Pakistan Punch Ledger: Unbiased World news & views--پاکستاني کھاتا: June, 2008

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June 30

Haqqani blames Pakistan Army for supporting Taliban

Mr. Husain Haqqani is harming Pakistani interests with his loose lips, his foreign loyalty and his Necon paymasters.

Pakistan's odd dance with the Taliban By Mustafa Malik Commentary by Tuesday, July 01, 2008

As NATO troops face stepped up guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan's new ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, is trying hard to explain to Americans why his government has tried to make peace with the Pakistani Taliban. That peace deal, despite the army's confrontation with a senior Pakistani Taliban leader in the past few days, appears to have bolstered the flow of Pakistani fighters into Afghanistan. Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid says most of the 56 militants killed in a recent military operation there were Pakistanis.

The Pakistani Army had pushed for the Taliban deal and, more ominously, its paramilitary troops are reported to be training Taliban guerrillas. Some Pakistani officials say the recent American air strikes that killed 11 of their soldiers were a US warning to their army.

So why is the army helping the Taliban? I asked Haqqani at a dinner reception in Arlington, Virginia. The ambassador said he prefers "not to answer this question." After a pause, he added: "The army operates in Pakistan's social environment." I was surprised by the envoy's effort to explain, rather than deny, his military's involvement in Taliban activities.

Pakistan's "social environment" is indeed overwhelmingly supportive of the guerrilla movement to expel NATO troops from Afghanistan. The discredited Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf led the "war on terror" against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to gain American support for his military rule. But the current democratically elected government, sensitive to public opinion, considers it suicidal to do so. Government officials also point out that Musharraf's military crackdowns against the Taliban have increased, instead of decreased, the guerrilla group's popularity and militancy.

During a fall trip through Pakistan, I was told by politicians, scholars and ordinary people that they didn't differentiate between NATO and Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Pakistani youths, supported by the CIA and American arms, fought to roll back the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In Islamabad, Senator M. Enver Baig of the ruling Pakistan People's Party reminded me that the US government and media called the anti-Soviet guerrillas "mujahideen" or freedom fighters. He said the Taliban were resisting "American hegemony," but that they "don't hate Americans."

The Taliban are made up mostly of Pashtun, who make up 42 percent of Afghanistan's population and nearly 20 percent of Pakistan's. Numerically, Pakistan has twice as many Pashtun as in Afghanistan. Many Pashtun in both Pakistan and Afghanistan resent the boundary, drawn by the British colonial power, that divides them between the two countries.

The Pashtun are known for their infinite hospitality and legendary spirit of independence. Unlike Al-Qaeda, the Taliban didn't have an anti-American agenda. Their belief that they had a "duty" to protect their guest Osama bin Laden made them face the catastrophe of the 2001 US invasion. In Bajaur tribal agency, I was told that if George W. Bush had become a Pashtun guest, they would have protected him, too, with their lives.

Similarly, throughout history the Pashtun have shown indomitable valor in beating back invaders, some of them superpowers of their day such as the Greeks, British and Soviets. Today most Pakistanis and Afghans believe in their bones that the Pashtun will drive back the NATO forces from Afghanistan as well, and Pakistanis overwhelmingly support their campaign.

Apart from Pakistan's pro-Taliban social environment, strategic calculations weigh heavily with the Pakistani Army, which dominates the management of Islamabad's Afghan (as well as Kashmiri and nuclear-arms) policy. Army officers resent Afghan President Hamid Karzai's warm ties to India, Pakistan's arch-adversary. And they believe that because NATO will one day be pulling up its stakes from Afghanistan, they need to make sure Kabul doesn't come under the influence of a hostile power, especially India. The Pakistani Army is cultivating the Taliban because it sees them dominating political life in post-NATO Afghanistan. They ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, when Pakistan's relations with it were the closest ever.

The Pakistani Army values relations with the United States, but it thinks it can't ignore Pakistan's strategic interests in Afghanistan. The army has, however, lessened somewhat it support for the Taliban in an effort to placate the Bush administration, hoping, perhaps desperately, that the Americans will eventually realize that they will need some day to bid Afghanistan farewell, but that Pakistan cannot do so.

Mustafa Malik, a Washington-based journalist, worked as speechwriter for the late Pakistani Prime Minister Nurul Amin and carried out diplomatic assignments from the Pakistani government. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

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Secret US military plan on Pakistan: On hold or in full action?

A report "leaked" to the media says Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold"

Is the leak part of the psy-ops to obfuscate the military action being conducted in Iran (as part of the $450 million funding provided by Congress)? Is the secret plan being conducted with the fig leaf of the Pakistani Frontier Constabulary?

Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:58pm EDT

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - Top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan late last year to make it easier for U.S. Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan's tribal areas, but Washington turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq have held up the effort, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The Times quoted a senior Defense Department official as saying there was "mounting frustration" in the Pentagon at the continued delay in deployment of special operations teams into Pakistan's mountainous and lawless western tribal regions, where senior al Qaeda operatives are thought to be hiding.
The Times report, based on more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan, said al Qaeda's new safe haven in Pakistan was in part due to the administration's accommodation to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, whose advisers have long played down the terrorist threat.

It was also a story, the report concluded, of infighting between U.S. intelligence agencies and a shifting in White House priorities from counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the war in Iraq.
The Times quoted a retired CIA officer as estimating that al Qaeda training compounds in Pakistan now host as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
Infighting within the CIA included battles between field officers in Kabul and Islamabad and the counter-terrorism center at CIA headquarters in Virginia whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missiles strikes, was derided by field officers as the work of "boys with toys," the Times reported.

GROWING THREAT
Turf battles between CIA officials in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan have also impeded progress, the Times reported, with officers in Kabul expressing alarm at what they see as a growing threat from the tribal areas and those in Islamabad, who are more prone to accept the Pakistani government's argument that the tribal areas are beyond anyone's control.

The level of expertise among CIA officers in the region was also a drag on operations, the report said. "We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience," it quoted a former senior CIA official as saying.

One reason for that, two former intelligence officials told the Times, was that the Iraq war had drained away most of the CIA officers with field experience in the Islamic world.
The Times said the Pentagon's top commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations and CIA operatives to assemble a dossier in late 2006 showing Pakistan's role in allowing militants to establish a safe haven in the tribal territories.

The general's order reflected a "broader feeling of outrage" within the Pentagon that the war on terror "had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America's most deadly enemy had become stronger."

In response to Eikenberry's dossier, the White House sent Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy CIA Director Stephen Kappes to Islamabad in March 2007 to register U.S. concern.
That visit, the Times said, was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan into stepping up the fight. Last year's decision to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort, it said.

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Discovering America's hidden Islamic Architecture!

Finding the Islamic architecture in the USA is not that hard. Finding documentation on Muslim architecture is more difficult. Some of it is hidden The Architecture digs are hidden. That is understandable, but the architecture is in plain site.

Why is America hiding its Muslim past?

Hawaii: Aloha Islam (+photos)

Shangri La, Doris Duke's home in Hawaii, is an astonishing mix of Middle Eastern and Western modernist styles. Photo / Graham Reid

5:00AM Tuesday July 01, 2008
By Graham Reid

View Photos

Islamic architecture in America can be divided into three distinct types, buildings for Muslim Americans, Orientalist buildings built by non-Muslims to evoke the spirit of the Orient, and buildings in the Spanish-American style which recalls the Mudejar architecture of Spain.

Definition

American cities with large Muslim populations include New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles, all of which have several mosques. The architecture of these mosques generally reflects the ethnic origin of the main Muslim group in the area, thus there are Albanian mosques in the four cities with large Albanian populations.

In recent times the influx of students from oil-rich countries into colleges in the United States has led to a number of mosques being built on campuses. One of the most ambitious projects is the headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at Plainfields, Indiana, begun in 1975. Although not yet complete, the centre will eventually include a mosque, accommodation for 500 students, a refectory, a library for 100,000 volumes and recreational facilities. Another notable Islamic student centre is that of the University of Arkansas at Johesboro financed by a patron from Saudi Arabia. The main building of the centre is a mosque with a small courtyard and a square-shafted minaret. There is a separate women's section or gallery on the upper floor which is reached by external and internal staircases. The building is faced in dark and light coloured brick and the facade is decorated with a calligraphic brick frieze. Both the Arkansas and the Indiana centres are undoubtedly modern buildings which reflect traditional Islamic architecture. By contrast the Dar al-Salam centre at Abiquiu in New Mexico, designed by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, is built with traditional materials and techniques. The complex consists of a mosque, madrassa and several accommodation blocks, all built out of mud brick known locally as adobe (from the Arabic al-toub). The building is covered with barrel vaults and domes and decorated with crenellations and carved woodwork. As well as being a religious centre Dar al-Salam will also function as a centre for traditional architecture and technology.

