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Archive for July, 2013

Arundhati Roy: India’s shame

Posted by Mahi Ali in FREEDOM FOR INDIAN OCCUPIED KASHMIR on July 19th, 2013

 
Arundhati Roy raised 13 questions about the attack on Indian parliament 
 
Mohammad Afzal is due to hang for his part in the 2001 attack on India’s parliament building. But was he only a bit player? And is the country trying to bury embarrassing questions about its war on terror? 
 
Arundhati Roy
The Guardian, 15 Dec 2006
 

 
 
Inline image 2
Mohammed Afzal. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
 
Question 1: For months before the attack on parliament, both the government and the police had been saying that parliament could be attacked. On December 12 2001, the then prime minister, AB Vajpayee, warned of an imminent attack. On December 13 it happened. Given that there was an “improved security drill”, how did a car bomb packed with explosives enter the parliament complex?
 
Question 2: Within days of the attack, the Special Cell of the Delhi police said it was a meticulously planned joint operation of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They said the attack was led by a man called “Mohammad” who was also involved in the hijacking of flight IC-814 in 1998. (This was later refuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.) None of this was ever proved in court. What evidence did the Special Cell have for its claim?
 
Question 3: The entire attack was recorded live on CCTV. Two Congress party MPs, Kapil Sibal and Najma Heptullah, demanded in parliament that the CCTV recording be shown to the members. They said that there was confusion about the details of the event. The chief whip of the Congress party, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, said, “I counted six men getting out of the car. But only five were killed. The closed circuit TV camera recording clearly showed the six men.” If Dasmunshi was right, why did the police say that there were only five people in the car? Who was the sixth person? Where is he now? Why was the CCTV recording not produced by the prosecution as evidence in the trial? Why was it not released for public viewing?
 
Question 4: Why was parliament adjourned after some of these questions were raised?
 
Question 5: A few days after December 13, the government declared that it had “incontrovertible evidence” of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack, and announced a massive mobilisation of almost half a million soldiers to the Indo-Pakistan border. The subcontinent was pushed to the brink of nuclear war. Apart from Afzal’s “confession”, extracted under torture (and later set aside by the supreme court), what was the “incontrovertible evidence”?
 
Question 6: Is it true that the military mobilisation to the Pakistan border had begun long before the December 13 attack?
 
Question 7: How much did this military standoff, which lasted for nearly a year, cost? How many soldiers died in the process? How many soldiers and civilians died because of mishandled landmines, and how many peasants lost their homes and land because trucks and tanks were rolling through their villages and landmines were being planted in their fields?
 
Question 8: In a criminal investigation, it is vital for the police to show how the evidence gathered at the scene of the attack led them to the accused. The police have not managed to show how they connected Geelani to the attack. And how did the police reach Afzal? The Special Cell says Geelani led them to Afzal. But the message to look out for Afzal was actually flashed to the Srinagar police before Geelani was arrested. So how did the Special Cell connect Afzal to the December 13 attack?
 
Question 9: The courts acknowledge that Afzal was a surrendered militant who was in regular contact with the security forces, particularly the STF of Jammu and Kashmir police. How do the security forces explain the fact that a person under their surveillance was able to conspire in a major militant operation?
 
Question 10: Is it plausible that organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad would rely on a person who had been in and out of STF torture chambers, and was under constant police surveillance, as the principal link for a major operation?
 
Question 11: In his statement before the court, Afzal says that he was introduced to “Mohammed” and instructed to take him to Delhi by a man called Tariq, who was working with the STF. Tariq was named in the police charge sheet. Who is Tariq and where is he now?
 
Question 12: On December 19 2001, six days after the parliament attack, police commissioner SM Shangari identified one of the attackers who was killed as Mohammad Yasin Fateh Mohammed (alias Abu Hamza) of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had been arrested in Mumbai in November 2000 and immediately handed over to the Jammu and Kashmir police. He gave detailed descriptions to support his statement. If police commissioner Shangari was right, how did Yasin, a man in the custody of the Jammu and Kashmir police, end up participating in the parliament attack? If he was wrong, where is Yasin now?
 
Question 13: Why is it that we still do not know who the five “terrorists” killed in the parliament attack are?
 
Five years ago this week, on December 13 2001, the Indian parliament was in its winter session. The government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal. At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an improvised explosive device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. 
 
Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed too. The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the parliament building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence – weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards, photographs, packets of dried fruit and even a love letter.
 
Not surprisingly, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11 attacks in the US only three months previously.
 
