The Genocide of Turkey's Greeks

Greek Genocide 1914-23
Fact Sheet: Greek Genocide

• The Greek Genocide was perpetrated between 1914 and 1923 by the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey's predecessor.  Approximately one million Ottoman Greeks, from a minority population of two and a half million, were exterminated during this period.
• The Genocide was perpetrated by two consecutive governments of the Ottoman Empire; the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti), also known as the Young Turks, and the Kemalists led by Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk".
• Massacres, internal deportations involving death marches and conscription into labor battalions were the principal methods employed to secure an end to the collective existence of the Greek minority in Ottoman Turkey.
• An American relief committee, namely the “Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor”, was formed in response to the Greek Genocide. Other relief organizations also provided aid to Ottoman Greeks.
• The Greek Genocide was systematically and methodically carried out throughout the entire territory of Ottoman Turkey which indicates that the genocidal campaign was centrally conceived and administered by Ottoman authorities.
• The Greek Genocide was carried out alongside the Armenian and Aramaean/Assyrian genocides, in which more than a million Armenians and several hundred thousand Assyrians died. The plight of these three Ottoman Christian minorities, Armenians, Aramaeans/Assyrians and Greeks, are often considered as a distinct genocidal campaign where the target group was the Christian element of the Empire.
• The genocide in the late Ottoman Empire was the precursor of the Jewish Holocaust and prototype of twentieth-century genocide. Prof. Israel Charny, one of the world's leading authorities on the Holocaust and genocide, has affirmed this. "Christian Holocaust is viewed as the precursor to the Jewish Holocaust in WWII.” 
• The word “holocaust” was widely used at the time to describe the plight of the Ottoman Greeks and other Christian minorities of the Empire.
• The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, passed a resolution affirming the 1914-1923 massacres and death marches of Ottoman Greeks were "genocide". The IAGS resolution noted that the Greek Genocide was "qualitatively similar" to the Armenian Genocide.
• The Turkish government today denies the Greek Genocide. Denial is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide.
• The Greek Genocide is commemorated annually on 14 September by the Greek Diaspora.

greek-genocide.org
Documentation

80% of Pakistani teachers view non-muslims as enemies of islam

British Pakistani rape

from Rationalwiki

Role of Islam

Nick Griffin pointed to the religion of the rapists: "the common denominator is not their Asian ethnicity, it’s the fact that they are Muslims", he said. "Their 'good book' tells them that that's acceptable. If you doubt it, go and buy a copy and you will find verse after verse saying you can take any woman you want as long as they're not Muslim."

"These gang members select their victims from communities which they believe to be 'unbelievers' -- non-Muslims whom they view with disdain and hostility", commented Melanie Phillips. "You can see that this is not a racial but a religious animosity from the fact that, while the vast majority of the girls who are targeted are white, the victims include Sikhs and Hindus, too."

Muslims in UK: 15-year-old victim told to 'Bring your younger friends next time'

Five vulnerable victims aged 13 to 15 were made to have sex with several men a day, several times a week, jury is told

Helen Carter
Guardian
Tuesday 21
 February 2012 13.11 EST

Abdul Rauf

A group of 11 men plied girls as young as 13 with alcohol and drugs so they could use them for sex, a court has heard.

The five victims, who were aged between 13 and 15 when the alleged abuse began, were passed around by the men "who acted together to sexually exploit the girls", a trial at Liverpool crown court was told.

All the girls were vulnerable as they were from broken homes and one was in the care of a local authority. Rachel Smith, opening the case for the prosecution, warned the jurors: "Some of you may find what you are about to hear distressing. The events and circumstances described by the girls are at best saddening and at worst shocking in places. No child should be exploited as these girls say they were."

The court heard that some of the girls were raped and physically assaulted, with some forced to have sex with "several men in a day, several times a week", in and around Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in 2008 and 2009. Some of the defendants allegedly paid the girls and took payments from other men to whom they supplied the girls for sex.

Kabeer Hassan, 24, Abdul Aziz, 41, Abdul Rauf, 43, Mohammed Sajid, 35, Adil Khan, 42, Abdul Qayyum, 43, Mohammed Amin, 44, Qamar Shahzad, 29, Liaquat Shah, 41, and Hamid Safi, 22, are on trial at Liverpool crown court charged with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16. They have all pleaded not guilty along with a 59-year-old man who cannot be named for legal reasons, who also denies two rapes, aiding and abetting a rape, one sexual assault and an allegation of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.

Hassan, from Oldham, and Shahzad, from Rochdale, also deny rape. Aziz, of Rochdale, denies two counts of rape and one allegation of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Khan and Rauf, of Rochdale, have also pleaded not guilty to trafficking for sexual exploitation. Sajid, also of Rochdale, denies trafficking, two counts of rape and one allegation of sexual activity with a child. Amin, from Rochdale, denies sexual assault. Shah and Safi, both of Rochdale, each denied two counts of rape and Safi has also pleaded not guilty to trafficking.

One 13-year-old victim became pregnant by Adil Khan and had an abortion, the jury was told. She said Khan attacked her when she refused to have sex with "two of four men" who were waiting at a house in Rochdale. He later denied knowing her, despite DNA proof he was the father of the baby, the court heard.

One girl said she was raped by Abdul Aziz in his taxi in December 2009 and afterwards he told her she no longer needed to pay the fare. She was also raped by Liaquat Shah while Safi watched, the jury was told. She claimed two men raped her while she was so drunk "she was vomiting over the side of the bed" after drinking spirits and beer.

She told police: "They were just having it in turns sort of thing … there was nothing I could do, I was throwing up, I just kept throwing up … And I felt like I couldn't move." When the men left, she said, she cried herself to sleep.

Another alleged victim, who was 14, said she would get "proper hammered" and, the court heard, "lost count of the number of times she had had sex with men when she did not want to do so".

The prosecutor said: "She was unable to describe all of the men but said she would regularly find herself drunk to near-unconsciousness, waking up with men having sex with her."

The court was told that in about August 2008 Abdul Aziz "took over" from the 59-year-old and started taking girls to various locations – including a flat in Rochdale where Sajid and Shahzad lived – where a "group of men" would always be waiting to have sex with them.

"Abdul Aziz was being paid by the various men to whom he delivered the girls for the purposes of sex," Smith said. One girl estimated that she was "having sex with several men in a day, several times a week", she said.

The court heard that on one occasion the 59-year-old man met two girls at a takeaway where they were given food and vodka.

He allegedly told a 15-year-old that he wanted sex, saying: "It's part of the deal because I bought you vodka, you have to give me something." When the girl refused, he allegedly raped her. The court was told that when the girl started crying, he said: "Don't cry, I love you."

On another occasion, the jury heard, he took one of the girls to Oldham where she was raped by another man, who told her: "Don't tell anyone. I'll give you money. I'll give you anything you want."

One girl, who was 15 when she met the defendants, told police she had been flattered by the attention. She said she thought it meant she was attractive and they thought she was pretty. However, she quickly began to drink heavily, became depressed and incapable of getting herself out of the situation, the court heard.

"At first I was scared," she told police. "Then after that it … just didn't bother me any more … At first I felt dead bad and horrible but then I didn't feel anything any more." The girl was persistently coerced or forced into submission by the men, Smith said.

"When she was told that she had to have sex with the particular defendant or other men, she would submit to them, although she describes herself as lying impassively with her eyes shut or looking at the wall. She was given alcohol, which she drank heavily, not least because it numbed her thoughts to what was happening to her."

It was "common knowledge", Smith said, among the defendants that the girl was 15 and that Aziz would give her lifts to school while Rauf asked the other older girl if she "knew anyone younger". Smith told the jury that one of the older girls, who was 16 at the time, recruited younger girls for the men as well as having sex with them for money.

The 16-year-old introduced a 14-year-old girl "to a number of different men who wanted to have sex with her, with or without her consent". The younger girl was raped at a takeaway and taken by the man to other places where she was provided to other men for sex.

One girl, who was 13 when the alleged abuse began, told police that the men she met were "friends" who looked after her and "her number would be passed around amongst the Pakistani men in her area".

She told police: "When you've got Asian friends, [your] number gets passed and they pass it to their friends. And they pass it to their friends, end up with a massive circle … everyone's got it."

"There were also occasions on which one or more of the girls were so incapacitated by alcohol and/or drugs that they were incapable of having any control over whether or with whom they had sexual intercourse," Smith said.

The court heard the men knew each other and that two of them worked in the takeaways Tasty Bites and the Balti House, both in Heywood. Four of the other men worked as cab drivers at local taxi firms, one was a student and four were jobless.

The men were known to the girls by nicknames such as "Master" and "Tiger", the court was told. The girls would often spend their days "unsupervised by responsible adults", were not in school regularly and drank and smoked and hung around with little to do.

Smith said they were the "sort of children who were easy to identify, target and exploit for the sexual gratification of these men".

The trial continues.

•     Teenager told court she had sex with taxi driver 'about 10 times' before she was 16
•     11 men are accused of being part of a child sexual exploitation ring

24th February 2012
Daily Mial (UK)

A member of an alleged child abuse ring told his teenage victims to supply him with even 'younger girls', a court heard today.

