BNN provides English-language US and world news, analysis and opinion from all over the Internet. We strive for high standards, ethical behavior, and the presentation of multiple responsible points of view.
|
Get More Traffic For Your Blog! Blog Explosion brings hundreds of interested visitors to your blog - without costing you a cent. BNN News Archive Page |
Friday, August 11, 2006
Pakistan Links to foiled terror plot - Fountainhead of Islamic Fascism ? OffStumped For All Things Right of Center, Bringing a Right of Centre Reality Check to Indian Politics, News Media Reporting and Opinion through Blogs and Podcasts. -- Offstumped Disclaimer: The use of the phrase “Islamic Fascism“ does not imply the religion Islam is fascist in nature. It only refers to a Fascist Regime that swears by Islam and attempts to legitimise its fascism by subverting the meaning and essence of Islam. Offstumped is proud of the Indian Muslim community that rejected this brand of fascism on August 14th 1947 by choosing to remain in India and reject the fascist idea of a Islamic State of Pakistan. It is now firmly established that the circle of global terror is epicentered in Pakistan. Officials in Pakistan said security forces in the country had arrested two British men of Pakistani origin in connection with the alleged plot, who were picked up in Lahore and Karachi last week. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has identified one of the men as Rashid Rauf with indications of Afghanistan-based Al-Qaeda connection. While the British Home office refused to confirm reports that Thursday's anti-terror operation in the UK was triggered by the interception of a decoded message sent by a suspect in Pakistan, the British Home Secretary John Reid Reid said he was "grateful" for the help of Pakistan, in disrupting the suspected plot. While the weary globe trotter makes peace with the ban on liquids and gels onboard flights and the severe restrictions on cabin baggage, the world at large will have to grapple with the Pakistan friend or foe conundrum. Should the world be delighted that Pakistan helped disrupt mass mayhem over the atlantic or should the world be concerned that Pakistan continues to be the innovation factory for Islamic Terrorism or Islamic Fascism as George W. Bush would like to describe it ? While the origin of the phrase Islamic Fascism is unclear it has gained a lot of currency on American Conservative Talk Radio in recent times with commentators like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh liberally using it in their daily monologues. Bush's reference to Islamic Fascism interestingly had its echo in India with rather near real time response. First you had the op-ed piece by Rajamohan in the Indian Express on the August 11th raising alarm on the likely controversy the Bush characterization was bound to generate in India. The Indian Express promptly followed up on Rajamohan's warning with an editorial piece on 12th August critical of Bush's choice of words when he conjoined Islam and fascism. But perhaps the usually right of center Indian Express and Rajamohan reacted too soon betraying a typical Indian secular trait of being overly sensitive on occassions when it is rarely called for. Nothing exemplifies this better than the editorial in normally Left of Center The Hindu on August 12th. The Hindu known for its overly secular political correctness displayed uncharacteristic bluntness when it described the Pakistani Connection to the foiled terror plot as a clearly Islamicist Ring of Terror. The Hindu goes further and poses the question whether the applause from American and European quarters was of any value while elements within the Pakistani military and political establishments sponsor the material and ideological infrastructure of terror. It is rather ironical that the legacy of British Colonial Map Making is finally catching up with it half a century later. The seeds of Islamic Fascism are neither recent nor of the making of this century as current conventional wisdom would have us believe. These seeds were sown when British map making in the Indian Sub-Continent acquired religious overtones starting first with the creation of Islamic East Bengal followed up a couple of decades later with the creation of Islamic Pakistan in 1947. For decades now the Pakistani establishment have struggled to rationalize the fact that a majority of Muslims chose Secular India with a Hindu Majority over a unapologetically Islamic Pakistan, making India the second largest Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. With many Muslim Presidents, Chief Justices, Bollywood Heart throbs and now the richest Indian, Indian Muslims defied the Muslim prototype that the founders of Pakistan sought to conjure up. There in were sowed the seeds of Islamic Fascism. For long the hatred and indoctrination was limited to India over Kashmir and the humiliation suffered when East Pakistan was freed to create the independent nation of Bangladesh. Successive Pakistani Establishment attempts to frustrate India into making a concession on Kashmir having failed despite Nuclear Blackmail in the late 1980s as reported by Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express on August 12th, the Pakistani Establishment embarked on a long term strategy that mixed Jihadic Islamic with assymetrical warfare to create a lethal force of non-state actors. The first products from the Ismalic Fascist Innovation Factory was the Taliban. The Post Najibullah Afghanistan with its faction wars presented the vaccum necessary for the Pakistani establishment to test its Fascist Frankenstein force. It is well documented how the Taliban ruled Afghanistan become the training center for the export of Islamic Fascist fighters ready to die for causes in Kashmir, Chechenya and Bosnia transcending national and racial identities. The general state of denial in the West of the festering Islamic Fascism in Pakistan, Afghanistan was rudely