Pakistan Ledger: Unbiased World news & views

Protests highlight Kashmir grievances

By Chris Morris, BBC News, Srinagar

Kashmir separatists celebrate the withdrawal of the land transfer plan

"It came as a bit of a shock. No-one was expecting it."

Professor Noor Ahmad Baba of Kashmir University was as surprised as anyone else when the Kashmir Valley was suddenly rocked last week by what turned into nine days of the biggest Muslim street protests seen in the region for years.

Only when the state government abandoned a controversial plan to transfer land to the trust which runs a Hindu shrine did the demonstrations come to an end.

But they had already become a focus for wider protests about Kashmiri identity.

Who gained from the events of the last two weeks?

Well, Kashmiri separatist parties seem to have discovered a new-found unity. But the notable thing about the protests was that they encompassed Kashmiris of many political persuasions.

Map shows Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Indian Occupied territory

'Opportunism'

"People are so frustrated," said Nawaz, a local businessman. "And the only thing they have left to defend is their land. That's why so many people came out and answered the call."

Tourists in Jammu - leaving!

The state government, though, is convinced that the demonstrations were all about political opportunism.

The land transfer, said government minister Abdul Gani Vakil, was only going to be temporary. But when the people protested, the government listened.

"We are going to the people on economic issues," Mr Vakil said.

"The other parties use sentimental and religious issues. We are fighting all these forces, because we want to make Jammu and Kashmir a prosperous state."

And in recent years there have been steps in the right direction. The talk is no longer of insurgency; it's of investment, jobs and career opportunities.

Until the protests were suddenly triggered, the tourist trade was booming.

But Kashmiri separatists insist that that's not enough. And the size of the recent protests suggests that on issues as sensitive as land and identity, plenty of people agree with them.

Solution needed

Kashmir seh rishtaa kiyaa: La Ilaha Ill-Lal lah. Batt key raheh gaa Hindustaan. Kashmir Banaigaa Pakistan

"Tulip gardens are being inaugurated, football matches are being held, yes all that is happening," said Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, one of Kashmir's main pro-independence politicians.

Hindus in Jammu have taken to the streets in recent days

"But the fact is that unless and until India addresses the sentiment for the resolution of the Kashmir issue I don't think you can have permanent peace in Kashmir."

For now, things have returned to normal in Srinagar. Shops have re-opened, and fuel supplies have been replenished.

But the repercussions of this new phase in Kashmiri protest are still spreading.

Hindu nationalist groups in Jammu, and elsewhere in India, have held angry demonstrations against the state government, accusing it of giving in to separatism.

On Thursday, protesters blocked roads and stopped trains in several Indian states.

The danger is that communal tensions focusing on Kashmir could intensify in the run-up to a series of state and national elections.

'Message to Delhi'

In Kashmir itself, people are wondering what will happen next. Enthusiasm for armed insurgency are there, but demands for political freedom have increased exponentially.

The outside world often looks at the situation in Kashmir through the prism of the long-running dispute between India and Pakistan, and that is certainly a factor.

But Kashmiris themselves want to have their say. And many of them feel they're being ignored.

"This is a message to Delhi," said Professor Noor Ahmad Baba. "Don't under-estimate the degree of resentment which exists here.

"Just because things are more peaceful now, it doesn't mean the problem of Kashmir has been solved."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7488136.stm

Posted by Isha Khan, who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com

Doris Duke could speak Arabic, collected Islamic artifacts from around the planet, built homes with Islamic Architecture, visited Muslim lands, owned a copy of the Quran, listened to Islamic music, wore Arab dress S9sometimes), built Islamic gardens, studied Islam, read Islamic books. and finally left her home to preserve her Islamic artifacts

Was Doris Duke a secret Muslim? or did they hide her Islamic beliefs?

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

At the end of her sometimes scandalous life, American heiress and socialite Doris Duke was unlikely to go into that great good night without some attendant controversy - and she didn't disappoint.

When she died in 1993, aged 80, at one of her homes - the so-called Falcon's Lair in Beverly Hills, which had belonged to Rudolph Valentino - she left her billion-dollar fortune to her charitable found ation. The catch was that it would be administered by her loyal butler, Bernard Lafferty, a gay Irishman often described as a drunkard and semi-literate.

Duke's was a singular life. When she was 12 she inherited a fortune and was dubbed by the press the Million Dollar Baby. She had two brief, high-profile marriages and serial lovers, and in 1988, at 75, she adopted a 35-year-old former bellydancer and Hare Krishna devotee, with whom some believed she was in a lesbian relationship. Always conscious of her looks, she had a facelift at 79.

With colourful locations, money to fritter and the cast of 20th-century public figures, Duke's life could be read as a script for a brash movie.

