GREEN CORRIDOR IN THE BALKANS

This is a seminal piece of research from the Balkans. After finishing reading look back at few points:

1. Kosovo independence, camp BONDSTEEL and oil – interference by US, UK, NATO.

2. Global Islamic Caliphate spewing network are headquartered in UK – Hizbut Tahrir and Tableeghi Jamaat (both aligned to Al Qaeda).

3. The role of Ghazwatul Hind, Khorasan and the march of the Army from South Asia to Europe and beyond.

4. The author misses the crucial part ISI played in Bosnia, though he mentions Khalid Sh Md. Read more of ISI & Bosnia here : ISI & AL - QAEDA.

Already the US has arm twisted India into making two important concessions post 26/11 - and even had the audacity to ask us to trim our consulate in JALALABAD, Afghanistan as it may be creating trouble for the Pakistanis in SWAT, BALCOHCISTAN !!

1. Talk to Pakistan even after they have taken no action against the perpetrators and in fact thumbed their nose by releasing the mastermind Hafeez Saeed.

2. Army presence from Kashmir is thinning down for a sinister plan for greater autonomy and increasing trade across LOC (Line of Control), which will see Pakistan taking greater control of the valley.

The following article by Dr. Srdja Trifkovic (1) was the basis for the author’s presentation and an accompanying discussion at the meeting in Copenhagen on May 17, 2009. It is one of a series of essays collected in the book Kosovo: The Score 1999-2009, which was published earlier this year by the American Council for Kosovo and the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies. It is reproduced here with permission.

U.S. Policy and Geopolitics of Jihad: The Green Corridor in the Balkans by Srdja Trifkovic



The Green Transverse or “Green Corridor” (in Serbian/Croatian: Zelena transverzala (2) is a geopolitical concept that has been used in two distinct, albeit interconnected meanings:

1. To define the long-term goal of Islamist ideologues, both in the Balkans and in the wider Muslim world, to create a geographically contiguous chain of majority- Muslim or Muslim-dominated polities that will extend from Turkey in the southeast to the northwestern-most point of Bosnia (120 miles from Austria). (3)

2. To denote the ongoing process of increasing ethno-religious self-assertiveness among major traditionally Muslim communities in the Balkans, (4) this has had a fourfold effect:

(a) Expanding the geographic area of their demographic dominance;

(b) Establishing and/or expanding various entities under Muslim political control with actual or potential claim to sovereign statehood;

(c) Enhancing the dominant community’s Islamic character and identity within those entities, with the parallel decrease of presence and power of non-Muslim groups; and

(d) Prompting Muslim communities’ ambitions for ever bolder designs in the future, even at the risk of conflict with their non-Muslim neighbors. Giving some clarity to this concept is essential to a comprehensive understanding of the motives, actions, and emerging expectations of different actors in the Yugoslav wars in general and the ongoing Kosovo crisis in particular.

Reality Denied — Political, cultural, religious and demographic trends among Muslim communities in the Balkans strongly suggest that the Green Corridor is taking shape, either deliberately or spontaneously. (5) Nevertheless, many Western academic experts and media commentators (especially in the English-speaking world) have shown the tendency to be a priori dismissive of any suggestion that a long-term Islamic geopolitical design exists in the Balkans, let alone that it is being deliberately and systematically pursued. The notion of the Green Corridor was thus criticized as a product of Serbian propaganda with “Islamophobic” overtones, although its most authoritative proponents have been institutions and experts with no ethnic or personal axe to grind in the Balkan imbroglio.

The Bosnian war was still raging when Sir Alfred Sherman, former advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and co-founder of The Lord Byron Foundation, warned that the Muslims’ objective was “to create a ‘Green Corridor’ from Bosnia through the Sanjak to Kosovo” that would separate Serbia from Montenegro. (6) Western powers are “in effect fostering this Islamistan,” Sherman warned, and developing “close working relations with Iran, whose rulers are keen to establish a European base for their politico-religious activities.” In addition, “Washington is keen on involving its NATO ally Turkey, which has been moving away from Ataturk’s secularist and Western stance back to a more Ottomanist, pan-Muslim orientation, and is actively helping the Muslim forces.”

THE GREEN CORRIDOR

Sherman’s diagnosis proved to be prescient. A decade later it was echoed by Col. Shaul Shay of BESA Center at Bar-Ilan University. He noted that “the Balkans serve as a forefront on European soil for Islamic terror organizations, which exploit this area to promote their activities in Western Europe, and other focal points worldwide.” His verdict regarding the Green Corridor is disquieting:

The establishment of an independent Islamic territory including Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania is one of the most prominent achievements of Islam since the siege of Vienna in 1683. Islamic penetration into Europe through the Balkans is one of the main achievements of Islam in the twentieth century. (7)

Shay’s account shows how the Bosnian war provided the historical opportunity for radical Islam to penetrate the Balkans at a time when the Muslim world — headed by Iran and the various Islamic terror organizations, including al-Qaeda — came to the aid of the Muslims. The Jihadist operational-organizational infrastructure was thus established.

John Schindler, professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer, concurs: in his view the Balkans provide the missing piece in the puzzle of al-Qa’ida’s transformation from an isolated fighting force into a lethal global threat. (8) Radical Islam played a key role in the Yugoslav conflict, Schindler says: like Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s became a training ground for the mujahidin, leading to blowback of epic proportions.

The Green Corridor paradigm reflects Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, which used the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a paradigmatic case of the so called “fault-line wars” between Islam and the rest. Many years before the first shots were fired in Bosnia in 1992, that paradigm was confirmed by Alija Izetbegovic. In his Islamic Declaration Izetbegovic denied any chance of “peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions”:

“Islam contains the principle of ummet, the tendency to unite all Muslims into a single community — a spiritual, cultural and political community… It is a natural function of the Islamic order to gather all Muslims and Muslim communities throughout the world into one.” (9)

During the Bosnian war (1992-1995) Izetbegovic presented a “pluralist” image to the West, but his followers acted in accordance with his primary message. The fruits of their labor — and that of their coreligionists in another half-dozen countries in the region — are clearly visible along a thousand miles’ trail through the middle of today’s Balkans.

Ottoman Legacy — Unlike other European peninsular regions (Iberia, Italy), the northern boundary of the Balkans is not marked by mountain ranges. That boundary is open and crossed by several key transit corridors connecting Central and Western Europe with the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. This has been the bane of the region’s history, inviting invaders and turning the Balkans for most of the modern era into an object of competing designs and interests of outside powers.

The Ottoman conquest and occupation left an indelible mark on the region. It started in 1354, when Ottoman Turks crossed the Dardanelles from Asia Minor and established a foothold on the northern shore. The subsequent spread of Islam in the Balkans was “by the sword”: it was contingent upon the extent of Ottoman rule and the establishment of political and social institutions based on the teaching of Kuran and the Islamic legal and political practice. The line of the attack went from Thrace via Macedonia to Kosovo; through the Sanjak into Bosnia all the way to the Una River, was finally stopped at the Habsburgs’ Military Frontier created in the 16th century.

It is noteworthy that the geographic thrust of the Ottoman attack and later colonization of Muslims from other parts of the Empire in the Balkans coincided exactly with the “Green Corridor.” From earliest days the Green Corridor has had a geopolitical logic that influences political and military decision-making. Furthermore, Ottoman efforts at Islamization of the local population were more determined, and more successful, along the “Corridor” axis (Thrace-Macedonia-Kosovo-Sanjak-Bosnia) than in other conquered Christian lands (e.g. in mainland Greece, central Serbia, northern Bulgaria, or Wallachia).

The Ottoman conquest destroyed the materially and culturally rich Christian civilization of Byzantium and its dynamic and creative Slavic offspring in Serbia and Bulgaria. The conquered populations became second-class citizens (“dhimmis”), whose physical security was predicated upon their abject obedience to the Muslim masters. (10) They were heavily taxed (jizya, or poll tax, and kharaj) and subjected to the practice of devshirme: the annual “blood levy” (introduced in the 1350s) of a fifth of all Christian boys in the conquered lands. Conversion to Islam, a phenomenon more strongly pronounced along the Green Route than in the central regions of the Empire, was near-universal among northern Albanians, including the settlers in Kosovo. This contributed to a new stratification of the society under Ottoman rule and a new power balance. It favored local converts to Islam, eager to assert their power over their former co-religionists, Christian gaiurs. This resulted in far harsher treatment of their Christian subjects than was mandated from the Porte, and helped ignite uprisings in Serbia (1804) and Greece (1821). The 19th century witnessed a more thorough oppression of the Christian communities under Ottoman rule than at any prior period.

At the same time, some great powers (Great Britain in particular) supported the continued Turkish subjugation of Balkan Christians on the grounds that the Ottoman Empire was a “stabilizing force.” France’s and Britain’s alliance with Turkey against Russia in the Crimean War (1853-1856) reflected a frame of mind and a strategic calculus — the desire to score points in the Muslim world vis-à-vis another, non-Muslim power — that has manifested itself in recent years in the overt or covert support by those same powers for the Muslim side in Bosnia and Kosovo, and somewhat less overtly in the Israeli-Arab conflict. (BuA: NOTE THIS IMPORTANT POINT ABOUT UK, and its continued dalliance with Pan Islamic terror organizations like HIZBUT TAHRIR and TABLEEGHI JAMMAT by giving them headquarters in UK)

Demography — The most enduring, politically and culturally relevant consequence of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans is the presence of large indigenous Muslim communities. The Balkan Peninsula is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse regions in the world, especially considering its relatively small area (just over 200,000 square miles) and population (around 55 million). (11) Of that number, Eastern Orthodox Christians — mainly Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs and Slavic Macedonians — have the slim majority of around 53 percent; Sunni Muslims (11 million Turks in European Turkey and a similar number of Albanians, Slavic Muslims and ethnic Turks elsewhere) make up 40 percent; and Roman Catholics (mainly Croats) are at around 5 percent. (12)

Those communities do not live in multicultural harmony. Their mutual lack of trust that occasionally turns into violence is a lasting fruit of the Turkish rule. Four salient features of the Ottoman state were institutionalized, religiously justified discrimination of non-Muslims; personal insecurity; tenuous coexistence of ethnicities and creeds without intermixing; and the absence of unifying state ideology or supradenominational source of loyalty. It was a Hobbesian world, and it bred a befitting mindset: the zero-sum-game approach to politics, in which one side’s gain is perceived as another’s loss. That mindset has not changed, almost a century since the disintegration of the Empire.

Most Balkan Muslims live in continuous swathes of territory along the Green Corridor. There are but two major gaps in the chain. One is in northeastern Macedonia, where 80 miles divides easternmost Albanian villages near Kumanovo from the westernmost Bulgarian-Muslim (i.e. Pomak) villages in the Bulgarian southwestern corner at Blagoevgrad. The other is in the region of Raska (northern Sanjak) in southwestern Serbia, along the main road and railway from Belgrade to Montenegro.