disrupted on September 11th, when George Bush read the riot act to Musharraf. Pervez Musharraf who was in the international dog house after his misadventure in Kargil and his coup overthrowing Nawz Sharif, saw in Sept 11th an ultimatum and an opportunity. The Frankenstien created by his establishment had crossed the line and he could not risk incurring American wrath, given the lifeline the Americans had been to Pakistani Military needs. Musharraf also saw in Sept 11th the opportunity to legitimise his military rule given the bloody history of dictators in Pakistan. The Frankenstein in the form of Taliban had to be sacrificed as a consequence. It must be said that Musharraf has been quite successful in his post 9-11 strategy. The west in all its naivety views him as a vital ally by ignoring the non-existence of democracy in Pakistan while accomodating his fiction that there exists a firewall between the Al-Qaeda, Taliban elements in Pakistan and the Kashmir Terrorists. That the west has condoned this dubious approach to terrorism, including as recently as the 7-11 Mumbai Blasts with the Richard Boucher flip-flops, goes to establish the many layers of Islamic Fascism that have been allowed to flourish and expand in Pakistan. The West and in particular the Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh American Right which tends to view the world through its Black or White, Good or Evil, With us or Against us Prism, must ask itself, how the ambiguity and duplicity in the American Government's approach to Terrorism Pakistan squares with their moral clarity in dealing with terror. The American Conservative Right must question itself on why is it that 5 years since 9-11 and the fall of Taliban, Pakistan, its most vital ally in the war on terrorism continues to be at the center of every recent terrorist plot or attack. Why is it that most senior Al-Qaeda figures were captured in Pakistan. Why is it that Musharraf continues to battle Al-Qaeda elements within Pakistan. How is the Al-Qaeda stranglehold of the Pakistan Afghanistan border any different from the Hezbollah stranglehold of the Israel Lebanese border. Why is it that 5 years on Osama is still suspected to be in the Pakistan Afghanistan border. The fact of the matter, for all the rhetoric on Islamic Fascism, the Americam Right does not understand the how or why Islamic Fascism thrives and flourishes. In their naivety in trusting Musharraf based on the "he is with us not against us" have adopted simplistic view of Pakistan and the many layers within which Islamic Fascism operates in Pakistan. It is this simplistic view of Pakistan that has clouded the Americans from asking tough questions and from taking a tough public stance on the continued use of Pakistan as the Islamic Fascist Innovation Factory. This simplistic view on the Pakistan "Friend or Foe" conundrum, has lead the West into a state of denial on the dreaded "what if scenario" for the Indian Sub Continent. What if Musharraf is assasinated by Al-Qaeda and what if a section of the Pakistani establishment with Islamic Fascist roots seizes power ? In one master stroke Bin Laden would have acquired a state of the art military with American technology and of course an Islamic Bomb. Offstumped Bottomline: For the British its colonial history is coming back to haunt. The seeds of Islamic Fascism sown with the creation of an Islamic State of Pakistan have spread their roots well beyond the Indian Sub-Continent. The failure on 9-11 was not so much a failure of intelligence but a failure of imagination. A Musharraf assasination coupled with a Islamic Fascist power grab in Pakistan is not beyond the realm of the possible. The Indian and American establishments must develop a strategy to pre-empt such an outcome to secure Pakistan's Nukes and to prevent an Al-Qaeda takeover. Manmohan Singh lead Congress and the Opposition BJP lead by LK Advani must set aside their differences on the Indo US Nuclear Deal and engage the Americans on this vital issue. Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Yossarin at 8:27 PM |
Subscribe to BNN and get a daily bulletin of all our news postings. Interested in writing for BNN? Want information on our news service? Contact The Editor Writing for BNN BNN Editorial Policies Previous Posts
|
2 Comments:
The entire article does just what it accuses right-wing pundits of doing: links Islam with fascism; asks the question "Is Pakistan with us or against us;" and so on. It's quite insulting to readers.
Steve - You seem to have missed the point of the article completely. The article does not accuse the right wing pundits of linking Islam with fascism. The article makes the point that there does indeed exist something called Islamic Fascism and while the right wing pundits are right in recognizing it they havent quite understood its nature and origins to deal with it. That they have not recognized its true nature is reflected in the fact that the right wing pundits have not really understood why Pakistan continues to be at the epicenter of all things terrorist in nature and also in the fact that the right wing pundits have allowed themselves and the Bush administration into believing that Pakistan is with them on the basis of Musharraf's actions while the reality on the ground is quite different. The reality on the ground is that the nation of Pakistan was created solely on the basis of Islamic Fascism and hence despite Musharraf's charm and pretensions the Fascist nature of the Islamic Establishment in Pakistan is what created the Taliban in the first place and continues to sustain the complex nexus between the Kashmir terrorist groups, the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. iF THE article accuses the right wing pundits of anything it is that they have failed to fathom the fascist underpinnings of this complex nexus and have let the Bush Administration take the Musharraf at its face value.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home