An Excellent Primer on Terror Organization SIMI

Praveen Swami offers an excellent background on SIMI, the terror organization that blows up RDX bombs to kill innocent people all over the country and provides underground logistical support for terrorist operations to terror and government organizations from Land of Pure, and increasingly, Bangladesh.

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Growing numbers of SIMI members followed in their footsteps, making their way to the Lashkar, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami training camps, but SIMI leaders continued to insist their organisation itself had nothing to do with terrorism. Its polemic, however, became increasingly bitter. In a 1996 statement, SIMI declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate. Soon after, it put up posters calling on Muslims to follow the path of the eleventh-century conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to god to send down a latter-day avatar to avenge the destruction of mosques in India. By the time of SIMI’s 1999 Aurangabad convention, the ground-level manifestations of this ugly polemic were only too evident. Many of the speeches delivered by delegates were frankly inflammatory. “Islam is our nation, not India,” thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad, one of over a dozen SIMI-linked Lashkar operatives arrested in 2005 for smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned series of attacks in Gujarat. Among those listening to the speech was 1993 bomber Azam Ghauri who, by the accounts of some of those present, was offered the leadership of SIMI. When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001, at what was to be its last public convention, the organisation for the first time called on its supporters to turn to jihad. Soon after the convention, Al Qaeda carried out its bombings of New York and Washington, D.C. SIMI activists organised demonstrations in support of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, hailing him as a “true mujahid,” and celebrating the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. [SIMI and the cult of the Kalashnikov - The Hindu]

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Ahluwalia Has It Right on Reducing Energy Usage

Let me just say upfront - I am a skeptic of global warming. Not global warming per se, but that humans are major contributing factor for the current global warming. I am skeptical that a few models could differentiate earth's warming and cooling cycles and could attribute current warming cycle to humans. But then I am also for clean environment - I worry about my car gas mileage, recycle paper/plastic, don't care for aerosol hair or cleaning products, and all for laws to remove pollution in water and air. And I am also firm a believer in free markets. Just like how a few climate modelers can't tell us anything about earth's warming and cooling cycles, a few socialist economists can't determine what the needs and wants of every family in a society are and use few simplistic models to tell us how much steel, for example, and how many cars and scooters to produce in the next few years. A free market is much better at determining that and allocating resources accordingly with the least possible market projection lag and over-run.

Coming back to why Montek Ahluwalia, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, is right. There are increasing calls, from international groups, that to reduce global warming energy usage has to be curtailed. But energy is a fundamental factor of economy. An economy can't be strong, viable, and growing without constant and vast supply of energy. And, in addition, for poor developing countries, like India, cheap energy is key to keeping the economy growing and pull the vast humanity out of poverty and misery. So, even if one were to believe that humans cause global warming and reducing energy usage will somehow reverse global warming, the reduction has to be based on parity among all societies.

Just because rich countries have started using vast amounts of energy early on, poor countries shouldn't pay for it now. In fact, the reason why rich countries are rich is because of high energy usage. Poor countries will never be able to get out of poverty and have decently well off populations without the availability of vast amounts of cheap energy.

Also, India has about a billion people with vast majority of countries about 20th the size, in population terms. Any country-based energy usage restriction will be grossly unfair to the people of India (and China).

The only solution is energy usage on a per-capita basis and usage standard should be equitable among rich and not-so rich societies.

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Ahluwalia said there was an increasing acceptance of the argument that per capita emissions by a country was the right basis to fix responsibility of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. “Any reduction strategy based solely on total global emissions, and not differentiating on the basis of per capita emissions by countries, is fundamentally flawed and goes against the tenets of equality,” he said. India is the fourth largest carbon emitter in the world, releasing 1,342 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2004. However, its per capita emission is just 1.2 tonnes of CO2, which is 17 times less than that of United States.[Montek objects to emission norms - IE]

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Even the leader of UN forum for Climate Change is dismayed at the unfairness of solutions proposed to curb the so-called greenhouse gases. (Human Development Report on climate change.)

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Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) R K Pachauri had also criticised the HDR on Monday saying certain sections of the report were “a bit questionable to say the least.”[Ibid]

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Update: Sebastian Mallaby, columnist at WaPo, summaries all the issues facing any so-called anti-global warming treaty from an American perspective.