The Christian communities all over the Balkans are in a steep, long-term demographic decline. Fertility rate is below replacement level in every majority-Christian country in the region. (13) The Muslims, by contrast, have the highest birth rates in Europe, with the Albanians topping the chart. On current form it is likely that Muslims will reach a simple majority in the Balkans within a generation.

The Role of Modern Turkey — Turkey’s European foothold is populous (over 11 million) and overwhelmingly mono-ethnic (Turkish) and mono-religious (Muslim); the Christian remnant is negligible. A nation-state of 72 million, the Turkish Republic is based on a blend of European-style nationalism and an Islamic ethos that breeds a sense of intense kinship with the Muslim communities further west in the Balkans.

The Kemalist dream had never penetrated beyond the military and a narrow stratum of urban elite. For decades described as the key to U.S. strategy in eastern Mediterranean, in the Middle East, and—more recently—in the oil-rich Caspian region and the sensitive ex-Soviet Central Asia, the country is ruled by the ever more openly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The AKP “espouses an ideology of cultural divide, tension, and conflict, despite all of the pro-Europe rhetoric in which Islamists in Turkey engage in their pursuit to exploit the European Union for their agenda of Islamization.” (14) That agenda is no longer confined to the borders of the Turkish state. There is a rekindled sense of kinship among the growing ranks of Turkish Islamists with their Balkan co-religionists and with the old Ottoman domains further west. The re-Islamization and assertiveness of Turkey under Erdogan is essential to the revival of Islam and ethnic self-assertiveness all along the Green Corridor:

The [Yugoslav] wars of the 90s opened whole areas where they [Muslims] were in the majority: While the regional realities modified, so did geopolitics between those who remained in their traditional homes in the Balkans and the ever expanding Islam over Europe itself [with] pan-European Islamic clusters from the West southward into the Balkans themselves. Of the utmost importance to Muslims in Western Europe, but especially the Balkans, is the admission of Turkey into the EU, for Ankara will be a voice for all Muslims inside the E.U. itself. (15)

Without a strong, solidly supportive anchor at its southeastern end, no Muslim revival in former Ottoman lands along the Balkan Green Corridor would be possible. The mix of nationalism and Islamism in Turkey aims not only at reversing the process of modernization of the past 85 years; it also aims at reversing the outcome of the preceding period of Ottoman decline. Under the AKP Turkey is becoming increasingly revisionist, potentially irredentist, and detrimental to stability in the Balkans.

Bulgaria — Of the country’s 8 million inhabitants, ethnic Turks account for just under ten percent (750,000). Southern Bulgaria is also home to several hundred thousand Pomaks, Islamized Slavic speakers. Their number is unknown as they are not recognized as a distinct ethnic group: officially they are “Muslim Bulgarians.”

Most Pomaks and Turks live in six districts that connect Turkey with FRY Macedonia: Haskovo, Kardjali, Smolian, Blagoevgrad, and southern parts of Pazardzhik and Plovdiv. The Pomaks are experiencing an intense Islamic religious revival, mainly financed from the Arab world. Hundreds of new mosques have been built in recent years. Middle Eastern “charities” are also establishing Kuranic schools, paying for trips to the Hajj, and offering scholarships to young Pomaks to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. Since religion defines their identity, “these poor, pastoralist Slavic Muslims have become prime targets for Arab proselytizers seeking to make inroads in Bulgaria, the EU country with the largest indigenous Muslim population.” (16)

In addition to the religious revival, the Pomaks are establishing a new form of ethnic identity. (17) Some Pomak activists assert that, far from being “Islamized Bulgarians,” they are descended from ancient Thracians. (18) Others assert Arab descent and an Islamic identity that antedates Turkish conquest. Many Bulgarians see such assertions as the first step in a future call for the establishment of a Pomak state — Islamic in character — in the Rhodope region as the key link to the Western Balkans. Some politicians warn of “unprecedented aggression based on religious and ethnic grounds” and accuse Muslim activists of “contempt for the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria.” (19) Even pro-Western sources in Sofia concede that “it is stretching credibility to imagine” that Bulgaria is not a target of radical Islam. (20)

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia — FYROM is widely considered the weakest state in the Balkans. Macedonian Slavs account for 66 percent (1.3 million) and Albanians for 25 percent (500,000) of the republic’s two million people. The latter, 98 percent Muslim, have had a remarkable rate of growth since 1961, when they accounted for 13 percent of the total. Albanian birthrate is more than twice that of the Slavs. Following the signing of the Ohrid Agreement that ended the 2001 armed rebellion by the “NLA” (a KLA subsidiary); the state itself is effectively becoming bi-national and bilingual. Albanians are de facto the second constituent nation in FYROM. They are guaranteed proportional share of government power and ethnicallybased police force.

Having secured their dominance along the borders of Albania and Kosovo, the current main thrust of the Albanian ethno-religious encroachment has the country’s capital city as its primary objective. It is a little-known fact that today’s Skopje is effectively as divided as Nicosia, or Jerusalem, or Mostar. Once a city quarter becomes majority-Albanian, it is quickly emptied of non-Albanian (i.e. Slavic-Macedonian, non- Muslim) population. The time-tested technique is to construct a mosque in a mixed area, to broadcast prayer calls at full blast five times a day, and to create the visible and audible impression of dominance that intimidates non-Muslims (“sonic cleansing”). In those mosques a Wahhabi-connected imam or administrator is invariably present to keep an eye on the rest. (21) Through their links with Arab donors they can influence the payment of salaries to imams and administrative staff.

During the 2001 Albanian rebellion the NLA was largely financed by the smuggling of narcotics from Turkey and Afghanistan, but in addition to drug money, “the NLA also has another prominent venture capitalist: Osama bin Laden.” (22) French terrorism expert Claude Moniquet estimated in 2006 that up to a hundred fundamentalists, “dangerous and linked to terrorist organizations,” were active or dormant but ready in sleeper-cells in Macedonia. New recruits are offered stipends to study Islam in Saudi Arabia, and they are given regular salaries and free housing to spread the Wahhabi word on their return to Macedonia. (23)

Both demographically and politically, the Republic of Macedonia has a precarious present and an uncertain future. In the aftermath of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, FYROM’s long term stability and sustainability are open to doubt.

Kosovo — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton warned in early 2008 that “Kosovo will be a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region… a potential gate for radicalism to enter Europe,” a stepping stone toward an anti-Christian, anti-American “Eurabia.” (24) His was a rare voice in Washington to warn of the ongoing merger of aggressive greater-Albanian nationalism and transnational Islamism. Bolton’s verdict is shared by former UN commander in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. Lewis McKenzie. In 1999 the West intervened “on the side of an extremist, militant Kosovo-Albanian independence movement,” he says. “The fact that the KLA was universally designated a terrorist organization supported by al- Qaeda was conveniently ignored.” (25)

Since the 1999 US-led NATO intervention, Kosovo has become the crime capital of Europe. (26) Crime is the province’s main economic activity: hard drugs (primarily heroin), followed by human trafficking, associated sex trade, and arms smuggling. (27) But no less significant, from the vantage point of the Green Corridor, has been the symbiosis that has developed between Kosovo’s Albanian crime families and the Jihadist networks abroad. As a result, according to a 252-page report compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies in April 2006, Islamic militants have been freely crisscrossing the Balkans for more than 15 years: “extremists, financed in part with cash from narcotics smuggling operations, were trying to infiltrate Western Europe from Afghanistan and points farther east via a corridor through Turkey, Kosovo and Albania.” (28)

This process started well before the 1999 NATO intervention, but the Clinton Administration ignored the warnings. (29) The relationship was cemented by the zeal of KLA veterans who joined Bin Laden’s network in Afghanistan. (30) Iran also supported the Albanian insurgency in Kosovo, hoping “to turn the region into their main base for Islamic armed activity in Europe.” (31) By the end of 1998 U.S. DEA officials complained that the transformation of the KLA from terrorists into freedom fighters hampered their ability to stem the flow of Albanian-peddled heroin into America. (32)

By that time the NATO bombing of Serbia was in full swing, however, and the mujaheddin were, once again, American “allies.”

A decade later Kosovo is run by those “allies.” It is the worst administered and most corrupt spot in Europe, (33) a mono-ethnic hotbed of criminality and intolerance, a major source of irredentism and regional instability — and a key pillar of the Green Corridor.

Sanjak — The region known to Muslims as Sandžak (“administrative district” in Turkish) is one of the most critical geopolitical pressure points in the Balkans. It covers some 8,500 sq.km. along the border between Serbia and Montenegro, linking Kosovo to the southeast with Bosnia to the northwest. Bosniaks and Muslims-bynationality accounted for 52 percent while Serbs and Montenegrins had 43 percent, with smaller groups making up the balance. The crucial demographic gap in the Green Corridor exists in the northwestern half of Sanjak, comprising three municipalities in Serbia (Priboj, Nova Varos and Prijepolje) and Pljevlja in Montenegro. If there is to be a fresh crisis in the Balkans over the next decade, it is to be feared that this will be its location.

After Montenegro proclaimed independence in May 2006, the Muslim demand for autonomy is focused on the six municipalities on the northern side of the border, in Serbia. Such an entity would have a 58% overall Muslim majority. More importantly, even in the reduced format it would still provide the all-critical land bridge between Kosovo and Bosnia.

Bosnia — Alija Izetbegovic’s memorable assertion in his Islamic Declaration that “there can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions,” and that his goal is “a great Islamic federation spreading from Morocco to Indonesia,” was not unusual for a sincere Islamist. (34)

(BuA: Read my very first article in my blog: ISLAM - WHY DOES IT NOT INTEGRATE WITH HOST COUNTRIES?)