Orientalist architecture in the USA is primarily a feature of the early twentieth century and is a product of the incredible wealth of America combined with cinema-inspired fantasy (e.g. The Thief of Baghdad). This can be seen in the numerous cinemas built in the Moorish palace style with names like the Alhambra. The most complete examples of this Islamic fantasy architecture is the city of Opa-Locka conceived as 'the Baghdad of south Florida'. The buildings have horseshoe-shaped windows, minarets, domes and crenellations. The most important building is the city ha. I built as a fortified citadel with thick crenellated enclosure walls. This building is covered with five large domes and framed by four minarets (three small cylindrical towers and one huge octagonal tower). Other Islamic-style buildings in the city include the railway station, the archery club, the archaeological museum and the Opa Locka hotel.

The discovery of the New World and the expulsion of Muslims from Spain occurred in the same year, 1492. The result was that a large number of Muslims converted to Christianity and emigrated to the New World where their skills were used in the development of New Spain. Mudejar (forced Muslim converts to Christianity) style architecture in America is found mostly in Mexico and Central America, although it can also be seen in the south and west of the USA in Texas, New Mexico and California. [hide description]

US peanuts: Biden's bribes too little too late!

New US tactics

Monday, June 30, 2008
Clearly anxious to somehow ensure an improvement in Pakistan’s performance in the struggle against terrorism, US lawmakers, much like a teacher pondering over a difficult pupil, are considering a change in tactics. According to reports, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has discussed new legislation under which non-security aid to Pakistan would be tripled to $15 billion over a period of 10 years. However security assistance will be tied in to the performance in the war on terror.
Senator Joseph Biden, who tabled the proposal, hoped it would set in place the foundation for a new, more stable relationship with Pakistan. A ‘democracy dividend’ of US $ 150 million to Pakistan has already been approved by the House committee, with those backing it hoping that money for development, for the building of schools, hospitals and infrastructure would help improve the US image among Pakistanis and bolster the elected government. The suggestion that non-security aid be increased follows the same line of thinking. The US has also welcomed the increased powers given to the Pakistan military to tackle terrorism, and has hoped it would set in place the basis for a strong military-civilian partnership against terror.

The strategy, aimed at protecting the interests of Pakistan’s people and thinking beyond President Musharraf, is of course welcome. The inherent principle of strengthening democracy also makes sense. There is clearly immense concern in key US quarters regarding the militant threat in Pakistan. This is of course unavoidable, given that the papers are filled with news of daring raids, arson attacks, kidnappings and other audacious acts of crime carried out by militants. The willingness to explore new options to defeat it is positive and must also be used by Pakistan to its own advantage.
The fact is that, while US intervention is in many ways unwelcome and policies adopted over the years by Washington have in many ways contributed to the emergence of radical Islamic groups who use violent means to further their cause, Pakistan needs all the help it can to defeat terror. Already, militants have overrun towns and villages, and even Peshawar is deemed to be under threat. In such a situation, rapid development efforts offer some hope; they will of course need to be combined with military action against the militias now on the rampage in Swat, the Khyber Agency, Kurram Agency, Waziristan and elsewhere.

To carry out effective development, on a scale large enough to have any impact, outside assistance is needed. The Pakistan government, however, must make an effort to ensure this is packaged as something it is itself giving people, rather than as something coming through the US. In this the cooperation of Washington is required – for though the good intentions of lawmakers is appreciated, they must also understand the need to keep a low profile in light of anti-US feelings in the region and thus increase the chances of the Pakistan government being able to overcome the immense threat posed by militancy. All efforts must be directed towards ensuring this success – with a spirit of coordination and cooperation developed between all partners for this purpose.

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Iranian Retaliation in case of war

How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war

Military analysts say the Islamic Republic would strike back in unconventional ways – targeting American interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 20, 2008 edition

Istanbul, Turkey - Pressure is building on Iran. This week Europe agreed to new sanctions and President Bush again suggested something more serious – possible military strikes – if the Islamic Republic doesn't bend to the will of the international community on its nuclear program.

But increasingly military analysts are warning of severe consequences if the US begins a shooting war with Iran. While Iranian forces are no match for American technology on a conventional battlefield, Iran has shown that it can bite back in unconventional ways.

Iranian networks in Iraq and Afghanistan could imperil US interests there; American forces throughout the Gulf region could be targeted by asymmetric methods and lethal rocket barrages; and Iranian partners across the region – such as Hezbollah in Lebanon – could be mobilized to engage in an anti-US fight.

Iran's response could also be global, analysts say, but the scale would depend on the scale of the US attack. "One very important issue from a US intelligence perspective, [the Iranian reaction] is probably more unpredictable than the Al Qaeda threat," says Magnus Ranstorp at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.

"I doubt very much our ability to manage some of the consequences," says Mr. Ranstorp, noting that Iranian revenge attacks in the past have been marked by "plausible deniability" and have had global reach.

"If you attack Iran you are unleashing a firestorm of reaction internally that will only strengthen revolutionary forces, and externally in the region," says Ranstorp. "It's a nightmare scenario for any contingency planner, and I think you really enter the twilight zone if you strike Iran."

Though the US military has since early 2007 accused Iran's Qods Force – an elite element of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – of providing anti-US militias in Iraq with lethal roadside bombs, and of training and backing "special groups" in actions that the US government alleges have cost "thousands" of lives, US commanders have played down Iran's military capabilities.

Even Admiral William Fallon, who publicly opposed a US strike on Iran before he resigned in April, dismissed Iran as a military threat. "Get serious," Adm. Fallon told Esquire in March. "These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them."

But that has not kept Iran from rhetorical chest-beating, with an active military manpower of 540,000 – the largest in the Middle East – dependent on some of the lowest per capita defense spending in the region. Iran "can deal fatal blows to aggressor America by unpredictable and creative tactical moves," the senior commander Brig. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid said in late May. "It is meaningless to back down before an enemy who has targeted the roots of our existence."

Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei also warned of far-reaching revenge in 2006. "The Americans should know that if they assault Iran, their interests will be harmed anywhere in the world that is possible," he said. "The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity."

Analysts say Iran has a number of tools to make good on those threats and take pride in taking on a more powerful enemy. "This is not something they are shying away from," says Alex Vatanka, a Middle East security analyst at Jane's Information Group in Washington.

"They say: 'Conventional warfare is not something we can win against the US, but we have other assets in the toolbox,' " says Mr. Vatanka, noting that the IRGC commander appointed last fall has been "marketed as this genius behind asymmetric warfare doctrine."

"What they are really worried about is the idea of massive aerial attacks on literally thousands of targets inside Iran," says Vatanka, also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. "Their reading of America's intentions in that scenario would be twofold: One is to obviously dismantle as much as possible the nuclear program; and [the other], indirectly try to weaken the [Islamic] regime."

Any US-Iran conflict would push up oil prices, and though Iran could disrupt shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf, its weak economy depends on oil revenues.

But nearby US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf provide a host of targets. Iran claimed last October that it could rain down 11,000 rockets upon "the enemy" within one minute of an attack and that rate "would continue."

Further afield, Israel is within range of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, and Hezbollah claims its rockets – enhanced and resupplied by Iran since the 2006 war to an estimated 30,000 – can now hit anywhere in the Jewish state, including its nuclear plant at Dimona.

Closer to home, Iran has honed a swarming tactic, in which small and lightly armed speedboats come at far larger warships from different directions. A classified Pentagon war game in 2002 simulated just such an attack and in it the Navy lost 16 major warships, according to a report in The New York Times last January.

"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack," Lt. Gen. K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who commanded the swarming force, told the Times. "The whole thing was over in five, maybe 10 minutes."

During the 1990s, Iranian agents were believed to be behind the assassinations of scores of regime opponents in Europe, and German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Iran's intelligence minister.

Iran and Hezbollah are alleged to have collaborated in the May 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in revenge for Israel's killing of a Hezbollah leader months before. Argentine prosecutors charge that they jointly struck again in 1994, bombing a Jewish community center in the Argentine capital that killed 85, one month after Israel attacked a Hezbollah base in Lebanon.

With some 30,000 on the payroll by one count, Iranian intelligence "is a superpower in intelligence terms in the region; they have global reach because of their reconnaissance ability and quite sophisticated ways of inflicting pain," says Ranstorp. "They have been expanding their influence.… Who would have predicted that Argentina would be the area that Hezbollah and the Iranians collectively would respond?"

Past examples show that "Tehran recognizes that at times its interest are best served by restraint," says a report on consequences of a strike on Iran published this week by Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

But Iran could target the US, too, depending on the magnitude of any US strike. "Iran's capacity for terror and subversion remains one of its most potent levers in the event of a confrontation with the United States," says the report, adding that "success" in delaying Iran's nuclear programs could backfire.

If "US and world opinion were so angered by the strikes that they refused to support further pressure against Iran's nuclear ambitions, then prevention could paradoxically [eventually ensure] Iran's open pursuit of nuclear weapons," concludes the report.

