19. September 2010 by admin.

An Islamic Strategy - HOW TO USE AMERICA versus AMERICA 

UK and France have recently witnessed riots and protests from muslim immigrants who have legally entered their country. The policy is simple and well tested….. and successful . Islamists have declared Southern France as an Islamic State and are working their way towards achieving the same in UK now. 

The ideology of Islam is to Islamise all the countries of the world. They are attacking America now.

How they are invading America is explained as follows.

The Strategy

You may have noticed, that the media in USA is pro-Islamist these days. Any American who is vocal about his/her concerns for the well being of this great nation, is labeled as racist/communal….and his argument is simply dismissed as “Islamophobia” . You will realize how they have a complete hold on the media. This is the first step.

The next step is to get into the judicial and political system of the country. While the media is used to brainwash people regarding the plight of minority muslims, a lot of money is also being spent to hire local Americans (in media and politics) who fight for the equal rights and religious rights of muslim minorities. The local Americans are however those people who try to project the liberal side of America. The law and the political system is being used to make this convenient. Amendments are being made in the law of the land to legally have a representative of muslims in the country’s parliament.

The next step is to use the law to declare innocent those muslims who are under suspicion of terrorist acts or have been convicted and are serving a sentence, or are under trial. The law here is again used to relieve them of sentences and they are declared innocent. In this process, people who were responsible (cops, judges, lawyers, etc) for arresting these criminals, the people who risked their lives to book the guilty are humiliated by either being dismissed from their duty and/or they are accused of falsely implicating muslims as criminals.

At the same time, they use their influence to distort the history of the country. Claims are made that Islam became popular because it is a religion of peace. History books in schools and colleges have chapters singing praises of how Islamic rulers and clerics influenced your country in a positive manner. However, the original historical heroes of the country who contributed and built the nation are projected in poor light. This is done to humiliate the local people of everything that they have ever been so proud of in the history of their nation. Watch out. It won’t be long before the muslims claim that America was originally an Islamic country, and people of other faiths are actually immigrants so they should either leave America or revert to Islam.

As the number of muslims grow in a country, their very next step is to gather themselves as a vote bank….and no politician would like to lose a large vote bank. This is how and why they get political backing. Once they have their representative in the parliament, the muslims use this as a tool to make amendments in the law of the land to favour Islam.

Defaming other Faiths/Religions

Another aspect that is simultaneously worked hard upon is the ‘conversion to Islam’ factor. A huge amount of money is also being spent on internet websites and personal propaganda to defame other religions to make Islam appear as the only religion that is true and scientific, and the only surviving religion of the world. So don’t be surprised when you come across statements like “Islam was always a part of your country”, or any propaganda that says “Christianity never existed” and “Jesus Was A Muslim”.

False propaganda is being circulated now, where they claim that thousands and thousands of people are converting to Islam every day. You will hear their propaganda that Islam is spreading like wild fire and people are submitting to Islam. Actually the fact is, that after 9/11 many muslims have given up Islam and converted to other religions because they were ashamed of being muslims for following the ideology of destruction and hate (this aspect is however never highlighted by them). Don’t we often complain that the voice of “moderate muslims” is missing when it comes to condemning Islamic terror attacks? Obviously, we don’t hear their voices because “the moderate muslim” has already quit Islam. In USA itself there are several organizations that have ex-muslims who are educating the rest of the world about the real ideology of Islam. See Youtube. You will find several videos showing people converting to Islam, but the videos showing muslims converting to other religions are flagged and removed. Please google “ex-muslims” for these organizations. Their statements should be valid enough for anyone to wake up.

Sowing the seeds for a FUTURE JIHAD

The original proposal of building a “Peace Mosque” at ground zero was seen by many as a symbol of victory by Islam in an infidel land.

Actually, the proposed mosque at Ground Zero is nothing but “Sowing The Seeds Of Dispute” for a FUTURE JIHAD. The reason to build a mosque there is to refute any claims in the future by anyone that the Twin Towers really existed and that America was ever attacked. It is obvious that there would be protests against the mosque. Nobody is against building a mosque. The mosque can be built elsewhere, why only on Ground Zero??? But these protests against building the mosque on Ground Zero will be used/projected to the Islamic world as “denial of freedom to follow Islam” by America … thus instigating further hatred by muslims for America and the West. This makes any muslim (who has grown up with the ideology that all non-muslims are their enemies) a potential recruit for a never-ending jihad against America, which they propose for many many generations to come….And with the number of muslims growing within America, there would be no need to look outside for help in jihad.

