India - Pakistan Crisis

» Steven_Russell - Jaish-e-Mohammad's Hasan Barki arrested

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Senior Jaish leader arrested in Pak

PTI [ THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002 1:09:07 PM ]

ISLAMABAD: As part of its continuing crackdown on militant groups, Pakistan police have arrested a senior Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, Hasan Barki. Barki was arrested here on Wednesday night on his arrival from Bahawalpur, a town in Punjab province where Jaish has its headquarters.

With his arrest, almost all major leaders of the terrorist outfit have been detained by the government, the Nation daily reported on Thursday.

During the past few days Barki had been speaking to the press about his group's resolve to carry on with its militant attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

Pakistan police have arrested the group's founding leader Maulana Masud Azhar and four of his brothers besides scores of its members in the nationwide crackdown.

They have been arrested for making inflammatory speeches.

The founding leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafeez Muhammad Saeed, has also been arrested few days after he said that he had quit the leadership of the militant outfit.

India has blamed both Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba for the December 13 Parliament attack.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is expected to announce stringent measures against militant groups in his address to the nation planned later this week.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

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» JenL_2 - Re: Jaish-e-Mohammad's Hasan Barki arrested

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is expected to announce stringent measures against militant groups in his address to the nation planned later this week.

Hope it works....this from 1/10 MSNBC.com:

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<img src="http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/3007..." width=330 height=242 align="left">Indian soldiers patrol in the Poonch sector near the India-Pakistan border in late December. The Indian army has ordered residents here to evacuate as the air force moves in.

The view from the Kashmir border

Amid breathtaking beauty, the scourge of war looms

By George Lewis
NBC NEWS

POONCH, Kashmir, Jan. 10 — The view from the hills overlooking this border town is magnificent — a lush valley with terraced farms along the hillsides and the Himalayas rising into the clouds in the background. Shangri-la at first glance, this breathtaking part of the world also has an ugly history of armed conflict.

THE VALLEY lies on the Indian side of the divided state of Kashmir, whose territory also is part of Pakistan. The nations have fought two wars over the state, and the historic conflict is heating up again with troops massing on both sides of the border.

The Indian Army escort accompanying an NBC News crew on a trip to the area said it’s quite dangerous for their soldiers here — that groups of armed insurgents from the Pakistani side sneak across the line at night to shoot at the Indian troops and terrorize the population.

The leaders of India blame Pakistan for stirring up the insurgency. Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told NBC News that Pakistan has more than enough troops on its side to stop the guerrilla groups, if it really wanted to. Fernandes said that an average of 20 people a week in India are dying in the constant firefights and shelling.

TROOPS AMASSED

India’s million-man army is conducting its biggest mobilization in 15 years, sending tens of thousands of troops to the border area in a buildup that began after armed militants attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on Dec. 13. That attack left 14 people dead and brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

Now, the rest of the world watches nervously because both countries have nuclear weapons, raising the ante in their long-running conflict.

The roads here are clogged with military convoys. A group of rhesus macaque monkeys, native to this area, curiously watched passing trucks loaded with armed soldiers, the machines of battle intruding on the serenity of nature.

The towns along the so-called “Line of Control” are patrolled day and night by troops while others set up minefields and dig bunkers. NBC’s Indian Army hosts said they plan to be here for a long time — that only when Pakistan puts a stop to the cross-border attacks will India consider pulling back.

‘WAR IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!’

At one of the refugee camps that have been set up along the border to house people fleeing the violence, families are housed 25 to a room in an old business park. The constant sniping and shelling forced them from their homes and farms.

“We want war! War is the only solution!” a group that quickly surrounded the NBC crew shouted.

When asked if a war would make them worry about the safety of their children, several responded, “Our children are in danger now. We can no longer live like this. We must put a stop to it.”

Other people who live along the border refuse to leave their homes. In one village, a group of locals said, “We can’t go anywhere else. Our farms and our lives are here.”