And the long list of unconventional tactics should not be taken for granted in Tehran, says Vatanka, noting that the Islamic system's top priority is survival.

"So the Iranians have to be careful," says Vatanka. "Just because the US doesn't have the will right now, or the ability to produce the kind of stick that they would fear, doesn't mean the way of confrontation is going to pay off for them in the long run."

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Hindu-Muslim clashes escalate in IHK

* Latest violence leaves one dead, 63 others injured
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: Kashmir Valley turned into a battlefield for a third day on Wednesday as hundreds of youth fought pitched battles with police and paramilitary forces protesting against the transfer of forestland to Hindu cave shrine of Amarnath.
Clashes: The latest clashes left a civilian, Farooq Ahmed dead, and 65 others wounded, including 15 members of Indian police and paramilitary forces and four Hindu pilgrims, police said. Most government offices, businesses and schools in Srinagar were forced shut.
Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad issued an appeal for calm and vowed no accommodation for Hindu pilgrims would be built until further notice.
“I request all to maintain peace and brotherhood,” Azad told a news conference, and promised an “all-party meeting to reach a consensus on how to deal with the issue”.
Meanwhile, a document issued by the six-member action committee constituted by the Hurriyat Conference against the land transfer has stated that under the garb of providing facilities to the Hindu pilgrims, the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board is planning to construct dams on Lidder and Indus rivers to generate power for the shrine

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Muslims in Spain

The Muslim minority in Spain will be very little involved in these Local and Autonomous Communities’ elections, because only 10% of the total amount of Muslims living in Spain have the right to vote: the Spanish converted to Islam and the foreigners who have acquired Spanish nationality.

But they all will vote for the left.

So it’s said in a report published by Spanish newspaper ABC.es this Sunday, where Jesús Bastante also writes about the position of some of the leaders of the Muslims community.

The previous speaker of the Islamic Federation of Spain, Yusuf Fernández, considers that “ the Muslims do not have any other option than to take active part in politics supporting progressist forces (like Socialists, Communist, Coalition for Melilla and others)”, among other reasons to combar the “islamophobia“, that, in his view, is based specially in PP.

Also Mansur Escudero, president of the Islamic Council, considers that PP members show themselves as ”very hostile” to Muslims.

Lastly, the Islamic Spanish Commission said it very clear last Wednesday: “We should consider who have been tripping up us and preventing our children from having Islamic religion in the schools and who had been the ones who had been supporting us in our equal right to religious teachings”, in clear reference to PP and PSOE.

In Spain, there are approx. one million one hundred Muslims, the majority of which are foreginers, although there are communities of converted Spanish of some importance in Andalucía.

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APHC represents the Kashmiris

Mirwaiz, Kashmir and wisdom

Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad, the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, of the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, said Tuesday that India and Pakistan must undertake a more structured bilateral dialogue on Kashmir to reach a decision on the status of the disputed region. He said the Kashmiris accepted no solution under the Indian Constitution, nor did they accept the Line of Control (LoC) as a permanent border. Talking about the APHC’s dialogue with New Delhi, he said that Kashmir run by India must be demilitarised because that would “solve 50 percent of the problem”.

The local Kashmir Action Committee of Pakistan (KACP), whose members met the Mirwaiz, asked the APHC to remove differences among the component parties of the APHC, especially the central rift between an isolated but hardline faction led by Syed Ali Gilani and the moderate one led by the Mirwaiz himself. This is good advice. Unfortunately, however, it then proceeded to suggest a completely unrealistic course of action to the Kashmiris of the two sides — expect nothing from India and Pakistan; reject the claims on Kashmir made by India and Pakistan; hold elections separately in the Indian Kashmir and Pakistani Kashmir under UN auspices and a neutral election commission; after the elections, the two elected assemblies should meet at some third place and announce their joint decision about the future of Jammu & Kashmir.

The youthful but wise Mirwaiz has met everyone who matters in Pakistan during his latest visit. He has been treated with great respect and got the attention that he deserved. He has a realistic approach to the problem and jibes increasingly with the change of attitudes in Pakistan in line with the commitment made by the PPP and the PMLN to undertake normalisation of relations with India in the Charter of Democracy of 2006. He knows that this commitment is a continuation of the initiatives taken earlier by President Pervez Musharraf and two successive prime ministers of India. He is therefore emphasising progress in the bilateral dialogue and wants space to be created within the ambit of this dialogue for Kashmiri representation. We agree with this approach.

The Indo-Pak dialogue has seen its ups and downs, not so much because of anyone’s unwillingness to talk, but because of Pakistan’s own uncertain domestic situation. Because of the commitment contained in the Charter of Democracy — and because of the memory of the PPP and PMLN both trying to move forward on peace and normalisation with India in their curtailed tenures — India has waited till the transition in Islamabad is completed after the February elections. It is also expected that the two sides will embark on a new and more inventive course to sort out the Kashmir problem whose lower bar has been determined by the dictum of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006: “Borders cannot be redrawn but we can work towards making them irrelevant — towards making them just lines on a map”.
The Indo-Pak dialogue has therefore proceeded on the basis of the famous Four Points: 1) identification of the State’s regions; 2) demilitarisation; 3) self-governance; and 4) a “joint management mechanism”. But for these objectives to be reached, the two countries must normalise at a greater speed through bilateral trade — including investment — and movement of people. Under the overarching SAARC treaties aspiring to a free-trade area (FTA) in the region, the two must move forward for an opening up without which the issue of Kashmir cannot be resolved. Pakistan has tried and failed to impose a “just” solution on “status quo” India. Perhaps this “non-success” was needed as a baseline from where to start the search for new templates of peace. This is the only way to go, because FTAs all over the world are guided by settled laws and states acceding to them can look forward to a peaceful resolution of all disputes lingering from the era of nationalism and conflict.

Some years ago the Mirwaiz would not have been a popular leader in Pakistan because we were wedded to violent ways of conflict resolution. But in the current impasse it is his moderation and realism that makes him “non-threatening” and relevant for us. (We already have jihadis of Kashmir in our midst who threaten us daily.) On the other hand, Syed Ali Geelani’s extreme but isolated stance, popular when Pakistan favoured war, is no longer attractive to Pakistanis. The honourable Mirwaiz is wise enough to understand that the future of India and Pakistan lies in their pursuit of energy supplies and routes for transit trade — and one very important region that will benefit from free trade is the Kashmir Valley itself — and the Kashmir cause will reach its most desired conclusion only if they jointly succeed in their quest

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Pakistani cotton seeds in the hands of US corporations

