US HAS ARM TWISTED INDIA INTO ACCEPTING BALOCHISTAN IN THE JOINT STATEMENT WITH PAKISTAN IN EGYPT:

The US has pressured India to include the name of Balochistan in the now “infamous” Indo-Pak joint statement. In the grand game, India was played along with US designs in the region and the grandeur of India becoming an equal partner to the US in the global stage suckered India into giving in.

The text reads ambiguously: "Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Baluchistan and other areas." Why on earth should Pakistan put this innocuous statement if India has had nothing to do with it. And if India has had nothing to do in Balochistan - and "other areas", then why should this seemingly innocuous statement find its way in a joint statement?

Pervez Kiyani to India - You want action on LeT - ensure you stop meddling in Balochistan, else we do nothing. That is the essence of the bungling Mr. Manmohan Singh. Times of India : "Reports in the US media quoting official sources said Pakistan army chief Ashfaque Kayani recently sought to link Pakistan's actions against Lashkar-e-Taiba with India putting a stop to its alleged covert operations in Balochistan."

Full text of joint statement - click here : SOUTH ASIA MONITOR

Hence, India was armtwisted to accommodate the Pakistanis by inserting the “B” word, in lieu of a greater “supposed” sweet defense deals with the US and a larger role in Central Asian politics. But Americans are Americans – the only other shoulder they see are their own shoulders – there is no team work – there is only “subordinate” work.

Before India gives in to the charms of the US as it puts in a strong pitch its aircrafts for the deal of the century - it should look back - not too far and learn certain lessons from history.

Before leaving India, Royal Air Force (RAF, UK) decided to destroy valuable aircrafts in the newly independent India with the aim of denying these to the nascent Indian Air Force (IAF). Over fifty (50) Liberator bombers stationed in Kanpur that could have formed several bomber squadrons, were, as the then seniormost Indian engineering officer in Royal Indian Air Force, Air Vice Marshal Harjinder Singh, recounts in his memoirs, ‘ broken up by using the heavy cranes. The undercarriages were retracted as they were lifted high up and then suddenly the aircraft would be dropped nose down, on the ground’ or sledge hammer to ‘to damage the mainplanes and tail units’. Spitfire fighter aircraft came in for similar treatment and the Aircraft Repair Depot on base, moreover, was stripped off all tools and maintenance equipment, and several expensive machines and instruments were simply ‘thrown into a large water tank.’ Having forcibly rid the force of the Liberator bombers, the presiding British officers then tried to induce the Indian government to buy the ‘obsolete’ Lancaster bombers from the UK.

Nehru faced similar rebuff from the US too. The initial query for the supply of hardware to India, including 1000 jeeps and 43 B-25 Mitchell bombers, and for the placement of some thirty ‘aero-engineers’ was made by the Indian Military Attache in Washington and concurrently Military Adviser to the Indian Delegation to the United Nations, Colonel (later Lt. General) BM Kaul, in January 1948, on the instructions of the Defence Minister Baldev Singh. India did not get but note the important US Joint Chief of Staff’s (JCS) recommendation.

The JCS note stated: “..the strategic importance of the Karachi – Lahore area … under certain conditions as a base for air operations against central USSR and as a staging area for forces engaged in the defence or recapture of Middle East oil areas.’ This JCS document deemed other countries like India in South Asia to be of negligible positive strategic importance to the US. (See Venkatramani: A Mission without success’: pp 61-65)

And true to form - In the middle of this, the US is building the biggest base in Islamabad, just a little smaller than the one it built in Iraq. This cannot be good news for Iran, China, Russia and India. That is the other story playing out. Will come to this “old Great Game” at a later date.

PAKISTAN ARMY - TROUBLES MULTIPLY:

A few going ons and the rationale thereof. The troubles of Pakistan Army have multiplied and if India does not co-operate, the grand designs of the Americans for this region will be tattered business plans destined to be consigned into the dustbins of history.

MEHSUDS:

WASHINGTON POST (21ST JULY'09) : A few hundred thousand people in Pakistan belong to the Mehsud tribe, a Pashtun network divided into three major clans: the Manzai, the Bahlolzai and the Shaman Khel. Although they are scattered across the country, their home territory is South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan and is a refuge for fighters operating in both countries. The violence has pushed tens of thousands of Mehsuds out of South Waziristan. But there is little respite wherever they turn.

Pakistan Army, not known to understand Geneva convention, and given to the draconian FCR - under Section 21 of the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) , a legal framework was developed to help the British Raj control rebellious Pashtuns. The regulations, which tribal leaders have tried to repeal or amend for years, give vast powers to the top official in each tribal district, known as the political agent.

And Pakistan army has decided that niceties and peace treaties be damned – Baitullah Mehsud must be captured and killed. And how is the Pakistan Army going about it : 2 incidents.

FIRST incident (JUNE 2009): Karachi police arrested five bandits in the southern port city of Karachi - Adil, Shah Hussain, Ahmed Baloch, Rahmat and Sher Muhammed, all from the Mehsud tribe and none of them from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

They were simply bandits who happened to be Mehsuds. However, the army was so keen to settle scores with Baitullah that a military security unit ordered a police officer, Raja Umar Khattab, to shoot them. Khattab refused, as he was aware, after their 15 days in custody, that they were just bandits and that an extra-judicial killing would land him in serious trouble.

The five were then transferred to another police officer, who did the deed. The bodies were immediately sent to South Waziristan with a message to Baitullah that the "more you defy us, the more you will collect the bodies of your tribal men".

This sordid episode further cemented the support of the entire Mehsud tribe around Baitullah, including all Taliban commanders. Baitullah is once again the undisputed number one commander of the Pakistani Taliban.

SECOND incident (JULY 2009): The Sina Diagnostic Center and Trust does not appear to be a menacing enterprise. The clinical pathology laboratory's 15 staff members conduct ultrasounds, X-rays and CAT scans and run free hepatitis and HIV tests for poor people and refugees in this teeming northwestern city of Peshawar.

That did not stop about a dozen Pakistani government revenue officers and police from marching up to the lab's second-story office this month to demand that the owner, Noor Zaman Mehsud, shut it down. They ushered patients and staff members outside, pulled down the metal gates and wrapped white cloth around the padlocks. Within 15 minutes, they were gone.
"They just said, 'You are a member of the Mehsud tribe, and we are going to seal up this business,' " Mehsud recalled. "My crime is that I belong to the Mehsuds."

Under regulations formulated a century ago by British colonial rulers - FCR, Pakistan's tribes are still bound by a legal concept known as "collective responsibility," under which any tribal member can be punished for the crimes of another.

That sweeping order has led to the closure of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of businesses in towns such as Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province, according to lawyers, human rights officials and residents. One South Waziristan political official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said 25 Mehsuds have been arrested in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank.

"This is the law of the jungle, not for civilized people. They are treating people like animals," said Noor Zaman Mehsud, the 39-year-old lab owner, who denied he had any connection to the Taliban. "If I am a criminal, they should arrest me. But they are giving other people's punishments to me."

Hence, as far as Mehsud tribe is concerned, Pakistan Army is an enemy and US too as its drones have now started to target Baitullah Mehsud. In fact, the US drone attacks should not be underestimated in making the region volatile to the detriment of Pakistan Army and its interests in the region.

The turning of several “good Taliban” against the Pakistan Army – a brief background.

The only Pakistani Taliban commander who sends his men to Helmand is Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan. Over the past few years, he has dispatched several thousand fighters.

A command structure comprising former Kashmiri fighters, under Abdul Jabbar, also sends men to Helmand. (IMPORTANT)

ASIA TIMES ONLINE: Few months ago, when the Malakand operation was in full swing, the Americans became so desperate that action should be taken against Pakistani militants who were due to go into Helmand that the Pakistani establishment believed they would take matters into their own hands and move into Pakistan.

To pre-empt this, all possible tribal rivals of Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan were organized (all were Taliban) under the banner of the Pakistan army. Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, whom the army claimed had 3,000 men, could hardly gather a few dozen, as with Haji Turkestan. The biggest Taliban commander on the Pakistani side, Mullah Nazir, an arch-rival of Baitullah due to tribal feuds, initially assured the army he would stay neutral if action were taken against Mehsud. Another Taliban commander, Gul Bahadur, also a rival of Baitullah, was silent.

Baitullah responded by conveying a message through influential commander Sirajuddin Haqqani to all Taliban leaders that if the Pakistan army entered South Waziristan, it would be completely under American pressure. As such, they should not make any agreements with the army.

Mullah Nazir promptly refused to allow the army passage in his area; Qari Zainuddin Mehsud was assassinated by Baitullah's men and Haji Turkestan went into hiding and refused to cooperate with the army.

