Militants behead two jawans in J&K - Indian Press supresses story

India Today
Ajmer Singh  New Delhi, August 6, 2011


In a barbaric incident, which has shocked army officials, Pakistan-trained militants beheaded two soldiers and dumped their bodies during an encounter to check infiltration attempt near the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara district of Kashmir late last month.

It is suspected that the militants killed the jawans from the 20 Kumaon regiment, beheaded the duo and reportedly retained their heads as war trophies.

But, the army officials are not willing to accept the tragic story, as it might have an impact on the morale of the armed forces waging anti- terror operations in J& K. A jawan of 19 Rajput, who was part of the patrol party, also died in the cross- fire.

A senior Army official, requesting anonymity, disclosed that the two men of Kumaon regiment were killed and their heads were chopped off. Their bodies were also mutilated, he said.

The incident happened around Pak foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar's visit to the country, in the last week of July, disclosed the officer.

The martyred soldiers were identified as Havildar Jaipal Singh Adhikari and Lance Naik Devender Singh.

The details of the third jawan, from 19 Rajput, couldn't be ascertained.

The soldiers were cremated on Wednesday at their native places in Pithoragarh and Haldwani districts of Uttrakhand.

A state police officer, who was present at the cremation of Devender Singh, confirmed that the bodies were badly mutilated and not shown to relatives. The Army authorities informed that the heads were blown away during the fierce encounter, he said.

Lance Naik Devender Singh's uncle also admitted that the bodies weren't shown to the family members, and so did a 20 Kumaon regiment official. Militants fired rocket propelled grenades at the jawans, killing them on spot and blowing off their heads, the official said.

He, however, refused to share details of the encounter. Lt Col J. S. Brar, the official spokesperson, HQ 15 Corps wasn't available for comments.

Rajesh Kalia, the official spokesman of Udhampur based Northernern Command, said there was an infiltration bid near Farkian Gali, which is close to the Line of Control (LOC), and that they had lost three men.

When asked if militants beheaded Indian soldiers, Kalia avoided a direct reply by merely commenting that " details weren't available". But, the actual incident is quietly being discussed among the army circles in the valley.

A commanding officer of a Rashtriya Rifles ( RR) unit, deployed in the Kupwara sector, also privately confirmed that militants had beheaded two soldiers of the Kumaon unit.

Officers said that the trend of beheading armymenby the militants has resurfaced after four yeras.

A major rank officer of Kumaon Scouts, however, claimed that soldiers were martyred in a fierce encounter, which took place at 16.40 hrs on July 30, near Kupwara.

The ambush party had come under attack from three sides.

The barbaric incident is despicable and has outraged top army officers, stated one colonel posted in Kupwara sector.

In 1999 also, there was a national outcry, when Kargil hero Lt Saurabh Kalia and five Jawans were captured by Pakistani troops.

They were brutally tortured and then shot dead.

According to Lt Kalia's father's online petition, Pakistan had dared to humiliate India by flouting all international norms.
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The Birkin effect: Our jawans are beheaded

Pioneer 24 August 2011 15:26
Kanchan Gupta


Pakistan’s businesswoman-turned-Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar may feign to be miffed that the media chose to focus attention on her Birkin handbag, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, Jimmy Choo shoes and South Sea pearls during her recent visit to India rather than her intellectual contribution towards peace-making between a terrorist state and its victim neighbour, but that does not in any manner diminish the fact that a calculated gamble by the decrepit civilian Government in Islamabad and the criminal military-jihadi complex in Rawalpindi has served its purpose and paid rich dividends.

The feckless political class in India has elected to be reduced to a bowl of quivering jelly in the face of Pakistan’s charm offensive, much as it was when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto brought along his daughter Benazir and managed to extract huge concessions at Simla in 1972 without raising any hackles. As for the media of this unfortunate country, led as it is by television channels desperate to grab eyeballs whatever it takes and ever-so-mindful of sensitivities across the Radcliffe Line, it has neither the time nor the inclination to look beyond the obvious. Given as we are to self-flagellation, self-doubt and self-denigration, it is only natural that our media, which frankly reflects our society without any distortion, should have seized upon Ms Khar’s visit to paint Pakistanis as the sub-continent’s beautiful people and Indians as the beasts. Nothing could have exemplified this better than the running commentary by the editor of a news channel comparing fuddy-duddies in the Government of India with the swish visiting Minister, and how we as a nation are straggling while Pakistan is boldly marching forward. It’s a pity that our media houses continue to enjoy the untold and never-to-be disclosed benefits of stationing their studios in Delhi and its suburbs; their hearts and minds belong elsewhere.

And so it is that ever since Ms Khar came to Delhi, showed off her sartorial preference for hand-made exclusive Hermes bags which she wouldn’t dare flaunt in the lanes of Karachi and conquered our Left-liberal commentariat which controls media content, rare has been the story or article critical of Pakistan or fair in its assessment of that country’s continued hate India, harm India policy that is implemented with the ruthless fanaticism of jihadis who have dedicated their lives to the mass slaughter of innocent men, women and children. Hence, it stands to reason that our media should have purposefully glossed over the barbaric beheading of two Indian soldiers by Pakistanis — it is unclear whether the perpetrators were Pakistani soldiers or Pakistani terrorists being provided cover by the former while trying to sneak into India — near the Line of Control in Kupwara district of Jammu & Kashmir. The ghastly incident, it now transpires, occurred late last month, around the time of Ms Khar’s visit. Sketchy details that are available suggest the Indian soldiers’ bodies were “dumped” on our side of the LoC, which would mean they were kidnapped, tortured and then beheaded, a ritual without which jihadis believe their faith-ordained task is incomplete.

India Today’s web edition, which has a story on the brutality, says “It is suspected that militants killed the jawans from the 20 Kumaon Regiment, beheaded the duo and reportedly retained their heads as war trophies.” The journal says, “A senior Army official, requesting anonymity, disclosed that the two men of Kumaon Regiment were killed and their heads were chopped off. Their bodies were also mutilated.” Such was the mutilation that the families of the soldiers were requested not to lift the shrouds covering their bodies. Quoting Army officials, the report identifies the two martyrs as Havildar Jaipal Singh Adhikari and Lance Naik Devender Singh. A third jawan, from 19 Rajput Regiment, was shot dead. His name has not been disclosed. The fallen soldiers were cremated on Wednesday at their native villages in Pithoragarh and Haldwani districts of Uttarakhand. But for the report in India Today, India would have remained ignorant of this horror story.

Unfortunately, the Army has chosen to maintain a strange silence. According to officials who spoke to India Today, this is because confirmation of the slaughter would ‘demoralise’ the soldiers on duty. But that’s balderdash: Jawans are not known to take the killing of their fellow jawans lightly, nor do they suffer loss of morale. If anything, it hardens their resolve and strengthens their belief that the enemy must be fought tooth and nail, till the last man standing. The capture and subsequent horrific torture of Lt Saurabh Kalia and five jawans whose mutilated, unrecognisable bodies were returned by the Pakistani Army did not weaken the resolve of our men in uniform during the Kargil war. While media is to be blamed for not sniffing out the story and splashing it (although it spared no effort to sniff out that Ms Khar was indeed carrying a Birkin handbag and that it could cost up to Rs 17 lakh and then went on to inform us why those who carry this bag are to be taken seriously) we must not overlook the role of our effete political leadership in keeping such details of Pakistani perfidy under wraps. It would not be unfair to presume that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, desperate to go down in history as the friend of a country that torments India, took personal interest in ensuring the story did not surface in the public domain; it would have remained a secret had an intrepid reporter of India Today not put it out.

