Jay’s Blog

In an interview aired Feb. 7 on CNN, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she considers weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of an international terrorist group to be the largest threat faced by the United States today, even bigger than the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. “The biggest nightmare that many of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations within this syndicate of terror will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction,” Clinton said. In referring to the al Qaeda network, Clinton noted that it is “unfortunately a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings.”

  Clinton’s comments came on the heels of a presentation by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In his Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community on Feb. 2, Blair noted that, although counterterrorism actions have dealt a significant blow to al Qaeda’s near-term efforts to develop a sophisticated chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attack capability, the U.S. intelligence community judges that the group is still intent on acquiring the capability. Blair also stated the obvious when he said that if al Qaeda were able to develop CBRN weapons and had the operatives to use them it would do so.

  Realities Shaping the Playing Field
To begin a discussion of jihadists and WMD, it is first important to briefly re-cap assessment of al Qaeda and the broader jihadist movement. It is our assessment that the first layer of the jihadist movement, the al Qaeda core group, has been hit heavily by the efforts of the United States and its allies in the aftermath of 9/11. Due to the military, financial, diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement operations conducted against the core group, it is now a far smaller and more insular organization than it once was and is largely confined geographically to the Afghan-Pakistani border. Having lost much of its operational ability, the al Qaeda core is now involved primarily in the ideological struggle (which it seems to be losing at the present time).

  The second layer in the jihadist realm consists of regional terrorist or insurgent groups that have adopted the jihadist ideology. Some of these have taken up the al Qaeda banner, such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and we refer to them as al Qaeda franchise groups. Other groups may adopt some or all of al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology and cooperate with the core group, but they will maintain their independence for a variety of reasons. In recent years, these groups have assumed the mantle of leadership for the jihadist movement on the physical battlefield.

  The third (and broadest) component of the jihadist movement is composed of grassroots jihadists. These are individuals or small groups of people located across the globe who are inspired by the al Qaeda core and the franchise groups but who may have little or no actual connection to these groups. By their very nature, the grassroots jihadists are the hardest of these three components to identify and target and, as a result, are able to move with more freedom than members of the al Qaeda core or the regional franchises.

  As long as the ideology of jihadism exists, and jihadists at any of these three layers embrace the philosophy of attacking the “far enemy,” there will be a threat of attacks by jihadists against the United States. The types of attacks they are capable of conducting, however, depend on their intent and capability. Generally speaking, the capability of the operatives associated with the al Qaeda core is the highest and the capability of grassroots operatives is the lowest. Certainly, many grassroots operatives think big and would love to conduct a large, devastating attack, but their grandiose plans often come to naught for lack of experience and terrorist tradecraft.

  Although the American public has long anticipated a follow-on attack to 9/11, most of the attacks directed against the United States since 9/11 have failed. In addition to incompetence and poor tradecraft, one of the contributing factors to these failures is the nature of the targets. Many strategic targets are large and well-constructed, and therefore hard to destroy. In other words, just because a strategic target is attacked does not mean the attack has succeeded. Indeed, many such attacks have failed. Even when a plot against a strategic target is successfully executed, it might not produce the desired results and would therefore be considered a failure. For example, the detonation of a massive truck bomb in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993 failed to achieve the jihadists’ aims of toppling the two towers and producing mass casualties, or of causing a major U.S. foreign policy shift.

  Many strategic targets, such as embassies, are well protected against conventional attacks. Their large standoff distances and physical security measures (like substantial perimeter walls) protect them from vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), while these and other security measures make it difficult to cause significant damage to them using smaller IEDs or small arms.
To overcome these obstacles, jihadists have been forced to look at alternate means of attack. Al Qaeda’s use of large, fully fueled passenger aircraft as guided missiles is a great example of this, though it must be noted that once that tactic became known, it ceased to be viable (as United Airlines Flight 93 demonstrated). Today, there is little chance that a flight crew and passengers of an aircraft would allow it to be seized by a small group of hijackers.

CBRN
Al Qaeda has long plotted ways to overcome security measures and launch strategic strikes with CBRN weapons. In addition to the many public pronouncements the group has made about its desire to obtain and use such weapons, we know al Qaeda has developed crude methods for producing chemical and biological weapons and included such tactics in its encyclopedia of jihad and terrorist training courses.

  However, chemical and biological weapons are expensive and difficult to use and have proved to be largely ineffective in real-world applications. A comparison of the Aum Shinrikyo chemical and biological attacks in Tokyo with the March 2004 jihadist attacks in Madrid clearly demonstrates that explosives are far cheaper, easier to use and more effective in killing people. The failure by jihadists in Iraq to use chlorine effectively in their attacks also underscores the problem of using improvised chemical weapons. These problems were also apparent to the al Qaeda leadership, which scrapped a plot to use improvised chemical weapons in the New York subway system due to concerns that the weapons would be ineffective. The pressure jihadist groups are under would also make it very difficult for them to develop a chemical or biological weapons facility, even if they possessed the financial and human resources required to launch such a program.

  Of course, it is not unimaginable for al Qaeda or other jihadists to think outside the box and attack a chemical storage site or tanker car, or use such bulk chemicals to attack another target — much as the 9/11 hijackers used passenger- and fuel-laden aircraft to attack their targets. However, while an attack using deadly bulk chemicals could kill many people, most would be evacuated before they could receive a lethal dose, as past industrial accidents have demonstrated. Therefore, such an attack would be messy but would be more likely to cause mass panic and evacuations than mass casualties. Still, it would be a far more substantial attack than the previous subway plot using improvised chemical weapons.

  A similar case can be made against the effectiveness of an attack involving a radiological dispersion device (RDD), sometimes called a “dirty bomb.” While RDDs are easy to deploy — so simple that we are surprised one has not already been used within the United States — it is very difficult to immediately administer a lethal dose of radiation to victims. Therefore, the “bomb” part of a dirty bomb would likely kill more people than the device’s “dirty,” or radiological, component. However, use of an RDD would result in mass panic and evacuations and could require a lengthy and expensive decontamination process. Because of this, we refer to RDDs as “weapons of mass disruption” rather than weapons of mass destruction.

  The bottom line is that a nuclear device is the only element of the CBRN threat that can be relied upon to create mass casualties and guarantee the success of a strategic strike. However, a nuclear device is also by far the hardest of the CBRN weapons to obtain or manufacture and therefore the least likely to be used. Given the pressure that al Qaeda and its regional franchise groups are under in the post-9/11 world, it is simply not possible for them to begin a weapons program intended to design and build a nuclear device. Unlike countries such as North Korea and Iran, jihadists simply do not have the resources or the secure territory on which to build such facilities. Even with money and secure facilities, it is still a long and difficult endeavor to create a nuclear weapons program — as is evident in the efforts of North Korea and Iran. This means that jihadists would be forced to obtain an entire nuclear device from a country that did have a nuclear weapons program, or fissile material such as highly enriched uranium (enriched to 80 percent or higher of the fissile isotope U-235) that they could use to build a crude, gun-type nuclear weapon.

  Indeed, we know from al Qaeda defectors like Jamal al-Fadl that al Qaeda attempted to obtain fissile material as long ago as 1994. The organization was duped by some of the scammers who were roaming the globe attempting to sell bogus material following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several U.S. government agencies were duped in similar scams.

  Black-market sales of military-grade radioactive materials spiked following the collapse of the Soviet Union as criminal elements descended on abandoned Russian nuclear facilities in search of a quick buck. In subsequent years the Russian government, in conjunction with various international agencies and the U.S. government, clamped down on the sale of Soviet-era radioactive materials. U.S. aid to Russia in the form of so-called “nonproliferation assistance” — money paid to destroy or adequately secure such nuclear and radiological material — increased dramatically following 9/11. In 2009, the U.S. Congress authorized around $1.2 billion for U.S. programs that provide nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union. Such programs have resulted in a considerable amount of fissile material being taken off the market and removed from vulnerable storage sites, and have made it far harder to obtain fissile material today than it was in 1990 or even 2000.

  Another complication to consider is that jihadists are not the only parties who are in the market for nuclear weapons or fissile material. In addition to counterproliferation programs that offer to pay money for fissile materials, countries like Iran and North Korea would likely be quick to purchase such items, and they have the resources to do so, unlike jihadist groups, which are financially strapped.
Some commentators have said they believe al Qaeda has had nuclear weapons for years but has been waiting to activate them at the “right time.” Others claim these weapons are pre-positioned inside U.S. cities. STRATFOR’s position is that if al Qaeda had such weapons prior to 9/11, it would have used them instead of conducting the airline attack. Even if the group had succeeded in obtaining a nuclear weapon after 9/11, it would have used it by now rather than simply sitting on it and running the risk of it being seized.

  There is also the question of state assistance to terrorist groups, but the actions of the jihadist movement since 9/11 have served to steadily turn once quietly supportive (or ambivalent) states against the movement. Saudi Arabia declared war on jihadists in 2003 and countries such as Yemen, Pakistan and Indonesia have recently gone on the offensive. Indeed, in his Feb. 2 presentation to the Senate committee, Blair said: “We do not know of any states deliberately providing CBRN assistance to terrorist groups. Although terrorist groups and individuals have sought out scientists with applicable expertise, we have no corroborated reporting that indicates such experts have advanced terrorist CBRN capability.” Blair also noted that, “We and many in the international community are especially concerned about the potential for terrorists to gain access to WMD-related materials or technology.”

  Clearly, any state that considered providing WMD to jihadists would have to worry about blow-back from countries that would be targeted by that material (such as the United States and Russia). With jihadists having declared war on the governments of countries in which they operate, officials in a position to provide CBRN to those jihadists would also have ample reason to be concerned about the materials being used against their own governments.

  Efforts to counter the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology will certainly continue for the foreseeable future, especially efforts to ensure that governments with nuclear weapons programs do not provide weapons or fissile material to jihadist groups. While the chance of such a terrorist attack is remote, the devastation one could cause means that it must be carefully guarded against.