The War Today

One cannot deny that conversions are on the rise in America. Aggressive conversions are happening in different states because conversions are the fastest way to grow in numbers as compared to procreation and marriages with non-muslims to convert them into Islam (which is also on the rise now). The purpose of growing in numbers is to attain muslim majorities in different geographical pockets of a country. Once the muslim population is in majority in a state, their demand for a separate muslim state comes into play. They set up terror training camps, indulge in stone-pelting, riots and blasts, and they demand for a separate Islamic State within the country, tearing away a nation, piece by piece. That is the whole idea - To have separate Islamic states spread out from corner to corner of a country/continent…and then join all the dots to form a single majority Islamic State - the best and simplest way to Islamise a nation from within.

A majority of people who are being converted into Islam these days in USA are the African-Americans….especially those from ghettos and with criminal backgrounds. This is being done on purpose. Also being targeted are the illegal Mexican immigrants. Islamists know the history of America and how the Africans came to USA. These people are shown “Islam as a religion of tolerance and brotherhood”. They are told, “they will regain their pride and dignity if they embrace Islam. Islam will give them the equality that the white Americans always denied them and suppressed them”. Using Islam as a tool, these converts are now being brainwashed into believing that they must fight the Jihad for Allah. They will use the frustrations of African Americans against the White Americans. And why not??? With the growing number of muslims in USA, it is most convenient and in their best interest to fight this war from within. This is how they are going to use America versus America in their Jihad!!!

This strategy is however, not just limited to America. All nations in the east and the west who have resisted Islam for all these years are going through this pattern of Islamisation now.

This is war, my friends……….this IS “THE WAR”.

Open your eyes before it is too late.

If you think this makes sense, please circulate it among like minded people and your community.

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18. September 2010 by admin.

Iran: Internal Political Dissent The attorney for 32-year-old Sarah Shourd, one of three U.S. citizens who has been in Iranian custody for more than a year on suspicion of espionage, on Sept. 13 said her family is asking Tehran to drop a demand for $500,000 bail. The demand came after Iranian judicial authorities canceled plans to release her Sept. 11. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conservative opponents have publicly opposed his government’s move to release Shourd — a gesture on Ahmadinejad’s part to facilitate talks with the United States ahead of his trip to New York later in September. The Shourd issue is just the latest manifestation of the internal struggle within the Islamic republic’s political establishment. In recent weeks, the Iranian media have been replete with statements from pragmatists opposed to Ahmadinejad and even from his fellow ultraconservatives (who supported him until last year) criticizing several of his foreign policy decisions. These include the decision to appoint special envoys to various regions, his calls for negotiations with the United States and his willingness to compromise on swapping enriched uranium. Clearly, the infighting has reached the point where the president’s opponents are aggressively targeting his efforts to execute foreign policy. Although the Ahmadinejad government and its allies within the clerical and security establishment effectively defeated the reformist challenge from the street, the Green Movement, the rifts among the conservatives have only worsened. The old dichotomy between the Ahmadinejad-led ultraconservatives and the pragmatic conservatives led by the regime’s second-most influential cleric, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is inadequate to describe the growing complexity of the struggle. A key reason for the growing rifts is that Ahmadinejad — despite his reputation as a hard-liner — has increasingly assumed the pragmatist mantle, especially with his calls to the Obama administration to negotiate a settlement with his government. This has turned many of his fellow hard-liners against him, giving the more moderate conservatives like Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani an opening to exploit and thus weaken the president. The situation is serious enough that it has offset the day-to-day balancing act among the various factions that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been engaged in for decades. The situation is exemplified in the open disagreement between the executive and legislative branches. A special committee within the Guardian Council was formed in late August to mediate between the two sides. The Rafsanjani-led Expediency Council was created in 1989 to settle disputes among various state organs. That an ad hoc special committee was created under the supervision of the Guardian Council (which vets individuals for public office and has oversight over legislation) to mediate this dispute shows the extent of the problems the Iranians are having in mitigating internal disagreements. Just as the disagreements in Tehran are no longer between two rival camps, they also are not limited to one institution disputing another, as elements from both sides are within each institution. Guardians Council chief Ahmad Jannati, a powerful cleric who played a key role in Ahmadinejad’s ability to secure a second term, criticized the president for trying to prevent security forces from enforcing the female dress code in public. Likewise, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of the Joint Staff Command of the Armed Forces — to whom Ahmadinejad is close — referred to a call by Ahmadinejad’s most trusted aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, to promote Iranian nationalism over Islamic solidarity as “deviant.” In response, Mashaie threatened to sue the general sitting at the apex of Iran’s military establishment. Perhaps most damaging for Ahmadinejad is that his own ideological mentor, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, also criticized the president’s top aide, warning about a “new sedition” on the part of “value-abiding” forces — a reference to the president and his supporters. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has strongly supported his chief of staff (who is also his closest friend and relative), saying he has complete trust in him. In the midst of all this, the supreme leader is trying to arbitrate between the warring factions but fears that Ahmadinejad could be trying to undermine him. Thus, Khamenei cannot support Ahmadinejad as he did during the post-election crisis of 2009, yet he cannot act against the president because doing so would undermine the stability of Iran’s political system at a critical time for several foreign policy issues — Iraq, the nuclear dispute and Afghanistan, among others. At this stage, then, the outcome of this increasing factionalization is unclear. What is clear is that the Shourd case is only one small disagreement in the midst of a much larger rift. The battling Iranian factions could reach a compromise on this particular matter, but the accelerating domestic disputes in Tehran make it very difficult for the United States to negotiate with Iran on the host of strategic issues the two are struggling over. Ahmadinejad feels that if he is able to clinch a deal of sorts with the United States from a position of relative strength, it could help him deal effectively with the domestic challenge to his power. Conversely, his allies are determined to prevent that from happening, as is clear from the statements against negotiating with Washington. At the very least, this public struggle is helping the ultraconservatives, the military and those who are the most opposed to talks with the United States.