On December 14 2001, the day after the attack on parliament, the Special Cell (anti-terrorist squad) of the Delhi police claimed it had tracked down several people suspected of being involved in the conspiracy. The next day, it announced that it had “cracked the case”: the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar- e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Three Kashmiri men, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru and Mohammad Afzal, and Shaukat’s wife, Afsan Guru, were arrested.
 
In the tense days that followed, parliament was adjourned. The Indian government declared that Pakistan – America’s closest ally in the “war on terror” – was a terrorist state. On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and banned air traffic with Pakistan. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than half a million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. All this cost India an estimated pounds 1.1bn of public money. About 800 soldiers died in the panicky process of mobilisation alone.
 
The police charge sheet was filed in a special fast-track trial court designated for cases under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Some three years later, the trial court sentenced Geelani, Shaukat and Afzal to death. Afsan Guru was sentenced to five years of “rigorous imprisonment”. On appeal, the high court subsequently acquitted Geelani and Afsan, but upheld Shaukat’s and Afzal’s death sentence. Eventually, the supreme court upheld the acquittals and reduced Shaukat’s punishment to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. However, it not just confirmed, but enhanced Mohammad Afzal’s sentence. He was given three life sentences and a double death sentence.
 
In its judgment on August 5 2005, the supreme court admitted that the evidence against Afzal was only circumstantial, and that there was no evidence that he belonged to any terrorist group or organisation. But it went on to endorse what can only be described as lynch law. “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation,” it said, “and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”
 
Spelling out the reasons for giving Afzal the death penalty, the judgment went on: “The appellant, who is a surrendered militant and who was bent upon repeating the acts of treason against the nation, is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct.” This implies a dangerous ignorance of what it means to be a “surrendered militant” in Kashmir today.
 
So, should Afzal’s life be extinguished? His story is fascinating because it is inextricably entwined with the story of the Kashmir Valley. It is a story that stretches far beyond the confines of courtrooms and the limited imagination of people who live in the secure heart of a self-declared “superpower”. Afzal’s story has its origins in a war zone whose laws are beyond the pale of the fine arguments and delicate sensibilities of normal jurisprudence.
 
For all these reasons it is critical that we consider carefully the strange, sad and utterly sinister story of the December 13 attack. It tells us a great deal about the way the world’s largest “democracy” really works. It connects the biggest things to the smallest. It traces the pathways that connect what happens in the shadowy grottoes of our police stations to what goes on in the snowy streets of Paradise Valley, and from there to the malign furies that bring nations to the brink of nuclear war. It raises specific questions that deserve specific, and not ideological or rhetorical, answers. What hangs in the balance is far more than the fate of one man.
 
For the most part, the December 13 attack was an astonishingly incompetent “terrorist” strike. But consummate competence appeared to be the hallmark of everything that followed: the gathering of evidence, the speed of the investigation by the Special Cell, the arrest and charging of the accused and the three-and-a-half-year-long judicial process that began with the fast-track trial court.
 
The operative phrase in all of this is “appeared to be”. If you follow the story carefully, you will encounter two sets of masks. First, the mask of consummate competence (accused arrested, “case cracked” in two days flat), and then, when things began to come undone, the benign mask of shambling incompetence (shoddy evidence, procedural flaws, material contradictions). But underneath all of this – as several lawyers, academics and journalists who have studied the case in detail have shown – is something more sinister, more worrying. Over the past few years the worries have grown into a mountain of misgivings, impossible to ignore.
 
The doubts set in as early as the day after the parliament attack, when the police arrested Geelani, a young lecturer at Delhi University. His outraged colleagues and friends, certain that he had been framed, contacted the well-known lawyer Nandita Haksar and asked her to take on his case. This marked the beginning of a campaign for the fair trial of Geelani. It flew in the face of mass hysteria and corrosive propaganda that was enthusiastically disseminated by the mass media. But despite this, the campaign was successful, and Geelani was eventually acquitted, along with Afsan Guru.
 
Geelani’s acquittal blew a gaping hole in the prosecution’s version of the parliament attack. The linchpin of its conspiracy theory suddenly tuned out to be innocent. But in some odd way, in the public mind, the acquittal of two of the accused only confirmed the guilt of the other two. There was bloodlust that had to be satiated. When the government announced that Afzal, Accused No 1 in the case, would be hanged on October 20 2006, it seemed that most people welcomed the news not just with approval, but with morbid excitement. But then, once again, the questions resurfaced.
 