MNCs vying to monopolise Pakistan’s agriculture, food

Monday, June 30, 2008

By Shahid Husain
KARACHI: Pakistan is set to ink an agreement with the US multinational company Monsanto before the advent of the next cotton season to introduce Bioinsecticide Cotton (Bt Cotton) in the country.
This move, critics fear, could ultimately pave the way for the monopolisation of the seed business in Pakistan. “For the time being, Pakistan has signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Monsanto but we hope to sign an agreement with the company before the beginning of the next cotton season,” Abdul Qadir Baloch, Federal Crop Commissioner, told The News.
He rejected the notion that the agreement would lead to the monopolisation of the seed business, and ultimately, of food and agriculture in Pakistan. “Cotton leaf curl virus is a big problem for this country. Previously, it was called Multan curl virus, then it was termed Burewala curl virus. We have been trying to contain it since 2000. By the time we sign an agreement with Monsanto, our research will be completed and the company will insert its virus resistant gene into our varieties,” he said.
Many independent scientists beg to differ with Baloch and fear repercussions of the highest order once Bt Cotton is introduced in Pakistan officially. “Bt Cotton has been sown in India by a joint venture company comprising Monsanto and the results have been disastrous. Thousands of farmers had a very poor cotton crop and suffered losses,” said Dr Azra Talat Sayeed, a PhD in social pharmacy who works with Roots for Equity, a non-governmental organisation.
She argued that since Pakistan and India have similar climatic conditions, there was every chance that Pakistan would bear the same losses as India. She said Monsanto maintains that transgenic cotton or Bt Cotton does not require pesticide spraying on the crop but all evidence until now has shown that there was no reduction in pesticide spraying.
“This basically means that Monsanto will not only reap profits for its Bt Cotton but also on its pesticide which is the prescribed one for Bt Cotton, all at the cost of poor, small farmers of Pakistan,” she cautioned.
“The issue is not confined to Bt Cotton. It is of accepting transgenic seeds per se. Once we allow genetically modified seeds in the organism we are accepting Bt Rice and Bt Corn, all of which are potentially hazardous, genetically modified organisms. This will give agro-chemical crops total monopoly over our food and agriculture,” she said.
However, Monsanto Pakistan rejects these apprehensions. Amir M Mirza, spokesman for Monsanto Pakistan in a query from The News, said: “Introduction of Bt Cotton through legal means will provide the Pakistani farmers access to technology which has been successfully commercialised in other major cotton-producing countries, where millions of farmers are benefiting from it. Other public and private technology providers, both foreign and indigenous, are free to introduce their technologies – farmers will have the choice to decide on which technology they would like to use, their decision will of course be based on which technology gives them the maximum benefit.”
He also disputed that farmers have suffered after the introduction of Bt Cotton in India. “There have been numerous socio-economic studies done by credible third party agencies highlighting the tremendous value Bt Cotton has created for Indian farmers and society at large.” Elaborating, he said: “Five years from the introduction of Bt Cotton in India, the Bt cotton area has soared from slightly over hundred thousand acres to 15.3 million acres grown by approximately 4 million small and resource-poor farmers the yields have gone up by up to 50 per cent, insecticide sprays have reduced by half, and the farm income at the national level has increased up to $1.7 billion as compared to $840 million in 2006.”
Genetically-modified seeds have already been illegally sown in Hyderabad and Sanghar districts in Sindh and in different areas of Punjab through smuggled seeds from India but the outcome has not been encouraging.
Monsanto, having made inroads in India, one of the world’s largest cotton producers, has been trying to break into the Pakistan market to sell GM cotton seeds since 2002 despite the reservations of scientists and lack of bio-safety laws. In a country short of water, Monsanto has been making much of the fact that Bt Cotton needs less water than the staple food crop of rice.
Cotton is vital for Pakistan’s economy and poor farmers in the country live under an exploitative landholding system and more than 30 per cent of the population is condemned to live below the poverty line. Bad irrigation practices and droughts have made growing crops increasingly difficult and the country, which used to export grain, now has to import it.
Cotton harvesting is done between October and December. After this, ginning begins and the crop starts coming into the market by the middle of the year. Cotton accounts for 8.2 per cent of the value addition in agriculture and about two per cent of GDP. The Punjab grows more than 70 per cent of the crop alone.
Dr Abid Azhar, professor and co-director general, Dr AQ Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, University of Karachi, said: “All multinational corporations have their commercial and economic interests and we have to strike a balance between their commercial interests and the interests of our economy and well-being of the community.”
Elaborating, he said: “It may be true that genetically modified varieties could have a better yield but their affects on human health could not be ignored. On the one hand, the economic interests of the farmers have to be protected, on the other, the health of the community at large should be safeguarded.”
He went on to add: “There have been several reports on the adverse effects of these varieties on human health in India and elsewhere,” he pointed out. But Aamir Mirza of Monsanto denied these conclusions and claimed that there were no adverse affects of GMOs on human health.
“Several scientific publications continue to document safety information about the genetically-enhanced crops,” he said. Whether Monsanto or the concerned academics and NGOs are right on this all-important question, the public will only know when it is too late. Our decision-makers have already decided to move ahead on this controversial plan.

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Shiakh Rashid predicts huge US attack in tribal areas before US polls

Another attack ahead of US polls: Sh Rasheed

Monday, June 30, 2008 By Our Correspondent LAHORE

AWAMI Muslim League (AML) President Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed has warned that US may carry out an attack in tribal areas of Pakistan before its upcoming elections.

Addressing a press conference after inaugurating a party office at Sir Agha Khan Road here on Sunday, the former federal minister and head of the newly-formed AML stated that the situation in the country was worsening day by day and US has made Pakistan its target now.

He said in order to win the polls, US administration may carry out an ‘immoral’ activity in the tribal region of Pakistan. He said he did not think that everything done so far in the tribal areas was according to the will of the Pakistan government.

He said the present government also lacks any clear policy to solve the problem of the turbulent region. He said the policy of the present Pakistani government witnessed a change repeatedly as pressure was exerted on it. He said the decision to combat terrorism was a positive step.

The AML president lambasted the coalition government for its sheer failure to deliver during its first 100 days. He said both the coalition partners were befooling each other as well as the nation.
He added they were doing nothing but to attract their clients. He said they were merely trying for the next election and asked that who would provide relief to the poor.

He said the coalition government should continue to work, as the country cannot afford another election right now. He said neither the coalition partners have required number of votes for passing the constitutional package nor it possessed enough strength for the impeachment of President Musharraf. He admitted it was early to comment upon the performance of the present government, but said that the present rulers were worse than the previous ones.

He added all efforts were being made by the coalition government to increase its strength rather than solving the public problems. He said the country cannot be dependent upon a single Abdul Sattar Edhi rather the rulers have to play their role to save the country.

The AML president urged the government to announce a relief package for the poor after completion its 100 days.

Answering a question about the impeachment of President Musharraf, Sheikh Rasheed said it was up to the Parliament to decide about it. He said a ‘safe passage for Musharraf’ shouldn’t be opposed.
Commenting upon National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), Sheikh Rasheed said its purpose was fulfilled whereas the poor population of the country was made to stand in the waiting list.
He said this ‘long wait’ by the poor for the relief could be very grave in future and added the situation in the country was just like it was before the French Revolution.

He said the recent rise in petroleum products prices has further hit the poor hard and the situation is getting worse.

He said the transfer of billions of rupees to other countries by investors following uncertainty in the country was a matter of serious concern. He added due to unemployment, employers were giving the salary of their own will to the workers and the decision of a minimum wage at Rs 6000 has not been implemented.

The AML president said the government should control inflation and maintain law and order on priority basis before it was too late.

He said the people were so disappointed from the government that they were trying to produce things themselves, which the government was supposed to provide them.

He added bureaucracy has been paralysed and made almost non-functional. The AML president said the ruling coalition should make proper decisions and inform the public about the facts.

Answering a question on the statement of PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari about Kashmir issue, Sheikh Rasheed said the government should issue responsible statements over the core issue.

He said Pakistan must stick to the UN resolution, which was vital for the solution of this issue. He also expressed his sympathies with the Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik and his companions who were injured recently by the Indian Army. He said Kashmir issue was a priority of AML.

When asked to comment over the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif, he said Nawaz should also be given a relief through NRO.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Muslim Front President Imtiaz Mustafa Haqani announced to merge his party into AML.

Sheikh Rasheed said, “AML provides a platform for all those political workers who are only used by politicians to win the elections and are neglected later on.”

He said even in its first five to six days, hundreds of workers have joined the party.

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Taliaban target ISAF NATO supply line to Afghansitan

Taliban warning in Karachi Monday, June 30, 2008

According to a recent press report, the local Taliban have warned truckers against catering for NATO. Handbills and pamphlets threatening truck drivers warning them against supplying diesel, petrol and goods to NATO troops, ISAF and US forces in Afghanistan are being distributed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Shireen Jinnah Colony and Mauripur truck stand in Karachi. These pamphlets were also pasted at the entrance of Kausar Masjid — the area’s main mosque — a few weeks ago. In these pamphlets, owners of trucks, trailers, truck stands and drivers were asked to stop supplies to NATO, ISAF and US forces within weeks.

If any truck or trailer was caught supplying diesel, petrol or goods after the passage of deadline, the pamphlet read, not only would the vehicle be set on fire but also the driver would be brutally slaughtered. These attacks would be carried out from Karachi to Peshawar, Chaman, Kandahar and Bagram until the supply line of the Christians (sic) was severed, the pamphlet stated.
During the past few months, a number of oil tankers and trucks carrying oil and supplies to Afghanistan for NATO and US forces have been torched by militants while they were parked in Torkham near Landi Kotal. But now these militants have chosen Karachi for stopping trucks from moving to Afghanistan. Besides oil tankers and trucks, offices of national and multi-national companies are located in the vicinity of Keamari. Therefore, such warnings to truckers by the local Taliban should serve as a wake-up call for the authorities concerned before it is too late.
Sqn-Ldr (retd) S Ausaf Husain

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McCain Obama visit anti-Islam pastor. Media quiet on Graham's bigotry

McCain visits evangelist Billy Graham and his son

A retired general has blunt words about the GOP senator's experience. Obama takes the day off.

From Times Wire Services June 30, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain met privately Sunday with evangelists Billy and Franklin Graham at the family's mountaintop retreat in North Carolina.
It was McCain's first sit-down with Billy Graham and his son, although McCain and the elder Graham are acquainted.

With 89-year-old Billy Graham in poor health, McCain flew to North Carolina expecting to meet only with Franklin Graham -- president and chief executive of the group his father founded in 1950, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn.

McCain, who is courting religious voters and trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, said he had "a very excellent conversation" with the two "great leaders."
Franklin Graham issued a statement after the meeting praising the Arizona senator's "personal faith and his moral clarity."

He said he was not endorsing anyone for president, but was urging "men and women of faith everywhere" to vote and to be involved in the political process.

McCain said last week that he did not consider the meeting with Franklin Graham to be political.
Franklin Graham was among 30 evangelicals with whom Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met this month in Chicago.

In Washington, retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark challenged McCain's claim that he was better prepared than Obama to be president.

Clark said he honored McCain's service as a prisoner during the Vietnam War and respected his role on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But Clark said McCain had no executive experience, and added that the Navy squadron McCain commanded was not a wartime squadron.

