelligence exchange across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A unilateral U.S. attack on Pakistan’s rustic tribal areas, however, will be devastatingly unsustainable and counterproductive.

Is this "Democracy"? You get what you deserve! 27 days have passed and counting.

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Red Nepal: Present and Clear danger for India

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A clear and present danger to Bharat may be a sympton of the way in which Nehru bamboozeled the states into joining the union.

The clear and present danger for Bharat extends beyond the threat from the Maoists in Nepal. The fact remains that New Delhi for the past several decades has opposed the Napali Maoist guerillas fighting a complacent, corrupt and complaint pro-Indian appendage of a government in Khatmandu. Now, New Delhi’s enemies are in power. This is the same situation as Afghanistan, where a pro-Pakistan government was removed and an anti-Pakistan government imposed on Kabul. With rising Chinese influence, Nepal is fast becoming India’s Tibet.

The problem for New Delhi extends beyond Khatmandu and Nepal. The Maoist victory in Nepal serves as a lightning rod to the Maoist and Naxalites that are active in more than a dozen Indian states–from the Seven sisters in the Northeast, all the way down to central India and then hooking up with the Tamil Nadus. The Naxalite insurrection in India has been named the number one security threat to the union right after Kashmir and the Northeast secessionist movement. India surrounded on all sides with insurgencies. India has horrible relations with all her neighbors-stealing territory from all of them. Much to the chagrin of Bharat, even Bhutan is now negotiating with China directly in the Chumbi valley.

Its payback time for China. India trid to create problems for China in Tibet. After messing with the rising Northern Red Dragon to the North, in Tibet, India will face blowback from the Chinese in Sikkim Bhutan and all along the Naxalite belt in Central and Northeastern India. Already Bihar and Orissa are up in arms against the central authority of New Delhi.

It used to be that the Naxalites from Andhra Pradesh used to support the Maoists of Nepal. Now that the Maoists have their own state, the trail of support will run both ways. The Nepalese revolution in eliminating the pro-Indian King will provide succor to the 89 insurgencies raging in the poor and disenfranchised sectors of “India.”

RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) manipulation of the Nepali elections failed. The unexpected results of the Maoist landslide has baffled the Indian establishment. Alarmed  Indian politicians have taken a deep breath and tried to spin the serious situation on their Northern border with tall tales of democracy and respecting the electorate.

WHO ARE THE MAOISTS?

The Maoists, or Communist Party of Nepal, attained a majority of directly elected seats for the Constituent Assembly in a historic election, whose official results are some weeks away.

Founded in 1994 by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda, Nepali for ‘The Fierce One,’ the group led a guerrilla uprising whose main goals were toppling the 239-year old monarchy and restoring elections.

The Maoist insurgency lasted from 1996 -2006, during which time 13,000 people died.

Nepal had been the world’s only Hindu kingdom. It became a secular state in 2006 after the king gave up absolute power.

Many Communist parties formed in the Himalayan nation after the banning of political organizations by royal decree in 1960.

Prachanda, leader of the Maoists, aspires to be the first president of Nepal. He was inspired by China’s Cultural Revolution and the theories of Mao Zedong. He has since tempered both his ideology and rhetoric.

The Maoists, whose ministers have served in the coalition government, have proposed a mixed system of economic policy – combining socialism, capitalism, and industrialization – to establish land reform and encourage more foreign investment.

Goals also include a 10,000 MW electricity generation plan over the next 10 years. Prachanda has also saidy that he wants to see warmer ties between China, India, and the US.

The US has listed the Maoists as a “Specially Designated Terrorist Organization” because of violence during the revolt.

Source: National News Agency, Nepal, News Reports, Political Handbook of the World, US Department of State: Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0415/p01s02-wosc.html

What the Moist takeover or Nepal means for India

• India has opposed the Maoists since the insurrection began in 1996 
• While US was leaning more towards Centrist parties (Maoists are banned on its terror list), China developed stronger ties with UML
• India will have to readjust its relationship with Nepal
• But it will have to contend with stronger anti-India stance of the Maoists swept polls on the plank of building a “truly independent” republic (read not subservient to India)–equidistant to both India and China (read move away from India)
• Nepal, under Maoists, will scrap the 1950 peace and friendship treaty
• The Maoist victory in Nepal will encourage the Maoists fighting in India. With a powerful ally to the North, they will get more access to resources and arms. The Maoists are now part of the Nepalese army with full Gurkha support.

Nepal is geographically the forehead of India. Right now, it is giving New Delhi a terrible migraine. Hindustan Times

that the insurgency’s trajectory is heavily influenced by transboundary links and should be viewed in the context of India’s role in shaping the past 50 years of Nepal’s political history. India’s Role in Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency Rabindra Mishra ,

India, faced with its own vast Maoist insurgency in over a hundred districts, had staunchly defended the monarchy throughout the bloody civil war

Now, though cautious not to tread too heavily on a country very much within India’s sphere of influence, China is beefing up its interests in this strategic Himalayan region bordering restive Tibet. Chinese companies are aggressively pursuing lucrative deals to tap Nepal’s glacial rivers for hydropower, while state officials are cozying up to the Maoists in Kathmandu. When I was in Nepal at the end of last year, I met a Maoist commander who had traveled with a delegation to visit the village home of their namesake in China’s Hunan province. He gushed in praise of Mao, but his eyes twinkled most when recounting his time spent amid the skyscrapers and shopping arcades of Shanghai. “That was something else,” he gasped. When I asked him whether he could imagine such a city in Nepal, he simply laughed and looked away. Nepal has too many other questions that need answering for this one to be even considered. With reporting by Yubaraj Ghimire/Kathmandu Time Magazine

Red Star over Nepal spells clear and present danger to India (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0822/p06s01-wosc.html)

election results in Nepal that saw the Maoists on the path to power while effectively spelling the end of the Monarchy in Nepal, are of significance to India for many reasons.

With the exception of Bhutan, India is now effectively surrounded on all sides by an amalgamation of hostile state and non-state players

A sycophantic Congress wedded to self preservation with support from China serving Communists can hardly be expected to do what it takes to serve Indian strategic interests.  

It is not enough for the BJP to swear by nationalism while being utterly naive about engaging with our neighbors on strategic affairs. The Maoist victory in Nepal is a lesson for the BJP on how out of touch with reality its support for the discredited monarchy was. Maoist Victory in Nepal – Indian Strategic Interests in Peril ?yossarin in Asian News, China News, India News, The War on Terror, US News, World Politics

“Armed struggle is always an option” Baburam Bhattarai

There is a rising concern among the security agencies, intelligentsia and civil society bodies over the Maoists’ intention to include the hill state of Uttarakhand as part of their ‘Red Corridor’, linking it to Nepal. There have been protests in the state over the intrusion of Nepali labourers alleged to have Maoist links. Police officials have instructed landlords to watch out for suspicious activities of these laborers.

The Nepalese Maoists and their counterparts in India are members of the `Revolutionary Internationalist Movement’ (RIM). In July 2001, some 10 radical Left-wing (Maoist) groups in South Asia, including the Nepalese as well as Indian Maoists, formed the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organization of South Asia (CCOMPOSA).Maoists Intrude into Uttarakhand: Maitreya Buddha Samantaray Security Analyst

 There is great danger that the Maoists will continue to support the insurgency in middle India and in the Northeast.

…the dramatically changed political conditions given the anti-India platform of the Maoists. The Maoist assertions of making Nepal a “truly independent republic” are bound to acquire a sharper anti-India edge. While it would be premature to speculate on the fate of the many agreements between India and Nepal, the Maoists are certain to demand that the 1950 treaty of peace and friendship should be revised, if not scrapped.

New Delhi will have to tread cautiously. It has to do a lot of thinking, and re-thinking, to evolve its policy towards Nepal under Prachanda, although he has said Kathmandu would maintain equidistance between India and China. The Tribune Online Edition

The Nepalese Maoists are armed and dangerous. Senior Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, who is tipped to head the new government in Nepal, on Wednesday, said King Gyanendra could stay in the country as a common law-abiding citizen after Monarchy is abolished.

Nepal’s King Gyanendra (L) and Queen Komal

”He (Gyanendra) can live in Nepal as a common law-abiding citizen,” Bhattarai said over phone from Kathmandu amidst preparations for installation of the new government there.

About India’s Maoist insurgency:

“India has failed to rein in the Maoists simply because there are no quick-fix solutions to the problems arising out of [bad governance],” says Suhas Chakma, the director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), Delhi

Big Maoist wins could reshape Nepal’s politics: Former insurgents have surprised Nepalis and marginalized moderates.

By Bikash Sangraula | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor: from the April 15, 2008 edition

Kathmandu, NEPAL – Barely two years after ending an armed insurgency that killed more than 13,000 people, Nepal’s former Maoists rebels have stunned themselves, the Nepalese people, and the world with a landslide win in constituent assembly elections that could profoundly change Nepali politics.

The goal of last Thursday’s election was to fulfill two Maoist demands: write a new Constitution and end the country’s 240-year monarchy. But concerns are growing that Nepal’s moderate political parties – which coaxed the Maoists into mainstream politics and forgave past atrocities in the interests of peace – might be sidelined and a more radical agenda prevail.

What matters now, analysts say, is how the Maoists themselves interpret the will of Nepalis. “If they take this as an endorsement of their policy of mass annihilation of class enemies, it will be a catastrophe,” says Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of Newsfront weekly. “If they take this as people’s recognition of them as the key agent of change, it will be easy for Maoists to work and good for the country as well.”

By late Monday, the Maoists had won in 112 of 202 constituencies where counting of the direct vote had concluded. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s Nepali Congress, which has dominated politics for six decades, had won just 32 seats, while the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML) had won 28 seats. Another 335 seats are allocated proportionally according to each party’s percentage of votes, and the remaining 26 members of the 601-member assembly will be nominated by the government. Vote counting for the proportional seats is under way.

International and national election monitors hailed the polls as a success. But reports of intimidation surfaced, with Maoists warning rural, poorly educated voters that they would be watching the polling booths and would know who voted for whom. Mr. Ghimire also argues that voters were terrified by the Maoist threat of going back to war in case of defeat.

But another factor in the Maoists’ strong showing may have been the perception that they hewed to a consistent agenda – forming a republic – while the leading Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal shifted toward the Maoist agenda as it became more politically expedient.

“The CPN-UML went to the election with an identity crisis,” says political analyst Krishna Hatchetu. “The CPN-UML gradually became less left since they joined multiparty politics after mass protests in 1990. In this election, the pro-left voters had the choice to vote between the CPN-UML and the radical Maoists. The people chose the Maoists.”