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The situation in Europe is dire.
After years of profligate spending, Greece is becoming overwhelmed. Barring some sort of large-scale bailout program, a Greek debt default at this point is highly likely. At this moment, European Central Bank liquidity efforts are probably the only thing holding back such a default. But these are a stopgap measure that can hold only until more important economies manage to find their feet. And Europe’s problems extend beyond Greece. Fundamentals are so poor across the board that any number of eurozone states quickly could follow Greece down.

And so the rest of the eurozone is watching and waiting nervously while casting occasional glances in the direction of Berlin in hopes the eurozone’s leader and economy-in-chief will do something to make it all go away. To truly understand the depth of the crisis the Europeans face, one must first understand Germany, the only country that can solve it.

  Germany’s Trap
The heart of Germany’s problem is that it is insecure and indefensible given its location in the middle of the North European Plain. No natural barriers separate Germany from the neighbors to its east and west, no mountains, deserts, oceans. Germany thus lacks strategic depth. The North European Plain is the Continent’s highway for commerce and conquest. Germany’s position in the center of the plain gives it plenty of commercial opportunities but also forces it to participate vigorously in conflict as both an instigator and victim.

  Germany’s exposure and vulnerability thus make it an extremely active power. It is always under the gun, and so its policies reflect a certain desperate hyperactivity. In times of peace, Germany is competing with everyone economically, while in times of war it is fighting everyone. Its only hope for survival lies in brutal efficiencies, which it achieves in industry and warfare.
Pre-1945, Germany’s national goals were simple: Use diplomacy and economic heft to prevent multifront wars, and when those wars seem unavoidable, initiate them at a time and place of Berlin’s choosing.

  “Success” for Germany proved hard to come by, because challenges to Germany’s security do not “simply” end with the conquest of both France and Poland. An overstretched Germany must then occupy countries with populations in excess of its own while searching for a way to deal with Russia on land and the United Kingdom on the sea. A secure position has always proved impossible, and no matter how efficient, Germany always has fallen ultimately.

  During the early Cold War years, Germany’s neighbors tried a new approach. In part, the European Union and NATO are attempts by Germany’s neighbors to grant Germany security on the theory that if everyone in the immediate neighborhood is part of the same club, Germany won’t need a Wehrmacht.
There are catches, of course — most notably that even a demilitarized Germany still is Germany. Even after its disastrous defeats in the first half of the 20th century, Germany remains Europe’s largest state in terms of population and economic size; the frantic mindset that drove the Germans so hard before 1948 didn’t simply disappear. Instead of German energies being split between growth and defense, a demilitarized Germany could — indeed, it had to — focus all its power on economic development. The result was modern Germany — one of the richest, most technologically and industrially advanced states in human history.

  Germany and Modern Europe
That gives Germany an entirely different sort of power from the kind it enjoyed via a potent Wehrmacht, and this was not a power that went unnoticed or unused.
France under Charles de Gaulle realized it could not play at the Great Power table with the United States and Soviet Union. Even without the damage from the war and occupation, France simply lacked the population, economy and geographic placement to compete. But a divided Germany offered France an opportunity. Much of the economic dynamism of France’s rival remained, but under postwar arrangements, Germany essentially saw itself stripped of any opinion on matters of foreign policy. So de Gaulle’s plan was a simple one: use German economic strength as sort of a booster seat to enhance France’s global stature.

  This arrangement lasted for the next 60 years. The Germans paid for EU social stability throughout the Cold War, providing the bulk of payments into the EU system and never once being a net beneficiary of EU largesse. When the Cold War ended, Germany shouldered the entire cost of German reunification while maintaining its payments to the European Union. When the time came for the monetary union to form, the deutschemark formed the euro’s bedrock. Many a deutschmark was spent defending the weaker European currencies during the early days of European exchange-rate mechanisms in the early 1990s. Berlin was repaid for its efforts by many soon-to-be eurozone states that purposely enacted policies devaluing their currencies on the eve of admission so as to lock in a competitive advantage vis-à-vis Germany.

  But Germany is no longer a passive observer with an open checkbook.
In 2003, the 10-year process of post-Cold War German reunification was completed, and in 2005 Angela Merkel became the first postwar German leader to run a Germany free from the burden of its past sins. Another election in 2009 ended an awkward left-right coalition, and now Germany has a foreign policy neither shackled by internal compromise nor imposed by Germany’s European “partners.”

  The Current Crisis
Simply put, Europe faces a financial meltdown.
The crisis is rooted in Europe’s greatest success: the Maastricht Treaty and the monetary union the treaty spawned epitomized by the euro. Everyone participating in the euro won by merging their currencies. Germany received full, direct and currency-risk-free access to the markets of all its euro partners. In the years since, Germany’s brutal efficiency has permitted its exports to increase steadily both as a share of total European consumption and as a share of European exports to the wider world. Conversely, the eurozone’s smaller and/or poorer members gained access to Germany’s low interest rates and high credit rating.

  And the last bit is what spawned the current problem.
Most investors assumed that all eurozone economies had the blessing — and if need be, the pocketbook — of the Bundesrepublik. It isn’t difficult to see why. Germany had written large checks for Europe repeatedly in recent memory, including directly intervening in currency markets to prop up its neighbors’ currencies before the euro’s adoption ended the need to coordinate exchange rates. Moreover, an economic union without Germany at its core would have been a pointless exercise.
Investors took a look at the government bonds of Club Med states (a colloquialism for the four European states with a history of relatively spendthrift policies, namely, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece), and decided that they liked what they saw so long as those bonds enjoyed the implicit guarantees of the euro. The term in vogue with investors to discuss European states under stress is PIIGS, short for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. While Ireland does have a high budget deficit this year, STRATFOR prefers the term Club Med, as we do not see Ireland as part of the problem group. Unlike the other four states, Ireland repeatedly has demonstrated an ability to tame spending, rationalize its budget and grow its economy without financial skullduggery. In fact, the spread between Irish and German bonds narrowed in the early 1980s before Maastricht was even a gleam in the collective European eye, unlike Club Med, whose spreads did not narrow until Maastricht’s negotiation and ratification.

  Even though Europe’s troubled economies never actually obeyed Maastricht’s fiscal rules — Athens was even found out to have falsified statistics to qualify for euro membership — the price to these states of borrowing kept dropping. In fact, one could well argue that the reason Club Med never got its fiscal politics in order was precisely because issuing debt under the euro became cheaper. By 2002 the borrowing costs for Club Med had dropped to within a whisker of those of rock-solid Germany. Years of unmitigated credit binging followed.

  The 2008-2009 global recession tightened credit and made investors much more sensitive to national macroeconomic indicators, first in emerging markets of Europe and then in the eurozone. Some investors decided actually to read the EU treaty, where they learned that there is in fact no German bailout at the end of the rainbow, and that Article 104 of the Maastricht Treaty (and Article 21 of the Statute establishing the European Central Bank) actually forbids one explicitly. They further discovered that Greece now boasts a budget deficit and national debt that compares unfavorably with other defaulted states of the past such as Argentina.

  Investors now are (belatedly) applying due diligence to investment decisions, and the spread on European bonds — the difference between what German borrowers have to pay versus other borrowers — is widening for the first time since Maastricht’s ratification and doing so with a lethal rapidity. Meanwhile, the European Commission is working to reassure investors that panic is unwarranted, but Athens’ efforts to rein in spending do not inspire confidence. Strikes and other forms of political instability already are providing ample evidence that what weak austerity plans are in place may not be implemented, making additional credit downgrades a foregone conclusion.

  Germany’s Choice
As the EU’s largest economy and main architect of the European Central Bank, Germany is where the proverbial buck stops. Germany has a choice to make.
The first option, letting the chips fall where they may, must be tempting to Berlin. After being treated as Europe’s slush fund for 60 years, the Germans must be itching simply to let Greece and others fail. Should the markets truly believe that Germany is not going to ride to the rescue, the spread on Greek debt would expand massively. Remember that despite all the problems in recent weeks, Greek debt currently trades at a spread that is only one-eighth the gap of what it was pre-Maastricht — meaning there is a lot of room for things to get worse. With Greece now facing a budget deficit of at least 9.1 percent in 2010 — and given Greek proclivity to fudge statistics the real figure is probably much worse — any sharp increase in debt servicing costs could push Athens over the brink.

  From the perspective of German finances, letting Greece fail would be the financially prudent thing to do. The shock of a Greek default undoubtedly would motivate other European states to get their acts together, budget for steeper borrowing costs and ultimately take their futures into their own hands. But Greece would not be the only default. The rest of Club Med is not all that far behind Greece, and budget deficits have exploded across the European Union. Macroeconomic indicators for France and especially Belgium are in only marginally better shape than those of Spain and Italy.

  At this point, one could very well say that by some measures the United States is not far behind the eurozone. The difference is the insatiable global appetite for the U.S. dollar, which despite all the conspiracy theories and conventional wisdom of recent years actually increased during the 2008-2009 global recession. Taken with the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and the fact that the United States controls its own monetary policy, Washington has much more room to maneuver than Europe.

  Berlin could at this point very well ask why it should care if Greece and Portugal go under. Greece accounts for just 2.6 percent of eurozone gross domestic product. Furthermore, the crisis is not of Berlin’s making. These states all have been coasting on German largesse for years, if not decades, and isn’t it high time that they were forced to sink or swim?

  The problem with that logic is that this crisis also is about the future of Europe and Germany’s place in it. Germany knows that the geopolitical writing is on the wall: As powerful as it is, as an individual country (or even partnered with France), Germany does not approach the power of the United States or China and even that of Brazil or Russia further down the line. Berlin feels its relevance on the world stage slipping, something encapsulated by U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent refusal to meet for the traditional EU-U.S. summit. And it feels its economic weight burdened by the incoherence of the eurozone’s political unity and deepening demographic problems.

  The only way for Germany to matter is if Europe as a whole matters. If Germany does the economically prudent (and emotionally satisfying) thing and lets Greece fail, it could force some of the rest of the eurozone to shape up and maybe even make the eurozone better off economically in the long run. But this would come at a cost: It would scuttle the euro as a global currency and the European Union as a global player.