To see through the prosecution’s case against Geelani was relatively easy. He was plucked out of thin air and transplanted into the centre of the “conspiracy” as its kingpin. Afzal was different. He had been extruded through the sewage system of the hell that Kashmir has become. He surfaced through a manhole, covered in shit (and when he emerged, policemen in the Special Cell pissed on him. Literally.) The first thing they made him do was a “media confession” in which he implicated himself completely in the attack. The speed with which this happened made many of us believe that he was indeed guilty as charged. It was only much later that the circumstances under which this “confession” was made were revealed, and even the supreme court was to set it aside, saying that the police had violated legal safeguards.
 
From the very beginning there was nothing pristine or simple about Afzal’s case. His story gives us a glimpse into what life is really like in the Kashmir Valley. It is only in the Noddy Book version we read about in our newspapers that security forces battle militants and innocent Kashmiris are caught in the crossfire. In the adult version, Kashmir is a valley awash with militants, renegades, security forces, double-crossers, informers, spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees, extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies, human rights activists, NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted-for money and weapons. There are not always clear lines that demarcate the boundaries between all these things and people; it is not easy to tell who is working for whom.
 
Truth, in Kashmir, is probably more dangerous than anything else. The deeper you dig, the worse it gets. At the bottom of the pit are the Special Operations Group and Special Task Force (STF), the most ruthless, indisciplined and dreaded elements of the Indian security apparatus in Kashmir, which play a central role in the Afzal story. Unlike the more formal forces, they operate in a twilight zone where policemen, surrendered militants, renegades and common criminals do business. They prey upon the local population, particularly in rural Kashmir. Their primary victims are the thousands of young Kashmiri men who rose up in revolt in the anarchic uprising of the early 1990s and have since surrendered and are trying to live normal lives.
 
In 1989, when Afzal crossed the border to be trained as a militant, he was only 20. He returned with no training, disillusioned with his experience. He put down his gun and enrolled himself in Delhi University. In 1993, without ever having been a practising militant, he voluntarily surrendered to the Border Security Force. Illogically enough, it was at this point that his nightmares began. His surrender was treated as a crime and his life became hell. Afzal’s story has enraged Kashmiris because what has happened to him could have happened, is happening and has happened to thousands of young Kashmiri men and their families. 
 
The only difference is that their stories are played out in the dingy bowels of interrogation centres, army camps and police stations where they have been burned, beaten, electrocuted, blackmailed and killed, their bodies thrown out of the backs of trucks for passers-by to find. Whereas Afzal’s story is being performed like a piece of medieval theatre on the national stage, in the clear light of day, with the legal sanction of a “fair trial”, the hollow benefits of a “free press” and the all pomp and ceremony of a so-called democracy.
 
In documents submitted to the court, Afzal describes how, in the months before the attack on parliament, he was tortured in the camps of the STF – with electrodes on his genitals and chillies and petrol in his anus. He talks of how he was a constant victim of extortion. He mentions the name of Deputy Superintendent of Police Devinder Singh, who said he needed him to do a “small job” for him in Delhi. (Singh has subsequently admitted on record to having tortured Afzal in exactly the ways Afzal has described.) Afzal has also said that from the time he was arrested up to the time he was charged (a few months), his younger brother Hilal was held in illegal confinement in a police camp in Kashmir. As ransom.
 
Even today, Afzal does not claim complete innocence. It is the nature of his involvement that is being contested. For instance, was he coerced, tortured and blackmailed into playing even the peripheral part he played? In a gross violation of his constitutional rights, from the time he was arrested and right through the crucial phase of the trial when the real work of building up a case is done, Afzal did not have a lawyer. He had nobody to put out his version of the story, or help him or anyone else sift through the tangle of lies and fabrications and propaganda put out by the police. Various individuals worked it out for themselves. Today, five years later, a group of lawyers, academics, journalists and writers has published a reader (December 13th: The Strange Case of the Parliament Attack, published by Penguin India). It is this body of work that has fractured what, only recently, appeared to be a national consensus interwoven with mass hysteria.
 
Through the fissures, those who have come under scrutiny – shadowy individuals, counter-intelligence and security agencies, political parties – are beginning to surface. They wave flags, hurl abuse, issue hot denials and cover their tracks with more and more untruths. Thus they reveal themselves.
 
The essays in the Penguin book raise questions about how Afzal, who never had proper legal representation, can be sentenced to death without having had an opportunity to be heard, without a fair trial. They raise questions about fabricated arrest memos, falsified seizure and recovery memos, procedural flaws, vital evidence that has been tampered with, false telephone records, false testimonies, legal lacunae, material contradictions in the testimonies of police and prosecution witnesses, and the outright lies that were presented in court and published in newspapers. They show how there is hardly a single piece of evidence that stands up to scrutiny.
 