Bill Clinton was still in the White House when a classified State Department report warned that the Muslim-controlled parts of Bosnia were a safe haven for Islamic terrorism. (35) This was confirmed in November 2001 when Bosnian passports were found in a house in Kabul used by the fleeing Taliban. (36) The core of Bin Laden’s Balkan network consists of the veterans of El Moujahed brigade of the Bosnian-Muslim army. The unit was distinguished by its spectacular cruelty, including decapitation of prisoners to the chants of Allahu-akbar. (37)

After the end of the Bosnian war, many Muslim volunteers remained. (BuA note - THESE WERE PAKISTAN BASED TERROR MODULES OF LASHKAR E TAIBA, JAISH E MOHAMMAD. Read it here : ISI & AL QAEDA) (38) The Bosnian-Muslim government circumvented the Dayton rules by granting them Bosnian citizenship. (39) The Bosnian veterans went on to perpetrate murder and mayhem in many countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. (40) They planned the Millennium Plot and the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh. (41) They plotted to blow up U.S. military installations in Germany. (42) Even 9/11 itself had a Bosnian Connection: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, who planned the 9/11 attacks, was a seasoned veteran of the Bosnian jihad, as were two of the hijackers. (43)

As Jane’s Intelligence Review concluded in 2006, “The current threat of terrorism in Bosnia and Herzegovina comes from a younger, post-war generation of militant Islamists, radicalized by US actions in Iraq and AFGHANISTAN.” (THE PAKISTANI ISI, LASHKAR E TAIBA ETC NEXUS)

The Green Corridor and the War on Terrorism — In the Balkans, a phenomenon initially based on local groups is morphing into an integral part of a global network. Al-Qaeda and its loosely linked Balkan offshoots, or self-starting independent cells merely inspired by it, are capable of fielding operatives who are European in appearance and seemingly integrated into the Western society — the “white al-Qa’eda.” (44) Western law-enforcement officials concede that the region has become “a paradise” for Islamic radicals.” (45)

By contrast, Western politicians and diplomats are typically evasive. They do not deny the existence of the problem, but tend to relativize it by adding that it is unlikely to disturb the political and security balance in the region, or to damage Western interests. As a former diplomat notes, “Then usually follows the reassuring mantra about the pro-European orientation of secularized Balkan Muslims with the optimistic conclusion that the accelerated process of the Euro-integration of the whole region would narrow the space for radical Islamism until such tendencies will finally disappear.” (46)

A major fault of the Western approach is its naïve faith in the attractive powers of secularisation. There is a growing gap between the reality of Islam in the Balkans and Western mainstream narrative about the allegedly moderate and tolerant “Balkan Islam.” The problem of the Green Corridor will not be resolved without critical reexamination of Western policies as well as Western illusions. That problem has morphed over the past two decades into a demographic, social and political reality:

“[W]hile the Muslims have established a continuity which drives a wedge within Christian Central Europe, the West is looking with indifference at that evolving situation which they hope will create a docile, Turkish-like Islam. But in view of the trouble Turkey itself is suffering from Muslim fundamentalists, it is doubtful whether these hopes will be fulfilled.” (47)

(BuA: Actually the author hit it right when he pointed out the western interests not being hit. The western interest is Oil & Gas and the Green Corridor ensures that oil pipelines are under control of Islamic assets that the West controls. However, the havoc these Isalmist will rein on the host countries seems oblivious to this Cheney, Haliburton led Western consortium. The Isamists are feeding into the greed of these corporations and entities into the West and quietly taking over an important part of Europe)

The U.S. policy in Southeast Europe over the past two decades in general, and Washington’s Kosovo policy in particular, have had the effect, by design or default, to favor the aspirations of various supposedly pro-Western Muslim communities in the Balkans along the geographic line extending from Turkey north-westwards towards Central Europe. (48) That policy was based on the expectation that satisfying Muslim ambitions in a secondary theater will improve the U.S. standing in the Muslim world as a whole. (BuA: ALSO OIL & GAS)

The policy has never yielded any dividends, but repeated failure only prompts its advocates to redouble their efforts. Former U.S. Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns thus declared on February 18, 2008, a day after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence: “Kosovo is going to be a vastly majority Muslim state, given the fact that 92 to 94 percent of their population is Muslim, and we think it is a very positive step that this Muslim state, Muslim majority state, has been created today. It’s a stable — we think it’s going to be a stable state.” (BuA: BURNS FORGOT TO MENTION THE AMBO PIPELINE, CAMP BONDSTEEL in KOSOVO)

If it is intrinsically “a very positive step” for the United States that a “vastly Muslim state” is created on European soil that had been “cleansed” of non-Muslims then it should be expected that Washington will be equally supportive of an independent Sanjak that would connect Kosovo with Bosnia, of a centralized, i.e. Muslim-controlled Bosnia that will abolish the legacy of Dayton, or of any other putative Islamistan in the region — from yet-to-be federalized Macedonia to a revived Eastern Rumelia in southern Bulgaria. It is worthy of note that the Organization of the Islamic Conference statement, to which the State Department referred so approvingly, announced that the Islamic Umma wishes its brothers and sisters in Kosovo success: “There is no doubt that the independence of Kosovo will be an asset to the Muslim world and further enhance the joint Islamic action.” (49)

“There is no doubt,” indeed. Far from providing a model of pro-Western “moderate Islam,” Kosovo, Muslim Bosnia, Sanjak, western Macedonia, and southern Bulgaria are already the breeding ground for thousands of young hard-line Islamists. Their dedication is honed in thousands of newly-built, mostly foreign-financed mosques and Islamic centers. The intent was stated by the head of the Islamic establishment in Sarajevo. “The small jihad is now finished … The Bosnian state is intact. But now we have to fight a bigger, second jihad,” Mustafa Ceric, the Reis-ul-Ulema in Bosnia-Herzegovina, declared over a decade ago. This statement reflects the inherent dynamism of political Islam: a truce with Dar al-Harb is allowed, sometimes even mandated, but a permanent peace is impossible for as long as there is a single infidel entity refusing to submit to Dar al-Islam.

If Western and especially U.S. policy in the Balkans was not meant to facilitate the Green Corridor, the issue is not why but how its effects paradoxically coincided with the regional objectives of those same Islamists who confront America in other parts of the world. Far from enhancing peace and regional stability, such policies continue to encourage seven distinct but interconnected trends centered on the Green Corridor:

(e) Pan-Islamic agitation for the completion of an uninterrupted Transverse by linking its as yet unconnected segments.

(f ) Destabilization of Bosnia resulting from constant Muslim demands for the erosion of all constitutional prerogatives leading to the abolition of the Republika Srpska.

(g) Growing separatism among Muslims in the Raska region of Serbia, manifest in the demand for the establishment of an “autonomous” Sanjak region.

(h) Continuing intensification of greater-Albanian aspirations against Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and rump-Serbia.

(i) Further religious radicalization and ethnic redefinition of Muslims in Bulgaria, leading to demands for territorial autonomy in the Rhodope region.

(j) Ongoing spread of Islamic agitation, mainly foreign-financed, through a growing network of mosques, Islamic centers, NGOs and “charities” all along the Route.

(k) Escalation of Turkey’s regional ambitions and Ankara’s quiet encouragement of all of the above trends and phenomena.

In all cases the immediate bill will be paid by the people of the Balkans, as it is already being paid by Kosovo’s disappearing Serbs; but long-term costs of the Green Corridor will haunt the West. By encouraging its Albanian clients go ahead with the UDI, the U.S. administration has made a massive leap into the unknown. That leap is potentially on par with Austria’s July 1914 ultimatum to Serbia. The fruits will be equally bitter. While their exact size and taste are hard to predict right now, that in the fullness of time both America and Europe will come to regret the criminal folly of their current leaders is certain. Pandora’s Box is wide open.

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BuA end note: The world may remember 9/11 as the date Twin Towers were brought down. But it has a far more significant connotation with the Islamic world and the Balkans. It is the date, Muslims were defeated in Europe at the gates of Vienna. For an excellent reading, go to: THE OTHER SEPTEMBER 11th.


There is also a metaphysical component to this Balkan tale - maybe I will put in the next article.

Notes

1 Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, for many years foreign affairs editor of Chronicles, is Executive Director of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.

2 The term “Zelena transverzala” first gained prominence 25 years ago, just before the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in 1984. The organizing committee — dominated by Bosnian Muslim members of the Communist Party (“League of Communists,” SKJ) — decided to give the sports hall built for the event an unusual name, “Zetra.” This was the acronym for the Green Corridor (ZElena-TRAnsverzala); it supposedly referred to the belt of urban parkland in central Sarajevo. Some observers — including Bosnian anti-terrorism expert Dzevad Galijasevic, himself a Muslim — believe that the choice of the name was anything but incidental.

3 In a 2001 report by the Italian security services, the dorsale verde is defined as “the project of Islamic colonization of the Balkans that aims at the gradual establishment of a green corridor to include all regions in which predominantly Muslim ethnic groups prevail.” Cf. Fiorenza Saranzini: “Soldi e moschee, Osama avanza nei Balcani.” Corriere della Sera, November 8, 2001, p. 11. See also “Come nasce la dorsale verde“ in Limes, 3/1998, pp. 15-27.

4 Massimo Nava, “Il nostro Afghanistan”, in Limes Quaderni Speciali 4/2001, pp. 177-185.

5 Cf. Laura Iucci: “La Bosnia resta un serbatoio di terroristi.” Limes (Rome), No 6-2003, pp. 203-208.

6 Sir Alfred Sherman: “Let’s Remove the Blinkers.” The Jewish Chronicle, September 30, 1994.

7 Shaul Shay, Islamic Terror and the Balkans. Transaction Publishers, 2008.

8 John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad. Zenith Press, 2007.

9 Alija Izetbegovic, Islamska deklaracija. Sarajevo: Mala muslimanska biblioteka, 1990.

10 “The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master toward slaves,” a British diplomat, H.E.W. Young, reported as late as 1909, “whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed.”

11 All data based on official statistics, adjusted for Panonian (non-Balkan) regions of Serbia and Croatia.

12 The region’s once-thriving Jewish community was destroyed during World War II, with the enthusiastic participation of two Waffen SS divisions, Hanjar (Bosnian-Muslim) and Skenderbey (Kosovo- Albanian).

13 It now stand at -0.83 percent in both Bulgaria and Greece.

14 Bassam Tibi, “Turkey’s Islamist Danger.” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2009.

15 “The Role of the Balkan Muslims in the Shaping of Europe,” Muslim Media Network, May 4, 2008.

16 Christopher Deliso, The Coming Balkan Caliphate. Praeger, 2007, p. 106.

17 In November 2008 the “Justice Federation,” a Pomak NGO in the town of Gotse Delchev, declared hat Pomaks were separate ethnicity and demanded their own TV channel and political party.

18 This claim is similar to the Albanian assertion of “Illyrian” descent: by implication, Orthodox Christian Slavs (Serbs, Bulgarians) are the relative “newcomers,” whose claim to the land is therefore more tenuous.

19 FOCUS News Agency, January 10, 2009: www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n166573.

20 Clive Leviyev-Sawyer,”Radical Islam in Bulgaria?” The Sofia Echo, April 16, 2007.

21 Deliso, op. cit., p. 84.

22 The Washington Times, June 22, 2001.

23 “Fissures in Balkan Islam,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 2006.

24 Voice of America interview, February 17, 2008.

25 Lewis Mackenzie, “We Bombed the Wrong Side in Kosovo.” The National Post, April 6, 2004.

26 Less than a year after NATO intervention, on 10 March 2000, the UN human rights rapporteur Jiri Dienstbier declared that “Kosovo is in chaos,” having become “a mafia paradise.” Reuters, 20 March 2000.

27 Cf. Norbert Spinrath, president of the Association of German Police Officers, in Der Spiegel, December 15, 1999. In March 2008, a similar picture was presented in a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

28 “Terrorists use Balkan corridor.” International Herald Tribune, April 18, 2006.

