Jinnah was a egomaniacal, power hungry politician who ran with the baton of Pakistan as a homeland for Indian Muslims, when his leadership ambitions in India fatally collided with reality. A charismatic personality, he used his charm to shamefully woo the impressionable and immature teenage daughter (less than half his age) of his Parsi friend, whose house he had unrestrained access to. He was a non-practicing Muslim belonging to the Shia sect of Islam. While he opposed Gandhi�s Khilafat movement support as he condemned it as religious zealotry and had abused his Parsi friend�s trust by seducing his daughter, he vehemently opposed his own half Parsi daughter Dina�s marriage to Neville Wadia, a Parsi practicing the Christian faith.

His dream of united Muslim Pakistan which was a lie from inception to the present, began unraveling in a few years. Many Muslims who migrated from India and were called Mohajirs sparked resentment from the provincial natives of Sindh and Punjab. The migrant Muslim business community from Kutch, Gujarat and Saurashtra concentrated in Karachi, the only premier business city of Pakistan, by expertise, greater capital or questionable business ethics, dominated the commerce and aspired to greater political power, planting the seeds of discord. These have flourished and led to militancy, armed intimidation and violent conflict. The leader of the Mohajirs, at one time left the country and sought asylum in the UK.

From its birth, Punjab was the most populated and fertile of the four provinces. Baluchistan was the largest, richest in natural resources and with the lowest population density and a small population. The Northwest Frontier province and the FATA were the least industrialized, mostly tribal, more religious and mainly Pashtun, like their brethren across the artificial Durand line frontier with Afghanistan. In NWFP, FATA and Baluchistan, local customs, laws and the writ of local chiefs trumped government writ, authority or law. Sindh is mainly arid, but like fertile Punjab dominated by landlords with a culture of feudalism and oppression of the poor serfs who constitute the majority in both provinces.

The unfair division of the Indus waters and the shoveling of federal pork in favor of Punjab, led to resentment in Sindh. The control of commerce in its capital Karachi by non-Sindhi Mohajirs fueled the unrest even more. The Punjabi dominated central government and armed forces mistreated the distant stepsister Bengali speaking East Pakistan, even more badly. The reduction in general mortality with better healthcare unaccompanied by economic improvement left no reason to practice birth control and the population of India and both Pakistans grew rapidly. East Pakistan soon became more populous than West Pakistan with greater representation in parliament. It also had mainly one political party which held the majority in the single parliament of both Pakistans.

This would have required making Bengali speaking Mujibur Rahman the prime minister of all of Pakistan. As in India, language, caste and religion have always been the factors responsible for lack of progress of South Asian nations. Other equally important factors are the ignorance of the leaders and the electorate and the prominent and conspicuous lack of integrity, character and decency which is ubiquitous in all politicians of all parties and all nations in the subcontinent. As everyone knows that eventually led to the rape and massacre of nearly a million East Pakistanis by the West Pakistani armed forces with the connivance of America, and the birth of Bangladesh, by India as the midwife.

The homeland of all Indian Muslims began fragmenting with civil strife between Mohajirs and Sindhi Muslims. Very soon an obscure Muslim sect called Ahmadis were terrorized legally as non-Muslim infidels. More recently violence against Christians and Shia Muslims became the norm even though Jinnah, the founder was a Shia. Once again American support for the fanatic General Zia was responsible for promoting this mayhem to defeat the USSR invasion of Afghanistan which the Carter administration precipitated to embroil the Soviet Union in its own Vietnam. Saudi Arabia was an equal donor to obscure the un-Islamic lifestyle of its ruling king and princes. The net result was Al Qaeda and Taliban, the Frankensteins now out to destroy America. It led to an even greater problem for perpetually foolish and shortsighted America, a nuclear armed Pakistan and the Khan Walmart for nuclear weapons.

Pakistan military�s cozy relationship with zealot religious fanatics is what led to the Talibanization of Afghanistan and now the border with Afghanistan and spreading to its heartland. The resignation of Musharraf was the result of his policy of being seen as a stooge of America. In reality he was no American ally, but a shrewd liar who clandestinely supported the terrorists of Taliban and even Al Qaeda, while milking America to strengthen the Pakistani economy and military to fight India. The ruling political parties are at loggerheads with one another. Sharif and his Punjab based party wants revenge on Musharraf and reinstatement of the illegally fired judges. Zardari and his PPP majority are afraid that a reinstated judiciary may reopen the corruption charges which Musharraf pardoned him for. The combined parties have no ability to oversee the military and the rogue ISI intelligence agency, both of which still decide the country�s foreign policy and have total control over the nuclear arsenal.