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13. September 2010 by admin.

Western  Freedom

By Susan MacAllen

In 1978-79 I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978 - even in Copenhagen, one didn’t see Muslim immigrants. 

The  Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated  the exotic, went   out  of its way to protect each of its citizens. It  was proud of its new brand  of socialist liberalism one in development since  the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to  struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time. The  rest of  Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior  educational system and a history of  humanitarianism. Denmark  was also most generous in its immigration  policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in  transportation, housing and  education. It was determined to set a world  example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism. How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of  political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the  streets -all because its commitment to  multiculturalism would come back  to  bite?   

By  the 1990’s the growing urban Muslim population  was obvious - as was its unwillingness to  integrate into Danish society. Years of  immigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive  enclaves. As the Muslim leadership became more vocal about what they  considered the decadence of Denmark ’s liberal way of life, the Danes  - once so welcoming - began to feel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible with their long-standing values:  belief in personal liberty and free speech, in equality for women, in tolerance for other  ethnic groups, and a deep pride in Danish heritage and history. An  article by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, in which they accurately forecast, that the growing immigrant problem in Denmark would explode.

In the article they reported: ‘Muslim  immigrants constitute 5 percent of the population but consume  upwards  of 40 percent of the welfare spending.’ ‘Muslims  are only 4 percent of Denmark’s 5.4 million people but make up  a majority of the country’s convicted rapists,  an especially  combustible  issue given that practically all the female  victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes.’ ‘Over  time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers,  they wish less   to  mix with the indigenous population. A recent  survey found that only 5 percent of young Muslim  immigrants   would readily marry a Dane.’ 

‘Forced  marriages - promising a newborn daughter in  Denmark to a male   cousin  in the home country, then compelling her to  marry him, sometimes on   pain  of death - are one problem’.  ‘Muslim  leaders openly declare their goal of introducing  Islamic law   once  Denmark’s Muslim population grows large enough-  a not-that-remote prospect.. If present trends  persist, one sociologist estimates, every  third inhabitant of   Denmark  in 40  years will be Muslim.’   It  is easy to understand why a growing number of  Danes would feel that   Muslim  immigrants show little respect for Danish values  and laws.