With the army nevertheless poised to attack Baitullah last month, Gul Bahadur, considered "good Taliban" by the army, broke a ceasefire in North Waziristan by carrying out a devastating attack on a military convoy in which three officers and 26 soldiers were killed. Thirty military personnel were also abducted.

The incident stunned the army and it was faced with the reality that far from eliminating Baitullah, he had emerged as the leader of all of the Pakistani Taliban; tribal feuds had been put aside. This was despite the fact that the army clarified on a number of occasions that the military operation was only against Baitullah, not even against his tribe. Clearly, no one believed the army.

The turning of Sirajuddin Haqqani:

ISI’s greatest asset is the Haqqani group. It was ISI’s baby for strategic depth in Afghanistan. However, with the ill health of the legendary Jalaluddin, his son Sirajuddin is slowly slipping out of the grips of the ISI.

(However, I must point out, there is the other ISI – very active – made up of former DGs of ISI and their cohorts and some of the current ISI operatives too – who owe their alligience to Taliban and Al – Qaeda. At the very top is Hamid Gul. US is trying to marginalize this group for a long time – without any success)

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), US intelligence and Arab states have for many years maintained excellent relations with Jalaluddin Haqqani, the legendary Afghan commander against the Soviets in the 1980s. Haqqani, now seriously ill, supported the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s on the instructions of the ISI. But the Taliban never considered him a part of the movement, more as a warlord who had allied with them.

As a result, Haqqani was never given any significant position in the Taliban regime. When the Taliban abandoned Kabul in the face of the US-led invasion in late 2001, Islamabad tried hard to get him to abandon Taliban leader Mullah Omar and become the next head of the Afghan government. He flatly refused the proposal and went to a base in North Waziristan.

In 2006, he was elevated by the Taliban to the number one commander in Afghanistan. Pakistan was not too concerned as Haqqani had never meddled in the internal affairs of Pakistan, never allied with a Pakistani political party or group and he had never supported any mutiny in Pakistan.

But now that Haqqani is ill and bed-ridden, his power has been handed to his son Sirajuddin. Siraj's strength, like his father's, is his Punjabi comrades, but his friendship with al-Qaeda's Arab ideologues has influenced him.

Unlike his father, Siraj is close to Pakistan militants hostile to the establishment. The intelligence apparatus was prepared to overlook this, but not any more.

Some while ago, Siraj's brother, Dr Naseer Haqqani, was arrested while attending a meeting that included several wanted people. To the surprise of the security forces, Baitullah Mehsud negotiated for his release, agreeing to swap a few Pakistani soldiers for the detained man. Subsequently, Baitullah and Sirajuddin became close.

This explains the failure of the recent operation to get Baitullah. It depended on the cooperation of local anti-Baitullah tribes who happened to be Taliban, such as those of Mullah Nazir and Gul Bahadur and the now slain Qari Zainuddin Mehsud. Sirajuddin quickly sent messages for all commanders to unite in support of Baitullah, and their compliance ended any hope of him being isolated.



It also explains why the Haqqani network is now in the sights of the military as it prepares for a renewed battle against militants.

MULLAH RADIO - SERIOUSLY WOUNDED says PAKISTAN ARMY. REALLY??

Long War Journal reports: Swat Taliban leader 'alive, healthy and has never been wounded' - spokesman Muslim Khan.

And then there is Bin Yameen in SWAT

Contrary to the military's claims of hundreds of militants killed, the militants say they have lost only 50 of their men, with the remainder being civilians killed in crossfire or in aerial bombings. Of the 50, two commanders - one named only as Daud and the other as Shah Doran - have died.

The military operation has seen the emergence of a new supreme commander of the Swat Valley - Bin Yameen. He is fiercely anti-army and insiders say that even if ceasefires agreements are made, he will ignore them and fight to his last man and last bullet.

Renowned as a pir (spiritual guide), Bin Yameen is a former Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM - led by Maulana Masood Azhar) leader in Swat. He spent seven years as a prisoner of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance after being captured in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban in the 1990s. On his release, he returned to Swat and joined the JeM. In mid-2000, he was picked up by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence for alleged involvement in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate president General Pervez Musharraf.

Bin Yameen was the victim of the worst sort of torture by army personnel, right up to the time it became crystal clear that he was not involved in any activity against the army or Musharraf. He became full of venom against the army.

After his release, Bin Yameen joined Mullah Fazlullah's TNSM, but retained command over a group of men loyal to him. Now there is a slogan that says "Bajaur [Agency] belongs to Faqir and Swat belongs to pir". (Faqir refers to another anti-army militant, Maulana Faqir Mohammad, whose brother was killed by the army in a torture cell.) At present, the entire Taliban leadership in the Malakand area is lying low, leaving Bin Yameen and his men face-to-face with the army.

Bin Yameen is just one example of a Talib who was once used by the military to further its strategic depth in Afghanistan, but who is now bitterly opposed to the army.

THE US ROLE :

The high-profile arrest of a group of Pakistani militants in mid-April 2009 in the restive Afghan province of Helmand by the Afghan army and their subsequent handover to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for grilling exposed a jihadi network running to the heart of urban Pakistan.

In the course of interrogation, the militants confessed to being recruited, trained and then launched into Helmand after spending some time in places such as the southern port city of Karachi and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.

They also gave details of their Pakistani leaders and their activities, including how these leaders could move around freely and how they owned huge religious establishments.

Three of the men have been identified as Enyatur Rahman (North-West Frontier Province - NWFP), Saeed (NWFP) and Imran (Punjab). When they were apprehended along with the four others, a Pakistani Taliban commander named Mansoor, based in Helmand, aware of the possibility of them exposing a major jihadi network inside Pakistan, tried his level-best to negotiate with ANA to prevent them from falling into the hands of NATO.

But a little mishandling caused ANA to turn them over to NATO.

There is an arrangement between the Taliban and ANA all over the south of Afghanistan, especially in Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Helmand and Ghazni provinces.

Under this, when ANA troops are sent on patrol inside Taliban areas, they pay the Taliban to avoid being killed. The price is arms, ammunition or rockets, which is handed over and then reported as having been lost during an encounter with the Taliban.

In turn, when ANA arrests any Taliban fighters, they demand cash money for their release. If the fighters are Pakistani or non-Afghan, ANA takes a little longer to negotiate a price, but if the fighters are Afghans, ANA personnel will not take unnecessary risks. Either they strike a deal then and there and release the Taliban fighters, or within a few days they hand them over to NATO. The reason is to avoid direct confrontation with the Afghan Taliban and their tribal constituencies, which could cause problems in any prolonged negotiations.

Under this arrangement, as the seven men were Pakistani, Mansoor started negotiations with ANA for the release of his men. ANA demanded US$200,000, Mansoor countered with an offer of 2 million rupees (US$25,000), which was refused. Mansoor then arranged for 10 million rupees to be paid, but since almost 10 days had passed, ANA handed the Pakistanis over to NATO.

Mansoor mishandled the situation on two counts. First, he did not involve the Afghan Taliban command, and secondly he took too long in reaching an agreeable figure.

Apparently, the youths soon began talking under interrogation. In particular, they gave details of a jihadi network known for its past association with the defunct Jaish-e-Mohammad. They also gave details of their backgrounds and how they were recruited and how they had spent time in different Pakistani urban centers, where the leaders of their network openly ran religious establishments.

This information was shared with concerned Pakistani quarters, but by that time all senior Pakistani Taliban commanders had gone underground. In the bigger picture, though, the incident provided Washington the ammunition it needed to really go after the Pakistan national leadership and warn that the entire country needed to stand up as one to fight against all sections and groups of the Taliban in the country. They reminded that it is not any particular government or political party, but the state of Pakistan that is running out of time.

This is where a new joint government involving Sharif could come into play, and Pakistan will once again be dancing to American tunes.

Actually US has bluntly warned Pakistan and it seems Pakistan is planning a major ground offensive against the Taliban. However it is loathe to take away any soldiers from its eastern borders with India – that will help the fight from the Pakistani side. The US surge will be on and it requires Pakistan’s support.

Pakistan is staring at an abyss. Its former “assets” have turned against it (not all – but a good many – and enough to give Pakistan Army a fight and beat them too).

The US desperately needs the Pakistan Army to fight its part of the “war on terror” judiciously.

Under US pressure (more than 500 Americans have arrived in Islamabad to observe developments) an operation was organized against militants in the southern Punjab and several high-profile commanders, including one named Farooq and other members of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, were arrested.

A top jihadi leader commented: "We never imagined such a reaction. We have not fought against the Pakistan army and we do not consider it right. But if the present arrests continue, what option will we have ... without going to Waziristan and doing what other people are doing there?”

The US observer status as Pakistan Army attacked, infuriated the already volatile Taliban. At this juncture, US needs India to heed its advice and not do “funny” things inside Paksitan.