The witness, who cannot be identified, was giving evidence in the trial of 11 men accused of being part of a sexual exploitation ring operating in and around Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in 2008 and 2009.

Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Qamar Shahzad, Liaquat Shah, Hamid Safi and a 59-year-old man who cannot be named all deny conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with five girls under the age of 16.

Qamar Shahzad and Mohammed Amin

The jury at Liverpool Crown Court were today shown a third day of police interviews with one alleged victim, recorded when she was 15 years old.

Questioned by a female police officer the witness, now aged 19, said she had had sex with defendant Abdul Rauf, a taxi driver, 'about 10 times' before she turned 16.

'Did he know how old you were?' the officer asked.

'He knew my age because my friend told him,' the girl replied.

'We were in his taxi and he just asked us how old we were.

'She told him I was 15 and she was 16 and he asked if we knew anyone younger and she said she did.

'He told us to bring them next time.'

The police officer asked the girl: 'What did you think about that?'

The witness said she 'would have been glad' because the younger girls would take attention off her. But she went on to say those feelings had made her feel 'tight'.

'Because it would happen to them and I would feel bad,' she explained.

She said Rauf would pay her friend about £20 if he had sex with one of them and £40 if he had had sex with them both.

Around half that money would then go to co-defendant Abdul Aziz, accused of 'taking over' the exploitation ring, she said.

The girls were abused by the men who used alcohol, money, drugs and threats of violence to force them to have sex, the court heard earlier.

Four were from broken homes and one was in care, and they would often spend their days 'unsupervised by responsible adults', the prosecution said.

The jury were told the girls were not in school regularly and 'drank and smoked and hung around with little to do'.

Hassan, 24, Aziz, 41, Rauf, 43, Sajid, 35, Khan, 42, Qayyum, 43, Amin, 44, Shahzad, 29, Shah, 41, and Safi, 22, all live in the Greater Manchester area.

In further police interviews, recorded when she was 18, the witness said she never discussed her age with Aziz but he had dropped her off at school in his car.

'He knew that I went to school. I don’t think he knew my age but obviously he knew I was under 16,' she said.

She was asked about her emotions during this period and replied: 'I wasn’t even bothered any more, I didn’t feel anything about it.'

Asked to explain further, she went on: 'At first I felt dead bad and horrible but then I didn’t feel anything any more.'

The officer asked: 'How did you cope?'

The girl replied: 'I don’t remember ... Most of the time I was just getting dead drunk so when it happened it didn’t feel that bad.'

Asked how she feels about it some years later, the teenager said: 'Horrible about myself that I didn’t do anything to stop it.'

The trial was adjourned until Monday at 10am.
A bomb alert at Liverpool Crown Court brought proceedings to a halt during the trial of the eleven men accused of grooming young children

A bomb alert at Liverpool Crown Court earlier this week brought proceedings to a halt during the trial of the eleven men accused of grooming young children

The sex gang accused of grooming underage girls
The Sun
26, Feb, 2012


(top left to bottom right) Abdul Rauf, Liaquat Shah, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Sajid, Kabeer Hassan and Mohammed Amin
Six of the accused ... (top left to bottom right) Abdul Rauf, Liaquat Shah, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Sajid, Kabeer Hassan and Mohammed Amin
Phil Richards/ Mercury Press
By GUY PATRICK
Last Updated: 22nd February 2012
GIRLS as young as 13 got pizzas and booze for having sex with a gang of men — whose nicknames included The Ugly One, Master and Tiger, a jury heard yesterday.

Victims were chatted up and groomed by the men who then passed them around so fellow Asians could satisfy their lust, the court was told.

Prosecutor Rachel Smith said as 11 men including a 59-year-old went on trial for child-sex crimes how schoolgirls would be plied with drink until they were in a stupor.

Ms Smith said of one 14-year-old: "She was unable to describe all of the men but said she would regularly find herself drunk to near-unconsciousness, waking up with men having sex with her."

The youngster told cops how she was so "hammered" on one occasion that two men even had sex with her while she was being sick over the side of a bed. The girl said: "They were just having it in turns sort of thing. There was nothing I could do — I was throwing up. I felt like I couldn't move." The prosecutor said: "Afterwards they left and she cried herself to sleep."

On another occasion a man watching her being raped begged: "I want a turn, I want a turn."

The 11 men in the dock plead not guilty to plotting to have sex with underage girls in and around Rochdale, Gtr Manchester.

Several are charged with rape, which they also deny.

Four of the accused are taxi drivers and two are fast food workers.

The girls — often chatted up at kebab shops — were targeted because they were seen as having little parental supervision, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

They saw the men who seduced them as boyfriends. But before long a "pattern of abuse emerged".

Youngsters started out being rewarded for sex with treats such as food and free cab rides, it was claimed. Later they would be driven to various addresses where they were passed around to other men who would pay for sex in cash. Some of those in the dock are accused of sex trafficking, which they deny.

The charges against the 11 involve five girls — all aged between 13 and 15 at the time. The attacks are alleged to have happened between 2008 and 2010.

The jury heard that youngsters reluctant to have sex were held down and raped. Some deliberately drank themselves into oblivion to blot out what was happening.

One was said to have told police how after she was befriended a "massive circle" of Pakistani men ended up with her phone number.

Prosecutor Ms Smith described all the victims as "easy to identify, target and exploit for the sexual gratification of these men".

That was partly because they spent a lot of time off school.

An older girl — who cannot be named for legal reasons — moved on from having sex with the gang to finding fresh prey, it was claimed. Ms Smith said the former victim was paid for "procuring" others. One 15-year-old was said to have told police she was having sex with "several men in a day, several times a week".

The girl said she would get drunk so "it wouldn't feel as bad" when the men raped her.

The jury was told the first to abuse her was the 59-year-old. He cannot be named for legal reasons.

After repeatedly raping her he forced her to have sex with fellow defendant Kabeer Hassan, 25, it was alleged. The court heard she told cops but no charges were brought — and the abuse went on.

Two victims — one of them just 13 — were made pregnant by members of the gang, it was claimed.

Those on trial with the 59-year-old and Hassan are: Abdul Aziz, 43, Abdul Rauf, 43, Mohammed Sajid, 35, Adil Khan, 42, Abdul Qayyum, 43, Mohammed Amin, 44, Qamar Shahzad, 29, Liaquat Shah, 41, and Hamid Safi, 22.

The case continues.

In Kashmir Christians get to taste the ethnic cleansing Hindus once faced

Pioneer
January 23, 2012

The manner in which Muslim zealots in Jammu & Kashmir have been harassing the State’s Christian minority community over a religious conversion row that erupted last week demonstrates yet again the unbridled and absolutely illegal manner in which mullahs are enforcing their writ. 

They have now begun to ‘ban’ priests, ‘banish’ foreign NGOs and demand that missionary-run schools should include Islamic prayers. Given this kind of bullying, it is little wonder that the Valley’s Christians are living in fear. They have become the victims of a vicious slander campaign that includes the kind of story that one of the State’s English dailies ran last Thursday.

A full-page spread titled, ‘Apostasy Unveiled’, the report is a first person account of a love-lorn young Muslim boy who has been lured with money, alcohol and drugs and ultimately beguiled into converting to Christianity — just the kind of thing that the Muslim-majority State’s religious guardians can be trusted to raise a ruckus about.

Ever since the conversion dispute surfaced, the situation has progressively worsened for the Christians, as the Valley’s mullahs have stepped up their efforts to make the entire community in Jammu & Kashmir — which has only a few hundred members — and even foreigners who practice Christianity, their target of hate and violence.

The most telling example of this mindless harassment is perhaps the story of Juan Marcos Troia — an Argentine football coach who had been promoting his sport in the Valley but is now being hounded by the fanatics. His house has been vandalised, funding for his clubs are under the scanner and he has received calls in the middle of the night asking how many copies of the Bible he keeps at home.

At the centre of this controversy is a certain Protestant Pastor, CM Khanna. The mullahs have released a video of his baptising Muslim boys and a shari’ah ‘court’ has expelled him from the State in blatant violation of the law of the land that does not recognise such illegitimate directives.
While the fundamentalists have behaved in the way they would be expected to — and as they have always done — it is for the State Government to end the persecution of the Christian minority which follows the cleansing of the Kashmir Valley of its Hindu minority. Unfortunately, no protection has been given to Pastor Khanna (instead, he has been arrested for disturbing communal peace) nor to the likes of Mr Troia — all of whom have been left to fend for themselves.

Similarly, the country’s Left-liberals, who are quick to denounce Hindus, have, once again, remained stunningly silent in the face of Islamist bullying. Just like they once glossed over the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, today there is barely a murmur of protest in support of the Christians living in the Valley.

CONVERSIONS AS MUSLIM MALAISE

From ML Kaul's excellent book: 
Kashmir: Wail of a Valley 


 There is hardly any conceivable excess and atrocity which the Kashmiri Pandits as a characteristic religious group have not been subjected to by the Muslim marauders. Apart from the pogrom having no semblance of a human face that was perpetrated on them the devastating catastrophe that could befall them was the forcible conversion to an alien religion of Islam.

