Rupee News

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Melungeons: Muslims in USA before Columbus After Spanish Inquisition

PAKISTAN LEDGER| 

Image via Wikipedia

 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)

Suriname

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

Is Mr. Haqqani a Neocon mole in Islamabad? How long can he last?

Is Husain Haqqani a “Mir Jaffar” Neocon Mole planted in Pakistan to monitor and report on the inner workings of the nuclear program? He received more than a quarter of million Dollars for research on similar subjects. See AIPAC press release below.

Husain Haqqani: Dangerous 5th column or selfish opportunist?

Pakistan’s New Ambassador: Traitor or Naïve fool?

Mr. Potato-Chips goes to Washington:-Neocon from Pakistan

A rebuttal to Mr. Haqqani: US policy and Pakistan’s drift

Mr. Haqqan is the new Ambassador to the USA. Pakistanis had breathed a sigh of relief when it was reported that he did not get the job as the Ambassador to the USA–it was not to be. As ambassador to the USA, Haqqani will essentially act as a “prime minister representative to foreign governments,” though the duties of the job have yet to be defined. Pakistani Americans hopes he is sent back to Sri Lanka.

It is a matter of public debate. Which flag does Mr. Haqqani owe his allegiance to?

Who is Haqqani? A Western Oriental Gentleman (WOG) came to the USA in 2002. His credentials were pretty weak an MA from The University of Karachi. He noticed that there was a huge opportunity in making a deal with Faust and selling Islamphobia to the naive and scared American public. In the grand tradition of “Orientalism”, this new FOB (Fresh of the boat) man jumped on the Neocon bandwagon and stabbed the Civil Rights Movement in the heart. Mr. Hussain Haqqani’s incorrect, false and incendiary statements caused havoc with the normal functioning of the great American Democracy. Hackles were raised. If a man named Hussian said this, it must be true. If a Pakistani said this it must have veracity.

The major Kashmiri Jihadi groups retain their infrastructure because the Pakistani military has not decided to give up the option of battling India at a future date. Afghanistan’s Taliban also continue to find safe haven in parts of Pakistan. Hussain Haqqani

Mr. Haqqani’s statements and article fanned the wave of Islamphobia which ended up affecting the lives, and livelihood of thousands of Muslims. It was because of this sort of Islamphobic drivel that thousands of Pakistanis were packed up in C-130s and sent back to Pakistan. If they were lucky the spent a few nights in the rape and sodomy centers  of 3rd world and Eastern European torture centers. If they were unlucky many of these Pizza Delivery people ended up in Gitmo. If they were unlucky they ended up in satellite prison systems in Egypt and Jordan’s notorious “mukhabarrat”. For these unlucky souls Abu Ghraib would be a picnic. Many of these horror stories are listed in “Civil Rights in Peril” and hundreds of other Human rights and Amnesty International reports.

Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments:
Among U.S. allies in the war against terrorism, Pakistan cannot be easily characterized as either friend or foe. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is an important center of radical Islamic ideas and groups. Since 9/11, the selective cooperation of president General Pervez Musharraf in sharing intelligence with the United States and apprehending al Qaeda members has led to the assumption that Pakistan might be ready to give up its longstanding ties with radical Islam. But Pakistans status as an Islamic ideological state is closely linked with the Pakistani elites worldview and the praetorian ambitions of its military. This book analyzes the origins of the relationships between Islamist groups and Pakistans military, and explores the nations quest for identity and security. Tracing how the military has sought U.S. support by making itself useful for concerns of the momentwhile continuing to strengthen the mosque-military alliance within PakistanHaqqani offers an alternative view of political developments since the countrys independence in 1947.

Book News Annotation:
Tracing political developments in Pakistan from the deliberately vague ideological justifications the Muslim League’s Muhhamad Ali Jinnah employed in calling for the formation of Pakistan to the present time, Haqqani (a former advisor to three Pakistani prime ministers and now a professor of international relations at Boston U.) analyzes the uneasy political alliance between the military and Islamists that has developed over the years and now poses unique challenges for the American “War on Terror” and relations with South Asia. Distributed in the US by Brookings Institution Press.
Annotation ?2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Synopsis:
Because of its cooperation with the United States since 9/11, Pakistan is thought to be ready to give up its longstanding ties with radical Islam. But its status as an ideological Islamic state is closely linked with the Pakistani elite’s worldview and the praetorian ambitions of its military. This book analyzes the relationships between Islamist groups and Pakistan’s military. Tracing how the military has sought U.S. support by making itself useful for concerns of the moment–while continuing to strengthen the mosque-military alliance within Pakistan–Haqqani offers an alternative view of political developments since the country’s independence in 1947.

Mr. Haqqani should have been defending the innocent. He was like Nero wathcin Rome Burn. Mr. Haqqani was not just a spectator, he was an active participat on the crusade on Muslims in the West.

Now this Neocon is coming back to the USA as Pakistan’s ambassador to the USA?