 
 
These questions, examined cumulatively, point to something far more serious than incompetence. The words that come to mind are complicity, collusion, involvement. There is no need for us to feign shock or shrink from thinking these thoughts and saying them out loud. Governments and their intelligence agencies have a hoary tradition of using strategies such as this to further their own ends. (Look up the burning of the Reichstag and the rise of Nazi power in Germany in 1933; or Operation Gladio, in which European intelligence agencies created acts of terrorism, especially in Italy, in order to discredit militant groups such as the Red Brigades.)
 
The official response to all of these questions has been dead silence. As things stand, Afzal’s execution has been postponed while the president considers his clemency petition. Meanwhile, the Bhartiya Janata party (now in the opposition) announced that it would turn “Hang Afzal” into a national campaign. But it does not seem to have taken off. Now other avenues are being explored. The main strategy seems to be to create confusion and polarise the debate on communal lines. In the business of spreading confusion, the media, particularly television journalists, can be counted on to be perfect collaborators. On discussions, chat shows and “special reports”, we have television anchors playing around with crucial facts, like young children in a sandpit. Torturers, estranged brothers, senior police officers and politicians are emerging from the woodwork and talking. The more they talk, the more interesting it all becomes.
 
One character who is rapidly emerging from the shadowy periphery and wading on to centre-stage is deputy superintendent Devinder Singh. He was showcased on the national news (CNN-IBN), in what was presented as a “sting” operation with a hidden camera. It all seemed a bit unnecessary, however, because Singh has been talking a lot these days. He has done recorded interviews, on the phone as well as face to face, saying exactly the same shocking things. Weeks before the sting operation, in a recorded interview with Parvaiz Bukhari, a freelance journalist, he said, “I did interrogate and torture him [Afzal] at my camp for several days. 
 
And we never recorded his arrest in the books anywhere. His description of torture at my camp is true. That was the procedure those days and we did pour petrol in his ass and gave him electric shocks. But I could not break him. He did not reveal anything to me despite our hardest possible interrogation … He looked like a ‘bhondu’ [fool] those days, what you call a ‘chootya’ [idiot] type. And I had a reputation for torture, interrogation and breaking suspects. If anybody came out of my interrogation clean, nobody would ever touch him again. He would be considered clean for good by the whole department.”
 
This is not an empty boast. Singh has a formidable reputation for torture in the Kashmir Valley. On TV, his boasting spiralled into policy-making. “Torture is the only deterrent for terrorism,” he said. “I do it for the nation.” He did not bother to explain why or how the “bhondu” that he tortured and subsequently released allegedly went on to become the diabolical mastermind of the parliament attack. Singh then said that Afzal was a Jaish militant. If this is true, why was the evidence not placed before the courts? And why on earth was Afzal released? Why was he not watched? There is a definite attempt to try to dismiss this as incompetence. But given everything we know now, it would take all of Singh’s delicate professional skills to make some of us believe that.
 
The official version of the story of the parliament attack is very quickly coming apart at the seams. Even the supreme court judgment, with all its flaws of logic and leaps of faith, does not accuse Afzal of being the mastermind of the attack. So who was the mastermind? If Afzal is hanged, we may never know. But LK Advani, the leader of the opposition, wants him hanged at once. Even a day’s delay, he says, is against the national interest. Why? What is the hurry? The man is locked up in a high-security cell on death row. He is not allowed out of his cell for even five minutes a day. What harm can he do? Talk? Write, perhaps? Surely, even in Advani’s own narrow interpretation of the term, it is in the national interest not to hang Afzal? At least not until there is an inquiry that reveals what the real story is and who actually attacked parliament?
 
A genuine inquiry would have to mean far more than just a political witch-hunt. It would have to look into the part played by intelligence, counter-insurgency and security agencies as well. Offences such as the fabrication of evidence and the blatant violation of procedural norms have already become established in the courts, but they look very much like just the tip of the iceberg. We now have a police officer admitting – boasting – on record that he was involved in the illegal detention and torture of a fellow citizen. Is all of this acceptable to the people, the government and the courts of India?
 
Given the track record of Indian governments (past and present, right, left and centre) it is naive – perhaps utopian is a better word – to hope that today’s politicians will ever have the courage to institute an inquiry that will, once and for all, uncover the real story. A maintenance dose of pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all governments. But hope has little to do with reason.
 
