KSM does bear a striking resemblance to Ron Jeremy...
How quickly we forget. Reflecting on the capture of bin Laden, I dug up an old Hitchens article on the capture Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Although nobody seems to remember this, he was found in the garrison city that serves as the headquarters of the Pakistani military:
I remember laughing out loud, in what was admittedly a mirthless fashion, when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of Osama Bin Laden's most heavy-duty deputies, was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Straining to think of an apt comparison, I fail badly. But what if, say, the Unabomber had been found hiding out in the environs of West Point or Fort Bragg? Rawalpindi is to the Pakistani military elite what Sandhurst is to the British, or St Cyr used to be to the French. It's not some boiling slum: It's the manicured and well-patrolled suburb of the officer class, very handy for the capital city of Islamabad if you want to mount a coup…Who, seeking to evade capture, would find a safe house in such a citadel?
Yet, in the general relief at the arrest of this outstanding thug, that aspect of the matter drew insufficient attention. Many words of praise were uttered, in official American circles, for the exemplary cooperation displayed by our gallant Pakistani allies. But what else do these allies have to trade, except al-Qaida and Taliban suspects, in return for the enormous stipend they receive from the U.S. treasury? Could it be that, every now and then, a small trade is made in order to keep the larger trade going?
Plus ca change.
I remember laughing out loud, in what was admittedly a mirthless fashion, when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of Osama Bin Laden's most heavy-duty deputies, was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Straining to think of an apt comparison, I fail badly. But what if, say, the Unabomber had been found hiding out in the environs of West Point or Fort Bragg? Rawalpindi is to the Pakistani military elite what Sandhurst is to the British, or St Cyr used to be to the French. It's not some boiling slum: It's the manicured and well-patrolled suburb of the officer class, very handy for the capital city of Islamabad if you want to mount a coup…Who, seeking to evade capture, would find a safe house in such a citadel?
Yet, in the general relief at the arrest of this outstanding thug, that aspect of the matter drew insufficient attention. Many words of praise were uttered, in official American circles, for the exemplary cooperation displayed by our gallant Pakistani allies. But what else do these allies have to trade, except al-Qaida and Taliban suspects, in return for the enormous stipend they receive from the U.S. treasury? Could it be that, every now and then, a small trade is made in order to keep the larger trade going?
Plus ca change.
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Too Much Love for Pakistan? 11/08/2010
I hope its not still monsoon season
Selig Harrison, a genuine South Asia expert, points out the biggest problem with Obama's current charm offensive in India (hint: its starts with a "P"):
Calling for a strategic partnership, Washington has pressed New Delhi to buy $11 billion in U.S. fighter aircraft and to sign defense agreements permitting U.S. military aircraft to refuel at Indian airfields and for U.S. naval vessels to dock in Indian ports. But New Delhi responds that the United States can hardly be a strategic partner if it continues to build up the military capabilities of a hostile Pakistan that sponsors Islamist terrorists dedicated to India's destruction…
…the full potential of U.S.-Indian cooperation, including naval cooperation in the face of an increasingly ambitious China, will not be realized until Washington stops providing Islamabad with weaponry that can be used against India and takes a realistic view of the reasons for Indian-Pakistani tensions.
Since 9/11, the U.S. has showered $13.5 billion in military hardware on Islamabad, and it pledged another $2 billion last month. The Pentagon justifies this buildup in the name of combating terrorism. But the big-ticket items have all strengthened Pakistani air and naval capabilities needed for potential combat with India, not for counterinsurgency mountain warfare against the Taliban.
Calling for a strategic partnership, Washington has pressed New Delhi to buy $11 billion in U.S. fighter aircraft and to sign defense agreements permitting U.S. military aircraft to refuel at Indian airfields and for U.S. naval vessels to dock in Indian ports. But New Delhi responds that the United States can hardly be a strategic partner if it continues to build up the military capabilities of a hostile Pakistan that sponsors Islamist terrorists dedicated to India's destruction…
…the full potential of U.S.-Indian cooperation, including naval cooperation in the face of an increasingly ambitious China, will not be realized until Washington stops providing Islamabad with weaponry that can be used against India and takes a realistic view of the reasons for Indian-Pakistani tensions.
Since 9/11, the U.S. has showered $13.5 billion in military hardware on Islamabad, and it pledged another $2 billion last month. The Pentagon justifies this buildup in the name of combating terrorism. But the big-ticket items have all strengthened Pakistani air and naval capabilities needed for potential combat with India, not for counterinsurgency mountain warfare against the Taliban.