Mr. Neocon goes to Washington–from Pakistan

Mr. Haqqani addressed the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA). The tone and content of his sppech disparaged Pakistan and Pakistanis.

 April 27, 2004 in JINSA Events, Programs, Publications and Notices : Events, Meetings and Programs : The Policy Forum
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Dealing with a Difficult Ally; Pakistan’s Tenuous Role in American Foreign Policy
Husain Haqqani Outlines Four Trouble Spots in Pakistan-U.S. Relations

“Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are two of the United State’s most difficult allies. Why difficult? Because there are those who would argue they are not allies at all… but [are, in fact] sources of trouble.” Speaking before a standing-room only crowd at the JINSA Policy Forum on March 2, 2004, Husain Haqqani, a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former advisor to Pakistani prime ministers Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Nawaz Sharif, and Benazir Bhutto, shared insights into four alarming trends with the potential to seriously complicate American relations with Pakistan. These trends, he said, are nuclear weapons proliferation, Pakistan’s role as a center of an Islamic militant movement, the continued precariousness of South Asian regional politics, and domestic issues complicating Pakistani efforts towards international engagements.

Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
Reflecting recent mainstream news coverage on the issue, Haqqani, a syndicated columnist for the Indian Express, Gulf News and The Nation (Pakistan), reiterated the pressing danger of Pakistani-orchestrated nuclear arms proliferation. Though such dangers have been recognized by the American government as a growing security threat, he explained, “there is going to be no consequences for Pakistan, because Pakistan is cooperating with the United States in the hunt for Bin Laden.”

Hussain Haqqani during JINSA’s March 2, 2004 Policy Forum.
Pakistan’s Role as a Center of an Militant Islamic Movement
While lauded for its cooperative role in war against terrorism, Haqqani suggested that Pakistan also has, and continues, to serve as the center of an Islamic militant movement. Abdul Alaa Maududi, founder of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami movement, authored Jihad for Islam, a seminal work regarded by Haqqani and others “as the boiler plate for subsequent developments in that whole theory about global [Jihaddist] effort.” While Pakistan acts as a central hub for international Islamic militancy, such violent factions also enjoy domestic support within elements of the Pakistani government. Haqqani suggested that “Pakistan’s military for strategic reasons has allied [with Islamic militancy] time and time against, and it was the alliance between the mosque and the militancy … which produced things like the Taliban.”

The Continued Precariousness of South Asian Regional Politics
The sporadic volatility of Indian-Pakistani relations, Haqqani reasoned, functions as the conduit for Pakistan’s military to gain control of the country. Regardless of the present strategic threat posed by India, the fact remains that “just as major threats to national security require large national security establishments, sometimes having a large national security establishment requires a large national security threat.” Continuing the explanation, “after the threat [of Indian secessionism] is gone, [the Pakistani military] has to continue to say that India is an existential threat.” In addition, Kashmir remains a key issue of international dispute, and Haqqani suggested it too functions as the means for the military establishment “essentially to justify its own role as Pakistan’s final arbiter and of the ruler of Pakistan.” By periodically putting pressure on India military Pakistan’s governing body solidifies its dominion over the nation – a particularly perilous and precarious balance of power, especially in light of the recent South Asian nuclear arms race; “The Pakistani military, like all praetorian militaries, basically does not want to relinquish power. So therefore they have to keep the South Asian competition alive.”

Domestic Issues Complicate International Engagements
Pakistan, while competing in the South Asian arms race and possessing the means to deliver nuclear weapons 1500 kilometers beyond its borders and vying for international prestige, faces growing domestic economic concerns. Thirty-one percent of the population lives below the international poverty line, with another 21 percent struggling at levels just above the $1 a day threshold. While both India and Pakistan originally faced similar patterns of rampant poverty, poverty levels in India have been decreasing yearly while they continue to rise on an annual basis in Pakistan. Haqqani believes that Pakistan spends roughly six percent on its GDP on the military and, given India’s dynamic economy, Pakistani efforts to match the military outputs of India cannot continue indefinitely.

Concerns over “nuclear weapons, Islamic militancy, extreme poverty, and a military that doesn’t want to relinquish power” exist in Pakistan, Haqqani noted. But complicating possible reformers is the fact that Pakistan’s leadership has historically enjoyed a “grossly exaggerated notion of [its] significance in the world.” The phenomenon has resulted from the United States’ repeated engagement of Pakistan as a client in dealing with regional problems such as supporting the mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union rather than developing a true partnership based on the sharing of liberal values and common regional goals.

Currently the U.S. government supports [Pakistan's dictator] Gen. Pervez Musharraf on account of his promise to continue efforts to defeat Islamic militancy, Haqqani reminded the audience. While Musharraf has enjoyed successes in combating terror, however, the Pakistani leadership continues to view “some Islamic groups [of questionable character in favorable light] because they have been helpful to the Pakistani military in tying down Indian troops in Kashmir.” Moreover, one must wonder why there have been nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks in both Pakistan and Turkey and in Pakistan and Iraq. Indeed, there exists in Pakistan an underground terror network that Musharraf is not targeting “partially because he doesn’t have the capacity to break it down [since] he and many of his military colleagues created this fire. When the ones who lit the fire are asked to put it out they still have some ideas about ‘this part of the fire we like,’” Haqqani said.