29 The Jerusalem Post, September 14, 1998.

30 USA Today, November 26, 2001.

31 The Sunday Times (London), March 22, 1998.

32 The Washington Times, May 4, 1999.

33 In a November 2008 progress report, the European Union said “corruption is still widespread and remains a major problem in Kosovo… due to insufficient legislative and implementing measures.”

34 Cf. Lieutenant Colonel John E. Sray, USA, Selling the Bosnia Myth to America: Buyer Beware. U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS, October 1995.

35 The Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2001.

36 AP, November 21, 2001.

37 Videos of such gruesome spectacles are circulated through Islamic centers and Internet sites in the West.

38 The Washington Post, November 30, 1995.

39 “Mujaheddin Remaining in Bosnia,” The Washington Post, July 8, 1996.

40 “Le troisième membre du ‘gang de Roubaix’ se revendique proche du FIS.” Le Monde, October 6, 2001.

41 The New York Times, June 26, 1997.

42 The Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2001.

43 John Schindler, author of Unholy Terror, in World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 35, September 27, 2007.

44 “Terrorist Cells Find Foothold in the Balkans,” The Washington Post, December 1, 2005.

45 Gregory Katz, “Terrorists said to be getting aid in Balkans,” Houston Chronicle, December 27, 2005.

46 Chronicles Online, April 6, 2006. www.chroniclesmagazine.org.

47 Raphael Israeli: From Bosnia To Kosovo: The Re-Islamization Of The Balkans. Ariel Center for Policy Research, Policy Paper No. 109, 2004.

48 Cf. a “programmatic” article on the U.S.-sponsored Greater Middle East by two New Republic editors, Jacob Heilbrunn and Michael Lind: “The Third American Empire.” The New York Times, January 2, 1996.

49 Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the head of the OIC, as quoted by Reuters, February 19, 2008.

CHINESE MEDIA : INDIA'S UNWISE MILITARY MOVES

This report came out on June 11th, 2009 in an editorial in People's Daily Online, CHINA: titled "India's unwise military moves". (c) People's Daily Online and Global Times.

Important article and a must read for fence sitters.

THE ARTICLE:

In the last few days, India has dispatched roughly 60,000 troops to its border with China, the scene of enduring territorial disputes between the two countries.

J.J. Singh, the Indian governor of the controversial area, said the move was intended to "meet future security challenges" from China. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed, despite cooperative India-China relations, his government would make no concessions to China on territorial disputes.

The tough posture Singh's new government has taken may win some applause among India's domestic nationalists. But it is dangerous if it is based on a false anticipation that China will cave in.

India has long held contradictory views on China. Another big Asian country, India is frustrated that China's rise has captured much of the world's attention. Proud of its "advanced political system," India feels superior to China. However, it faces a disappointing domestic situation which is unstable compared with China's.

India likes to brag about its sustainable development, but worries that it is being left behind by China. China is seen in India as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass.

But India can't actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has NOT YET realized this.

Indian politicians these days SEEM to think their country would be doing China a huge favor simply by NOT joining the "ring around China" established by the US and Japan.
India's growing power would have a significant impact on the balance of this equation, which has led India to think that fear and gratitude for its restraint will cause China to defer to it on territorial disputes.

But this is WISHFUL THINKING, as China won't make any compromises in its border disputes with India. And while China wishes to coexist peacefully with India, this desire isn't born out of fear.



India's current course can only lead to a rivalry between the two countries. India needs to consider whether or not it can afford the consequences of a potential confrontation with China. It should also be asking itself why it hasn't forged the stable and friendly relationship with China that China enjoys with many of India's neighbors, like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Any aggressive moves will certainly not aid the development of good relations with China. India should examine its attitude and preconceptions; it will need to adjust if it hopes to cooperate with China and achieve a MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL OUTCOME.

KARGIL - PAF's retd AIR COMMODORE'S ACCOUNT

This article appeared today (Sunday 14th June, 2009) in Indian Express, hence (c) to Indian express. Article title was: Pakistan's Kargil Plot.



Air Commodore (retd) Kaiser Tufail was Director of Operations, Pakistan Air Force, at the time of the Kargil war in 1999. His account, published in the Vayu Aerospace and Defence Review magazine, shows how steps taken by Pakistan triggered the conflict. Before excerpts, do go to Kaiser's blog : KAISER - AERONAUT - it has a treasure trove of information for buffs (Prasun - you may like this blog!).

INDIAN EXPRESS ARTICLE:

The Planning: As Director of Operations (in the rank of Gp Capt), the first occasion when I got an opportunity to interact with the Army’s Director of Military Operations (DMO) was over a phone call, some time in March 1999. Brig Nadeem Taj (who later became the ISI Chief) called with great courtesy and requested some information that he needed for a paper exercise, as he told me. He wanted to know when did the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) last carry out a deployment at Skardu, how many aircraft were deployed. Rather impressed with the Army’s interest in PAF matters, I passed on the requisite details. Next day, Brig Taj again called, but this time his questions were more probing and he wanted some classified information, including fuel storage capacity at Skardu, fighter sortie-generation capacity, radar coverage, etc.




He insisted that he was preparing a briefing and wanted his facts and figures right, in front of his bosses. Although he made it sound like routine contingency planning, I sensed that something unusual was brewing.

A cautious Air Marshal Zahid Anis (the Deputy Chief of Air Staff Operations) decided to check things for himself and despatched Gp Capt Tariq Ashraf, Officer Commanding of No. 33 Wing at PAF Base, Kamra, to look things over at Skardu and make a report. Within a few days, Gp Capt Tariq (who was also the designated wartime Commander of Skardu Base) had completed his visit, which included his own periodic war-readiness inspection.

While he made a detailed report to the DCAS (Ops), he let me in on the Army’s mobilisation and other preparations that he had seen at Skardu. His analysis was that ‘something big is imminent’. Helicopter flying activity was feverishly high as Army Aviation’s Mi-17s were busy moving artillery guns and ammunition to the posts that had been vacated by the Indians during winter season. Troops in battle gear were to be seen all over the city. Interestingly, Army messes were abuzz with war chatter amongst young officers.



In retrospect, one wonders how Indian intelligence agencies failed to read any such signs, many weeks before the operation unfolded. After hearing Gp Capt Tariq’s report, Air Marshal Zahid again got in touch with Major General Tauqir and, in a roundabout way, told him that if the Army’s ongoing ‘review of contingency plans’ required the PAF to be factored in, an Operations and Plans team would be available for discussion.

Nothing was heard from the GHQ till 12 May, when Air Marshal Zahid was told to send a team for a briefing at HQ 10 Corps with regard to ‘Kashmir Contingency’. Air Cdre Abid Rao, Air Cdre Saleem Nawaz (the Assistant Chief of Air Staff Plans) and myself were directed by the DCAS (Ops) to attend a briefing on the ‘latest situation in Kashmir’ at HQ 10 Corps. We were welcomed by the Chief of Staff (COS) of the Corps, who led us to the briefing room. Shortly thereafter, Corps Commander Lt General Mehmud Ahmad entered, clad in a bush-coat and his trademark camouflage scarf, cutting an impressive figure. After exchange of pleasantries, the COS started with the map orientation briefing.

Thereafter, Lt General Mehmud took over and broke the news that a limited operation had started two days earlier. It was nothing more than a ‘protective manoeuvre’, he explained, and was meant to foreclose any further mischief by the enemy, who had been a nuisance in the Neelam Valley, specially on the road of our side of the Line of Control (LoC). He then elaborated that a few vacant Indian posts had been occupied on peaks across the LoC, overlooking the Dras-Kargil Road.

The target was a vulnerable section of Dras-Kargil Road, whose blocking would virtually cut off the crucial lifeline which carried the bulk of supplies needed for daily consumption as well as annual winter-stocking in Leh-Siachen Sector. “Come October, we shall walk in to Siachen—to mop up the dead bodies of hundreds of Indians left hungry, out in the cold,” he succinctly summed up what appeared to be a new dimension to the Siachen dispute.

When Lt General Mehmud asked for questions at the end of the rather crisp and to-the-point briefing, Air Cdre Saleem Nawaz opened up by enquiring on the type of air support that might be needed for the operation. Lt General Mehmud assured us that air support was not envisaged and that his forces could take care of enemy aircraft, if they intervened. “I have Stingers on every peak,” he announced.

Air Cdre Saleem tried to point out the limited envelope of these types of missiles and said that nothing stopped the IAF from attacking the posts and artillery pieces from high altitude. To this, Lt General Mehmud’s reply was that his troops were well camouflaged and concealed and that IAF pilots would not be able to pick out the posts from the air. As the discussion got more animated, I asked the Corps Commander if he was sure the Indians would not use their artillery to vacate our incursion, given the criticality of the situation from their standpoint.

He replied that the Dras-Kargil stretch did not allow positioning of hundreds of guns that were required, due to lack of depth; in any case, it would be suicidal for the Indians to denude artillery firepower from any other sector as defensive balance had to be maintained.

It seemed from the Corps Commander’s smug appreciation of the situation that the Indians had been tightly straitjacketed in Dras-Kargil Sector and had no option but to submit to our operational design. More significantly, an alternate action like a strategic riposte by the Indians in another sector had been rendered out of question, given the nuclear environment.

Whether an exterior manoeuvre (diplomatic offensive) by the beleaguered Indians had crossed the planners’ minds, it was not discernible in the Corps Commander’s elucidation. Perhaps it was the incredulousness of the whole thing that led Air Cdre Abid Rao to famously quip, “After this operation, it’s going to be either a Court Martial or Martial Law!” as we walked out of the briefing room. Back at Air Headquarters, we briefed the DCAS (Ops) about what had transpired at the 10 Corps briefing.

His surprise at the developments, as well as his concern over the possibility of events spiralling out of control, could not remain concealed behind his otherwise unflappable demeanour. We all were also piqued at being left out of the Army’s planning, though we were given to believe that it was a ‘limited tactical action’ in which the PAF would not be required—an issue that none of us agreed with.

PAF’s predicament

From the very beginning of the Kargil operations, the PAF was entrapped by a circumstantial absurdity: it was faced with the ludicrous predicament of having to provide air support to infiltrators already disowned by the Pakistan Army leadership! In any case, it took some effort to impress on the latter that crossing the LoC by fighters laden with bombs was not, by any stretch of imagination, akin to lobbing a few artillery shells to settle scores.

There was no doubt in the minds of PAF Air Staff that the first cross-border attack would invite an immediate response from the IAF in the shape of a retaliatory strike against the home base of the intruding fighters, thus starting the next round. PAF’s intervention meant all-out war: this unmistakable conclusion was conveyed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by the Air Chief in no equivocal terms.

Short of starting an all-out war, PAF looked at some saner options that could put some wind in the sails after doldrums had been hit. Air Marshal Najib Akhtar, the Air Officer Commanding of Air Defence Command, was co-opted by the Air Staff to sift the possibilities. Audacious and innovative in equal parts, Air Marshal Najib had an excellent knowledge about own and enemy’s Air Defence Ground Environment.