Sunday-Afternoon Read: "Flood Tides" 09/19/2010
Whether as Af-Pak or cable news’ favorite villain, Pakistan is often the victim of hyperbole and histrionics. In this context, Steve Coll’s latest article for the New Yorker offers some welcome sobriety and insight. A few key points that don't make it onto the networks: 1) the number of Pakistanis living in poverty fell by almost half between 1999 and 2008; 2) religious parties have never won more than twelve per cent in a national election; and 3) much of the country’s growth has come from smuggling consumer goods to India’s nascent middle class. All of this suggests that, with a sustained economic recovery and some kind of rapprochement with India, Pakistan could become more like Indonesia and less like Afghanistan. The question is will the US support these measures or continue its paradoxical policy of cooperation and smart bombs?
Dawn’s Mohsin Hamid explains why legislating religious values is not only futile, but also corrosive to public morality:
A state that mandates religious practices, as Pakistan does, is a state that mandates hypocrisy, because the law can only govern outward behaviour. It can say that such-and-such behaviour is prohibited, but it cannot say that such-and-such belief is prohibited. And as the gap between belief and behaviour widens, hypocrisy sets in. People with beards still kill. People who cover their heads still steal. People who thank God for their victories still cheat. And because so many people do these things, the split between religion and morality becomes profound and widely accepted.
Sadly, it seems that we have gone from a period when the new post-colonialist countries of the Muslim world, learning from the West’s disastrous period of religious government, separated mosque from state, to a situation where the new generation in these countries is intent on learning the perils of mixing religion and government firsthand. In truth, real faith is voluntary and requires no ostentation.
A state that mandates religious practices, as Pakistan does, is a state that mandates hypocrisy, because the law can only govern outward behaviour. It can say that such-and-such behaviour is prohibited, but it cannot say that such-and-such belief is prohibited. And as the gap between belief and behaviour widens, hypocrisy sets in. People with beards still kill. People who cover their heads still steal. People who thank God for their victories still cheat. And because so many people do these things, the split between religion and morality becomes profound and widely accepted.
Sadly, it seems that we have gone from a period when the new post-colonialist countries of the Muslim world, learning from the West’s disastrous period of religious government, separated mosque from state, to a situation where the new generation in these countries is intent on learning the perils of mixing religion and government firsthand. In truth, real faith is voluntary and requires no ostentation.
From an NY Times piece on tax collection (or lack thereof) in Pakistan:
Out of more than 170 million Pakistanis, fewer than 2 percent pay income tax, making Pakistan’s revenue from taxes among the lowest in the world, a notch below Sierra Leone’s as a ratio of tax to gross domestic product.
This might sound like paradise to some, but as a Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, taxes are the price that we pay for civilization. A government's ability to collect revenue is a good proxy for judging the writ, legitimacy, and competence of a state. Pakistan looks to be failing in all three.
Out of more than 170 million Pakistanis, fewer than 2 percent pay income tax, making Pakistan’s revenue from taxes among the lowest in the world, a notch below Sierra Leone’s as a ratio of tax to gross domestic product.
This might sound like paradise to some, but as a Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, taxes are the price that we pay for civilization. A government's ability to collect revenue is a good proxy for judging the writ, legitimacy, and competence of a state. Pakistan looks to be failing in all three.
From the Guardian's William Dalrymple:
Since then the nature of Karzai's plans have become clearer: it has emerged that the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, has secretly been visiting Karzai; on Monday General Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army, will arrive in Kabul, presumably to confirm whatever deal has been agreed. It seems the Pakistanis are encouraging an accommodation between Karzai and the ISI-sponsored jihadi network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, which would give over much of the Pashtun south to Haqqani but preserve Karzai in power in Kabul. The US has been party to none of this, and administration officials are apparently surprised and alarmed…
Most sober observers recognize that any endgame to the Afghan conflict requires pinching our noses and accommodating large elements of the Taliban. But it seems that Karzai would prefer to do this on Pakistan's terms, not on America's terms. This is quite rational--Pakistan, unlike America, will always be next door, and the whole question is rendered moot if the ISI is as close to the Taliban as many people are currently reporting. But does Pakistan actually have control over the Taliban and their jihadist fellow-travelers? The worsening security situation in Pakistan suggests not, and this is in many ways the more important point.