The crushing defeat of his party prompted CPN-UML General Secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal to resign Sunday from the post he had held for 15 years. The former CPN-UML chieftain was also humiliated by his defeat in Katmandu by a little-known Maoist candidate.

A majority of top leaders from the Nepali Congress, including four relatives of the prime minister and powerful ministers in the current cabinet, also were defeated, mostly by Maoist candidates. The casualties included the party’s acting president, Sushil Koirala, who announced his resignation.

The two parties made a policy switch from “constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy” to “federal democratic republic” last year after sensing overwhelming support for a republic during the peaceful uprising in April 2006 that forced King Gyanendra to relinquish executive authorities he grabbed in a military coup in 2005.

Despite their stunning victory, the days ahead might not be easy for the Maoists, analysts say, especially as they will now have to deliver on tall promises, including swift economic transformation.

“The people have given legitimacy to the Maoists,” says C.K. Lal, a noted political columnist. “But they have yet to get acceptance. And remember, there is only a prefix that separates legitimacy and illegitimacy.”

So far, the Maoists have indicated that they understand the people’s message.

Speaking during a rally after his victory from a constituency in Katmandu this weekend, Prachanda, the leader of the Maoists, promised that his party would continue to work with other political parties, strengthen relations with the international community, and shoulder the responsibility entrusted by the people to build lasting peace.

The party’s chief ideologue, Baburam Bhattarai, who is the most likely prime ministerial candidate from the party, said on Sunday that the new government “that will be formed under our leadership” will have participation from all parties represented in the constituent assembly. Mr. Bhattarai’s wife, Hisila Yami, was declared the winner in her constituency.

But analysts say the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, with an eye on the next election, might opt to sit in opposition and let the Maoists try to deliver without any support from them, something that could hinder legislative efforts.

Among immediate challenges the Maoists will face after forming a government is ensuring a smooth supply of fuel without making the unpopular decision of raising fuel prices. For the past year, the state-owned Nepal Oil Corp. has borne heavy losses as a result of the disparity between local prices of fuel and international prices. And Indian Oil Corp., the monopoly supplier of fuel to Nepal, has regularly cut supplies in a bid to force payment.

Also, the Maoists will have to help solve the country’s current power shortages, which leave Nepalese without electricity for eight hours each day.

The interim constitution says the elected assembly will have to come up with a constitution within two years, after which a general election must be held for a government that will sit for five years.

Maoist wave in Nepal’s ‘land of disappeared’

Kathmandu:  A remote backward district in far western Nepal, whose fame for its national park was eclipsed in the decade-long “People’s War” due to a high number of disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings, is now seeking to take revenge on the ruling parties by voting en masse for the former Maoist guerrillas.

As vote counting started in three constituencies in Bardiya district after Thursday’s historic constituent assembly election, the former rebels, who have been campaigning for the state to disclose the whereabouts of hundreds of people missing even two years after the signing of a peace pact, were substantially ahead.

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s Nepali Congress (NC), which gave carte blanche to the army to stamp out the Maoist movement and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) – once the second largest party – were losing ground in Bardiya, with the Maoists steadily forging ahead in their first national election after 17 years.

In Bardiya Two and Four, Maoist candidates from the Tharu community, freed slaves who are at the bottom of the social ladder, were substantially ahead of the NC and UML as counting started.

In Bardiya One, little known Maoist contestant Sarala Regmi was plodding sturdily ahead of her UML rival, Bamdev Gautam, a veteran politician and one of the mediators who forged an understanding between the rebels when they were underground and the main political parties.
While the NC was ahead in Kathmandu, with the Maoists following a close second, in the outer districts, the former rebels were ahead in the race.

Maoist Minister For Information and Communications Krishna Bahadur Mahara, who is also the spokesman of the Koirala government, was way ahead of his nearest NC contender Anita Devkota in Dang district, a Maoist stronghold in midwestern Nepal.

In the tourist district of Chitwan, famed for its rhino park, Maoist strategist Ram Bahadur Thapa aka Badal was leading the race.

In Banke, the Maoists were ahead in Constituency Four, while debutant ethnic party Madhesi Janadhikar Forum was leading in Constituency Three.

Even in Palpa district, the site of a devastating attack by the Maoists during the last days of King Gyanendra’s rule, the Maoists were well ahead.

Maoist chief Prachanda, who is vying from Kathmandu 10 as well as Rolpa, the cradle of the Maoist movement, was leading in the capital while the Election Commission said vote counting was yet to start in Rolpa because of its remoteness.

As Maoists routed the UML, only a small, localised Left party stood its ground.
The Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP), a minor partner in the ruling alliance, held its traditional bastion Bhaktapur town in Kathmandu valley defending it stoutly against both the NC and Maoists.
NWPP chief Narayan Man Bijukchhe was winning from Constituency One, while his lieutenant Sunil Prajapati was leading over his nearest rival, NC’s Lekhnath Neupane, in Constituency Two.

from the August 22, 2006 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0822/p06s01-wosc.html

Maoist rebels spread across rural India: India plans to deploy paramilitary forces to deal with growing insurgency. By Anuj Chopra | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor: ULGARA, INDIA

A sprawling, yet largely hidden, war is raging in India’s rural countryside, and after years of ignoring it, Delhi is signalling a military counteroffensive.

India’s Maoist insurgents, also called Naxalites, have expanded their area of operations from just four states 10 years ago to half of India’s 28 states today. In 165 districts, they claim to run parallel “People’s” governments. This year alone, fighting between rebel and government forces has claimed more than 500lives – many civilian.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh turned heads recently by calling the Naxalites, “The single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country.”

To tackle the threat, Delhi is planning to deploy 11 battalions of paramilitary police and is sponsoring opposing vigilante groups who espouse violence. But issues of underdevelopment and poor human rights are the real oxygen of the Maoist insurgency, not local police weakness, argue critics of the new government approach.

“India has failed to rein in the Maoists simply because there are no quick-fix solutions to the problems arising out of [bad governance],”says Suhas Chakma, the director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), Delhi.

Hardest hit in this conflict are poor, tribal residents of rural villages like Ulgara, a hamlet in the rural interior of Jharkhand state. Naxalites pass through often, stopping sometimes to demand food, which villagers quietly admit they give out of fear. Five years ago, in the wee hours of the night, nearly 100 guerrillas attacked the village, torching 19-year-old Rakesh Kumar’s house. His father was shot and his family beaten.

“We’re stuck in the middle – between the Naxalites and the state,” says Mr. Kumar, explaining that it’s neither safe to support the Maoists nor turn them away.

Many beleaguered villagers have fled the area. Others, including the Kumars, are scrounging together money to move to the city. In parts of India, fearful villagers have reportedly abandoned whole villages.

Aiming to bring the fight to cities

Recent reports suggest that this rural insurgency is slowly, yet inexorably, spreading into four more states, with what analysts see is a long-term plan to extend their red corridor – called the “Compact Revolutionary Zone” – throughout India. Their ultimate stated goal is to capture India’s cities and overthrow Parliament. In an interview last year with The Telegraph newspaper, a national daily, a member of the Maoist Central Committee named “Comrade Dhruba” said, “Our mass base is getting ready. After five years, we will launch our strikes.”

While most observers doubt the Naxalites can directly threaten urban India, the guerrilla attacks are becoming more audacious – and lethal. Rebels attack in large numbers – much like the Maoists of Nepal, with whom they’re suspected to have links – often to overwhelm their target.Attacks on police forces, train hijacking, and brutal beheadings are common. Just last month, India witnessed its worst spasm of Naxalite violence. In the thick of the night, nearly 800 armed Maoists sprayed bullets, killing 32, in an anti-Maoist relief camp in the Indian state of Chattisgarh – an impoverished region most affected by Naxalite violence.

While the insurgents garner support mainly through fear, Mr. Chakma says, some people in the hinterlands relate to and support them because they champion the cause of the poor at the bottom rung of India’s caste and class hierarchy.

In remote, interior villages, Naxalites claim to distribute sacks of pulses to the masses, collect funds to run schools, and organize mass weddings for the impoverished. They also target corrupt officials, despotic landlords, and loan sharks.

Sluggish courts vs. swift Naxalites

The Jharkhand High Court recently expressed concern over the fact that more and more people in areas where Naxalites are active were approaching the kangaroo courts of the Maoists to settle disputes. Government courts take years to dispense justice. A recent study revealed that for every million people, there were only 10 judges in India’s courts. The rebels can be approached any time, and justice – most often from the barrel of a gun – is swift.

An elderly woman in Chaukhra, an obscure village, says she approached Naxalites for settling a lengthy land dispute she had with another villager. “They were most helpful,” she says, declining to give her name for fear of local chastisement. “They know very well who is right and who is wrong.”

As the twilight sets over Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, a tiny band of leftist ideologues led a protest against rising food prices. A stream of adivasis, or tribal people, mill around the rally. Many are said to be Naxalites who slip back into the forest after the meeting under the cover of darkness. The Naxalites are sustained in their jungle war with the help of leaders who run underground front organizations in the cities – which operate despite being banned. These leaders provide strategic assistance, mobilize Naxalite sympathizers, and instigate such demonstrations.

“We’re not not terrorists,” says one such front organization leader. “We’re fighting a people’s war. We want the proletariat to rule, not imperialistic governments.”

This decades-old armed rebellion, he says, is to stop pauperization of India’s indigenous, tribal people at the hands of the rich, and their displacement due to industrialization.

Governments in states like Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have signed deals worth millions of dollars with industrial companies for steel mills and power stations – deals that the state sees as necessary to create jobs and provide the raw materials for economic growth. However, such deals, he says, end up displacing villagers, and, moreover, the benefits never trickle down to them.

“These injustices have happened for decades. People’s voices have been muzzled. It’s the only way to get them heard,” he says responding to a question asking if violence is the only way to remedy the problem. “Why else would our cadres live such unglamorous lives in jungles?”

Although the death toll of civilians killed in Naxalite violence is mounting, their aim is to “never harm the proletariat,” he says.

Claims of child soldiers denied. He refuted eyewitness reports suggesting that the Bal Mandal – children’s division – of the Naxalites were being used for armed conflicts. “Children in this conflict are used only as messengers and informers,” he says. Without giving an estimate on the number of children enrolled with the Maoists, he says the Naxalites do provide them “military training” to prepare them for “any situation.”