Funny things is an euphemism for taking revenge for the Indian embassy blasts in Kabul and 26/11 attack in Mumbai. India may well have made their intentions clear one way or another to Paksitan about what its assets can do too inside Pakistan and Pakistan had no choice but to go and cry on the shoulders of the US. The US in turn, have turned the heat on to India to curb its supposed “activities” in consulates in Afghanistan.

THE US – PAKISTAN CURRENT BONHOMIE:

ASIA TIMES ONLINE :The seamless friendship between the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, has cemented the relationship between the military establishments of the two countries to levels not seen since the 1950s, when Pakistan was a frontline state against communism.

The result is that Islamabad and Washington are in a position to implement coordinated, long-term policies in the region, which include action against militants, moves to improve ties between Pakistan and India, especially their dispute over divided Kashmir, and the evolution of a broad-based, stable civilian government in Pakistan.

First, Pakistan will launch a comprehensive battle against all Taliban groups in the country, irrespective of whether they are perceived as good or bad. Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to split the Taliban by making deals with the good ones, that is, those seen as more moderate, to bring them into a peace process.

Second, an initiative will be made by the Pakistani government, supported by the country's Western allies, for better relations with India, strongly mediated by the Pakistan army. The aim will be to reopen the dialogue process on Kashmir which was stalled following the Pakistani-linked terror attack on the Indian city of Mumbai last November in which 166 people were killed. This could also help in building a joint mechanism for cooperation between India and Pakistan with the US in fighting terror.

US has hard sold the second initiative to India and been sucker punched into approving the “B” (BALOCHISTAN) name in its joint declaration draft (a non-legal and non-binding statement, for what its worth).

TALIBAN – AL QAEDA response:

And in all this supposed grand plans – what about the militants? Will they sit idle and be attacked from two fronts?

The Pakistani Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies obviously will not stand back. Al-Qaeda's command has already drawn up plans to stir up a reaction all across the country - the masses will be urged to show their allegiance in black and white.

The militants, too, have their mechanisms in place, and they too don't plan to deviate. A MIGHTY COLLISION IS INEVITABLE.

INDIA’s response:

India’s response should be wait and watch. If the democratic government pulls off another IK Gujral stunt (which stopped R&AW’s black ops inside Pakistan) – which it really did not – as R&AW simply handed over the assets to some other Indian organization – then we should not heed the UPA government.

Pakistan is at its vulnerable best. It has no other choice but to lean on the US to give it a guarantee that India will not play a spoiler as it passes through its toughest fight internally post independence. And US is pushing the right buttons in India to facilitate just that.

I think time has come for India to look beyond and see what is good for India. A shared border with Afghanistan is not a bad idea, I would think. Let the Pushtuns get Pushtunistan and the Baloch – Balochistan.

TWO RELATED ARTICLES BY EX-INDIAN SPYMASTERS - MUST READL

1. VIKRAM SOOD'S SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY : (excerpts) - "The Sharm el-Sheikh declaration is perhaps the shortest, the most perplexing and worrying piece of drafting that has been signed by two heads of government. It now exists as a document that would be the basis for continued acrimony between India and Pakistan and among Indians. Never have so few led the country so astray as in this document.

One of the sentences that has generated considerable debate is when it states that “Both leaders agreed that the two countries will share real time, credible and actionable information on any future terrorist threats.”

2. MALOY DHAR'S (ANGRY) ARTICLE "Shame at Sharm Al Sheikh : How Manmohan succumbed to US & Pak blackmail?": (excerpts):- "What was India doing at Sharm-al-Shyakh? Attending the Non- Aligned Nations Meet (NAM). What was Pakistan doing there? Also attending the NAM. The basic questions are: 1. How can an American Client State be non-aligned? 2. How can a Chinese client State be a member of the NAM? Some wise cracks say that both the Giant Panda (Chinese national animal) and the Markham (hill goat-Pakistani national animal) can piss at the feet of a giant elephant-that is India. They not only can, they really piss every now and then and the thick-derma Pachyderm keeps on lurching helplessly in spite of being pissed at day in and day out. The USA also pisses, but its piss gives Skunky odour, very foul and soul sickening. And many Indians worship that white man’s Skunky piss, as the holy reservoir of World Bank, IMF"

TO P.M. MANMOHAN SINGH: The lure of a Nobel Peace prize should not cloud your judgement on the true intentions of Pakistan and cause you to compromise India's national security interests.

MY MUSLIM BROTHERS & SISTERS IN PAKISTAN : ZAWAHARI'S VIDEO

Al-Qa'ida "Central's" (AQC), (also transliterated al-Qaeda), media outlet, the Al-Sahab (The Clouds) Media Foundation has released on 14th July 2009, a new audio message from its chief ideologue, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, entitled "My Muslim Brothers and Sisters in Pakistan." In a message that lasts for just under nine minutes, he condemns the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence services for allying with "the Crusaders," the United States government and military. In addition to the message's content, which mirrors that of AQC chief U(O)sama bin Ladin's June 2009 audio message, which was released online on July 13, this new release from al-Zawahiri is also noteworthy because he speaks in English, in which he is fluent, and not Arabic. Arabic subtitles are provided in the audio-video.

Al-Zawahiri paints a black-and-white picture of the situation that he says the Muslims of Pakistan are currently facing:

"My Muslim brothers and sisters in Pakistan, the peace and mercy and blessings of God be upon you. I believe that every honest and sincere Muslim in Pakistan should seriously contemplate – at this moment – Pakistan's present state and expected future, because the blatant American Crusader interference in Pakistan's affairs, or to be precise, the American Crusader manipulation of Pakistan's destiny, has reached such an extent that it now poses a grave danger to Pakistan's future and very existence. It is evident that Pakistan is deeply involved in a fierce internal struggle between two forces. The first one represents the Islamic values of ( والأمر بالمعروف والنهي التوحيد والجهاد عن المنكر ) and is defending the dignity and independence of the MuslimUmmah; confronting – with strength and courage – the American aggression against Pakistan and Afghanistan; and defeating the traitors who transgress against the blood, honor and dignity of the Muslims for the sake of the invading and aggressive Crusader forces. It also symbolizes the Muslim Ummah’s rejection of all forms of external aggression, occupation of its territories, theft of its resources and interference in its affairs."

[Al-Zawahiri makes reference to the Islamic concepts of Tawhid, the absolute Unity of the One God, without partners, "struggle" in the way of God (jihad), and the duty to "enjoin the good and forbid, or prevent, the evil."]

The second force comprises a clique of corrupt politicians and a junta of military officers who are fighting to remain on the American pay list by employing Pakistan’s entire military and all its resources in the American Crusade against Islam, and turning Pakistan’s military and security organizations into hunting dogs in the modern Crusade."


He ties the "mujahidin" of AQC and its allies in Pakistan to seemingly nationalist "Pakistani" goals:

"This force [representing "Islamic values"] is also persisting in and carrying on the long and continuing struggle of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent to establish Pakistan as a political entity standing as a citadel of Islam in the subcontinent: an entity ruled by Shari'a [Islamic law] as the supreme undisputed law and realizing ( الولاء للمؤمنين والبراءة من الكافرين ) by offering shelter and support to Muslims victimized by the aggressive anti-Islamic forces; and by abstaining from providing any form of cooperation, help or support to the infidels against Muslims. This force is the real hope for achieving the goal of establishing a true Pakistan, a goal which, after sixty years of separation from India, has yet to be achieved."

The United States and Crusader West, he says, is threatened by the "mujahidin" in Pakistan, which he notes is a "nuclear capable country":

"...the Western Crusade, headed by America and served by the puppet rulers of our countries with their armies, security organizations, media, judiciary and jails, aims at halting the escalating jihadi tide in the Muslim World. In Pakistan in particular, the Crusade aims at eradicating the growing jihadi nucleus in order to break up this nuclear capable country, and transform it into tiny fragments, loyal to and dependent on the neo-Crusaders."

Military jihad, al-Zawahiri claims, is the "only" way to stop the "neo-Crusaders" and their apostate allies from carving up the Muslim nation-state of Pakistan:

"The only hope to save Pakistan from this disastrous fate is Jihad. There is no other alternative. The current ruling class in Pakistan is lining up under the cross of the modern Crusade and competing for American bribes. Hence, the actual ruler of Pakistan is the American ambassador, who pays the bribes and issues the orders. So the only thing that class can be expected to do is to fight Muslims and Mujahidin and sacrifice Pakistan and the lives and dignity of Pakistanis in order to achieve their dirty, greedy ambitions. They have already sold their honor and religion to the Crusaders."

The "Mujahidin" are winning victories despite the treachery of the traitorous Pakistani government and military in both Pakistan and Afghanistan:

"Today, the Mujahidin are resisting the Crusaders in Afghanistan and their bombing in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Pakistan army and security organizations stab them in their backs. And in spite of all of that, the Mujahidin are winning victories and moving from one conquest to another. This is one of the good signs of victory and triumph, with God's help."