He had conceived and overseen the unprecedented heli-lift of a low-looking radar to a 14,000 ft mountain top on the forbidding Deosai Plateau. The highly risky operation became possible with the help of some courageous flying by Army Aviation pilots. With good low level radar now available up to the LoC, Air Marshal Najib along with the Air Staff focused on fighter sweeps as a possible option.

While the PAF looked at some offensive options, it had a more pressing defensive issue at hand. The IAF’s minor border violations during recce missions were not of grave consequence in so far as no bombing took place in our territory; however, the fact that these missions helped the enemy refine its air and artillery targeting was, to say the least, disconcerting. There were constant reports of our troops on the LoC disturbed to see (or hear) IAF fighters operating with apparent impunity.

The matter was taken up by the GHQ with AHQ and it was resolved that Combat Air Patrols (CAPs) would be flown by the F-16s operating out of Minhas (Kamra) and Sargodha. This arrangement resulted in less on-station time but was safer than operating out of vulnerable Skardu, which had inadequate early warning in the mountainous terrain; its status as a turn-around facility was, however, considered acceptable for its location. A flight of F-7s was, nonetheless, deployed primarily for point defence of the important garrison town of Skardu as well as the air base.

F-16 CAPs could not have been flown all day long as spares support was limited under the prevailing US sanctions. Random CAPs were resorted to, with a noticeable drop in border violations only as long as the F-16s were on station. There were a few cases of F-16s and Mirage 2000s locking their adversaries with the on-board radars but caution usually prevailed and no close encounters took place. After one week of CAPs, the F-16 maintenance personnel indicated that war reserve spares were being eaten into and the activity had to be ‘rationalised’, a euphemism for discontinuing it altogether.

Those not aware of the gravity of the F-16 operability problem under sanctions have complained of lack of cooperation by the PAF. Suffice to say that if the PAF had been included in the initial planning, this anomaly (along with many others) would have emerged as a mitigating factor against the Kargil adventure.

It is another matter that the Army high command did not envisage operations ever coming to such a pass. Now, it was almost as if PAF was to blame for the Kargil venture spiralling out of control!

Might it strike to some that PAF’s restraint in warding off a major conflagration may have been its paramount contribution to the Kargil conflict?

The Aftermath

It has emerged that the principal protagonists of the Kargil adventure were the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Pervez Musharraf, Commander 10 Corps Lt General Mehmud Ahmed and Commander Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA) Major General Javed Hasan. The trio, in previous ranks and appointments, had been associated with planning during paper exercises on how to wrest control of lost territory in Siachen.

The plans were not acceptable to the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to whom the options had been put up for review more than once. She was well-versed in international affairs and all too intelligent to be taken in by the chicanery. It fell to the wisdom of her successor, Mr Nawaz Sharif, to approve the Army trio’s self-serving presentation. “General sahib, bismillah karen …” is how he is supposed to have given the go ahead, not withstanding the denials we hear from him every new moon.

In an effort to keep the plan secret—which was the key to its successful initiation, so it was thought—the Army trio took no one into confidence, neither its operational commanders, nor the heads of the other services. This, regrettably, resulted in a closed loop thought process, which engendered a string of oversights and failures.

Kargil, I suspect, like the 1965 and 1971 Wars, was a case of not having enough dissenters (‘devil’s advocates’, if you will) during planning, because everyone wanted to agree with the boss. That single reason, I think, was the root cause of most of the failures that were apparent right from the beginning. If this point is understood well, remedial measures towards tolerance and liberalism can follow as a matter of course.

Such an organisational milieu, based on honest appraisal and fearless appeal, would be conducive to sound and sensible planning. It would also go a long way in preclusion of Kargil-like disasters.

‘The truth is out…Sharif not innocent’

Gen VP Malik, Indian Army Chief during kargil conflict

It is a good that now some more information about the war has started coming from Pakistan. He (Kaiser Tufail) is the first Pakistan Air Force officer who has written about it in a candid manner. I am sure that slowly more information on the Kargil operations will come out now that Pervez Musharraf is not around. The article basically confirms our view that not many people had been taken into confidence (when the Pakistan Army planned the operation), particularly from the other two services—the Air Force and the Navy. It was conceived by the trio of Musharraf, 10 Corps Commander Lt Gen Mehmud Ahmad and Force Command Northern Areas commander Maj Gen Javed Hasan.

These three people were deeply involved as was the Director General of Military Operations. It also confirms my view that Nawaz Sharif is not as innocent as he makes himself out to be. In my book, In Kargil: From Surprise to Victory, I had written that Sharif had been briefed about the operation though he may not have understood the implications of it. He is really confirming what we always knew.



What I don’t agree with is that the Pakistani Army airlifted guns to vacated posts. Except for one post, none of the positions had been vacated by us. No guns were taken to our areas expect that in one case, we found 120 mm mortars. The artillery remained on their side.

What he has written is confirming what is known to us. If we have to learn proper lessons and Pakistan has to learn proper lessons, more such truth should come out. From our side, there is a lot of material on the war that has been brought out officially as well as in books. We did not get the confirmation from the Pakistani side but now that too has started coming.

PAKISTAN & CHINA'S ECONOMIC TERRORISM AGAINST INDIA

Counterfeiting is economic terrorism, but terrorism none the less. When your adversary is economically becoming stronger it will mean that the adversary will also become militarily stronger and powerful, a situation to the detriment of the host country.

Pakistan’s ISI has systematically tried to weaken India by supporting insurgencies in India, opening of caste and religious divide in the society and also good old terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere. Where it has played with finesse is in the counterfeiting department.

Before this, I cannot resist a little history : OPERATION BERNHARD

Only a fortnight after the start of World War II, at a meeting that has remained a secret for more than half a century, officials of German finance and Nazi espionage approved an audacious plot to bring down the world's financial system. Hundreds of millions of forged British pounds were to become a weapon of war. Operation Bernhard not only became the greatest counterfeit scheme in history but the most wide-ranging and bizarre, with its own gallery of rogues.


COUNTERFEIT £5 NOTE MADE BY THE NAZIS

Major Bernhard Krueger, a meticulously correct SS engineer, ran a production line of Jewish prisoners in Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. The millions of forged notes they printed were laundered through a Nazi confidence man with the help of Jewish agents who concealed their origins. Toward the end, one of Europe 's most accomplished professional forgers, the only career criminal in the operation, was brought in to counterfeit dollar bills.


Bernhard Krueger as a young SS officer (left), and in a mug shot taken by the British after the war. Photo Credit: British National Archives

In London, the arrogant grandees at the Bank of England could not believe their pound notes could be forged with such expertise and in such quantity. Even George Soros, the great speculator who broke the Bank of England fifty years later, almost got bilked as a boy on the Budapest black market. In one of the crowning ironies of many, after the war Golda Meir protected a millionaire Jewish money-launderer from British authorities in what was then known as Palestine.

The plot was hatched in Berlin on September 18, 1939, behind the imposing stone facade of what had once been Kaiser Wilhelm's Finance Ministry. Walther Funk, a pudgy former financial journalist whose principal task was keeping German industry in Hitler's camp, was the only one to register the least objection because he feared the counterfeit notes would upset his task of milking Hitler's conquered territories. Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, was not present but feared the "grotesque plan" might be turned against Germany 's own fragile finances by the Allies. In fact, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt toyed with the idea of counterfeiting enemy currency but their advisers rejected it.

Nevertheless, the minds of Nazi espionage believed they could weaken the pound as the trading standard and store of value underpinning the British Empire. Bullies and incompetents were at first put in charge of the operation. After several false starts, Krueger, a textile engineer, figured out how to match the paper, printing, and design of the impressive British notes. He found his forgers in Jewish death camps on the orders of SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler. Some were plucked from Auschwitz by Krueger himself, who courteously addressed them with the formal German Sie.

The SS planned to keep the operation secret by killing them when the job was done. The prisoners worked with the knowledge that they were marked for death when they had finished their jobs. " From the start, they wondered whether they should stretch out their work and risk execution for sabotage, or perform efficiently and thus hasten their own deaths. No one ever knew for sure where Krueger stood, but by keeping the operation going, he kept himself from being sent to the Russian front. What all these men said and thought as they lived under this sword of Damocles makes chilling, personal drama.

From 1942 to 1945, the Germans forged more pound notes than all the reserves in the vaults of the Bank of England--132 million pounds, equal to about 15 per cent of all genuine notes in circulation and enough to cast suspicion on all of England 's paper money. They were worth $650 million at the wartime rate of exchange and six or seven billion dollars in today's money.

By 1943 the Luftwaffe was almost kaput, so instead of pursuing their original goal of dropping the counterfeits on England to cast suspicion on real pound notes, the SS used the fakes to finance its own espionage service--whose discoveries Hitler ignored like all bad news--and to undermine and eventually absorb the German military's own intelligence corps. The SS specialized mainly in dirty tricks and, true to the nature of the Nazis' gangster regime, in skimming money to enrich themselves. So many counterfeit pounds flooded the black markets on the European continent and North Africa that Britain's currency came under widespread suspicion abroad, and its value plunged.The British defense was as weak as it was unprecedented. Normally nations at war guard their currency by prohibiting its export. Instead, the British imposed a wartime blockade on bringing pounds into the country to prevent the counterfeits from infecting the economy. Scotland Yard was powerless, and so was Interpol. Its Vienna headquarters had fallen into Hitler's hands when he swallowed Austria in 1938. The Nazis even fooled Swiss bankers, whom the British left swinging in the wind rather than let their secret defenses against counterfeits become known.

By the end of the war, Operation Bernhard had left its imprint. Through one of the Jewish money launderers, the Jewish underground passed on thousands of counterfeits to help the ingathering of exiles to Palestine and the purchase of war materiel for the nascent Israeli army. The Bank of England was so embarrassed by the massive counterfeit that it not only burned the fakes but some of its files. In the continuing and futile search for Nazi loot and bank records deep in the Alpine lakes where the SS dumped millions of forged bills, the financial and political ripples continued into this century.

PAKISTAN:

Times of India: Though the role of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI in printing and circulation of FICN (Fake Indian Currency Notes) has never been a secret, sleuths recently found that the spy agency had, of late, impressed upon the government in Islamabad to import additional currency-standard printing paper from companies located in London to pursue its nefarious designs in India.

Pakistan has been procuring currency-standard printing paper in huge quantities from London-based companies — much higher than normal requirement of the country for printing its own currency — for diverting it to print FICN.

The ISI has, in fact, been using state air-carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to tansport counterfeit currency to its conduits in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, sources in investigating agencies said.

The modus operandi of the ISI was revealed by two Nepali counterfeit currency traffickers who were arrested by Thailand police in October 2008. During interrogation, the accused disclosed that they were working for a prominent Nepali businessman who was the son of a former minister in King Gyanendra's regime. “The fact that Nepali territory is being used by Pakistanis to smuggle counterfeit currency is well known. The first such expose was made when Pakistani diplomats were caught distributing FICN in Nepal,” an official said.