The Indian government’s tougher approach to the growing Naxalite problem includes arming thousands of villagers with guns, spears, and bows and arrows. Human Rights Watch calls the move “a mistake,” arguing that “scrupulous respect for rights is the best answer to the Naxalites.”

As Maoists enter the political process in Nepal – with help from the Indian government – some observers wonder if the same process can be tried with India’s Maoists. So far, however, the insurgents have shown no proclivity for joining hands with the Indian government, and Delhi has said that the rebels must give up arms before any dialogue can happen.

Assam wants to be independent.

Red Nepal: Present and Clear danger for India

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India: A budget fit for a Superpower!

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A country where 30% of the population dies of malnutirition and medical issues can afford to spend $2.5 Billion on a Russian Ship?

A country where a million girls are killed during or after a pregranancy can afford to buy hundreds of planes?

Some estimates say that at current spending it will take Bharat three centuries to reduce proverty to human levels.

VIEW: India’s fiscal follies -Mira Kamdar

For all the attention that India’s retail revolution, information technology prowess, and booming manufacturing sectors have garnered in recent years, agriculture, on which 70 percent of the population still directly depends, is in crisis

India’s new budget for 2008-2009 says less about the country’s current financial health than it does about the irresistible tendency of Indian governments to use the national budget as a pre-election cudgel.

Every year, India struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable: stimulate economic growth and investment, alleviate endemic poverty, and feed a ravenous military appetite. The government must be seen to care about the aam aadmi, the common man (who votes), while satisfying the needs of businessmen (who keep the economy humming).

Indeed, the new budget is a pre-election bonanza for key constituencies: tax cuts for the middle class and perks for the country’s big corporations. There’s a little something for everyone, including a stunning $15 billion in loan waivers for small farmers. For all the attention that India’s retail revolution, information technology prowess, and booming manufacturing sectors have garnered in recent years, agriculture, on which 70 percent of the population still directly depends, is in crisis. Growth in India’s agricultural sector declined from a lacklustre 3.8 percent to an even more anaemic 2.6 percent last year.

Water tables are dropping where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Subsistence farming of traditional food grains, fruits, and vegetables is giving way to cash crops and monocultures dependent on high-priced inputs that small farmers cannot afford and water that they can’t provide. Farmers borrow money from usurious private lenders. Unable to repay their loans, they kill themselves.

Farmer suicides in India have raged unabated over the past decade, a period of much-vaunted rapid growth. These more than 100,000 deaths are a tragic indictment of India’s economic “miracle”, and an embarrassment for a government eager to promote India’s image as an up-and-coming global economic and military power.

While well intentioned, the new budget’s lavish loan forgiveness scheme will not help those farmers who most need relief: 80 percent of India’s farmers have no access to formal credit, and it is bank loans that are to be forgiven. Moreover, since farmers who do have access to formal credit will have less incentive to repay their loans, banks will become more reluctant to lend to any farmers at all.

A policy of expanding legitimate micro-lending schemes and prosecuting illegal loan sharks, not to mention the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices that require fewer expensive (and environmentally dangerous) inputs, would do far more to help India’s poorest farmers than this expensive and misguided measure.

The new budget, recognising the country’s acute water crisis, also calls for more money to expand irrigation. Most Indian farmers will benefit from greater access to irrigation, but if this means building more ill conceived dams and pursuing large-scale projects, the result will be more water for industrial agriculture, more damage to India’s damaged environment, and little improvement for poor farmers. Aggressive expansion of proven low-cost, high-impact micro-irrigation techniques would do more to help small-scale farmers.

The new budget is also likely to do little to improve India’s poor education and primary health-care systems. True, spending in these two critical areas is to rise dramatically (by 20 percent for education and 15 percent for health care). But, because these items amount to a pittance of India’s total budget, total spending remains low, especially relative to need.

Meanwhile, the lion’s share of the new budget, 63 percent, will go to the military, police, administration, and debt service. India’s defence spending will hit a new record of $26.5 billion as the world’s fourth-largest military embarks on an aggressive drive to modernise its capabilities in the face of the deteriorating situation in Pakistan and China’s military expansion.

Having performed poorly in a spate of recent state elections, the ruling Congress Party is betting that the new budget will swing voters its way if the national election, currently scheduled for April 2009, is moved forward to this autumn. The lesson of the 2004 election, when poorer voters, fed up with the previous BJP-led government’s “India Shining” policies and slogans, threw it out of office, has not been forgotten.

But the strategy of embracing “poor-friendly” policies that deliver little real relief could backfire. Poor voters may not associate the largesse with the Congress-led government in New Delhi, but rather with the state governments that actually hand out the goods. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate that the government aid proposed in the budget will reach those who need it with any more efficiency than the dismal record so far.

It is conceivable that Mayawati Kumari, the self-appointed “goddess” of the poor whose low-caste-based party, the BSP, swept to power last year with a clear majority in Uttar Pradesh, could be the biggest winner in an early election. This would represent a revolution in Indian politics, but it is hardly the outcome the champions of business-driven market reforms would welcome.

Whether a more populist government would be able to break radically with India’s flawed fiscal policies and create an environment favourable to a dramatic improvement in India’s shamefully poor human and physical infrastructure – which would give a solid boost to India’s economy over the long term – remains to be seen. -DT-PS

Mira Kamdar, the author of Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy, is currently a fellow at the Asia Society

India: A budget fit for a Superpower!

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America's favorite whipping boy!–Pakistan

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Like a whimsical and angry giant America lashed out against her real or perceived enemies. The Neocons, drunk with power and intoxicated with hubris stated “you are with us or aginst us.” The carpet bombing of Kabul and Kandhar could not satiate the demand for blood. Kissinger said “we attacked Iraq, because Afghanistan was not enough”.Facing defeat in both places, now the Neocon’s favorite whipping boy is Pakistan. Pakistan had nothing to with either the attack or America’s defeats. None of the hijackers were Pakistani. Blame all evil on Pakistan. Blame Pakistan for the defeats and hide the incompetence of Mr. Karzai and the inadequacies of the NATO forces.

The simple knee jerk reaction is to blame Pakistan for all ills–whether it is the defeat in Iraq or the annhilation in Afghanistan

Published on Monday, April 14, 2008 by The Boston Globe

America’s Whipping Boy For 9/11 by James Carroll
As a high school freshman, attending a small private prep school, I was one of a number of pranksters. We made the flag disappear from the flagpole. We put goofy hats on the bust of the school patron in the foyer. We organized silent boycotts of the greasy French fries in the lunch room. We dropped books on cue in Latin class.

One day, we went some act of mischief too far, and the headmaster went ballistic at morning assembly. A buzz of anxiety coursed through the school. I forget how, but the damning finger soon pointed to me, and I took the fall. I was summoned to the headmaster’s office, where, wielding a stick with grave ceremony (“This hurts me more than it hurts you”), he inflicted multiple blows on my backside.

The memory of the pain I felt has faded, but not the humiliation. In those days, such corporal punishment was not unusual in schools, and “spanking” was ubiquitous in families. It is notable today how such public violence as a method of disciplining children has become taboo, even if children are still shockingly at risk for abuse in private.

But that memory is revealing to me now as an instance of scapegoating, and the lesson it offers in the social use to which designated victims are put. I was not consciously attuned to the sadomasochistic undercurrent of the event, but inwardly I burned with shame to have been so treated, especially by a figure whose authority was absolute.

Yet the most striking aspect of the experience was the sharp contrast between the private mortification I felt at being beaten in such a way and the public respect it earned me. My degradation stood in marked contrast to the new status I found myself occupying in the aftermath of my “strokes,” as the blows were called. My schoolmates quietly treated me with an unprecedented deference which, at the time, was mystifying. How could such an experience of shaming lead to what was, in effect, a social promotion?

It was not only that I took the punishment that could have been meted out to a handful of others who went undisciplined. It was also that the headmaster’s rage had been mollified, and the communal anguish that had upset the school had been dispelled. The punishment inflicted on me sparked a broad sense of relief, and the gaze with which my mates greeted me was infused with gratitude.

The aftermath of my beating was a period of good feeling in the school. The headmaster’s authority had been reinforced, and with it the structure of order. The affectionate bond among us boys was strengthened as well, and even I felt somehow ennobled. Crucial to this outcome was the fact that I had been physically hurt. A mere bawling out would have resulted in no such mystical cohesion.

Now I understand that violence can have this effect across a range of social situations. Indeed, hurt-induced mystical cohesion accounts in large part for why we humans are addicted to turning on each other with weapons. We find an infinite variety of victims, and their suffering serves a social purpose. African-American men subjected with wild disproportionality to the caged violence of prisons. Muslim “terrorists” in torture camps. Enslaved women. Death row. In case after case, threatened authority locates a victim on whom to unload.

Whether the designated object of punishment is guilty (Saddam Hussein, say) or innocent (the American soldiers whose faces we see on the news each night) does not matter. This impulse to salve communal anxiety by inflicting hurt was the defining core of American public life after Sept. 11. It engendered the present war.

Up until the point of his “Mission Accomplished” celebration on that aircraft carrier, President Bush was the self-satisfied headmaster, and Baghdad was the chastened, if mulish, pupil. An ennobled US population was mainly pleased. No more. The war in Iraq is demonstrably mistaken by now, and American authority has self-destructed. Shame abounds.

In deciding what to do next, we should not compound the mistake by pretending any longer that the

America's favorite whipping boy!–Pakistan

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Hollow Victory! Defeat's agony! Afghanistan-Iraq

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As Robert Fisk and others have noted, the sickly scent of defeat wafting over the the campaigns in Mesopotamia and Bactria cannot be disguised with the sweet smell of roses. The American people have seen through the fog and understand the real facts about the war. The repudiation of the war mongering is everywhere, in election results, in polls and in the general demeanor of the people.

Published on Saturday, April 12, 2008 by The Independent/UK Semantics Can’t Mask Bush’s Chicanery by Robert Fisk
After his latest shenanigans, I’ve come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam’s “programmes” for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).

Now he’s gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and “mission accomplished” and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a “shining age of human liberty”, George Bush told us this week that “thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success”.

Now let’s take a look at this piece of chicanery and subject it to a little linguistic analysis. Five years ago, it was victory – ie success – but this has now been transmogrified into a mere “prospect” of success. And not a “prospect”, mark you, that has even been glimpsed. No, we have “renewed” and “revived” this prospect. “Revived”, as in “brought back from the dead”. Am I the only one to be sickened by this obscene semantics? How on earth can you “renew” a “prospect”, let alone a prospect that continues to be bathed in Iraqi blood, a subject Bush wisely chose to avoid?