An example is the phenomenon  common to other European countries and    Canada: some Muslims in  Denmark  who opted  to leave the Muslim faith have been murdered in  the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for  their   lives.  Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by  Muslim leaders in Denmark, a country where once Christian citizens  worked to smuggle out nearly all of their 7,000  Jews by night to Sweden  - before  the Nazis could   invade.  I think of my Danish friend Elsa - who, as a teenager, had dreaded crossing the street to the  bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazi  soldiers - and I wonder what she would say  today.   

In  2001,   Denmark  elected the most  conservative government in some 70 years -one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas  about liberal, unfettered immigration. Today Denmark  has the strictest  immigration policies   in Europe  . ( Its effort to protect  itself has been met with accusations of ‘racism’  by liberal media across Europe - even as other  governments struggle to right the social  problems wrought by years of too-lax  immigration).   

If  you wish to become Danish, you must attend three  years of language classes.  You must pass a test on Denmark ’s  history, culture, and a Danish language test . You must live in Denmark  for 7 years  before applying for citizenship.  You  must demonstrate an intent to work, and have a  job waiting. If you wish to  bring a spouse into Denmark, you  must both be over 24 years of age, and you  won’t find it so easy anymore to move your  friends and family to Denmark with you.You  will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children  have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and  language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in  ways that past immigrants weren’t.

 In  2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus  Hjort Frederiksen,   spoke  publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on  the Danish welfare   system,  and it was horrifying: the government’s welfare  committee had calculated that if immigration  from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent  of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare  system in coming decades would be unnecessary.  In other words, the welfare system, as it existed,  was being exploited by immigrants to the point  of eventually   bankrupting  the government.

‘We are simply forced to adopt a  new policy on immigration’. ‘The  calculations of the welfare committee are  terrifying and show how   unsuccessful  the integration of immigrants has been up to  now,’ he said.   A  large thorn in the side of   Denmark ’s  imams is the Minister of   Immigration  and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj.. She makes no  bones about the   new  policy toward immigration, ‘The number of  foreigners coming to the   country  makes a difference,’ Hvilshoj says, ‘There is an  inverse correlation between how many come here  and how well we can receive the foreigners that come’  And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate  a willingness to blend in, ‘In my view,   Denmark  should be a country with room  for different cultures and religions. Some  values, however, are   more  important than others. We refuse to question  democracy, equal rights,  and  freedom of speech.’      

Hvilshoj  has paid a price for her show of backbone.  Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban,  demanded that the government pay blood money to  the family of a   Muslim  who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen,  stating that the family’s thirst  for revenge could be thwarted for money. When  Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the payment of retribution money was  common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country  is  not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The  Muslim reply came soon after: her house was  torched while she, her husband and children  slept. All managed  to escape unharmed, but she and her family were  moved to a secret location and she and other  ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time  - in a country where such murderous violence was  once so scarce.

Her  government has slid to the right, and her  borders have tightened.Many believe that  what happens in the next decade will determine whether   Denmark survives as a bastion of good living,  humane thinking and   social  responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation  at civil war with   supporters  of Sharia law.   And  meanwhile, Canadians clamor for stricter  immigration policies, and demand  an end to state welfare programs that allow many  immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in Canada look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us,  and see those  who enter our shores too easily, dare live on  our taxes, yet refuse to embrace our culture,  respect our traditions, participate in our  legal system, obey our laws, speak our language,  appreciate our history..  we would do  well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.  If  you agree with this article, then please pass it  on.

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13. September 2010 by admin.

– The Story You Won’t See In the Western Mainstream MediaBy Phyllis Chesler Published September 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com They are crossing the border illegally and violently displacing the indigenous population whose homes and possessions they either destroy or occupy. They are attacking the young, the elderly, and especially the girls and women, whom they kidnap, forcibly convert, or traffic into brothels. The locals are terrified of them. The police rarely come to their aid, nor do the politically correct media or government. Both are terrified by the criminals and terrorists who are riding these immigrant waves.

I am not talking about illegal immigrants to Europe or North America. I am describing Muslims who are penetrating India’s West Bengal region. These Bangladeshi immigrants are becoming conduits for criminal activities (arms, drugs, and sexual slavery) which also fund global jihad.

The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Nathan Bloom in the preparation of this article.

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11. September 2010 by admin.