"He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall," Clark said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
When moderator Bob Schieffer noted that Obama hadn't had those experiences, nor had he flown a fighter plane and been shot down, Clark replied: "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Obama took a break from campaigning Sunday but still had a busy day.
The Illinois senator managed a 30-minute workout at a gym near his home on Chicago's South Side, then got a haircut at the Hyde Park Hair Salon, where he's been a customer for several years.
Barber Ishmael Alamin, who was working at the shop, said Obama got "a regular clipper cut."
Obama returned home to pick up his daughters and take them to the East Bank Club in the River North neighborhood to play basketball. His wife, Michelle, joined them.

In Orlando, Fla., police were investigating the spray-painting of dozens of city vehicles, some with disparaging messages about Obama and McCain.

The vandals even left business cards on the vehicles criticizing both candidates. The cards voiced support for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's former opponent. Clinton won the Florida Democratic primary, but the contest was held early in violation of party rules. Party leaders initially said that as punishment the state's delegates would not be seated, then eventually agreed to seat half of them at the national convention.

Clinton's supporters wanted the state's delegation fully restored. Instead, the compromise pushed Obama toward the nomination.

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Kashmir Freedom movement re-ignited

More protests in Kashmir land row

A protest by Muslims in Srinagar in Kashmir on Sunday 29 June 2008

At least four people have died in the week-long protests

Thousands of people have protested in Indian-administered Kashmir for an eighth successive day over plans to transfer land to a Hindu shrine trust.

The area's Muslim majority continued to demonstrate even though the state government has said it will revoke its decision to transfer the land.

In protest, the state's Hindu-majority Jammu region is also witnessing a strike with crowds out on the streets.

Four people have died and hundreds have been injured since the protests began.

The demonstrations are among the biggest the disputed Himalayan region has seen for years, and have widened to focus on pro-independence demands.

Strikes

In the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley shops, banks, schools, colleges and government offices are closed and traffic is off the roads, the BBC's Altaf Hussein in Srinagar says.

Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the border town of Baramullah.

In Srinagar, prominent separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani led a huge procession in the old city.

Kashmiri Hindu exiles protest in Delhi on Sunday, 29 June 2008

The land row has communally polarised Jammu and Kashmir

The Hindu-majority towns in the Jammu region are also observing a strike called by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Hundreds of protesters from the BJP and hard-line Hindu groups like the Shiv Sena and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council) denounced Kashmir's Governor NN Vohra and Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

They accused them of "bowing to the dictates of Muslim fundamentalists".

The BBC's Binoo Joshi in Jammu says businesses are closed and public transport is off the roads. Few people turned up for work.

'Conspiracy'

On Sunday, the state government said it would revoke plans to transfer the land to the Amarnath shrine board.

It said it will provide all the necessary facilities for pilgrims who wanted to visit the shrine.

The government had said the land was needed for the construction of pre-fabricated huts and toilets for the pilgrims.

Separatist groups said the transfer of land was part of a "conspiracy to settle non-local Hindus in the valley with a view to reducing the Muslims to a minority".

Local environmentalists also protested against the decision.

The unrest has brought back memories of widespread protests that swept the region after a separatist insurgency began in 1989.

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Islamic Crater Names on the moon

These are the Islamic names of the craters on the moon

No.

Name

Arabic Name

Arabic Name

Latitude

Longitude

Dia(Km)

Abul Wafa

Abu al-Wafa

1 N

117 E

Abulfeda

Abu al-Feda'

14 S

14 E

Al-Bakri

14 N

20 E

Al-Biruni

18 N

93 E

Al-Khwarizmi

7 N

106 E

Al-Marrakushi

10 S

56 E

Albategnius

Al-Battani

12 S

4 E

114

Alfraganus

Al-Farghani

5 S

19 E

Alhazen

Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham

16 N

72 E

Almanon

Al-Ma'mun

17 S

15 E

Alpetragius

Al-Bitruji

16 S

5 W

Arzachel

Al-Zarqalluh

18 S

2 W

Avicenna

Ibn Sina

40 N

97 W

Azophi

Al-Sufi

22 S

13 E

Geber

Jabir Ibn Aflah

19 S

14 E

Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battutah

7 S

50 E

Ibn Firnas

7 N

122 E

Ibn Yunus

14 N

91 E

Ibn-Rushd

Ibn Rushd

12 S

22 E

Messala

Ma-Sha' Allah al-Basri

39 N

61 E

125

Nasireddin

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

41 S

0 E

Omar Khayyam

Omar al-Khayyam

58 N

102 W

Thebit

Thabit Ibn Qurrah

22 S

4 W

Ulugh Beigh

Ulugh Bek

33 N

82 W

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June 25

1932 repeat?

Democratic congressional candidates...won more seats than anyone had dared predict...Democrats added 97 seats in the House, expanding their margin to 313 to 117 during Roosevelt’s first two years in office. The large class of incoming freshmen was filled with liberals who would faithfully support Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. . . Democratic congressional candidates swept the South, much of the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. . .Republicans lost their tenuous grip on the Senate’s majority and with it their majority leader and most powerful committee chairmen. The election put legislative state houses and governor’s mansions across the nation largely under Democratic control.”

That, of course, is a synopsis of the storied elections of 1932 in which Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Presidency in a landslide and led Democrats to their greatest triumph at the polls. In his most insightful book Electing FDR, Donald A. Ritchie, associate historian of the U.S. Senate historical office, breathes fresh life and insight into the dramatic election of 76 years ago.

The far-reaching impact of the Democratic tide in that election cannot be understated. Democrats would hold onto majorities in both Houses of Congress for twenty-four unbroken years. Even when public sentiment soured on the Democrats in 1938 and ’42 and Republicans made big gains in mid-term elections, the cushion that Democrats had from their ’32 sweep was enough for them to hang onto their House and Senate majorities.

When you listen to the top campaign leaders for Republicans in Congress these days, or even read the numbers of who is up for election and who is retiring, it doesn’t look good for the GOP, the Presidential race notwithstanding. With 24 Republican senators facing the voters and only eleven Democratic senators up for election, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, recently told reporters he would be satisfied if he held Republican losses in the Senate to three seats (the current Senate line-up is 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans). On the House side, where the line up is 236 Democrats to 199 Republicans and where 27 Republicans and only eight Democrats are relinquishing their seats, it doesn’t look pretty for Republicans. In recent interviews, both National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) and former NRCC Chairman and Virginia Rep. Tom Davis both suggested to me that their party’s goal was to minimize losses and that odds on retaking a majority in the House were somewhere between slim and none.

Continued

Sponsored Links:

So with all this gloom-and-doom forecasting coming from Republicans themselves, I posed this question to some noted political historians: could the congressional elections of 2008 reach a level akin to that of 1932, the Democrats’ best-ever year in races for the House and Senate?

“In some people’s fondest dreams, yes,” historian Ritchie told me, “And it would not be unusual to have a big change in Congress. But I can’t believe 1932 -- which produced more than 100 new House Members -- would happen again.”

Ritchie noted that while the economy is not doing well now, it is nothing like it was in 1932, with unemployment at 25% of the nation’s workforce. In Ritchie’s words, “The Watergate election of 1974 was big for Democrats, but not that big. We’re talking about a ‘Category Five’ hurricaine, which would have a chance of occurring again only if there was a catastrophic failure of the economy. I don’t see it.”

Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report, veteran election analyst and father of the Almanac of American Politics, seconded Ritchie. Recalling the 1930 midterm elections in which Democrats made significant gains (and actually took the House from Republicans), Barone pointed out that the economy was bad then and declined further to the point of 25% unemployment. “We’re nowhere near those levels now.”

The other reason cited by Barone that is unique to the ’32 election was reapportionment. He noted how “Congress refused to reapportion House seats among the states after the 1920 Census, as required by the Constitution” because for the first time, a majority of Americans were living in urban communities and Members did not want urbanites to have increased representation.

“In the runup to the 1930 Census,” Barone recalled, “President Hoover got Congress to pass a law automatically reapportioning House seats by applying a specific formula to the Census results. It’s still in effect. That meant that 20 years of demographic change was reflected in the 1932 district lines -- or, in several states, all Members were elected at-large (where states lost seats and legislatures could not agree on lines, that was the only way to do it). Thus, many, many incumbents had new districts or were redistricted in with other incumbents.” (Such circumstances would be almost out of the question today, with the “one-man, one-vote” decision of the Supreme Court in the 1960’s all but ending the scenario of House Members elected at large).

Barone gave me this interesting fact: the 1932 elections produced the only House in the 20th century in which a majority of Members had not served in the previous Congress. In his words, “I don’t think we’re going to see change as sweeping in 1932 this year.”

The lone member of the House leadership of either party whose profession is that of historian weighed in on the same side as Ritchie and Barone. Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.), the House Republican Whip, told me that “Republicans [with 199 seats] have the most in their minority status since 1954,” the year the GOP lost its majority in the House for the next forty years.