Note, too, the constant use of words that begin with “re -”. Renew. Revive. And – incredibly – Bush also told us that “we actually re-liberated certain communities”. This, folks, goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around “re-liberating” anything? And what does that credibility-sapping “actually” mean? I suspect it was an attempt by the White House speech writer to suggest – by sleight of hand, of course – that Bush was really – really – telling the truth this time. But by putting “actually” in front of “re-liberate” – as opposed to just “liberate” – the whole grammatical construction falls apart. Rather like Iraq.

For by my reckoning, we have now “re-liberated” Fallujah twice. We have “re-liberated” Mosul three times and “re-liberated” Ramadi four times. The scorecard goes on. My files show that Sadr City may have been “re-liberated” five times, while Baghdad is “re-liberated” on an almost daily basis. General David Petraeus, in his pitiful appearance before the US Senate armed services committee, was bound to admit his disappointment at the military failure of the equally pitiful Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Basra. He had not followed Petraeus’ advice; which was presumably to “re-liberate” the city (for the fourth time, by my calculation but with a bit more planning).

Indeed, Petraeus told senators that after his beloved “surge” goes home, the US will need a period of “consolidation and evaluation” – which is suspiciously close to saying that the US military will be, as the old adage goes, “redeployed to prepared positions”. Ye gods! Where will this tomfoolery end?

In statistics, perhaps. By chance, as Bush was speaking this week, my mail bag flopped open to reveal a letter from my old American military analyst friend, George W Appenzeller. He gently (and rightly) corrects some recent comparative figures I used on US casualties in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. “In previous wars,” he writes, “the US army has not reported to the public the number of wounded who are treated and immediately released back to duty. They have reported these casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars”.

So here are a few Appenzeller factoids (glossed by Fisk, so the responsibility is mine!). The correct ratios for wounded in action vs killed in action for Iraq and Afghanistan is 8.13 to 1; for Korea, it’s 7.38 to 1 and for Vietnam it’s 6.43 to 1.

The true number of US wounded in Iraq until 18 March this year was 13,170, of whom 8,904 were so badly wounded that they required air evacuation to hospitals outside Iraq. The number of killed in action in Iraq is 3,251. (The other 750 died in accidents or of sickness.) But this does not include the kind of figure that the Pentagon and Bush always keep secret: an astonishing 1,000 or more Western-hired mercenaries, killed in Iraq while fighting or killing for “our” side.

But now I’ll let George Appenzeller speak in his own words. “There are widely ranging estimates, but roughly 450,000 individuals … fought on the ground in Vietnam … At the height of the Vietnam war there were 67,000 ground combat troops there. That is roughly the number of ground combat troops the US presently has deployed in Iraq. Interestingly enough, that is also about the number of ground combat troops the US had fighting at any one time in the Korean war.

“The US army now has a much leaner and meaner organisation than in the past with a higher proportion of combat troops to total troops. All those American civilian truck drivers and Bangladeshi cooks have freed up troop slots that have gone to the combat arms.”

No, Iraq has not yet reached Korea and Vietnam proportions. The three-year Korean war resulted in 33,686 US battle deaths and about 250,000 US wounds, an average of 94,562 casualties per year. The American phase of the Vietnam war lasted 14 years and resulted in 47,378 US battle deaths and 304,704 US wounds, an average of 25,149 casualties per year and an average of 66,792 during the four years of 1966-1969, the height of American fighting.

The Iraq war has lasted five years and has resulted in 3,251 battle deaths and 29,395 wounds, an average of 6,529 casualties per year. “Thus, the average number of killed and wounded during the Korean war was three times the total number of killed and wounded in the five years of the Iraq war. The average number of killed and wounded during each of the most difficult years of the Vietnam war was twice the total for the five years of the Iraq war.”

Now for much more blood, the civilian variety. According to George, “About 1,600,000 were killed in the Korean war, 365,000 (according to American authorities) and four million (according to the Vietnamese government) during the American phase of the Vietnam war, and who knows how many in Iraq. No fewer than 250,000, certainly.”

Not that long ago, Bush claimed that civilian fatalities in Iraq were “30,000 more or less” – again, note the “more or less” – but I can see why these statistics matter even less for him. It’s not just that we don’t care a damn about Iraqi lives. We are going to care even less about Iraqi civilian casualties when we walk backwards, when we are renewing and reviving and re-liberating all over again.

Robert Fisk’s new book, ‘The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings’, is published by Fourth Estate

Hollow Victory! Defeat's agony! Afghanistan-Iraq

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India's Caste based exploitation and control: A Dalit view

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V.T. Rajshekar, a noted Indian political scientist talks about “India”

On Dec.22, 2005 (Dec.23 in India) American television viewers as well as an international internet audience were treated to a very special interview conducted on the relatively new but increasingly popular internet TV program, Current Issues.

V.T. Rajshekar, a noted Indian political scientist, author, journalist and publisher, appeared on the program and provided the Current Issues audience with a socio-political breakdown of modern India.

Most Americans are unaware of events in India, many aren’t even familiar with the reality of the inequitable caste system. Rajshekar was like a breath of fresh air blowing through stagnant contemporary American political skies. He opened the interview with what may perhaps turn out to be the most significant aspect of the interview and that was an introduction of himself, his Weltanschauung (political world view), his journal Dalit Voice, and the plight of the persecuted nationalities of India.

India is not Hindu: Rajshekar immediately dispelled that notion that India is a Hindu nation. He eloquently explained how the alien Aryan religious system was initially introduced to the subcontinent and how it is exploited by the ruling Brahminical caste to indoctrinate the masses and maintain control over them.

He compared the virtual micro-minority Brahmin monopoly of the Indian media, government, political parties, educational system and professions to the [deleted] {polyarchs} in America and how they too have usurped the leadership positions in the very same institutions and for the same purposes, to exercise control over the majority. This isn’t to say that he exonerated the European American leadership of their responsibility in criminal world events, but he recognizes that the current leadership here in the US does not reflect the will of the European American majority, nor America’s diverse minority. This is an incredibly important point because it reveals a commonality that all peoples share in today’s world, an inability to exercise one’s true will in the face of the imposed oppression of a few elitists, whether those elitists be [deleted] Brahmin or wealthy European traitors serving [deleted] masters.

Rajshekar reveals how the outsourcing of American jobs to India isn’t serving the Indian people, something most Americans erroneously believe, as much as it enriches the oppressive Brahminic minority of India who have allied themselves with zionism and the state of Israel at the expense of India’s persecuted majority.

Fraud on democracy: V.T. Rajshekar also exposes the ruse of democracy (one man one vote) in India and how the subterfuge can be compared to our own fraudulent system here in the US. He explains how the theoretical concept of democracy exists in India but how it is manipulated by the Brahmin monopoly of the Indian media and how it dictates its will through the indoctrination process offered by the substandard Indian educational system. He dismisses the idea that India educates its masses, revealing that most Indian schools, roads, public services and jobs exist only in the cities, not in the countryside, where the largest number of Indians live.

He reveals himself to be an eminent political scientist by nearly dissecting through the extraneous political noise associated with the inconsequential and getting right to the purulent cancer lying just below the surface, by explaining how the media in both countries dominated by a numerical minority and how that monopoly effectively renders the voice of the majority null and void.

Internet breaks monopoly: In the US..[deleted]. This is evident by the fact that legitimate polls reveal that 85% of the American people believe George bush should be impeached; yet he still sits in the White House. The Brahmins do exactly the same in India. They position themselves to determine what the Indian public sees, hears and learns.

Fortunately for the people of the world, the Internet has disrupted this media monopoly and we are able to hear for ourselves the words of political dissidents like V.T. Rajshekar, Mordechai Vanunu, Dr. Fredrick Toben, Ernst Zundel, and many others on new Internet TV programs like the Current Issues. No longer do [deleted] and Brahmins maintain an absolute stranglehold on information dissemination. No longer are they able to dictate their “reality” without being scrutinized and critiqued by brilliant, albeit persecuted, modern-day dissidents. Dalit Voice

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COMMUNICATION
Extending caste to economic planning is dialectically right
BOBBY ANTHONY, 23 – SITLA DARSHAN APTS., MAHIM (W), BOMBAY – 400 016
I read your long Editorial on economic planning. (DV Dec.1, 2005: “DV jumps from social to economic”). The ruling upper castes will oppose it. The opposition is in the form of a systematic conspiracy of silence. But be rest assured that the same people who have resorted to this strategy are secretly discussing whatever you write. They will pretend to ignore you until they have no choice but to confront you. Another reason why they are ignoring you is because they don’t want to grant legitimacy to you in any manner and end up making you any sort of a leader. This is nothing new and all ruling classes do this.

I strongly feel that you should leave no stone unturned to make DV a national weekly.

CASTE-BASED CAPITALISM
I also think that despite shrinking attention spans, TV is a better medium. All you have to do is look at the effect that Dr. Kancha Ilaiah has when he takes on VHP heroes on NDTV with Rajdeep Sardesai as mediator. I think you too must get into TV.

Caste-based economic development is worth pursuing. In India, capital has been refracted by caste leading to what Dr. Kancha Ilaiah calls casteisation of capital. That is how we have caste-based housing societies and banks like Saraswat Co-operative Bank. We too must set up such housing societies and co-operative banks on caste basis. But it may eventually lead to violence and caste-based ethnic cleansing due to various other factors. You may also have to prepare a strategy in an era where a global market crash may lead to state capitalism under an Brahminical bureaucratic bourgeoise making a come-back. Even under such a system economic planning will have to be caste-based.

BRAHMINS & SOCIALISM
The zionazi narco-dollar is artificially propping up the New York stock exchange and global banking system. All this maya may not last long and may even lead to a great economic depression which may be worse than the 1930 crash. This will be the time when the Brahminical bureaucrat-technocrat types and “Socialist Brahmins” will say that “socialism is better”. They may try to milk the socialist cow once again or resort to naked fascism. These are the only two possibilities and I feel you should be prepared for both the situations with a fool proof strategy.

No revolution in history has proceeded peacefully and your “caste identity” theory also has military value – it has the potential to rip apart the Indian army on caste lines. Imagine caste-based revolts within the army. The British were forced to run away because Indians in the royal British army revolted.

PRINCIPAL ENEMY
So, not only must we press for private sector reservations, we must also push for caste-based economic development. If necessary, we must even launch a Bodh Gaya liberation movement on the lines of the Ram Janambhoomi movement.