‘THE LAST GREAT HOPE’

The townspeople showed NBC the bullet holes in their homes, inflicted by gunmen who infiltrate across the border. A few people stepped forward to show wounds on their bodies from those same bullets. Small children are being killed in the firefights, they said. Fed up with the situation, they said they want revenge against Pakistan.

This feeling is not universal, however. Many in Indian Kashmir’s Muslim majority say they want peace with their brethren on the Pakistan side.

The situation brings to mind India’s great man of peace, Mahatma Ghandi, who once called Kashmir “the last great hope” for people of different persuasions —

India’s largely Hindu population and Pakistan’s largely Muslim population — to live in harmony.

But as an Indian soldier peered out of his guard shack at a breathtaking sunset, that hope seems elusive. For the soldiers know all too well that the night will bring a renewal of fighting in this beautiful but troubled place.

NBC correspondent George Lewis is on assignment in Kashmir.

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Ummm - so sad - Having been to Kashmir, living a couple weeks on a houseboat on Dahl lake, Srinagar....and having hiked in the highlands where they're fighting now....this is such a waste of what could be a real Shangri-la!.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» Steven_Russell - Musharraf's crackdown on Madrassas Saturday

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Pak police raid madrasas, mosques

AFP [ SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 2002 2:53:57 PM ]

KARACHI: Heavily armed police raided three religious schools and two mosques in Karachi early on Saturday and arrested at least 25 Muslim extremists, police said.

The crackdown came ahead of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's address to the nation Saturday evening, in which he is expected to announce comprehensive measures to curb religious extremism, terrorism and violence. The arrests were a precaution against any violent reaction by extremist Islamic groups after Musharraf's speech, said a senior police official, who asked not to be identified.

Most of those arrested belonged to the extremist Sunni Muslim group Sipah-e-Sahaba, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, and the Shiite Muslim Tehrik-e-Jafria, or Movement for the Imposition of Shiite Law. Some members of the Sunni Tehrik, or Movement, also were arrested, police said.

Police raided and searched three religious schools and two mosques run by the Sipah-e-Sahaba in the eastern Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighborhood for suspected terrorists and weapons, as well as several private homes. There was no word whether any weapons were seized.

Police blame the Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jafria for most of Pakistan's sectarian bloodletting, which kills hundreds of people each year.

Besides targetting the two groups, the government has also shut offices of militant Islamic movements, including those waging a secessionist war in the disputed region of Indian Kashmir. They have been barred from displaying banners, flags and collecting donations.

The officer said police have been ordered to remove flags and banners of all the militant religious, ethnic and political groups.

The United States and its allies have been urging Musharraf for swift and tough action against Islamic extremists. They say a crackdown on militants would help in easing tensions with India.

-------------------------------------------------

more arrests later Saturday:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...

Pak arrests 350 militants ahead of Musharraf speech

AFP [ SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 2002 6:09:18 PM ]

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police said Saturday they had arrested over 350 militants ahead of President Pervez Musharraf's speech later in the day, which will focus on curbing extremism.

Interior ministry sources also said police in all four of the country's provinces had been ordered to guard mosques and religious places.

"The move is aimed at warding off any attempts by extremist groups to disturb law and order," an interior ministry official said.

Police in Karachi said they had detained more than 200 militants from the Muslim Sunni sect party, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), and the minority Shiite sect party, Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) in the southern Sindh province as a preventive measure to avoid any possible backlash in case of a ban being placed on the groups.

"Police have detained over 200 militants of different sectarian groups throughout the province including Karachi," Sindh police spokesman Ghulam-us-Saqlain told AFP.

A total of 74 were detained in Karachi and the rest in other parts of the province under the maintenance of public order law, he said.

Police in the North West Frontier Province have rounded up more than 100 leaders and activists of the same two sectarian parties since Friday, police said.

Meanwhile, police in the central Punjab province said they had arrested around 50 preachers since Friday for violating government restrictions on the use of loudspeakers for delivering inflammatory sermons in mosques.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

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» Steven_Russell - Lashkar-e-Taiba to holy war in Kashmir

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Lashkar vows holy war will continue in Kashmir

AFP [ SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 2002 9:37:38 PM ]

KARACHI: Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba vowed Saturday to continue its "holy war" in Kashmir despite being banned by President Pervez Musharraf.