History is a pulsating witness to the brutal conversions that were realised by Muslim monarchs whether of Sunni or Shia brand through spilling of blood, hacking of flesh and splintering of body limbs for transforming religious complexion of Kashmir. Sikander, Ali Shah, Malik Saif-ud-din, Kaji Chak, Aurangzeb and Afghan surrogates as medieval despots were at pains to devise all instruments of coercion and repression with the ominous motive of proliferating the support-base of Islam which in Kashmir at the initial stages was near negligible. With the loss of political power to the Sikhs the raging fury of proselytisation campaigns came to a sudden halt but the deep and crippling scar of conversion was already inflicted on the religious personality of Kashmir. Some of the neo-converts who were traumatised by the forcible conversion to Islam harked back to their birth religion. Had the process found support from the power structures it would have turned into a roaring tide.

With the decay of Sikh state the reins of power in Kashmir were handed over to the Dogras by the British masters and with the speed of lightning a consistent campaign of calumny virulent hatred was unleashed by the Punjab based violent and fanatic Muslim groups urging the Kashmir Muslims to dismantle the Dogra rule spoke by spoke. Demands were yelled that the rulers who were dubbed as staunch Hindus should cease to create hurdles in the holy task of conversions from other faiths and should desist from interference in the launch of straightforward hate campaigns against the religious enemies.

In the murderous loot of 1931 the seven Kashmiri Pandits belonging to a single family of the village of Kanikoot near yusmarg were offered conversion as an alternate choice to escape slaughter. In 1932 when riots were triggered off in Mirpur the Hindus were massacred, arsoned and coerced to accept Islamic faith. Forty-one Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam in the Kotli Police Station area. In the Seri Police Station area four hundred and thirty-five Hindus from ten villages were coerced to join the Islamic ranks. In Kotli Tehsil five Hindus were slaughtered- who reportedly rejected the offer of conversion to Islam. A Maulvi, combative and violent, from Kashmir was responsible for the riots in Rajouri with their quick impact in all the adjoining areas.

"Islam is in danger" (and ironically it is always deemed in danger) is the standard Muslim tactics of generating Muslim paranoia against Hindus and mobilising the Muslim hordes for unleashing wild frenzy for Jehad. In the ensuing tidal wave of chaos and mayhem the Hindu minority for one reason or the other is charged with betrayal and sacrilege to Islam and struck with fear psychosis generated in ample measure by the yelling and howling Muslim crowds many succumb to the sword of Islam. Pt. Hargopal, a poet and historian, known as the Lion of Kashmir, along with Janki Nath and Sham Narain was accused of having used abusive language against Islam over a trifling issue of trespass which, his neighbour, a Moulvi, refused to remove despite numerous requests and entreaties. Hargopal was put under detention to quell the mob fiery. His licence as a practicing lawyer was cancelled. Despite court acquittal the Muslims as a combination of brute force and harsh coercion never felt satisfied with the quantum of punishment awarded to him. Ultimately all the three were exiled from their native homes.

The tribal raid of 1947 had all the contours of Muslim Jehad and primeval savagery. Thousands of Hindus, men, women and children whose staggering numbers were never divulged were mercilessly butchered and conversions as a Muslim malaise resorted to on a large scale. Till the adjoining areas of Baramulla and the town itself were under the deluge of tribals Kahmiri Pandits who were unable to move to the safer zones in the city of Srinagar were not only looted and killed but also converted to the Islamic religion by the secular progeny of humanists drummed about as Islamic sufis. After the territories under the avalanche of the barbarous raiders were cleared by the valiant soldiers of India, prominent Kashmiri Pandits like Pt. Kashyap Bandhu, Pt. Shamboo Nath Ogra, Pt. Sham Lal Shalla alongwith Rameshwari Nehru toured the villages and hamlets where Muslim marauders having planted banners of crescent had effected forcible conversions. The neo-converts despite threats and verbal invectives from the Muslim bigots were re-christened and restored to their birth religion.

The Muslim fundamentalist movement of 1989-variety targeting the Kashmiri Pandits as enemies of Islam and agents of Brahmanical imperialism realised their massive exodus to the Siberia of Indian plains. History has been repeating for them. They were slaughtered and their hefty properties looted, grabbed or destroyed as per the religious ordinances and fatwas that have been relentlessly and immutably in vogue. Buzzing off to safer zones despite heavy losses in terms of life and limb, what satisfied them the most was that they preserved their ideological and religious personality which they had acquired through civilisational processes of growth and flowering and had not renounced even in the worst.times of Muslim holocaust. Yet there are a few thousand of their co-religionists who chose to stay back for their own reasons despite polarisation on communal lines and religious cleansing. Their presence in the valley though confined to the high security zone has been blown out to authenticate and propagate the dubious theory of Muslim secular sense, tolerant ethos and intellectual acceptance of composite culture. As is buttressed by the authentic reports their numbers are believed not to exceed a bare two thousand. But the vested interests in cohorts with unscrupulous elements in the corridors of central government inflated their figures to a whopping twenty thousand only to secularist the troubled times and to establish that the Pandits' perception of deadly threat from the Muslim majority was only a ploy to be in self-exile.

The Kashmiri Pandits who have chosen to stay back as subservient to Muslim identity and majoritatianism are to all intents and purposes hostages to the Muslim majority and have been victims to Muslim fundamentalist terror attacks and Qrgies of carnage. The fate of Sohan Lal Braroo, his wife and his innocent daughter has blackened the countenance of Muslim rationality and exposed the Muslim pretensions of allegiance to Sufi Islam and caused shivers in the corridors of Geneva, the seat of Human Rights Commission. T.N. Bhat who had stayed back and was a poor guy eking out existence from the scarce earnings from a few temples. The inhuman terrorists earning tremendous favours and sympathies from the Muslim masses robbed him of his earnings at the Shrine of Zeshta Devi, tied him to a three wheeler, wounding him brutally and fatally and hurled him in an unconscious state into the Dal Lake for final burial. But the humiliating disability and torture that they have been subjected to is the forcible conversion to Islam and adoption of Muslim dress codes, language nuances and other outer appearances that stand out a Muslim.

The Report of a team of the Gandhi Peace Foundation which visited Kashmir very recently reveals, "Those Kashmiri Pandits who have stayed back with their families have made adjustments with the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Their women do not wear sari, do not put on a bindi or wear 'dejohur'. They have no outward sign of being married."

Since the volcanic eruption of fundamentalist insurgency till June, 1994 a good number of Kashmiri Pandits and their daughters under duress have been forcibly converted to Islam at the hands of rabid Muslims owing allegiance to multiple armed outfits.82 The Pandit girls who were abducted from their house-holds and work - places were forcibly converted and married to Muslims after meting out to them the treatment prescribed for the looted women of Kafirs. In the hateful conversion campaigns the Jammaati-Islami has been in the active vanguard and has drawn unstinted and unqualified support from a Muslim fanatic, Qazi Nissar, and some Janata Dal turn-coat politicals with a dubious track-record in politics. The pages of "Kashmiriayat" as the official organ of umat-e-Islami have showered a litany of plaudits and praises on Qazi Nissar impelled by the Islamic concept of Kufra for the initiation and direction of the conversion campaign. The hapless victims to the brutality of conversion generally belong to the villages of Anantnag, Pulwama and Tangmarg.

In Tral (District Pulwama) a Pandit family with a teenage daughter clinging to its habitat like a limpet was coerced to accept Islam by the rabid Jammaat activists.84 Since its conversion the brutalised family has been shifted from its ancestral house to the house of a Muslim in the same locality. Attempts galore have been made to abduct the teenage girl by the lecherous elements held in high esteem as the saviours of Islam. The Pandit family is under close watch lest it should slip off to the safer zones for retrieval from the atrocity and as is reliably reported has been under lessons of initiation in Islamic precepts and practices by some rabid Mullahs who have been howling along with dogs since 19/20th January 1990 as generalismos of Islamic army of marauders.

Another Kashmiri pandit girl from Safapora was made off as a prize catch by a Muslim in broad daylight. She was converted under the shadow of a gun and married to her Muslim abductor. The parents of the girl living in absolutely hostile environs meekly protested against the atrocity but were threatened with dire consequences if they did not shut up their traps and maintain stoic silence. The mother of the girl under a terrific shock developed serious ailments and her spouse floated a humiliating application in the dailies for permission from the brutal terrorists to shift his wife to Srinagar for proper medical;aid. The family somehow managed to flee to Jammu and thus was able to save another teenage daughter from the similar fate awaiting her.

In Tangmarg a Kashmiri Pandit lady married with children was said to have been lifted and forcibly married to a Muslim who is said to be a driver. Her husband tried to report the abduction to the nearby police station but was threatened with dire consequences by the hostile Muslims in the area. In the same area another girl with Hindu origins was said to have been converted and married to a Muslim under duress.