Rumors are circulating on the Internet and Indian media over the reported presence of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, ostensibly to provide “protection for aid and construction workers”. It is not really unusual that the reports/news might be a bit over blown by the media, BUT China’s growing reassertion of territorial claims in the region will not go ignored by India and will give New Delhi and Washington another cause for cooperation. The prospect of greater U.S.-Indian defense cooperation and diminishing U.S. interest in Afghanistan will meanwhile drive Pakistan closer to China, creating a series of self-perpetuating threats on the subcontinent.Let us analyse the geopolitical implications on the subcontinent and relationship of India, Pakistan and China with each other and with United States. U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Robert F. Willard is on a two-day visit to India to meet with the Indian defense leadership Sept. 9-10. Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony will follow up his meetings with Willard when he meets with U.S. defense leaders in Washington at the end of September. With an arduous war being fought in Afghanistan and India’s fears growing over Pakistan-based militancy, there is no shortage of issues for the two sides to discuss. But there is one additional topic of discussion that is now elevating in importance: Chinese military moves on the Indian subcontinent.Allegations over a major increase of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in northern Kashmir have been circulating over the past several weeks, with an Op-Ed in The New York Times claiming that as many as 7,000 to 11,000 PLA troops have flooded into the northern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, known as the Gilgit-Baltistan region. This is an area through which China has been rebuilding the Karakoram Highway, which connects the Chinese region of Xinjiang by road and rail to Pakistan’s Chinese-built and funded ports on the Arabian Sea. Though Chinese engineers have been working on this infrastructure for some time, new reports suggest that several thousand PLA troops are stationed on the Khunjerab Pass on the Xinjiang border to provide security to the Karakoram Highway construction crews. Handfuls of militants have been suspected of transiting this region in the past to travel between Central Asia, Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang province, and Chinese construction crews in Pakistan have been targeted a number of times by jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That said, a large Chinese troop presence in the region is likely to serve a larger purpose than simply stand-by protection for Chinese workers.Pakistan responded by describing the reports as fabricated and said a small Chinese presence was in the area to provide humanitarian assistance in the ongoing flood relief effort. Chinese state media also discussed recently how the Chinese government was shipping emergency aid to Pakistan via Kashgar, Xinjiang province, through the Khunjerab Pass to the Sost dry port in northern Pakistan. India expressed its concern over the reports of Chinese troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said it was working to independently verify the claims, and then claimed to confirm at least 1,000 PLA troops had entered the region.Such claims of troop deployments in the region are often exaggerated for various political aims, and these latest reports are no exception. It is still not known for sure the exact number of PLA troops in and around Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (known as Gilgit-Baltistan) and what percentage of those are combat troops. It has been reported that a convoy of approximately 110 Chinese trucks recently delivered some 2,000 metric tons of mostly food aid through the Khunjerab Pass to the Gojal Valley, an area devastated by recent flooding and landslides. Chinese Bridges and Roads Co. (CBRC) has been working on expanding the Karakoram Highway for the past three years and has roughly 700 Chinese laborers and engineers working on the project. The highway expansion is expected to be completed by 2013, but the deadline is likely to be extended as a result of recent flooding.Though, as per various media sources, on-ground reports so far track closest with the Chinese claims of flood relief operations, such relief and construction work can also provide useful cover for a more gradual buildup and sustained military presence in the region. This prospect is on the minds of many U.S. and Indian defense officials who would not be pleased with the idea of China reinforcing military support for Pakistan through overland supply routes.

What can be the intentions behind this build-up?

Though Pakistan, as per its typical characteristic, has reacted defiantly to the rumors, Islamabad has much to gain from merely having the rumor out in the open. Pakistan’s geopolitical vulnerability cannot be overstated. The country already faces a host of internally wrenching issues but must also contend with the fact that the Pakistani heartland in the Indus River Valley sits near the border with Pakistan’s much bigger and more powerful Indian rival, denying Islamabad any meaningful strategic depth to adequately defend itself. Pakistan is thus on an interminable search for a reliable, external power patron for its security, and its preferred choice is the United States, which has the military might and economic heft to buttress Pakistani defenses. However, Washington must maintain a delicate balance on the subcontinent, moving between its deepening partnership with India and keeping Pakistan on life support to avoid having India become the unchallenged South Asian hegemon.