The aftermath of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s murder provides insight into the troublesome relations between Pakistan’s ruling elite and organizations carrying out terrorism, Haqqani related. When al Qaeda operative Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, upon learning he had been implicated in Pearl’s kidnapping and killing, contacted a Pakistani military intelligence officer who had been his handler, he inadvertently turned himself in to government forces and, moreover, presumably did so with mindset that he was dealing with friendly forces. “The fact that [an al Qaeda terrorist] feels so comfortable with Pakistani intelligence officers … is a source of worry in itself,” Haqqani said.

These issues suggest America should reevaluate its attitude towards Pakistan and the country’s leadership. U.S. policy makers, Haqqani concluded, “have opted so far to put their faith in General Musharraf and nudge him very gently. Not publicly but only privately.” Perhaps, given the gravity of the concerns, it may be best to explore other means to enact policy change and explore the serious challenges Pakistan poses as a difficult ally.

By JINSA Editorial Assistant Shai Dardashti

Is Mr. Haqqani a Pakistani Ambassador a security risk for Pakistan. Is Mr. Husain Haqqani a US citizen? His interests are making money and supporting the Neocon cause disqualifies him from representing Pakistan. As Pakistan’s ambassador to the USA., his deep links with the think tanks will jeopardize national security. There was a huge outcry on importing the last Prime Minister from the USA, and Mr. Zardari as well as Mr. Sharif said, that this would never happen in their administration. They are kind of correct, because they are not importing Mr. Haqqani, they are simply giving him a new title. His loyalties will remain with those who have written him huge paychecks.

What irked Pakistani Americans most about Mr. Haqqani’s writings were his insinuations innuendo and portrayal of false history about Islam in America. His most egregious offense was to cast doubt on the loyalty of Muslims in America. His portrayal of terrorists cells and sleeper cells mirrored the writings of Dr. Emersen, Robert Spencer, David Harowitz, Michelle Milkin and others the worst Islamphobes in the planet. For example Mr. Haqqani’s article with the innocuous title “The Politicization of American Islam” is a ticking time bomb for American Muslims. It is exactly these type of writings that have encouraged Michelle Malken to write “The Case for internment”, a book that propounds the thesis that the internment of innocent American citizens who happened to be Japanese

However he has more than skeletons in his closet. He is a closet full of skeletons. For the past decade his sordid connections with the Neocons and their think tanks created this tsunami of Islamphobic rhetoric that eventually turned into a crescendo of Anti-Pakistan balderdash.

The new Pakistani ambassador to the USA will be very comfortable in Washington circles. His last paychecks came from the DC think tanks which have propagated the culture of hate against Pakistan. Mr. Husain Haqqani is a honorable gentleman, well read, and prolific in his writings in English as well as Urdu. His mastery of Urdu literature, and his cognizance of world affairs, and his intimate knowledge of Pakistani politics should be commended. In circumstances other than today, he would have made a good ambassador for Pakistan.

As Islam continues to win converts in the United States, these new converts are more likely to be influenced by radical Islam than by traditional Islam.Husain Haqqni

The portrayal of DMS (Dead Muslim Scholars) as progenitors of all evil in the world is a growth industry in America. Mr. Haqqanis writings linking DMSs to 911 and future events is exactly what is depicted in Mr. Geert Wilder’s balderdash “Fitna”. If Fitna is blasphemy, Mr. Haqani’s sacrilegious writings also create psychopathic paranoia in the intellectual circles of America. What is worse, Mr. Haqqani’s writings are then quoted as “fact” to create discriminatory laws, illegal surveillance and creates the case to end Habeas Corpus via the “Patriot Act” Laws.

Many mosques and organizations in North America are influenced or controlled by associates of the Muslim BrotherhoodHussain Haqqani

These sort of statements are insidious on many counts:

1) What does “some” mean. There are more than 3000 mosques in the USA. Taking a conservative estimate of 10% that amounts to about 300 mosques. Even if it is 150 (5%) or even less than that 50, that is enough to cover many major cities of the USA. In fact Congressman Peter King and Mr. Emersen did exactly what was feared. They took Mr. Haqqani’s sentence and substituted “some” for 80% and plastered the internet and airwaves with this gobbledygook