He closes by reiterating that it is the "duty" of all Muslims to assist the Mujahiddin:

"The scholars of Islam have unanimously agreed that if the infidel enemy enters a Muslim country, it is the duty of all of its inhabitants – and when needed, their neighbors – to mobilize for Jihad; and the Americans are today occupying Afghanistan and Pakistan, so it is the duty of every Muslim in Pakistan to rise up to fight them. It is the individual duty of every Muslim in Pakistan to join the Mujahidin, or at the very least, to support the Jihad in Pakistan and Afghanistan with money, advice, expertise, information, communications, shelter and anything else he can offer. It is also the duty of every noble person in Pakistan’s army and security agencies to give the orders of God and His Messenger precedence over the orders of the Crusaders’ slaves, and to refrain from killing, pursuing or harming in any way Muslims and Mujahiddin."

Victory, al-Zawahiri claims, is at hand:

"The jihadi force in Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only resisting attempts to defeat it, but is also winning military victories over the treasonous Pakistan army and the Crusader coalition, and is liberating more land and applying Shari'a in wide areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan in defiance of the Crusaders and the corrupt puppet regimes and secular judiciaries which continue to seek shelter under the broken wings of the American eagle."

WHY HINDUS DO NOT WORSHIP BRAHMA?

I read this very interesting article written by Aakar Patel - Why indians don't give back to society? Most of the points made are valid (though linking them to custom or religion is wrong) and before extreme right wing fanatics take a pot shot at me - will ask them to really read this and fault the points made, rather than at me.

However I feel the main point that the author misses is this - the growth of population that has made Indians as opportunists and scrambling for the "goods" or "space". In earlier times, foreign invaders were amazed to see peace, prosperity and wealth in India. Why things have changed ? Ask this - Can a 900% growth of Islamic population create any semblance of peace and prosperity when neither the land mass, nor the productivity of land is increasing? Where 60% of Indian Muslims are against assimilation and are openly hostile? And where the Prime Minister of India states MUSLIMS MUST HAVE FIRST CLAIM ON RESOURCES.

Also the author fails to see similar linkages in a developing economy whether it is in Laos, Pakistan or Bangladesh. Far worse conditions exist in countries worshipping other Gods too and having age old customs. In the end, by writing in a simplistic manner the author contorts some "truths" by giving it as a function of custom and / or religion.. Herein lies the main story which the author misses out. However, read the article for other "home truths".

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THE ARTICLE


Why don't we worship Brahma? We know he's part of the Hindu trinity as the creator, but we worship Vishnu, manager of the cosmos, and Shiva, its eventual destroyer. The answer lies not in religion, but in culture. But in what way does our religion shape our culture?

What explains the behaviour of Indians? What explains the anarchy of our cities? To find out, we must ask how our behaviour is different..

Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our opportunism. One good way to judge a society is to see it in motion. On the road, we observe the opportunism in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there.. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine, as long as we maintain our advantage over people behind us or next to us. This is because the other man cannot be trusted to stay in his place.

The Indian's instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police, his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee. Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran over people and drove away.

We show the pattern of what is called a Hobbesian society: one in which there is low trust between people. This instinct of me-versus-the-world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. We form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced, scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered. Airlines modify their boarding announcements for Indians taking international flights. (And most of you will notice, as soon as the plane touches down - the Indians stand up to collect the bags and stand in a aisle even as the plane is taxiing, and you will notice "other nationalities" cooly sitting down and getting up, only when the door of the plane is opened).


Our opportunism necessarily means that we do not understand collective good. Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. Thailand's toilets are used by as many people as India's toilets are, but they are likely to be not just clean but spotless. This is because that's how the users leave them, not the cleaners.

The Indian's reluctance to embrace collective good hurts his state. A study of income-tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India (Elsevier Science/Das-Gupta, Lahiri and Mookherjee) concluded that "declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect" on compliance, while "traditional enforcement tools (searches, penalties and prosecution activity) had only a limited effect" on Indians. The authors puzzled over the fact that "India's income tax performance (was) below the average of countries with similar GDP per capita".

We do not think stealing from the state is a bad thing, and our ambiguity extends to corruption, which also we do not view in absolute terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians who are demonstrably corrupt, recorded on camera taking a bribe or saying appalling things, or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a comeback-unthinkable in the West.

The opportunist is necessarily good at adapting, and that explains the success of Indians abroad. We can follow someone else's rules well, even if we can't enforce them at home ourselves. The Indian in the US is peerless at the Spelling Bee because the formula of committing things to memory, which in India passes for knowledge, comes naturally to him. But this talent for adapting and memorizing is not the same as a talent for creation.

The question is: Why are we opportunists?

In his great work Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti observed that the rewards religions promised their faithful were all far off, in the afterlife. This is because a short goal would demand demonstration from god and create sceptics instead of believers. There is an exception to this in Hinduism. Hinduism is not about the other world. There is no afterlife in Hinduism and rebirth is always on earth. The goal is to be released entirely and our death rites and beliefs-funeral in Kashi-seek freedom from rebirth. Christianity and Islam are about how to enter heaven; Hinduism is about how not to return to earth, because it's a rotten place. Naipaul opens his finest novel with the words "The world is what it is", and Wittgenstein ( "The world is all that is the case") opens his Tractatus similarly.

Hinduism recognizes that the world is irredeemable: It is what it is. Perhaps this is where the Hindu gets his world view-which is zero-sum-from. We might say that he takes the pessimistic view of society and of his fellow man. But why?

The Hindu devotee's relationship with god is transactional: I give you this, you give me that. God must be petitioned and placated to swing the universe's blessings towards you. God gives you something not through the miracle, and this is what makes Hinduism different, but by swinging that something away from someone else. This is the primary lesson of the Vedic fire sacrifice. There is no benefit to one without loss to another. Religion is about bending god's influence towards you through
pleas, and appeasement, through offerings.

Society has no role in your advancement and there is no reason to give back to it (in any way, including leaving the toilets clean behind you) because it hasn't given you anything in the first place. That is why Indian industrialists are not philanthropists. Rockefeller always gave a tenth of his earnings to the Church, and then donated hundreds of millions, fighting hookworm and educating black women. Bill Gates gave $25 billion (around Rs1.2 trillion), and his cause is fighting malaria, which does not even affect Americans. Warren Buffett gave away $30 billion, almost his entire fortune. Andrew Carnegie built 2,500 libraries. Dhirubhai Ambani International School has annual fees starting at Rs47,500 (with a Rs24,000 admission fee) and Mukesh Ambani's daughter was made head girl.

An interesting thing to know is this: Has our culture shaped our faith or has our faith shaped our culture? I cannot say. To return to the question we started with: Why is Brahma not worshipped? The answer is obvious: He has nothing to offer us. What he could do for us, create the universe, he already has. There is no gain in petitioning him now.

900% GROWTH OF ISLAMIC POPULATION

This article I wrote and posted just a day prior to the fateful day 26/11. Am re-posting it, as this article is more a truism than a narration. I would like to bring in Maloy Dhar's comments from his new article : INDIAN FAULT LINES, in which he writes:

"The other cancerous reality check pertains to unbiased appreciation of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, contamination of Indian Muslim minds with the poison of jihad and revival of the isolationist separatist tendencies. Let us be clear at the outset that all Muslims are not separatists and jihadists. Most of them are not even fundamentalists. In case a comparative study is made between the 80+ crore Hindus and 15+ crore Muslims it would appear that about 5% Hindus strongly believe in Hindutwa and Hindu fundamentalism. Only a fraction, may be 0.01% think of taking up weapons against the Muslims.

Compared to this about 60% of Muslims can be rated fundamentalists, 35% believe in Islamic resurgence, 30% believe in isolationist separatism and nearly 15% believe that armed jihad, as practiced by Pakistani and Bangladeshi tanzeems can alone retrieve the lost glory of Islam in India. This figure is worrisome. The minorityrian isolationism that is leading to Muslim separatism and majoritarianism of the Hindus are gradually coming to conflict situation."

Whenever any of you try to sermonize me on "secularism", look at the hard statistics and then come to me:

We: 0.01% ready for armed fight against Muslims and
They ( Indian Muslims): 15% ready for armed jehad against Hindus.

Herein lies the problem : Our parents teach us to live together amicably with the Muslims while the madrassa bred Muslim children, specially the Deobandis are being taught to be insular, jehadist thus breeding in them a sense of alienation and hatred towards Hindus at a very young age. All this means - assimilation is a dream, internal fault lines are growing unchecked, prisoner to vote bank politics.