  Every state to date that has defaulted on its debt and eventually recovered has done so because it controlled its own monetary policy. These states could engage in various (often unorthodox) methods of stimulating their own recovery. Popular methods include, but are hardly limited to, currency devaluations in an attempt to boost exports and printing currency either to pay off debt or fund spending directly. But Greece and the others in the eurozone surrendered their monetary policy to the European Central Bank when they adopted the euro. Unless these states somehow can change decades of bad behavior in a day, the only way out of economic destitution would be for them to leave the eurozone. In essence, letting Greece fail risks hiving off EU states from the euro. Even if the euro — not to mention the EU — survived the shock and humiliation of monetary partition, the concept of a powerful Europe with a political center would vanish. This is especially so given that the strength of the European Union thus far has been measured by the successes of its rehabilitations — most notably of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain in the 1980s — where economic-basket case dictatorships and pseudo-democracies transitioned into modern economies.

  And this leaves option two: Berlin bails out Athens.
There is no doubt Germany could afford such a bailout, as the Greek economy is only one-tenth of the size of the Germany’s. But the days of no-strings-attached financial assistance from Germany are over. If Germany is going to do this, there will no longer be anything “implied” or “assumed” about German control of the European Central Bank and the eurozone. The control will become reality, and that control will have consequences. For all intents and purposes, Germany will run the fiscal policies of peripheral member states that have proved they are not up to the task of doing so on their own. To accept anything less intrusive would end with Germany becoming responsible for bailing out everyone. After all, who wouldn’t want a condition-free bailout paid for by Germany? And since a euro-wide bailout is beyond Germany’s means, this scenario would end with Germany leading the EU hat-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund for an American/Chinese-funded assistance package. It is possible that the Germans could be gentle and risk such abject humiliation, but it is not likely.

  Taking a firmer tack would allow Germany to achieve via the pocketbook what it couldn’t achieve by the sword. But this policy has its own costs. The eurozone as a whole needs to borrow around 2.2 trillion euros in 2010, with Greece needing 53 billion euros simply to make it through the year. Not far behind Greece is Italy, which needs 393 billion euros, Belgium with needs of 89 billion euros and France with needs of yet another 454 billion euros. As such, the premium on Germany is to act — if it is going to act — fast. It needs to get Greece and most likely Portugal wrapped up before crisis of confidence spreads to the really serious countries, where even mighty German’s resources would be overwhelmed.

  That is the cost of making Europe “work.” It is also the cost to Germany of leadership that doesn’t come at the end of a gun. So if Germany wants its leadership to mean something outside of Western Europe, it will be forced to pay for that leadership — deeply, repeatedly and very, very soon. But unlike in years past, this time Berlin will want to hold the reins.

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His dream of united Muslim Pakistan which was a lie from inception to the present, began unraveling in a few years. Many Muslims who migrated from India and were called Mohajirs sparked resentment from the provincial natives of Sindh and Punjab. The migrant Muslim business community from Kutch, Gujarat and Saurashtra concentrated in Karachi, the only premier business city of Pakistan, by expertise, greater capital or questionable business ethics, dominated the commerce and aspired to greater political power, planting the seeds of discord. These have flourished and led to militancy, armed intimidation and violent conflict. The leader of the Mohajirs, at one time left the country and sought asylum in the UK.

From its birth, Punjab was the most populated and fertile of the four provinces. Baluchistan was the largest, richest in natural resources and with the lowest population density and a small population. The Northwest Frontier province and the FATA were the least industrialized, mostly tribal, more religious and mainly Pashtun, like their brethren across the artificial Durand line frontier with Afghanistan. In NWFP, FATA and Baluchistan, local customs, laws and the writ of local chiefs trumped government writ, authority or law. Sindh is mainly arid, but like fertile Punjab dominated by landlords with a culture of feudalism and oppression of the poor serfs who constitute the majority in both provinces.

The unfair division of the Indus waters and the shoveling of federal pork in favor of Punjab, led to resentment in Sindh. The control of commerce in its capital Karachi by non-Sindhi Mohajirs fueled the unrest even more. The Punjabi dominated central government and armed forces mistreated the distant stepsister Bengali speaking East Pakistan, even more badly. The reduction in general mortality with better healthcare unaccompanied by economic improvement left no reason to practice birth control and the population of India and both Pakistans grew rapidly. East Pakistan soon became more populous than West Pakistan with greater representation in parliament. It also had mainly one political party which held the majority in the single parliament of both Pakistans.

This would have required making Bengali speaking Mujibur Rahman the prime minister of all of Pakistan. As in India, language, caste and religion have always been the factors responsible for lack of progress of South Asian nations. Other equally important factors are the ignorance of the leaders and the electorate and the prominent and conspicuous lack of integrity, character and decency which is ubiquitous in all politicians of all parties and all nations in the subcontinent. As everyone knows that eventually led to the rape and massacre of nearly a million East Pakistanis by the West Pakistani armed forces with the connivance of America, and the birth of Bangladesh, by India as the midwife.

The homeland of all Indian Muslims began fragmenting with civil strife between Mohajirs and Sindhi Muslims. Very soon an obscure Muslim sect called Ahmadis were terrorized legally as non-Muslim infidels. More recently violence against Christians and Shia Muslims became the norm even though Jinnah, the founder was a Shia. Once again American support for the fanatic General Zia was responsible for promoting this mayhem to defeat the USSR invasion of Afghanistan which the Carter administration precipitated to embroil the Soviet Union in its own Vietnam. Saudi Arabia was an equal donor to obscure the un-Islamic lifestyle of its ruling king and princes. The net result was Al Qaeda and Taliban, the Frankensteins now out to destroy America. It led to an even greater problem for perpetually foolish and shortsighted America, a nuclear armed Pakistan and the Khan Walmart for nuclear weapons.

Pakistan military�s cozy relationship with zealot religious fanatics is what led to the Talibanization of Afghanistan and now the border with Afghanistan and spreading to its heartland. The resignation of Musharraf was the result of his policy of being seen as a stooge of America. In reality he was no American ally, but a shrewd liar who clandestinely supported the terrorists of Taliban and even Al Qaeda, while milking America to strengthen the Pakistani economy and military to fight India. The ruling political parties are at loggerheads with one another. Sharif and his Punjab based party wants revenge on Musharraf and reinstatement of the illegally fired judges. Zardari and his PPP majority are afraid that a reinstated judiciary may reopen the corruption charges which Musharraf pardoned him for. The combined parties have no ability to oversee the military and the rogue ISI intelligence agency, both of which still decide the country�s foreign policy and have total control over the nuclear arsenal.

America is now lost and does not know who to turn to. Its objectives are to prevent conventional terror attacks on itself, prevent the terrorists from gaining access to Pakistani nuclear weapons and assure a safe supply route for its forces occupying landlocked Afghanistan, which is its base for accessing Central Asian oil and gas. America�s newfound love for Georgia, Ukraine, Poland etc. is also based on accessing Central Asian energy via safe pipelines and surrounding Russia with anti-missile defenses to achieve full spectrum nuclear dominance. ABMs are not defensive weapons, but first tier offensive ones. They allow the possessor to preemptively strike another nuclear power, destroying the bulk of its nuclear arsenal. The remaining few second strike weapons which survive the preemptive first strike can be effectively neutralized thus escaping Mutual Assured Destruction, the stalemate strategy that prevented nuclear war in the cold war era.

Pakistan now faces an insurgency in NWFP, FATA and Baluchistan, a restive Sindh, widespread terrorist attacks, a deteriorating economy, rampant inflation, a disillusioned America in economic difficulties, unwilling to write blank checks and a divided, corrupt civilian government, a military with poor morale and increasing casualties and an angry and hungry population. NATO and America will tire of expense and casualties in a year or two and the Taliban will eventually form a Pakhtunistan. Baluchistan will secede with Iranian help as will Sindh with India�s help. A landlocked nuclear Punjab as a remnant of Pakistan will be effectively marginalized. This time Iran will ensure a satellite Shia state in western Afghanistan, the newly antagonized Russians will promote the merger of the northern and eastern parts into Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. From India�s standpoint, it is not a totally bad idea, as the corrupt, weak and inept government of Karzai is unsustainable and consumes a lot of Indian aid. The Russian response to Georgia was a shot across the bow to America and its inane interference in Russia�s near abroad.

Unfortunately for America, its own blunders and its retarded ineducable leaders are hell bent on destroying the nation as articles by Andrew Bacevich, Kevin Phillips, Pat Buchanan and Ted Galen Carpenter from the right, George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson from the left and veteran national security professionals like Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett emphasize. America is in retreat in Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia), stalemated in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria) and stopped cold in the Caucasus by Russia. In India we have a similar problem. The ruling Tarzana, her Little Nkima and her coterie of multiparty apes have reignited the conflagration in Kashmir, while the shortsighted BJP stands ready to add fuel to the fire for political gains in the elections next year. In America Darth Vader, his pet G2B2 and the chest thumping Neocon troglodytes indulge in arson around the world and the democrats cheerfully appropriate funds fueling the fire and demagogue to win the next election. 

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

  On Jan. 24, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the botched attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The short one-minute and two-second audio statement, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television, called the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a hero and threatened more attacks. The voice on the recording said the bombing attempt was in response to the situation in Gaza and that the United States can never dream of living in peace until Muslims have peace in the Palestinian territories. The speaker also said that attacks against the United States would continue as long as the United States continued to support Israel.

  While the U.S. government has yet to confirm that the voice is that of bin Laden, Al Jazeera claims that the voice is indeed that of the al Qaeda leader. Bin Laden’s health and welfare have been the topic of a lot of discussion and debate over the past several years, and many intelligence officials believe he is dead. Because of this, any time an audio recording purporting to be from bin Laden is released it receives heavy forensic scrutiny. Some technical experts believe that recent statements supposedly made by bin Laden have been cobbled together by manipulating portions of longer bin Laden messages that were previously recorded. It has been STRATFOR’s position for several years that, whether bin Laden is dead or alive, the al Qaeda core has been marginalized by the efforts of the United States and its allies to the point where the group no longer poses a strategic threat.

  Now, questions of bin Laden’s status aside, the recording was most likely released through channels that helped assure Al Jazeera that the recording was authentic. This means that we can be somewhat confident that the message was released by the al Qaeda core. The fact that the al Qaeda core would attempt to take credit for a failed attack in a recording is quite interesting. But perhaps even more interesting is the core group’s claim that the attack was conducted because of U.S support for Israel and the treatment of the Palestinians living in Gaza.