“There is nothing near the kind of crisis there was in 1932,” said Blunt, former instructor at Drury College (Mo.) and president of Southwest Baptist University, “and, in fact, with energy opening up as the Number One issue, Republicans are on the right side of issues. “

As for the 27 open Republican seats, the Missouri lawmaker said the GOP was only in jeopardy “in a handful of them” and could actually be competitive.

1932 all over again? It’s highly unlikely, or so the historians say. Now, 1974 was the most disastrous year for Republicans until the midterm elections of ’06, in which they lost control of both the House and Senate after twelve years. Could that be repeated? It’s a subject for another discussion with the experts -- and another story.

John Gizzi is Political Editor of HUMAN EVENTS.

Reader Comments: (

)

Here are a few of the comments submitted by our readers. Click to view all

Report Abusive PostThere is one thing that can help. Conservatives could lay out one simple analogy: What if Dems handle the war on terror in the same way they handled the Florida and Michigan primaries? Follow me: The Dem leadership layed down the law by saying if the two states moved up their primaries, the votes wouldn't count. When their bluff was called, what did they do? Simply stated, they have no stomach for distress, no line in the sand worth standing up for. What was the result?
1. The voters in both states felt devalued.
2. The Dem leadership was neutered.
3. Votes counted for 1/2...akin to slavery status.
4. Their weakness and caving will open the door to more primary defiance.
So how would this weak-knee'd approach play out with Iran? What did the Dem appeasement signal to Muslim fundamentalists?
Just a thought from a cop who says it in song @
www.conservativemusiconline.com

Lance Morrison, CA

Jun 20, 2008 @ 03:32 AM

Report Abusive PostThe problem with the Republican Party is simple, they have given up their Conservative backgrown in order to be liked by the Democratic Leadership. Now the people see them as weak. They have shown they have no leadership ability.

Thomas, Fargo

Jun 20, 2008 @ 06:14 AM

Report Abusive PostThe best way to defeat Republicans is to let them pass their agenda. I say let's eliminate social security, reproductive freedoms for women and launch another stupid, useless war for israel. Democrats would hold majorities in both houses for generations.

kellamd, chicago, il

Jun 20, 2008 @ 07:36 AM

Report Abusive PostThomas, your logic doesn't work. No one sees Repubs as weak, but they do see them as out-of-touch, insulated and away from their core values.
Kellamd, I would appreciate if you would begin by letting Repubs pass their agenda.

FreeConservative

Jun 20, 2008 @ 08:13 AM

Report Abusive PostRepublicans have hammered Michelle Obama for her remarks in February that she was proud of America "for the first time in my adult life." Yesterday, however, Dan Abrams showed footage he uncovered of a Fox News interview with John McCain on March 13, 2008, in which McCain said, "I didn't really love America until I was deprived of her company."

The Last Sane Person, in America

Jun 20, 2008 @ 08:25 AM

Report Abusive PostJust think St. Michael, me and Bubba Clinton are the ONLY two democrats that were re-elected MORE than one term since 1932? WOW? That's 76 years. I wonder why? Since 1932? Must be a vast right wing conspiarcy? What's that?"

FDR, Heaven - Cloud #9

Jun 20, 2008 @ 08:55 AM

Report Abusive PostAll
The election of 32, was 2 years prior to my birth. As a Depression Babe, I probably was born with a depression stigma. My family, Independents all, survived without handouts, doles, or Fed Aassitance. They worked.
If the 2008 Election goes as the media directs, Mr. O will occupy the Oval Office and the Sofa Sitters therein will run the USA into a situation that will make the Depression Era seem like heaven. This is not just a reaction to the Primary fiascos, but an opine based on history, the Lefts angst, and a recent review of the Depression Era. Folks, we have a choice. Basic. Follow this Chicago Piped Piper to our doom, or elect McCain and try our best to bend his Nice Guy Philosophy into a reasonable salvation.
Choosing the Obama alternative, leaves the USA electorate without a means of effecting any of the "Change" we hear about. The "Change" is already on the agenda of the NGOs, OSI and the hedgefund operators controlling Mr. O.
Comparison to the 32 election, vs the 08 election is a bit like apples and oranges. But the results will be very similar, but definetly not something our population can live with.
end

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Book Review: The India Doctrine by Munshi

1) The general theme of the book is apt and very important. It is a fantastic book, well written and exposes many of the things that the young generation does not know about. I am so grateful for this wonderful gift...thank you again.

2) The book brings out some great and valid points and Munshi surely has done the right research even on events in Pakistan and other countries which is indeed fantastic.

3) The analysis is profound and fantastic. It discussed the ideas propagated by the RSS. They want to expunge Muslims just like they expunged Buddhists (http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/03/why-did-buddhism-disappear-from-the-south-asian-subcontinent-summary-of-brahmin-atrocities-that-destroyed-buddhism-in-the-subcontinent/)

4) Of course I have serious reservations about the map at the back that shows all of Kashmir and Northern Areas as part of India.

5) I have written several articles on the Two Nation Theory and its validity before and after 1971. (http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/why-we-created-pakistan-the-pakistan-ideology/) I think Munshi and I need to spend some time in developing the right story on this...(http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/why-we-created-pakistan-the-pakistan-ideology/) The joint and common independence struggle of Bengalis and Bengali Muslims cannot be rejected. The Bengalis were in the forefront of the Muslim movement and this has to be highlighted. The All India Muslim League was not formed by any Punjabi chauvinist or an army general...it was formed by Waqar ul Mulk and Mohsi ul Mulk great Bengali leaders who actually paved the way for others like to come in and build a movement around the poetry and vision of Ch. Rehmat Ali and Iqbal.As you know the 1940 resolution called for SEPARATE STATES per the map shown on Rupee News site...Bangladesh a the time was called Bangistan because it would have included Bihar, Assam and all of Bengal. Pakistan was the name of the Eastern state and osminatan was the name of Hydrabad.It was the Bengalis who wanted one state and it was the Bengali who wanted to create a new language for the Muslims...

6) If you read the Two Nation Theory (TNT) it does not simply state that there are two nations...the theory was not created by Jinnah or his fans (Mujib traveled on a bicyle several hundred kms to hear Jinnah)..inspired by the Spanish Inquisition and Torquamada, the TNT was actually created by Rai and the RSS brigands who wanted to throw the Muslims out of the Subcontinent and conduct another Spanish Inquisition in "India".

7) They still want the Subcontinent for the Hindus...and Munshi properly identifies this grand plan that has to be exposed...in the current language of Terror, ethnic cleansing etc.using the word "partition" informs the planet that one country was bifurcated or vivisected (per Bal Thackery, Advani and Modi). We must not use the word "partition. http://rupeenews.com/2008/04/24/there-was-no-partition-for-britain-indian-empire-included-somalia-iraq-burma-singapore-etc-for-the-french-india-included-vietnam-indo-china-for-the-dutch-india-included/

8) The word "democracy" does not appear in the US constitution and Jefferesn wrote reams against it. The word was created by the British and the Americans during the 40s (http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/30/the-democracy-excuse-destroyed-the-ottoman-empire-eliminated-muslim-power-in-india-partitioned-iraq-bifurcated-pakistan-in-1971-and-pushed-afghanistan-into-perpetual-war/) to destroy the Ottoman Empire with Arab Nationalism, subjugate all of India under Brahmin rule, take over Hydrabad, Bhopal, Manvadar, Junagarh and if I may say so to partition Pakistan by sowing seeds of discontent among brothers (http://rupeenews.com/2008/04/05/dynastic-democracy-and-plutocratic-oligarcy-has-failed-south-asia/). India is a plutocracy and Bengal Bundhu Mujib who created BD in the name of the democratic rights of the disenfranchised and claimed that Bhutto was not giving him power...declared himself president for life and you know the rest.