Since then the nature of Karzai's plans have become clearer: it has emerged that the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, has secretly been visiting Karzai; on Monday General Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army, will arrive in Kabul, presumably to confirm whatever deal has been agreed. It seems the Pakistanis are encouraging an accommodation between Karzai and the ISI-sponsored jihadi network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, which would give over much of the Pashtun south to Haqqani but preserve Karzai in power in Kabul. The US has been party to none of this, and administration officials are apparently surprised and alarmed…
Most sober observers recognize that any endgame to the Afghan conflict requires pinching our noses and accommodating large elements of the Taliban. But it seems that Karzai would prefer to do this on Pakistan's terms, not on America's terms. This is quite rational--Pakistan, unlike America, will always be next door, and the whole question is rendered moot if the ISI is as close to the Taliban as many people are currently reporting. But does Pakistan actually have control over the Taliban and their jihadist fellow-travelers? The worsening security situation in Pakistan suggests not, and this is in many ways the more important point.
At TED, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy talks about how the Taliban turn Pakistani children into bombs ready for detonation. Half of the video consists of excerpts from a documentary, The Taliban Generation, which aired last year as part of (British) Channel 4's venerable Dispatches series. In the other section, Obaid-Chinoy gives a five-step breakdown on how to make a suicide bomber. PBOM's summary below.
Step 1: Get a child. Go to large, rural, families, offer an Islamic education with food and shelter. Give the father a stipend if necessary. Then take the son to a medrassah hundreds of miles away. The father will be too poor to get him back, and the child will be too far away to run home.
Step 2: Put on the blinders. The child’s only source of information from here on will be the holy Quran. Fortunately, the Quran is in Arabic, and these kids don’t know Arabic, so you can control the entire message for them. Beat the kid if he tries to read anything else.
Step 3: Make the kid hate his life. Beat him. Only feed him twice a day with a meal of bread and water. No playing games, just 8 hours straight of reading and reciting the Quran.
Step 4: Make the kid love the afterlife. Have older members of the Taliban, the fighters, come by and make an impression. Teach the kid about the glories of martyrdom, the lakes of milk and honey, the boundless virgins, how he will become a hero in his neighborhood. Maybe teach him to use an AK-47.
Step 5: Show Islam under the siege of the infidels. Bombard the child with endless videos of men, women, and children dying in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the Muslim world. The kid is now ready to "serve Islam"—that is, to blow himself and probably other innocent Pakistanis into pieces, in order to advance the Taliban's terror agenda.
Step 1: Get a child. Go to large, rural, families, offer an Islamic education with food and shelter. Give the father a stipend if necessary. Then take the son to a medrassah hundreds of miles away. The father will be too poor to get him back, and the child will be too far away to run home.
Step 2: Put on the blinders. The child’s only source of information from here on will be the holy Quran. Fortunately, the Quran is in Arabic, and these kids don’t know Arabic, so you can control the entire message for them. Beat the kid if he tries to read anything else.
Step 3: Make the kid hate his life. Beat him. Only feed him twice a day with a meal of bread and water. No playing games, just 8 hours straight of reading and reciting the Quran.
Step 4: Make the kid love the afterlife. Have older members of the Taliban, the fighters, come by and make an impression. Teach the kid about the glories of martyrdom, the lakes of milk and honey, the boundless virgins, how he will become a hero in his neighborhood. Maybe teach him to use an AK-47.
Step 5: Show Islam under the siege of the infidels. Bombard the child with endless videos of men, women, and children dying in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the Muslim world. The kid is now ready to "serve Islam"—that is, to blow himself and probably other innocent Pakistanis into pieces, in order to advance the Taliban's terror agenda.
Remember the Arrest of Mullah Baradar? 05/10/2010
Baradar might hate infidels, but he loves the iPhone
Mullah Baradar is the Taliban number 2, and was arrested by the Pakistani ISI in January. It was a bizarre episode, because Mullah Baradar was the reported lynchpin in Karzai's efforts to secure a peace deal with Taliban. Well, check out the indispensable Ahmed Rashid for this tidbit on Baradar's arrest:
When Karzai visited Islamabad on March 10 to find out why his interlocutor Mullah Baradar was arrested, he was, according to Afghan officials, bluntly told by Pakistan's generals that the Americans are bound to leave and that if he wanted Pakistani help resolving issues with the Taliban, he would first have to close Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad. Pakistani officials deny threatening Karzai and insist that they want a peaceful and stable Afghanistan once the Americans leave. But other sources have confirmed that such ultimatums were delivered.
The ISI playing hardball? Couldn't be...
When Karzai visited Islamabad on March 10 to find out why his interlocutor Mullah Baradar was arrested, he was, according to Afghan officials, bluntly told by Pakistan's generals that the Americans are bound to leave and that if he wanted Pakistani help resolving issues with the Taliban, he would first have to close Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad. Pakistani officials deny threatening Karzai and insist that they want a peaceful and stable Afghanistan once the Americans leave. But other sources have confirmed that such ultimatums were delivered.
The ISI playing hardball? Couldn't be...