"The government of Pakistan has no right to ban us as we are a Kashmir based group fighting against the Indian forces and we will continue our jihad (holy war)," Lashkar spokesman Abdullah Sayyaf told AFP.

"Our struggle for Kashmir will continue," he said by telephone from an unknown location.

Lashkar has been banned without any evidence of its involvement in terrorism, he said. "We have never been involved in act of terrorism and have always condemned the killing of civilians."

He also denied the organization carried out the December 13 attack on the Parliament.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

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» Steven_Russell - Musharraf snubs India on top 20 terrorist list handover

Pretty strong on the war words.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...

Musharraf cracks the whip on terror groups

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 2002 8:22:55 PM ]

NEW DELHI: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday came down heavily on religious extremism and said he wanted a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue through a process of dialogue. He said madrasas and mosques were being misused by extremists in Pakistan.

Referring to the list of 20 people India wants apprehended for various crimes, Musharraf said Pakistani nationals among those will not be extradited to India. For the others, India has to provide the proof, he said.

Musharraf had tough words for India. He said any attempt by India to cross the border would be met with "full force". As the commander of the armed forces of Pakistan, he warned that the Pakistani forces were completely ready to "fight till our last drop of blood".

Musharraf said Pakistan could deal with external aggression. "We too have the missiles," he said. What, he said, Pakistan needed "was to fight the strife within".

-- posted by Steven_Russell

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» JenL_2 - Re: Musharraf snubs India on top 20 terrorist list handover

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

More on the Musharraf speech from 1/12 MSNBC.com:

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<img src="http://www.msnbc.com/news/1334402.jpg" width=330 height=225 align="left">Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, addressed his nation Saturday.

Musharraf vows to end extremism

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Jan. 12 — In a widely watched speech, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday vowed to “rid society” of sectarian violence, and started by banning two groups accused by India of sponsoring terrorists. Just a few hours earlier, Pakistani police raided religious schools and mosques, arresting some 250 suspected extremists. But Indian and Pakistani troops also traded fire across their border Saturday, a reminder that the nuclear-armed nations could still go to war.

MUSHARRAF EMPHASIZED that force alone would not end extremism, and that Pakistan and other countries would have to reach into the “minds and hearts” of people to end religious hatreds.

He then urged Pakistanis to support a “greater jihad,” not an armed struggle against other religions but a campaign against “backwardness and illiteracy.”

Pakistan’s president also referred to ties with India, which accuses Pakistan’s intelligence service of having supported a suicide attack on its Parliament Dec. 13. The attack, which left 14 people dead, including the five attackers, followed decades of strained bilateral relations tied to the disputed Kashmir region.

Both sides have mobilized their armies since the attack, but Musharraf on Saturday said the Kashmir dispute must be settled by negotiations, not war.

Musharraf also handed India a peace offering by banning Jaish-e-Muhammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba — two Kashmiri groups accused by India of involvement in the attack.

But he stopped short of India’s demand that Pakistan hand over 20 people suspected of ties to the assault. Musharraf refused to hand over any Pakistani citizens, saying instead that if his government found evidence against them “we will try them in our country.”

250 ARRESTED

Under pressure from the United States and Britain, Musharraf has in recent weeks ordered arrests of suspected Islamic militants, particularly Taliban and al-Qaida supporters but also those seen by India as “terrorists.”

Saturday’s arrests were mostly of suspected members of the extremist Sunni Muslim group Sipah-e-Sahaba, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet, and the Shiite Muslim Tehrik-e-Jafria, or Movement for the Imposition of Shiite Law. Some suspected members of the Sunni Tehrik, or Movement, also were arrested, police said.

Police blame the Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jafria for most of Pakistan’s sectarian violence, which kills hundreds of people each year.

In the restive port city of Karachi, police raided and searched three religious schools and two mosques run by the Sipah-e-Sahaba for suspected terrorists and weapons, as well as several private homes. They arrested 74 people, a police official said.