9) In 14th Aughust 1975, (the date is very significant) the Bengali nationalists who did not want BD to be colony of India rose up and declared their independence from India. Khondkar Mushtaque Ahmed declared the Islamic republic of Bangladesh and for the briefest period declared a confederation with Bangladesh. (See Stanley Wolpert Zulfi my friend and many newspapers of the era). Khondkar and Zia in declaring true independence for BD buried secularism deep into the Bay of Bengal

10) With all due respect the events of 1971 were the fault of the army--who were trying to preserve the homeland of the Muslims in the Subcontinent and on an ideological war with the Akhand Bhartis. Munshi has eloquently defined this and brilliant stays away from the mess of 1971. I believe that the language riots were a distraction...after all the language of the Muslims of Bengal was Urdu and Farsi when Clive arrived in Calcutta. After the destruction of the industrial base of Bengal the British imposed the Devanagri script on the Muslims rendering them illiterate. The Bengalis of Calcutta then took control of all of Bengal and specially the Muslims whom they considered uncouth and uncivilized....and used Bengali to discriminate among them..Bengali became a language of the Bengalis...even though till 1973 Urdu was the language of Bengal...I know you guys will not agree with this...let us agree to disagree on this one..(http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/the-language-systems-of-the-subcontinent-urdu-punjabi-sindhi-hindi-saraiki-potohari-hindko-bengali-etc/)

11) The chapter on Nepal and Maoists may have been overtaken by events in Nepal

12) A more detailed discussion of the BLA now headquartered in Tel Aviv (mainly for Sistan Baluchistan...but also Pakistan Baluchistan) http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/20/bla-a-threat-to-international-peace-by-ahmad-shah-baloch-the-bla-is-the-creation-of-indian-intelligence-agencies-which-are-trying-to-create-instability-in-the-areas-bordering-iran-and-afghanista/

13) The issues of Gandhi and his hypocrisy seem to have been ignored http://rupeenews.com/moins-articles/india-is-a-misnomer-the-british-indian-empire-included-india-iraq-burma-etc/gandhi-did-not-bring-the-british-empire-to-its-knees-they-had-already-decided-to-leave/#comment-3494. If you are going to fight an ideological battle than the cons have to be exposed with facts

14) Kashmir is not just a Pakistani problem...it is a Muslim problem...Akhand Bharat would convert BD and Pak into Kashmiri Sikkims. Some background on Kashmir and Gurdaspur
http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/25/gurdaspur-was-the-key-to-the-fraud-in-kashmir-accession/ The book does not have a Pakistani point of view and does not look at India's aims beyond Pakistan...into Afghanistan and does not look into the revival of the Curzon on to the Oxus policy.

15) The book ignores Indira Gandhi's comments (

http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/20/declassified-us-national-archive-material-pakistan-many-surprises-in-536571-the-uncanny-resemblance-to-the-events-fo-1953-to-the-events-of-2007-8-is-deja-vu-liaqat-ali-khan-had-refused-to-help-th/

16) made to Henry Kissinger when she said that NWFP belongs to India and Punjab is on the way. (http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/28/theran-times-trilaterals-triangulating-in-pakistan-iran-to-pakistan-to-save-country-the-pakistani-people-must-use-all-their-talent-energy-and-resourcefulness-to-confront-the-hidden-hands-w/) Indai's base in Tajikistan and her 4 consulates and 13 information centers in Afghanistan are an attempt to put New Delhi borders to the Oxus (Amu Darya). Here is a list of declassified docs from the US Embassy in Karachi (http://rupeenews.com/2007/11/27/why-was-liaqat-ali-khan-assassinated-a-forgotten-pakistani/)

17) The book has to mention the growing Paktunistan movement from Pakhtun Nationalists like Ibid Ullah Jan in its new manifestation (all of Pakistan and all of Afghanistan)
(http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/29/the-inevitable-pakistan-afghan-union-by-by-abid-ullah-jan/)
14) A nuclear armed Pakistan is a thorn in the side of India which bleeds ...a Pakistan aligned with Bangladesh is India's nightmare (http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/22/pakistnais-lifeline-to-china-and-chinas-access-to-gwador-and-the-arabian-sea-karakakoram-highway-being-upgraded-at-a-cost-of-327-million/)

18) Some facts about kargil http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/20/revisiting-kargil-9-years-later-fact-and-fiction/

19) ZAB for all his faults had already seen the Indian machinations and did not want Pakistan aligned with India against China...(http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/01/the-idea-of-becoming-subservient-to-india-is-abhorrent-and-that-of-cooperation-with-india-with-the-object-of-promoting-tension-with-china-equally-repugnant-zulfiqar-ali-bhutto/) he paid for his life for building the bomb (http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/13/peace-in-swat-nato-impotence-iran-pakistan-china-ipc-pipeline-heralds-eviction-of-india-from-afghanistan-and-maybe-even-chahbahar/)

20) This is a RAW story...tell me if there is an iota of truth in this at all or if there is some new sentiment in BD...else I would not have paid much attention to it..http://rupeenews.com/2008/02/27/bangaldesh-bnp-jei-government-was-reportedly-working-towards-a-confederate-relationship-with-pakistan-indian-newspaper-report-by-bhaskar-roy/

21) The future problems for both Pakistan and Bangladesh..is going to get nasty...for both our countries...The future problems: India’s Aqua bomb and the coming water wars in Kashmir
http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/29/indian-aqua-bomb-the-coming-water-wars-in-kashmir/

22) India policies viz a viz Tibet are a huge issue. The book does not focus on a pakistan centric discussion, and it should not--especially for a book published in Bangladesh...The Pakistan dimension is one of the issues. Afghanistan, Aurchal Pradesh, Tibet, Aksai Chin, the issues with Burma, Thailand, Maldives have to be highlighted.

23) The joint Bengali and Non-Bengali struggle for independence has to put in the right perspective especially for the younger generation. Reams have been written on the Two Nation Theory (TNT). "The Sign Doctrine" which is very similar to the book, except it concerns itself with Lord Curzon's policy of "On to the Oxus" and then "Back to the Indus"

24) The main thrust of the Indian argument is that the creation of Bangladesh killed the TNT....and the corollary to that argument is therefore there should be "Akhand Bharat"

25) My contention is that the 1940 resolution actually called for STATES...see Chaudhry Rehmat Ali's maps of "Dinia" and Bangistan. It was the Bengali leadership in the Muslim League that called for country. Many nations live in different countries. The Arabs live in 22 states. The Europeans live in more than two dozen states. Britishers live in Australia and New Zealand. Europeans of the same religion and race live in Canada and the USA. Many Catholics live in different countries even though most are all Spanish speaking. Even Hindus live in Bhutan, Nepal and India. The creation of Bangladesh does NOT dilute the TNT-- in actual fact the failure of Non-Muslim Bengalis (in Calcutta) to respond to the slogan of Bengali nationalism actually reinforces the TNT.

..to be continued...more later.

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Its not the Taliban its the Pakhtun dummy! Its time to dump the Taliban moniker

The new Pakhtun resistance is not the students out of the refugee camps. The new Pakhtun resistance does not comprise of "Students". The new Afghan resistance includes the Mujahideen from the first Afghan war, the various factions in Afghanistan.

The struggle in Afghanistan is between the occupiers and the occupied. The "Taliban" moniker has a lot of baggage attached to it. Only egos are in the way. If the old nomenclature is to be maintained, Mr. Karzai was part of the Taliban and therefore the Taliban are in Kabul.

One important factor for dumping the Taliban name is the hackles it raises when the Pakistanis begin talking to their own citizens.

Ostensibly the US and its allies removed the Taliban from Kabul and then brought in Mr. Kazai and self professed Taliban.

The tainted legacy of the Taliban belongs in the dustbin of history. The Pakhtuns in Afghanistan should use their proper name which reflects the new alliance. The Pakistani press should not misrepresent all the Pakhtuns as the Taliban. Using the incorrect moniker demeans the valiant struggle of the Pakhtuns against the oppressors.

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SAY IT OBAMA. Just say it! There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, Keith Ellison

As the election data near, the American media has suddenly woken up to a new reality--the Muslim vote.

All of a sudden there is a discussion of the Muslim vote on Fox, on CNN, in the NY times, in the USA today, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other major US dailies. This story was published by the NY Times

A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.

Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.

Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.

A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.

As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.

“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”

In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.

The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.

“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”

Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.

Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)

Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)

Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.

Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.

“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.

For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.

Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”

“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”

As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.

“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”

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Assassination attempt on Sarkozy?

Israeli policeman kills self at Sarkozy ceremony By DAN BALILTY – 1 hour ago

AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

BEN-GURION AIRPORT, Israel (AP) — An Israeli police officer fatally shot himself in the head at an airport farewell ceremony Tuesday for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, prompting bodyguards to whisk the visiting leader and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to safety, officials said.

A military band was playing at the time of the shooting, and the dignitaries apparently didn't hear anything. Dark-suited security men quickly ushered Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, up the stairs of his plane at Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv.

Security guards, their guns drawn, also rushed Olmert and Israeli President Shimon Peres toward their cars. The incident was over within minutes, and Olmert then boarded the plane to tell Sarkozy what happened, witnesses said.

The policeman, who was on a roof about 100 yards from Sarkozy's plane, fell to the ground after shooting himself, and his sheet-covered body lay on the tarmac afterward.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld denied reports that there had been an assassination attempt on Sarkozy, and other police officials said the leaders were never in danger.

"We are currently investigating the circumstances to see whether it was suicide or if he accidentally discharged his weapon," said area police commander Nissim Mor. "His mission was to secure an area to prevent people from reaching the ceremony."

A French presidential spokesman who was on another scheduled flight out of Tel Aviv said he knew nothing about the incident.

Sarkozy was ending a three-day visit. Earlier Tuesday, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Sarkozy said Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank would not guarantee its security forever, renewing his call for Israelis and Palestinians to make peace and share the holy city of Jerusalem.