America is now lost and does not know who to turn to. Its objectives are to prevent conventional terror attacks on itself, prevent the terrorists from gaining access to Pakistani nuclear weapons and assure a safe supply route for its forces occupying landlocked Afghanistan, which is its base for accessing Central Asian oil and gas. America�s newfound love for Georgia, Ukraine, Poland etc. is also based on accessing Central Asian energy via safe pipelines and surrounding Russia with anti-missile defenses to achieve full spectrum nuclear dominance. ABMs are not defensive weapons, but first tier offensive ones. They allow the possessor to preemptively strike another nuclear power, destroying the bulk of its nuclear arsenal. The remaining few second strike weapons which survive the preemptive first strike can be effectively neutralized thus escaping Mutual Assured Destruction, the stalemate strategy that prevented nuclear war in the cold war era.

Pakistan now faces an insurgency in NWFP, FATA and Baluchistan, a restive Sindh, widespread terrorist attacks, a deteriorating economy, rampant inflation, a disillusioned America in economic difficulties, unwilling to write blank checks and a divided, corrupt civilian government, a military with poor morale and increasing casualties and an angry and hungry population. NATO and America will tire of expense and casualties in a year or two and the Taliban will eventually form a Pakhtunistan. Baluchistan will secede with Iranian help as will Sindh with India�s help. A landlocked nuclear Punjab as a remnant of Pakistan will be effectively marginalized. This time Iran will ensure a satellite Shia state in western Afghanistan, the newly antagonized Russians will promote the merger of the northern and eastern parts into Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. From India�s standpoint, it is not a totally bad idea, as the corrupt, weak and inept government of Karzai is unsustainable and consumes a lot of Indian aid. The Russian response to Georgia was a shot across the bow to America and its inane interference in Russia�s near abroad.

Unfortunately for America, its own blunders and its retarded ineducable leaders are hell bent on destroying the nation as articles by Andrew Bacevich, Kevin Phillips, Pat Buchanan and Ted Galen Carpenter from the right, George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson from the left and veteran national security professionals like Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett emphasize. America is in retreat in Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia), stalemated in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria) and stopped cold in the Caucasus by Russia. In India we have a similar problem. The ruling Tarzana, her Little Nkima and her coterie of multiparty apes have reignited the conflagration in Kashmir, while the shortsighted BJP stands ready to add fuel to the fire for political gains in the elections next year. In America Darth Vader, his pet G2B2 and the chest thumping Neocon troglodytes indulge in arson around the world and the democrats cheerfully appropriate funds fueling the fire and demagogue to win the next election. 

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

By Scott Stewart

  On Jan. 24, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the botched attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The short one-minute and two-second audio statement, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television, called the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a hero and threatened more attacks. The voice on the recording said the bombing attempt was in response to the situation in Gaza and that the United States can never dream of living in peace until Muslims have peace in the Palestinian territories. The speaker also said that attacks against the United States would continue as long as the United States continued to support Israel.

  While the U.S. government has yet to confirm that the voice is that of bin Laden, Al Jazeera claims that the voice is indeed that of the al Qaeda leader. Bin Laden’s health and welfare have been the topic of a lot of discussion and debate over the past several years, and many intelligence officials believe he is dead. Because of this, any time an audio recording purporting to be from bin Laden is released it receives heavy forensic scrutiny. Some technical experts believe that recent statements supposedly made by bin Laden have been cobbled together by manipulating portions of longer bin Laden messages that were previously recorded. It has been STRATFOR’s position for several years that, whether bin Laden is dead or alive, the al Qaeda core has been marginalized by the efforts of the United States and its allies to the point where the group no longer poses a strategic threat.

  Now, questions of bin Laden’s status aside, the recording was most likely released through channels that helped assure Al Jazeera that the recording was authentic. This means that we can be somewhat confident that the message was released by the al Qaeda core. The fact that the al Qaeda core would attempt to take credit for a failed attack in a recording is quite interesting. But perhaps even more interesting is the core group’s claim that the attack was conducted because of U.S support for Israel and the treatment of the Palestinians living in Gaza.

Smoke and Mirrors
During the early years of al Qaeda’s existence, the group did not take credit for attacks it conducted. In fact, it explicitly denied involvement. In interviews with the press, bin Laden often praised the attackers while, with a bit of a wink and a nod, he denied any connection to the attacks. Bin Laden issued public statements after the August 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks flatly denying any involvement. In fact, bin Laden and al Qaeda continued to publicly deny any connection to the 9/11 attacks until after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. These denials of the 9/11 attacks have taken on a life of their own and have become the basis of conspiracy theories that the United States or Israel was behind the attacks (despite later statements by bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that contradicted earlier statements and claimed credit for 9/11).