Though Pakistan will do whatever it can to hold U.S. interest in an alliance with Islamabad — and keeping the militant threat alive is very much a part of that calculus — it will more often than not be left feeling betrayed by its allies in Washington. With U.S. patience wearing thin on Afghanistan, talk of a U.S. betrayal is naturally creeping up again among Pakistani policymakers as Pakistan fears that a U.S. withdrawal from the region will leave Pakistan with little to defend against India, a massive militant mess to clean up and a weaker hand in Afghanistan. China, while unwilling to put its neck out for Pakistan and provoke retaliation by India, provides Islamabad with a vital military backup that Pakistan can not only use to elicit more defense support against the Indians, but also to capture Washington’s attention with a reminder that a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could open the door for Chinese military expansion in South Asia.Chinese motives in the Kashmir affair are more complex. Even before the rumors, India and China were diplomatically sparring over the Chinese government’s recent refusal to issue a visa to a senior Indian army general on grounds that his command includes Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Such diplomatic flare-ups have become more frequent over the past couple of years, as China has used visa issuances in disputed territory in Kashmir and in Arunachal Pradesh along the northern Indian border to assert its territorial claims while trying to discredit Indian claims. Even beyond Kashmir, China has injected life into its territorial claims throughout the East and South China seas, much to the consternation of the Pacific Rim states.China’s renewed assertiveness in these disputed territories can be explained in large part by the country’s resource acquisition strategy. As China has scaled up its efforts to scour the globe for energy resources to sustain its elephantine economy, it has increasingly sought to develop a military that can safeguard vital supply lines running through the Indian Ocean basin to and from the Persian Gulf. Building the Karakoram Highway through Kashmir, for example, allows China to substantially cut down the time it takes to transit supplies between the Pakistani coast and China’s western front.China’s increasing reliance on the military to secure its supply lines for commercial interests, along with other trends, has thus given the PLA a much more prominent say in Chinese policymaking in recent years. This trend has been reinforced by the Chinese government’s need to modernize the military and meet its growing budgetary needs following a large-scale recentralization effort in the 1990s that stripped the PLA of much of its business interests. Over the past decade, the PLA has taken a more prominent role in maintaining internal stability — including responses to natural disasters, riots and other disturbances — while increasing its participation in international peacekeeping efforts. As the PLA’s clout has grown in recent years, Chinese military officials have gone from remaining virtually silent on political affairs to becoming commentators for the Chinese state press on issues concerning Chinese foreign policy.The PLA’s political influence could also be factoring into the rising political tensions in Kashmir. After all, China’s naval expansion into the Indian Ocean basin for its primarily commercial interests has inevitably driven the modernization and expansion of the Indian navy, a process the United States supports out of its own interest to hedge against China. By both asserting its claims to territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir and raising the prospect of more robust Chinese military support for Pakistan, the Chinese military can benefit from having India’s military focus on ground forces, which require a great deal of resources to maintain a large troop presence in rough terrain, while reducing the amount of attention and resources the Indian military can give to its naval modernization plans.

The Indian Response

There may be a number of commercial, political and military factors contributing to China’s military extensions into South Asia, but India is not as interested in the multifaceted purposes behind China’s moves as it is in the actual movement of troops along the Indian border. From the Indian point of view, the Chinese military is building up naval assets and fortifying its alliance with Pakistan to hem in India. However remote the possibility may be of another futile ground war with China (recall the Sino-Indian war of 1962) across the world’s roughest mountainous terrain, India is unlikely to downplay any notable shifts in China’s military disposition and infrastructure development in the region. India’s traditional response is to highlight the levers it holds with Tibet, which is crucial buffer territory for the Chinese. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit with the Dalai Lama was certainly not lost on Beijing. Chinese media have already reported recently that India is reinforcing its troop presence in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, which flanks the Tibetan plateau. Singh also recently warned that India would have to “take adequate precautions” against Chinese “pinpricks” in Jammu and Kashmir, while maintaining hope of peaceful dialogue.The Chinese relief work in the area so far does not appear to have reached the level of criticality that would prompt India to reinforce its troop presence in Kashmir. However, tensions are continuing to escalate in the region and any meaningful shift in India’s troop disposition would carry significant military implications for the wider region.India has been attempting at least symbolically to lower its war posture with Pakistan and better manage its territorial claims by reducing its troop presence in select parts of Indian-administered Kashmir. If India is instead compelled to beef up its military presence in the region in reaction to Sino-Pakistani defense cooperation, Pakistan will be tempted to respond in kind, creating another set of issues for the United States to try to manage on the subcontinent. Washington has faced a persistent struggle in trying to convince Pakistan’s military to focus on the counterinsurgency effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan and leave it to the United States to ensure the Indian threat remains in check. Though the Pakistani security establishment is gradually adjusting its threat matrix to acknowledge the war right now is at home and not with India, Pakistan’s troop disposition remains largely unchanged, with 147,000 troops devoted to the counterinsurgency effort in northwestern Pakistan and roughly 150,000 troops in standard deployment formation along the eastern border with India.