Update 2 (Dec 3, 2007): Ahluwalia expands on his thinking on climate change on Shekhar Gupta's 24x7.

How Bharatiya History - Rather Study Of - Began

B.B.Lal is a well known Indian archaeologist. He gave the inaugural speech at an International Conference of South Asian Archeology, in July of this year, in Italy. His speech runs for several pages but the first few paragraphs summaries the attitude of the study about Bharatiya's past, especially pre-Islamic invasion era, by the entire international scholarship, those so called Indologists.

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Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists. The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster. However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past. As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas. However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.” But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE. The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people. Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory. And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself. With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India. But the honeymoon was soon to be over. Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases. All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory. But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts. A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra (Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation. [Highlights mine]

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And Sri Lal goes on to explain the fraud...thus began our history - just made up in few short years.

Musharraf's Mubarak Route?

Writing about the absurdity of supporting any dictator, liberal authoritative or communists socialists, Robert Kagan posits that Gen. Musharraf may be doing a Hosni Mubarak of Egypt:

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Today, Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf is playing the old game, as is Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and it appears to be working. Substitute radical Islamists for communists, and the pitch is the same: Apr¿s moi, le d¿luge. If you force me out, the radical Islamists will win. And Musharraf is busily trying to ensure that this is the only option. He cracks down on moderates with good democratic credentials, and with far greater zeal than he has cracked down on al-Qaeda. If he can hold on long enough, he may so radicalize the opposition that no reasonably moderate alternative will be available. [Musharraf And the Con Game - WaPo]

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Sounds entirely plausible. The pharaoh has been reelected for six six-year terms by destroying - arresting and shutting down - opposition parties, while fighting the Muslim Brotherhood radicals and terrorists, and getting at least $4 billion aid annually from Washington, most for any country (the aid is mostly because Egypt made peace with Israel during Anwar Sadat time, which is currently fragile but none-the-less legal).

Although Musharraf is much older to remain in power for very long, even if the Mubarak card works, Musharraf's successors can benefit from this arrangement. But it's hard to see Washington providing billions of aid to LoP forever, if the army doesn't fight the Taliban/al-Qaida terrorists, even if it makes peace with Israel - both actions being very unlikely.

What Are You, If You Read This Blog?

(via Ajay Shah)

Praise, But What Did He Get In Return?

Bush was effusive about Gen. Musharraf, that paragon of democracy:

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President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy." Bush was asked in the interview if there is any line Musharraf should not cross. "He hasn't crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don't think that he will cross any lines," Bush replied, according to an ABC transcript. ". . . We didn't necessarily agree with his decision to impose emergency rule, and . . . hopefully he'll get . . . rid of the rule. Today, I thought, was a pretty good signal, that he released thousands of people from jail." [Bush More Emphatic In Backing Musharraf - WaPo]

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What did Gen. Musharraf promise Bush that he would do? We may not know anytime soon, but it may have something do with allowing American forces to secure nuclear weapons and material, and probably allowing American forces to cross Afghan-Pakistan border to fight Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists. While we may find out eventually what deal was stuck, Bush, and the American administration, has once again showed that democracy and public opinion (in the brutalized country) will always take a back seat to American national interest. Always.

Secret Brookes-Bhagat Report - Babus Protecting Babus?

While the military planners still seem to be a puny ones with no strategic thought behind actions:

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This is illustrated by a meeting of the hush-hush China Study Group in 2004, when the Indian army opposed the plan of constructing 12 strategic roads in Arunchal Pradesh, saying that these would be used by Chinese Peoples Liberation Army to come into India. At this point, the then home secretary testily told the then director-general, Military Operations, that if the army was so afraid of meeting the PLA on the foothills, it should prepare to meet it in Delhi.

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the secrecy around the Brookers-Bhagat report on the 1962 Chinese war against India, written soon after the war ended, from December 1962 through May 1963, is mind boggling. Common notion seems to be that Congress I politicians do not want to embarrass the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru, who belong to the original INC, and his clan that continues to rule the newer Congress I party single handedly. But two different opposition coalitions, Janata Party, and Bharatiya Janata Party, ruled during various times and these parties too, which had every incentive to drag Congress I through mud, did not release the ultra secret war postmortem document.