Soon after I resumed writing for this newspaper in 2004 after returning to India from Cairo where I was posted on a Government assignment, I had penned a piece on a similar incident that had missed the attention of media and fetched no protest from the Government of India, headed then as it is now by Mr Manmohan Singh. Late in the evening on Saturday, April 16, 2005, an Assistant Commandant and a constable of the Border Security Force, on duty at Lankamura outpost on the India-Bangladesh border, a mere eight km from Tripura’s capital, Agartala, were dragged into Bangladeshi territory. By the time the BSF got them back, Assistant Commandant Jeevan Kumar was dead. He had been shot at point blank range. Injuries on his body indicated he was brutally knifed before being killed. Constable KK Surendran, seriously injured, was battling for his life. I must confess I do not know whether he survived that attack. On that occasion, in the absence of any official statement, I had sought to reconstruct events on the basis of what local residents had to say: The two men were rushed by a group of Bangladesh Rifles personnel in civilian clothes, dragged across the border and then set upon by their colleagues. All the while, the BDR’s men kept firing on the Lankamura outpost. The firing stopped around midnight, followed by a hastily arranged flag meeting during which Kumar’s lifeless body and a barely alive Surendran were handed over to the BSF. There was not even a word of condemnation.

PS: On Kargil Diwas I tweeted about Saurabh Kalia. There were numerous tweets in response, asking me who was Saurabh Kalia. Those asking this question were young Indians, well-educated and from middle-class families. A nation forgets its martyrs when it is led by those who hold martyrs in contempt and are elected to office by those who are bowled over by Birkin handbags, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, Jimmy Choo shoes and South Sea pearls — namely, our selfish, self-serving middle-classes.

PAKISTAN SUPPORTS TERRORIST REBELS IN KASHMIR -- BY YOSSEF BODANSKY AND VAUGHN S. FORREST

US Congressional Record

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PAKISTAN SUPPORTS TERRORIST REBELS IN KASHMIR -- (BY YOSSEF BODANSKY AND VAUGHN S. FORREST) (Extension of Remarks - June 22, 1994)

[Page: E1295]

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HON. BILL MCCOLLUM

in the House of Representatives

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1994

• Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of the House a very important matter. The role of Pakistan in aiding and abetting terrorism in Kashmir is well documented, so much so that the administration almost placed the Pakistani regime on the 1993 list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, the administration did not take such action because it was assured by Pakistan that Islamabad was taking credible steps to dissociate itself from the militants in Kashir.

• Recent reports however, suggest that Pakistan never stopped its aid to the terrorists in Kashir. A report in the Washington Post dated, May 16, 1994, titled, `Pakistan Aiding Rebels in Kashmir: Muslims Reportedly Armed and Trained,' by John Word Anderson, datelined Muzzaffarabad, gives a first-hand account of such assistance by Pakistan to terrorists in Kashmir.

• The State Department has also confirmed this fact in its annual report titled, `Patterns of Global Terrorism' I quote, `* * * there were credible reports in 1993 of official Pakistani support to Kashmiri militants * * *.'

• This fact is further confirmed from a study conducted by The Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare titled, `The Kashmir Connection,' which I would like to place in the Record, immediately following these remarks which details the extent of Pakistani involvement in aiding the terrorists in Kashmir.

• This House should take cognizance of this serious issue particularly as some of those who have indicted in the bombing of the World Trade Center had also received training in Pakistan.

(BY YOSSEF BODANSKY AND VAUGHN S. FORREST)

Chief of staff's note: The following paper was prepared in light of the publication in the Monday, May 16 issue of The Washington Post of an article discussing Pakistan's extensive involvement in rendering support to terrorist elements in Kashmir. That piece revealed the fact of Pakistani involvement, but not the extent. In this paper, and in future papers, the Task Force will seek to explore in-depth Pakistan's role in international terrorism and its profound ramifications for the Central Asian region in general, and India in particular.

As the rivalry between India and Pakistan has intensified, perhaps no other region has taken on the significance of Kashmir. That province is unique among all the crisis points along the Indo-Pakistani border in that it is not just an area of strategic and economic importance, it is also the object of the ideological passions of the various states in the region. Thus, the following paper will briefly summarize the ongoing rivalry in Kashmir, focusing on Pakistan, Iran, the various Islamist movements, and the military/terrorist dimension of the conflict.

For Islamabad, the liberation of Kashmir is a sacred mission, the only task unfulfilled since the days of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. However, Kashmir is equally important in that it serves the domestic interests of the Pakistani Government in three crucial respects. First, tension over Kashmir creates a diversion from frustrations at home. Second, the Kashmir cause allows Islamabad to rally the support of Pakistan's Islamist parties and their loyalists in the military and the ISI, and third, it serves the regime as an important access point to the markets of Central Asia.
Similarly, Iran considers an escalation of the Jihad for the liberation of Kashmir a key to the assertion of its own strategic prominence, particularly under the auspices of its Islamic Bloc. Indeed, Iran sees Kashmir, because it is the land of the Ayatollah Khomeynia's roots, as sacred ground and is using that fact to instill ideological zeal in the various nationals who make up Tehran's terrorist infrastructure. Not surprisingly, having taken the proverbial tiger by the tail and invested such prestige in the `Islamization' of Kashmir, Tehran now finds itself committed to fighting for it.

Additionally, beyond Iran and Pakistan, the Armed Islamic Movement, as well as several Saudi, Gulf Arab, and other supporters of Islamist causes, put Kashmir high on their list of jihads to be fought. This is not only because of Kashmir's aforementioned material and `spiritual' importance, but also because it is seen as a relatively easy target. Being geographically isolated and chocked full of weapons and terrorists cells, many Islamist groups believe that the wresting of Kashmir from India would be a great prize acquired at minimal cost and would inspire their followers and further the cause.

Whatever the validity of such as assumption, all of the states and organizations engaged in Kashmir have large, highly trained and well equipped forces, and most have not yet been committed to the Kashmiri jihad. Thus, there exists an environment in which ideological zeal and strategic and political considerations have coalesced. Specifically, as already noted, Pakistan needs Kashmir as a distraction from its domestic problems, various terrorist `Afgahan' groups are chomping at the bit to move, awaiting only a wink and a nod from the ISI, and Iran and various Arab states stand willing to finance the effort.

Thus, it is safe to assume that the fighting in Kashmir will escalate significantly, with numerous additional highly trained and well equipped mujahideen many of them professional special forces and terrorists, joining the fight and expanding the struggle into the rest of India. Indeed, there are already in place extensive stockpiles of weapons as well as large sums of money to sustain and support such a conflict.

Consequently, apparently reassured about the steadfastness of its Islamist support, Islamabad has acknowledged openly the futility of its negotiations with India over the Kashmir issue. At the same time, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has begun to accede to demands from her military leaders for further increases in the Pakistaini defense budget.

In fact, the rising militancy of Pakistani officials is far from empty rhetoric, for Ismanabad has used the increasing tension in Kashmir as pretext for expanding its terrorist training and
support system for operations in Central Asia and elsewhere in the world.

To that end, the ISI has established the Markaz-Dawar, a center for world wide Islamist activities. Mulavi Zaki, the center's spiritual leader, has told the trainees that their destiny is to fight and liberate `the land of Allah from infidels' wherever they might be. The commanders and instructors at Markaz-Dawar are AIM members, primarily Ikhwan from Algeria, Sudan and Egypt, and most of them have more than a decade of combat experience in Afghanistan.

In early 1992, some of these `Afghans' were transferred to Azzad Kashmir where new camps were being built for them by the Pakistani Army. By early 1993, there were over 1,000 `Afghan' mujahideen in the Markaz-Dawar alone. Following the completion of their advanced training, the `Afghans' were sent to Kashmir, Algeria and Egypt. Furthermore, Islamabad's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the main offices of the Islamist terrorist organizations have remained functioning in Peshawar.

In addition to the transfers noted above, a series of `raids' by police since October 1992 resulted in the shifting of some 200 terrorist operatives, including some wanted by Western police officials, to facilities near Jalalabad, just across the Afghan border. Indeed, in the fall of 1993, an Arab `Afghan' with first hand knowledge of the situation confirmed that Pakistan had `pushed them out of the door only to open a window for them to return and they come and go as they wish in Peshawar.'