So far no Indian Maoist has launched a movement naming Brahmins as the principal enemy, even though they say that feudalism is the principal contradiction.

How can feudalism be fought as the principal contradiction without fighting Brahminism which is the fountainhead of feudal fascism? No Indian maoist has openly declared that caste is both base as well as superstructure. It is both subjective as well as objective. It is because caste is also a base that it influences the superstructure. Otherwise casteisation of capital would not have occurred on a regular basis.

CUTTING CROSS-THREAD
An honest maoist should lead economic boycott of upper caste products as well as organise the cutting off of cross-thread as part of a de-feudalisation drive. But nothing like this has happened so far because of savarna marxists. It is because of such ideas that I support your “caste identity” theory. You are planning to fight casteism with caste. Dialectically, you are correct. Now “Socialist Brahmins” will be totally exposed. They also know this and that is why they are keeping quiet. But be rest assured that this is merely the clam before the storm.

Caste demographics seem to suggest a possibility of caste-based ethnic cleansing due to fights over women and water, due to female infanticide as well as water shortage. Your game plan appears to be to ask for a rightful share of the economic cake based on caste lines. You have observed how ethnic identities could not be erased despite East European-style state capitalism. I am also aware that Lohia had mentioned that in India caste is class. I also fully agree with you that Brahminical marixsts have been deliberately misinterpreting marxism in a mechanical way.

I have already read your How Marx Failed in Hindu India? Going by the demographic reasons I feel there is a possibility of your “caste identity”- based economic development leading to violence along caste lines. Peaceful economic empowerment using caste identities may not be possible all the time. There should not only be religious revolution but also linguistic and cultural rejection – that is Dalits should completely jettison their so-called mother-tongue and neutralise sanskritisation by adopting total Westernisation. Even Ambedkarites seem to be quite sanskritised or tend to be impractical mother-tongue maniacs. I think rejection of what you call Mother Tongue mania is absolutely necessary to finish off brahminisation (sanskritisation). If the Dalits get together and threaten en masse conversion to Islam if land reforms and human rights are implemented all hell will break lose.

ENGLISH PRAVACHANS
Please write on how sanskritisation could perhaps be neutralised with unabashed and complete linguistic and cultural rejection of Brahminised “mother tongues”. What is the necessity to cling on to such Brahminised mother-tongues especially when these are getting anglicised and westernised every day because of industrialisation? I have actually seen and heard English pravachans conducted in Matunga’s temples. All “Sri Sri” Ravi Shankars speak in English. So why should Dalits love such mother-tongues and dig their own grave? Dalits ought to understand that Western culture accepts beef-eating. Tribal and Dalit culture are more aligned to Western culture than puritanical Brahminical culture can ever hope to be. Dalits ought to stop learning their so-called mother-tongues are enough to preserve their myths and collective memories, they are mistaken.

English will not only serve the purpose better, but also enable them in touch with the Blacks and the Burakumin as well as other allies. It will put them on a level paying field vis-a-vis Brahmins who love to play jazz music of Black African slave origin and prevent the Dalits from learning. I am convinced that along with rejecting Brahminical religion, Dalits should culturally and linguistically reject Brahminical agri-rural-feudal bullshit which is already decaying and dying. Dalits should westernise furiously to kill sanskritisation and brahminisation.

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CASTE WAR IN CHURCH
DV supports Madras CSI Bishop’s bid to oust Syrian Christians
XAVIER GNANARAJ, NO.17 – APPADURAI FIRST ST., AYANAVARAM, MADRAS – 600 023
The minority upper caste (Syrian) Christians of Kerala have abrogated the ecclesial as well as educational institutions to themselves by fraudulent means. Such instances are many. St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, was jointly established by the Catholic churches to offer quality medical education to oppressed Christians. However, the college has been hijacked by the upper caste Kerala Christians. Recently, Rev. V. Devasahayam, the CSI Bishop in Madras, has given a call to retrieve the four famous Christian colleges in Madras (Women Christian College, Madras Christian College, Meston Training College and St. Christopher’s Training College) from the clutches of upper caste Christians. The Bishop formed a retrieval committee to look into the issue and reclaim these colleges to serve the 40 lakhs of Tamil Protestant Christians of the Madras diocese.

Nadar-Dalit clash: However, in this act of treachery some Nadar Christians of the CSI diocese of Madras who were once the front-runners of social transformation in Tamil Nadu, have abetted the crime of Keralites. A deep chasm exists in the diocese between the Dalits (Adi Dravida) and Nadar Christians. The economically powerful Nadar Christians have a grouse against the poor Dalit Christians. The cause of disagreement is the control over the finances of the CSI diocese among the affluent Nadar Christians and the Dalit Christians.

This chasm is being fully exploited by the Keralites to achieve their unholy aims of controlling the colleges in Madras.

Stella Maris College: The other side of the story is the case of Stella Maris College, under the control of the Catholic diocese of Madras-Mylapore. There are also the nuns from Kerala have taken full control of the college with little room for the native Tamils in general and the Tamil Dalits in particular.

Meanwhile, the principal of the Madras Christian College has issued an advt. threatening those who are demanding justice. It is unbecoming of a principal of such a famous college to issue such a threat against the Bishop who wants to reclaim these colleges so that the Dalits and oppressed for whom the colleges were started can utilize these.

Remember, the fierce battle waged by the Nadars to reclaim the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank from the ESSAR group.

Some linguistic jingoists from Kerala in the Christian College have been saying that it is not Madras Christian College but Malayali Christian College. Who owns the college? The diocesan committee and the duly appointed ecclesial authority or a few individuals who want to abrogate powers to themselves?

The right step to retrieve the colleges and establish the priority to the Dalit Christians of the state is to involve the Tamil Protection Movement and other Dalit outfits, organizations, movements and political parties. The Bishop must ask the Govt. of Tamil Nadu through the State Minority Committee and set the ball rolling. It is the duty of all self-respecting Tamils to support the claims made by the CSI Bishop.

The four colleges usurped by Syrian Christians were under the Madras Diocese until 1980 when the Women’s Christian College, Meston and Christopher’s colleges, which were registered under the Societies Act, were discreetly brought under the Companies Act.

“The cardinal principle was that the institutions would be administered by persons nominated by the church on a time-bound basis. However, those nominated to the Governing Council fraudulently altered the clauses and made themselves life-members, besides abrogating the power to nominate or expand the council”, Devasahayam said.

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TN ruled by non-Tamils
Dalit Voice fully supports the stand taken by Bishop Devasahayam to reclaim the institutions belonging to the CSI church from the Syrian Christian usurpers. Tamils have been steadily losing Tamil Nadu itself to outsiders. Today non-Tamils are virtually ruling TN. What a shame on the children of Periyar E.V. Ramaswami and his Self-Respect Movement. The Bishop and the CSI church must note that his fight is not a legal question but a question of Tamil identity and Tamil pride. What a misfortune that the country’s most ancient and original Dravidians are ruled by Aryans – EDITOR.

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BOOK REVIEW
Perpetual conflict in S. Asia until Hindus stop persecuting Bahujans
USMAN KHALID, 3-BLACKLANDS DRIVE, HAYES, MDDX, UB4 8EU, U.K.
I have read Dr. (Mrs.) Ajeet Jawed’s book on Jinnah but hesitated to comment because my understanding of Jinnah is very different from her. This is not unexpected because I judge him with a different yardstick. However, we both see him as a leader with clear vision, great integrity, sterling character and exemplary steadfastness.

There were two very distinct phases of his political life: (1) in which he was looking after the interest of Muslims during a period of political and social reform with agenda being set by the British Raj; (2) period of constitutional reform in which the agenda was set primarily by Hindu bigots like M.K. Gandhi. That he was not a bigot in either of those phases is conceded by all. But that does not make him secular or Indian Nationalist as Dr. Jawed concluded. His politics was determined by the political focus and agenda of the time. This has to be case with every successful politician. And he was more than a politician; he was statesman who set precedents that guide peoples in the entire region including those he did not claim or try to lead – the Sikhs and Dalits.

Hindu bigots: Most of the book is devoted to wondering what he could do as a leader of secular India if Hindu bigots had embraced him rather than spurn him. But Hindu bigots could not have embraced him except in the manner in which L.K. Advani did. He also praised Jinnah for being secular and the outcry of bigots in the BJP – who outnumber those clever with words by 100 to 1 – was indeed spectacular. In her eagerness to make the same point L.K. Advani made during his visit to Pakistan, she ignores what he did do as a leader of the Muslims of South Asia and sought to do for other minorities including the Sikhs and Dalits.

I see that a concerted effort is being made by Indian scholars to rehabilitate Jinnah to assimilate Muslims in a manner similar to that used by the Brahmin for assimilating native Bahujans into the Hindu fold.

The Brahmin embraced the gods of the native peoples but on their terms; they made them the children of lesser gods -Untouchables in their own land. What is an offer to the Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Sikhs is the same status and fate.

Distorting history: India is not just politically Machiavellian; it is socially Machiavellian as well. India is continuously trying to rewrite and distort history in order to assimilate those it can and liquidate those it cannot. Jinnah took a long time discovering that truth. He was not alone; the Muslims of British India took even longer. India has not abandoned its quest. Perpetual strife and conflict is the fate of entire South Asia until India abandons its quest to absorb/liquidate other identities. That it has sharpened the Muslim identity of Bangladesh by trying to impose secularism on that hapless country should have taught India a lesson. But India refuses to see and learn. It is trying its subversive methods against Pakistan as well and the reaction is even stronger. Even If India wins a battle or two that it has with American blessing and help, it is bound to lose the war.

Hinduism is not a faith; it does not seek converts or respect the identity of other peoples; it subverts other identities and its embrace is deadly. Islam, on the other hand, offers converts equality and honour, the embrace of Islam is socially uplifting. (usmankhalid@lisauk.com)

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A must book for every DV family member You will shed tears as you read it
JINNAH (Secular & Nationalist)
Dr. (Mrs.) Ajeet Jawed
2005 pp.400 Rs. 255, $15
Faizbooks.com
1116 (CL), Main Market, Paharganj, New Delhi – 110 055. email: info@faizbooks.com

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Dalit scholar looks at anti-human features of Hinduism
ROOPALI ROKADE, 1455, APT.#2, GERRARD STREET EAST, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA – M4L 1Z9
Introduction:
By his origin alone a Brahmana (Brahmin) is a deity even for the gods, and (his teaching is) authoritative for men, because the Veda is the foundation for that. (Manusmriti, XI, 85).
Hinduism is so ancient that its followers claim it to be eternal (sanatan). The “infallible” Vedas assert the creation of a divine social order based on varna system, which led to the formation of castes and hundreds of subcastes in India. At the roots of the Hindu social system lies a dharma as prescribed in the Manusmriti. God, the ultimate reality, could be attained only by unquestioned service (karma) to the Brahmins, while they lead the quest of the Brahman by reading and reciting the Vedas.