I think it's more to do with babus protecting babus - one should never underestimate the power of babus and overestimate the power of politicians in the country.

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In the late eighties, then minister of state for defence, Arun Singh, tried unsuccessfully to ask the defence secretary, S.K. Bhatnagar, to lend the Report to the army chief, General K. Sundarji, so that he could read it, but to no avail. In 1997, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, N.N. Vohra, was successful in accessing the Report, with a deputy secretary of the defence ministry waiting inside his office to ensure that there was no attempt made at photocopying it! [Truth of ’62 is locked away - Shishir Gupta, IE]

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How Foreign Policy is Stitched Up Elsewhere

Arun Shourie, in his brilliant rhetorical style, reminds us, for those who needs reminding, how foreign policy is made in Bharat. Where bad becomes good and good becomes bad because the right people, who have no interest of the nation at heart, except to prompt their own blinkered views and ideologies, and, ultimately, their own national interests.

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The very highest in this government allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Americans that we should do something that would strengthen Musharraf, as he was the best, it would seem the only option for us. Of course, they were nudged into accepting American ‘advice’ by that one mental ability they have in abundance — the ability to conjure wishfulfilling thoughts, thoughts that exempt them from standing the ground. This combination — American ‘theses’ and conjured rationalisations — led them to almost make a grand gesture of Siachin to bolster Musharraf, and yet again buy ‘peace in our time’, and that too under the exact camouflage that an American think-tank had stitched up.

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The stitch job is actually fairly consistent since Indian independence from British Imperialists. The period under imperialism has taught most foreign policy babus (and coterie of politicians who control foreign policy) not to think for themselves, with national interest at heart, but reproduce, propose, and implement stitched up plans made in London, then in Moscow, and later, in Washington

Sri Shourie prefaces the above with this:

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Here is one of the most deceitful men we have had to deal with. It is not just that he was the architect of Kargil. Here is a general who insisted that the Pakistani army had nothing to do with Kargil, so much so that he did one of the most dishonourable things that any armyman can do: he refused to accept bodies of soldiers who had died in the operation he had himself planned. And yet the same man claims in his book that Kargil was one of the most successful operations of the Pakistani army! Here is a man who has repeatedly dishonoured his word — pledged to the people of Pakistan, to its courts — about sticking to his office. Here is a man who has repeatedly issued decrees exempting himself from law, from his pledged word. Here, then, has been a personification of deceit. And yet, what a buildup he has had in India — eulogising him has been almost a fashion-statement among many Indian journalists.[Where have all the general’s cheerleaders gone? - IE]

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And it's not just Congress I, which takes the biggest laddu, but also the likes of Jaswant Singh, who worked against national interest during Operation Parakram, after Parliament terror attacks, based on stitch up jobs in western press (Jaswant looked to the British for answers also).

This reminds me of early Nehru socialists days when P. C. Mahalanobis went around the world, in the summer of 1954, to get his economic engineering and planning ideas validated.

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"The most brilliant" of these was Joan Robinson, then just back from a trip from China (where she was "much impressed by the progress they were making"). She thought htat the export-import sector in India needed more government control. Mahalanobis agreed, and in turn asked Robinson to visit India as a guest to the ISI [Indian Statistical Institute - that halo institute that could predict exactly how much 30+ crore Bharatitya would consume in terms of cars, scooters, iron, power, and everything else for the next five years]. This visit, he told her, "might be of very great help to us because her support may carry conviction that our approach to development planning is not foolish (sic). She smiled and said - 'Yes, I think I would be able to knock some sense into the heads of the economists in your country.'" [India After Gandhi, pg 215, Ramachandra Guha] (ISI explanation mine)

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Wonderful Show!

Created by Hawks, the newly arriving IAF trainers - 20 years in the approval process and 3 years since signed deal - imported from UK's BAE Systems. [Link]

LoP, The Iran of 1979?