In the meantime, in the summer of 1993, the ISI had in the Markaz-Dawar another force of some 200 Afghans--mainly Jallalluddin Haqqani's people from the Khowst area--operating under its direct command and earmarked for special operations in Kashmir. According to Muhammad Fazal al-Hajj, a PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] terrorist captured in southern Kashmir in the summer of 1993, additional `Afghans' and Afghan nationals were being prepared by the ISI for a forthcoming escalation in Kashmir. At least 400 `Afghans' and Afghan nationals were known to have been organized in one camp, where they were trained by the ISI to augment and provide a leadership core for the Kashmiri Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. There was also a corresponding expansion of the preparation of Islamist terrorists for operations in forward bases in Kashmir, with some 600 terrorists, about half of them veteran `Afghans' and Afghans, already at the final phase of their training.
Indeed, many Arab volunteers continue to arrive in Peshawar almost every day. The preferred port of entry is the Karachi airport. There, a special department run by a Major Amir--an ISI Major with Afghan experience `turned' director of Immigration at the airport--oversees the volunteer's `proper' entry into Pakistan and quick dispatch to Peshawar. The main Ikhwan facility is the Maktaba-i-Khidmat [Services Offices], which was originally established by the late Shaykh Abd Allah Azzam and is now run by his successor, Shaykh Muhammad Yussaf Abbas. The Maktaba-i-Khidmat still processes volunteers for AIM, but at present many of the volunteers are dispatched to the numerous training camps run by Arab `Afghan' militants inside Afghanistan. The ISI continues to provide the weapons and expertise necessary to support this operation.

Meanwhile, the Government of Afghanistan has also increased its support for terrorist training and preparation. This growing direct involvement is important because the main operating bases for the ISI's activities in Central Asia are in northern Afghanistan. The origins of this arrangement run back to the aftermath of the fall of Kabul. At that time, many Arab `Afghans' returned to Peshawar where they were organized by the Pakistani government to support various Islamist causes in concert with Iran and Sudan. Many of these fighters later returned to Afghanistan as quality forces or to serve in personal guard details.

Subsequently, in early December 1993, during a state visit to Pakistan, the Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan, Maulana Arsalan Rahmani, elaborated on Kabul's perception of the Islamist struggles worldwide, and especially in south and central Asia. He hailed Afghanistan's active support for Islamist armed causes and stressed that `we don't consider this support as intervention in any country's internal affairs.' Maulana Arsalan Rahmani also admitted that Afghanistan was providing military assistance to various insurgencies because, `we cannot remain aloof from what is happening to the Muslims in occupied Kashmir, Tajikistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Burma, Palestine and elsewhere. . . . We are not terrorists but Mujahideen fighting for restoring peace and preserving honor.'
Rahmani acknowledged that Afghanistan has also played a major role in a recent development among the Islamist organizations fighting in Indian Kashmir, namely, the merger of the Harakat ul-Jihad Islami and Harakat ul-Mujahideen into the potent Harakat ul-Ansar group. This support for the unification of the two movements, according to Rahmani, was but part of the active support given by Afghanistan to the Islamist fighters in Kashmir, Tajikistan, and Bosnia. `There are about 8,000 members of Harakat ul-Ansar who are supporting the Kashmiri struggle against Indian occupation,' Rahmani stated.

[Page: E1296]

The ISI also provides these and other terrorists with new

• weapons. For example, in the summer of 1993, the Kashmiri mujahideen were provided with powerful long range missiles--called `chemical missiles' by the Sikhs who had learned about them while in training in Pakistan. At that time, the Kashmiri and ISI crews were being trained in the use of these missiles in Pakistani Kashmir. In fact, these are Saqr missiles which were developed in the 1980s with help from the United States for use by the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

• Subsequently, there has been a significant expansion in the smuggling of quality weapons from Pakistan into Kashmir and as of late 1993 there has been a corresponding change in the tactics used by terrorists, including the use of hit and run strikes by highly trained and well equipped detachments. Among the new weapons now used in Kashmir are 107mm rockets, 60mm mortars, 40mm automatic grenade launchers (Soviet and Chinese models), a modification of the 57mm helicopter rocket pods with solar-powered timing devices for the delayed firing of rockets and a LAW-type tube-launched ATMs (Soviet and Chinese models).

• In addition, the Kashmiri terrorists have also begun using sophisticated communications systems including small radios (systems with frequency hopping, selective broadcast, digital burst communications, etc.) and collapsible solar-panels for reload systems, as well as frequency scanning devices for detecting and homing in on military-type broadcasts. All the communication systems are of NATO/US origin, with some components made in Japan. All of these systems have been used by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, having been provided via the ISI.

• On top of all of this, there has been a large increase in the quantities of small arms provided to the Kashmiris, including Type 56 ARs (PRC AK-47s), several types of machineguns, long-range sniper rifles, pistols and RPGs, all of Soviet and Chinese manufacture. Also, some of the Kashmiri terrorists have begun receiving highly specialized weapons for assassination projects.

• Given this obviously high level of sophistication, it would seem safe to assume that the situation in Kashmir will become increasingly ominous. As Pakistan and India eye each other with rising suspicion, and as other powers come into play, the danger or outright war becomes ever more real. In future reports, the Task Force will examine the full extent of this danger and will explain its ramifications.

END

Pakistan and Terrorism from a 1994 US Congressional Debate

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?"

Al-Qaeda's roots grow deeper in Pakistan

By Amir Mir
Asia Times
September 10, 2011

ISLAMABAD - Ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City's twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and the subsequent "war on terror" launched by United Stated-led forces against al-Qaeda, the terrorist group continues to pose a serious threat to the world as it keeps surviving and thriving mainly on the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt.

In these rugged areas it has established an effective jihadi network that increasingly exploits its Pakistani affiliates to carry on the global jihadi agenda of Osama bin Laden, despite his May 2 killing in a United States military raid in Abbottabad in Pakistan.
Until recently, analysts have been mostly focusing on the dangers posed by the growing Talibanization of Pakistan. Yet, it has now become abundantly clear that the time has come to pay more attention to the bigger dangers posed by the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda.

Since US president George W Bush's declaration of war against global terrorism in September 2001, the US and its allies claim to have killed or captured over 75% of senior al-Qaeda leaders, the latest being Younis al-Mauritania, suspected of directing attacks against the US and Europe, who was arrested on September 5, 2011, during a raid in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province in Pakistan.

Yet, the frequency of terror attacks worldwide being attributed to the al-Qaeda network has increased, as compared to the pre-9/11 period, the latest being the September 7 twin suicide attacks targeting the residence of the deputy inspector general of the Balochistan Frontier Corps in Quetta, which killed 24 people.

Pakistani terrorism experts believe that the current spate of high-intensity attacks, despite Bin Laden's death four months ago, make obvious that al-Qaeda's core elements are still resilient and that the outfit is cultivating stronger operational connections that radiate outward from hideouts in Pakistan to affiliates scattered throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Therefore, as things stand, it appears that al-Qaeda not only remains in business in its traditional stronghold in the Waziristan tribal region on the largely lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt border, it has also clearly advanced to the urban areas in all the four provinces of Pakistan.

This is confirmed by the growing belief of the Barack Obama administration that if there is one country that matters most to the future of al-Qaeda, it is Pakistan.

A solid base
Al-Qaeda, which means "The Base" in Arabic, was founded in 1988 by Bin Laden with the aim of overthrowing the US-dominated world order. The outfit was relatively unknown until the 9/11 terror attacks when its operatives hijacked four US airliners and successfully crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, with a third plane hitting the Pentagon building in Washington and a fourth one crashing in Pennsylvania as the passengers attempted to regain control of the plane.

In an exclusive interview with Geo television on July 23, 2008, Mustafa Abu Yazid alias Sheikh Saeed, then the third senior-most al-Qaeda leader after Bin Laden and Dr Ayman Zawahiri, confessed for the first time that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda operatives.

As US-led forces launched a ruthless military offensive in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11, the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda leadership started systematically moving its fighters across their eastern border into Pakistan, where they effectively took over the rugged mountainous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after joining hands with local militants.