Again in Tral (District Pulwama) a Kashmiri Pandit girl living with her parents was abducted by the Islamic terrorists who rule the roost despite government claims of normalcy. She was converted to Islam under gun-point and married by a terrorist affiliated to a particular brand of terrorist formation. Another terrorist of a different brand did not take kindly to the marriage and after an incessant chase were able to spot the terrorist and his bride and without mincing words commanded him to hand over the girl to him for marriage. Losing his cool and in utter rage the terrorist pounced on his rival and in the ensuing bloody duel he fell to a bullet. The rival made off with his catch to the privacy of a den leaving behind no clues for tracing him out.

In the health resort of Pahalgam a Kashmiri Pandit boy possessed of Dutch courage reportedly married a Muslim girl from the same area. The Muslim terrorists alongwith their Muslim supporters were shell-shocked by such a marriage as it was deemed to score off the history that they were writing in Kashmir. They were dead set after the two lovers for their annihilation. Ultimately after a hunt the couple was traced, abducted and mercilessly beheaded with a blunt axe. Their bodies with severed heads were recovered from a field. How could a space be allowed to those who are deviants from the grammar of Islam?

Scores of Sikh girls have been abducted and brutally converted to the Islamic religion. The abduction and subsequent conversion of Satinder Kour D/o Bhupender Singh R/o Khawaja Bagh, Barmulla and Surinder Kour D/o Dalip Singh R/o Alucha Bagh, Srinagar have been splashed in the media. Appeals to the Sikh separatist leader Simranjit Singh Mann who had informed the valley Sikhs that he had ensured their safety through a pact with the Kashmiri terrorists failed to secure their release from the clutches of the Islamic crusaders. The Sikh organizations of varied hues from the Punjab have also issued numerous appeals for the redemption of the Sikh girls but to no avail. The chief of the Dukhtaran-i-Milat, Aisha Indrabi, has been assiduously working to the nefarious end of realising the conversion of many a Sikh and Pandit girl.

In the villages of Sopore, Tral, Mattan, Anantnag et al the Pandit families that have been atrociously converted to Islam are allowed to retain the pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses only to mislead the anti-terrorist operators and maintain the effectiveness of the den.

Som Deva reports, "Since the eruption of the fundamentalist insurgency till June, 1994 nearly a hundred Pandit and many Sikh girls have suffered this fate at the hands of Jamaat-i-Islami and Its armed outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. Later on they were married to Muslim boys."

He continues, " In July, 1993 two Pandit girls at the historic village Omanagri (Anantnag) and another one at Safapore were forcibly converted to Islam by Jammaat activists. The attempts by their families which subsequently migrated to Jammu to seek the help of official agencies for retrieving their daughters evoked no response."

Life as a non-muslim woman in Islamic countries

Egypt:




 Pakistan:

Christian Girls Kidnapped & Forcibly Married in the Punjab

Posted on November 2, 2011 by alaiwah

The forced marriages of religious minority women must be annulled and the victims returned to their families and communities
The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms.
The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the criminal elements who are engage in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims.
In a recent case of rape and forced conversion to Islam which occurred in the month of August, the owner of a kiln factory, Muhammad Amin alias Sony, forcibly entered the house of one of his employees, a 13-year-old Christian girl and raped her at gunpoint. Sony then forced the victim to place her fingerprints on a set of marriage papers to provide himself with legal protection if he was to be accused of rape.  Anwar Masih, the father of the victim and a resident of Harbans Pura, Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, was working in Sony’s factory for daily wages with his wife and daughter. During August, because of heavy rains the kiln was closed and the victim’s parents went out in search of work leaving their daughter alone in the house.
Immediately following the incident the parents filed a case with the Police. However, to date, the police have not taken action against the accused person as he is a powerful man. Also, he sought the help of a Muslim religious group who has threatened the police that if any case is filed against the rapist the houses of the Christian community will be burned.
On October 22, after many delayed proceedings, the Session Court of Lahore ordered the Harbans Pura police to file the case which should have been done immediately. However, once again the police no action has been taken and the police are avoiding their sworn responsibilities.
In Sony’s factory there are around 70 employees most of whom are Christians. One lady worker who was widowed two years ago has become pregnant and Sony has been forcing her to convert to Islam but the Christian community is trying to prevent it. They have accused Sony of being responsible for the pregnancy and have reported the matter to the police who once again refuse to file a case against him. Instead the police have threatened the Christians with dire consequences should they proceed. This lack of action by the police is due to threats by a Muslim group that the police themselves will suffer dire consequences should they side with the Christians.
There have been many cases reported by the Christian rights groups concerning rape and forced conversion. The following cases which all involve Christian women are but a few:
Sidra Bibi, (14) in the district of Sheikhupura in Punjab, is the daughter of a worker in the cotton industry. A Muslim from the village had his eye on her and began to molest her, and eventually abducted and raped her before threatening her with death. Physically and psychologically abused, the girl became pregnant. She managed to escape from her tormentor and is now back, in a state of exhaustion, with her family. The police have refused to accept her complaint because of the involvement of a Muslim religious group and now the CLAAS lawyers are handling the case.
Tina Barkat, (28), was approached by a Muslim friend who, after being friends with her for several months, asked her to convert to Islam. His family began to read her verses from the Quran, kidnapped and threatened her, and then gave her in marriage to a Muslim family member. Her lawyers have a current action to dissolve the marriage.
The same fate has befallen Samina Ayub, (17), who lives with her family near Lahore. Kidnapped by a Muslim, she was forcibly converted to Islam, and renamed Fatima Bibi and was forced to marry in the Muslim rite. Her family reported the abduction but the police have not prosecuted those responsible. The case remains unsolved and the family calls for the mobilisation of civil society to save Samina.
Shazia Bibi, (19) from Gujranwala, worked as a maid in the house of a Muslim woman, the owner of a grocery store. A Muslim boy from the shop fell in love with Shazia and in agreement with the owner, held a conversion and forced her into marriage. The plan was successful but now, thanks to Shazia’s family the case has ended up in court.
Uzma Bibi, (15), from Gulberg, and Saira Bibi, (20), a nurse from Lahore, were taken by force by Muslim neighbours, converted to Islam and then forced to marry in the Islamic rite. The families of the girls have reclaimed their daughters and the cases are currently before the High Court of Lahore, represented by lawyers provided by CLAAS. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 13/4/2011)
Two Christian sisters Rubecca Masih and Saima Masih from Jhung, were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. Both sisters were on their way home when by Muhammad Waseem and his five friends abducted them in and sped off in a vehicle. Muhammad Waseem married Saima Masih the day after her kidnapping.
Jhang is an area where the majority of Muslims are radical. They believe that if a woman marries a Muslim, she automatically embraces the faith of her husband as a direct consequence.
Farah Hatim (24), of Rahim Yar Khan inSouthern Punjab was abducted on May 8, 2011 by Zeeshan Ilyas and his brothers Imran and Gulfam. After this, she was forced to convert to Islam and marry Zeeshan. Human rights organizations and the Catholic Church have condemned the act and demanded action against the violation of her human rights.
The Justice and Peace Commission are leading the case which they took to the Session Court under the FIR, Case No. 150/11US/ 365-B CR.PC. The police have since been threatening the family because of the religious angle. The Session Judge, Khawaja Mir, realised the seriousness of the case and had it transferred to the High Court (the High Court being a higher authority), for hearing due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Once the appeal was taken to the High Court it was presented by the Justice and Peace Commission and APMA (All Pakistan Minorities Alliance). Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman from the High Court Bahawalpur bench instructed the District Police Officer based in Rahim Yar Khan, and the families involved in the case, to appear.
The Judge questioned Farah Hatim as to whether she was kidnapped or went with Zeeshan by her own free will. After a few moments of silence, she replied, “I went with my own will”. After a few more questions, the judge announced that Farah would be living with her new family. The young woman broke into tears as the court announced the decision.
It is unclear if the High Court took note of other cases involving women who have been kidnapped or if the High Court took into account the consideration of fear.
Farah Hatim was allowed a few moments to meet with her family. Her brother said, “I am shocked at what Farah said in the court, she was under threat, now all hopes are gone for her return. Why us? Why did we have to face this? Only because we are Christians (that we are treated like this).”
According to the Justice and Peace Commission, “Farah became a victim of the racket that is involved in prostitution. Zeehan IIyas had tried to force her into prostitution while she was a student at the Sheikh Zaid Medical College in Rahim Yar Khan, but she refused. Then Zeehan IIyas took his revenge. The current decision by Farah is possibly because she is pregnant and fears that her family will be killed if she tries to go back. Therefore, even if she had taken a brave stance of returning, she wouldn’t have been accepted by society as she was kidnapped and raped. The fear of rejection is also a possible reason?”
The Justice and Peace Commission commented that ”thousands of girls from minorities are kidnapped and forced into marriages (against their will)”. The Justice and Peace Commission also stated that ”we are fighting against the cancer of kidnapping and forced marriages”.
Therefore, it is more than evident that the legal system and other important institutions are failing the religious minorities in Pakistanand women can become victims at any time.
Ironically these realities are a continuous issue for Christians, Hindus and other religious minorities and generally it is thought that the purpose behind this action by Islamic fundamentalists is to make Pakistan pure.  The religious minorities reside in fear because legal institutions and other institutions are either biased or live in fear of the militant religious groups themselves.
Approximately 90 percent of the Christians and Hindus are the poorest of the poor and live in slum areas. They are forced to do the jobs of scavengers, sweepers, garbage collectors and other types of the lowest menial work. Their access to education is limited.
This is a basic issue of the rule of law in that the police take it upon themselves to act as judge and jury when it comes to a conflict between Islam and the religious minorities. They decide which FIRs to accept and even then when they deign to record the complaints they seldom make any investigations into the cases unless ordered to do so by a court. And even then, they delay the issue for as long as possible. An FIR is the first step in the registration of a complaint and every police station has the non-transferable duty to record them. It is very simply not their choice to decide which FIR to file. No action can be taken into a complaint until the FIR has been registered and therefore this alone is ample evidence that the police collude with the perpetrators.
Similarly, the lower judiciary fails in their responsibilities. In the vast majority of cases the judicial officers, including magistrates and judges question the traumatised victim in open court in full view of her family members, the alleged perpetrators and complete strangers. They do not considered the sensitivity of the feelings of the victim and pay no attention to the sanctity of the women, regardless of their religion.
All of this is a direct result of the government’s appeasement policy towards the Muslim fundamentalist groups. Whether out of fear of a religious uprising that might dethrone the existing government or genuine feelings of the righteousness of what they are doing, is not known. What is known is that if the government does not take a firm stand against religious extremism they can hardly expect the judiciary and the police to do so. Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan clear states that protection must be provided to all citizens regardless of their religion.