Comparing the current turmoil in the Land of Pure with the turmoil in Iran right before Ayatollah Khomeini took over and send Iran down an Islamic spiral, David Ignatius, of Washington Post, suggests it may be time for US to stop meddling in LoP's affairs.

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The shah was America's friend, just like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He was our staunch ally against the bogeyman of that time, the Soviet Union, just as Musharraf has been America's partner in fighting al-Qaeda. The shah ignored America's admonitions to clean up his undemocratic regime, just as Musharraf has. And as the shah's troubles deepened, the United States hoped that moderate opposition leaders would keep the country safe from Muslim zealots, just as we are now hoping in Pakistan. And yet the Iranian explosion came -- a firestorm of rage that immolated any attempt at moderation or compromise. A similar process of upheaval has begun in Pakistan -- with one terrifying difference: Pakistan has nuclear weapons. The Iran analogy was made forcefully two weeks ago by Gary Sick, a Columbia professor who helped oversee Iran policy for the Carter administration during the time of the revolution. "There was no Plan B," Sick wrote in an online posting. He sees the same dynamic at work in Pakistan. "We have bet the farm on one man -- in this case Pervez Musharraf -- and we have no fall-back position, no alternative strategy in the event that does not work." ... The abiding truth, about Iran then and Pakistan now, is that outsiders don't understand the forces at work in these societies well enough to try to manipulate events. The disaster of Iran happened partly because of American meddling -- in installing the shah in the first place and then enabling his autocratic rule. Pakistan, too, has suffered over the years from too much U.S. intervention... But changing Pakistan is a job for Pakistanis, and history suggests that the more we meddle, the more likely we are to get things wrong.[In Pakistan, Echoes of Iran - WaPo]

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Popular Useful Idiots

Here are not-so popular useful idiots one finds everyday and then there are popular useful idiots. Not-so popular ones don't do much damage until they help create terror or help destroy innocent lives - like the Tehelka sting operation and its supporters are doing now. The popular ones are the most dangerous ones.

Anne Applebaum, of Washington Post, writes about the latest popular useful idiots - a phrase used by Lenin referring to foreigners supporting his revolution and newly established workers paradise Bolshevik system in Russia.

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Exhibit A is [Naomi] Campbell. Though better known for her taste in shoes than for her opinions about Latin American economics, she nevertheless turned up in Caracas last week gushing about the "love and encouragement" Chávez pours into his welfare programs. Wearing what a Venezuelan newspaper called "a revolutionary and exquisite white dress from the prestigious Fendi fashion house," she praised the country for its "big waterfalls." Not surprisingly, Campbell did not mention the anti-Chávez demonstrations held in Caracas the week before her visit; proposed constitutional changes designed to let Chávez remain in power indefinitely; or Chávez's record of harassing opposition leaders and the media. But then, that wasn't the point of her visit, just as it wasn't the point when actor Sean Penn, a self-conscious "radical" and avowed enemy of the American president, spent a whole day with Chávez. Together, the actor and the president toured the countryside. "I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country," Penn declared. Of course he found a great country! Penn wanted a country where he would win adulation for his views about American politics, and the Venezuelan president happily provided it. In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia and the catwalks, Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration [John] Reed once felt -- the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law. [The New Fellow Travelers - WaPo]

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A Logical Conclusion to Post-Partition Trauma in South Asia

And a Logical End to the Current Mess?

Nitin Pai at Acorn dissects C. Raja Mohan's rather uncharacteristic column in Indian Express that India should proactively work with the Pakistanis to support its territorial integrity.

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New Delhi must move from a mere refusal to take advantage of Pakistan’s current internal crisis to a series of considered step — including troop reductions in J&K and greater cooperation across the international border — to signal India’s positive support for Pakistan’s territorial integrity. [Musharraf maelstrom and India - IE]

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While I agree with the analysis of Sri Raja Mohan, I don't like his policy prescription.