The al-Qaeda leadership's choice of using the FATA region, especially the North and South Waziristan tribal agencies as their hideout, has enabled the terror outfit to build a new power base, separate from Afghanistan. As a result, despite Pakistan's extensive contribution to the "war on terror", many questions persist about the extent to which al-Qaeda and its allied groups are operating within Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda's success in forging close ties to Pakistani jihadi groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan. These regions have replaced Afghanistan as the key training and indoctrination grounds for al-Qaeda recruits to be used in operations abroad and for training those indoctrinated and radicalized elsewhere.

The international community continues to portray Pakistan as a breeding ground for the Taliban militia and a sanctuary for fugitive al-Qaeda leaders. Despite repeated denials by Pakistani authorities, the global media keep reporting them having already established significant bases in Peshawar and Quetta, and carrying out cross-border ambushes against their targets in Afghanistan, while al-Qaeda suicide bombing teams target US-led forces from their camps in the mountainous region.

The general notion that al-Qaeda is getting stronger even after the decade-long "war on terror", can be gauged from the fact that Pakistan, despite being a key US ally during all those years, is undergoing a radical change, moving from the phase of Talibanization of its society to the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda.

Many of the key Pakistani jihadi organizations, which are both anti-American and anti-state, have already joined hands with al-Qaeda to let loose a reign of terror across Pakistan. The meteoric rise of the Taliban militia in Pakistan, especially after 9/11, has literally pushed the Pakistani state to the brink of civil war, claiming over 35,000 lives in terrorism-related incidents between 2001 and 2011.

Terrorism experts believe that the Pakistanization of al-Qaeda is rooted in decades of collaboration between elements of the Pakistani military and the intelligence establishment and extremist jihadi movements that birthed and nurtured al-Qaeda, which has evolved significantly over the years from a close-knit group of Arab Afghans to a trans-national Islamic global insurgency, dominated by more and more Pakistani militants.

American intelligence agencies believe that with a surge of motivated youth flooding towards the realm of jihad and joining al-Qaeda cadres, Pakistan remains a potential site for recruitment and training of militants as the fugitive leadership of the outfit keeps hiring local recruits with the help of their local affiliates in Pakistan. This is to bolster the manpower of al-Qaeda, which has grown from strength to strength despite the arrest and killing of hundreds of its operatives from within Pakistan since 2001.

These experts believe, despite the physical elimination of al-Qaeda founder Bin Laden, that his terrorist outfit remains a potent threat to global peace as it keeps blooming in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt. They say al-Qaeda, for all practical purposes, is now a Pakistani phenomenon as a good number of the anti-American sectarian and jihadi groups in the country have joined the terrorist network, making Pakistan the nerve center of al-Qaeda's global operations.

Investigations into the May 22, 2011, fidayeen (suicide) attack on the Mehran Naval Base in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi have revealed that it was a coordinated operation involving al-Qaeda's Waziristan-based chief operational commander from Egypt, Saif Al Adal, the outfit's top military strategists from Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmir, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban - TTP) and the Punjabi Taliban, a term used to describe the Punjab-based jihadi organizations that are opposed to, and fighting, the Pakistani state as well as the United States.

The Pakistani intelligence findings on the Mehran attack clearly demonstrate that al-Qaeda and the TTP have teamed up with the Punjabi Taliban in recent years to form a triangular syndicate of militancy, with the aim to destabilize Pakistan, whose political and military leadership has been siding with "the forces of the infidel" in the "war against terror".

Therefore, the al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance has gained an edge in Pakistan because of the support the local jihadi groups provide. Ideological ties bind al-Qaeda, the TTP and the Punjabi Taliban to throw out international forces from Afghanistan. These three jihadi entities share intelligence, human resources and training facilities, and empathize with each other as American and Pakistani forces - however strained the relationship between the two countries may be - hunt and target them. This was proven recently with the arrest of Mauritania, which was the result of collaboration between US and Pakistani intelligence agencies.

The three organizations initially came together at the time the US invaded Afghanistan post-9/11, prompting al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban to rely on local partners such as Pakistani pro-Taliban tribes, anti-US and anti-Shi'ite groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and jihadi mercenaries in Pakistani religious seminaries and jihadi groups for shelter and assistance.

The ties between local militant groups and al-Qaeda were cemented further as the Afghan Taliban's astonishing successes against the US-led allied forces prompted the US to increase drone attacks in the tribal areas and turn the heat on Pakistan to crack down on the TTP and others.

However, this "axis of evil" remains an informal alliance that is mainly meant to protect and support each member. What gave the alliance a fillip was the migration of battle-hardened Pakistani commanders from the battlefront in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir to the Waziristan region of Pakistan.

As things stand, the violence-wracked Waziristan region has become the new battlefield for the pro-Kashmir militants, who have already joined hands with the anti-US al-Qaeda elements. Information collected by Pakistani agencies shows the presence of fighters belonging to several pro-Kashmir jihadi groups, many of which have fallen out of favor with the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which is under tremendous pressure to stop harboring al-Qaeda-linked elements.

These groups, which include the Harkatul Jihad-al-Islami, al-Badar, Jamaatul Furqaan and renegade elements of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, have strong connections with al-Qaeda in terms of operational collaboration and logistical support.

Veteran jihadi commanders like Kashmiri, who was reportedly killed in June in a US drone attack, were the first to adopt al-Qaeda's ideology - that the weakening of the world's only superpower, the United States, is essential for the survival of the Muslim world.

The death of Bin Laden was unquestionably a major blow to al-Qaeda. Yet, terrorism experts say long before he was killed, al-Qaeda had adapted itself to survive and operate without him, ensuring that the threat his terror network posed lived well beyond his demise.

Therefore, a decade after the US unleashed its much-trumpeted "war on terror", and despite the death of Bin Laden, there is no reason to believe that the terrorist outfit he launched more than two decades ago is anywhere near defeat.

Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.

Why Islam Isn't Innocent

by James Dunnigan 
September 3, 2011
StrategyPage

Twenty nations account for over 95 percent of terrorism activity in the world. Of these twenty (Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Uganda, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria. Palestinian Territories, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, Algeria, Thailand, Philippines, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Burundi, India, Nigeria and Israel), all but four of them (Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia and Burundi) involve Islamic terrorism. In terms of terrorism fatalities, the top four nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia) accounted for 10,400 dead last year, 75 percent of the world total. All of these were the result of Islamic radicalism, often directed at other Moslems, and not just non-Moslems (“infidels”).

This has been the case for decades, and the Moslem world does not like to dwell on this fact. Many Moslem leaders admit that there is a lot of Islamic terrorism, but insist that it’s all the fault of Infidels who are making war on Islam, so some Moslems feel compelled to fight back. The catch-phrase Moslem leaders like to repeat is that Islam is the “religion of peace.” It is not, and the historical record makes that very clear.

And not just the historical record. Currently you find Moslems attacking Buddhists in Thailand, Jews everywhere, Baha'is in Iran and Christians in Egypt, Iraq, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia and elsewhere. This is not a sudden and unexpected outburst of Moslem violence against non-Moslems. It is normal, and at the root of Islamic terrorism. While this violent behavior represents only a small number of Moslems, it is a large minority (from a few percent of a population, to over half, according to opinion polls). Moreover, the majority of Moslems has not been willing, or able, to confront and suppress the Islamic radicals that not only spread death and destruction, but also besmirch all Moslems. This reveals a fundamental problem in the Islamic world, the belief that combining righteousness with murderous tactics is often the road to power and spiritual salvation. Throughout history, when these tactics were applied to non-Moslems, they often failed. The non-Moslems were unfazed by the religious angle, and, especially in the last five hundred years, were better able to defeat Islamic violence with even greater violence. Thus, until quite recently, the Moslems fought among themselves, and left the infidels (non-Moslems) alone. But after World War II, that began to change.