Persecuted Hindus migrating from Islamic Pakistan in hordes

 The News International Pakistan

 

Saher Baloch
Friday, November 18, 2011

 

 

 

A year back, when Himesh Kumar’s* son was kidnapped from outside his school, he knew he had to do something drastic.

He had been getting phone calls for extortion for quite some time, but he had ignored them — thinking they were mere threats.

As a contractor working in Malir for the past 12 years, Kumar got the shock of his life when he was informed by his driver one afternoon that his eight-year-old son, Nitin*, had been kidnapped. Fortunately, his elder kid, a 13-year-old girl, was spared.

After a gruelling few months of negotiations with the kidnappers, Nitin was finally released. As soon as he saw his son, Kumar arranged for the family to move to India. Informing a few close friends, they wound up their business and left quietly.

Draupati Mandhan, a mother of two, left her home in Jacobabad in the month of Ramazan to move to Karachi to pursue a career in medicine.

After months of house-hunting in the city, she zeroed in on a small apartment, owned by an old man, in Delhi Colony. The rent was reasonable and the place was comfortable.

“My husband had to stay back to settle the old debts that we had in Jacobabad. So I came alone with the children.”

But all her excitement of shifting to a big city vanished when the owner did not let her in the house. Embarrassed but still forcing a smile, she says that at first she did not understand the man. “But then he started calling me and my children Paleet (impure) and asked me to forget about the deal.”

Completely at a loss, she frantically phoned her husband. “Thankfully, I had enough money. But the thought of my staying at a hotel did not go well with my husband.”

She eventually stayed at a friend’s house for a few days and went back until another place was arranged. Even today, she is unable to comprehend what had happened to her.

The Cover-up

The patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council says over 200 Hindu families from different areas of Karachi have left Pakistan in the last couple of months.

The Pew Research Centre of Religion and Public Life has rated Pakistan the third least tolerant country in terms of religious diversity while the recent killing of three Hindus in Shikarpur has set alarm bells ringing for the minority community living in Sindh for centuries.

Amarnath Motumal, Vice-Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Sindh, gave a politically correct statement at first when asked about the fate of minorities. “Pakistan is secure enough for us than India; the present government is doing a lot for minorities.”

But when prodded a bit and given examples of the recent cases, he slightly changed his stance. “There is lawlessness and insecurity. Those who are rich are leaving in hordes but the poor are bound to suffer in silence.”

Forced Conversion

Ramesh Kumar Wankwani, the patron in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, was way more candid. “A case of forced conversion takes place in Sindh almost every week.”

Over 93 percent of all Hindus in Pakistan live in Sindh. The recent abductions of Hindu girls from Khairpur, Dadu and Jacobabad have forced the Hindu families to flee their ancestral villages where they had been living for hundreds of years. In Ghotki alone, the locals say, as many as 800 families have fled.

Wankwani claims that most of such cases go unreported as families cover up victimisation to avoid public humiliation. “And when they do seek help, the police never co-operate. Most of the families, who have reported incidents of victimisation to the police, come back with complaints that the police have refused to register an FIR. It is only through contacts that you get an FIR registered.”

No official figures on forced conversions are available but the HRCP believes that the numbers are high.

In most cases, young Hindu girls are abducted, converted, and forced to marry Muslim men. In some cases, they have also been forced into prostitution.

In Lyari, 16 girls have been abducted and forced into prostitution so far, according to Wankwani. In the latest case, Poonam Wasu was drugged and married off to her friend’s brother. Fortunately, she ran away and was reunited with her family. For Poonam’s family, migration is not an option as they are willing to fight.

Banu, from a scheduled caste family, was abducted in the beginning of 2010 and is still missing. Her father, Devjee, is looking for a job at the age of 55 to arrange money to fight his daughter’s case in court.

In 2007, Wankwani filed a petition in the Sindh High Court against forced conversions. Four years have gone by and he is still hopeful that something concrete would come out of it. “I have a firm belief in the judicial system of Pakistan. Let’s see.”

Kidnapping for Ransom

Kidnapping for ransom is another cause of concern for Hindu families. Dr Khushal Das, the founder of the Rajput Veterinary Services, is awaiting he safe recovery of his two nieces for the last two months. The two women were on their way to Dr Das’s home when they were kidnapped from Bahadurabad. One was a 27-year-old mother of two and other a 21-year-old student.

Dr Das received a call from his frantic sister-in-law that her daughters had not come back home. “They had left around 2 in the afternoon and my Bhabhi called me around 2 at night,” he said.

In a hushed tone, he said that what was more shocking to him was the attitude of the authorities. “I have given 30 years of my life to this city and after this incident people are behaving as if they do not know me at all,” he said with a rueful smile.

The only time he felt a bit hopeful was when he received a missed call on his mobile phone one night. Cautious, he informed the police who told him that the call was made from Abbottabad which was out of their jurisdiction.

But the apathetic attitude of the police did not disappoint him. He went from person to person of the higher ranks to find some clue to his missing nieces. “I am financially secure and can pay money to get my nieces back. But tell me honestly would someone want to stay in this country after such an incident?”

‘Flawed’ Education System

Sitting in his well-decorated office, with Jinnah’s portrait hanging high on a wall, Misri Ladhani, a government officer, blames the flawed education system for migration of his community members.

This year, Ladhani, a self-confessed patriot, completes 30 years in Pakistan. Brought up in a religiously diverse neighbourhood, Ladhani says it was different in the beginning. “We would sit and speak for hours with our neighbours. I never remember my mother locking the entrance door of our home. It was open for everyone,” he gets nostalgic.

With the start of Ziaul Haq’s era, things started dilapidating. “Unfortunately no one took notice of the fact that our nation was headed towards a downward spiral”, he explains.

The radicalisation that followed had long-lasting effects, but Ladhani believes that despite blaming external factors, one should look inward. “This is where the prejudice comes from.”

Last month, he moved the Sindh High Court on behalf of his son against the compulsion of studying Islamiat in O levels. In his appeal, he stated that the subjects subscribed to the O level students were Islamic Religious Culture and Islamiat for Muslims. However, there was no apparent choice for the minority students to study anything other than Ethics.

Due to this, he said, his son was unable to get an equivalence certificate to appear in the MBBS entrance exam. The SHC promptly allowed the boy to appear in the entry test.

But Ladhani feels that the problem is much deeper than that. He argues that after studying Islamiat from third standard till intermediate, their children would show as much interest in their own scriptures.

Most of the Hindu children opt for Islamiat because they can easily get distinction in it. “Whereas you get only passing marks in Ethics,” he raises his brows. “The competition should be fair. How about teaching our children Bhagwat Geeta and Ramayana at schools?”

Taking a pause, he cautiously speaks about his daughter. She has married a Muslim man. That came as a shock to many in their community, but he stood by his daughter’s decision. “After all, what can parents do in such a situation?”

But he feared that the marriage might invite the wrath of the radicals. So the first thing he did after getting them married was to ask them to leave the country.

Himesh Kumar* is happily settled in Bangalore now. He has a good job and he does not have to constantly worry about his family. But he misses home. “No matter where I live, I’ll always be a Pakistani,” he told The News on phone.

Wankwani claims that those who have left are still willing to come back. “But equal rights, self-respect and equal opportunities are something that every citizen wants, no matter what religion they belong to.”

* Names changed to protect privacy

Pakistan: Forced Marriages Of Religious Minority Women

From Scoop, NZ

Friday, 28 October 2011, 9:40 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

Pakistan: Forced Marriages Of Religious Minority Women
Friday, 28 October 2011, 9:40 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

AHRC-STM-159-2011October 25, 2011

A Statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission

The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms.