Nitin tries to argue that:

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Ideally, a stable, peaceful and internally reconciled Pakistan is in India’s interests. However, while a total collapse of Pakistan will certainly be undesirable, a breakaway state along the Durand Line need not necessarily be such a bad thing. Yes, as long as the state is illegitimate and constitutes nothing more than a ungoverned space that hosts al-Qaeda related organisations, it will remain inimical to India’s interests. But if the state were to somehow acquire legitimacy and become a ‘normal’ state that does not share a border with India, then it should be possible for India to work out a modus vivendi with it. How likely is the latter? Exteremly unlikely, it would seem, but we don’t really know. India would do well to spend some effort to find out. [Musharraf’s second coup and India’s response - The Acorn]

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In the comment section, I went a bit further to say that a stable, peaceful, and strong Pakistan is not in our interest and we'd be better off with a divided and internally reconciled several states in the land mass that is currently Pakistan:

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India should do no such thing as supporting territorial integrity of LoP. We didn’t cause it. Why should we support our enemy’s (is there another word for this country) territory? Does that include PoK also? We have a habit of putting our selves into unenviable positions repeatedly - as Nehru has done with respect to China. That’s one lesson (and only one lesson) we should learn from Indira. It’s fine if Pak wants to be normal country - we should deal with it. But if it wants to break up, we should act and take back PoK and complete that land bridge to Afghan and beyond to Central Asia. And recognize and establish contacts with new nations such as Baloch and Sindh/Punjab - if it happens. In fact I think we should actively promote it. NWFP and Tribal Areas will be no better. The whole land mass will be lot less of an enemy to Bharat. Imagine the strategic implication if Pak disappears. Beyond nuclear weapons, as long as we can protect the western border - and I suspect we can, it’s fool hardly to assume a strong Pak is in India’s interest. It’s like US, during the cold war, saying a strong powerful Soviet Union is in its interest (and USSR had lot more nuclear weapons). No, it’s not. We should sit back and watch the situation with no guarantees and warranties to others. Only guarantee GOI should be giving Indian people is that it hasn’t let down guard on the western front or on the terror front in homeland. [Comment]

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It may be time for Balochistan to declare independence - after all, General Musharraf killed their leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, just last year. With the already uncontrollable Pashtuns (or Pathans as we call them) forming their own state across Durand line or merging with Afghanistan (at least later, when NATO forces leave), the rest of the land mass of current Pakistan will be Sindh and Punjab along with PoK. The current Pakistan ruling class already mostly emanate from Sindh and Punjab. These two states can work to stay together to continue the experiment of Land of Pure and may even end up as a viable, stable, and progressive state.

This combined Sindh-Punjab could be India's buffer state to the uncontrollable tribal regions. This combined entity, as future Land of Pure, may still continue its policy of terror in India. But a weakened and broken-up land mass will be less of a threat to Bharat and less of an ally to Chinese or other hegemonic powers in the region.

Instead of guaranteeing territorial integrity of our enemy, we should make contingency plans to take part of PoK along with Northern Areas back - excluding the hard to control Muzaffarabad - and to recreate that land bridge to Northern Afghanistan that is dominated by Tajiks (and on to energy rich Central Asia). We should also be making contingency plans to work with the Americans to allow them to remove Pak's nuclear weapons and destroy nuclear military facilities before the terrorists can lay their hands on the weapons or facilities.

Breaking up the current Pakistan into its natural components will be a logical conclusion of the British Empire in the subcontinent and post-partition trauma on both Bharat and current land mass of Pakistan. And a logical end to the current mess in Land of Pure.

Can the General Survive After Angering the Three As?

Move to avoid the noose of Zulfikar Bhutto may have hastened it?

It was self-preservation that finally drove General Musharraf to impose emergency and chaos in Land of Pure. Now that he did, he seem to have lost the patience of at least two As - America and Army. The Islamists have been saying for few years now that the General has angered Allah.

American and Army play the same game. One gives and other takes and follows orders. If the general defied America, the Army may decide to cut its loses and move on. Hence the expedited move towards the noose.

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The key question Musharraf faces is how long the army will continue to back him. Rank-and-file soldiers are keenly aware of the widening gulf between them and the public they are supposed to protect. The army, already demoralized, is unwilling to fight a never-ending war against its own people. [Ahmed Rashid's A Second Coup in Pakistan - WaPo]

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Gen. Mush could have cut a deal with the Army and his buddy CoAS General Kiyani before the official announcement of the Supreme Court's verdict (it's very likely he knew what the verdict would be - there was no reason to make this move otherwise) and retired in Europe or America. No, he wanted to take his fate in his own hands. Now it seems it may not be in his hands anymore.