Naturally, this began to show up first in the Middle East. During the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990, Christian and Moslem Arabs fought bitterly over political, cultural and, ultimately, religious differences. The capital, Beirut, was divided into Christian and Moslem sections by the Green Line. The name came from the fact that in this rubble filled no man's land, only grass and weeds survived. And that the line on a ceasefire map was drawn in green. There have been a lot more Green Lines since then. Few realized it at the time, but this war was but the first of many major conflicts between Christians and Moslems in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Many of the earliest Moslem converts were Christians. And many of the peoples Moslem armies unsuccessfully sought to conquer were Christian. The original Crusades, which modern Moslems portray as Western aggression, were actually a Western attempt to rescue Middle Eastern Christians from increasing Islamic terrorism and violence. But Islam as a political force was in decline for several centuries until the 1970s. Then things changed, and they continue to change. Fueled by oil wealth and access to Western weapons and technology, Islamic radicals saw new opportunities. Islam was again on the march, and few have noticed the many places where it was turning into religious war with Christians and other non-Moslems.

In Asia, we have a Green Line between India and Pakistan. Inside India, many Moslem communities remain, and feelings aren't always neighborly. Indonesia and the Philippines suffer growing strife between Moslems and non-Moslems. Malaysia has fanatical Moslems persecuting more laid-back ones, and non-Moslems in general. China has a large Moslem community that generates an increasing amount of violence. Russia and America have formed a curious partnership to deal with Islamic-based terrorism coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And in Chechnya, Russia faced Islamic-inspired violence all alone in the 1990s.

Africa has a rather dusty Green Line south of the semi-arid Sahel region. Many African nations are split by increasingly sensitive religious differences. The Moslems are in the north, Christians and animists in the south. Nigeria, Chad and Sudan are among the more violent hot spots at the moment. When the Moslem Somalis stop fighting each other they will return to raiding their Christian and animist neighbors to the south.

The Middle East still contains many non-Moslems. None have their own country, except for Israel. But Egypt contains five million Copts, native Christians who did not convert to Islam. Similar small Christian communities exist throughout the Middle East, and growing hostility from Moslem neighbors causes many to migrate, or get killed.

Moslems also have turned their righteous wrath on dissident Moslem sects. The Druze and Alawites are considered by many Moslems as pagans pretending to be Moslems. Similarly, the Shias of Iran and neighboring areas are considered less orthodox, not just for their admitted differences, but because many adherents openly practice customs of the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religion. These differences are less frequently overlooked today. To survive, many Druze have allied with Israel, and most of the current Syrian leadership are Alawites who pretend to be more Shia than they really are.

Even Europe has a Green Line. The Moslems in the Balkans (Albanians and Bosnians) have been a constant source of strife for the last decade. Moslem migrants in Europe face even more persecution because of all those Green Lines, and this makes it easier for radical groups to recruit and carry out their crusade against Christians. In many European cities with Moslem minorities, there are neighborhoods non-Moslems are advised to stay out of.

But the Green Lines are about more than religion. A lot of it is politics. One of the reasons Islam ran out of steam centuries ago was that the Moslem areas never embraced democracy, and intellectual progress. Until the 20th century, most Moslems lived as part of some foreign empire, under local totalitarian monarchs. The foreign empires are gone, but democracy has had a hard time taking hold. The dictatorships are still there. And the people are restless.

Radical Islam arose as an alternative to all the other forms of government that never seemed to work. In theory, establishing "Islamic Republics" would solve all problems. People could vote, but only Moslems in good standing could be candidates for office. A committee of Moslem holy men would have veto power over political decisions. Islamic law would be used. It was simple, and it makes sense to a lot of Moslems in nations ruled by thugs and thieves, especially if the people are largely uneducated and illiterate.

Islamic Republics don't work. The only one that has been established (not counting others that say they are but aren't) is in Iran. The major problems were twofold. First, the radicals had too much power. Radical religious types are no fun, and you can't argue with them because they are on a mission from God. Most people tire of this in short order. To speed this disillusionment, many of the once-poor and now-powerful religious leaders became corrupt. This eventually sends your popularity ratings straight to hell.

It will take a generation or so for everyone in the Moslem world to figure out where all this is going. This is already happening in Iran, where moderates are getting stronger every day, but everyone is trying to avoid a civil war. While the radicals are a minority, they are a determined bunch. The constant flow of Islamic radical propaganda does more than generate recruits and contributions in Moslem countries; it also energizes Moslem minorities (both migrants and converts) in Western countries to acts of terrorism. In the United States, you find such Moslems getting arrested several times a year for attempting to carry out religious violence.

Radicals throughout the Moslem world continue to take advantage of dissatisfaction among the people and recruit terrorists and supporters. To help this process along they invoke the ancient grudges popular among many Moslems. Most of these legends involve Christians beating on Moslems. To most radicals it makes sense to get people agitated over faraway foreigners rather than some strongman nearby.

Most radicals lack the skills, money or ability to carry their struggle to far-off places. So most of the agitation takes place among Moslem populations. Any violent attitudes generated are easily directed at available non-Moslems. Thus we have all those Green Lines. But the more violence you have along those Green Lines, the more really fanatical fighters are developed. These are the people who are willing to travel to foreign lands and deal with non-believers, and kill them for the cause. We call it terrorism; the fanatics call it doing what has to be done.

Not surprisingly, Moslems get motivated to do something about Islamic radicalism when the violence is literally next door. That's why terror attacks in the West are so popular. The infidels are being attacked, without any risk to those living in Moslem countries. Iraq changed all that, and during the course of that war (2004-7) the popularity of Islamic terrorism, in Moslem countries, declined sharply because the terrorists were killing so many Moslems. That, in the end, is what has killed, for a while, most Islamic terrorism in Iraq. But this time around, it would be nice if the Moslem world got their act together and expunged this malevolent tendency once and for all.

NATO trucks attacked again in Pakistan

Pakistani "Militants" surrounded convoy before destroying trucks with rockets

(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad -A pro-Al-Qaeda group of militants in Pakistan's tribal region of Khyber Agency on Monday and carried out an attack by surrounding Nato oil tankers from all four sides before firing rockets into the convoy. The attack destroyed two of the vehicles and injured two people.

According to eye witnesses a group of militants hid themselves in the nearby mountains and provided the cover to the militants who confronted the security escort along with the Nato tankers. The action lasted for half an hour during which time the militants escaped.

The action was taken at a time when hundreds of Nato supply convoys travelled from Peshawar to the Jamrood district of Khyber Agency in order to cross the border into Afghanistan. The incident caused a panic in the area and the tanker drivers immediately tried to drive back to Peshawar. This situation caused a massive traffic jam on the road prompting the local administration closed down the Torkham border crossing.

Almost 75 percent of the NATO supplies for the land locked Afghanistan goes through Khyber Agency. Khyber Taliban and Al-Qaeda bases were few prior to 2007. The majority of the area belongs to Sufi Islam which does not subscribe to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s Salafi or Deobandi ideology.

In late 2007, Al-Qaeda began an initiative to create bases in the area, eventually transforming the tribal area into its most effective training centre , using it as a launch pad for actions throughout northwest Pakistan.The bulk of supplies and equipment required by foreign troops in Afghanistan is shipped through the Khyber region, although US troops increasingly use alternative routes through central Asia.

Pakistan shut its main northwestern border crossing to NATO supply vehicles on September 30 for 11 days after a cross-border NATO helicopter assault killed two Pakistani soldiers.

Scores of NATO supply vehicles were destroyed in gun and arson attacks while the crossing was shut, as Taliban militants stepped up efforts to disrupt the route in response to US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Iran hangs 11 Jundullah Sunni militants

20 December 2010
BBC

Iran has hanged 11 members of a Sunni militant group Jundullah for murder and terrorism, the country's justice ministry said.

The men were executed at dawn in Zahedan, the capital of the south-eastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

Officials said they belonged to Jundullah, which said it was behind an attack on a mosque last week which killed 39 people.

But it is not clear whether those executed were involved in that attack.

In June, Iran killed Jundullah's leader, but attacks have continued.

"The people of Sistan-Baluchestan province, in their continuing campaign against the elements of cruelty and insecurity, hanged 11 people at Zahedan prison," the justice ministry said in a statement on Fars news agency.