Police arrested more than 150 others in similar raids in more than a dozen other cities. Among them was Behawalpur, home of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who is accused by India of terrorism, and Jhang and Akora Khatak, homes to pro-Taliban clerics Maulana Azam Tariq, and Maukana Samiul Haq. Also raided was Dera Ismail Khan, home town of Maulana Fazle ur-Rehman, another pro-Taliban leader detained recently by Pakistani authorities
.
“It was a precautionary step to avoid any possible reaction to the president’s speech,” Moazzam Jah Ansari, according to a senior police official in southern Sindh province.

BALANCING ACT

But officials in Islamabad have also played down prospects of a history-making move by Musharraf on the Kashmir dispute. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947.

Musharraf is forced to balance global pressure to crush the militants and strong domestic support for the fight against India rule in Kashmir, the mainly Hindu, but secular, nation’s only Muslim-majority state.

India, Pakistan and China all administer parts of the disputed Kashmir region.

The United States has been calling for dialogue between the two countries, while urging Musharraf to take stronger action against militant groups.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, due to visit India and Pakistan next week, said war over Kashmir would be “unthinkable” and a “disaster” between the nuclear-armed nations.

“We have to try to solve this in diplomatic and political channels because the dangers to peace in that part of the world, and the impact it would have on the entire international situation for a conflict to break out between these two nuclear armed nations, are so troubling to contemplate,” he said late Friday.

Powell said he had been trying to cool tensions in daily telephone diplomacy and made clear one message to India was to keep being patient with Musharraf.

WARNING BY INDIA’S ARMY CHIEF

Only hours before Musharraf’s speech, India’s army chief, Gen. S. Padmanabhan, said his forces were ready for war. “This (deployment) we are doing for real. We have not gone for exercises. We are ready for war,” Padmanabhan said.

Nevertheless, he said, any nuclear exchange “would be disastrous” for the whole region and that a country that used nuclear weapons against India would be “punished so severely” its survival would be doubtful.

But Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes was quick to nuance his army chief’s tough talk, issuing a statement saying India was pursuing diplomatic options.

“In the prevailing situation in the subcontinent, we are pursuing the diplomatic efforts in the belief that they will yield results,” Fernandes said.

He also played down the potential use of nuclear weapons as something “no sensible person” would ever want to do.

“The government has not been talking of nuclear weapons. I wish everyone gives up this talk of nuclear weapons being brought into play,” Fernandes said.

An official source also told Reuters that the deployment of the Indian army remained “precautionary and defensive.”

NEW DEATHS

Along the border, troops exchanged small and heavy machine-gun fire near western Jammu district overnight. A 17-year-old Pakistani villager was killed and a 10-year-old wounded by Indian firing, police and witnesses said.

Pakistan says more than 28,000 people in its area of Kashmir have been forced from their homes since tension between India and Pakistan flared last month.

On Saturday, 11 rebels and two Indian security personnel were killed in Kashmir in gun battles and a landmine blast, police said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Makes ya wonder... if Musharraf could be so effective in this crack-down on Pak Islamic militants, arresting hundreds of 'em prior to his speech as a precautionary measure.....why the heck couldn't he have done it before???.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» BPyles - Muslims in India

An article by Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite columnists. Lot of info here I did not know.

By Thomas Friedman
NEW DELHI -- So, class, time for a news quiz: Name the second-largest Muslim community in the world. Iran? Wrong. Pakistan? Wrong. Saudi Arabia? Wrong. Time's up you lose.

Answer: India. That's right: India, with nearly 150 million Muslims, is believed to have more Muslim citizens than Pakistan or Bangladesh, and is second only to Indonesia.

Which brings up another question that I've been asking here in New Delhi: Why is it you don't hear about Indian Muslims who are a minority in this vast Hindu-dominated land blaming America for all their problems or wanting to fly suicide planes into the Indian Parliament?