Smoke and Mirrors
During the early years of al Qaeda’s existence, the group did not take credit for attacks it conducted. In fact, it explicitly denied involvement. In interviews with the press, bin Laden often praised the attackers while, with a bit of a wink and a nod, he denied any connection to the attacks. Bin Laden issued public statements after the August 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks flatly denying any involvement. In fact, bin Laden and al Qaeda continued to publicly deny any connection to the 9/11 attacks until after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. These denials of the 9/11 attacks have taken on a life of their own and have become the basis of conspiracy theories that the United States or Israel was behind the attacks (despite later statements by bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that contradicted earlier statements and claimed credit for 9/11).

  In the years following 9/11, the al Qaeda core has continued to bask in the glory of that spectacularly successful attack, but it has not been able to produce the long-awaited encore. This is not for lack of effort; the al Qaeda core has been involved in several attempted attacks against the United States, such as the attempted shoe-bomb attack in December 2001, dispatching Jose Padilla to the United States in May of 2002 to purportedly try to conduct a dirty-bomb attack, and the August 2006 thwarted plot to attack trans-Atlantic airliners using liquid explosives. Interestingly, while each of these failed attempts has been tied to the al Qaeda core by intelligence and investigative efforts, the group did not publicly claim credit for any of them. While the group’s leadership has made repeated threats that they were going to launch an attack that would dwarf 9/11, they simply have been unable to do so. Indeed, the only plot that could have come anywhere near the destruction of the 9/11 attacks was the liquid explosives plot, and that was foiled early on in the operational planning process — before the explosive devices were even fabricated.

  Now, back to the failed bombing attempt on Christmas Day. First, the Yemeni franchise of al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has already claimed responsibility for the attack, and evidence strongly suggests that AQAP is the organization with which Abdulmutallab had direct contact. Indeed, while some members of AQAP have had prior contact with bin Laden, there is little to suggest that bin Laden himself or what remains of al Qaeda’s core leadership has any direct role in planning any of the operations conducted by AQAP. The core group does not exercise that type of control over the activities of any of its regional groups. These groups are more like independent franchises that operate under the same brand name rather than parts of a single hierarchical organization. Each franchise has local leadership and is self-funding, and the franchises frequently diverge from global al Qaeda “corporate policies” in areas like target selection.

  Furthermore, in an environment where the jihadists know that U.S. signals-intelligence efforts are keenly focused on the al Qaeda core and the regional franchise groups, discussing any type of operational information via telephone or e-mail from Yemen to Pakistan would be very dangerous — and terrible operational security. Using couriers would be more secure, but the al Qaeda core leadership is very cautious in its communications with the outside world (Hellfire missiles can have that effect on people), and any such communications will be very slow and deliberate. For the al Qaeda core leadership, the price of physical security has been the loss of operational control over the larger movement.
Taking things one step further, not only is the core of al Qaeda attempting to take credit for something it did not do, but it is claiming credit for an attack that did little more than severely burn the attacker in a very sensitive anatomical area. Some have argued that the attack was successful because it has instilled fear and caused the U.S. government to react, but clearly the attack would have had a far greater impact had the device detonated. The failed attack was certainly not what the operational planners had in mind when they dispatched Abdulmutallab on his mission.

  This attempt by the al Qaeda core to pander for publicity, even though it means claiming credit for a botched attack, clearly demonstrates how far the core group has fallen since the days when bin Laden blithely denied responsibility for 9/11.

The Palestinian Focus
Since the beginning of bin Laden’s public discourse, the Palestinian cause has been a consistent feature. His 1996 declaration of war and the 1998 fatwa declaring jihad against the West and Israel are prime examples. However, the reality of al Qaeda’s activities has shown that, to bin Laden, the plight of the Palestinians has been less an area of genuine concern and more of a rhetorical device to exploit sympathy for the jihadist cause and draw Muslims to al Qaeda’s banner.

  Over the years, al Qaeda has worked very closely with a number of militant groups in a variety of places, including the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in China. However, while one of bin Laden’s mentors, Abdullah Azzam, was a Palestinian, and there have been several Palestinians affiliated with al Qaeda over the years, the group has done little to support Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas, even though Hamas (as the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) sprang from the same radical Egyptian Islamist milieu that produced al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which al-Zawahiri later folded into al Qaeda.

  Jihadist militant groups such as Jund Ansar Allah have attempted to establish themselves in Gaza, but these groups were seen as problematic competition, rather than allies, and Hamas quickly stamped them out.
With little help coming from fellow Sunnis, Hamas has come to rely on Iran and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, as sources of funding, weapons and training. Even though this support is flowing across the Shiite-Sunni divide, actions speak louder than words, and Iran and Hezbollah have shown that they can deliver. In many ways, the political philosophy of Hamas (which has been sharply criticized by al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders) is far closer to that of Iran than to that of the jihadists. With Iran’s help, Hamas has progressed from throwing rocks and firing homemade Qassam rockets to launching the longer range Grad and Fajr rockets and conducting increasingly effective irregular-warfare operations against the Israeli army.

  Hezbollah’s ability to eject Israel from southern Lebanon and its strong stand against the Israeli armed forces in the 2006 war made a strong impression in the Middle East. Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are seen as very real threats to Israel, while al Qaeda has shown that it can produce a lot of anti-Israeli rhetoric but few results. Because of this, Iran and its proxies have become the vanguard of the fight against Israel, while al Qaeda is simply trying to keep its name in the press.

  Claiming credit for failed attacks orchestrated by others and trying to latch on to the fight against Israel are just the latest signs that al Qaeda is trying almost too hard to remain relevant.

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The Islamic arch in the making 
By Ioannis Michaletos | Blog 

Over the 1990’s one of the most popular theories regarding the changing nature of the Balkan affairs, was the existence of the “Islamic arch” or the “Green traverse” stretching from Turkey up to Croatia that would unite all the Balkan Muslim communities into a single force, subject to control by either Turkey or the Middle Eastern Sunni powers and the Shiite Iran as well.The years after 9/11 many of such Islamic networks that were also connected with international terrorism, were disband. Moreover this particular theory faded away from the mainstream media, although it is still a reality that is being pursued by various Islamic circles.

Sarajevo July 21, 2008: Bosnian Muslims celebrate the arrest of Karadzic by waving Turkish flags.

This present article will briefly provide the most important events of this Balkan Islamic arch project that are related to terrorism.Diary of events since 2003
November 2003: Al Qaeda strikes Istanbul with bombs that targeted two Synagogues, a British bank and the UK Consulate. The brain behind the attack has the Syrian citizen Louai al-Sakka, who was also planning to blow up two Israeli cruise ships but he was arrested on August 2005 and subsequently it was found that he maintained close links with Bosnian extremist Islamic circles.
July 2005: A group of Bosnian Muslims were arrested in Italy because on April that year they tried to place explosives during the funeral of late Pontiff John-Paul II.
August 2005: The fugitive Moroccan terrorist Abdelmajid Bouchar was arrested in Serbia after he escaped from Spain where he took part in the bombing attacks in Madrid in March 2004. He was in contact with radical Muslims in the Balkans over the previous years.
October 2005: The Bosnian security forces arrested Bosnian Muslims that were in procession of plastic explosives and were preparing a terrorist attack in Western Embassies in Sarajevo. The group was revealed that was in contact with the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
December 2005: United Nations sources in Pristina indicate that North African terrorists may have allocated themselves in Kosovo with the assistance of local collaborators.
September 2006: In Oslo the Pakistani citizen named Arfan Qadeer Bhatti was arrested because he was planning the bombing of the American and Israeli Embassies in the Norwegian capital. Himself was an associate of the Kosovo Albanian heroin smuggler Princ Dobrosi and has visited numerously the Balkans.
December 2006: In Trevizo-Italy Bosnian Muslims and Albanians were arrested, because they were smuggling weapons from Turkey and were also related with terrorist organizations.
February 2007: A group of Bulgarian Muslims -Including a proselyte woman- were arrested by the Bulgarian authorities due to their collaboration with Wahhabi groups in order to arm Chechen terrorists. They were also planning to impose Sharia law once the group took a hold in the Muslim communities of the country.
March 2007: The Serbian police uncovers a crypt in the Sanjak region containing heavy armaments (Rockets, bombs, machine guns, grenades, communication systems) that belonged to a group of local Wahhabis.
November 2007: The FYROM police uncovers stashed weapons capable of arming a small army of a 1,000 men in a remote village near the borderline with Kosovo. The arms belonged to an Albanian paramilitary group from Kosovo that included in its ranks radical Muslims.
December 2007: The Albanian government and its Ministry of Economics announced that it outlaws the operation of several Islamic charities and forbids the transaction of certain foreign citizens with local institutions.
Some of the names and organizations banned are:
Saad Rashed Mohammad Al-faqih (Provided support to Al Qaeda)
Anshori Abdullah Anshori (Jemaah Islamiya related)
Abd Al-Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil (Director of the outlawed NGO, IIRO Eastern Province (IIRO-EP) of Saudi Arabia)
All Sayyid Muhamed Mustafa Bakri ( Al Qaeda member and chemical weapons expert)
Dieman Abdulkadir Izzat (He took part in the assassination attempt against the Iraqi Prime Minister in 2004 in Germany)
Elehssan” (Cover organization for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad)
“Lashkar-e- Tayyiba” (The armed terrorist wing of the Pakistani radical group, Markaz-ud- Dawa-wal-Irshad)
December 2007: Bosnian Muslims and a Turk were arrested in Germany, because they were planning terrorist attacks against the country’s transportation system
March 2008: Five Wahhabis in Bosnia were arrested carrying heavy armaments and were aiming at attacking Christian Churches during the coming Easter Period.
May 2008: In Skopje the Albanian Imam Halim Bekiri was arrested because he was receiving funds from the Kuwaiti based outlawed organization Revival Islamic Heritage Society, in order to facilitate the infiltration of Wahhabis in the Balkans.
June 2008: Ten Islamic extremists were arrested in Bosnia transferring illegally obtained weapons to Croatia in order to arm terrorist cells in Central Europe. All of them were revealed that maintained links with Mujahedeen fighters from the 1990’s wars in Ex-Yugoslavia
July 2008: A TIR truck from Iran heading towards Kosovo was stopped for inspection on the FYROM-Kosovo borderline. Officially it was carrying diesel but it was reveled that it contained a chemical substance. Ten border guards were sent to the hospital with signs of contamination.
A similar case was recorded with a truck from FYROM to Greece in May the same year.