While the earlier article by Trifkovic highlighted how Islamic birthrates in Europe are taking a dramatic upswing specially contrasted with the declining "original" population, the story for the Indian sub-continent is no different.

This is for you Serge - a few pictures taken in London during a "Peace march" by the Muslims - enjoy !!









Thankfully, in India, a few hesitant steps are taking place :

1. Probe into Maharashtra's Muslim boy-Hindu girl marriages

2. Modi govt orders study of Gujarat population to ‘stop polarisation’

THE ARTICLE:

The growth of Islamic population, their birth rates etc have been much debated. How does it impact the rest of us? And if the growth rate is alarming, how will it impact India?

I will present this article first with a macro view and then bring in micro view which is India / Pakistan / Bangladesh centric.

Let us look at the macro view – the presence of Muslims around the world.

MACRO VIEW:

Map 1 – shows that Islam is spread all over the world, and the annual growth rate in absence of total growth rate does not give a realistic picture.


Map 2 – This is an important map as it shows the growth of Islam and this is pretty much confined to North Africa / Arab / South & South East Asia.


Map 3 – It shows the percentage of Muslims around the world. India still has overall percentage <15% (but for only a short time – we will come to this later). In a separate article I had written why Islam cannot integrate with host nations – specifically acts of arson / killing go up commensurate with the increasing % of muslims in host nations.


Map 4 & 5 – Shows the actual Muslim population in countries. See the huge number of Islamic population in the Indian sub-continent.


CLICK ON THE ABOVE MAP FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW.

On top of such a huge and growing population the Islamic states are blessed with oil. Hence, it has been the dream of some Islamic scholars and strategists that the Islamic nations should form a confederation of states and come under one banner and control this precious commodity through Unites States of Islam (USI) – a de facto Caliphate. It is interesting to see the US version of this Caliphate and the Islamic version of this Caliphate, 2050 AD. In the US version – Afghanistan and Iraq are under US control. Of course, the Islamic version has no such pretensions. I believe, if this Caliphate comes about – it will mirror the Islamic version.

Map 6 – US version on Caliphate


Map 7 – Islamic version of Caliphate


The US version feels that there is tremendous conflict within Islam and sectarianism (fight within Sunni & Shia) will never make this Caliphate a reality.

Map 8 - Distribution of Sunnis & Shias in this world.


If Sunni & Shia can be termed as brothers – there is an old Persian saying. Me, my brother and our cousin against the stranger. Then me and my brother against our cousin. Lastly, it will be me against my brother. (Hence, what is stopping brothers from making common cause against an “identified” enemy – the stranger).

If you look at both the versions – India, it seems is out of this Caliphate. However, dreamers of this Caliphate in Pakistan, view it differently - they very much see portions of India in this Caliphate.

Map 9 - World Map by population. Look at this very interesting map. The map of the world has been redrawn with same borders but with different bulge – greater the population, bigger the bulge. Look at India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh – they are huge.

CLICK ON THE ABOVE MAP FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW.

Herein, lies the second part of the story. The declining population of Europe, Japan and Russia.

To maintain a steady population, a country has to have a birth rate of 2.10. However, Western Europe has a birth rate of 1.5 – which is 30% below replacement. For a nation obsessed with sex, they are producing less children. Other than a shrinking population, these countries will see shrinking economies and a far higher tax burden on the younger generation. Europe is trying to tackle this issue by importing Muslim labourers. France and Germany today have 10% Muslim population that are growing at a far higher rate than is the “host” Christian population. This affects foreign policy of nations. Germany and France did not support the US invasion of Iraq, simply out of the fear that their Muslim population will implode on them.

Japan which has an even lower birth rate of 1.3 has tackled its issues differently. They stand to lose 60 million of its population in the next 30 years. Japan does not import labour. It simply shuts down schools and businesses. Till date, Japan has closed 2000 schools and the rate of school closure is 300 / year.

For Russia the problem has taken catastrophic proportions. Its birth rate is so low, that by 2050, THE POPULATION OF RUSSIA WILL BE LESS THAN THAT OF YEMEN. Russia sits on 1/6 of the global available land and one cannot defend such a huge territory with such a small population.

MICRO PICTURE:

Let us look at India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Even though Bangladesh was part of Pakistan in 1947, for reasons of statistics, I am taking it as a separate country. I will show the population that was there in 1947 and expected population of these countries in 2050. All figures taken from World Bank.

PAKISTAN: Population in 1947 = 30 million. Expected Population in 2050 = 300 million. A 900% growth over 103 years.

BANGLADESH: Population in 1947 = 32 million. Expected Population in 2050 = 280 million. A 775% growth over 103 years.

INDIA: Population in 1947 = 345 million. Expected Population in 2050 = 1630 million. A mere 373% growth over 103 years.

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have overwhelmingly Islamic population, hence growth is wholly attributed to them.

In case of India, there is a difference of Islamic population growth rate and the Hindu population growth rate. Muslims in India accounted for 9.9% of India’s total population in 1951, 10.8% in 1971, 11.3% in 1981, 12.1% in 1991. (CENSUS FIGURES - ACTUAL FIGURE HIGHER).

Let us look at the scientific data, and try to figure out when India’s muslims become 25% of India’s total population. Will come to why this 25% is important.

Total Indian Population in 1991 = 816 million.

Indian Muslim Population in 1991 = 101 million (12.1% of total).

% Increase in Total Population since 1981 = 23.8
%
Increase in Muslim Population since 1981 = 32.8
%.

We now make a few rough, order-of-magnitude calculations of the numbers involved and their actual consequences. Using t for time, with origin at 1991, T for total Indian population and M for the population of Indian Muslims, the relevant exponential equations are:

T(t)=T(0)exp(0.24t), with T(0)=816mil
M(t)=M(0)exp(0.24t), with M(0)=101mil

Our first calculation is based on the admittedly ad-hoc assumption that India can't support a population more than double the present one. The time for population to double is obtained by solving T(t)=2T(0), and we get t=2.89. Since we are measuring time in decades, this is about 30 years. Now we find that M(2.89)=262mil, while the total will double to 1632mil, and so the Muslim fraction will be only about 16%.

Now let us look at what it would take for the Muslim fraction to reach 25%. The relevant equation is:

M(0)exp(0.33t)=0.25T(0)exp(0.24t)

Solving for t, we get t=7.81, which is about 80 years i.e. 2070.

It is reliably argued (IN BOARDROOMS) that when the Muslim population of India will reach 25% of the total population, there will be a third partition of India. (The first two gave birth to Pakistan and Bangladesh).

Which area is vulnerable to such a scenario?

A quick look will point to Assam, West Bengal and Bihar. The present population ratio of Muslims is calculated to be 28% in Assam and 25% in W. Bengal.


I am quoting from a brilliant article written by Arun Shourie – which is a must read. He states: “West Bengal accounted for 56 per cent in South and North Parganas, 48 per cent in Nadia, 52 per cent in Murshidabad, 54 per cent in Malda and about 60 per cent in Islampur sub-division of West Dinajpur. (For those who are not in the know – the above mentioned named eg: West Dinajpur etc are districts within the state of West Bengal)

A study of the border belt of West Bengal yields some telling statistics: 20-40 per cent villages in the border districts are said to be predominantly Muslim. There are indications that the concentration of the minority community, including the Bangladesh immigrants, in the villages has resulted in the majority community moving to urban centres. Several towns in the border districts are now predominantly inhabited by the majority community but surrounded by villages mostly dominated by the minority community. Lin Piao’s theory of occupying the villages before overwhelming the cities comes to mind, though the context is different. However, the basic factor of security threat in both the cases is the same.

‘‘...Figures have been given showing the concentration of Muslim population in the districts of West Bengal bordering Bangladesh starting from 24 Parganas and going up to Islampur of West Dinajpur district and their population being well over 50 per cent of the population. The Kishanganj district (of Bihar) which was part of Purnea district earlier, which is contiguous to the West Bengal area, also has a majority of Muslim population. The total population of the districts of South and North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Nadia, Malda and West Dinajpur adds up to 27,337,362. If we add the population of Kishanganj district of Bihar of 986,672, the total comes to 28,324,034. (All figures are based on the 1991 Census.) This mass of land with a population of nearly 2.8 crores has a Muslim majority. The total population of West Bengal in 1991 was 67.9 million and of these, 28.32 million are concentrated in the border districts, with about 16-17 million population of minority community being concentrated in this area. This crucial tract of land in West Bengal and Bihar, lying along the Ganges/Hughly and west Bangladesh with a population of over 28 million, with Muslims constituting a majority, should give cause for anxiety for any thinking Indian.’’

And what if, from these figures, I had advanced two warnings.

First: ‘‘There is a distinct danger of another Muslim country, speaking predominantly Bengali, emerging in the eastern part of India in the future, at a time when India might find itself weakened politically and militarily.’’