2) The other problem with this claptrap is usage the of the word “controlled.” Mr. Haqqani makes it sound as if the mosques are fully owned franchises of the Waffen SS, complete with nazi salutes, arms and brownshirts. In fact this is exactly what has happened, Mr. Robert Spencer taking cue from writings like those of Mr. Haqqani recently celebrated “Islam-Fascism” week on American University campuses. All Islamphobes one can list were there spreading the same kind of hate. This sort of nonsense also shows up in American foreign policy, targeted killings, drone bombings and cross border raids on innocent civilians in Waziristan and FATA. In a sense this article is responsible for blood on Mr. Haqqani’s hands. Obviously the poorly run, dilapidated building passing for mosques are the first attempt of Muslims to create and be part of the American mainstream by building a community. Mr. Haqqani’s unsubstantiated claims not withstanding, there are several books that have repudiated this drivel. Two books “Why they don’t hate us”, and “Civil rights in Peril” refute the Haqqani neurosis. We wish Mr. Haqqani had participated in writing these and thse types of books. Alas! Mr. Haqqani used his command of the English language to fill his pockets on the heads of poor and innocent Muslims and Pakistanis

3) Mr. Haqqani’s insinuations have harmed the Muslims in America and Muslims all over the world an has harmed Pakistan by these type of articles. For example he insinuation has tried tie Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) with these groups overseas. The struggle for Muslim Civil Rights has thus impaired Muslim civil rights and harmed America.

4) Muslim Civili Rights organization and other organizations in the USA know Mr. Haqqani’s records. Mr. Haqqani will be unable to function in the USA as an ambassador of one of the largest Muslim countries in the world when he is identified with the Neocons who forced Mr. Bush to wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq. It is these same Neocons who are ready to attack Iran and bomb Pakistan.

In short, Mr. Haqqani’s writings have done great harm to Pakistanis and Muslims.

This is his official biography posted on his own website http://www.husainhaqqani.com/:

Husain Haqqani is Director of the Center for International Relations and Professor at Boston University. He is Co-Chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on the Future of the Muslim World as well as editor of the journal ‘Current Trends in Islamist Thought’ published from Washington DC.

Haqqani came to the U.S. in 2002 as a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC and an adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He is a leading journalist, diplomat, and former advisor to Pakistani Prime ministers. His syndicated column is published in several newspapers in South Asia and the Middle East, including Oman Tribune, Jang, The Indian Express, Gulf News and The Nation (Pakistan).

Husain Haqqani is co-chair of the Islam and Democracy Project at the Hudson Institute. This is a Neocon think tank which is very Anti-Islam. For details on this group with Fascist leanings, see Appendix A. Mr. Haqqani not only was a member of this institute, he also participated in and was the co-chair “Islam and Democracy”, an anthology of Islamphobic writings spreading paranoia and hatred towards all Muslims and Pakistanis in America.

Semantics are extremely important. We strenuously objected to Mr. Haqqani’s usage of Quranic words for nafarous purposes. He continues to use the words giving succor to the enemy, but also encouragin appartichiks like Mr. Shaharyar to “monkey say monkey do” follow in his footsteps and use the same blasphemous wordings. Mr. Haqqani should be aware that blasphemy is still an offense in Pakistan and congucating Quranic terms to portray ignoble people is blasphemy. When Pakistani territory is called a “safe haven”, instead of a hideout, it creates paranoia in Washington.

The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups (Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, April 2005)

We have repeatedly requested Mr. Haqqani not to use Neocon language. He continues to do so. One would have expected Mr. Haqqani to be the frontline “haraval dasta” to mold American opinion in projecting a realistic picture of Pakistan. By his writings, Mr. Neocon Haqqani did the exact opposite.

Against the murdered shut the door, not bear the knife himself

The Pakistani Ambassador to the United States of America is one of the most important positions in the world. The Ambassador represents Pakistan, Pakistani thought and Pakistani interests. Mr. Haqqani represents none of the credentials. The fastest way to fame in the America of 2002 was to create an atmosphere of “the hordes are coming” and write about “sleeper cells”. Mr. Haqqani in a faustian deal with the think tanks did exactly that. To sell books and get his articles published Mr. Haqqani followed the Salman Rusdie route to notoriety. He is a biased partisan of the PPPP to such an extent that he has for the past decade sacrificed Pakistan’s interests for the sake of putting the PPPP back in power in Islamabad.

In the interest of full disclosure, this author has been in email contact with Mr. Haqqani for years. We posted the email exchange on RupeeNews.com, however Mr. Haqqani objected to personal email being posted on the internet. This was a reasonable request so we removed his portion of the comments. He appreciated the quick response to his request.

These issues will not go away. It would be best if Mr. Haqqani is never made Ambassador. It would be horrible for him, if had to resign later.

This article will be researched and Mr. Haqqani’s writings will be added to the articles on a periodic basis. By writing this article we are very well aware that our invitations to the Pakistani Embassy implaced by Dr. Maleeha Lodhi will be canceled by Mr. Haqqani!

APPENDIX A

The History and Unwritten Future of Salafism HILLEL FRADKIN

The Brotherhood in the Islamist Universe GILLES KEPEL

Something’s Rotten in Denmark NASER KHADER

The Islamization of Arab Culture HASSAN MNEIMNEH

The Crisis of the Arab Brotherhood ISRAEL ELAD ALTMAN

Reporting the Muslim Brotherhood ROD DREHER

The Brotherhood’s Westward Expansion IAN JOHNSON

The Brotherhood Network in the U.S ZEYNO BARAN

The Politicization of American Islam HUSAIN HAQQANI

Contributors and Editors

Hillel Fradkin, a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, is the Director of the Center for Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World.