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Musharraf seems to believe he has something else going for him as well. The general has survived suicide attacks, a plane hijacking and even an instance when he fell out of a mango tree. "I have confronted death and defied it several times in the past because destiny and fate have always smiled on me," Musharraf wrote in his 2006 memoirs. "I only pray that I have more than the proverbial nine lives of a cat." [Musharraf Declaration Seen as Latest Misstep - WaPo]

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The wile cat may have run out of lives.

Another Emergency in LoP

How Does an Emergency in a Military Dictatorship Work?

Apparently this time Emergency was declared by the civilian president, Gen Musharraf. The previous crisis was precipitated by the General, then as the general, when he sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. With massive street protests and Lal Masjid debacle and growing dissatisfaction within the LoP, the General wiggled out the crisis by making the deal with Benazir Bhutto.

With American backing, Benazir thought she could come back and loot a few more billions before running back to London where her expensive headscarf and Oxford education make her an automatic westerner, despite her corruption and mal-administration. The plan didn't work out the way she wanted. Since the last time she was in LoP, the country has changed. Terrorists colluding with ISI mass murdered nearly 200 people in her procession on the day of her arrival. She stuck around for few more days making more enemies than friends in the country. Now, conveniently, she is in Dubai to see friends and family! Less said about that other leader, Nawaz Sharif, the better.

Raising everyones hope for democracy, at least the sham one LoP always had, Gen. Musharraf worked overtime to diffuse the previous crisis with active American State Department in the background. But the chief justice was back in business and the future for the General is not clear. If the Supreme Court nullified the sham presidential election of making Gen. Musharraf the president, the General will be without a role - he had already appointed his friend and buddy, Lieutenant General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani, as Chief of Army Staff. But once in power, with himself being out of power, because of Supreme Court, who know what Gen. Kiyani would do.

Leaving the country's, Benazir's, and American hopes in tatters, General (not retired yet) Musharraf acted. He shut down the Supreme Court and nominally took over government radio and TV stations while shutting down the private ones (including the one that has a transgender has a host! - we were told, with no sense of irony, that made LoP more progressive then Bharat). I say nominally because the military already controls all administrative aspects of LoP's government.

So the military administration imposed an emergency on itself to control those institutions that were slipping away - like that increasingly independent Supreme Court. Now there won't be mass demonstrations to bring back Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Now there can be a rubber stamp as new chief justice. Benazir can go back to London from Dubai - dashing her hopes of milking few more billions from LoP. The Americans can be talked out of tough situations because, frankly there is nothing they can do. All hurdles are removed for the Gen. Musharraf. Until of course, a military C-130 crashes for some inexplicable reason as it happened when Gen. Zia Ul-Haq overstayed the LoP Army's welcome in power.

Update: A new rubber stamp chief justice is in place already.

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Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, who was one of the judges in the bench that heard the case against Chaudhry, was appointed the new Chief Justice and was sworn-in. Five other judges took fresh oath under the emergency proclamation. [PTI - The Hindu]

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Ali Ettefagh, an Iranian, writes at Post Global that it may be it's time to dissolve the unnatural Land of Pure. And adding insult to injury, he says LoP should not have been formed in the first place. I don't agree with the latter (more on that someday) but I do with the first suggestion. It happened before - in 1971. May be it's time to break up the country into more homogeneous parts so that some parts can move on with development and be normal nations, for example Baloch and Sindh regions, while other parts, like NWFP, FATA, and may be even part of Punjab, with the help of LoP military, of course, can continue their march towards seventh century. And allow PoK to rejoin J&K and make Kashmiris happy and peaceful people again.