According to a recent Government estimate, counterfeit currency amounting to Rs 169,000 crore (USD 36,000 MILLION) is floating around in the Indian financial system. From real estate transactions to ordinary grocery shopping, these bogus notes are being deployed everyday — sometimes innocently, sometimes with a sinister objective. “In 2008, the CBI registered 13 cases having international/ inter-State ramifications relating to the recovery/ seizure of fake Indian currency notes,” says Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) spokesperson Harsh Bhal.

Intelligence agencies see the counterfeit rupee attack as a form of “economic terrorism”. They have traced many of the fake currency operations back to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and its ancillary crime syndicates such as the Dawood Ibrahim gang. With a multi-layered network in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka and also inside India, counterfeit notes enter India in all three ways — through land, sea and air.

Intelligence officials say the ISI uses terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) to smuggle and circulate counterfeit currency in India.

Dangerously, the counterfeiters have managed to find their way into the official banking system. “Perhaps there is no better way to pummel India’s economy,” says an intelligence official. He explains the modus operandi. Fake currency operatives usually deposit the notes during peak hours when bank tellers are pressed for time and liable to make mistakes.

Fake currency amounting to nearly Rs 3 crore was found in the chest of the State Bank of India’s Domariaganj branch in Uttar Pradesh’s Siddarthnagar district. Some fake notes were also found in the currency chest of ICICI Bank’s Sanjay Place branch in Agra. The examples can go on.

Where are the fake notes printed? A CBI report to the Finance Ministry suggested that the Pakistan Government printing press in Quetta (Baluchistan) was churning out large quantities of counterfeit Indian currency.

Karachi’s security press, and two other presses in Lahore and Peshawar, have also been suspected.

The fine quality of Pakistan-produced fake currency has alarmed India. Printed on security paper, the sophistication and craftsmanship is of a high order. “Only a specialist can make out the notes as counterfeit,” says an intelligence official. The fake notes duplicate serial numbers and floral designs of genuine notes. In addition, they even have the security wire or “guide wire” — the common man’s mode of authenticating a currency note.

However, in the larger reckoning, the problem remains. If and when India does decide to take action against Pakistan-based terror, it may find that it is not enough to destroy merely military camps. A certain currency printing press in Quetta may also need to be blown up!

CHINA:

China loses no chance to undermine India at international for a, be if for surreptitious moves during the Nuclear Deal or blocking Maulana Massod’s Azhar’s terrorist tag in the UN (though this was together with UK) or the more blatant vetoing of ADB loan of US$60 million to India because there was a reference to Arunachal Pradesh.

But what takes the cake is this Nigerian Tribune News dated 6th June 2009. It states: “A clearing agent(names withheld) has been apprehended by the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) over his involvement in the importation of fake malaria drugs (Maloxine and Amalar tablets) worth N32.1million.

He was arrested at Kirikiri Terminal in Lagos while attempting to clear a container load of the drugs marked PCIU 2184458 which was imported by Divine Favour Overseas limited of 41, Tejuosho Street, Yaba.

According to the Director-Genral of NAFDAC, Dr. Paul Orhii, who disclosed this at a press conference in Lagos on Monday, the arrest and subsequent seizure of the drugs followed a text message from an informant on the development.

He said the fake products were produced in China but labelled “Made in India,” adding that the laboratory analysis of the drugs had revealed that it lacked an important active ingredient called pyrimenthamine.

The NAFDAC boss said the seizure was significant in view of the emergence of resistance strain of malaria parasites, saying the use of the fake drugs might lead to treatment failure, anaemia and death if no effective drug was given after.”

Bear in mind, The Indian pharmaceutical industry’s exports to Africa are worth $1,065 million a year and undermining that will suit China.

It is worth noting that multinational EU / US drug manufacturers who are hardest with the cheap Indian generic drugs, started a smear campaign in Africa that Indian generic drugs are fake. They forgot to mention that the fake ones are MADE IN CHINA.

How India helps : It costs about $15,000 a year to treat a patient with patented medicines. But the cost of the same treatment with generic drugs is just $300.

the Indian industry supplies quality drugs at one-tenth the cost of patented drugs. Over 15 per cent of India’s drug exports go to Africa. “And nearly a fifth of Africa’s $4.86 billion drug imports imports annually are from India.

A worthy target for economic terrorism. As China tries to increase its sphere of influence deeper into Africa, probably it makes economic sense to kill off India's entry to other sectors including oil, gas, coal, gemstones, other industries by sullying its name.

IS PAKISTAN DOUBLE DEALING OR IS IT THE US ?

Media in India is shouting through the roof that Pakistan's lie has been nailed. I was wondering which lie - cause they lie as a habit and they never accept if they are caught. It seems the media was going overboard on a Pentagon report.

Pakistan has used a substantial amount of military aid from the US meant to fight terrorism to build up its army with modern weapons and equipment for a conventional warfare against India, Pentagon documents have revealed. This is old news ! Barack Obama during his campaign days stated that Paksitan was preparing for a conventional war with India by misusing funds from US and I distinctly remember Arnab sniggering at this Obama remark.

What does the Pentagon "expose" say.

The Pentagon documents also revealed that a major post-9/11 American defence supply to Pakistan under FMF (Foreign Military Financing) had NOTHING to do with its fight against terrorism.

While the Taliban and al-Qaida gained ground in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, Islamabad bought eight P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft and their refurbishment worth $474 million. It also placed orders for 5,250 TOW anti-armour missiles worth $186 million. 2,007 of these have already been delivered and the rest are in the process of being supplied.

Besides buying more than 5,600 military radio sets worth $163 million, Pakistan bought six AN/TPS-77 surveillance radars worth $100 million and six C-130E transport aircraft and their refurbishment worth $76 million. Under the Excess Defence Articles (EDA), it was granted 20 AH-1F Cobra attack helicopters, which were then refurbished, according to the Pentagon documents.

Pakistan also used a substantial chunk of America's FMF to purchase up to 60 mid-life update kits for F-16 A/B combat aircraft valued at $891 million. Of this, it paid $477 million from the FMF funds given by the United States.

Similarly, of the $87 million worth order for 115 M-109 self-propelled howitzers, it paid $53 million from FMF. And all this happened while Pakistan's economic situation deteriorated. (All overseen by Bush Jr)

Islamabad also paid a whopping $1.43 billion to the US to purchase 18 new F-16 combat aircraft and another $629 million for F-16 armaments.

Prominent among these are 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles; 1,450 2,000-pound bombs; 500 JDAM tail Kits for gravity bombs and 1,600 Enhanced Paveway laser-guided kits, also for gravity bombs. F-16 has not been delivered to date.

Pakistan also paid $298 million for 100 Harpoon anti-ship missiles; $95 million for 500 sidewinder air-to-air missiles and $80 million for six Phalanx close-in-naval guns.

While the Pentagon notified Congress on the possible transfer to Pakistan of three P-3B aircraft as EDA grants that would be modified to carry the E-2C Hawkeye air-borne early warning suite in a deal worth up to $855 million, this effort has not progressed beyond the notification stage.

Major EDA grants since 2001 include 14 F-16A/B combat aircraft and 39 T-37 military trainer jets.

Under Coalition Support Funds -- part of the Pentagon budget -- Pakistan has received 26 Bell 412 utility helicopters, along with related parts and maintenance, valued at $235 million.

Finally, under 1206 and Frontier Corps Authorities, the United States has provided Pakistan with helicopter spare parts, night vision goggles, radios, body armour, helmets, first aid kits, litters and other individual soldier equipment.

QUESTIONS:

Who gave the funds to Pakistan?
Answer: USA

Which country gave majority of the weapons from these funds to Pakistan?
Answer: USA

Did US not know that these armaments are to fight India and not terrorists?
Answer: Yes, even then US supplied weapons.

So, is it really Pakistan whose lie has been nailed as media is shouting?

Or has US, again played the "Great Game" on India by making its ally on war on terror (Pakistan) reach a convention detente with India?

Have been saying again and again, Great Powers will play the Great Game. By watching from the sidelines, will ensure India forever remains an impotent spectator. However, India does have the wherewithal to change the game for US in the region. A certain division of US has realized this folly, and are pro-India. But economic crisis has restrained Washington's choices and China factor has curtailed many of the better ones for both US & India.

Time for India to stand up and be counted !

On 26th December last year, I wrote this article: SO YOU THINK AMERICA WILL HELP INDIA, WAKE UP !. There were 96 replies, some exceptionally good - do read them too.

INDIA JOLTED AS PAKISTAN RELEASES HAFEEZ SAEED AND UK QUESTIONS THE TERRORIST TAG ON MASOOD AZHAR

Picture (c) REUTERS

Hafeez Saeed is released, engineered by Pakistan. And why are we feigning to be surprised? Did anyone of us seriously believed that Pakistan has had a change of heart and is going to go after its own assets that it created to fight proxy wars in both India and Afghanistan.

Pakistan did what we all expected it will do – continue to finance terror, obfuscate terror dossiers handed to it, stall investigations, lie blatantly and to confuse the agenda go off tangentially to a topic known to provoke India – Kashmir (as was done when Prime Minister of Pakistan talked on Kashmir on the day Hafeez Saeed was released).

For an excellent analysis, read LONG WAR JOURNAL article - Pakistan releases LeT leader.

Interestingly, Indian Express reported (May 31) : “For the first time, the Pakistan Government on Saturday (May 30th ) admitted that Jamaat-ud-Dawa, blamed for the 26/11 attacks, has “prima facie” links with al-Qaeda, as it justified the detention of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed and another top leader after the Mumbai terror strikes.

Submitting his arguments on Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba, and Col (retd) Nazir Ahmed’s petition against their detention, Attorney General Latif Khosa told the Lahore High Court that the Government had received “evidence” that showed the JuD “prima facie has links with al-Qaeda”. Khosa said the Government had “classified information” that would justify their detention.”

Not that it mattered much, as Times of India on June 3rd reported: “The weak case that Pakistani authorities presented to the court point towards the essential ambiguity of its anti-terror commitments and underline a self-evident truth that Islamabad only acts on any Indian concern under pressure. Now that it has been seen to take on the Taliban in Swat - a pressing US concern - it perhaps feels it can ease up elsewhere. Also, given Pakistan's deep links with jehadis, it does not find it easy to take on all such outfits at the same time.

Pakistan's military establishment simply does not believe it can roll back its leverage against India through infiltrating jehadis into Kashmir even as fronts like Hurriyat keep the separatist movement going and groups like LeT and its jehadi twin Jaish-e-Mohammed are key parts of this strategy. Despite important LeT figures like Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a close aide of Saeed, being in direct contact with the Mumbai attackers, Saeed has been able to walk free.