And then there are even more disturbing questions that have been raised, which range beyond the fate of Afzal. Some of these are critical for a country that is claiming to be a responsible nuclear power. Here are 13 questions for December 13:
 
Question 1: For months before the attack on parliament, both the government and the police had been saying that parliament could be attacked. On December 12 2001, the then prime minister, AB Vajpayee, warned of an imminent attack. On December 13 it happened. Given that there was an “improved security drill”, how did a car bomb packed with explosives enter the parliament complex?
 
Question 2: Within days of the attack, the Special Cell of the Delhi police said it was a meticulously planned joint operation of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They said the attack was led by a man called “Mohammad” who was also involved in the hijacking of flight IC-814 in 1998. (This was later refuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.) None of this was ever proved in court. What evidence did the Special Cell have for its claim?
 
Question 3: The entire attack was recorded live on CCTV. Two Congress party MPs, Kapil Sibal and Najma Heptullah, demanded in parliament that the CCTV recording be shown to the members. They said that there was confusion about the details of the event. The chief whip of the Congress party, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, said, “I counted six men getting out of the car. But only five were killed. The closed circuit TV camera recording clearly showed the six men.” If Dasmunshi was right, why did the police say that there were only five people in the car? Who was the sixth person? Where is he now? Why was the CCTV recording not produced by the prosecution as evidence in the trial? Why was it not released for public viewing?
 
Question 4: Why was parliament adjourned after some of these questions were raised?
 
Question 5: A few days after December 13, the government declared that it had “incontrovertible evidence” of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack, and announced a massive mobilisation of almost half a million soldiers to the Indo-Pakistan border. The subcontinent was pushed to the brink of nuclear war. Apart from Afzal’s “confession”, extracted under torture (and later set aside by the supreme court), what was the “incontrovertible evidence”?
 
Question 6: Is it true that the military mobilisation to the Pakistan border had begun long before the December 13 attack?
 
Question 7: How much did this military standoff, which lasted for nearly a year, cost? How many soldiers died in the process? How many soldiers and civilians died because of mishandled landmines, and how many peasants lost their homes and land because trucks and tanks were rolling through their villages and landmines were being planted in their fields?
 
Question 8: In a criminal investigation, it is vital for the police to show how the evidence gathered at the scene of the attack led them to the accused. The police have not managed to show how they connected Geelani to the attack. And how did the police reach Afzal? The Special Cell says Geelani led them to Afzal. But the message to look out for Afzal was actually flashed to the Srinagar police before Geelani was arrested. So how did the Special Cell connect Afzal to the December 13 attack?
 
Question 9: The courts acknowledge that Afzal was a surrendered militant who was in regular contact with the security forces, particularly the STF of Jammu and Kashmir police. How do the security forces explain the fact that a person under their surveillance was able to conspire in a major militant operation?
 
Question 10: Is it plausible that organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad would rely on a person who had been in and out of STF torture chambers, and was under constant police surveillance, as the principal link for a major operation?
 
Question 11: In his statement before the court, Afzal says that he was introduced to “Mohammed” and instructed to take him to Delhi by a man called Tariq, who was working with the STF. Tariq was named in the police charge sheet. Who is Tariq and where is he now?
 
Question 12: On December 19 2001, six days after the parliament attack, police commissioner SM Shangari identified one of the attackers who was killed as Mohammad Yasin Fateh Mohammed (alias Abu Hamza) of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had been arrested in Mumbai in November 2000 and immediately handed over to the Jammu and Kashmir police. He gave detailed descriptions to support his statement. If police commissioner Shangari was right, how did Yasin, a man in the custody of the Jammu and Kashmir police, end up participating in the parliament attack? If he was wrong, where is Yasin now?
 
Question 13: Why is it that we still do not know who the five “terrorists” killed in the parliament attack are?
 
(C) Arundhati Roy 20

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THE HUFFINGTON POST: Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex

Posted by admin in MALALA YOUSUFZAI on July 19th, 2013

Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex
 
Assed Baig, 13/07/2013
 
Malala
 
When Malala Yusufzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen simply because she wanted to gain an education it sent shockwaves around the world.
 
Straight away the Western media took up the issue. Western politicians spoke out and soon she found herself in the UK. The way in which the West reacted did make me question the reasons and motives behind why Malala’s case was taken up and not so many others. There is no justifying the brutal actions of the Taliban or the denial of the universal right to education, however there is a deeper more historic narrative that is taking place here.
 
This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her.
 