Ebrahim Hamidi, head of the provincial justice department, told state news agency Irna that the group had received a fair trial and had been charged with "corruption on earth, fighting against God and the Prophet and confronting the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran".
Deprived province

The deadly suicide bombing outside the Imam Hossein Mosque in the city of Chabahar on 15 December killed and wounded scores.

Founded in 2003, Jundullah (Soldiers of God) says it is fighting for the culture and faith of the ethnic Baluch people.

The majority of Iran's ethnic Baluchi population live in Sistan-Baluchistan and adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam. They claim that as a minority in a Shia state, they are persecuted by the authorities.

Sistan-Baluchistan is one of Iran's most deprived provinces and its location also makes it a key route in the international drugs trade.

Iran caught Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi while he was on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan in February, and executed him in June.

“The perpetrators of such terrorist attacks are in Pakistan who are led by foreign intelligence services,” Commander of the IRGC Ground Forces Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour told reporters on Monday.

He criticized the Pakistani government for not cooperating with the Islamic Republic in identifying and eradicating terrorist groups in Pakistan, calling on Islamabad to find the people behind the terrorist attack.
_____________________
Iran Warns Pakistan to Control Borders

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian military commander urged Islamabad to tighten control over its shared borders with Iran, and warned of Tehran's unilateral action in case Pakistan shows any further negligence in this regard.


"If Pakistan fails to control and prevent terrorist measures at its borders like recent years, we will make use of our legitimate rights," Iran's Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Hassan Firouzabadi cautioned on Monday.

Stressing the age-old friendship between Iran and Pakistan, he stressed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has always paid attention and interacted with the brotherly country of Pakistan, but "Pakistan unfortunately does not control and stop terrorists".

"The terrorist incidents at border areas with Pakistan make us revise the related issues," Firouzabadi added.
He made the remarks after a suicide attack near a mosque in Southeastern Iran killed at least 37 and wounded 95 people in a mourning ceremony held to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of Shiites' third Imam on Wednesday.

The attack took place outside Imam Hossein Mosque in the port city of Chabahar, in Sistan and Balouchestan province, near the border with Pakistan.

The Pakistani-based Jundollah terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Following the incident in Chabahar on Wednesday, Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said that the terrorists in charge of the bombing had received training in Pakistan.

"A number of terrorists that are being trained beyond (Iran's) Eastern borders in Pakistan have carried out this terrorist attack," Najjar said.

Also, after Iran arrested Jundollah's number one Abdolmalek Rigi in late February, the criminal ringleader confessed that he was traveling to Bishkek to meet with a high-ranking US official at a nearby military base to discuss new terrorist attacks on Iranian territory. Rigi was executed in June.

Iran says that there are few remaining elements of the group that the United States and British intelligence services are supporting. Tehran has arrested or killed a large number of the Jundollah terrorists, including the ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi and his brother and Jundollah's number two man Abdolhamid Rigi.

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FACTBOX-Jundollah, Iran's Sunni Muslim rebels

Dec 15 (Reuters) - Here are some key details about Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah which said on Wednesday it was behind an attack which killed dozens in southeastern Iran, according to Al Arabiya television. [ID:nLDE6BE0KQ]

LINKS:

* Iran, which is predominantly Shi'ite, has linked Jundollah (God's Soldiers) to the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda network. It also accuses the United States of backing Jundollah in order to create instability in the country. Washington denies the charge.

* Jundollah says it is fighting for the rights of Iran's minority Sunnis. Iran rejects allegations by rights groups that it discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities.

ALLIANCES/AIMS:

* Jundollah chief Abdolmalek Rigi said in a 2007 interview that his group was fighting for the rights of the Baluch people facing what he called "genocide" in Iran, but denied it harboured any separatist or radical sectarian agenda.

* Jundollah has evolved through shifting alliances with various parties, including the Taliban and Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, who saw the group as a tool against Iran, according to Lahore-based Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid.

* Jundollah, which also calls itself the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, was founded in 2002 and launched its armed campaign in 2005.

* Since early 2005 the group has sought to expand operations in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

* The group probably numbers fewer than 100 militants armed with explosives and small arms in Sistan-Baluchestan which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

* Last month the United States named Jundollah for repeated attacks within the Islamic Republic to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

* ATTACKS:

* In June 2005, The Sunni Muslim Jundollah Baluch militant group, which Iran says has linked to al Qaeda, kidnapped Revolutionary Guard officer Shahab Mansuri and sent a video of him to al-Arabiya. He was killed on July 13.

* On Dec. 14, 2005, an assassination attempt was carried out against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while on a visit to Sistan-Baluchestan. This attack was also blamed on Jundollah.

* In 2007, Jundollah claimed responsibility for several attacks. On Feb. 14, 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed in an attack on a bus in the city of Zahedan.

* In Dec. 2008 there was a suicide attack in Saravan on a security forces headquarters. This was the first such suicide attack in Iran and was carried out by Abdul-Ghafoor Rigi, a brother of the group's leader.

* On May 28, 2009, a suicide bomber killed 30 people and wounded more than 120 in an attack on a mosque in Zahedan. Jundollah claimed responsibility for the attack.

* An Oct. 18, 2009 bombing by the group killed 40 people. Fifteen Revolutionary Guards members were among those killed, including the deputy head of ground forces. Jundollah said it was behind the deadliest attack in Iran since the 1980s.

* On July 15, 2010 powerful bombs exploded near Zahedan's Grand Mosque scattering body parts around the holy site. At least 28 people were killed and more than 169 injured. The Sunni Muslim Jundollah militant group claimed the blast in revenge for the execution of its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, on June 20.

* Two people including a hostage were killed on Sept. 18 during an operation to free six Iranians taken captive from a bus. Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guards' ground forces said Jundollah was behind the abduction of the five soldiers and a bank employee in Sistan-Baluchestan.

* Dec. 15 - At least 30 Iranians were killed and over 100 wounded in a suicide attack in the city of Chabahr in Sistan-Baluchestan province, near the Imam Hussein Mosque, during a Shi'ite mourning ceremony. Jundollah claimed responsibility for the bombing.

ARRESTS AND EXECUTIONS:

* On May 30, 2009 three men were hanged in public for involvement in the Zahedan bombing. Two more were hanged on June 2. Iran executed 13 more men accused of membership of Jundollah in July 2009.

* On Nov. 3, 2009 Iran executed Jundollah member Abdolhamid Rigi.

* The leader's brother also called Abdolhamid was hanged in on May 24, 2010.

* The group's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, was arrested in February 2010. He was convicted by a Revolutionary court of various charges, including armed robbery, kidnapping, drug smuggling, assassination attempts and murder and was executed on June 20.

* Iran arrested three Jundollah members in October who played "a major role" in the July mosque explosion IRNA news agency reported.

Sources: Reuters/Janes World Insurgency and Terrorism (Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

Saudi Arabia Under The Spotlight

August 03, 2005
By Milan Rai
ZSpace

With the death of King Fahd, Saudi Arabia is the main topic of discussion in today's newspapers. Below we fill in some of the gaps in the British coverage.


THE WAHHABI-SAUDI CONNECTION

The central fact of Saudi Arabia is the merger between the ruling al-Sa'ud family and the harsh Wahhabi version of Islam. This is referred in the Guardian's editorial thus: 'Unhappily, the kingdom is also the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, wayward scion of a wealthy and privileged family whose violent fundamentalism is still close to Wahhabi doctrine.'

This says that bin Laden's family is close to Wahhabism.

Nowhere in the editorial is there acknowledgement that the al-Sa'ud family is not merely close to Wahhabism, but its guarantor and promoter, not only in Saudi Arabia, but around the world.

The Guardian obituary is even worse: 'The ruling house had its Wahhabite zealots, but, on the whole, it was always relatively forward-looking, far more so, certainly, than the hidebound religious establishment, the other pillar of this unique theocracy - and usually more so than the people at large.'

No acknowledgement here that the 'other pillar of this unique theocracy is only there because the House of Sa'ud determined in the past that it should be the state religion, and continues to enforce its dominance by force and largesse.