The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the criminal elements who are engage in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims.

In a recent case of rape and forced conversion to Islam which occurred in the month of August, the owner of a kiln factory, Muhammad Amin alias Sony, forcibly entered the house of one of his employees, a 13-year-old Christian girl and allegedly raped her at gunpoint. Sony then forced the victim to place her fingerprints on a set of marriage papers to provide himself with legal protection if he was to be accused of rape. Anwar Masih, the father of the victim and a resident of Harbans Pura, Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, was working in Sony's factory for daily wages with his wife and daughter. During August, because of heavy rains the kiln was closed and the victim's parents went out in search of work leaving their daughter alone in the house.

Immediately following the incident the parents filed a case with the Harbans Pura Police Station. However, to date, the police have not taken action against the accused person as he is a powerful man. Also, he sought the help of a Muslim religious group who has threatened the police that if any case is filed against the alleged rapist the houses of the Christian community will be burned. On October 22, after many delayed proceedings, the Session Court of Lahore ordered the Harbans Pura police to file the case which should have been done immediately. However, once again the police no action has been taken and the police are avoiding their sworn responsibilities.

In Sony's factory there are around 70 employees most of whom are Christians. One lady worker who was widowed two years ago has become pregnant and Sony has been forcing her to convert to Islam but the Christian community is trying to prevent it. They have accused Sony of being responsible for the pregnancy and have reported the matter to the police who once again refuse to file a case against him. Instead the police have threatened the Christians with dire consequences should they proceed. This lack of action by the police is due to threats by a Muslim group that the police themselves will suffer dire consequences should they side with the Christians.

There have been many cases reported by the Christian rights groups concerning rape and forced conversion. The following cases which all involve Christian women are but a few:

Sidra Bibi, (14) in the district of Sheikhupura in Punjab, is the daughter of a worker in the cotton industry. A Muslim from the village had his eye on her and began to molest her, and eventually abducted and raped her before threatening her with death. Physically and psychologically abused, the girl became pregnant. She managed to escape from her tormentor and is now back, in a state of exhaustion, with her family. The police have refused to accept her complaint because of the involvement of a Muslim religious group and now the CLAAS lawyers are handling the case.

Tina Barkat, (28), was approached by a Muslim friend who, after being friends with her for several months, asked her to convert to Islam. His family began to read her verses from the Quran, kidnapped and threatened her, and then gave her in marriage to a Muslim family member. Her lawyers have a current action to dissolve the marriage.

The same fate has befallen Samina Ayub, (17), who lives with her family near Lahore. Kidnapped by a Muslim, she was forcibly converted to Islam, and renamed Fatima Bibi and was forced to marry in the Muslim rite. Her family reported the abduction but the police have not prosecuted those responsible. The case remains unsolved and the family calls for the mobilisation of civil society to save Samina.

Shazia Bibi, (19) from Gujranwala, in Punjab, worked as a maid in the house of a Muslim woman, the owner of a grocery store. A Muslim boy from the shop fell in love with Shazia and in agreement with the owner, held a conversion and forced her into marriage. The plan was successful but now, thanks to Shazia's family the case has ended up in court.

Uzma Bibi, (15), from Gulberg, and Saira Bibi, (20), a nurse from Lahore, were taken by force by Muslim neighbours, converted to Islam and then forced to marry in the Islamic rite. The families of the girls have reclaimed their daughters and the cases are currently before the High Court of Lahore, represented by lawyers provided by CLAAS. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 13/4/2011)

Two Christian sisters Rubecca Masih and Saima Masih from Jhung, Punjab province were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. Both sisters were on their way home when by Muhammad Waseem and his five friends abducted them in and sped off in a vehicle. Muhammad Waseem married Saima Masih the day after her kidnapping. Jhang is an area where the majority of Muslims are radical. They believe that if a woman marries a Muslim, she automatically embraces the faith of her husband as a direct consequence.

Farah Hatim (24), of Rahim Yar Khan in Southern Punjab was abducted on May 8, 2011 by Zeeshan Ilyas and his brothers Imran and Gulfam. After this, she was forced to convert to Islam and marry Zeeshan. Human rights organizations and the Catholic Church have condemned the act and demanded action against the violation of her human rights.

The Justice and Peace Commission are leading the case which they took to the Session Court under the FIR, Case No. 150/11 US/ 365-B CR.PC. The police have since been threatening the family because of the religious angle. The Session Judge, Khawaja Mir, realised the seriousness of the case and had it transferred to the High Court (the High Court being a higher authority), for hearing due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Once the appeal was taken to the High Court it was presented by the Justice and Peace Commission and APMA (All Pakistan Minorities Alliance). Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman from the High Court Bahawalpur bench instructed the District Police Officer based in Rahim Yar Khan, and the families involved in the case, to appear.

The Judge questioned Farah Hatim as to whether she was kidnapped or went with Zeeshan by her own free will. After a few moments of silence, she replied, "I went with my own will". After a few more questions, the judge announced that Farah would be living with her new family. The young woman broke into tears as the court announced the decision.

It is unclear if the High Court took note of other cases involving women who have been kidnapped or if the High Court took into account the consideration of fear.

Farah Hatim was allowed a few moments to meet with her family. Her brother said, "I am shocked at what Farah said in the court, she was under threat, now all hopes are gone for her return. Why us? Why did we have to face this? Only because we are Christians (that we are treated like this)."

According to the Justice and Peace Commission, "Farah became a victim of the racket that is involved in prostitution. Zeehan IIyas had tried to force her into prostitution while she was a student at the Sheikh Zaid Medical College in Rahim Yar Khan, but she refused. Then Zeehan IIyas took his revenge. The current decision by Farah is possibly because she is pregnant and fears that her family will be killed if she tries to go back. Therefore, even if she had taken a brave stance of returning, she wouldn't have been accepted by society as she was kidnapped and raped. The fear of rejection is also a possible reason?"

The Justice and Peace Commission commented that ''thousands of girls from minorities are kidnapped and forced into marriages (against their will)''. The Justice and Peace Commission also stated that ''we are fighting against the cancer of kidnapping and forced marriages''.

Therefore, it is more than evident that the legal system and other important institutions are failing the religious minorities in Pakistan and women can become victims at any time.

Ironically these realities are a continuous issue for Christians, Hindus and other religious minorities and generally it is thought that the purpose behind this action by Islamic fundamentalists is to make Pakistan pure. The religious minorities reside in fear because legal institutions and other institutions are either biased or live in fear of the militant religious groups themselves.

Approximately 90 percent of the Christians and Hindus are the poorest of the poor and live in slum areas. They are forced to do the jobs of scavengers, sweepers, garbage collectors and other types of the lowest menial work. Their access to education is very limited.

This is a very basic issue of the rule of law in that the police take it upon themselves to act as judge and jury when it comes to a conflict between Islam and the religious minorities. They decide which FIRs to accept and even then when they deign to record the complaints they seldom make any investigations into the cases unless ordered to do so by a court. And even then, they delay the issue for as long as possible. An FIR is the first step in the registration of a complaint and every police station has the non-transferable duty to record them. It is very simply not their choice to decide which FIR to file. No action can be taken into a complaint until the FIR has been registered and therefore this alone is ample evidence that the police collude with the perpetrators.

Similarly, the lower judiciary fails in their responsibilities. In the vast majority of cases the judicial officers, including magistrates and judges question the traumatised victim in open court in full view of her family members, the alleged perpetrators and complete strangers. They do not considered the sensitivity of the feelings of the victim and pay no attention to the sanctity of the women, regardless of their religion.

All of this is a direct result of the government's appeasement policy towards the Muslim fundamentalist groups. Whether out of fear of a religious uprising that might dethrone the existing government or genuine feelings of the righteousness of what they are doing, is not known. What is known is that if the government does not take a firm stand against religious extremism they can hardly expect the judiciary and the police to do so. Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan clear states that protection must be provided to all citizens regardless of their religion.

The Asian Human Rights Commission strongly urges the government of President Zardari to stand behind the Constitution and ensure protection to each and every citizen of Pakistan.

The cases mentioned above, in which FIRs have been filed, must be properly investigated.

The perpetrators must be brought to trial, prosecuted and made to answer for the heinous crime of rape, especially against under aged girls.

The police officers who turn a blind eye and refuse to take action against the perpetrators must face the most severe disciplinary action. Once again, especially where under aged girls are the victims.

Those marriages which were forcefully or illegally conducted must be annulled forthwith and the girls and women given the choice of returning to their families and communities.

In view of the fact that apostasy is forbidden in Islam the government must take steps to cancel any and all conversions that have been done under duress. The Christian and Hindu women who have been forcibly converted must be provided with a safe environment to decide which religion they wish to follow.