Read This: March 26, 2010 03/26/2010
Swat After the Offensive (CSM)
Nine months after Pakistan’s military cleared the Swat Valley of a brutal Taliban occupation, the region has made steady gains in improving security and rebuilding infrastructure. But its progress remains vulnerable, threatened by sporadic militant attacks, stilted economic recovery, and growing frustration among residents at the strong military presence.
Al Qaeda the Media Organization (New America Foundation)
Al-Qaeda Central, the organization led by Osama bin Laden and likely based somewhere in Pakistan, is today primarily a media phenomenon. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, it has not succeeded in carrying out a similarly ambitious operation, although it has been effective at spreading its message globally over the Internet. But it now faces a triple communications challenge: staying prominent in an ever more competitive online environment, explaining how its current entanglement in the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus makes sense in the global jihadist narrative, and trying to change increasingly negative views of suicide bombing and al-Qaeda itself in the Arab-Muslim world.
Islamo Erotica(?) (Daily Beast)
While the Koran does not specifically ban nude art, the almost universal opinion of religious leaders is that Islam forbids it. However, a handful of Muslim artists have been daring to depict nudity.
Nine months after Pakistan’s military cleared the Swat Valley of a brutal Taliban occupation, the region has made steady gains in improving security and rebuilding infrastructure. But its progress remains vulnerable, threatened by sporadic militant attacks, stilted economic recovery, and growing frustration among residents at the strong military presence.
Al Qaeda the Media Organization (New America Foundation)
Al-Qaeda Central, the organization led by Osama bin Laden and likely based somewhere in Pakistan, is today primarily a media phenomenon. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, it has not succeeded in carrying out a similarly ambitious operation, although it has been effective at spreading its message globally over the Internet. But it now faces a triple communications challenge: staying prominent in an ever more competitive online environment, explaining how its current entanglement in the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus makes sense in the global jihadist narrative, and trying to change increasingly negative views of suicide bombing and al-Qaeda itself in the Arab-Muslim world.
Islamo Erotica(?) (Daily Beast)
While the Koran does not specifically ban nude art, the almost universal opinion of religious leaders is that Islam forbids it. However, a handful of Muslim artists have been daring to depict nudity.
Read This: March 16th, 2010 03/16/2010
Zakaria on Obama's Pakistan Win:
There has been a spate of good news coming out of that complicated country, which has long promised to take action against Islamic militants but rarely done so. (The reason: Pakistan has used many of these same militants to destabilize its traditional foe, India, and to gain influence in Afghanistan.) Over the past few months, the Pakistani military has engaged in serious and successful operations in the militant havens of Swat, Malakand, South Waziristan, and Bajaur. Some of these areas are badlands where no Pakistani government has been able to establish its writ, so the achievement is all the more important. The Pakistanis have also ramped up their intelligence sharing with the U.S. This latter process led to the arrest a month ago of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban, among other Taliban figures.
'Temporary Marriage' and the Economy of Pleasure (in Iran)
During the past few years, the ninth government [Ahmadinejad's first administration, 2005-9] and the seventh and eighth parliaments have turned the revival of this custom and its promotion as "temporary marriage" into one of the foundations of their sexual politics. The government and the parliament went so far as to ratify the new family law bill despite women's strong opposition. This bill gives legal justification to conditional polygamy, including multiple [permanent] wives and sigheh. It no longer even requires permission from the first wife.
The NYTimes on Corruption in Iraq
Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions — involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery — made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.
There has been a spate of good news coming out of that complicated country, which has long promised to take action against Islamic militants but rarely done so. (The reason: Pakistan has used many of these same militants to destabilize its traditional foe, India, and to gain influence in Afghanistan.) Over the past few months, the Pakistani military has engaged in serious and successful operations in the militant havens of Swat, Malakand, South Waziristan, and Bajaur. Some of these areas are badlands where no Pakistani government has been able to establish its writ, so the achievement is all the more important. The Pakistanis have also ramped up their intelligence sharing with the U.S. This latter process led to the arrest a month ago of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban, among other Taliban figures.
'Temporary Marriage' and the Economy of Pleasure (in Iran)
During the past few years, the ninth government [Ahmadinejad's first administration, 2005-9] and the seventh and eighth parliaments have turned the revival of this custom and its promotion as "temporary marriage" into one of the foundations of their sexual politics. The government and the parliament went so far as to ratify the new family law bill despite women's strong opposition. This bill gives legal justification to conditional polygamy, including multiple [permanent] wives and sigheh. It no longer even requires permission from the first wife.
The NYTimes on Corruption in Iraq
Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions — involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery — made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.
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