Robert Fisk offers some corrective in the Independent, with a front page story on the House of Sa'ud, acknowledging the importance of Wahhabism to the royal family in his second sentence, going on to write:

'Journalists like to claim that Wahhabism is "obscurantist" but it is not true. Abdul-Wahab was not a great thinker or philosopher but, for his followers, he was a near-saint. Waging war on felllow Muslims who had erred was an obligatory part of his philosophy, whether they be the "deviant" Shia Muslims of Basra - whom he vainly tried to convert to Sunni Islam (they chucked him out) - or Arabians who did not follow his own exclusive interpretation of Muslim unity.'

'But he also prescribed rebellion against rulers. His orthodoxy threatened the modern-day House of Saud because of its corruption, yet secured its future by forbidding revolution. The Saudi royal family thus embraced the one faith which could protect and destroy it.'

'Which is why all the talk in modern Saudi Arabia of "cracking down on terror", protecting women's rights, lessening the power of the religious police, is so much hokum.' (page 2)

Roula Khalaf, another outstanding Middle East correspondent, writes in the FT that after 9/11, 'A royal family that has always relied for its legitimacy on the support of clerics from the puritan and often intolerant Wahabi sect was compelled to face the dangerous consequences of their religious teaching, whether in mosques or schools.'

In the Telegraph, Tim Butcher and Rasheed Abou-Alsamh (the latter writing from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia) quote 'Adel Al-Toraifi, a writer and political analyst in the capital, Riyadh, [who] said he did not believe that women would be allowed to drive or vote in the next five years. Such a change of policy would risk antagonising the ultra-conservatives, whose support of the royal family has been crucial to the longevity of their rule. Mr Al-Toraifi said: "If they allow women to drive and vote, it will spell the end of their control over the population and it would be too dangerous for them.' '


THE SA'UDI-WAHHABI MERGER

For a percept account of the Sa'udi-Wahhabi merger, we may turn to Madawi al-Rasheed's A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
It is well-known that Ibn Sa'ud, the founder of the modern state that bears his name, conquered the peninsula in the 1920s with the aid of a tribal military formations known as ikhwan. Mudawi al-Rasheed points out that equally important in securing the establishment of Sa'udi rule over the diverse tribes of the Arabian peninsula was the system of part-time clerical authorities peculiar to central Arabia:

'A mutawwa' 'was a member of the hadar [sedentary population] who had acquired a religious education after a period of study with a distinguished member of 'ulama [religious scholars] based in the main towns of southern Najd (mainly Riyadh) and Qasim ('Unayzah) after which he became a specialist in jurisprudence and matters relations to 'ibada (Islamic rituals)... a volunteer who enforced obedience to Islam and performance of its rituals... [This was] a Najdi phenomenon... differed from religious scholars in other parts of the Islamic world, commonly referred to as 'ulama. Historically Najdi men of religion often studied, taught and applied Hanbali fiqh [school of law] only, and considered other branches of the religious and linguistic sciences as intellectual luxuries that were not needed in their own society...' The mutawwa'a were '
"religious ritual specialists", or simply "ritual specialists"... [with] limited expertise in theology. They practised their expertise in conjunction with agriculture and trade.' (page 49)

''''Although they taught submission to God, 'in practice they implied that without submission to the political authority of Ibn Sa'ud, the faith and deeds of Muslims would be threatened.' 'they often had to use violence against those who refused to submit to their authority', including 'publicly lashing those who violated their code of behaviour... These ritual specialists became the nucleus of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice.' (page 52)

'The problem for Ibn Sa'ud as he set out to build a kingdom, was that his base was a small, isolated settled community in the central Najd region of Arabia. It lacked the strong kinship ties to powerful non-settled bedouin tribes needed to create the kind of powerful alliance needed to conquer the peninsula. Solution? Religious authority.

'The enforcement of ritualistic Islam by the Najdi mutawwa'a was significant in the process of state formation. Between 1902 and 1932 the regime of "discipline and punishment" enforced by the mutawwa'a who were constantly preoccupied with ritualistic Islam was essential for domesticating the Arabian population into accepting the political authority of Ibn Sa'ud after he captured Riyadh in 1902.' They declared him imam. 'The symbolic title of imam granted him a most needed legitimacy. In return, the mutawwa'a were assured of sympathetic political and military leadership.' (page 50)

'It seems that before Ibn Saud captured Riyadh, the mutawwa'a were lacking in prestige and authority', sometimes expelled from tribal confederations, just as their founder Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab had been expelled from 'Uyahnah in the eighteenth century. (page 54) 'Having lost their material wealth, prestige and status in the nineteenth century, the mutawwa'a were predisposed to accept a political figure who promised not only their salvation but also a reversal of their misfortune.' (page 56) 'Ibn Sa'ud enlisted them in the service of his domain as he employed them and paid their salaries in cash and kind. He thus transformed them into full-time religious ritual specialists, loyal to him and dependent on his resources.
In return, Ibn Sa'ud was guaranteed the political submission of the Arabian population under the guise of submission to God.' The mutawwa'a also collected zakat (tribute or taxes) for the central government. (page
57)

/'Often the mutawwa'a arrived among the tribal confederations before Ibn Sa'ud's raiding troops... They were probably 'confined to teaching the Qur'an and 'ibada [Islamic rituals]... In addition, they preached the importance of obedience to wali al-amr, leader of the Muslim community.
Obedience should be manifested in readiness to pay him zakat and respond to his call for jihad. Both zakat and jihad were at the heart of the Wahhabi idea of the state, and were considered crucial mechanisms for its consolidation.' (pages 51, 52)

'The mutawwa'a also played a crucial role in the creation of the ikhwan fighting force' with which Ibn Sa'ud conquered his kingdom. (page 58) Tribal confederations were persuaded to settle in villages known as hujjar, a word that 'evokes the early migration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Madina where he established the first Muslim community in the seventh century... Those who agreed to settle and endorse the mutawwa'a's teaching became known as ikhwan.' (page 60) They became the fierce fighting core of Sa'udi power.

'With the ikhwan, the tension between central power and the tribal periphery, which had plagued previous Sa'udi emirates and had often led to their demise, was partially overcome. Ibn Sa'ud incorporated the tribal confederations in a semi-permanent force, which was not meant to disperse after raids against settlements or confederations.' (page 60)

'While the mutawwa'a exerted mental coercion among those whom they were meant to educate in Islamic rituals, the ikhwan practised physical coercion among people in Arabia... The ikhwan carried out public prosecutions and looted and plundered the towns and their inhabitants.
They became known in Arabia as jund al-tawhid, the soldiers who enforced the doctrine of the oneness of God.' (page 61) 'Their uncompromising attitude and ability to inflict severe punishment created an atmosphere of fear and apprehension among people. Their reputation travelled fast in Arabia even before they arrived at the gates of oases and towns.' (page 62)


THE IKHWAN REVOLT

The loyalty of the ikhwan depended on the continuation of military campaigns. When Ibn Sa'ud ran into the boundaries of the British empire in the 1920s, he quickly recognised power realities and ruled British-controlled terroritories off-limits to the ikhwan. This was a major factor in precipitating the ikhwan revolt in 1927, which was forcefully put down with the assistance of the British (a fore-runner to today's joint "counter-terrorist" operations of the US-UK and the House of Sa'ud).

Madawi al-Rasheed comments that, 'the ikhwan rebellion demonstrated that the emerging state was from the very beginning a non-tribal entity whose expansion and consolidation could only progress at the expense of the tribal element.' (page 70) The new state was 'definitely a non-tribal entity that gradually undermined and broke the cohesion of the various tribal groups.' (page 71)

The al-Sa'ud family had no tribal strength. It could only conquer and rule through invoking a loyalty across tribal lines. By using a particularly harsh and authoritarian form of Islam: Wahhabism. That remains the case today. This strength is also its weakness.

The ikhwan challenge in 1927 was seen off by a combination of clerical loyalty and imperialist intervention. Without the loyalty of the clerics, the neo-ikhwans (such as those who besieged the Mecca mosque in 1979) cannot be resisted.