Seized weapons

July 2008: Abu Hamza in Bosnia, one of the main Mujahedeen figures of the ’90’s, stated in the media that he received assistance from the Turkish intelligence (MIT) during the war against the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, in order to arm his Islamic fighting units.All the above are just a very synoptically note of all the incidents that have occurred over the past few years in the region where the Islamic arch is supposed to have been formed.
It has to be noted also that:
During the “cartoon demonstrations”, the Muslims communities in FYROM, Sanjak and Bosnia revealed intense dynamism and made numerous riots in the respective regions.
It is a well known fact that the Balkan radical Islamists have an articulate propaganda system composed by companies that issue magazines, record music and create websites, aiming at spreading mostly Wahhabi values.
Over the past five years numerous Byzantine era Churches have been attacked in Albania by “unknown assailants” whilst there have been incidents of threats being issued against Christian citizens in the form of graffiti in walls or notes placed in their cars and houses.
In FYROM, Wahhabism exorcism has been recorded and youth festivals have been trashed by radicals in Bosnia and Sanjak as well.
Female circumcision is also being performed by radical Muslims in the Balkans and Imams from North Africa and the Middle East have allocated themselves in the region.
Moreover Turkey’s mutation into an Islamic state is in process and the Christian communities in Bulgaria, FYROM are decreasing due to their very low birth rates. In Kosovo the non-Muslim population was eradicated and in Albania the majority of Eastern Orthodox and Catholics has emigrated. In a sense the Balkans are being formed into a semi-Muslim region where the radical element is pretty strong and increasing.
Although populations such as the Albanians are still in a pre-modern level and that means they group themselves on kinship ties rather on cultural or religious ones, that will inevitably change in the coming generations due to the entrance of the region in a more “Westernized” social environment and then the societal divisions that are being examined are going to surface with dire consequences.
More pressing is the issue of Bosnia-Herzegovina that is already divided between three groups (Serbs, Croats, and Muslims) with the first two resenting the primal position that Muslims have attained.
As the Balkans enters into Europe they tend to drift away and that is the irony of history.

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  On Jan. 4, 2010, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) adopted new rules that would increase the screening of citizens from 14 countries who want to fly to the United States as well as travelers of all nationalities who are flying to the United States from one of the 14 countries. These countries are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Four of the countries — Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria — are on the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The other 10 have been labeled “countries of interest” by the TSA and appear to have been added in response to jihadist attacks in recent years. Nigeria was almost certainly added to the list only as a result of the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man.

  As reflected by the large number of chain e-mails that swirl around after every attack or attempted attack against the United States, the type of profiling program the TSA has instituted will be very popular in certain quarters. Conventional wisdom holds that such programs will be effective in protecting the flying public from terrorist attacks because profiling is easy to do. However, when one steps back and carefully examines the historical face of the jihadist threat, it becomes readily apparent that it is very difficult to create a one-size-fits-all profile of a jihadist operative. When focusing on a resourceful and adaptive adversary, the use of such profiles sets a security system up for failure by causing security personnel and the general public to focus on a threat that is defined too narrowly.
Sketching the face of jihadism is simply not as easy as it might seem.

The Historical Face of Terror
One popular chain e-mail that seemingly circulates after every attack or attempted attack notes that the attack was not conducted by Richard Simmons or the Tooth Fairy but by “Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 40.” And when we set aside the Chechen “Black Widows”, the occasional female suicide bomber and people like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, many terrorist attacks are indeed planned and orchestrated by male Muslim extremists between the ages of 17 and 40. The problem comes when you try to define what a male Muslim extremist between the ages of 17 and 40 looks like.
When we look back at the early jihadist attacks against the United States, we see that many perpetrators matched the stereotypical Muslim profile. In the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing and the thwarted 1993 New York Landmarks Plot, we saw a large contingent of Egyptians, including Omar Abdul-Rahman (aka “the Blind Sheikh”), ElSayyid Nosair, Ibrahim Elgabrowny, Mahmud Abouhalima and several others. In fact, Egyptians played a significant role in the development of the jihadist ideology and have long constituted a very substantial portion of the international jihadist movement — and even of the core al Qaeda cadre. Because of this, it is quite surprising that Egypt does not appear on the TSA’s profile list.
Indeed, in addition to the Egyptians, in the early jihadist plots against the United States we also saw operatives who were Palestinian, Pakistani, Sudanese and Iraqi. However — and this is significant — in the New York Landmarks Plot we also saw a Puerto Rican convert to Islam named Victor Alvarez and an African-American Muslim named Clement Rodney Hampton-el. Alvarez and Hampton-el clearly did not fit the typical profile.
The Kuwait-born Pakistani citizen who was the bombmaker in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is a man named Abdul Basit (widely known by his alias, Ramzi Yousef). After leaving the United States, Basit resettled in Manila and attempted to orchestrate an attack against U.S. airliners in Asia called Operation Bojinka. After an apartment fire in Manila caused Basit to flee the city, he moved to Islamabad, where he attempted to recruit new jihadist operatives to carry out the Bojinka plot. One of the men he recruited was a South African Muslim named Istaique Parker. After a few dry-run operations, Parker got cold feet, decided he did not want to embrace martyrdom and helped the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service special agents assigned to the U.S. Embassy orchestrate Basit’s arrest. A South African named Parker does not fit the typical terrorist profile.
The following individuals, among many others, were involved in jihadist activity but did not fit what most people would consider the typical jihadist profile:

  Richard Reid, the British citizen known as the “shoe bomber.”
Jose Padilla, the American citizen known as the “dirty bomber.”
Adam Gadahn, an al Qaeda spokesman who was born Adam Pearlman in California.
John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban.”
Jack Roche, the Australian known as “Jihad Jack.”
The Duka brothers, ethnic Albanians involved in the Fort Dix plot.
Daniel Boyd and his sons, American citizens plotting grassroots attacks inside the United States.
Germaine Maurice Lindsay, the Jamaican-born suicide bomber involved in the July 7, 2005, London attacks.
Nick Reilly, the British citizen who attempted to bomb a restaurant in Exeter in May 2008.
David Headley, the U.S. citizen who helped plan the Mumbai attacks.

As reflected by the list above, jihadists come from many ethnicities and nationalities, and they can range from Americans named Daniel, Victor and John to a Macedonian nicknamed “Elvis,” a Tanzanian called “Foopie” (who smuggled explosives by bicycle) and an Indonesian named Zulkarnaen. There simply is not one ethnic or national profile that can be used to describe them all.

An Adaptive Opponent
One of the big reasons we’ve witnessed men with names like Richard and Jose used in jihadist plots is because jihadist planners are adaptive and innovative. They will adjust the operatives they select for a mission in order to circumvent new security measures. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when security forces began to focus additional scrutiny on people with Muslim names, they dispatched Richard Reid on his shoe-bomb mission. And it worked — Reid was able to get his device by security and onto the plane. If he hadn’t fumbled the execution of the attack, it would have destroyed the aircraft. Moreover, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to get an operative into the United States to conduct attacks following 9/11, he selected U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. Padilla successfully entered the country, and it was only Mohammed’s arrest and interrogation that alerted authorities to Padilla’s mission.
But their operational flexibility in fact predates the 9/11 attack. For example, some of the operatives initially selected for the 9/11 mission were Yemenis and could not obtain visas to the United States. Since Saudis were able to obtain visas much easier, al Qaeda simply shifted gears and decided to use Saudis instead of Yemenis.
Pakistan-based militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami likewise sought to fool the Danish and Indian security services when they dispatched an American citizen named David Headley from Chicago to conduct pre-operational surveillance in Mumbai and Denmark. Headley, who was named Daood Gilani at his birth, legally changed his name to David Coleman Headley, anglicizing his first name and taking his mother’s maiden name. The name change and his American accent were apparently enough to throw intelligence agencies off his trail — in spite of his very aggressive surveillance activity.
Most recently, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) showed its cunning when it dispatched a Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, in the Christmas Day attack. Although STRATFOR was among the first to see the threat AQAP’s innovative devices posed to aviation security, there is no way we could have forecast that the group would conduct an attack originating out of Nigeria using a Nigerian citizen. A Saudi or Yemeni, certainly; a Somali or American citizen, maybe — but a Nigerian? AQAP’s use of such an operative was a total paradigm shift. (Perhaps this paradigm shift explains in part why U.S. officials chose not to act more aggressively on intelligence they had obtained on Abdulmutallab that could have prevented the attack.) The only reason Nigeria is on the list of 14 countries now is because of the Christmas Day incident, and there is no reason that jihadists couldn’t use a Muslim from Togo, Ghana, or Trinidad and Tobago instead of a Nigerian in their next attack.
Jihadist planners have now heard about the list of 14 countries and, demonstrating their adaptability, will undoubtedly try to use operatives who are not from one of those countries and choose flights that originate from other places as well. They may even follow the lead of Chechen militants and the Islamic State of Iraq by employing female suicide bombers. They will also likely instruct operatives to “lose” their passports so that they can obtain new documents that contain no traces of travel to one of the 14 countries on the list. Jihadists have frequently used this tactic to hide operatives’ travel to training camps in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  Moreover, jihadist groups have no lack of operatives from countries that are not on that list. Jihadists from all over the world have traveled to jihadist training camps, and in addition to the large number of Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian jihadists (countries not on the list), there are also Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians and, of course, Americans and Europeans. Frankly, there have been far more jihadist plots that have originated in the United Kingdom than there have been plots involving Nigerians, and yet Nigeria is on the list and the United Kingdom is not. Because of this, a British citizen (or an American, for that matter) who has been fighting with al Shabaab in Somalia could board a flight in Nairobi or Cairo and receive less scrutiny than an innocent Nigerian flying from the same airport.