Husain Haqqani is co-chair of the Islam and Democracy Project at the Hudson Institute.

Eric Brown is a Research Fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World.

APPENDIX B

Source: http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/research/pubID.83/pub_detail.asp

The Politicization of American Islam
by Husain Haqqani Published on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
REPORTS Current Trends in Islamist Ideology vol. 6

Since its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood has defined itself as the vanguard of a global Islamic revival. After starting out in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood had set up branches in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Hyderabad (India), Hadramawt (Yemen) and Paris by 1937.1 The universality of the Brotherhood’s ideology and organization was described by its founder, Hassan al-Banna when he said:

A Muslim individual, Muslim family, Muslim nation, Muslim government and Muslim state should be able to lead Islamic governments, should be able to unite the dispersed Muslims, should be able to regain their honor and superiority, and should be able to recover their lost lands, their usurped regions and their occupied territories. Then it should be able to raise the flag of Jihad and the call towards Allah until the entire world is benefited by the teachings of Islam.2

In al-Banna’s vision, the Brotherhood was not to be restricted to a single country or region. Its members had the responsibility of organizing themselves and carrying its message throughout the world. Since the objective of this organization was not merely to expand Islamic piety but rather to create an Islamic political entity, the Brotherhood could not ignore the major actors in its global power play. Within the Muslim world, the Brotherhood sought members who would struggle to create and lead what they construed as the Islamic State. In countries with non-Muslim majorities, the purpose was to advance the Brotherhood’s political agenda by all means possible. In a message addressed to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Banna stated:

Always remember that you have two basic objectives: number one, that the Islamic country should be free from all foreign control, for freedom is the natural right of every man which can be denied only by an oppressive dictator; second, in this free land [the concept of freedom in this context is very different from a Western understanding], a free Islamic government should be established which should act on the Islamic commands, should enforce its collective system, should declare its right principles as operative, and should popularize among the people its message which is based on wisdom. As long as the government is not established, all Muslims will be guilty, and for any slackness and carelessness in this connection will have to be accountable before Allah.3

The Muslim Brothers’ mission is defined in a seven-point pledge of allegiance, which emphasizes the connection between being personally religious and creating an Islamic polity.

The Oath of Allegiance

First, a person who takes the oath of allegiance to the Brotherhood acknowledges that he will build up “an Islamic personality: his body should be strong; his character should be firm; his thinking should be mature and balanced; he should be capable of earning his living and be resourceful; his belief should be on the right lines and his prayers should be selfless; he should be keen for his progress as an individual, and mindful of his time; all his affairs should be organized; and his existence should be beneficial for others to the best possible extent. These are the duties of every Muslim Brother individually.”4

Second, he should establish a Muslim family. Each Brother should win the loyalty of his own family members; he should prepare them to be respectful of Islamic etiquette in their private lives and to follow it. He should give to his sons and his servants the best available training and should instruct them, bringing them up on Islamic teachings. This is the duty of a Muslim Brother in relation to his family.

Third, the Brother should work to reform society. He should popularize righteous living; he should encourage the prohibition of evil deeds, and should encourage performance of good acts that exalt virtue, and a competitive spirit in performing good deeds. Importantly, he should induce the people to “color their whole living in the Islamic hue.”5 This is the duty of the Muslim Brotherhood, of every Brother individually, and it is also the responsibility, as a whole, of the entire Jamaah of the Brotherhood.

Fourth, a Muslim Brother should free his country from every foreign, non-Islamic control. He should not allow any other political, spiritual or economic power to step into authority.

Fifth, he should reform his government until it is, in the true sense of the word, converted into an Islamic type of government, able to perform its duty and responsibility as a servant of the entire Muslim community of believers, or Umma.

Sixth, the Muslim Brotherhood should collectively work to restore the international position of the Umma. To this end, it will be necessary to liberate occupied Muslim regions. The Brotherhood should restore Muslim honor and superiority; it should promote its civilization and re-establish its culture. A new spirit of oneness should be instilled until the entire Umma becomes a heartwarming unity. In this way the crown and throne of the caliphate of the world can be regained. Seventh, the Muslim Brotherhood should perform the duties of the teacher, serving as the “guide to the whole world.”6 Beginning with the individual, the focus then expands to the family, then the Muslim society, then the Muslim states and governments, and then to the whole world. The Muslim Brotherhood stipulates spreading its politicized version of Islam “to every nook and cranny of the world in a way that there will not remain any trace of polytheism on this earth, and everywhere the invigorating sight of obedience to Allah may be seen everywhere. Indeed, Allah cannot but make his light supreme.”7 This casting of Islam as an ideology, as opposed to a religion that serves as the means of spiritual salvation to its followers, sets the Muslim Brotherhood apart from purely religious groups. Assertions about the universality of a religion can be found in the writings and pronouncements of preachers of other faiths. Statements such as eliminating polytheism might have been read differently, perhaps as pious objectives of a puritanical group, if the political agenda of foisting an Islamic State did not accompany these declarations.