SHUDRAS RELIGIOUSLY HUMILIATED
The Brahmin men, thereby, codified this in the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda which reveals the Chaturvarna comprising 1. The Brahmins (who originated from Brahma’s mouth, and thereby, are his mouthpieces) 2. The Kshatriya, who ruled and fought on the divine advice of their Brahmin masters, 3.Vaishya, who formed the trading community and 4.shudra, the craftsmen, potters and farmers. Those who did not belong to any of these varnas were the ati-shudras, the Untouchable outcasts. (Shudra=low, ati-Shudra =most low). Brahminism is a confluence of the three twice-born varnas, headed by the Brahmins, who have religiously humiliated the shudra, the ati-shudras, tribal communities, Christian and Muslim minorities. Few of them, like the leftists and feminists are Brahmin by birth, but may not be Brahminical in ideology and practice. (The word Brahminism refers to the upper-caste people who represent the Vedic hegemony) There have always been various other deities and forms of worship in India which, according to the non-Brahmin scholars, have been co-opted and appropriated by Brahmanists. These variations, they say, are distinct and cannot be interpreted as different manifestations of the Brahman.

KILLING OF SHUDRA SHAMBUKA
“Hindus may be tolerant, not Hinduism either socially or intellectually”. (Nath, Ramendra) The Vedas and other Hindu scriptures lack even oblique emphasis on humanitarian values like equality, fraternity and compassion toward all human beings. Obsessive importance is given to following one’s dharma based on karma, which is in turn based on one’s birth, not capacities. The best punya (good deed), according to the Manusmriti, is to donate generously to a Brahmin (not to the poor) and the worst kind of paap (sin) is to hurt a Brahmin.

Ram, the hero of the “sacred epic” Ramayana, and supposedly incarnation of God Vishnu, kills Shambuka, a shudra, who had taken to ascetic practices in search of the ultimate reality. He (Ram) was taught his dharma (duty) by the sons of the Brahman (the Brahmins) to persecute the one who disobeyed the Divine Law. Dronacharya, the Brahmin Guru in Mahabharat, demands Eklavya (a shudra) his thumb as guru-dakshina (fees of the teacher) because he could not let a shudra excel Arjuna, a Kshatriya and god Krishna’s friend, in archery. The influence of these Vedic principles, law books and “sacred scriptures” has reduced Dalits (Untouchables) and women to subhuman status, in spite of the Constitutional protection.

During the pre-colonial period, untouchability, sati (widow-burning), child marriages and Devadasi (temple prostitution) were on a historic high.

GANDHI’S LIP SYMPATHY
While M.K.Gandhi paid only lip service to the cause of untouchability, other crusaders like Jyotirao Phule, Periyar and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar paved the way to the emancipation of the downtrodden by securing Indian women and the Dalits constitutional rights and reservations.

Untouchability: The outcasts were scavengers of the social order for generations and lived outside the village boundaries. Untouchability, under the pretext of purity, is as sanatan as is Brahmanism. Inter-dining and inter-caste marriages were strictly prevented as divine will. The Untouchables could not use water from the ghats and wells of the twice-born. These restrictions are followed in villages even in this century.

Its impact is very severe because masses of people remain enslaved in this vicious system physically, mentally and spiritually as part of obedience to god’s commandments for their wrong deeds in the past birth. Manusmriti prescribes several brutal punishments for those who break these laws of karma and purity. Caste discrimination takes different subtle forms in cities.

HINDUISM PROHIBITED EDUCATION
Let the three twice-born castes (varna), discharging their (prescribed) duties, study (the Veda); but among them the Brahmana (alone) shall teach it, not the other two; that is an established rule.(Manusmriti, X, 1)
All over the world, religions worked for mass education, except Hinduism, which worked to restrict social mobility. (Ghose, Sagarika). Vedas and shastras reserved the right to education to the Brahmin men. More than 50 years after India’s “independence”, only a tiny percentage of Dalits are literate.

Most of them live in incredible conditions in the villages. Syllabi in schools and universities is so designed that it gives little or no space to understand the real struggles and problems in the society.

Dalits and tribals have lost their cultural and religious identities in the course of compulsory Brahmanism in schools and media.

Women:
A woman is forever either the daughter, wife or mother of a man; men are to revere women in household settings (Fisher, Mary Pat, 88)
BRAHMINS PERSECUTE PHULE
It was a shudra couple, Jyotirao and Savitri Phule, who started the first ever girls school in India, especially for the Untouchable girls during the British colonial rule. Brahmins harassed them for breaking the “sacred” Hindu law.

While Gandhi fought for political freedom mobilising men and women from all communities, he did not oppose the Varna-Vevastha and supported the Sati-Savitri and Sita images of Hindu women.

Dr. Ambedkar had to resign as Law Minister to get the Hindu Code Bill passed which empowered women by securing them equal property rights and right to divorce besides other. The Brahminical forces condemned such reforms because it was against the Hindu vedic laws.

Dalit women lie at the lower-most rung of the social ladder. The Devadasi tradition of child prostitution in temples continues in some parts of the country. Most urban prostitutes come from Dalit communities.

FALL OF WOMEN UNDER HINDUISM
Besides this, Hindu women remain trapped in the Sita-Savitri ideal of eternal self-sacrifice and service to men, especially husbands. Rape and violence on Dalit women (Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist) go unreported. Inter-caste marriages are rare. It is not uncommon to kill those who marry against the shastras (Hindu laws) when one of the parties is a Dalit.

Women’s literacy is stunningly low; women’s employment does not always render them equal status because they have to remain subordinate to men as part of the Divine Hindu order. Besides dowry deaths, female foeticide has become like a norm in India, among educated middle- class Hindus, in spite of the law against sex determination. Ironically, doctors use godly code words like Jai Shree Ram if it is a boy and Jai Matadi (victory be to the Goddess) if it is a girl. Customs like doodh-piti (drowning baby-girls in a pot of milk) continue in some parts of India.

The root cause is not only patriarchy, which is universal, but a deeply rooted religious belief (Hindu), which bestows spiritual bliss to the ones who are blessed with sons because it is a son who traditionally gives agni (fire) on one’s death that leads to one’s moksha.

WHEN BRAHMINS ATE BEEF
Ahimsa (non-violence):

Svayambhu (the self-existent almighty god) himself created animals for the sake of sacrifices and a Brahmin may eat flesh of animals consecrated with Vedic mantras. (Manusmriti, V, 39,36).

There are ample evidences in the Vedas and other scriptures, which indicate that Brahmins have been meat-eaters, ate even beef and drank seven kinds of wine. The Ashwamedha Yajna demanded a number of horses for sacrifice. The “supreme queen” had to do intercourse with the royal horse a night before the Yajna after which the horse was set free as a royal symbol of power expansion.

It could have been by the advent of Budhism in India that the Brahmins took to vegetarianism.

The outcastes were condemned to eat meat of dead animals. The sacred scriptures are full of brutalities against animals and human beings. Even at a symbolical level, one cannot doubtlessly assert that the Hindu gods represented goodness.

Hospitality: Atithi Devo Bhava (a guest is god):

BRAHMIN DOMINATION IS TOTAL
Unfortunately, not every person who visits a Brahmin is defined as guest. A Kshatriya, Vaisya and a shudra at a Brahmin’s door are not atithi (guests), according to the Hindu shastra (Law).

But a Kshatriya (who comes) to the house of a Brahman is not called a guest (atithi), nor a Vaisya, nor a sudra. (Manusmriti, III, 110) Brahmins enjoy exclusive privilege in every aspect of life to date.

Political Economy:

Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana (Brahmin); on account of the excellence of his origin. The Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to all. (Manusmriti, I, 100)
Brahminical scholarship legitimised leisure, mantra, puja, tapasya and soothsaying and defied all economic theories including feminist economic theory. (Ilaiah, Kancha). Brahminical hegemony pervades through every aspect of Indian societies.

Politics in India is religion and caste- based. Brahminical forces have invariably controlled the major political parties in power. The Dalits merely try to lobby and their leaders mostly fail to address their issues in the post-Ambedkarite era. Major educational, health and commercial institutions are owned and controlled by upper castes. Dalits are systematically excluded from being part of development programmes.

Christian and Muslim minorities are exploited invoking the heroic deeds of Ram and Krishna who symbolise violent coercion.

Hinduism is deemed synonymous to Indian nationalism. In villages, these minorities are treated as untouchable outcastes who would pollute their dharma (Hindu). Old town planning tells a lot about the Hindu caste system. Brahmins reserved the area lining rivers, building temples on the ghats and declaring them sacred, in other words reserved exclusively for the pure ones. Dalits, Muslims and later on Christians lived out of the limits of the chaturvarna (the four-tier system).

WHITE WOMAN AS TEMPLE PRIEST
Elite Brahmanism, on the other hand, has been successful in India and abroad projecting a liberal, accommodating, democratic image. They go to the extent of refusing the Manusmriti as part of Vedic Hinduism, which has been to them, until the dawn of British colonial rule, as important aspect of Hinduism as is the Shariah to Islam and to the Muslims.

Recently, a Western (White) woman was appointed high priest in Varanasi, the most sacred Hindu place of pilgrimage. This honour and authority was never bestowed upon any Brahmin woman scholar in the history of Hinduism.

Not to mention, non-Brahmin men and women are still not allowed to study the Vedas in Hindu religious schools. The Shankaracharyas and other religious heads take no stand against untouchability and other issues. Brahmin priests control temples, harvest gods and humiliate Dalits and women.

Upper-caste leftist, Dalit, Muslim and Christian activists who raise their voices against this age-old system face a number of threats from the Hindu fascist quarters for whom Dharma-yudh (holy war) is the essence of Hinduism. Christian missionaries and innocent children were burnt to death, nuns mass raped, Dalits lynched in public, Dalit women stripped and paraded on streets.

SOCIALIST & SACRED BRAHMINS
It cannot be a coincidence that no Brahmin woman or man has faced such humiliation in the history of Brahmanist India. In the view of many Dalit scholars liberal and fascist Hindus are two sides of the same evil- Brahmanic/Vedic Hinduism.