Answer: Multi-ethnic, pluralistic, free-market democracy. To be sure, Indian Muslims have their frustrations, and have squared off over the years in violent clashes with Hindus, as has every other minority in India. But they live in a noisy, messy democracy, where opportunities and a political voice are open to them, and that makes a huge difference.

"I'll give you a quiz question: Which is the only large Muslim community to enjoy sustained democracy for the last 50 years? The Muslims of India," remarked M. J. Akbar, the Muslim editor of Asian Age, a national Indian English-language daily funded by non-Muslim Indians. "I am not going to exaggerate Muslim good fortune in India. There are tensions, economic discrimination and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and provides a real opportunity for the economic advancement of any community that can offer talent. That's why a growing Muslim middle class here is moving up and, generally, doesn't manifest the strands of deep anger you find in non-democratic Muslim states."

In other words, for all the talk about Islam and Islamic rage, the real issue is: Islam in what context?

Where Islam is imbedded in authoritarian societies it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest, because religion and the mosque are the only places people can organize against autocratic leaders. And when those leaders are seen as being propped up by America, America also becomes the target of Muslim rage.

But where Islam is imbedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Two of India's presidents have been Muslims; a Muslim woman sits on India's supreme court. The architect of India's missile program, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a Muslim. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian states, and the wealthiest man in India, the info-tech whiz Azim Premji, is a Muslim.

The other day the Indian Muslim film star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi lashed out at the imam of New Delhi's biggest mosque. She criticized him for putting Islam in a bad light and suggested he go join the Taliban inKandahar. In a democracy, liberal Muslims, particularly women, are not afraid to take on rigid mullahs.

Followed Bangladesh lately? It has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. Over the last 10 years, though, without the world noticing, Bangladesh has had three democratic transfers of power, in two of which are you ready? Muslim women were elected prime ministers.

Result: All the economic and social indicators in Bangladesh have been pointing upward lately, and Bangladeshis are not preoccupied hating America. Meanwhile in Pakistan,trapped in the circle of bin Ladenism military dictatorship, poverty and anti-modernist Islamic schools, all reinforcing each other the social indicators are all pointing down and hostility to America is rife.

Hello? Hello? There's a message here: It's democracy, stupid! Those who argue that we needn't press for democracy in Arab-Muslim states, and can rely on repressive regimes, have it all wrong. If we cut off every other avenue for non-revolutionary social change, pressure for change will burstout anyway as Muslim rage and anti-Americanism.

If America wants to break the bin Laden circles across the Arab-Muslim world, then, "it needs to find role models that are succeeding as pluralistic, democratic, modernizing societies, like India which is constantly being challenged by religious extremists of all hues and support them," argues Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper. So true. For Muslim societies to achieve their full potential today, democracy may not be sufficient, but it sure is necessary. And we, and they, fool ourselves to think otherwise.

-- posted by BPyles

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» BPyles - Pakistan's ISI

Jen: You mentioned in a previous post about why Mushaarf did not speak out before this - here is one opinion - the ISI - when intelligence agencies become more powerful than their government - big trouble.

January 13, 2002, New York Times

The Rogue to Fear Most Is the One Following Orders

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ

I N 1999, Pakistan's civilian prime minister sent the head of its
intelligence agency on a secret trip to the United States. He listened
as Clinton administration officials urged Pakistan to withdraw its support
for the Taliban. Equally important, he had instructions to tell the
Americans that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif suspected that the
Pakistani army chief of staff was plotting a coup against him.

As the intelligence director traveled from office to office in Washington,
he was trailed by a spy — a man within his own agency whose real
loyalties were to the generals Mr. Sharif feared. The spy's job was to
keep an eye on his boss, the director general of Inter-Services
Intelligence, and report back to the military leaders who held the real
power in Pakistan and controlled the spy agency itself. Within a month,
Mr. Sharif was ousted and the army chief of staff, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, had taken his place.