And second "that the danger is as grave even if that third Islamic State does not get carved out in the sub-continent into a full-fledged country.”

I agree 100% with Shourie and would like to draw attention back to 2070 when this might become a reality as per statistics. However, the reality will be different. The plotters in Pakistan have re-drawn the India map and they want to see it fructify in their lifetime – and most of these are old warhorses are into their late 60s and 70s. Which means – in the next 15 years.

I have kept this article deliberately simple. There are many scenarios which can seriously complicate the above assumptions, for example:

1) detonation of a dirty bomb in Gujarat
2) nuclear attack on Israel
3) increasing riots in city centres as food becomes scarce following a draught, population keeps increasing but land mass does not
4) Shrinking shorelines due to global warming and consequent rise in water level. Will push millions of Bangladeshis in Bengal.

I give 15 years before we see very interesting and intriguing developments in our neighbourhood. Some of our politicians are hastening this process by shamelessly indulging in vote-bank politics.

And the game has started unfolding in Assam and Bengal. I had written an earlier article : BEHEADING IN BENGAL - WHAT NEXT? Another article I wrote : IS THERE A GORKHALAND?

To exacerbate the split:

1)The serial blasts have taken place in Guwahati. The blasts want to split the community along religious lines - makes it easier for a future split.

2) Logically, therfore, blasts are imminent in Kolkata, Siliguri in West Bengal. It should be mentioned, Assam, Bengal and Kerela are the most communally sensitive states (as per poll). Hence, blasts here will have the desired result.

3) SIMI etc will carry on mindless killing of innocents to push forward the message: We can strike anywhere at our will and your police and intelligence are worthless in protecting you. This will psychologically wilt the population and drive it against police / army / political forces, hastening the divide.

WHAT NEXT? AND OUR RESPONSE?

DEFEATING JIHAD - SERGE TRIFKOVIC

This is a seminal piece of research by Serge Trifkovic. The following excerpt has been taken from his book - DEFEATING JIHAD. Rights to reprint this has been received from author. Do read his earlier exception article - GREEN CORRIDOR IN THE BALKANS. And dont forget the last part about UK's sterling role in this.



The Article:

The present technological, cultural and financial strength of Europe is a façade conceals an underlying moral and demographic weakness. Its dynamics have the potential to eventually undermine the entire edifice. The symptoms of the malaise are apparent in the loss of a sense of place and history that goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of the European Union, a transnational hyper-state that replicates, within Europe, the elite mindset prevalent in the United States.

Europe’s demographic self-annihilation is a phenomenon of world-historical proportions. In France, of some 760,000 births in a nation of almost 60 million, Muslim immigrants (predominantly from North Africa) and their French-born descendants accounted for over a quarter in 2004. Italy will plummet from today’s 57 million to a much older 40 million by 2050. The continent as a whole will face a net loss of some 150 million people by that time. As its ancient cities succumb to alien majorities, some economists say that immigration into Europe must increase even further, to an average of four million net entrants a year, to compensate for the pending loss of working population. The collective death wish, epitomized by the Pill, abortion, deviant lifestyles, promiscuity, and euthanasia, has its roots in the loss of religious impulse. The process started in earnest with the Renaissance, made a quantum leap in the Enlightenment, and was well nigh complete when the guns fell silent in 1918. A delayed consequence of the second round of European fratricide in 1939-1945 was a reduced workforce in its aftermath, which opened the door for millions of non-European, predominantly Muslim immigrants.

Europe’s population has aged to such a degree that it will continue to shrink even in the unlikely event that birthrates rebound to one-for-one replacement level. Year 2000 was a key turning point, when the momentum was reversed from positive to negative reflecting the age structure. Europe started the new century with fewer children than adults of reproductive age. This phenomenon – called “negative momentum” by demographers – implies that even if women in the future should have an unexpected fertility increase to two children on average the population would (in the absence of migration and mortality changes) be destined to shrink. The process is unprecedented: “Negative momentum has not been experienced on a large scale in world history so far. It is now like sailing against a current running toward population shrinkage and aging.”

On current form, by the end of this century there will be no “Europeans” as members of ethnic groups that share the same language, culture, history, and ancestors, and inhabit lands associated with their names. The shrinking populations will be indoctrinated into believing – or else simply forced into accepting – that the demographic shift in favor of Muslim aliens is actually a blessing that enriches their culturally deprived and morally unsustainable societies. Europe is losing the ability to define and defend itself, to the benefit of unassimilable multitudes filled with contempt for the host-society. That society is being “absorbed as a python swallows its prey – slowly, with a long digestion.”

Many Muslims in Europe already consider themselves de facto autonomous, a community of believers opposed to the broader society of infidels. Jihadist networks now exist in every country west of the former Iron Curtain save Iceland. They are centered on mosques and Islamic centers often financed by Saudi money. The emergence of a huge diaspora of the faithful away from the heartland is seen by pious Muslims as an event archetypically linked to conquest, ever since Muhammad pronounced anathema on Meccan leaders and took his followers to Medina where he built an army that conquered Mecca nine years later:

Today, in the minds of mujahideen in Europe, it is the Middle East at large that figures as an idolatrous Mecca because several governments in the region suppressed Islamist takeovers in the 1990s. Europe could even be viewed as a kind of Medina, where troops are recruited for the reconquest of the holy land, starting with Iraq.

The mass immigration of Muslims to Europe that started in the wake of its rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 60s has now turned into a deluge. Millions of presumably temporary workers, Gastarbeiters, came to Stuttgart, Rotterdam, Marseilles, and Antwerp, and stayed permanently. Their families eventually joined them, and they have multiplied while in all West European countries native populations are declining. Muslims constitute the majority of immigrants in all west European countries save Britain, where they have the plurality. Muslim population of Europe, which stands at some 20 million as of this writing, will double by 2025 and at that time it will account for a third of all live births in the “Old Europe” (the 15-nation core of the European Union).

Their contempt for the secular-democratic institutions of their host countries notwithstanding, the newcomers’ religious and community leaders will use them to pursue their goial of a Muslim Europe. Their leaders are aware that the political and legal straightjacket imposed from the European Union Headquarters in Brussels makes any opposition to the demographic change not only undesirable but also illegal.

London’s Bombs and Sleepwalkers

Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair is a thoroughly modern European politician. “What happened in America was not the work of Islamic terrorists, it was not the work of Muslim terrorists,” he declared after meeting a group of Muslim “community leaders” at 10 Downing Street, in the aftermath of 9-11. “It was the work of terrorists, pure and simple” who must not be honored “with any misguided religious justification,” because they “contravened all the tenets of Islam”:

It is… explicitly contrary to Islamic law to kill innocent civilians, to murder women and children and non-combatants… Islam is a peace-loving, tolerant, religion. Many of the world’s religions, indeed including Christianity, draw from the same spiritual heritage. We share the same values, and the same respect for the sanctity of human life… [W]e know of no specific threat in relation to this country and it is important that we are not alarmist about it. And I mean frankly some of the reports have been alarmist.

Echoing the Prime Minnister, two weeks after 9-11 former Home Office Minister John Denham pledged to cut out the “cancer of Islamophobia” infecting Britain, and declared that “the real Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding.” In line with the EU instructions he called on the media to avoid promoting “a distorted or caricatured or prejudiced” view of Muslims or the Islamic faith.

Dr. Richard Stone, chairman of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, criticized the Blair government for not addressing “in a deep way” the anti-Muslim prejudice in Britain: “There is now... mounting concern that the already fragile foothold gained by Muslim communities in Britain is threatened by ignorance and intolerance.” He added that the only area where there had been major improvement was “within Muslim communities themselves.” The key finding of his commission was that 9-11 had made life more difficult for Muslims. It castigated British public bodies for failing to address "institutional Islamophobia” and called for changes in the law to better protect Muslim communities (i.e. introduce censorship) and “a major effort” (i.e. affirmative action) to bring more Muslims into public life.

The Director of Public Prosecutions expressed concern that the war on terror is “alienating whole communities” in Great Britain. Colelctively they have all contributed to the creation of a culture of Muslim victimhood in which “Islamophobia,” defined both as a legal crime and a moral outrage, inhibited all serious debate in Great Britain after 9-11 on the causes of terrorism.

Since then thousands of people have been murdered in jihadist attacks, in Bali, Moscow, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, Sharm-el-Sheik, Nairobi, and dozens of other places.

On July 7, 2005, London’s turn came. The suicide bombers were four young British citizens, Muslim by religion, three of them Pakistani by parentage. They were born and bred in England, they attended British state schools, traveled on British passports, and spoke with Yorkshire accents. They also hated England and its people with such intensity that they were prepared to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill as many of them as possible. They were coldly premeditated, practicing their attacks on a dry run on June 28, nine days before their bombs killed 52 people and wounded 200. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead suicide bomber, recorded a video in which he declared, “We are at war and I am a solider.”