Without Wahhabism, there is no logic to Sa'udi rule. It is difficult to attack the Wahhabi zealots (such as Osama bin Laden) or to alter the fundamentalist structure of the state without immediately endangering the non-tribal foundations of the state. If Wahhabism is not holding the structure together, Sa'udi society will return to its traditional tribal patterns of authority, in which the House of Sa'ud has no pre-eminent place.

Robert Fisk: 'Saudi Arabia is not - and cannot be - a "modern" society in our sense of the word as long as Wahhabism holds its power. But it must be allowed to do so - to protect the king. And since it increasingly becomes a poor country, the Wahhabi authorities and the religious police grow stronger.'



SAUDI ARABIA DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: BACKING SADDAM

What else is missing from the enormous coverage of Saudi Arabia? One element that is hardly mentioned is the long strategic compact between the House of Sa'ud and Saddam Hussein (united by their fear of their Shia populations, and of Shia Iran).

The Telegraph obituary is honest enough to record that, 'During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, terrified of the threat from Islamic fundamentalists in Iran, Fahd provided generous financial backing to Saddam Hussein, and in 1989 signed a pact of non-aggression with him.'

Not honest enough to note, however, that Fahd himself was running an Islamic fundamentalist regime, and that it was therefore impossible for his backing of Saddam's semi-genocidal regime to be based on a 'fear of fundamentalism'.

David Hirst in the Guardian's obituary makes the same 'error', with a re-writing of history as to Saudi motives: 'Fahd lavished petro-dollars on keeping, first, communism, then Islamic fundamentalism at bay. He cultivated his "brother Saddam Hussein" with the object of curbing the Iraqi dictator's designs on neighbouring Kuwait, and subversive activities in general. He called Saddam "the sword of Islam" when he went to war against Khomeini's Iran, and backed that accolade with huge subventions.'



SAUDI ARABIA DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: SAUDI NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION - LONG AGO

One aspect of the Fahd-Saddam alliance that has not been mentioned at all is the evidence that emerged in 1994 of Sa'udi funding of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. A former Saudi diplomat, Mohammed Khilewi, who sought asylum in the United States, alleged that Saudi Arabia provided $5 billion in funding for Iraq's nuclear programme during the 1980s in exchange for a nuclear weapon (and that Saudi Arabia had two undeclared nuclear research reactors).

The Monterey Institute of International Studies Center for Nonproliferation Studies plays down the claims: 'After obtaining asylum in the US, with the consent of Saudi Arabia, Khilewi's allegations never came to fruition. The allegation have not to date been confirmed by any other source, and US officials said they had no evidence of Saudi assistance to Iraqi nuclear development.'

On the other hand (setting aside the official US denials as of no significance), confirmation from another source is claimed by the respected GlobalSecurity.org:

'Khilewi produced documents for the London Sunday Times that supported his charge that the Saudi government had paid up to five billion dollars from the Saudi treasury for Saddam Hussein to build a nuclear weapon. Between 1985 and 1990, up to the time Saddam invaded Kuwait, the payments were made on condition that some of the bombs, should the project succeed, be transferred to the Saudi arsenal.'

The Khilewi cache 'included transcripts of a secret desert meeting between Saudi and Iraqi military teams a year before the invasion of Kuwait. The transcrips depicts the Saudis funding the nuclear program and handing over specialised equipment that Iraq could not have obtained elsewhere.'

'What Khilewi did not know was that the Fahd-Saddam nuclear project was also a closely held secret in Washington. According to a former high-ranking American diplomat, the CIA was fully apprised. The funding stopped only at the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991.'

'The defector's documents also showed that Riyadh had paid for Pakistan's bomb project and signed a pact that if Saudi Arabia were attacked with nuclear weapons, Pakistan would respond against the aggressor with its own nuclear arsenal.'

The source for the highlighted paragraph is the New Yorker. Andrew and Leslie Cockburn found two sources:

'... the Fahd-Saddam nuclear project was also a closely held secret in Washington. According to a former high-ranking American diplomat, the C.I.A. was fully apprised. "I knew about it," the diplomat says matter-of-factly, "and so did they." A senior White House official, asked about the Saudi government's involvement and American complicity, told us, "They did spend billions on the Iraqis. It was a different world. We were ready to overlook a lot of things the Saudis were doing for the Iraqis.
It's consistent with all the other terrible things we did at the time "to shore up Saddam."

The original Khilewi story appeared in Marie Colvin, 'How an Insider Lifted the Veil on Saudi Plot for an "Islamic Bomb",' Sunday Times, 24 July 1994. It was also reported in Steve Coll and John Mintz, 'Saudi Aid to Iraqi A-Bomb Effort Alleged,' Washington Post, 25 July 1994.


SAUDI ARABIA DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: SAUDI NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION - CONTEMPLATED NOW

The Guardian reported in September 2003 that Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, had embarked on a 'strategic review' that included the option of acquiring nuclear weapons:

A strategy paper being considered at the highest levels in Riyadh sets out three options:

• To acquire a nuclear capability as a deterrent;
• To maintain or enter into an alliance with an existing nuclear power that would offer protection;
• To try to reach a regional agreement on having a nuclear-free Middle East.

Until now, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the US nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US has steadily worsened since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington: 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi.

It is not known whether Saudi Arabia has taken a decision on any of the three options. But the fact that it is prepared to contemplate the nuclear option is a worrying development.

United Nations officials and nuclear arms analysts said the Saudi review reflected profound insecurities generated by the volatility in the Middle East, Riyadh's estrangement with Washington and the weakening of its reliance on the US nuclear umbrella.

They pointed to the Saudi worries about an Iranian programme and to the absence of any international pressure on Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear devices.

Saudi Arabia does not regard Iran, a past adversary with which Riyadh has restored relations, as a direct threat. But it is unnerved by the possibility of Iran and Israel having nuclear weapons.

Riyadh is also worried about a string of apparent leaks in American papers
from the US administration critical of Saudi Arabia.

David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington thinktank, said he doubted whether the Saudis would try to build a nuclear bomb, preferring instead to try to buy a nuclear warhead. They would be the first of the world's eight or nine nuclear powers to have bought rather than built the bomb.

"There has always been worries that the Saudis would go down this path if provoked," said Mr Albright. "There is growing US hostility which could lead to the removal of the US umbrella and will the Saudis be intimidated by Iran? They've got to be nervous."

UN officials said there have been rumours going back 20 years that the Saudis wanted to pay Pakistan to do the research and development on nuclear weapons.

In 1988, Saudi bought from China intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any part of the Middle East with a nuclear warhead.


SAUDI-CHINESE PROLIFERATION?

The China link is particularly interesting today, as Patrick Bishop reports in the Telegraph:

'Western governments should not get too relaxed about the smooth transition.'

'The signs are that the conviction is growing [in Saudi Arabia] that close ties with the West may be more trouble than they are worth.'

'The kingdom has watched over a US military intervention that has spawned an army of international jihadists, followers of the anti-Saud bin Laden.'

'The situation when finally resolved will probably result in an Iraq dominated by Shias, creating a solid Shia front with Iran and shifting the religious balance of power in the Persian Gulf. All this fills Saudis with alarm.'

'It has started hedging its diplomatic bets, looking east to China as a market for Saudi oil, and as a source of finished goods, military hardware and ultimately, it has been speculated, nuclear technology. American troops, by mutual agreement, are no longer in the kingdom (or at least not
overtly) and have set up in Qatar instead.'

There is a logic to the alliance, as both Saudi Arabia and China are highly authoritarian capitalist economies whose ageing leaders cynically exploit anti-capitalist ideologies to maintain their power. They are both somewhat hostile to Russia (Saudi Arabia because of Russia's capacity to challenge Riyadh for dominance of the world energy market, China for geopolitical reasons).

As world oil begins to shrink, Saudi Arabia's enormous reserves will become more and more of a prize, just as China's economic (and political) strength is set to become more and more of a global force.