The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, “see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives.” The truth is that there are hundreds and thousands of other Malalas. They come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places in the world. Many are victims of the West, but we conveniently forget about those as Western journalists and politicians fall over themselves to appease their white-middle class guilt also known as the white man’s burden.
 
Gordon Brown stood at the UN and spoke words in support for Malala, yet he is the very same Gordon Brown that voted for the war in Iraq that not only robbed people of their education but of their lives. The same journalists that failed to question or report on the Western wars in an intelligible manner now sing the praises of the West as they back Malala and her campaign without putting it in context of the war in Afghanistan and the destabalisation of the region thanks to the Western occupation of Afghanistan.
 
Malala’s message is true, it is profound, it is something the world needs to take note of; education is a right of every child, but Malala has been used as a tool by the West. It allows countries like Britain to hide their sins in Afghanistan and Iraq. It allows journalists to report a feel good story whilst they neglect so many others, like the American drone strikes that terrorise men, women and children in Pakistan’s border regions.
 
The current narrative continues the demonization of the non-white Muslim man. Painting him as a savage, someone beyond negotiating with, beyond engaging with, the only way to deal with this kind of savage is to wage war, occupy and use drones against them. NATO is bombing to save girls like Malala is the message here.
 
Historically the West has always used women to justify the actions of war mongering men. It is in the imagery, it is in art, in education, it is even prevalent in Western human rights organisations, Amnesty International’s poster campaign coinciding with the NATO summit in New York encouraged NATO to ‘keep the progress going!’ in Afghanistan.
 
Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz were also shot along with Malala, the media and politicians seem to have forgotten about them. Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi – how many of the Western politicians and journalists know about this name? She was the 14-year-old girl gang raped by five US soldiers, then her and her family, including her six-year-old sister were murdered. There are no days named after her, no mentions of her at the UN, and we don’t see Gordon Brown pledging his name to her cause.
 
I support Malala, I support the right to education for all, I just cannot stand the hypocrisy of Western politicians and media as they pick and choose, congratulating themselves for something that they have caused. Malala is the good native, she does not criticise the West, she does not talk about the drone strikes, she is the perfect candidate for the white man to relieve his burden and save the native.
 
The Western savior complex has hijacked Malala’s message. The West has killed more girls than the Taliban have. The West has denied more girls an education via their missiles than the Taliban has by their bullets. The West has done more against education around the world than extremists could ever dream of. So, please, spare us the self-righteous and self-congratulatory message that is nothing more than propaganda that tells us that the West drops bombs to save girls like Malala.
 
 

REFERENCE

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ZARDARI’S RELATIONSHIP WITH INDIAN SPY:CAN THIS MAN BE TRUSTED WITH STATE SECRETS?

Posted by Rana Tanveer in INDIAN GOVTS LIES EXPOSED on July 19th, 2013

Indian spy who was Zardari’s jail mate wants to meet him

 

Kolkata: Mehboob Elahi is happy that his old prison mate Asif Ali Zardari is coming to India but is crestfallen that he will not get to meet the Pakistani president during his short visit Sunday. Elahi, a former Indian spy, was Zardari’s jail mate at the Karachi Central Jail for a few months between 1986-87.

Elahi had decided that if he gets to meet Zardari he would request the Pakistani president to release all the Indian prisoners of war in Pakistani jails.

Elahi had served two decades in several Pakistani prisons from 1977-1996 on the charge of spying for India. He was Zardari’s prison mate along with several leaders of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the Karachi Central Jail in 1986-87.

 
Indian spy who was Zardari's jail mate wants to meet him

Mehboob Elahi, a former Indian spy, was Zardari’s jail mate at the Karachi Central Jail for a few months between 1986-87.

“I had been serving in the same prison along with Zardari and Benazir Bhutto during the military rule in Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq. We used to meet Zardari on Sundays in the courtyard of the jail,” Elahi said in an exclusive interview.

Elahi, a seasoned spy of the late 60s and 70s, had twice crossed over to Pakistan – once via East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and once via the western border. He recollected how he had developed a good rapport with Zardari in prison.

“He (Zardari) used to talk about the political situation in Pakistan, and the misrule and suppression of Zia. He had a strong following inside the jail,” he recalled.

According to Elahi, Zardari was sympathetic to the plight of Indian prisoners.

“Zardari was quite influential and he was sympathetic to Indian POWs. The Indian POWs used to wash the clothes of Pakistani prisoners and do menial chores for them. They would also do it for Zardari, but Zardari was sympathetic to them. He would speak to them, buy them soap and sweets,” said Elahi.