The ranks of those potential soldiers are increasing, paradoxically enough, as the British-born young Muslims come of age. “What is striking about most second- and third-generation British Muslims is their intense religiosity. Asked how much of a role Islam played in their everyday lives, 45 percent of the respondents in the student survey said it played a role in everything while 48 percent said it played a role in most things. This is in sharp contrast with a comparable survey of the British public in which 66 percent said religion was not an important factor in their lives.”

According to a detailed survey of the attitudes of British Muslims prepared for The Daily Telegraph in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings of July 7, 2005, one in four sympathizes with motives of terrorists and six per cent insist that the bombings were “fully justified.” In absolute numbers this means there are over 100,000 Muslims in Great Britain who are either prepared to carry out terrorist acts, or ready to support those who do. And a substantial majority, 56 per cent, say that, whether or not they sympathize with the bombers, they can at least understand why they behave in this way. The sheer scale of Muslim alienation from British society that the survey reveals is remarkable: nearly a third of them, 32 per cent, believe that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.”

The attacks should not have come as a surprise. It has been known for years that trained al-Qaeda terrorists were present in the United Kingdom and operated in classic small cell structures. In December 2002, only a day after the arrest of seven Muslims suspected of terrorism in London and Edinburgh, British government sources acknowledged the existence of terrorist cells in the country and predicted that the most likely threat would take the form of a “explosives left in a public place” and attacks on transport networks.

Left by whom exactly? The British establishment remains adamant that the perpetrators are by definition apostates from Islam. When asked if the bombings across London on July 7 were the work of Islamic terrorists, the deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, responded that the culprits “certainly were not Islamic terrorists, because Islam and terrorism simply don’t go together.” He repeated, almost word for word, Tony Blair’s assurances on the subject given four years earlier.

In November 2005, Blair himself traveled to Leeds to meet with young Muslims in an attempt to understand how three “born-and-bred Yorkshire lads” (the fourth bomber, Lindsay, was a naturalized citizen born in Jamaica) could turn on their fellow citizens in such a murderous manner. His reference to the morbid jihadist trio as “lads” – an English term of endearment for the youthful male person, derived from Middle English ladde – is indicative of the fact that, after 7/7/, he has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

Paddick’s boss, the Met’s Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, is out-Blairing his better known namesake. Britain’s most powerful policeman belongs to the same milieu as the Prime Minister: he has an Oxford degree, a Miro on his office wall, and the propensity to ascribe to Al-Qaeda “a late 19th-century nihilism.” He takes pride in his force’s “cultural and community resources unit” that enables police to call in Somalian-born officers to a Somalian case, but admits that “we do have some trouble providing Inuits.” Six months before the London bombs he made the unbelievable statement that “there is nothing wrong with being an Islamic fundamentalist.” When a journalist suggested that the family of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film maker who was killed for questioning Islamic attitudes to women, could beg to differ on that one, Sir Ian replied,

“There were lots of fundamentalist Muslims who didn’t shoot him.” So that’s okay? “Just wait,” he says sharply. “Look at Jerry Springer. Christian fundamentalists objected very strongly but they didn’t shoot the producer. And nor do 99.9 percent of Muslims want the sort of extremism that leads to violence. They know the consequences of terrorists claiming to be Muslim, so our job is to help. Bridges will be built.”

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone went one better by blaming Britain’s role in the war in Iraq for the explosions in his city. He also compared an outspoken Muslim scholar who backs suicide bombings, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to the late Pope John XXIII, because both believed that their faiths must engage with the world. While giving evidence to a House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the terrorist attacks in London, Livingston said that Sheik Qaradawi is “very similar to the position of Pope John XXIII. An absolutely sane Islamist… Of all the Muslim thinkers in the world today he is the most positive force for change.”

Far from being a “moderate,” the sheikh is a mainstream member of the Muslim Brotherhood. His Ikhwani affiliations led to his imprisonment in Egypt in 1949, then in 1954-1956, and again in 1962. For some years Al-Qaradawi has been a media superstar in the Arab world, thanks to his regular program Al-Shariaa wa Al-Haya (“Sharia and Life”) on Al-Jazeera TV network. He has called on Muslims to fight foreigners in Iraq — troops and civilians — because they are occupiers, and fighting them is a religious duty. And yet in 2004 he came to Britain’s capital and spoke at the “European Council of Fatwa and Research” in London’s City Hall, and warmly welcomed by none other than the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone (“You are truly, truly welcome!”). At a public lecture during his stay, the good, sane sheikh asserted that female rape victims should be punished if they were dressed immodestly when they were raped. In his opinion, “For her to be absolved from guilt, a raped woman must have shown good conduct.”

With Messrs. Livingstone, Blair, Blair, and other such elected and appointed officials in charge, the bombers could do their thing unobserved and unhindered. It is to be feared that if and when “7/7” happens again, possibly on a far grander scale, the sleepwalking of those who are supposed to protect Britain will become more determined than ever before. With stern illiberalism that belies their self-professed respect for other cultures and belief systems they will continue to deny respect to the bombers who sacrifice their lives for the sake of their faith by denying them the right to define themselves. Khan and his three associates died for Islam, but Blair, Blair & Co. insist that they could do no such thing.

Blairism is all–pervasive in the academia that informs the policy-makers. “The bombs that killed more than 50 people in the heart of London in July served only to reinforce the realisation across the EU that more effective action is needed to ensure the integration of migrants, and their children, into our diverse societies,” writes Sarah Spencer of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at Oxford University, in an European Union-sponsored publication. We need to move beyond security and the fear of radicalization, she asserts, which “set a narrow and potentially divisive context” (i.e. law and order) for an agenda that “has to embrace broader outcomes,” such as greater access by the Muslim community to jobs, housing, health, education, poverty and civic participation. Such measures should be regulated by “an EU-wide approach to the integration of migrants,” Ms. Spencer concludes.

Historian David Starkey agrees. Addressing The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2005 he warned that “Britain is in danger of sleepwalking into a new era of religious intolerance after the July 7 bombings” and that the religious intolerance of previous centuries could be repeated unless society reconsiders its attitute. He voiced alarm at the trend towards “thought crimes” encapsulated in anti-terrorism legislation that include expressing any sympathy for suicide bombers. The key to present-day threats, Starkey concludes, is tolerance: “In the same way that a multitude of religious sects were allowed to continue without threat of being burnt at the stake after the Restoration, Britain today should tolerate Islam.”

The thought that British Muslims may be loath to integrate and accept being one among a multitude is inadmissible to the elite mindset. Even in the mundane Britain of commerce and banking, Islam has successfully planted the seeds of its acceptance as a legitimately parallel structure with the non-interest-based, sharia-compliant “Islamic mortgages” which every self-respecting High Street home loan provider now feels obliged to offer:

It was an unusual sight – hundreds of businessmen listening attentively while a small group of top-notch Islamic scholars instructed them on the intricacies of Muslim ethics. These were bankers, and what they wanted to know was how they could do better business with Muslims. The Islamic Real Estate Finance conference... came after The Bank of England’s request for high street banks to create financial solutions for Muslims... Islamic scholars were called in to advise on the Sharia-compliance of the new mortgages. On the whole they were happy, but some expressed concern that the banks may be using money in non-permissible activities, like financing breweries or non-halal meat companies.

This is but one manifestation of the ongoing legitimization of the sharia as a legal and moral code with a legitimate role in the public life of Great Britain. It has penetrated culture, high as well as popular. In the fall of 2005 London audiences enjoyed a widely acclaimed production of Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe’s 16th century classic. Few noticed, however, that several insufficiently reverential references to Muhammad had been deleted from the production. Worse still, an essential scene in the play in which the Kuran is burned was also censored beyond recognition. In the original, “Tamburlaine” (Tamerlane) asks his servant to bring “the Turkish Alcoran, and all the heaps of superstitious books found in the temples of that Mahomet whom I have thought a god – they shall be burnt.” As they light a fire Tamburlaine dares Mahomet to send a whirlwind that would save the Kuran from burning, or else punish the perpetrator. Nothing happens, and he declares,

Well, soldiers, Mahomet remains in hell;
He cannot hear the voice of Tamburlaine:
Seek out another godhead to adore;
The God that sits in heaven, if any god,
For he is God alone, and none but he.

Director David Farr openly admitted that he edited the scene because did not want to upset Muslims. Simon Reade, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, equally frankly said that if they had not altered the original it “would have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions.” Worse still, the two claimed that the censored version was better than the original: The burning of the Koran was smoothed over, “so that it became just the destruction of ‘a load of books’ relating to any culture or religion. That made it more powerful, they claimed.”