The story, told by former Pakistani and American officials, hints at what
can happen when intelligence officials become more powerful than their
governments — the emergence of an independent agency able to
overturn government policies or the government itself. It also
demonstrates the precariousness of General Musharraf's position today
as he, even more than his predecessors, comes under American and
British pressure to abandon policies and allies that the spy agency and
his fellow generals have backed over the years. As prime minister, he
has vowed, as he did again last night, to curb Islamic extremism and
terrorist groups, but a critical question remains: Do his military and
intelligence officers support those goals?

So General Musharraf must navigate a treacherous course, and a
misstep could bring calamity. India and Pakistan, nuclear powers prone
to brinksmanship, are at the edge of war. India charges that Pakistan
and its intelligence agency support Kashmiri militants, including two
groups that India accuses of attacking its Parliament on Dec. 13.
Meanwhile, even as troops mass on both sides in disputed Kashmir, Al
Qaeda leaders are slipping away across Pakistan's western frontier.

The stakes for the United States are enormous. Averting an
India-Pakistan war and catching Al Qaeda's leaders are critical to the
success of America's war on terrorism. And achieving both goals
depends in large measure on General Musharraf: Can he force the
intelligence agency to renounce its activities in Kashmir without
provoking another coup?

The relationship between intelligence agencies and the governments
they serve is often murky; by definition, spies operate in the shadows,
and even in open societies their exploits are often designed to let
governments deny connection to them. In countries like Pakistan, where
military and intelligence officers exert power independent of civilian
authority, these agencies routinely flout the law and pursue their own
interests.

Looked at one way, intelligence agencies can seem impossible for the
state to control. Looked at another way, their independence also allows
the state or military to play a double game, espousing one policy while
secretly undermining it through the actions of a supposed "rogue"
organization.

In the case of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the agency's
actions have generally been carried out at the instruction of the military
leadership, which has usually been too strong to be overruled by civilian
governments. The agency's top officers come from the armed forces;
the director general is always a senior general. So the agency operates
as an arm of the military leadership, no matter who is running the
government, even one of its own.

General Musharraf is a career military officer, but he must beware of
antagonizing hard-liners among his colleagues, particularly when it
comes to the perception that he might be abandoning a popular national
cause like ending Indian control over part of Kashmir. The Pakistani
leader knows the role that the spy agency and its friends in the military
played in his rise. And he knows he serves at their pleasure.

"The I.S.I. started out as an important arm of Pakistani national security,
but it ended up defining national security in its own terms," said Husain
Haqqani, a political analyst in Islamabad and a former Pakistani
government minister. "Whenever a covert agency is allowed to define
the national interest, it ends up with more power than intended."

The result is that the agency is not so much a rogue outfit as one that
has enormous independence from the political leadership, though the
army chiefs and political leaders sometimes find it convenient to use the
rogue pretense to maintain deniability.

Deniability brings its own risks. After years of publicly denying
intelligence activities to which they have covertly given a green light, a
state's leaders can find it much harder to rein in such an agency when
the world changes, as it has done for Pakistan since Sept. 11. Simply
put, they get used to doing things their own way.

General Musharraf now faces a trap created by the culture of
deniability, which has also made it easier for India to demonize
Pakistan's spy agency — depicting it as the omnipresent evil hand
behind every dastardly act. Can General Musharraf control his spies and
deliver what President Bush and the Indians demand? Or is he playing a
double game — exaggerating how hard it would be to rein them in, in
order to maintain his hold on power or extract a higher price from
Washington for his cooperation?

IN fact, General Musharraf faces substantial risks — perhaps to his life
— if he is serious about regaining control of the agency. He has already
angered key figures there by ending Pakistan's support for the Taliban
after Sept. 11. Now he is trying to wean his spymasters from their
support of militant groups fighting in Kashmir, an issue even dearer to
their hearts.

There are unpleasant precedents from other countries that allow policies
to be made in the shadows. For instance, a chief difficulty for
Washington in dealing with Iran has been not being able to know who is
really accountable when its surrogates take hostages or stage terror
attacks. In an odd parallel, President Ronald Reagan was tarnished,
during the Iran-Contra scandal, when elements of his own national
security and intelligence community were said to have acted
independently (certainly they acted outside the view of Congress) to
trade arms for hostages and funnel money to Nicaraguan rebels.