  In the years following 9/11, the al Qaeda core has continued to bask in the glory of that spectacularly successful attack, but it has not been able to produce the long-awaited encore. This is not for lack of effort; the al Qaeda core has been involved in several attempted attacks against the United States, such as the attempted shoe-bomb attack in December 2001, dispatching Jose Padilla to the United States in May of 2002 to purportedly try to conduct a dirty-bomb attack, and the August 2006 thwarted plot to attack trans-Atlantic airliners using liquid explosives. Interestingly, while each of these failed attempts has been tied to the al Qaeda core by intelligence and investigative efforts, the group did not publicly claim credit for any of them. While the group’s leadership has made repeated threats that they were going to launch an attack that would dwarf 9/11, they simply have been unable to do so. Indeed, the only plot that could have come anywhere near the destruction of the 9/11 attacks was the liquid explosives plot, and that was foiled early on in the operational planning process — before the explosive devices were even fabricated.

  Now, back to the failed bombing attempt on Christmas Day. First, the Yemeni franchise of al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has already claimed responsibility for the attack, and evidence strongly suggests that AQAP is the organization with which Abdulmutallab had direct contact. Indeed, while some members of AQAP have had prior contact with bin Laden, there is little to suggest that bin Laden himself or what remains of al Qaeda’s core leadership has any direct role in planning any of the operations conducted by AQAP. The core group does not exercise that type of control over the activities of any of its regional groups. These groups are more like independent franchises that operate under the same brand name rather than parts of a single hierarchical organization. Each franchise has local leadership and is self-funding, and the franchises frequently diverge from global al Qaeda “corporate policies” in areas like target selection.

  Furthermore, in an environment where the jihadists know that U.S. signals-intelligence efforts are keenly focused on the al Qaeda core and the regional franchise groups, discussing any type of operational information via telephone or e-mail from Yemen to Pakistan would be very dangerous — and terrible operational security. Using couriers would be more secure, but the al Qaeda core leadership is very cautious in its communications with the outside world (Hellfire missiles can have that effect on people), and any such communications will be very slow and deliberate. For the al Qaeda core leadership, the price of physical security has been the loss of operational control over the larger movement.
Taking things one step further, not only is the core of al Qaeda attempting to take credit for something it did not do, but it is claiming credit for an attack that did little more than severely burn the attacker in a very sensitive anatomical area. Some have argued that the attack was successful because it has instilled fear and caused the U.S. government to react, but clearly the attack would have had a far greater impact had the device detonated. The failed attack was certainly not what the operational planners had in mind when they dispatched Abdulmutallab on his mission.

  This attempt by the al Qaeda core to pander for publicity, even though it means claiming credit for a botched attack, clearly demonstrates how far the core group has fallen since the days when bin Laden blithely denied responsibility for 9/11.

The Palestinian Focus
Since the beginning of bin Laden’s public discourse, the Palestinian cause has been a consistent feature. His 1996 declaration of war and the 1998 fatwa declaring jihad against the West and Israel are prime examples. However, the reality of al Qaeda’s activities has shown that, to bin Laden, the plight of the Palestinians has been less an area of genuine concern and more of a rhetorical device to exploit sympathy for the jihadist cause and draw Muslims to al Qaeda’s banner.

  Over the years, al Qaeda has worked very closely with a number of militant groups in a variety of places, including the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in China. However, while one of bin Laden’s mentors, Abdullah Azzam, was a Palestinian, and there have been several Palestinians affiliated with al Qaeda over the years, the group has done little to support Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas, even though Hamas (as the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) sprang from the same radical Egyptian Islamist milieu that produced al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which al-Zawahiri later folded into al Qaeda.

  Jihadist militant groups such as Jund Ansar Allah have attempted to establish themselves in Gaza, but these groups were seen as problematic competition, rather than allies, and Hamas quickly stamped them out.
With little help coming from fellow Sunnis, Hamas has come to rely on Iran and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, as sources of funding, weapons and training. Even though this support is flowing across the Shiite-Sunni divide, actions speak louder than words, and Iran and Hezbollah have shown that they can deliver. In many ways, the political philosophy of Hamas (which has been sharply criticized by al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders) is far closer to that of Iran than to that of the jihadists. With Iran’s help, Hamas has progressed from throwing rocks and firing homemade Qassam rockets to launching the longer range Grad and Fajr rockets and conducting increasingly effective irregular-warfare operations against the Israeli army.

  Hezbollah’s ability to eject Israel from southern Lebanon and its strong stand against the Israeli armed forces in the 2006 war made a strong impression in the Middle East. Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are seen as very real threats to Israel, while al Qaeda has shown that it can produce a lot of anti-Israeli rhetoric but few results. Because of this, Iran and its proxies have become the vanguard of the fight against Israel, while al Qaeda is simply trying to keep its name in the press.

  Claiming credit for failed attacks orchestrated by others and trying to latch on to the fight against Israel are just the latest signs that al Qaeda is trying almost too hard to remain relevant.

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