“Dalitisation alone can effectively challenge Brahminical fascism parading in the garb of Hindutva.” (Ilaiah, Kancha)

Law & order: Prisons in India are occupied mostly by Dalits. It is similar to the condition of the African- Americans in the US prison industry. Dalit custodial deaths are numerous. There are evidences which indicate how the police department is ordered by the upper-caste ministers to allow the mob to do its job during communal violence. (Sharma, Rakesh)

Tsunami: The latest natural disaster brought the world together to help those who suffered tremendous loses. However, the aid that poured in from all corners of the world could not reach Dalit and Tribal communities in India, as it should have. Untouchability was evident. Fear of the Christian missionaries mobilised some politically motivated volunteers to keep the Dalit and tribal masses from being converted to Christianity. Some Dalit activists have documented the caste-based relief work in a short documentary film, Outside Mercy.

CONCLUSION
Hinduism is an exceptional religion because it legitimises all kinds of divisions, discriminations, inequalities, exploitation, violence, and, pornography too in its Vedas, Puranas and books of Divine Laws. While the Budha, Jesus and Prophet Mohammad worked to bring about equality, peace and love, especially for poor men and all women in the society, the Hindu rishis perceived the ultimate reality as a divisive, discriminating power working only to protect and serve the pets of Brahmin, brutalising rest of the humanity, including all women.

Christians, Muslims and Buddhists are encouraged to read, understand, and propagate their religion and to move closer to the ultimate reality. However, Brahminism has always banned non-Brahmins from the same and has not been tolerant to the people of their own religion, as they have been to the powerful Westerners.

BURNING OF MANU SMRITI
The low-caste Hindus have readily converted to Islam and Christianity and to Budhism to get rid of their castes. The real impact of Hinduism on Indian social structures is nothing but casteist and sexist degradation.

December 25th is observed as Manusmriti Dahan Diwas, on which several Dalit and women’s groups symbolically burn the Hindu law book in public, like Dr. Ambedkar, who did the same when he led the movement to annihilate caste and abolish untouchability in India. (roopalirokade@yahoo.com)

References:
Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2002.

Ambedkar, Dr. B.R., Writings and Speeches, Vol.3, Maharashtra Govt.

Ilaiah, Kancha, Why I am not a Hindu, Distributed by Bhatkal Books International (1996)

Sharma Rakesh, The Final Solution,

Sagarika Ghose, The Earthly Pundit, Independent Media Centre, India , 2003

Nath, Ramendra, Why I am not a Hindu, www.infidels.org. Bihar Rationalist Society, 1993.

Omvedt Gail, The Pioneer, Jan.30 2000

Now, a phirang priest in Varanasi, The Times of India, March 11, 2005

Manusmriti, translated by Buhler, George, The Laws of Manu, Sacred Books of the East, Vol.25.

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The essay was written as part of the interdisciplinary course from the Dept. of Philosophy, Toronto. Though not an exhaustive piece of work, the essay attempts to present an argument against the notions that have been popularised over centuries about Hinduism, especially in the West. Following were some of the issues discussed in the class with regard to what Hinduism has given to the world. The author got an A+ in the course.

India's Caste based exploitation and control: A Dalit view

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The Melungeons: Muslims in USA before Columbus After Spanish Inquisition

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The Melungeons: Muslims in USA before Columbus After Spanish Inquisition

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 April 11th, 2008  | |  | RUPEE NEWS | Moi April 11th, 2008 MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

Fromt he 7th Century inscriptions of Arabic on Nevada Rocks, to Islamorada in Florida, to the Meungeons of the Applachians, to the Morrish Architecture of Caliph-Haronia (California), Islam is present everywhere in America. One just needs to look.

• USA Muslims: 7th Century Islamic inscriptions on Nevada rocks
• Recreating a New America as envisioned by our Founding Fathers:-A patriotic American Muslim speaks out
• AMERICA IS MY LAND TOO: A patriotic Muslim American speaks out
• Muslims in America before Columbus
• A mosque is as American as apple pie. Muslims have been part of America before Columbus
• 500 American town have Muslim names. Reds have Green Roots. Cherokee Muslims. Mali Muslims visit American. Chinese Muslims
• Expansion of Early Islam in maps: 6th & 7th century
• Creeping Shariah? Muslims were in America before Columbus, Pilgrims or May Flower

The Melungeons
Etymology of the term “Melungeon”. Kennedy (1994) writes that it derives from the Turkish melun can (from Arabic “mal`un jinn” ????? ???) which means “damned soul”.

In Spain the Muslims were known as Mudajjan a word probably related to the term Melungeon. Ethnically, many of the Santa Elena colonists were Berber Muslims and Sephardic Jews, recruited by the Portuguese Captain Joao Pardo from the heavily Berber Galician Mountains of northern Portugal in 1567-less than one year before the Inquisition kicked into high gear against the Muslims.

When Santa Elena fell, its inhabitants-including its converted Jews and Muslims-escaped into the mountains of North Carolina. And there they survived, intermarrying to some degree with Native Americans, eventually merging with a second group arriving on American shores in, ironically, 1587, the same yr. Santa Elena fell.

Chinese Muslim Admiral Zeng he discovered America before Columbus

A 10th century Arab map showing America as Ard Majhoola

The Melungeons: An Untold Story of Ethnic cleansing in America (B.Kennedy)  This is an article from Islamic Horizons magazine Nov/Dec issue 1994.

The Melungeons An Untold Story of Ethnic cleansing in America By Brent Kennedy Perhaps Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was Melungeon.

It somehow seems fitting that one of America’s greatest Presidents should be of mixed race and probably Muslim heritage. But who are the Melungeons? Historical records document that from 1492 through the early 1600′s an estimated 500,000 Jews and Muslims were exiled from Spain and Portugal through a religious witch-hunt known as the Spanish Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim exiles escaped to their ancestral homelands of Morocco, Algeria, Libya nd Tunisia.

In fact, the well-known Barbary Coast Pirates of North Africa sprang from this group. They, along with their Turkish compatriots, were renowned for their seagoing exploits as they sought revenge against the Spanish and Portuguese in ferocious Mediterranean sea battles. Of course, they didn’t always win: those pirates unfortunate enough to lose at sea often ended up as galley slaves beneath the creaking decks of Spanish and Portuguese ships bound for the New World. Ironically, slaves of the Christians once again.

Other Muslims-Berber in particular-Moriscos they were called made their way to the Canary Islands, India, France and other countries. And interestingly enough wherever these exiled Berbers went, they identified themselves as ‘Portuguese,” even if they had originated in Spain.

In fact, the term “Portuguese,” became almost synonymous for both the Muslims and the Jews who had been exiled during the Inquisition. Finally, as the Inquisitions grew in Power and severity, even Christianized Moors and Jews were forced in exile. These “Conversos” the name given to both Muslim and Jewish coverts were not trusted by either the Church or the government, and probably with good reason, since most had converted Catholicism only to avoid the death sentence.

The Spanish Inquisition, horrible as it was accomplished something of great historical value for Islam. Even though Western historians have generally ignored the evidence, there is little doubt that Muslims played an early-and perhaps the earliest- role in the permanent settlement of this Nation.

And there is little doubt that the Inquisition-with all it agonies-drove Spanish and Portuguese Muslims toward the New World. While American school children learn of columbus’s role in the discovery of the New World, they aren’t told the entire story. For example, Columbus employed both Moorish and Spanish sailors, and himself may have been Jewish.

On his fourth voyage in 1502 he records two important discoveries: First, on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, he discovered an iron pot and an old ship’s mast preserved in an Indian hut. He and his crew determined these artifacts had come from the Canary Islands.

The Canaries, a Portuguese possession, had been a favorite dumping ground for Conversos of Muslim Berber origin. Second, on July 31, 1502, came an even more extraordinary discovery. Off the island of Jamaica, Columbus encountered strange people on a strange ship that western historians have generally considered to be Mayan Indians. This ship was forty feet ling with a diameter of eight feet, and had a shaded pavilion in the center. From a distance, Columbus thought it to be uncannily like the Moorish galleys he and so often seen the the Mediterranean.

There were approximately forty men and women on thie galley and unlike the Jamaican Indians, these people wore clothing: sleeveless shirts and with showy colors and designs like those Columbus had seen, in his own , in Muslim Granada. These so-called Mayan Indians carried a cargo of tools, copper implements, and forges for working copper. But perhaps Columbus’s striking observation was that the women aboard this galley “covered their faces like the women of Granada.” Were these truly Mayan Indians? Or simply one more case of biased historians refusing to accept the fact that Muslims could have reached the New World before Columbus? Columbus certainly considered the possibility.

In 1527, the first land crossing of the US by an non-Native American most likely was achieved by Azemmouri, a Moroccan Berber- a muslim. Originally a member of an expedition of 300 Spaniards, only Azemmouri and three of his comrades survived this eleven yr, 5,000 mile trek from Florida to the West Coast and back to Texas. He was the first explorer to enter a Pueblo Indian Village, and the story of his daring exploits make for fascinating reading.

Curiously, Azemmouri is never mentioned in the American history books. The establishment of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 was indeed an important event in American history.

Bit is was by no means the first European settlement in the New World. The Spanish established the Santa Elena, South Carolina, colony in 1566, forty yrs before Jamestown. The colony thrived for more than twenty yrs until it was overrun by the English in 1587. But since the English won the battle for this Nation, Santa Elena was conveniently left out of American history books. What happened to the survivors of Santa Elena, and who were they?

Their identity is important to understanding the hidden role played by Islam in the shaping of the American nation. Many of the Santa Elena colonists were converted Muslims and Jews or Conversos.

In Spain the Muslims were known as Mudajjan a word probably related to the term Melungeon. Ethnically, many of the Santa Elena colonists were Berber Muslims and Sephardic Jews, recruited by the Portuguese Captain Joao Pardo from the heavily Berber Galician Mountains of northern Portugal in 1567-less than one year before the Inquisition kicked into high gear against the Muslims.

When Santa Elena fell, its inhabitants-including its converted Jews and Muslims-escaped into the mountains of North Carolina. And there they survived, intermarrying to some degree with Native Americans, eventually merging with a second group arriving on American shores in, ironically, 1587, the same yr. Santa Elena fell.