And indeed there has been a film made about her final days, Bernard and Doris starring Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon.

Aside from gossip, lovers and a fortune, Duke left a more publicly tangible legacy - her home on the Hawaiian island of Oahu near Waikiki Beach, which she built in the late 1930s and has now opened to small groups of visitors. Few tourists who hit the bars, beaches and aloha-shirt shops on Oahu make it to Duke's ocean-front house. It is under-publicised and only 12 visitors at a time are allowed entry on four days a week.

Shangri La, as she called it, is all but invisible as you come down the driveway to the main entrance, which is simply wooden doors in a white, windowless wall.

Duke - who owned homes and apartments in New York, Rhode Island and Los Angeles, as well as a farm in New Jersey - considered the 2ha property her retreat.

Duke liked her privacy, says Charles, the guide who is showing just two mainland couples and myself around on this typically warm day.

Even when glimpsed from passing boats, little of Shangri La reveals itself. Its discreet low lines offer no hint of its inner opulence.

What makes Shangri La so interesting is that it is a monument to unconstrained wealth, eclectic taste, restless acquisition and eccentricity.

However, Duke's ocean-front home has a more singular focus in its elegant mix of Islamic art and design. Stepping through that wooden door - inscribed in Arabic: "Enter here in peace and security" - you walk into a world which is lavish yet minimal.

Over there are 17th-century ceramic tiles from Turkey, down there in the inner courtyard around the fountain are some from 13th-century Iran, here are light fixtures from Syria, and over there, a mosaic made by Duke in 1938 based on Iranian arabesques.

But in the enormous living room Duke used the modern technology of her time - a glass wall, 12m wide and 5m high, slides into the floor at the push of a button.

Now you have an unimpeded view of Diamond Head beyond the Olympic-size pool, where Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller once swam.

Duke bequeathed this place to her foundation to promote the study and understanding of Middle East art and culture.

Duke saw what she liked, bought it, then placed it where it suited her. Although it draws on Islamic art, there is no consistency.

A beautiful 13th-century mihrab - a wall niche indicating the direction of Mecca - is on an east wall rather than facing northwest. To Duke, it simply looked better there.

Elsewhere, separate centuries and styles are juxtaposed. And in its heyday, Duke had Hawaiian knick-knacks - hula-girl glasses, surfboards - around the place. This was a home to be lived in.

Her collection of 3500 items is where the real treasure for a scholar might lie, but to peruse those you need special permission.

Shangri La rewards a visit on its own terms - and Duke had a bottomless well of money to create it. Her father, James Buck Duke, made his money from tobacco, property and energy companies and when he died in 1935 she inherited most of his estate - more than $1 billion in today's money.

The young Doris was by all accounts a smart and intelligent child, and although her wealth allowed her to indulge various passions such as a love of animals, the arts and travel, she was far from frivolous with her money.

As her third cousin Pony Duke noted, she didn't have hobbies, she had obsessions and she turned all her interests into businesses.

She made large donations to charities, but also took care of her own increasingly rapacious desires.

She married James Cromwell in 1935 and a lengthy honeymoon took them to India where Duke fell in love with the Taj Mahal.

She immediately commissioned a marble bedroom based on the designs of that exotic tomb.

The final stop on their 10-month honeymoon was Hawaii, where she began to conceive a retreat on the picturesque property at Kaalawai.

So, with more than 100 local workers and using designs by architect Marion Sims Wyeth, 100 workers started building the home, and it was occupied by 1938.

Duke used Shangri La - named for the Utopian kingdom in James Hilton's pre-war escapist novel Lost Horizon - as a seasonal retreat, more so after she and James divorced in 1943.

Although she was busy with the house Duke also had time for life.

She was briefly married to the notoriously well-endowed playboy-cum-diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, entertained herself with travel, alcohol and drugs, played jazz piano, and enjoyed numerous lovers, parties and famous guests.

When she was on the island she surfed competitively and for pleasure - and pleasure, especially of the sexual kind, was something she knew well, as a few salacious biographies attest.

Charles, our guide, is circumspect when I ask whether there is a thorough biography of Doris Duke.

He leaves us in no doubt that any bad press and innuendo about Duke remain outside those wooden doors.

At the end she was left with Lafferty, her beloved dog and the house, with its strange collision of eclectic Islamic decor set on the Pacific island.

In 1938, a reporter for the Honolulu Star Bulletin wrote: "On all the face of the globe there is no other place like it, nor is there likely to be".

- Detours, HoS

This is a draft article published for your convenience. It will be updated periodically

There is not not enough web presence of Pakistani newspapers. The newspapers who setup the sites about 10 to 15 years ago have not shown any new innovation that keeps up with the technology of the times.