Gang rape of Hindu and Christian girls: Open letter to Pakistan President Zardari

From TwoCirlces

October 14, 2011

To

Mr. Asif Ali Zardari
President of Pakistan
President's Secretariat
Islamabad, PAKISTAN

Dear Mr. President,

We, the following social activists and members of the web-based online forum The Moderates, have come to know about a dastardly incident that has taken place in your country through a news release of the Asian Human Rights Commission. Here is the link to the report:http://www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-199-2011

Attention: A 12 year-old Christian girl has been gang-raped, detained for eight months, forcibly converted and 'married' to her Muslim attacker

Name of victim: Miss Anna (not her real name) 12, daughter of Arif Masih, employed as street sweeper at WAPDA, resident of quarter number 44, WAPDA colony, Shahdra, Lahore, capital of Punjab province,

Place of incident: WAPDA Quarters resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
Date of incident: December 24, 2010

Names of alleged perpetrators:
1. Muhammad Irfan, (rapist) resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
2. Muhammad Irshad, (rapist) resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
3. Mumtaz Bibi.resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
4. Farzana Bibi.resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
5. Kiran Bibi resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
6. Nida, resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
7. Station House Officer (SHO), factory area police station, Shadra, Lahore, Punjab province,

We are writing to voice our deep concern regarding the gang rape of this young Christian girl who was then forcibly converted to Islam and then 'married' to one of her attackers by the members of a banned religious organization. As the details of the incident have been well documented in the AHRC report, we would like to refrain from re-stating the horrific story.

The aforesaid report also mentions that as many as 20 to 25 girls from the Hindu community are abducted every month and converted forcibly, according to Amarnath Motumal, an advocate and council member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Many abducted girls are raped, others are never heard from again by their families; all cases involved a struggle to access their right to redress. 

While the aforesaid incidents are extremely dastardly and inhuman, a general perception about the human rights situation of minorities in Pakistan can be easily gauged from the recent chain of unfortunate incidents including the assassination of Minorities minister Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Governor Mr. Salmaan Taseer, for supporting minority rights.

It has also been reported that the judge who awarded death penalty to Taseer’s killer has gone into hiding fearing threats to his own life. It is easily imaginable that if ministers, Governors and judges advocating minority rights are not safe, how difficult it would be for an ordinary citizen to defend his/her human rights in your country.

Mr. President, we believe that defending and upholding minority rights is one of the foremost responsibilities of a healthy democracy. If your country fails to protect its minorities, it may not only affect the democratic credentials of your country but also promote and bolster anti-minority activities in other countries.

So keeping in mind the human, moral, democratic and civic responsibility of a country to protect human rights of its citizens in general, and those of minorities, in particular, we, on behalf of The Moderates , urge you to investigate the case of Miss Anna and prosecute all the perpetrators involved in the gang rape of a 12 year old girl for eight months. We also urge you to provide full protection to the child and her family and the best possible medical treatment and counseling.

Finally, we request you to ask the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to provide you with the list of the minority community girls who have been abducted, and instruct your law enforcement agencies to trace them and return them to their families, and provide them with protection.

The Islamic Paradise of Kashmir

Pakistan: A monster roaming the world

Paul McGeough
September 3, 2011
SMH

Long haul ... NATO supply convoys assemble near Karachi port before taking the hazardous journey to US-led coalition bases in Afghanistan. Last year more than 150 convoys were attacked.

Long haul ... NATO supply convoys assemble near Karachi port before taking the hazardous journey to US-led coalition bases in Afghanistan. Last year more than 150 convoys were attacked. Photo: Kate Geraghty

The West has spent billions trying to buy Pakistan's friendship but the jihadists are stronger than ever, writes Paul McGeough.

Search for a firm footing in Pakistan and there is none - all is quicksand … strategically, politically, morally.

Here in south Asia, strategically sandwiched between failing Afghanistan and the China and India powerhouses, is a country in which journalists are abducted in the night by agents of the state and murdered; in which the only advance after a decade in which Washington has tried to buy friendship with cheques for more than $20 billion, is the expansion of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - which is on the verge of surpassing Britain's as the fifth biggest in the world.

In Pakistan, a 50-year-old woman is sentenced to death on a dubious blasphemy charge - and politicians who dare to speak in her defence are gunned down; and a woman is gang-raped and paraded naked through her village on the orders of a local council, over bogus claims that her 12-year-old brother has offended a 20-year-old woman from the clan of the men who defiled her.
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Death in Islamabad ... Newspapers with headlines about the death of Osama bin Laden, after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in May.

Death in Islamabad ... Newspapers with headlines about the death of Osama bin Laden, after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in May. Photo: Reuters

But that's village life. In the leafy garrison town of Abbottabad, an hour's drive north of Islamabad, Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks of September 11, 2001, was able to hide in plain sight for years. The location of his fortified bunker, a stone's throw from a prestigious military academy, made it harder to give any credence to the generals' repeated denials that significant elements of Pakistan's extensive security apparatus sheltered the al-Qaeda chief and continue to give succour to the Taliban and other insurgency and terrorist movements.

In the south-west, in the wilds of provincial Baluchistan, there have been 150 ''kill and dump'' operations this year. Most of the victims are Baluch nationalist rebels. Their killers are the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and other elements of Pakistan's national security forces - driven to brutality by a belief, which could be correct, that Pakistan's arch foe, India, stirs the local nationalist pot. In turn, the Baluch nationalists are accused of running their own death squads - their victims are Punjabi ''settlers'', government workers brought in from other parts of the country.

Baluchistan is half Pashtun, which also makes it a sanctuary for the Taliban from adjoining Afghanistan, where Washington and the world still struggle, with little success, to impose a semblance of democracy on the bones of a fracturing, failing state. Here then is another of the ironies that puts a serious question mark over the bona fides of the Pakistani security forces: the leadership of the Afghanistan Taliban sequesters in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, but the various Pakistani security services are so busy putting the Baluch nationalists through the mincer they don't have time to take down the Taliban command-and-control centre. Instead, they reportedly socialise with the Taliban and sit in on their strategy meetings.

West from Baluchistan is the sprawling port city of Karachi, where the spiralling death toll in renewed ethnic turf-wars gives raw meaning to what local novelist Kamila Shamsie broaches obliquely, recounting how the city ''winks'' at her. "Yes, the city said, I am a breeding ground for monsters, " she writes, "but don't think that is the full measure of what I am."

This drab, chaotic home to 18 million people who account for 65 per cent of Pakistan's economy is being carved up by bullets that this year have accounted for as many as 1000 ''wrong place, wrong time'' deaths as gunmen randomly select their targets - sending messages to whole communities, not the individuals with whose blood they paint the rough pavements. As the suburbs seethe, police do little, because they are cowed by the systematic elimination of those in their ranks who intervened in the last iteration of these ethnic wars. Provincial and federal governments and the security forces only wring their hands.

In Karachi everyone lies. No one denies turf wars are being waged. They simply blame everyone else - all the political parties deny any links to the militias that prosecute their bloody agendas and to the crime, drug and land-development mafias that prosper in their wake. And the city's once-dominant Urdu-speaking Mohajirs fight to maintain their control of corrupted city politics, amid an influx of Pashtuns fleeing upheavals along the Afghan border.

"Tension rises, we see killings and then scores must be settled," an adviser to the provincial governor says. "We are at war - the political parties say they are not involved, but the mafias take shelter from the parties as they exploit the situation."

In Islamabad, enter any of the city's newsrooms, and see fear in the eyes of journalists who risk death and torture for going about assignments. Consider the words of their Karachi colleague Madiha Sattar - "a growth of intolerance has forged an extreme, murderous antipathy to freedom of expression."

Most shocking in this campaign of fear and intimidation against one of the pillars of democracy was the disappearance in late May of Syed Saleem Shahzad, an investigative reporter for the respected, Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online. Two days after his abduction, Shahzad's battered body was found at Mandi Bahauddin, 130 kilometres south-east of the capital. The reporter left detailed accounts of the threats he had received from the ISI; in Washington, senior officials unflinchingly confirming that Shahzad's death had been ''sanctioned'' by the Pakistani government.

Umar Cheema might just as easily have been their victim. Behind a door marked ''Investigation Cell'' off a basement corridor in the Islamabad offices of The News, the 34-year-old father of two explains that the shock in his colleague Saleem Shahzad's murder was a realisation it might just as easily have been him.

As Cheema drove home from a party in the early hours during Ramadan last year, 12 men who identified themselves as police commandos abducted him, he says. Informing him first that he was a suspect in a killing, they pulled a bag over his head and hauled him away.

"They took me to a building where the leader stripped off my clothes. Then I was ordered to lie on the floor and they beat me on the back and shoulders for 20 or 25 minutes with leather straps and wooden canes.

"I was writing about corruption in the government and the lack of accountability in the military and intelligence agencies - they said they were beating me because of my reporting. Then they shaved my head and eyebrows - that's what is done to thieves in rural areas to humiliate them.

"Shahzad's death left me speechless," he says. "I was the second last victim before they took him. So I felt very much that this was a message for me - it was very, very personal."

In Islamabad, the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Gillani is as overwhelmed as it is complicit in the nation's failings. The economy is in crisis and the government has ceded control of more than half the country to the military or to extremist militias. "None of the cogs of state mesh to make it do what must be done," Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Kamran Arif said.