The objectives, the method, and the outline of the Muslim Brotherhood’s message as defined by its founder in the 1930s—shortly after the founding of the Brotherhood—has been consistently followed by successive generations of Muslim Brotherhood members. Since then, the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow travelers have expanded their presence to almost all continents. In the United States, the Brotherhood’s expansion has been particularly significant.

Taking Root in American Soil

There was an indigenous Muslim community in America, especially among African-Americans, long before significant numbers of immigrant Muslims started arriving in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s, Muslim immigrants came either as students at American colleges and universities, or as young men and women who, after completing their education, decided to pursue the American dream. They did not come to Islamize the United States or to pursue the agenda of political Islam. But they did have religious needs. They needed a mosque to pray in, halal food to eat, proper religious and cultural education for their children, and they needed to arrange and organize marriages and burials according to Islamic rituals. Muslim immigrants to the United States also discovered that certain economic practices common in the U.S.—for example, mortgage financing and bank interest—were being questioned by theologians in the Muslim world, and thus they started worrying about how to have banking arrangements that were not interest-based.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood rose as leaders of the burgeoning American Muslim community ostensibly to address the Muslim community’s concerns and needs. In the process, they were also able to lay the foundation of political as well as potentially radical networks that would advance the ideological agenda laid out by Hassan al-Banna. Thanks to them, four things happened simultaneously in the 1950s.

First, the Muslim Brotherhood needed cadres worldwide, since it was propounding a universal message. The Muslim Brotherhood initially comprised people who could read and write, but now they were looking for people with higher education to fill out a more robust talent pool. Since many young Muslims had come to the United States to receive an education, the Muslim Brotherhood recognized that they could get better quality cadres by drawing from Muslims studying in the United States.

Second, for Muslims who came to the United States as students, or as young professionals starting out in pursuit of the American dream, there was a need for services in relation to prayer, religious obligations, and the Muslim equivalent of a Sunday school for their children. The Brotherhood astutely recognized that the Muslim community’s needs could dovetail nicely with its own. The immigrants had come to the United States to pursue a home and a car, a good job and an education for their children. Most of them sought an Islamic tradition—including a house of worship and a relationship to God—but were not necessarily motivated to change the world or to wage Jihad. However, if the Islamistswere the only providers of religious services, those young and ambitious Muslims, who were not very clear about their own religious beliefs, would embrace political Islam as their ideology in an attempt to protect their Islamic identity and heritage.

The third key development in the 1950s was Saudi Arabia’s emergence on the global scene and its desire for influence among the world’s Muslims. Hermann Eilts, who served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia reports that, in the late 1940s, Hassan al-Banna and some of his closest associates used to travel to Saudi Arabia—not the Saudi Arabia of today, but a kingdom that was still just coming out the shadows of its early Wahhabi, non-modernist beginnings. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, in particular, had ties with the Saudis. According to Eilts, Sheikh Mohammed Suroor Sabhan, a Sudanese, was Saudi deputy finance minister at the time and bore responsibility for providing money for the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence-building program.8 Now that Saudi funding was available, this collusion coincided nicely with the international agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood. All al-Banna and his associates had to do was persuade the Saudis that expanding into Europe and America was a significant opportunity and a worthwhile investment.

The fourth issue that worked to the Brotherhood’s advantage during the 1950s was the Cold War. The U.S. was still trying to find its way in a very complex new world, and American policymakers were not necessarily aware of the complexities they were facing. They took a binary approach: the U.S. needed to contain communism, which also meant it needed to stop newly-independent Muslim countries from becoming friends of the Soviets. Thus, anybody the Americans could find to help in that process became a useful partner. This approach positioned the Saudis as key allies of the United States, and the Muslim Brotherhood was allied to the Saudis. Therefore, in the context of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be potential partners. The level of sophistication regarding the Middle East in the United States was very limited at this time (some would argue that it still is). For example, there was an education initiative called the “Red Pig” campaign. “Pig” is the symbol of dirt—and hence forbidden by Islam. Propagandists combined it with “red,” meaning communist, to create the phrase “Red Pig,” a simplistic term meant to convince Muslims that the communists were bad.9

Another idea conceived by the Americans was to try to find a “Muslim Billy Graham.” The person most likely to be identified as a Muslim Billy Graham could only be someone who himself wanted to be identified as such; somebody eager for the funding and support needed to carry out his own crusade. Not surprisingly, one of the people who showed up to fill that role was a man by the name of Said Ramadan. He was the husband of Wafa al-Banna, who was the daughter of Hassan al-Banna. By 1953, Hassan al-Banna’s son-in-law was privileged to have a meeting in the Oval Office with Dwight Eisenhower, the President of the United States. In his role as a potential Muslim Billy Graham, some in Washington expected him to mobilize the Muslims of the world against the evil and atheism of communism.10