  In an environment where the potential threat is hard to identify, it is doubly important to profile individuals based on their behavior rather than their ethnicity or nationality — what we refer to as focusing on the “how” rather than the “who”. Instead of relying on pat profiles, security personnel should be encouraged to exercise their intelligence, intuition and common sense. A U.S. citizen named Robert who shows up at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi or Amman claiming to have lost his passport may be far more dangerous than some random Pakistani or Yemeni citizen, even though the American does not fit the profile requiring extra security checks.

  The difficulty of creating a reliable and accurate physical profile of a jihadist, and the adaptability and ingenuity of the jihadist planners, means that any attempt at profiling is doomed to fail. In fact, profiling can prove counterproductive to good security by blinding people to real threats. They will dismiss potential malefactors who do not fit the specific profile they have been provided.

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Meir Dagan

 

Meir Dagan is legend. 

This intense miniature bull of a man, a son of Russian survivors of the holocaust, may single-handedly be keeping the Middle East a safer place.  Dagan leads the most effective and mysterious intelligence agency in the world, Israel’s Mossad, which has that reputation because of him.

This weekend, the official Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, wrote an unusual story praising Dagan’s accomplishments.  It is unusual because Israel has historically been “coy” about Dagan’s exploits and because Egypt is not necessarily a friend to Israel.  Al-Ahram calls Dagan “the Mossad Superman.”

Here is a portion of the Al-Ahram article filed by debkafile.com, which indicates how respectful Egypt is of its Israeli opponent, Dagan.

“He is credited with putting its Iran’s nuclear program well behind schedule by several years. 

The paper assigns him a possible role in stirring up opposition unrest in Tehran in the six months since Iran’s dubious presidential election, as well in the Iranian nuclear scientist’s assassination on Jan. 11. Dagan is also described as aiding the international campaign against Tehran by damaging leaks to world media for blackening the Islamic regime, its leaders and its methods. 

In Syria, says al-Ahram, Dagan succeeded in scaling down Syria’s military capabilities, notably by masterminding the destruction in Sept. 2007 of the North Korean plutonium plant under construction at Deir ez-Zor in northern Syria. 

In other words, were it not for Dagan and his audacious exploits, the Middle East might be a different place today with Iran and Syria the unchallenged regional superpowers, says the Egyptian newspaper. 

After various military/government assignments, Meir Dagan, was first appointed Mossad director in 2002 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His term of office has been extended twice, by Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s two successors as prime minister. He is 65. 

In 2008, one of Israel’s leading television stations named Meir Dagan its “Man of the Year.” The award was strongly criticized by liberals within the Jewish state as glorifying violence.  In the past, Dagan’s doings have been strictly censored by Israeli government officials. 

The “Man of the Year” award panel that year offered a fascinating glimpse  of  Meir Dagan and Mossad:

Major Gen.Yossi Ben Hanan spoke about how Dagan once killed a terrorist with his own hands, though of course he did not specify how, and reminisced about how they had once traveled together in the Far East. National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer added: “I recommend that you don’t get too close to him – I suggest your story had best be favorable.”

Later the panel made intimations about his doings in the past year: The killing of senior Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, a few more mysterious and unnecessary killings and, of course, the bombing of the alleged nuclear site in Syria, operations that they said should make Meirke deserving of “at least 10 Israel Prizes.  Indeed, our man of the year is a declared killer. Whether by box-cutter or car bomb, his craft is killing.

As Iran grows ever nearer full nuclear military capability, Egypt’s “hat tip” to Meir Dagan may indicate how Middle Eastern alliances may be shifting.  What consequences Iran may suffer for its nuclear aggressions will surely ripple to its neighbors or allies. 

Middle East news website Al Majlis says the favorable article about Dagan could not have been written in a government newspaper without the permission of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:

Mubarak clearly wanted to send a message to the countries and organizations that Dagan allegedly undermines.

It’s a reflection of the deepening tension between the Egyptian government and other prominent actors in the Arab world, particularly Hamas, which has clearly frustrated Cairo with its refusal to sign a reconciliation deal with Fatah.

Having an enemy call you a fearsome “superhero” capable of extraordinary acts is most surely a sign of respect in the machismo of Middle East culture.  Chances are, Muslim leaders bent on terrorism do not consider a leader who has a low golf handicap or who bows at the waist to them to be a “superhero” capable of extraordinary acts. 

Because of this fact, it could very well be that America’s safety also depends on the intrepid leader of Israel’s Mossad. 

May Meir Dagan stay strong and safe and live long.  L’ Chaim.

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

‘’Muinuddin Hasan al-Husaini al-Sijzi Chishti was well known for his miracles and asceticism and was endowed with all the merits of perfection. He had high status and was a great healer. He was a Saiyid by true descent. There is no doubt about his genealogy. He wore the cloak of poverty (faqr) and discipleship from Imam al-Awliya Usman Harwani. Through his coming to Hindustan, the way (tariqa) of Islam was estabished there. He destroyed the
darkness of unbelief and ‘shirk’ which had prevailed there since time immemorial through revealing clear reasons and arguments. For this reason Muinuddin is called Nabi-ul-Hind (the prophet of India). For seventy years his ablution was not broken without him washing before prayer. On whomsoever his propitious glance fell, that man was immediately brought to Allah. Whenver a sinner came into his illuminated presence, he immediately repented. (accepted the true faith of Islam). ‘’Each time he finished reading the Quran, a voice came from the unseen world saying, O Muinuddin ! your recitation has been accepted.”

‘’Although it has been stated that Muinuddin could produce any amount of gold through his miracles, it is certain that he had no dearth of money. It is related that in the kitchen of Muinuddin so many meals were cooked every day that all the impoverished people of the whole city could eat their fill. The servant in charge of this used to go every day before the saint for the expenses. He used to stand with his hands joined in respect. Muinuddin used to take a corner of his prayer rug aside and reveal sufficent treaure. He used
to tell the servant to take enough gold from this treasure to cover the kitchen
expenses for that day.”

‘’It is told that once when he went to perform the pilgrimage to the holy tomb of the Prophet Muhammad, one day from the inside of the pure and blessed tomb a cry came : ‘’Send for Muinuddin.’’ When Muinuddin came to the door he stood there and he saw that presence speak to him. ‘’Muinuddin, you are the essence of my faith; but must go to Hindustan. There is a place called Ajmer, to which one of my sons (descendants) went for a holy war, and now he has become a martyr, and the place has passed again into the hands of infidels. By the grace of your footsteps there, once more shall Islam be made
manifest, and the Kafirs be punished by God’s wrath.’’

Accordingly Muinuddin reached Ajmer in Hindustan. There he said :

‘’Praise be to God, May He be exalted, for I have gained possession of the property of my brother. Although, at that time there were many temples of idols around the lake, when the Khwaja saw them, he said : ‘’If God and His Prophet so will, it will not be long before I raze to the ground these idol temples.’’

Then follow many stories of the Khwaja over coming those Hindu deities and teachers who were strongly opposed to his settling down there. Amongst such people was a disgruntled employee of Rai Pithaura (Prithvi Raj Chauhan). The Khwaja recomended his case to Rai Pithaura who turned down the request.

It appears that shorn of miracles the story simply is that the Khwaja came to India determined to eradicate idolatry and paganism and establish Islam in its place. He met a lot of resistance from the local governor of Rai Pithaura and even by Rai Pithaura himself. With the help of the immense treasure at his disposal and having converted many gullible Hindus to his faith, he became strong enough to invite Rai Pithaura to convert to Islam. Having
failed to persuade him the Khwaja went to Ghazni or sent a message inviting Sultan Shihabuddin Ghori to attack India. Shihabuddin made unsuccessful invasions. Rai Pithaura always allowed him to go back unmolested after his defeat. Ultimately, however, he defeated Prithvi Raj Chauhan and killed him. Muinuddin has a unique position as pioneer of Islam in India in spite of strong opposition of the Hindus. This theme appears throughout in the Siyar al-Awliya where Muinuddin is credited with the Islamic conquest of India.

Having settled his opposition and converted Jogi Ajaipal to Islam, Muinuddin moved into the formers temple which was later converted into his Dargah. There is evidence in the Siyar al-Aqtab, to suggest it. Sculpted stones, apparently from a Hindu temple, are incorporated in the Buland Darwaza of Muinuddin’s shrine. Tradition says that inside the cellar is an image of Mahadeva in a temple on which sandal used to be placed every day by a
Brahman. The shrine still employs a Hindu family to prepare the sandal which is now presented on the grave of Muinuddin. At the least, it serves as a useful explanation to his followers of why Muinuddin, elsewhere portrayed as a powerful evangelist (Missionary of Islam), is buried on ground sacred to the Hindus.

The ‘Siyar al-Arifin’ sums up the life work of this prince of saints, the refuge of the poor and a fore runner of Hindu-Muslim unity. ‘’Through his (Muinuddin) coming to Hindustan the ‘way of Islam’ was established here. He destroyed the darkness of unbelief. Because of his coming….the darkness of unbelief in this land was illumined by the light of Islam.’’ Amir Khurd includes two verses which contrast the situation in India before and after Muinuddin’s arrival :
Before, entire India was ignorant of the orders of religion and law.
“All were ignorant of Allah and His Prophet. None had seen the Kaba. None had heard of the greatness of Allah’’ After Muinuddin arrived in India, ‘’Because of his sword, instead of idols and temples, there are Mosques, Mimbars and Mihrabs in the land of unbelief. ‘’In the land where the sayings of the idolaters were heard, there is now the sound of Allah-Akbar.’’

Yet, almost every Prime Minister and President of India has humbled himself at the Mazar of this slaughterer of Hindus and destroyer of their temples. Recently Sushma Swaraj, M. P. disclosed in the Parliament that Mr. Ram Bilas Paswan, Railway Minister who professes to be an atheist has also been to this Mazar to seek its blessings. Is it igorance, blind faith or political exhibitionism? Who can say?

Conversions Galore
The daily average of votaries staying at the Khanqah of Syed Adam Bannuri (d. 1643) as one thousand. They took their meals at the Khanqah. A great throng of men, including hundreds of theological doctors, followed the saint wherever he went. It is stated in Tazkira-i-Adamiya that 10,000 (ten thousand) persons formed his entourage during his visit to Lahore in 1642.