The detention of the man who has preached jehad against India, inspiring thousands of youth in Pakistan's Punjab to volunteer on tours of duty in India was termed as unconstitutional by the Lahore court. Indian authorities were appalled as they said Pakistan facilitated his release by not pursuing the case against Saeed, who was placed under house arrest on December 11 last year in the face of extreme international pressure.”

The important point is not what Pakistan is doing, but what can India do?

Let’s look at a recent attack in Lahore. Orbat.com reports quoting Manjit Bajwa

“Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence’s Section K, responsible for handling Khalistani Indian Sikh separatists, suffered 100% casualties in the Taliban attack on Lahore. The section is housed in the front of the ISI building, which is adjacent to a police station. Of its strength of 36, ten were killed and 25 injured.”

What India needs to engineer are such black ops or help people to execute command that will be surgical in precision. Hafeez Saeed should be a marked man and he is out in the open – I see no reason why that murderer has any reason to live.

While Americans are pincer poised on the Haqqani group (responsible for Indian embassy bombing in Kabul with help of ISI), India should seriously look at eliminating D Company – notwithstanding the enormous clout Dawood has with Indian politicians and police and also with CIA, Dick Cheney black ops team.

India should eliminate Masood Azhar, the perpetrator of Indian Parliament attack, again with the help of ISI and JuD + LeT.

To understand the kind of leverage India has internationally, read this >Economic Times article - Britain has put a roadblock on India’s efforts to get Jaish-e-Mohammad founder Maulana Masood Azhar on the UNSC terror list. India’s request to put the JeM chief along with Lashar-e-Taiba intelligence chief Azam Cheema, who is an accused in the Mumbai train blasts, on the list has hit a hurdle after Britain asked for a confirmation of the evidence provided by INDIA.

Ok, China has raised similar apprehensions, but it was expected. But the question is why did UK raise concerns?

Remember David Miliband’s last visit to India where he tried his surreptitious best and with a boyish charm his face exudes,to set forth Kashmir as an agenda. Of course the kick he received in his backside from India, he will not forget in a hurry!

One must remember and recall, that BJP government’s greatest folly had been to release Massood Azhar and Omar Sheikh in Kandahar. It is well known that Omar Sheikh is a British Intelligence asset. During the Kosovo and Bosnia wars, British and American intelligence used ISI, Omar Sheikh, Al-Qaeda to send in Islamic warriors from LeT etc to fight the Serbs and Soviet backed assets.

Even after the Kandahar release, Omar Sheikh went to London twice from Pakistan to visit his parents, and while a red corner notice was put against him, Omar Sheikh was not even detained in London airports.

So, why is UK getting all shy on Masood Azhar? Is Masood Azhar also a British intelligence asset if not a collaborator? After all UK used to channel militants through them for the Kosovo war.

Interestingly, and I have stated this before, two notorious pan Islamic organizations are headquartered in UK. Both have Islamic Caliphate as their agenda - same as Al Qaeda's and LeT's.

1. Tablighi Jamaat : perhaps the largest Islamic “teaching organization,” was named for the Bali bombings in 2006. The organization—influenced by a branch of Saudi Arabian Islam known as Wahhabism—has already been linked to two of the July 7 London suicide bombers who attended a Tablighi mosque at the organization’s headquarters in Dewsbury, in northeast England. The jailed shoe-bomber Richard Reid is also known to have attended Tablighi meetings.

2. Hizbut Tahrir (HT): an extremely active and dangerous Islamic group also headquartered in Britain. HT is funded by various Saudi charities, and is most active in Central Asia. Another preachers’ group, openly promoting a worldwide Islamic Caliphate from the mosques of Britain, HT is ostensibly a non-gun-carrying group. But, at the same time, one of the most violent terrorist groups that function in Central Asia, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), recruits exclusively from the HT. HT is also active in Chechnya, although its headquarters are in Old Brompton Road in London.

I will have to go back to a new angle here and come back to the main story. Let’s just take the Kosovo liberation. Why on earth would Christian majority countries like US / UK and NATO members help carve out an Islamic enclave Kosovo from former Yugoslavia and use terrorist assets like LeT that were supplied by ISI, Al-Qaeda?



Kosovo has no oil. So?

But its still about oil. Confused?

When Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its independence, it was instantly recognized as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France.

Kosovo does not have oil but its location is strategic as the trans-Balkan pipeline - known as AMBO pipeline after its builder and operator the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation - will pass through it.

The pipeline will pump Caspian oil from the Bulgarian port of Burgas via Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora, for transport to European countries and the United States. Specifically, the 1.1 billion dollar AMBO pipeline will permit oil companies operating in the Caspian Sea to ship their oil to Rotterdam and the East Coast of the USA at substantially less cost than they are experiencing today.

Brown & Root Energy Services, a wholly-owned British subsidiary of Halliburton (remember DICK CHENEY – well he was CEO here and held shares) completed the original feasibility study for this project.

The report stated the this pipeline will "provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries", "provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor", "advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region" and "facilitate rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western Europe".

Behind the idea of that "grid" lay a go-for-broke militarization of an energy corridor that would stretch from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia through a series of now independent former SSRs of the Soviet Union to Turkey, and from there into the Balkans (from thence onto Europe). It was meant to sabotage the larger energy plans of both Russia and Iran. AMBO itself would bring oil from the Caspian basin to a terminal in the former SSR of Georgia in the Caucasus, and then transport it by tanker through the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of Burgas, where another pipeline would connect to Macedonia and then to the Albanian port of Vlora.



Incidentally, Halliburton was also granted a contract to service US troops in the Balkans and build "Bondsteel" in Kosovo, which now constitutes "the largest American foreign military base constructed since Vietnam".

And coincidentally the AMBO pipeline just runs along Camp BONDSTEEL.



“The AMBO Trans-Balkans pipeline project would link up with the pipeline corridors between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea basin, which lies at the hub of the World's largest unexplored oil reserves. The militarization of these various corridors is an integral part of Washington's design."

This is a topic worthy of a separate article which I will put up soon.

Some of you may ask me what has Hafeez Saeed’s release got to do with Camp Bondsteel?

If you look at it from micro perspective – then nothing. However, if you have the larger geo-strategic consideration in your perspective, you will get to see the larger picture – the dalliance of West with Islamic extremists and continued second class treatment to India and its concerns (which in reality is a function of India's toothless posturings in international fora).

While India has to look at Western countries playing the oil game, it has to look at China too as it tries to encircle India – be it in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Indian Ocean.

Adding complexity to this scenario is a weakening US and a rising China. India is rising too – but is it rising fast enough to contain and thwart designs of our friends and enemies in the region?

Racist Australia has understood that the US power is waning in the region. Brendan Nicholson writing in Australian newspaper THE AGE (2nd May) writes: “AUSTRALIA needs to massively bolster its military capacity to deal with the rise of China and the possible decline of American influence in the region.

"We must never put ourselves in a position where the price of our own security is a requirement to put Australian troops at risk in distant theatres of war where we have no direct interests at stake," the Defense White Paper stated.

It details the purchase of a massive list of military hardware expected to cost more than $100 billion. The weapons include a new generation of very long range submarines to provide "strategic strike" with cruise missiles and 100 state-of-the-art Joint Strike Fighters.

The paper points to China as a possible threat in a future world where the power of Australia's key ally, the United States, gradually declines.”

The world knows that US power is waning, its economy in tatters and the real unemployment rate in US is actually 20%. My sister who is in Sloan Business School (MIT) gave me a link to read up – THE BASELINE SCENARIO – to understand the crisis better. This site is run by people in MIT.

The rationale for writing this, it is high time India realize that US needs India far more than India needs US. With Obama trying to put in hardliners in proliferation team, the US-India nuclear deal is in for hard times. Not that it matters to India much – India will simply move its business elsewhere.

India better get ready for a tenuous relationship with the US. What this means is its time INDIA stood up on its own feet and behave like a regional superpower. It has the economic strength, the smart military power and coercive diplomacy as its assets – which it must use.

Pakistan gets better of the TAPI vs IPI game:

While the US is pushing for TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project, Russia & Iran are gunning for IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline. TAPI will give a profitable reason for US / NATO to sit tight in Afghanistan.

The bigger game is Nabucco pipeline which would require gas from either Turkmenistan and / or Iran. While Russia and US are playing a deadly game in Turkmenistan, India was warned off Iranian gas by the US. Like a puppy, India heeded.

Pakistan upped the stakes and went in for IP (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline.



Tehran Times (May 25th) reports: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari inked an agreement in Tehran on Sunday finalizing the deal to transfer gas from Iran to Pakistan. India has not participated in the last several rounds of talks, but Iran has encouraged India to rejoin the process.

Both Russia and China are jumping in delight as Iranian gas goes to Pakistan and then onto either India or China means one thing - no surplus gas for Nabucco. That leaves the playing fields of Turkmenistan. And if Turkmenistan gas is snapped up by Russia rendering the Nabucco pipeline bust - does it make any "economic" sense for the US to hang inside Afghanistan?

Also read my earlier blog: Russia moves in to the Iran - US game


The last 20 years, India has lost ground heavily. The next 2 years it has got to correct this – and if not, India has to bid its status as a regional superpower goodbye.

India has to make one reality happen in these two years – It must get is border to touch Afghanistan and cut the land access route of Pakistan and China. Whether US / UK / NATO likes it or not, it is in India’s interest to get back its own territories.

No use worrying about Hafeez Saeed and Lakhvis till that time !!

ADDENDUM:

Osama bin Laden's (supposedly) tape sent to Al Jazeera. Bin Laden accused the United States, Israel and India of conspiring against Pakistan, accusing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani of fighting against Islam instead of against Pakistan’s true enemies — namely, India.

This statement plays on the fears of many Pakistanis who view their country’s eastern border as a much larger strategic threat than its internal militant Islamist problem — the same argument the Pakistani military makes to Washington for its resistance to redeploying troops from the Indian border to deal more effectively with the jihadist threat in the west. By playing on this fear, bin Laden is trying to undermine the Pakistani government’s judgement and prevent the application of more military pressure to jihadist forces in the west.

US & INDIA - dealing with the Muslim Obama:

I have already mentioned that dealing with US will become tenuous - if Obama has his way.

Barack Hussein Obama will be giving an important speech today to the Muslim world - we must pay heed to what he says. In a article on 1st November, I wrote about Obama's Islamic roots : Barack Hussein Obama was born a Muslim - so what?

ABC news (June 2nd), reporting in The Emergence of President Obama's Muslim Roots : "Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago."

Read this Julia Gorin article : Obama's Christian Grandma to make Hajj this year.

Again, if someone asks how does it matter if Obama is a Muslim or not - I will tell them this. It matters. It does not mean he will be anti-India. But he will be pro-Muslims. And in this context, pro - Pakistan. Already the dollars are flowing into Pakistan. Because China owns a lot of US debt, Hillary Clinton, a friend of India, has no choice but to be more friendly to China. The only friend India has in the US are the Republicans and CIA. These will be very difficult times for India.

