also read my old column, 'what happened in kunduz?'
now what would explain manmohan singh's strange penchant for caving in to musharraf?
Musharraf is Untouchable
Friday, October 6, 2006
It is a confirmed fact that in the days preceding 9/11, Lt Gen Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), transferred $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. This explosive fact has received only minimal coverage in the
mainstream US media. Lt Gen Mahmoud Ahmed has had deep links with the US intelligence establishment, and was in fact in a meeting with Bush administration officials on the morning of 9/11. When the US attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan, he was asked by Musharraf to quit. He is now living a comfortable life as a retiree in Islamabad, and is a volunteer in the Tablighi Jamaat, a hardline Islamist organization. Interestingly enough, the US has not made any attempts to get their hands on him or bring him to justice.But wait—things get stranger still: Some Americans have begun trying to actually promote the Taliban in Afghanistan. On October 2, the leader of the Republicans in the US senate, Bill Frist, declared in Afghanistan that the "people who called themselves the Taliban" should be brought to power in Kabul, and that the "Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield". Now, these are the same Taliban that who owe their all to the Pakistanis, who hosted Osama Bin Laden, who opposed the Afghan elections, and who have of late been burning schools and murdering teachers in southern Afghanistan.
So now we have a scenario in which the chief of Pakistani
Intelligence participates in organizing a horrific attack on the US with 3000 dead, and then gets no more punishment than being asked to go into a comfortable retirement. Meanwhile the US remains quite happy to leave him in peace, and shows no interest in getting hold of him. And senior Republicans are actually trying to promote the interests of the Taliban.Why does the West display such extreme reluctance to hold the Pakistanis accountable for their numerous sins? Why are Western governments so eager to swallow the stories put out by the Pakistanis? Just why is it that the West, in particular the Americans, are being so very accomodating to the Pakistanis, in the process undermining their own national interests? Is there an explanation that can fit this bizarre behavior?
Yes, there is one: The Pakistanis know too much. The Bush administration has foolishly put itself in the grip of a bunch of amoral and ruthless Pakistani Generals. And the people of America are paying the price, the people of Afghanistan are paying the price. The whole world will pay the price.
CORRECTION: i got the above in an email which attributed it to ahmed rashid, a pakistani journalist and an expert on the taliban, writing it in the uk telegraph of oct 6th, and i posted it as such. in fact, ahmed rashid wrote something else on that day, about the ISI being blamed by NATO generals. i posted that on this blog earlier. anyway, thanks to alert reader partha who pointed this out to me. sorry about the mis-attribution. what is said above is probably true, but not written by ahmed rashid.
4 comments:
It's just not Manmohan Singh, to me it looks like that all Indian leaders lose their mental faculties when left alone in the presence of any Pakistani leader. Have Pakistani leaders secretly perfected the art of hypnotism or is it some thing in the soil and air of Pakistan? Evidence is aplently-- left or right-
Indira Gandhi flushed down the toilet 1971 decisive victory with Simla Accord in front of Bhutto.
Vajpayee gave pretty much everything to Musharraf at Agra when left alone with him only to be saved at last minute by presumably Ironman Advani who was not present, but then Advani as soon as went to Pakistan turned to Jello.
Let's not even begin with Manmohan Singh.
From now on there should be a strict protocol at MEA--under no circumstances any Indian leader be allowed to be alone with a Pakistani in a room.
I think that the Pakistani bluff of what KPS Gill calls the State as a suicide bomber is at the root of this bending over and greasing up by Indian leaders.
I think it's time to call the bluff and tell the Gen we are prepared to deal with a Daadhiwallah i.e. bearded Mullah - Lord knows we have enough of those in our country.
Another gem from Hindustan Times.
Excerpts:
"The BJP is demanding — nay ranting — that the President must turn down his plea for clemency because the attack on Parliament in 2001 was an attack on the Indian State."
"The sheer strength of the public and political reaction has provoked the Supreme Court into making yet another, and this time truly unwarranted, incursion into the domain of the executive. It has in effect voiced a lack of confidence in the President of India and asserted that even his grant, or denial, of clemency will be subject to judicial review. In short, if the Supreme Court has its way, we will henceforth be ruled not by Parliament and the President but by a bunch of non-elected judges."
The depths, scum like Prem Shankar Jha would go to are truly astonishing! The worst thing is that they think they are doing the nation a great service by writing this crap.
san, one issue is that manufacturing degrades the land, permanently. agriculture does not. for instance, in the northeastern US, there are more trees now than when the white guys first showed up, as agricultural land reverted to forest. (it is true that temperate zone forests recover, and tropical forests do not, unless carefully sustained.) but land that becomes industrial, it takes an enormous investment to clean it up. remember the river in pittsburgh that used to regularly catch fire -- what is it, the monanaghela or something? it cost billions of dollars to clean up the detritus of the steel industry.
america has vast arid lands so it can be profligate in degrading land. india doesn't. and since it was the basis of indian prosperity for millennia, i dont see why it cannot be again. after all, all 6 billion people on earth have to eat, and somebody has to make the food. might as well be india. just like OPEC has us all by the short and curlies on oil, india may at some point be the agricultural superpower.
also, i dont quite understand your problem with agri-business. it seems to me quite clear that instead of displacing people off the land and pulling them into ever-more-crowded cities (the typical result of low-skill manufacture) it is better to have local agri-based industry, adding value to basic agricultural products.
the e-chaupals and so forth are certainly helping the farmers get rid of the middlemen, and that is a good thing. this giridharadas should also have talked about the supply chain rather than just the supermarkets. reducing the number of levels in a distribution chain certainly improves efficiency. old-fashioned retail will almost certainly die, especially as today's employed couples want more and more prepared and fast foods.
but there is two downsides. with centralized distribution, there will be a tendency to ship things around a lot, that is instead of *local* produce being consumed locally, there will be a huge added cost based on transportation, thus adding to the oil bill.
more subtly, there is also the change in eating habits, including more fast foods, salt and saturated fats, which will lead to a) obesity, b) disease in a big way. i believe these days 30% of americans, even californians, are overweight and obese. this sort of tendency will lead to huge medical costs, just like in america. this is a big downside of lifestyle changes and a supermarket culture.
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