Sarkozy spoke at a news conference alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, following his only meeting with Palestinian leaders during his visit, which was aimed primarily at cementing the improved relations between France and Israel after years of frosty ties.

Nevertheless, the French president was unusually frank in his comments critical of Israeli policies.

On Monday, he told the Israeli parliament that there could be no Mideast peace unless Israel halted its West Bank settlement construction and divided Jerusalem. On Tuesday, he focused on the separation barrier that Israel says it has built to keep suicide bombers out. Palestinians denounce the barrier as a land grab.

"You can't protect yourself with a wall, but with politics," Sarkozy said. "What will give Israel security ... is making a democratic Palestinian state."

Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Sarkozy was "a great friend of Israel," adding that "great friends don't always see eye to eye on every issue."

Sarkozy also repeated his call to share Jerusalem, the eastern part of which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

Sarkozy, whose maternal grandfather was a Greek Jew, devoted most of his trip to meetings with Israeli leaders. He also met the parents of an Israeli soldier held by Palestinian militants in Gaza. The young man, Gilad Schalit, also holds French citizenship.

Throughout the visit, he called himself a "friend of Israel" and showered praise on the Jewish state.

"On behalf of France, we would like to declare our true love to Israel — we love you!" Sarkozy said at a meeting with businessmen.

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The Muslims of Guyana and Suriname

MUSLIMS IN GUYANA

By Raymond Chickrie Published 07/17/2007 Guyana

MUSLIMS IN GUYANA: HISTORY, TRADITIONS, CONFLICT AND CHANGE

Introduction
The birth of Islam in Arabia and its later spread to South Asia and Africa had rippling effects not only on that region's social and political history, but international ramifications as it spread from there to other parts of the world, including Guyana. Islam travelled to the shores of Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad largely because of the institutions of slavery and indentureship.
Guyana is a multi-ethnic republic situated on the northern coast of South America (see Figure 1). The country is inhabited by nearly one million people who are heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity and religious affiliation. Amerindians are the indigenous people of Guyana. In the seventeenth century the country became populated by waves of immigrants brought in under colonialism which introduced plantation slavery and the indenture system. Thus the Dutch and later the British colonial mercantile interests shaped the socio-cultural environment of the country. Guyana remained a British colony until 1966 when it achieved independence, which marked the transfer of political power to the Afro-Christian population. However, the majority are of South Asian descent and form roughly 51% of the population (see Figure 2). Yet, they remained disenfranchised until the 1992 general elections.
South Asians, who are mostly Hindus and Muslims, have always had a cordial relationship among themselves. It would seem that these two groups had come to a mutual understanding of respecting each other's space while culturally and even linguistically identifying with each other. In fact, Hindus and Muslims share a history of indentured labour, both having been recruited to work in the sugar cane plantations. They came from rural districts of British India and arrived in the same ships. Furthermore, Muslims and Hindus in Guyana did not experience the bloody history of partition as did their brethren back in the subcontinent. Also, the lack of Hindu/Muslim friction in Guyana may be attributed to the Cold War and to their common foe--the Afro dominated government, which practised discrimination against them (for religious composition, see Figure 3).

MAP: Fig. 1. Guyana: administrative divisions, 1991.
According to the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG), there are about 125 masjids scattered throughout Guyana. Muslims form about 12% of the total population. Today in Guyana there are several active Islamic groups which include the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG), the Hujjatul Ulamaa, the Muslim Youth Organization (MYO), the Guyana Islamic Trust (GIT), the Guyana Muslim Mission Limited (GMML), the Guyana United Sad'r Islamic Anjuman (GUSIA), the Tabligh Jammat, the Rose Hall Town Islamic Center, and the Salafi Group, among others. Two Islamic holidays are nationally recognized in Guyana: Eid-ul-Azha or Bakra Eid and Youman Nabi or Eid-Milad-Nabi. In mid-1998 Guyana became the 56th permanent member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). Guyana's neighbour to the east, Suriname, with a Muslim population of 25%, is also an OIC member state.

The Afghan Muslims of Guyana and Suriname

By Raymond Chickrie Published 08/17/2007 Guyana

The Political Scene

Both Suriname and Guyana experienced political turmoil after independence from Holland and England. Guyana had an Afro dominated dictatorship, which marginalized East Indians while in Suriname several coups rocked that country's peaceful history. Remarkably, this cosmopolitan mixture held together under Dutch rule, but as independence approached, ethnically based political parties took shape, rallying supporters on racial lines. In Guyana racial tensions have spilled over into ethnic violence several times, but in Suriname consoctional democracy has worked. The Dutch pulled out in 1975, promising continued aid, but many Surinamese who were fearful of what happened in neighbouring Guyana to East Indians, decided to accept the offer of Dutch citizenship. Some 40,000 migrated to Holland in the months preceding independence. Today over 400,000 Surinamese live in Holland. In Guyana over half of its population migrated to the United States, Canada, England, Suriname and Trinidad. The dictatorship in Guyana ended in 1992 after the United States decided to support the democratic movement. With the end of the Cold War, the United States was no longer afraid of the opposition People's Progressive Party as the leadership of the PPP was accused of being communist sympathizers.
Their fears were in part justified, for Guyana and Suriname underwent a series of political and economic traumas in the 1980s. A coup in 1980 brought Colonel Desi Bouterse to power, and when 15 opposition leaders were executed in 1982, the Netherlands imposed sanctions. Then, from 1986, a guerrilla war broke out between boschnegers and the Paramaribo-based military regime. Civilian rule was only solidly re-established in 1991, and since then the country's fractious ethnic parties have formed more or less unstable coalition governments. The former dictator Bouterse, who has remained an influential presence, was indicted for cocaine smuggling by a Dutch court in 1997; the Surinamese Government refused to extradite him but in 1999 he was sentenced in absentia to 16 years.
Guyana and Suriname remain dependent on a handful of commodities: bauxite, sugar, timber, rice and bananas. Suriname continues to rely on Dutch financial support, which is decreasing and ever more conditional on democratic reforms. About half the population is estimated to live in poverty, and remittance payments from relatives in the Netherlands keep many families alive. This material poverty, deepening over the last decade, contrasts ironically with the country's extraordinary wealth of cultural diversity. Guyana on the other hand, has been experiencing positive economic growth since the liberalization of the economy in the 1990's. Violence continues to plague Guyana in which people of South Asian decent are mostly the victims. The police have also become victim of armed gangs. Suriname however, has remained relatively safe and stable.

Source: World Site Atlas, available online at: http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/403.htm

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Blog

Haqqani blames Pakistan Army for supporting Taliban

Secret US military plan on Pakistan: On hold or in full action?

A report "leaked" to the media says Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold"

Discovering America's hidden Islamic Architecture!

Finding the Islamic architecture in the USA is not that hard. Finding documentation on Muslim architecture is more difficult. Some of it is hidden The Architecture digs are hidden. That is understandable, but the architecture is in plain site.

Hawaii: Aloha Islam (+photos)

5:00AM Tuesday July 01, 2008
By Graham Reid

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US peanuts: Biden's bribes too little too late!

Iranian Retaliation in case of war

How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war

Military analysts say the Islamic Republic would strike back in unconventional ways – targeting American interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hindu-Muslim clashes escalate in IHK

Muslims in Spain

APHC represents the Kashmiris

Pakistani cotton seeds in the hands of US corporations

Shiakh Rashid predicts huge US attack in tribal areas before US polls

Taliaban target ISAF NATO supply line to Afghansitan

McCain Obama visit anti-Islam pastor. Media quiet on Graham's bigotry

McCain visits evangelist Billy Graham and his son

Kashmir Freedom movement re-ignited

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Islamic Crater Names on the moon

1932 repeat?

Book Review: The India Doctrine by Munshi

Its not the Taliban its the Pakhtun dummy! Its time to dump the Taliban moniker

SAY IT OBAMA. Just say it! There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, Keith Ellison

Assassination attempt on Sarkozy?

Israeli policeman kills self at Sarkozy ceremony By DAN BALILTY – 1 hour ago

The Muslims of Guyana and Suriname

MUSLIMS IN GUYANA

The Afghan Muslims of Guyana and Suriname

Blog

A report "leaked" to the media says Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold"

Finding the Islamic architecture in the USA is not that hard. Finding documentation on Muslim architecture is more difficult. Some of it is hidden The Architecture digs are hidden. That is understandable, but the architecture is in plain site.

Hawaii: Aloha Islam (+photos)

5:00AM Tuesday July 01, 2008By Graham Reid

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How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war

Military analysts say the Islamic Republic would strike back in unconventional ways – targeting American interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain visits evangelist Billy Graham and his son

More protests in Kashmir land row

Israeli policeman kills self at Sarkozy ceremony By DAN BALILTY – 1 hour ago

MUSLIMS IN GUYANA

The Afghan Muslims of Guyana and Suriname

5:00AM Tuesday July 01, 2008
By Graham Reid