Building a Global Network

The Egyptian revolution in 1952 led by Gamal Abdel Nasser marked the beginning of the rise of Arab nationalism. Within a few years, Iraq fell to the Baathists and, later on, came under communist influence. These developments made the Cold War paradigm of seeking allies opposed to Soviet influence all the more urgent. The Muslim Brotherhood was looked upon with renewed interest and favor, especially by the U.S. intelligence community, which envisioned it as a major source of resistance against Arab nationalism and Nasserism. Said Ramadan recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one, and quickly and strategically positioned himself. Western-educated, and with exceptional access, he started building up the Brotherhood’s international institutional mechanism. Although the Muslim Brotherhood was restricted to Arabic-speaking countries at this time, Said forged an alliance with the fledgling Muslim state in Pakistan, and especially with Jamaat-e-Islami led by Abul A‘la Maududi. In fact, Ramadan gained enough influence in Pakistan by the time of the first World Muslim Congress held in Karachi in 1949 that Pakistan’s prime minister—a Westernized man very much in President Truman’s favor —wrote the preface to one of Ramadan’s first books. In essence, a secular national leader was writing the preface to an Islamist scholar’s book, thus implying that radical Islam could be the west’s ally within the greater framework of the Cold War.

Said Ramadan set up the Islamic center in Geneva in 1961, and then in 1962, Saudi Crown Prince Faisal Abdul Aziz helped create the Muslim World League, also known as Rabita al-Alam al-Islami. Radical Islam has noticeably flourished in places where people linked to the Rabita originated: Ramadan himself was Egyptian; Abul A‘la Maududi, Pakistani; Haj Amin al-Husseini, of Palestine; Sibghatullah Mujaddedi of Afghanistan; Mohammed ibn Ibrahim al-Shehr, the Saudi Grand Mufti; and Abdul Rahman and Yahya al-Iryani of Yemen. The Rabita became a major funding source for radical Islamic projects all over the world. Given the fact that the American Muslim population comprised either of young professionals or students, one of the first organizational structures to emerge in the United States was the Muslim Students Association (MSA), founded by an Iraqi Kurd, Jamal Barzanji and his family network, all of whom were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood-linked students who grew out of the student format then created other institutions such as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). At the same time, the Muslims Students Association of America became the pivot of an International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO).Another important Brotherhood achievement took place in the publishing world. Noting that fewer books had been translated from western languages into Arabic in the last 100 years than were translated into Spanish every year, the MSA sought and acquired funding to do a massive translation project of all the major texts of radical Islam: the works of Said Qutb, Abul A‘la Maududi, al-Banna, and everyone else in the Brotherhood’s ideological network were widely published and distributed. These texts were translated into 70 languages, thus making them available to every Muslim center or mosque. When American Muslim college students visited their school’s Muslim prayer room, they could choose any of these Islamist books to take home. All of these were edited, published, and/or printed in either Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, and to this day remain available free of charge.

Traditionalist Islamic texts do not enjoy the benefit of such broad and free circulation, nor do modernist writings that seek to bridge the divide between Islam and the West. Instead, the translated books have helped bring an entire generation of young Muslims closer to the Brotherhood’s politicized view of Islam than, for instance, the Sufi version emphasizing piety. A young Muslim engineering student, say in Oklahoma or Michigan who wants to learn about his faith can simply visit the school’s prayer hall and take whatever Islamist literature he wants: if he is a Turk, it’s available in Turkish, if he is from India, it’s available in Hindi, if he is Pakistani it’s available in Urdu, and it’s certainly available in English. He mbraces the Brotherhood’s notion of Islam as political ideology and is inadvertently influenced by Jihadist ideas, often with little awareness of the pluralist traditions within Islam.

The Muslim Students Association also started inviting speakers to the United States from the Muslim world, including Abul A‘la Maududi, Abul Hassan Ali Nadvi, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. While the American government facilitated these trips because they perceived the speakers to be devoutly anti-communist (which they in fact were), most of the lectures were actually about the impending clash between Islam and the West. In essence, as far back as the 1970s, the Muslim Brotherhood was fighting communism while at the same time preparing its followers for a confrontation with the West. Maududi’s speeches in America, each one subsequently published in book form, are very strong on this subject—as are Nadvi’s and Qaradawi’s. Their cumulative message focuses on how the Westernized way of life is not going to be Islam’s salvation. Instead of modernizing the Muslim world, the Muslim Brothers’ agenda, then and now, is to Islamize the modern world.