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Pakistan was a phrase coined for an idealistic confederation of five Muslim provinces within the old British-controlled India (Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province or Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan). However, these are tribal lands with distinct traditions and have very little in common. These provinces were all knocked together, on presumption of a common religion, and a “dominion” was fabricated within the Commonwealth with self-governance authority akin to independence after World War II. It was all part of the post-war fire sale of territorial control of Britain. The ill-conceived plan even set up a separate territory of East Bengal as East Pakistan, a subcontinent away, with the rough-and-ready argument of common religious beliefs and a majority Muslim population. East Pakistan eventually became independent and renamed itself Bangladesh. For as long as I remember, Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan has always been a hub of instability, smuggling and violent crime. Pakistan is the main transit route for opium and heroin from Afghanistan, where more than 90% of the world’s opium supply is produced. In turn, that cash flow encourages money laundering, armed banditry, murder, violence and corruption. Therefore, several conflicting layers of official structure naturally form, each operating as lawless gangs or states within a state. Drug-infested territories have a poor record of development. Power and corruption leads to uneven, Byzantine relations between groups and to opaque alliances. Meanwhile, the masses remain in poverty: according to the World Bank, that’s about a third of all Pakistanis... There are other issues to ponder, namely a nuclear arsenal, missiles, a brisk small-arms export business (about $250 million a year) and the schizophrenic dual-tracked “friendship” with the U.S., al-Qaeda and Wahhabi extremists. Pakistan’s aimless Kashmir policies are perfect examples of circular political indecision. U.N. peacekeepers have remained stationed in Kashmir for more than three decades. [Why Not Dissolve Pakistan, Too? - Post Global]

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An utterly sane idea!

How the Taj Was to Come Under a Wrecking Ball

Next time anyone claims British rule was good for India it may be worthwhile to remember this:

Excerpts from books on Taj Mahal and Mughal architecture:

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Lord William Bentinck, (governor general of Bengal 1828-33, and later first governor general of all India), went so far as to announce plans to demolish the best Mogul monuments in Agra and Delhi and remove their marble facades. These were to be shipped to London, where they would be broken up and sold to members of the British aristocracy. Several of Shahjahan's pavilions in the Red Fort at Delhi were indeed stripped to the brick, and the marble was shipped off to England (part of this shipment included pieces for King George IV himself). Plans to dismantle the Taj Mahal were in place, and wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition work was to begin, news from London indicated that the first auction had not been a success, and that all further sales were cancelled -- it would not be worth the money to tear down the TajMahal. Thus the Taj Mahal was spared. [R. Nath's History of Decorative Art in Mughal Architecture] The forts in Agra and Delhi were commandeered at the beginning of the nineteenth century and turned into military garrisons. Marble reliefs were torn down, gardens were trampled, and lines of ugly barracks, still standing today, were installed in their stead. In the Delhi fort, the Hall of Public Audience was made into an arsenal and the arches of the outer colonnades were bricked over or replaced with rectangular wooden windows. The Mughal fort at Allahabad (one of Akbar's favorite) experienced a fate far worse. Virtually nothing of architectural significance is to be seen in the barracks that now make up the fort. The Deccan fort at Ahmednagar was also converted into barracks. Now, only its outer walls can hint at its former magnificence. [David Carroll's Taj Mahal]

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Come to think of it, it sounds pretty close what the Islamic raiders and rulers did to Hindu and Buddhist temples and universities, few hundred years prior. The Islamics destroyed and burnt places because they weren't Islamic while the British destroyed places for profit and power.

Communists Restate the Obvious

Our brain dead communists have come out the closet again, for the nth time. Few weeks ago they denied their opposition to India's 123 Nuclear Agreement with US had anything to do with China. Now the picture becomes more clear.

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He [CPM general secretary Prakash Karat] said that the sole strategy of the US was to capture the Indian market. And why does US wish to “capture” the Indian market? “Because China will be equal to the US in terms of economy and growth by the middle of this century,” Karat said, “so China has to be encircled.” He said the US was trying to make India its strategic ally to counter China, “the most powerful socialist country capable of challenging the might of the USA”. He said the Government is aware of this “US hegemony” but prefers to remain silent.[US and India will corner China - IE]

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The government wants to be silent may be because it wants to be part of the hegemon rather be a pawn in the global hegemony game. And in case Karat hasn't noticed the Chinese market is being "cornered" by America (companies, that is) and the Chinese are no longer Marxists socialists but dictatorial free marketeers.

To put it another way, Bharatiya communists are saying we care more about the future and security of China rather then Bharat's.