Seeing the phenomenal popularity of Syed Bannuri, Emperor Shah-Jehan became so apprehensive that he thought of a plan to send him out of India. He sent to him a large sum of money and then suggested that as possession of money made the Haj pilgrimage obligatory for a Muslim he should waste no time in proceeding to the Hejaz to discharge the duty. The saint, thereupon, migrated from India.24

Hazrat Mujadid’s celebrated son and spiritual deputy, Khwaja Mohammad Masoom (d. 1668) had as many as 9,00,000 (nine lakhs) disciples who did the Bai-at and repentance at his hand. Of them, 7,000 rose to be his Khalifas. It is recorded about Shah Ghulam Ali in Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s ‘Asar-ul-Sanadeed’ that ‘’not less than 500 destitute persons used to live in his Khanqah. All of whom were fed and clothed by him.

25‘’Unprecedented scenes of popular enthusiasm were witnessed during the missionary tours of the famous divine and spiritual leader of the 19th century, Syed Ahmad Shaheed, as also during his journey to Calcutta, while on his way to Arabia for the Haj. In many of the towns that fell on Syed Saheb’s route few persons were left who did not offer baiat and repentance at his hand. At Allahabad, Mirzapur, Varanasi, Ghazipur, Azimabad, (Patna) and Calcutta, specially, his disciples must have run into lakhs. The limit was that at Varanasi, the indoor patients of the Sadar Hospital sent to him a petition begging that since they were unable to move out he might condescend to visit them in the hospital so that they could take the baiat. About a thousand persons became his disciples every day during his two months stay at Calcutta. From morning till late at night a stream of men and women would pour in where he was staying. There was hardly any time left for Syed Saheb to attend to his personal needs. When it became impossible to administer the vow to
everyone individually, it was arranged for the aspirants to collect in a large house where Syed Saheb went and initiated them into the fold. Seven or eight turbans were unrolled on the ground when he went there, and the apirants were told to hold them at different places, while one end of them was held by Syed Saheb himself. He then taught them the fundamentals of the faith and read out the oath in a loud voice like Azan which they repeated, and thus, the ritual was completed. This was done seventeen or eighteen times each day.

  Islamization of Kashmir
Kashmir is a typical example of Islamization, both by sword and by the Sufis. Amongst the Sultans who used force to Islamize Kashmir the most notorious is Sikandar-but-Shikan (Iconoclast).” About this Sultan (1389-1431) Kalhan in his “Rajtarangini” says : ‘’The Sultan forgeting all his royal duties took pleasure day and night in destroying idols. He destroyed the idols of Martand, Vishnu, Ishan, Chakravarty and Tripureshwar. Not a forest, a village or a town or a city escaped where the Turushk and his Minister Suha left any temple undestroyed.’’

But the real credit of Islamizing Kashmir goes to the Sufis. Sikandar was a passing phase having lived only 42 years. Conversion by Sufis was a continuous process almost imperceptible which lasted centuries. Sikandar’s conversions were caused by utter terror. Sufis created conditions where Hindus voluntarily came to them and got converted.
Amongst the Sufis who played a major role in converting Hindu Kashmir to Muslim Kashmir, Shaikh Nuruddin popularly known as “Rishi Nur” holds a high place.

Burning Down of Charare Sharif
On the night of 10-11 May, 1995 his mausoleum known as “Charar-e-Sharif” was burnt down by the Muslim terrorists. The Indian press, as usual, described it as ‘’the sacred Dargah of Sufi Saint Nuruddin Nurani’’ (India Today), ‘’Symbol of secularism, a most valuable symbol of cultural identity’’ (Front Line), ‘’Abode of Rishis’’ (The Economic Times), without going into the antecedents of this secular symbol of cultural identity. The communist leader Indrajeet Gupta described him as ‘’the symbol of communal unity.’’ As a
senior communist leader he should have known about the role of these Sufi saints who de-stablished Russia. Bennigsen considered an expert on Soviet Islam says ‘’These Sufi orders are among the most intractable and dangerous adversaries of the Sovet regime because (they) the only authentic anti-Soviet mass organisation movement in the Muslim reforms of U.S.S.R…… nucleus for communal and even national movements in the Muslim regimes.27
‘’In the Caucasus, Sufi orders had organised most of the Muslim resistance to Russian rule, before disappearing after 1928. They turned up after World War-II in a less political form, concentrating their energies on mystical pursuits…..This is the appropriate posture for periods when Islam is recouping its forces for another round against infidels.’’ 28 The final result of Sufi activites was a break up of the U. S. S. R., liberating the Central Asian Muslim States, the revolt spreading from Azarbejan-a Muslim state of U. S. S. R. Shaikh Nuruddin was initated into the order by Ali Hamdani. In order to know Shaikh Nuruddin, it is therefore necessary to know his pir Syed Ali Hamdani.

As the name suggests, Ali Hamdani belonged to Hamdan in west Iran. In order to contribute to the Islamization of infidel India, Syed Ali Hamdani sent one of his disciples Syd Tazuddin to Kashmir to find out the conditions there. Syed Tazuddin was well received by the then Sultan Shahabuddin (1354-73). The Sultan gave him facilities for making his Khanquah at a place 9 miles north-west of Shrinagar. It is now known as Shahabuddin Pura. Having received a favourable report regarding the possibilities of proselytization in Kashmir, Hamdani reached there in 1381 A.D. alongwith a force of seven hundred disciples.
Mir Saiyed Ali Hamdani was imbued with the searing missionary zeal……took the form of temple demolition and the forced conversion of many Kashmiris.

The first conversion that he affected was of the Brahman priest of Kali Mandir Shrinagar. The then Sultan Qutubuddin on persuasion by Hamdani destroyed the temple and allowed Hamdani to build his Khanquah on that site. The seven hundred disciples of Hamdani spread over the whole of Kashmir, constructed their Khanquahs in different places and made them
centres of converting Hindus to Islam. In this work, they were convertly and overtly helped by the Muslim Sultans.

Hamdani lived in Kashmir for 3 years, after which he died on his way to Mecca. Nuruddin belonged to the Silsila of Syed Ali Hamdani. The destruction of temples and building of Khanquahs by Hamdani and his disciples had created some sort of a reaction in the Hindu public against the Sufis. Shaikh Nuruddin, therefore, chalked out a different course. At that time, a Shiv devotee lady of the name of Lal Didi or Lal-Ded was roaming about in Kashmir singing devotional songs. She had earned great fame, love and respect of the Kashmiri people. Shaikh Nuruddin projected himself as a similar mendicant. In Brahmin Kashmir, Rishi was the highest appellation used for Hindu seers who had reached the final stage of communion with God. Nuruddin styled himself and his disciples as Rishis to take advantage of this Hindu psyche. The Rishis of old used to clad themselves in striped tiger skins. This school of Rishis adopted a similar dress made of sriped woollen cloth.

The principal disciples of Nuruddin were Bamuddin, Jainuddin, and Latifuddin. All these three were Brahmins by birth and had been converted to Islam by Shaikh Nuruddin. Brahmins were the natural teachers of the Hindu society and enjoyed great respect. A converted Brahmin was, therefore a very great force on converting his erstwhile Hindu followers to Islam which was projected as a divine faith. The credit of converting Hindu Kashmir to Muslim Kashmir of today is shared equally by Sultans like Sikander-But-Shikan and Sufis like Hamdani and Rishi Nuruddin whose mausoleum was burnt down by the terrorists to embarass the government of secular India and which the government of India promised to restore at a cost of crores of rupees collected as revenue, mainly from the Hindus.

(Concluded)

  Reference
1. S.Athar Abbas Rizvi : A History of Sufism in India Vol.II, p-425.
2. K.S.Lal : The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, p-120.
3. Ibid., p-119.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. S.Athar Abbas Rizvi Ibid, Vol.I, p-110.
7. Ibid, p-109.
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Elliot and dowson : History of India by its own Historians Vol. II; p-534.
12. Ibid
13. Ibid
14. S. aTHAR aBBAS rIZVI : iBID, P-314
15. S. aTHAR aBBAS rIZVI : iBID, P-427
16. Ibid, vol.-II, p-426
17. Ibid, p-427
18. Ibid, p-426
19. Ibid
20. K.S.Lal : Ibid, p-202
21. Ibid, p-234
22. Ibid, p-236
23. Ibid, p-237
24. S.Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi : Muslims in India, p-52-53
25. Ibid, p-53
26. Ibid, p-43-54
27. Daniel Pipes : In the Path of God, p-269
28. Ibid.

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Two such graves in Lucknow have recently (post partition) become famous and now attract thousands of Hindu devotees who have contributed most of the money for their expansion and decoration.

Khamman Pir Baba of Lucknow
One of these is known as the Mazar of Khamman Pir Baba at the Charbagh Railway Station, Lucknow. It is awkardly situated between the Railway lines. One day every week, the normal work of the Railways is entirely dislocated. Thousands of people keep crossing the lines to reach it. This man was a companion of Salar Masud and was killed by Hindus in the
battle and buried where he lies today.

Shaheed Quasim Baba of Lucknow
Another grave is that of Shaheed Qasim Baba near Dieklusha, in Lucknow cantonment. He too was a comapnion of Salar Masud Ghazi and was killed at the place where his grave exists today. God knows how many Hindus he and his companion ‘saints’ killed for refusing to accept Islam? The news item in Dainik Jagaran Lucknow dt. 25.7.94 shall therefore always stand a historical monument of Hindu ignorance or political opportunism along with the shrine of Salar Masud at Bahraich, Muinuddin Chisti at Ajmer, Nizamuddin at Delhi
and thousands of others who contributed significantly to the Islamization of India.

According to this report, Mr. Moti Lal Vora, then Governor of U. P., after offering the ceremonial Chadar at the Mazar of the said Shaheed Quasim Baba told the people gathered there that ‘’The noblest message for the benefit of humanity given by Rishis, Munis and Sufi saints is not confined to any country, religious, group or community. Hazrat Shaheed Quasim Baba too, for the liberation of human society, went beyond the narrow boundaries of religion, community, language and territory when he preached love, unity and humanism.’’ His Excellency expressed happiness that the U. P. Chief Minister, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav had got a road constructed upto the Mazar and provided it with water and electric supply.