Nondescript and virulently anti-Pakistan "web pages" like Thai Indian and Asian tribune and others hog the space when it comes to stories on Pakistan.

Pakistani newspapers publish AFP, AP and BBC stories verbatim without commentary or correction. Therefore the newspapers are nothing but clearing houses of "news" that is written thousands of miles away with an agenda

General criticism common to the six major Pakistani newspapers:

The Daily Dawn: The most sober and solid newspaper has a very disappointing presence on the web. the page was designed more than a decade ago does not allow any feedback or discussion forums and rarely appears on news.google.com searches on Pakistan. Dawn has very few graphics and hardly ever has any maps. A lack of correct Pakistani maps shown by Dawn and other Pakistani newspapers creates a problem for the American public. They only see the Indian maps and think them to be accurate. Many Pakistani newspapers including Dawn publish Indian maps.

For the longest times Ayaz Mir and Irfan Husain kept on regurgitating the Neocon version of events--blame Pakistan first for all evil.

We see almost no original research. World news stories are simply copied, mostly without comment. Many times "Orientalist" of Islamphoic vocabulary which was created to demean Pakistan ("Islamist") is used. No original graphics are created. No world class pictures are included. Dawn does not use site optimizers so Dawn news stories do not show up in google and yahoo researches at the top positions

The News: This is a good newspaper still stuck in 1980s technology. No feedback or discussion sessions are possible. Very few Graphics. No historical analysis of world events or deep insight into Pakistani history. For example the anniversary of the Battle of Plassy was totally ignored by The News and all Pakistani papers. Pakistani maps are now shown. Graphics are vew few and far in between. Some short stories are simply copied from the newsreader feed without correcting the wrong information about Pakistan. One might as well be reading news.google.com/pakistan which sorts all news items with Pakistan in it

The Daily news: Poor web presence. No discussion forum. Few graphics. Incorrect maps. Simple regurgitation of news feed stories. Few opinion columnists. Regional or local news is not highlighted. Original research on in depth analysis of issues are almost never presented. We have noticed that The Daily News and other papers have not presented the new research on the "Geographical Two Nation Theory" which says that "Pakistan existed 5000 years ago" as the Indus Valley Civilization. There are hundreds of books published, The Daily News has not found it fit to present Book

The Statesman:

GEO News website:

ARY Web site:

Foreign Troop Surge Useless - Afghan Paper

By: iStockAnalyst   Monday, July 07, 2008 9:57 AM

iStock an Indian site has carefully edited the full text of the newspaper article which was very critical of the US occupation. Only parts of the article are reproduced here. As we get a better unabridged translation the Pakistan Ledger will publish it

Text of article by Hamid Roshan entitled "Is the increase in US forces in Afghanistan the escalation of conflict or end of civil war?" published by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht- e Sobh on 6 July

Despite the fact that June was declared the deadliest and most difficult month for foreign forces in Afghanistan, US President George Bush plans to send fresh forces to Afghanistan. Even Barack Obama, whose success in the next presidential election is still not certain, has promised to ask the Europeans to send more troops for war in Afghanistan.

The foreign troop surge shows that the military option to win the war against the Taleban in the south and east is still a fundamental strategy. Maybe, George Bush believes in the effect of air strikes of American warplanes more than anyone else at the White House. Bush may think that the Europeans and Karzai will bear and carry on this costly war.

The Europeans are afraid of their wavering public opinion and death of their soldiers, and the Afghan government forces have turned into shields for the NATO forces in the country's south. It was very painful that eight Afghan policemen were killed in Panjwai District of Kandahar Province last week, but the deaths of these soldiers do not have any effect in improving the situation in the south. Despite that, the USA is hopeful that the Afghan security forces will be able to take over the war against the Taleban by 2011 and NATO will play a role of advisor in the war. This means that we will not be able to put an end to the war against the Taleban by 2011, but we will have an experienced Afghan army and police.

There is a very simple question: Does an increase in the foreign military in Afghanistan help Afghanistan's security and defeat the Taleban in the south and east?

Answering this question has both positive and negative aspects. The positive point is that the troop build-up fulfils the demand of NATO for more troops in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Mr Karzai can also remain assured that he enjoys enough military support in the war against the Taleban and still has the support of White House.

But this alone is not enough. The Taleban have been able to expand their influence and strengthen positions in different parts of the country, and their movements have not been reduced despite the offensives of the Afghan National Army and NATO forces in the wars such as in Arghandab. The Taleban, however, do not have the ability to wage a frontal war against the Afghan and foreign forces in the best time.

But the foreign troop surge means the continuation of war, and this surge shows more preparations are needed to defeat the Taleban.