Already Pakistan is threatening to attack India with another 26/11 - maybe a spectacular assassination of Narendra Modi, certainly bring Kashmir to a boil again. And India, it seems, buckling under force fed "intel", as per Times of India (4th June) - India likely to resume talks with Pakistan.

(Excuse me, did not India say - no talks till Pakistan books the 26/11 accused. And India wants to talk right after Pakistan releases Hafeez Sayeed !)

The article states: "Pakistan may be thumbing its nose at India by releasing wanted terrorists like Hafeez Saeed, but New Delhi is veering around to the view that talks with Islamabad that were suspended after the 26/11 Mumbai attack should be resumed as engagement, however frustrating, would be better than benign neglect of the source of its terror problem. Taking the cue from the boss, the foreign office is trying to find a way to break the ice.

There are two main reasons why India would like to begin talks. First, it might get the Pakistanis to at least attempt to stop the next big- ticket terrorist attack against India. Sources said Pakistan is likely to sponsor another big attack in J&K to push India to come to the table. This is nothing short of blackmail, but India doesn't want to be in a position where it might seem to be succumbing to such blackmail.

Second, Indian officials are clear that the US, waiting for the elections to be over, will soon raise the talks issue with India. This could come as soon as Hillary Clinton's visit to India in July. The government here is keen to pre-empt such pressure tactics.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh might have an occasion to break the ice if he decides to go for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Moscow later this month. If Singh attends the SCO, he would have a chance to meet his Pakistan counterpart and could seize the opportunity. "

Interestingly the US too may be overtly blackmailing India. US justifies travel advisory to India. Generally it happens if US receives clear intelligence that their citizens are at a substantial risk in the concerned country or it is a diplomatic tool used by US to make the concerned country (here India) change or facilitate policies which the US may want.

And message we are therefore giving to Pakistan - keep on doing what you do, increase the nukes, we will sit tight and get angry and not talk for a while till you threaten us again.

INTERVIEW WITH DR. WAHID BALOCH - MAKING SENSE OF "BALOCHISTAN"

DEAR READERS,

I had conducted this interview with Dr. Wahid Baloch so that all of us can get a first hand report on the issues that plague Balochistan. Whatever we read in mainstream media, glosses over or does not report at all the scale of atrocities that Pakistan Army inflicts on the Balochis while robbing / stripping them literally off their assets.

Preamble:

Populated by fiercely independent Baluch warriors, Kalat retained much of its independence from the British. Regarded as too wild to tame but a useful buffer against Russians, the Baluch were allowed to keep their sovereignty.

Just six months of independence, the Pakistani military stormed in and forced Kalat to cede to Pakistan. Baluchi separatists have since fought five insurgencies to try to claw back their independence from Pakistan’s central government, which has responded with massacres, large scale disappearances and torture, inclusive of local rulers like Bughti, a secular soft spoken; Oxford educated leader who wanted independence from Pakistan and as such was assassinated by the Pakistan Military.

Read this statement by ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - PAKISTAN: Fingers point at state intelligence agencies in the killings of three Baloch nationalist leaders.

Main worry is that the continued repression of the Baluch, coupled with the de facto silencing of their tribal leaders, is forcing many formerly secular separatists into the arms of the Taliban / Al Qaeda instead.

Until recently, The Taliban have held little sway over the Baluchi tribes. But Islamic radicalism appears to be spreading through the region. Taliban leaders recently announced the creation of a new group, “Tehreek-e-Taliban Baluchistan”.

The shift to Taliban is not large scale, the Balochis themselves are largely secular, have a royal gait and demeanor. We now delve into the interview to make sense of the constantly shifting landscape to the west of India.




Q1. Please introduce yourself?



My Name is Wahid Baloch. I'm the president of Baloch Society of North America, an organization dedicated to highlight the plights of Baloch people in Iranian and Pakistani occupied Balochistan. I'm a US citizen, originally from Balochistan.

Q2. Can you please tell me your organization's aim?

Baloch Society of North America is the first Baloch political organization that was created in US on March 2005. The aim was to educate the American people and the world community against the Pakistani and Iranian illegal occupation of Balochistan and exploitation of Baloch resources and to bring their human right violations in Balochistan into the world notice. By doing so, we have done a great job in such a short span of time.

Q3. I have a flag here (dated 1893) which depicts Balochistan as a separate country? How did it become part of Pakistan?



Balochistan was never a part of India but was separate country and it had enjoyed bilateral relationship with British Government. When British left the Indian subcontinent, Balochistan emerged as an independent state on August 12, 1947. Pakistani army, after 7 and 1/2 months, attacked the sovereign Balochistan and occupied it on March 27, 1948 at gun point. Since then Balochs are fighting for their independence. The war of independence continue as we speak.



Q4. Why do you then consider the "occupation of Pakistan" illegal?

As I said, Balochistan was an independent free sovereign state even before Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947. Baloch people were not a part of Indian Muslim League's movement to create Pakistan. Balochistan was forcefully annexed into Pakistan against the wishes of Baloch people. Pakistan is in violation of international law for its continuous illegal occupation of Balochistan and exploitation of Baloch resources without Baloch consent.

Baloch do not consider themselves as Pakistani. We are a secular nation. We should not be forced to live in with Islamic terrorists and extremists in Pakistan. We have nothing in common with Islamic Pakistan. Our culture, language and traditions are completely different from that of Pakistan. We are fighting for our freedom that Pakistan has taken away from us.

Pakistani army has committed war crimes against the Baloch people in Balochistan. These war crimes include indiscriminate bombing women and children, use of chemical weapons, rape, torture, murder, disappearances and displacement of thousands of Baloch people, testing its nuclear weapons in Balochistan, rendering hundreds of miles of Baloch land into waste, leading to the spread of diseases such as increased number of abnormal birth defects and glaucoma due to spread of radio active materials. Thousand of nomadic lives have perished because of the effects of the Nuclear holocaust. These and many other crimes are well documented by independent human rights organizations. They all constitute crimes against humanity and call for international intervention and action that is long overdue.

Q5. Under the terms of agreement, Pakistan was to reimburse proceeds from gas sales which originated from Balochistan. Has Pakistan honored this commitment?

I'm not aware of any such agreement between the Baloch leaders and Pakistani Government. Whatever Pakistan is doing or has done with Baloch resources are a clear loot and plunder at gun point. Pakistan owes the Baloch people trillions of dollars for illegally occupying Baloch land, exploiting Baloch resources for the last 61 years and for testing its nuclear weapons on Baloch soil without the Baloch consent. Pakistani army must leave Balochistan peacefully without any further bloodshed . Balochistan's sovereignty must be restored as an independent secular state according to the international law as it was in 1947 prior to the Pakistani occupation. Pakistan must pay restitutions to thousands of Baloch families whose loved ones were killed, tortured, murdered, jailed or made disappeared by Pakistani army and its ISI.

Q6. In your quest for freedom struggle, how do you get to aim to fight Pakistan forces, which is one of strongest in the world? How would term the success / failure of the movement till now?

A strong or big army can not be defeated merely by being strong militarily alone but it also needs the will-power and determination of people too. Baloch people have demonstrated that will-power and have grown stronger and stronger everyday in their determination to defeat Pakistani and Iranian occupying forces. Baloch people may have lost few battles due to the lack of training and resources and lack of international help but we have not lost the war. The war for freedom continues and with everyday, Baloch's will to liberate their land from these occupying forces is getting stronger and stronger. Every Baloch is determined to fight to the last drop of his blood to free their land from the Pakistani and Iranian occupiers. We ask all the freedom loving Nations to support Baloch peoples in their just cause.

Q7. Pakistan claims that yours is a terrorist movement funded by outside countries (namely USA, India and even Russia). Your views.

Pakistan can calls us whatever she likes, but the fact is that we are not terrorists or separatists. We are freedom fighters, fighting for our freedom that has been taken away from us by Pakistan and Iran.

In fact, Pakistan and Iran, both are itself terrorist states and are sponsoring global jihad and Islamic terrorism. Pakistan is the epicenter of terror. Wherever there is a terrorism, Pakistan's foot prints are found there.

Q8. In this link (CLICK HERE), it is mentioned that Akbar Bugti died from a shell that backfired. Your views?

These are Pakistani propaganda to mislead and hide the facts. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed along with his companions and body guards by Pakistan's army in a massive military operation by Pakistan's army on August 26, 2009. Baloch Nation lost a great leader but his great grandson Brhamdagh Bugti is still with us, fighting for Balochistan and we fully support him.

Q9. Pakistan is today facing an existential threat from Taliban, who too are entrenched inside Baluchsitan. How to aim to "cleanse" Baluchistan?

Taliban were created by Pakistani ISI and they have been nurturing and supporting them all this time. It will be naive to believe that Pakistani army will ever take any action against its own created ideological friends. It is no secret that Taliban's top leader Mullah Omar is hiding in Quetta with full ISI knowledge and support. As long as Pakistan exists Taliban are going no where and they will continue to bleed the NATO forces and Afghanistan, and the dream of a peaceful democratic Afghanistan will remain a distant reality.

In order to eliminate Taliban, the main sanctuary, Pakistan, must be be eliminated first. Their safe heavens inside Pakistan must be dismantled and their main sponsors and financier Pakistani Jihadi army and ISI must be defeated.

Let's not be too enthusiastic that Pakistan Jihadi army will defeat or eliminate its own created Taliban. Taliban are a big asset and a great source of income for Pakistan's army. I suggest the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan to take the matter in their own hand and go in into Balochistan along with secular Baloch on their side to finish Taliban sanctuaries by themselves.

A peaceful Balkanization of Pakistan on ethnic lines and creation of an independent Democratic Secular United Balochistan is the ultimate answer. This will limit and weaken both Pakistan and Iran's quest in their nuclear adventures and reduce their capablity to support and spread the Islamic extremism and fundamentalism in the region.

We will stand with the NATO forces and world community to do the job that needs to be done. Nothing else will work. Let's not waste time and money on Pakistan any more. This terrorist country with its pan-Islamic terrorist ideology should not have been born to begin with. This country is a curse for the entire region. It is the most corrupt country on the face of earth.


NOTE: THE HIGH SPEED TRAIN CORRIDOR FROM GWADAR TO CHINA - STILL ON PAPER!

Q10. Gwadar is a port built in Balochistan with help from China. If we give you the hypothetical situation that Balochistan is liberated, how would you want to use the port? Will you allow Chinese navy berthing rights in Gwadar?

We will use the port to benefit our people. We will facilitate the trade and business of South Asian countries to promote peace and friendship among nations in the region. Currently China is working with Pakistan to crush the Baloch freedom movement. We are not against China but China must stop supporting Pakistani army against Baloch freedom fighters. A free united Balochistan will extend a hand of friendship to all of those Nations who have helped us to liberate our land from the Pakistani and Iranian occupiers.

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