North African Berbers and Turks captured in the Mediterranean by the Spanish and Portuguese were regularly used as galley slaves in ships crossing the Atlantic. Once in the New World, these Muslim captives were assigned to slave labor on sugar plantations and in the mining operations of among other places, Cuba and Brazil. In 1586, English pirate, Sir Francis Drake, commanding thirty English ships, made a daring raid against his Spanish and Portuguese enemies on coast of Brazil. During this raid, Drake liberated some 400 Portuguese and Spanish held prisoners, including an estimated 300 Moorish and Turkish galley slaves Muslims captured in Mediterranean sea battles as well as several dozen South American Indians, a smaller number of West African Muslims, and a few Portuguese soldiers.

Drake had planned to arm and release Turks and Africans on Cuba, to serve as a stronghold against Spanish but heavy storms forced him to continue up the coast of North Carolina. There on Roanoke Island he was sieged by stranded English settlers pleading for a ride home to England. The English colony of Ralph B Lane had enough of the New World and wanted to go home. To fulfill their wish, Drake had to make room for them on his already crowded ships.

According to English records, only 100 Turks were taken back to England where they were ransomed to the Turkish Dominions,” There’s no further mention of the remaining 200 Moors, Turks, West Africans, Portuguese Soldiers or the South American Indians by Drake, and records show that Sir Walter Raleigh who visited the Island two weeks later found no trace of them.

Where did they go?

Research indicates that Drake left them behind, assuring that he or someone would be back for them. But that was no guarantee of safety from the pursuing Spanish of Portuguese. On Roanoke Island they were little more than sitting ducks.

There is little doubt they made their way the short distance e to the mainland, probably utilizing the small boats left behind by the English, and then traveled steadily inland. Along the way too intermarried with Native Americans, mostly Powhatan, Pamunkey, Nansemond and Hatters. Within the next decade or so they encountered the remanent of the Santa Elena colony, many of whom shared their Muslim heritage.

And there thousands of miles away from their homelands, these two surviving groups became one people. Christians, Jews and Muslims- literally the people of the book- living and worshipping the God of Abraham together.

In 1654, the English explorers learned from southeastern Indians of a colony of bearded people wearing european clothing, living in cabins smelting silver and dropping to their knees to pray many times daily, wherever they might be. A people who did not speak English, but claimed to “Portyghee” In the mid 1600′so there were people living among the Powhatans and related tribes of eastern Virginia and North Carolina who were described as dark like Indians, but called “Portugals” A similar people in South Carolina called themselves “Turks.”

The early 17th Century Powhatan Indians description of Heaven is nearly word for word the description found in the Holy Quran. In the 1690′s, French explorers reported finding “Christianized Moors” in the Carolina mountains.

When the first English arrived in the mid- 1700′s, large colonies of so called “Melungeons” were already well established in the Tennessee and Carolina Mountains. And, in broken Elizabethan English they called themselves “Portyghee,” or by the more mysterious term “Melungeon” Tennessee Governor John Sevier records a 1784 encounter in what is now Western North Carolina with a dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people supposed to be of Moorish descent who claim to be Portuguese.

In east Tennessee in late 1700′so Jonathan Swift, an Englishman married to a Melungeon woman utilized Melungeon men in his own silver mining operations. His dark-skinned companions were known as “Mecca Indians.” Over years, as growing numbers of Anglo settlers swept upon them and around them, Melungeons were pushed higher and higher into the mountains. And their claims of Portuguese and Melungeon heritage were increasingly ridiculed.

Even the word Melungeon became a most disparaging term. In fact, to be legally classified as a Melungeon meant in the words of one journalist, to “nobody at all”.

The Melungeons, pushed off their lands, denied their rights, often murdered, always mistreated, became an imbittered and nearly defeated people. Over the ensuing decades- in a vain effort to fit in with their Anglo neighbors, they lost their heritage, their culture , the names and thier original religion but not their genetic structure. Perhaps the most stunning evidence is the gene frequency research conducted in 1990 by Dr. James Guthrie, who performed a reanalysis of 177 Melungeon blood samples taken in 1969, in east Tennessee and SW Virginia.

Dr Guthrie compared the frequency of certain genes within the Melungion sample to the know genetic make-up of nearly 200 other world population groups. His findings indicated no significant differences between the Melungeon people of east Tennessee and SW Virginia, and the people of North Africa and especially Morocco, Algeria and Libya and the Calician mountains of Spain and Portugal, Iraq, Cyprus, Malta, the Canary Islands and extreme southern Italy, and most interesting certain South American Indians and last but not least, the Turks.

Can it be pure coincidence that these gene frequency comparisons match up so perfectly with those populations theorized to be the source of the Melungeons?

Can this sort of coincidence truly exist? There as also a number of medical conditions associated with the Melungeon people, e.g. sarcoidosis, a dibilitating and sometimes fatal disease which is primarily a disease of Arabic, North African and Portuguese people with links to the Canary Islands, In this country it’s most common among Caucasian-Americans of Melungeon decent and AfricanAmericans with SE roots. Both groups undoubtedly share the same Mediterranean and Middle Eastern gene pool.

There is strong evidence that Christopher Columbus himself suffered from sarcoidosis. And there are other genetically related illnesses as well. Familial Mediterranean Fever, thallasemia and Machado Joseph Disease (also know as Azorean Disease) are all strong indicators that Melungeons are indeed of mixed Mediterranean, Middle Eastern North African and African descent.

Even if historians never took seriously the Melungeon claim to be Portuguese or Moorish, the medical and genetic work cannot be so easily dismissed. What can the long-standing mystery word Melungeon possibly mean? It was used by Spanish and Portuguese Berbers to describe themselves.

But now there is yet another hint, further substantiating a Muslim origin. there are two Turkish words; “melun” meaning cursed or damned and “can” meaning “life” or “soul” used together these words- Pronounced Melungeon” translate as “one whose life or soul has been cursed.” Which would seem quite appropriate for 200 Muslim Turks an Ocean away from their loved ones and their country.

The descendants of the Melungeon people are everywhere , especially those who have ancestors from the SE US, of any race with the following surnames: Adams, Adkins, Bell, Bennett, Berry, Bowling, Chavis, Coleman, Collins, Gibson, Goins, Hall, Jackson, Lopes, Moore, Mullins, Nash, Robinson, Sexton and Williams. As a result of continuning research, several American celebrities have recently discovered their Melungeon roots.

The Melungeon researchers are supported by grants from the governments of Portugal, Morocco and especially Turkey. The Turkish are providing Arabic-reading scholars to translate records from the Ottoman Empire. Among the other competent scholars assisting in this research are Dr. Ahmad al-Hassan, author of “An Illustrated History of Islamic Science and Technology” published by Cambridge University Press. Research grants have also come from the humanities councils of South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia.

Many Melungeons are excited to learn that, though they themselves are Christians, their ancestors were Muslims, and what they accomplished. This realization put into better focus the prejudices that their people have suffered, not only the older members of their families, but still living ones.

A Melungeon lady suffering because of the dark color of her skin, or a Melungeon male being attacked by tow men in Blacksburg VA in 1980 because they thought he was Iranian, or another being detained as a suspected Palestinian at an Israeli border crossing while visiting the Holy Land with his family. All these things have impact, and point out the insanity of prejudice based on one’s physical haracteristics.

The Melungeons were Americans, and Christians as well and even thought they were Scots Irish. Bit it didn’t matter, because the rest of World was caught up in its preset prejudices. The Melungeons experience shows that even if kinship may not be seen on the surface, it’s there.

The Melungeons victims of an early form of ethnic cleansing-are the ancestors of a significan number of present day Americans. Americans who may not know they are descended from Muslims and Jews, Arabs, and Berbers, Africans and Native Americans, Portuguese and Spanish. And when people maliciously target any religious, racial or ethnic group that is different from what they perceive themselves to be, they are truly hurting themselves. Racial and religious prejudice is nothing more than self mutilation. Humankind are all not just figuratively-but literally- brothers and sisters. Not just in God’s eyes but in true family kinship as well The Melungeons, though most today are Christian, are the living legacy of Islam’s first wavy of immigration to the New World.

For further information, This article is just a piece of Brent Kennedy’s book The Melungeons: The resurrection of a Proud People published by Mercer University Press (1994)

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The Melungeons: Muslims in USA before Columbus After Spanish Inquisition

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Promises are made to be broken! Is this Democracy?

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The new coalition government is rady to implement the “MInus One” formula under which all the judges will be restored and then Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry will resign from his post. Technically this will enable the PML(N) to say that it has kept the promises, and the lawyers can declare victory and go home. Mr. Chaudhry will recuse himself from Mr. Musharraf’s case.

When will the Pakistani politicinas quit playing games and get to the real problems of the people, water, electricity, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Terrorism.

New govt plans to thank, say ‘bye to Iftikhar* Iftikhar Chaudhry may be reinstated, then forced to retire

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is drafting a constitutional package likely to sideline sacked chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The PPP is expected to submit the proposal for parliamentary scrutiny as soon as next week. It is honour bound to reinstate the judges sacked on November 3 within 30 days of the formation of the government, under a pact between PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif.

Pakistan’s new political order will thank Chaudhry for precipitating the political shift that led to the defeat of pro-Musharraf parties in February’s elections, reinstate him and then try to wave him goodbye, analysts and others said. “Restoration will redeem his honour,” said a senior PPP official in government. “But this is about reforming the judiciary, not making heroes out of people.”

“If there is any compromise on this issue then there are serious threats to the coalition,” Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, a senior minister from the PML-N, told Reuters, adding that for now “all is well”.

Independent analysts say Zardari has Nawaz’s approval to remove Chaudhry without the issue breaking the coalition, but that Nawaz won’t say so publicly as he has to manage dissent in the PML-N. “They are together on the fundamental issue, that this time the civilians will prevail,” the PPP official said. The restored judges could revive challenges to Musharraf’s re-election in October while still army chief, or go after the president for his November 3 actions.

The PPP wants to avoid an early confrontation with Musharraf.

The PPP faces several problems including stabilising its government, averting possible economic crisis, and fighting Al Qaeda-inspired militants.

“Who benefits from upheaval?” asked the PPP official. “There’s a difference between a compromise and a sell-out.”

It has been argued that forcing Chaudhry into early retirement could go some way to defusing a potentially explosive situation.

“The other option is not to remove him, but to reduce his personal power,” the PPP official said.

That would entail removing the chief justice’s right to allocate judges to cases, and choose which judges sit on benches.

Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, warned of more agitation if Chaudhry is removed.

“There will be no closure of the issue. There will be continued uncertainty and instability,” he said. reuters

Promises are made to be broken! Is this Democracy?

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