An Islamist Success Story

After the massive publication program of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s saw the Muslim Brotherhood’s America Project became a major source of fundraising in the Gulf region. This became possible thanks to the rise in oil prices after 1973. The anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan enabled the Brotherhood to create networks for raising funds and even for providing ammunition for the mujahidin; those networks included charities. Following the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Saudis began competing with the Iranians for influence over radical Islamists. The U.S. saw Iran as the enemy and Saudi Arabia as an ally in this struggle for regional leadership. Once again, the Brotherhood benefited from the perception that they were on the right side of the U.S. strategic agenda.U.S. intelligence officials have often believed that there is no inherent clash of interest between radical Islam and the United States. As a State Department official said about the Taliban in 1995, “the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, there will be pipelines and there will be an emir, no parliament, and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”11 This attitude of ignoring the consequences of Jihadist ideology and attitudes towards the West has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to dramatically expand its networks, and those networks have emerged as the most influential face of Islam within the Muslim communities in the United States, even though they do not necessarily represent the Muslim majority.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful expansion in the United States had four effects on the Muslim community in the country. First, many of the leading figures in the U.S. Muslim community ended up being people from, or influenced by, the Muslim Brotherhood. They had the money, resources, and the connections to organize and claim to represent America’s Muslims.

Second, many mosques and organizations in North America are influenced or controlled by associates of the Muslim Brotherhood. The American Muslim community as a whole is very diverse and includes Sufis, Shias, Sunnis, and people with backgrounds in syncretism. Although an overwhelming majority of American Muslims would prefer that their imams be American and Muslim—rather than radical Muslims aiming to change the American way of life—the Muslim Brotherhood has identified itself as their leaders.Third, the Muslim agenda in the U.S. has been defined by the Muslim Brotherhood. Matters of religious interpretation and inter-faith dialogue have taken a back seat to the Brotherhood’s political issues and priorities. Instead of accepting the diversity among Muslims who consider Islam simply as their religious faith, Muslim Brotherhood leaders describe Islam as a political and social ideology. Islam is therefore defined as ideology and faith, and any distinctions between the two become blurred.

Fourth, the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance has marginalized traditional Islam within the American Muslim community. The kind of people who want to say their prayers but otherwise want to get on with the business of life; who want to have a relationship with God through saintly intermediaries, but do not want to think in terms of political agendas, have found themselves on the outside of the organized U.S. Muslim structures.

The Muslim Brotherhood also has had an impact on the American mainstream. As the American media and academia sought to understand Islam, because of the way the Brotherhood has organized itself, journalists and scholars found it most convenient to approach Islam through the Brotherhood’s politicized version. Only recently have some academics begun doing research on Sufi traditions or non-radical versions of Islam. Otherwise, one often hears that Muslims divide the world between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the land of Islam and the land of war, even though that is one particular version of Islam, not its universal view.

This tendency to adopt the Brotherhood’s point of view is also related to the fact that distinctions within Islam are complex and can be difficult to discern. When people with very little background knowledge and historic understanding of Islam get into the business of trying to understand the contemporary Islamic world, the temptation is great to go and pick up a copy of the Koran, locate a specific verse, and then read some of the debates within the Islamic theological tradition. However, the more the layperson gets into it, the more confusing it becomes, because any spiritual understanding of Islam is quickly over-taken by current politics. For instance, Islam has existed for fourteen centuries, but it is only now that suicide bombings are taking place in Islam’s name. In fact there is no long historic Islamic tradition of suicide killing in the same manner. The explanation for this phenomenon cannot be easily provided through direct references to original sacred texts of Islam. That is because today’s Islamist activism does not come directly from the Koran, even though the Koran is invoked by its defenders.

Islamism is essentially a recent movement, reflecting a particular response within the Muslim world to Muslim decline, based on the types of arguments forwarded by the Brotherhood. Along similar lines, consider the question of violent jihad, which has long been debated, just as the concept of Holy War was debated among Christians throughout the Middle Ages and well into modern times. There’s a famous ruling going back to the thirteenth century by certain scholars, such as Ibn Taymiyyah, who argued that jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam. But throughout Islamic history there have been others who have argued that military jihad is only meant to be a response to an attack.

Allowing radicals to define Islam may be, in some respects, like having Christian Evangelicals define Christianity without allowing Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox or other denominations to offer alternative definitions. Islam’s historic religious tradition is equally diverse and there is scope for further diversity, especially in the free environment of the United States. But for many Americans, the Muslim Brotherhood’s version is now the “official” and mainstream version of Islam. If a news organization is looking for a spokesman for the Muslims, they usually go to one of the Brotherhood-linked organizations, marginalizing the opinions of traditionalist but non-radical Muslims. Ironically, commentators then turn around and wonder what has happened to the moderate Muslims. The point is that moderate Muslims do not control the organizational structures from which Muslim spokespeople in the U.S. are selected.

As Islam continues to win converts in the United States, these new converts are more likely to be influenced by radical Islam than by traditional Islam. Whether it’s a Muslim prison ministry, a chaplaincy in the military, or some other U.S. outreach, all of its teachings have been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood sufficiently for the Brotherhood’s views to be the prism through which new converts view Islam. Even critics of radical Islam are affected by the Muslim Brotherhood’s notion that there is only one Islam. As a result, the plurality of Islam and the pluralism within Islam are totally ignored. Creating the illusion of homogeneity for a diverse community might be the Muslim Brotherhood’s most effective and profound accomplishment. It has achieved this through its well-planned takeover of Muslim leadership in the United States.

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