  Addressing the same gathering, Mr. Mulayam Singh said that ‘’This 900 years old shrine is worshiped by people belonging to all religions and faiths. This is an excellent example of our Ganga Yamuni composite culture. It is our determination to fulfil the edict of Shaheed Baba to achieve National Integration, communal harmony, mutual love and brotherhood.’’ The
cantonment land near the shrine has been transfered to the shrine.

The photographs and news items regarding similar functions at the Mazar of Muinuddin Chisti at Ajmer, and Nizamuddin Aulia at Delhi where our Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Prime Ministers, in order to prove their secularism and great respect for the Islamic faith, flock to offer ceremonial Chadar and gifts, frequently appear in national news papers.
These cruel fanatics who offered only “death or Quran” to innocent teachers, peasants, women and children, are presented by Hindu dignitaries as Rishies, Munies and Saints, excellent example of National Integration and Communal harmony who promoted Hindu-Muslim brotherhood.

How does one explain this phenomenal-ignorance, political opportunism or chicanery?

  Coming back to Salar Masud Ghazi, when he had entered India, the Hindu rulers had asked him what was the justification for invading a land without any provocation? Masud had replied in words which should remove any doubts regarding the purpose of such unprovoked invasions by Muslims from across the border. He said : ‘’The land belongs to Allah. He gives it to any one of His slaves whom He wants to favour; my ancestors’ belief is this ‘’To convert Kaffirs to Islam is a duty. If they refuse, they should be killed.’’ (11)
When he reached Delhi fresh reinforcements from Ghazni helped him in defeating Mahipal the then ruler. A large number of Hindus and Musims were killed. Masud recruited 5000 to 6000 local mercenaries and crossed the Ganga near Kannauj whose Raja, a vassal of Mahmud Ghaznavi helped him.

Masud, continuing his ‘’Islam or death’’ March reached the holy tank at Satrik in Distt. Barabanki, U. P. where he made his head quarter. From Satrik he sent his commanders in all directions. While bidding them goodbye he said : “We commit you to the care of God. Wherever you go persuade Hindus to accept Islam. If they do, be kind and considerate to them otherwise slay them”.12 Thereafter, they embraced each other and departed on their mission.

The Muslim historian applauds : ‘’What a scene? What a friendship? What a firmness of belief ? For the propagation of the true faith of Islam without caring for their personal aggrandizement or safety, to jump into the sea of Kufr.’’13 Salar Masud was killed in a battle by the Pasi Raja Suhal Dev, and buried in Distt. : Baharich, U. P. where he died. His body was later on dug up and buried perhaps by Muslim Sultan Mohd. Bin-Tughlak in the famous sacred place of Hindu pilgrimage Suraj Kund. The prefix and suffix of Shaheed and
Ghazi attached to his name tell the tale of his life devoted to forcibly converting and killing thousands of Hindus, and ultimately getting killed in this effort.

  Saiyed Athar Abbas Rizvi in his monumental book ‘History of Sufism in India’’ (2 vol.) aptly comments : ‘’To the Hindus who consider him a saint of miraculous powers, the number of their bretheren he killed or Islamized was then, as it is now, meaningless.’’14 They worship him ! And those, who are unable to travel to the tomb at Bahraich, worship at one of the many symbolic graves scattered from Punjab to Eastern Bengal. These symbolic graves represent events of Salar Masud’s life, and are worshipped with fervour equivalent to
that of the one at Bahraich.

  Bale Miyan of Nauchandi, Meerut
Mention may be made here of one such important Mazar namely that of Bale Miyan near the famous Nauchandi temple at Meerut (U. P.) It appears that a fierece battle was fought here when the troops of Masud attacked the temple. The Hindus fought and killed the cmmander and many others. The main grave (perhaps of the commander) has been called the Mazar of Bale Miyan (i.e. Masud), whose real grave is in Bahraich. Small graves near by
appear to be of the Muslim soliders. Recently, the Muslim M.P. of the area has spent Rs. 4 Lakhs of secular public money out of his discretionary grant for development works to construct a hall at the Mazar. The Hindu temple hardly 100 ft. away across the road stands neglected and forlorn because any attempt to add a hall to the. Hindu temple will be against the secular character of the Indian Government.

  Some Sufi orders devoted several years of their lives to the practice of Yoga and ascetic exercises in the wilderness so that the fame of their ability to perform miracles and supernatural feats helped them to convert their Hindu visitors. It is believed that impressed by these stories of actual performance of miracles (and supernatural powers), Hindus became their disciples and ultimately converted to Islam. Not only did they convert many animists, Buddhists and Hindus in India but their activities extended from there to
Sumatra and Jawa, converting their Hindu, Bouddh and tribal population to
Islam.15

  Suhrawardiya, Shaikh Jalalu’d-Din Tabrizi, Makhdum Jahaniyan and his brother, Raju Qattal were some of the very active propagaters of Islam. The sufis trained in the Khanqah of Shaikh Alaud-Daula Simnani, Mir Sayyad Ali Hamadani and his son and sucessor, Mir Muhammad, considered the conversion of Hindus to Islam as one of their main objective.16 The extent of Islamization of Hindu India by these Sufis is indeed astounding. In this brief
essay, we shall mention only a few cases as illustrations of their work.

Badauni claims that Shaikh Dawud of Chati converted fifty to a hundred Hindus each day in Punjab and Sindh. Despite Akbar’s prohibition against forced conversion, Shaikh Dawud’s successor, Shah Abul Maali and Sufis in other Qadriyya Khanqahs never hesitated in using force in their proselytizing mission. Even Mulla Shah converted a large number of Hindus to Islam.17

The Rashidiyya Khanqahas of the Qadiriyyas between Jaunpur and Bihar, in areas sparsely populated by Muslims, were more actively engaged in proselytization. Diwan Abdur Rashid’s disciples and descendants also established Khanqahs through out Bengal. The support given to the Qadiriyya Khanqah of Shaikh Niamatullah Qadiri and his successors by Prince Shah Shuja, and later by Aurangzeb, helped to invigorate their proselytizing activities
resulting in that area becoming Muslim majority area.

Shaikh Jalal of Sylhet and his Turkistani disciples Khwajgan and the Naqshbandiyyas of Central Asia, some of whom would devote a few years of their lives fighting against kafirs before converting them to islam, were all imbeded with missionary fervour. The Sufis of the Shattariyya, Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya orders who began establishing their Khanqahs during the fifteenth century were deeply aware of the proselytizing traditions of their ancestors in Persia and Central Asia, and brought their knowledge to bear
upon Indian conditions in order to gain converts.18

Bengal to Malwa
They established their Khanqahs from Bengal to Malwa and later on their disciples established Khanqahs as far away as Gujarat.(19) There is a similar story of another Sufi Shaikih Jalaulddin Tabrizi. He was living at Lakhnauti in Bengal. There he established a Khanqah and attached many lands and gardens to it. Then he shifted to Devtalla. There a Kafir Hindu or Boddh had erected a large temple and a well. The Shaikh demolsihed the temple and constructed a Takiya (Khanqah) over it. He converted a large number of Kafirs (Hindus and Boddhs). However, the Shaikh’s memory is treasured by Hindus and Muslims alike. Dev Talla came to be known as Tabrizabad and attracts large number of pilgrims.
After consolidating the proselytizing work in Bengal Jalaluddin shifted to Badaun in U. P. There also he converted large number of Hindus to Islam.

The credit of Islamizing East Bengal which later opted for Pakistan goes to Sufi orders.
One Raja Ganesh occupied the throne of Bengal in 1409 A. D. He sought to establish his authority by getting rid of prominent ulema and Sufis who were creating trouble in the Hindu State. Qutbul Alam Shaikh Nurul Huq wrote to Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi to come and save the Muslims of Bengal. IbrahimSharqi responded to the call, and Raja Ganesh, finding himself too weak to face the challenge, appealed to Shaikh Nurul Huq, the very person whom he wanted to get rid of, for help. The latter promised to intercede on his behalf, if
he became a Musalman.

  The helpless Raja was willing but his wife refused to agree. Ultimately a compromise was made by the Raja offering to retire from the world and permitting his son, Jadu to be converted and ascend his throne. On Jadu being converted and enthroned as Jalaluddin Shah, Shaikh Nurul Huq induced Sultan Ibrahim to withdraw his armies (20).

  The converted Raja Jadu, now Jalaluddin Muhammad forcibly converted hosts of Hindus to Islam during his reign of seventeen years (1414-1431). Dr.Wise writes that : ‘’The only condition he offered were : Koran or Death…..Many Hindus fled to Kamrup and the Jungles of Assam, but it is nevertheless probable that more Muhammadans were added to Islam during his reign of seventeen years (1414-31) than in the next three hundred years”.
And Barbosa writes that : ‘’It is obviously an advantage in the sixteenth century Bengal to be a Moor (Mussalman) in as much as the Hindus daily become Moors to gain the favour of their rulers.21 If a Raja of the stature of Ganesh could not face up to the Ulema and the Sufis, smaller Rajas and Zamindars were still worse placed. Petty Rajas and Zamindars were converted to Islam with their wives and children, if they could not pay their revenue or tribute in time. Such practice appears to be common throughout the whole country as instances of it are found from Gujrat to Bengal.22

  Contrary to general belief, in place of being kind to the Hindus as saints should be, the Sufis wished to Hindus to be accorded a second class citizenship if they refused to be converted. Only one instance, that of Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangohi (Saharanpur U. P.) need be cited because he belonged to the Chishita Silsila considered to be the most to tolerant of all Sufi Groups. He wrote letters to Sultan Sikandar Lodi, Babur and Humayun to reinvigorate the Shariat and reduce the Hindus to payers of land tax and Jiziyah. To Babur he wrote. ‘’Extend utmost patronage and protection to Ulema and mystics (Sufis)…that they should be maintained and subsidized by the state.. No non-Muslim should be given any office…Further more, in conformity with principles of the Shariat, they should be subjected to all types of indignities and humiliations.’’(23)
The list of atrocities commited upon the Hindus for forcing them to convert to Islam, is endless.

  (To be continued)

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