“Empowerment” in this case means that Muslim radicals bomb the Underground (July 2005), which prompts “Englishmen” to censor one of their great playwrights to please the bombers (October 2005) – a bit like letting a rapist date your daughter after the fact.

As for the British courts, they are already Sharia-compliant. A key tenet of Sharia is that non-Muslims cannot try Muslims, or even testify against them. A judge at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, accepts the concept. He may not be familiar with the Islamic law but he observed its commandments when he banned Jews and Hindus – and anyone married to one – from serving on the jury in the trial of Abdullah el-Faisal, accused of soliciting the murder of “unbelievers.” The judge reportedly announced, “For obvious reasons, members of the jury of the Jewish or Hindu faith should reveal themselves, even if they are married to Jewish or Hindu women, because they are not fit to arbitrate in this case.” One can only speculate what the reaction would be if equally “obvious reasons” were invoked in an attempt to exclude Muslims from a trial of an alleged Islamophobe.

For years Muslims have been getting halal meals in British schools and hospitals. The Commission for Racial Equality has ruled that businesses must provide prayer rooms for Muslims and pay them for their absences on Islam’s holidays. Public funds are used to build state-of-the-art housing in London’s East End reserved for Muslim “elders” from which white pensioners are excluded. But Sirajul Islam, in charge of social services at the local borough of Tower Hamlets, responded that “one size fits all” approach to public services was no longer acceptable in 21st century Britain: “Tower Hamlets is fortunate to have a diverse mix of communities and the council strives to ensure that its services are responsive to the differing and changing needs of its residents.”

Even without formally designated segregated units, Muslims control large areas of dozens of industrial cities in the Midlands and Yorkshire, from which non-Muslims – by no means only the white ones – move out as soon as they can. Both the “moderates” and the “radicals” believe in the goal of an Islamized Britain:

There are two main religious traditions among Pakistani-British Muslims. The Barelwi majority believe in a slow evolution, gradually consolidating their gains and finally achieving an Islamic state. The Deobandi minority argue for a quicker process using politics and violence to achieve the same result. Ultimately, both believe in the goal of an Islamic state in Britain where Muslims will govern their own affairs and, as the finishing touch, everyone else’s affairs as well.

The bombings in London were a logical outcome of the Blairite forma mentis, the size of Muslim immigration into the country, and the dynamics of that growing community’s symbiotic interaction with the elite consensus. Even before the Rushdie affair allowed Muslims in Britain to flex their muscles in open opposition to the law of the land, a Declaration issued by the Islamic Foundation in Leicester stated, urbi et orbi, that its goal is to change the existing British society into “an Islamic society based on the Qur’an and the Sunna and make Islam, which is a code for entire life, supreme and dominant, especially in the socio-political spheres.

A generation later mosques and Islamic centers have multiplied all over Britain and provide the backbone to terrorist support network. The Home Office approved visas to Muslim clerics, primarily from Pakistan, sympathetic to the radicals. Mosques provide venues for the faithful “to hail Osama bin Laden as a hero and to evoke the ‘positive outcomes’ of the attacks in New York and Washington.” At least the British cannot complain that they not have been warned:

[T]he Islamists don't even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. “We are here as on a darkling plain ...” wrote Matthew Arnold in the famous concluding lines to Dover Beach, “where ignorant armies clash by night.” But we choose in large part to stay in ignorance. Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world's leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they're taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.

The British security services, exemplified by Sir Ian Blair, have followed their political masters into a state of denial regarding the Islamist threat. The courts, for their part, routinely interpret the criminal, asylum, and terrorism laws in the manner damaging to the security of the Realm and favorable to the Islamic underground. That underground thrives in mosques, state-supported educational institutions and community centers. There are hundreds of after-hours Islamic schools all over Britain in which Muslim children start formal indoctrination in their parents’ creed. That message, rooted in rock-hard certainties, very effectively overrides the tepid multiculturalist message of the state curriculum. Maintaining the loyalty of the Muslim diaspora in Britain has been the mullahs’ top priority, and the system has facilitated their task.

As Islam spreads its control over many inner cities in the industrial heartland, the culture of dhimmitude for the remaining whites is developing by default. The British Council, a taxpayer-funded organization that sponsors cross-cultural projects, fired one of its press officers, Harry Cummins, for publishing four articles in London’s Sunday Telegraph critical of Islam. British Muslims took exception to his observation that Muslims had rights to practice their religion in the UK which were not available to Christians in the Islamic world, and this “despite the fact that these Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land.” He also wrote that Muslims had displayed a “bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat.” His cardinal sin was to note that “it is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object.” Abdul Bari, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed Cummins’ firing but expressed “dismay” that the publishing company had not taken action against the editor of the Sunday Telegraph as well.

In 2003 Britain’s Channel 4 TV broadcast a sobering documentary – The Last White Kids – about two English children, Amie Gallagher (9) and her sister Ashlene (12), who live in the Muslim neighborhood of Manningham in Bradford. They attend the local mosque, wrap themselves in Islamic burkas, and learn the revelations of Muhammad by heart. The girls were born to a dysfunctional welfare mother. Islam apparently offered something that is missing from their lives. At the mosque there is authority, certainty, even disciplined education, albeit in Arabic and focused on the Kuran. The girls were not offered any authority, certainty, or discipline by state schools; as for the Christian churches, they have all but disappeared from the lives of the British people. As the Daily Mail commented:

The chapels of Wales are gaunt ruins, the great Roman Catholic churches of the industrial North West are often empty and derelict, the Anglicans scuttle about in their hallowed, lovely buildings like mice amid ancient ruins, rarely even beginning to fill spaces designed for multitudes. The choirs and the bells gradually fall silent, the hymns are no longer sung and one by one the doors are locked and places which in some cases have seen worship for centuries become bare museums of a dead faith.

“If you’re white and you ain’t hard you’re f…..d,” explains the girls’ 11-year-old brother Jake, who does not go to the mosque: “I used to get picked on at school… They would call me ‘white bastard’ and we would get into a fight.” And what an eleven-year-old learns in an English state school is on par with the kind of indoctrination applied in California. The new curriculum on religious education, backed by the Education Secretary Charles Clarke, will “help overcome barriers to how non-Muslims understand the faith” and “help strengthen a multi-faith, multi-cultural society.” It almost goes without saying that the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is helping with the curriculum. It is only through understanding thus gained “that this country can move forward as a true multi-faith and multicultural society,” according to Mr Clarke: “We must ensure children grow up with a better understanding of their friends and neighbours. The Muslim Council of Britain's initiative, books for schools, brings us much closer towards that goal.”

Submission or resistance: the last white children in a grim part of Bradford epitomize Britain’s choice. In Tony Blair’s, Charles Clarke’s and Don Livingstone’s Britain there is no doubt which path should be taken. Those mosque-attending girls symbolize a healthy openness to cross-cultural fertilization, while their cocky half-brother is a budding racist thug fit only for sensitivity training and, if it does not work, medication. It could hardly be otherwise in a country whose leader was prompted by 9-11 to declare that “the doctrine and teachings of Islam are those of peace and harmony,” that it “is a whole teaching dedicated to building peace in the world and therefore those people who’ve committed this atrocity, they no more represent the true spirit of Islam than does the Protestant or Catholic on the streets of Northern Ireland that murders someone of the opposite part of the Christian religion, represent the true spirit of Christianity.

The new and supposedly improved Tory Party hardly offers an alternative. Feeling panicky after a string of electoral defeats, and determined that out-Blairing Blair is the only way to regain power, under David Cameron it has joined the multiculturalist bandwagon. He believes in racial, ethnic, and gender-based quotas. Cameron’s colleague, the Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude, immigration had been “fantastically good” for the United Kingdom.

Such inanities are light years away from another British Prime Minister and a far truer Tory, Winston Churchill, who warned over a century ago that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than Islam: “Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science – the science against which it had vainly struggled – the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

The science is still there but the shelter has been eroded in the realm of the soul. Churchill’s verdict on Islam was as astute as it was on Hitler (“that bad man,“ as early as 1933 he concluded). In the end Hitler’s defeat in World War II was greatly accelerated by his refusal to accept any news he did not want to hear and his propensity to accuse those trying to present such news of bad faith. His self-deceptions were believed with such firmness that, by mid-1944, Field Marshal Rommel felt compelled to conclude that the Fuehrer was living in a Wolkenkuckucksheim (cloud cuckoo land).

The way in which the war against terrorism is waged in today’s Downing Street resembles the atmosphere at Rastenburg in 1944. With the Blairites in charge T.S. Eliot may yet be proven right in his warning that the West would end, “not with a bang but a whimper.”

Some decades earlier, in 1899, 26 year old Winston Churchill expressed hope “that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some — even in these modern days — who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things and tamely survive the disaster.” Even his precience could not envisage the possibility that “the invader” would have his best friends and allies at No. 10 and London’s County Hall.