Just south of Islamabad is Rawalpindi, a more typical Asian city than the sanitised and empty boulevards of Islamabad. As home and headquarters to the men and institutions that comprise Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment, this is the centre of absolute power in Pakistan. And it is here that a deep-fried sense of humiliation over the American raid to kill Osama bin Laden, in May this year, is felt most acutely.

"After the bin Laden raid, it's a question of the survival of the state," the defence analyst and director of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, Maria Sultan, says. "The problem now is that by this very public humiliation, the US has lost its biggest supporter - it's not the capability of the Pakistani military that is affected, it's its credibility."

A close reading of ''Getting Bin Laden'', The New Yorker's inside account of the May 2 raid, reveals the mission was not just a single US incursion that managed to evade Pakistan's air defences. On the night, there were effectively three separate American missions, none of which was detected by a military-security complex that demands indulgence by the people of Pakistan on the grounds that it is their only protection from the Indian hordes.

Pakistan's generals faced a grim choice - they had to admit to deceiving the world in harbouring bin Laden, or to incompetence by not knowing he was lounging in their backyard. So supine were they in opting to plead incompetence there were fears of a mutiny in the middle ranks of the security services.

The US signal to the world of just how much it could not trust its south Asian ally came hard on the heels of serial embarrassments at the hands of the Taliban and other militant groups in Pakistan.

There have been a series of militant attacks on the most secure and sensitive defence establishments. The latest, which some observers concluded could not have been undertaken without inside help, saw a 10-man assault team storm the Mehran naval aviation base in Karachi. It took hundreds of Pakistani navy commandos, marines and paramilitaries to retake the base, but not before two aircraft were destroyed, hostages taken and the base had been occupied for the best part of a day.

But it takes a discerning Pakistani general to differentiate between militants - some are ''strategic assets'' of the security apparatus and the generals refuse to go after them.

Dr Ayesha Agha, whose military and political commentaries appear in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, explains: "The military depends on these 'assets' - they are a cost-effective means to fighting wars that the Pakistani military wants to fight in India and Afghanistan." Extrajudicial killings by the military now are counted in the hundreds.

When men in uniform were filmed recently murdering a detainee, the reckoning in human rights circles was that far from being a lapse of judgment, the recording had been allowed in the knowledge that its distribution on the internet would serve as a useful warning to the wider community.

A Karachi taxi driver becomes excited as he ferries us from the airport to a downtown hotel - "Pakistan lovely country," he bellows. "Terrorism? No, no, no."

But a single graphic in a 200-page study of Pakistan, published in May by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, reveals an impossible security challenge. Last year alone, 2113 terrorist attacks, 369 clashes between the security services and militants, 260 operational attacks by the security forces, 135 US drone attacks, 69 border clashes, 233 bouts of ethno-political violence and 214 inter-tribal clashes resulted in more than 10,000 dead and as many injured.

The death of bin Laden and the reported death of al-Qaeda's new No. 2 figure, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, in an American drone attack last week, are still being factored into a running debate among intelligence specialists on the extent to which al-Qaeda offshoots elsewhere in the world, especially the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP], have taken the baton from the Pakistani organisation.

But a July study by the New America Foundation of 32 ''serious'' jihadist terror plots against the West from 2004 to 2011, finds 53 per cent had operational or training links to jihadist groups in Pakistan - compared to just 6 per cent being linked to Yemen. And the rising tempo of the drone attacks has failed to dent the rising frequency of Pakistan-linked plots against the West, the study finds.

Implicit or explicit in any discussion on Pakistan's volatile mix of militant violence and governmental chaos, is the level of anxiety around the world about the security of its nuclear arsenal. Confronted with claims such as that by bin Laden that acquiring a nuclear weapon was a ''religious duty'' and the hope expressed by one of his lieutenants that such a weapon one day might be seized in Pakistan, officials in Islamabad invariably boast that all is tightly locked down.

But when we ask a Pakistani diplomat how secure were the weapons in the aftermath of the US mission to kill Osama bin Laden, he replies: "Less so, now that the Americans have revealed to the world that it is possible to sneak into Pakistan undetected, to take something that you really want."

President Obama's public appeal that Pakistan not become the world's first ''nuclear-armed militant state'' gives context to disclosures by The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh of the existence of a US Special Operations rapid-response team which would be parachuted into Pakistan in the event of a nuclear crisis.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counter intelligence at the US Department of Energy, is boldest in setting out the fears of Washington, London and other capitals - some of which were disclosed without diplomatic varnish by Wikileaks last year.

Writing in Arms Control Today, Mowatt-Larssen, who served 20 years at the CIA, bills Pakistan as the most likely setting for terrorists bent on acquiring a nuclear device to co-opt a nuclear insider - of whom there are estimated to be as many as 70,000 in Pakistan.

"There is a lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders," he writes. "Insiders have facilitated terrorist attacks. Suicide bombings have occurred at air force bases that reportedly serve as nuclear weapons storage sites. It is difficult to ignore such trends.

''Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to co-operate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause."

"Not possible," says Maria Sultan. "About eight to 10,000 personnel working at the strategic level on security," she says, ticking off seven or eight interlocking layers of complex security, the first of which she says would trip most intruders before they came within 80 kilometres of a nuclear facility. "The idea that a terrorist can walk in and get hold of a device is just not possible."

Such is the bind in which Pakistanis find themselves. But if it is true feeble and corrupt civilian administrations make circumstances ripe for a military takeover, it is hardly surprising the generals have no respect for democratic fundamentals.

As revealed in one of the Wikileaks cables, Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was ready to force President Asif Ali Zardari from office - save for the fact the general thought even less of Zardari's likely civilian replacement. And historically, Washington has opted to connect with Pakistan through the military power of the generals, rather than the people power of the civilian leadership.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA analyst, sets out the connections in Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad. "…Richard Nixon turned a blind eye to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis to keep his friends in Pakistan's army in power, a strategy that ultimately failed," Riedel writes. "Ronald Reagan entertained Zia-ul-Haq even as Zia was giving succour to the Arab jihadists who would become al-Qaeda. George W. Bush allowed Pervez Musharraf to give the Afghan Taliban a sanctuary from which to kill American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan."

And in the judgment of Bushra Gohar, an elected MP from Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, Washington still prefers to deal with the military rather than the country's civilian leadership. "That's not a role that the military has under the constitution," she says during a break in the business of the National Assembly in Islamabad. "There has been a democratic transition in this country and we expect the international community to support it."

Power vacuums become ripe for exploitation, as was revealed with frightening clarity earlier this year when two of three elected figures who had dared to speak out against Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws were assassinated. In January, Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer was gunned down by one of his state-provided security men; in March, the Minorities Minister and the only Christian in Gillani's cabinet, Shahbaz Bhatti, died in a hail of gunfire as his car left his mother's home in Islamabad.

Taseer's killer confessed and became a national hero. His home is a shrine, he is garlanded with rose petals and, in the oddest twist of all, the young lawyers' movement that effectively bundled Pervez Musharraf, the last dictator, from power in 2008, has taken the side of this cold-blooded murderer - not the principle for which his victim died.

A visitor leaves Pakistan wondering if anyone here speaks the truth. The dictators habitually resort to amping up religious parties - either to drown out secular ones that might be interested in the ideals of selfless democracy, or to further marginalise the country's Shiia Muslim minority.

"And people like Musharraf have two faces," Kamran Arif of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said. "He would say all the right things for the West and do just what he wanted to do at home."

Some foreign analysts fall back on the seeming failure of Pakistan's religious parties at the ballot box as a hopeful sign. But a sense of rising radicalisation, particularly in the military and the middle classes, suggests an asymmetric contest for control of a highly unstable society - the non-religious parties fight in the parliament, but the religious parties are street brawlers.

Sherry Rehman, the only elected figure in the country to defend the convicted blasphemer Aasia Bibi, makes the same point in explaining how that debate was lost. "The discourse shifted from the parliament to the street," she says.

"We have to keep the agenda in the parliament, and not with the gun-toting thugs who make inflammatory speeches outside."

Like the financial institutions in the 2008 global financial crisis, Pakistan is deemed by Washington to be ''too big to fail''. Between them, however, Washington and Islamabad have been unable in the past decade to make this relationship work - credibly or creditably.

Predictions of imminent collapse in Islamabad are exaggerated, but perhaps not overly so. "The government does not have the capacity to tackle any of the issues," says the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Arif. "Things will just keep getting bad … and I don't discount the fact that we can fall into chaos."

Like many other analysts, Bruce Riedel laboriously sets out the policy options by which Washington and Islamabad might work together to defeat the global jihadist movement - before he concludes that none is easy or guaranteed.

An adviser to several US administrations and now with the Brookings Institution, Riedel sees Pakistan under siege from a syndicate of radical terrorist groups unified by the notion that nuclear-armed Pakistan could be the extremist jihadist state they have never had.

"They want to hijack Pakistan and its weapons," he says. Alluding to Islamabad's role in creating a monster, as often as not with Washington's sponsorship, he writes: "An extremely powerful jihadist Frankenstein is now roaming the world, with equally powerful protectors in Pakistani society, right up to the very top.

"Who cannot fear that the 'long beards' will prevail?"