As the foreign military build-up is not made to control Afghanistan's borders with Pakistan and the Taleban can easily cross the border, the troop surge does not create much optimism. This policy [foreign troop surge] is effective if the Taleban do not enjoy financial and intelligence support on the other side of the border and if the Pakistan army stops supporting Taleban's prominent commanders in Afghanistan. If Pakistan's borders remain open to the Taleban, intelligence information is given to them, the Taleban continue treating their wounded soldiers in Pakistan, and the Pakistan religious schools provide the Taleban with fresh fighters, then what will be the big impact of the foreign troop surge against the Taleban?

It is only the Taleban that can gain victory in a guerrilla war and suicide attacks and then fleeing to another country. Boosting foreign military forces can have more effect only in a face-to-face war - an issue the Taleban cannot dare and do not have the ability to carry out.

More than 20 civilians were killed in an air strike in Nurestan Province. The UN in Afghanistan is speaking of a 60 per cent increase in civilian casualties. Military operations also harm ordinary people besides the Taleban in Afghanistan. By warning about civilian casualties, some people are saying that the USA should not make the mistake the Russians made. This means that civilian casualties can lead to a kind of general discontent. Therefore, many are concerned that civilians will suffer more casualties and financial losses with the increase of foreign troops and the prolonging of the war, and the country will once again be caught in a devastating civil war.

As long as the US strategy remains based on the wrong philosophy of forbearance towards Pakistan and fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan, the foreign forces will only contribute to the prolonging of the war, push Afghanistan towards another civil war, and considerably strengthen extremism in the south. The foreign forces are killing some Taleban, but more despotic Taleban are coming from Quetta, Karachi and North Waziristan and joining the war in Helmand, Kandahar and Konar Provinces after being told by Pakistani clerics that they will go to paradise.

Originally published by Hasht-e Sobh, Kabul, in Dari 6 Jul 08.

Editorial: Embassy attack a warning 8 July 2008

IT has been a bad two days on the terrorist front. Yesterday, in the Afghan capital a suicide attack on the Indian Embassy killed at least 41 people. Hours earlier in the Pakistani capital, a suicide bomb killed more than 10 Pakistani policemen while in the Somali capital gunmen murdered a top UN aid official.

The only civilized response to all three attacks is horror and revulsion - horror that once again innocent people have been murdered by evil-minded fanatics and revulsion at the warped thinking which drives them to such wickedness.

There is no factual link between these three killing sprees. Yet there is a broad political link, at least between the Kabul and Islamabad attacks. They were the work of so-called Islamic militants - a resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan and a similar movement in Pakistan. (Responsibility for the Somali attack is more difficult to pin down. It could be the work of a disgruntled war lord; on the other hand, attacks on aid agencies have noticeably increased in recent months and have been largely blamed on the local Al-Qaeda.)

The link between these militants is their twisted version of Islam that they use to justify their evil acts, as well as a sense of common cause and a hatred of everyone else who is not part of their movement.

It is a macabre irony that Indians and Pakistanis should be the joint targets of these fanatics. In the case of the Kabul attack, the Taleban were clearly out to make common cause with Kashmiri militants. That is a new development, but hardly surprising. Not that they will have any effect on that or on Indian relations with Afghanistan. They may have imagined that they could force a change of heart by Delhi - that it would end its program of aid and reconstruction - but they are as ignorant and foolish in that as they are cruel and evil. India, with its long experience of terrorists and its policy not to make concessions to them, will continue to maintain close ties with the Afghan government and provide it with aid.

The same with Pakistan. Sunday's killings will not deter the Pakistani police from doing their job any more than terrorist bombs deter the police in Spain or elsewhere. That is the one constant about terrorism. It never wins against a well-organized army or state. It is a thorn in the side of the state, painful and bloody, but not terminal. The only time terrorists can succeed is in a power vacuum. For all the problems, no one can say that about Afghanistan today. The Taleban may be resurgent but the country is not in chaos or on the point of collapse. Nor should anyone repeat the easy lie that it is forever a graveyard for foreigners. That is the very antithesis of what Afghanistan is. It is not the clash point of civilizations; it is, and has been for three thousand years, the crossroads of civilizations. It certainly was never the graveyard for the Arabs and Persians who introduced Islam to the country.

The embassy attack does not mean that Afghanistan is an impossible mess or that the international forces there are losing the battle. But it is a warning to President Karzai and Afghanistan's friends to redouble efforts to pacify the country. Ultimately that is not a military issue, it is a financial one. More roads, more schools, more infrastructure will mean more jobs, more trade, more business and more reason for ordinary Afghans to appreciate and support their government. That is President Karzai's urgent task.