IN Peru, former President Alberto Fujimori paid a high price for the
shady dealings and human rights crimes attributed to his spy chief,
Vladimiro Montesinos, but there too deniability clouds the real story. As
he rose to power, Mr. Fujimori got considerable help from Mr.
Montesinos, and for many years it was difficult to tell who owed his job
to whom.

And in the Middle East today, Yasir Arafat's motives have been brought
into question by his unclear relationship with violent forces among the
Palestinians. In trying to assess his real intentions, President Bush,
echoing the Israeli leadership, has fallen back on a harsh standard:
Results are what count, not promises or even deeds that can be quickly
reversed.

In South Asia, with the stakes so high, Indians are now suggesting that
such a standard should also be applied to General Musharraf, even as he
tries to close down Inter-Service Intelligence's powerful Kashmir and
Afghan divisions.

Under pressure from the United States after Sept. 11, General
Musharraf took the first steps to control the agency when he replaced
its pro-Taliban director general with a moderate who was loyal to him,
Lt. Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq. His mission, originally to end support for the
Taliban, expanded after the attack on India's Parliament in December,
when General Musharraf reluctantly agreed to try to reduce the
agency's Kashmir operations too.

Some Pakistani intelligence officials argued that the Parliament attack
was not approved by the agency, but had been carried out by groups
that the agency had backed. The intent, these officials said, was to force
hard-liners within Pakistan's military to stop General Musharraf from
dismantling the Kashmir cell.

Whether that twisting plot comes from Islamabad or from an imagination
like John le Carré's, no one imagines that General Musharraf and his
new intelligence chief have yet ridded the spy agency of its pro-Kashmir
elements or pro-Taliban "jihadis." Their inroads are simply too deep.

"What is important now," said Jessica Stern, an expert on religious
terrorism who lectures at Harvard's Kennedy School, "is not whether
the I.S.I. as a whole is a rogue agency, but whether there are rogue
pockets within the agency that Musharraf cannot control."

In other words, the fate of the corner of the world where Osama bin
Laden hides from Americans while two nuclear neighbors face off could
well depend on whether a spy agency that may or may not be a rogue is
now infected by rogues within itself. And by whether the officials who
were there at the rogue's birth can, or will, bring all of it into line with
what the government says is its policy.

-- posted by BPyles

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» JenL_2 - Re: Muslims in India

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Thanks for that article Betty - I totally agree. Had several very good Indian Muslim friends in Malaysia, and don't think Muslim rage or anti-Americanism ever crossed their minds.

As for my Yahoo cyberfriends, most of the folks in India have been Hindu, but did get to chat with one Indian Muslim....I asked him what he thought about the India-Pak crisis and he said that he's Indian first and Muslim second, and of course he's on India's side...and that Pakistan has to crack down on their Islamic extremist groups so they stop attacking India. I asked him if he felt discriminated against as a Muslim in India, and he said "not at all".

That's also the impression that I got when visiting India in the 70s, even in Kashmir. That's why this whole Kashmir war especially dismays me. I really wonder if Kashmiri Muslims have legitimate grievances against the Indian gov or if the grievances are instigated by the Pak Islamic extremist groups?

Here's a website showing Kasmir in more peaceful times:

http://hulk.bu.edu/~lilly/index.html

gotta show you some pics from the site of things I saw in Kashmir....the Kashmiri Muslim men do the famous Kashmir embroidery....

<img src="http://hulk.bu.edu/~lilly/images/shawl.g..." width=314 height=261>

Kashmiri children work as apprentices to make Kashmir carpets...

<img src="http://hulk.bu.edu/~lilly/images/carpet...." width=245 height=323>

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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» JenL_2 - Re: Pakistan's ISI

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Betty - Wow - great NYtimes article about Pak's ISI. Haven't read the problem clarified so well. Let's not forget also that the Taliban were created by the ISI with CIA funding to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan - so we've cooperated with these guys before and we share some culpability in creating a monster......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

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