Initially, Elahi spent nearly 10 years in Pakistan from 1968 to 1977 after spying in various government organisations, including the Pakistani army and police.

He regretted that neither the Indian government nor the Indian Army has done enough to bring the “real heroes” back home.

Elahi had written to the Pakistani High Commission in India seeking an appointment with Zardari during his six-hour visit to India, but did not receive a reply.

“I didn’t get a reply from Pakistan high commission. But the sad thing is that I had also written to the Indian president ( Pratibha Patil), but she too didn’t reply. I am disheartened by this indifference of both the countries towards the POWs.”

Since his release in 1996, Elahi has been a voracious campaigner for release of Indian POWs and prisoners. During the BJP-led NDA rule he sat on a demonstration in New Delhi and even threatened to commit suicide in front of parliament. The then defence and foreign minister Jaswant Singh had assured him that the Indian government was consistently taking up the issue with Pakistan.

Elahi is upset that in India “most Muslims are viewed with suspicion”.

“Muslims are patriots. They should not been seen with an eye of suspicion. Muslims are ready to die for their motherland,” said Elahi.

 

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Revelation of Indian State Sponsored Black OPS Terrorism in Pakistan By RAW Chief. Why is US Mum? Pakistan Media(GEO, Dunya,Waqt) Silent?

Posted by Jasmine in STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM BY INDIA on July 19th, 2013

 

Tue, 2013-07-16 07:54 — editor
 
By Zaheerul Hassan

A former Indian investigator Satish Verma of Home Minister has disclosed that a member of the secret service team had accused that Indian governments staged terror attack on Lok Sabha and the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai. Notably, over 300 people were killed and injured during the attacks. As usually India stayed ISI responsible for these attacks. However, the alleged responsible for attacks Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru were apprehended and hanged till death.

Attacks on Mumbai and Parliament pushed two South Asian nuclear countries into the brink of war and put the regional peace at stake. It further strained already deteriorated relationship between two nations. The talks on Confidential Building Measures (CBM) which were started in the previous regime of Nawaz Sharif in 2004 were suspended as result of stated two attacks. Exchange of cultural groups was terminated while cancelling the visa of Pakistani actors who were on visit to India. At that time, Bal Thackeray (late), India’s Hindu terrorist too has advised his government to attack Pakistan without warning. He also stated that he is proud of extremist Hindus if at all they have launched Mumbai attacks. His statements are the true reflection of the exact mentality of extremist thoughts. Earlier reports are that US had asked Islamabad to allow New Delhi to attack some selected targets in Pakistan and later should not retaliate.

Moreover at that time, the major media group of Pakistan aired the documentary about Ajmal Kasab and tried to prove the involvement of Pakistani non state actors in Mumbai attacks but now after the statement of Satish Verma the same electronic channel yet to air half of that time which it spent in establishing Pakistan’s connection in Mumbai attack.

Anyhow, the Indian involvement in the case of Mumbai and Parliament was established when in the fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan, a key government official, R V S Mani submitted an affidavit in the court revealing that a member of CBI and SIC investigation team Satish Verma told him that the terrorists attacks on Parliament in Delhi and Mumbai terror attacks were pre-planned. He further explained that the objectives of attacks were strengthening of counter-terror legislation (sic). Actually, the fake encounter was also planned by the RAW to support anti-Muslim Mr. Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat state.

The Gujarat Police had claimed that Ishrat and the three others were Lashkar-e-Toiba members and had come to Gujarat to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Ishrat’s family, however, has been maintaining that Ishrat was a college student who was struggling to run her family after her father’s death.

In fact the conspiracy behind Mumbai attack unveiled due to the controversy between RAW, Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and CBI. Notably, Anti Terrorist Squad was headed by Hemant Karkare, who was killed by RAW elements during the Mumbai attacks. It is worth mentioning here that Karkare, was the one who exposed the involvement of a notorious RAW’s official Lt Col Prohit’s involvement in blasting of Samjohta Express in 2007. In this connection Karkara’s wife has already filed a case against RAW in the Civil Court.

Apart from above narrated details there are many other facts which are enough to confirm Satesh Verm statement that “India is behind Mumbai and Parliament attacks’. For example, on February, 2009 Bangladeshi Foreign Minster Mr. Hassan admitted that Mumbai Drama was planned on their land.

According to Press Trust of India’s report of 17 February 2009, BJP leader L. K Advani demanded a judicial inquiry into the Mumbai terror attack, since it could not have taken place without local support. The ruling Congress instead accepting the opposition’s demand, had tried to hide the actual facts and failure of Indian intelligence agencies.

Former Interior Minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik also stated in a Press Conference in Islamabad that terrorist attack in Mumbai has planned in a number of countries, including India, Austria, Spain, Italy, Russia and US.

Moreover, in those days, a “Blue Water” Naval exercise was planned and conducted in Indian maritime with the theme of countering terrorist attack via sea route on Mumbai. Thus, attacking terrorists on Taj Mehal hotel without coming into the eyes of deployed and alert Naval Forces during exercise was next to impossible. It only proves the inability of Indian naval forces present in the sea. Furthermore, it is not possible for an untrained person to move from Thatta to Mumbai with the help of GPS on ordinary boats all the way in an open sea.

Earlier, Pakistan has also handed over a dossier to New Delhi to seek answers of 30 questions that have cropped up during the investigations for further probe into the attack. In this regard Islamabad has adopted a constructive, proactive, well-coordinated and coherent regional approach to deal with the Mumbai Issue. The diplomatic corps and world’s leadership expressed satisfaction over Pakistan action but on the other hand India never proceeded further except carrying out media warfare. Whereas, the responsibility displayed by Pakistan government demanded reciprocal actions from India too.

The terrorism can be controlled if all regional countries religiously and seriously interested in rectifying the real causes behind. India being a larger country should take steps to stop state terrorism against minorities and Kashmiris. But Satish disclosure once again made it clear that New Delhi is not serious in cooperating with Pakistan.

Therefore, it would be the duty of world community to pressurize India to stop fomenting terrorism in regional countries. The world should condemn India for attacking her economical capital and parliaments just to malign Pakistan. She must be pressed to hand over Col Purohit to Pakistan so that justice be granted to the victims of Samjhauta Express. The United Nations Organisation should also ask so-called secular state to ban Hindu extremists groups that are operating against over 200 million Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. Several training camps are being maintained all along the western border and these are being used as launching pads for terrorist activities in Pakistan.

Probably Indian leadership has planned Mumbai drama and started proxy war to gain regional hegemony. The first proxy militia – Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan – was created and used by India in 1971 to invade Pakistani territory. And again she is operating in Balochistan funding BLA and TTP in FATA. RAW supported by Hindu Taliban is deceiving her government, national and international community from actual root cause of the problem i.e. communal violence and terrorism against minorities.

Thus, Satish Verma revelation of Indian involvement on Mumbai and parliament attacks is to malign Pakistan and ISI and nothing more than a cocktail story and blame game. Unfolding of this issue slowly and gradually is continuously causing embarrassment and giving shock to New Delhi on diplomatic and international fronts. However, international community should now raise voice for the families of Afzal Guru, Ajmal Kasab, wife of Karkare, and victims of Samjohta Express.

– Asian Tribune –

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ZARDARI’S LEGACY: Heroin in Pakistan more affordable than food

Posted by Juliana in NAWAZ SHARIF: THE LOOTER on July 19th, 2013

 

 
Inline image 1
 
Heroin in Pakistan more affordable than food
 
July 16, 2013
 

 

When corrupt and brutally insensitive and corrupt rulers like

Don Asif Zardari, Don Corleone of Pakistan

Zardari’s Capos

Raja Pervez “Rental,”Ashraf

 

and

 

Gaddi-Nasheen, Yousuf Raza Gilani 

The Former PPP Prime Minister,Yousuf Raza Gilani is the Poster Boy of Corruption in Pakistan

Over one billion dollars’ worth of heroin each year – that is the deadly fallout Pakistan gets from the blooming narcotics industry that provides the main cash crop in devastated Afghanistan. 

 
Locals say heroin is cheaper than food. It’s thought Pakistan has more than four million drug addicts, but less than 80 dedicated drug rehab clinics. As RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports from Karachi, those heroin addicts don’t even bother hiding their habit. For many this is a deadly path.  Local young man Abdullah spent two weeks looking for his father, a heroin addict, eventually finding him in Karachi’s largest morgue.  While help for drug addicts is in short supply, there is no shortage of heroin on the streets of Karachi.  
 
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium – heroin’s main ingredient – and accounts for 90 per cent of the global supply. Roughly 40 per cent of it is smuggled through Pakistan. Opium production is up for the third year in a row, and predicted to grow more. When NATO leaves in 2014, there are fears the floodgates will open for the spread of the deadly harvest. For more watch RT’s Lucy Kafanov’s report from Pakistan. 
 

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