The United States, like India, is keeping a watchful eye on China’s military movements on the subcontinent, providing another reason for the two to collaborate more closely on military affairs. Willard was quoted by the Indian state press Sept. 10 as saying that “any change in military relations or military maneuvers by China that raises concerns of India” could fall within U.S. Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, while also maintaining this is an issue for the Indian military to handle on its own. 

Though the United States is being exceedingly cautious in defining its role in this affair, it cannot avoid the fact that every time U.S. and Indian defense officials get together to discuss Pakistan and China, Islamabad’s fears of a U.S.-Indian military partnership are reinforced, drawing the Pakistanis closer to China. This combination of insecurities is creating a self-perpetuating threat matrix on the subcontinent with implications for U.S., Indian, Chinese and Pakistani defense strategy.

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7. September 2010 by admin.

Rethinking American Options on Iran

By George FriedmanCourtsey: www.stratfor.comPublic discussion of potential attacks on Iran’s nuclear development sites is surging again. This has happened before. On several occasions, leaks about potential airstrikes have created an atmosphere of impending war. These leaks normally coincided with diplomatic initiatives and were designed to intimidate the Iranians and facilitate a settlement favorable to the United States and Israel. These initiatives have failed in the past. It is therefore reasonable to associate the current avalanche of reports with the imposition of sanctions and view it as an attempt to increase the pressure on Iran and either force a policy shift or take advantage of divisions within the regime.My first instinct is to dismiss the war talk as simply another round of psychological warfare against Iran, this time originating with Israel. Most of the reports indicate that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran. From a psychological-warfare standpoint, this sets up the good-cop/bad-cop routine. The Israelis play the mad dog barely restrained by the more sober Americans, who urge the Iranians through intermediaries to make concessions and head off a war. As I said, we have been here before several times, and this hasn’t worked. The worst sin of intelligence is complacency, the belief that simply because something has happened (or has not happened) several times before it is not going to happen this time. But each episode must be considered carefully in its own light and preconceptions from previous episodes must be banished. Indeed, the previous episodes might well have been intended to lull the Iranians into complacency themselves. Paradoxically, the very existence of another round of war talk could be intended to convince the Iranians that war is distant while covert war preparations take place. An attack may be in the offing, but the public displays neither confirm nor deny that possibility.

The Evolving Iranian Assessment

STRATFOR has gone through three phases in its evaluation of the possibility of war. The first, which was in place until July 2009, held that while Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon, its progress could not be judged by its accumulation of enriched uranium. While that would give you an underground explosion, the creation of a weapon required sophisticated technologies for ruggedizing and miniaturizing the device, along with a very reliable delivery system. In our view, Iran might be nearing a testable device but it was far from a deliverable weapon. Therefore, we dismissed war talk and argued that there was no meaningful pressure for an attack on Iran.We modified this view somewhat in July 2009, after the Iranian elections and the demonstrations. While we dismissed the significance of the demonstrations, we noted close collaboration developing between Russia and Iran. That meant there could be no effective sanctions against Iran, so stalling for time in order for sanctions to work had no value. Therefore, the possibility of a strike increased. But then Russian support stalled as well, and we turned back to our analysis, adding to it an evaluation of potential Iranian responses to any air attack. We noted three potential counters: activating Shiite militant groups (most notably Hezbollah), creating chaos in Iraq and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 45 percent of global oil exports travel. Of the three Iranian counters, the last was the real “nuclear option.” Interfering with the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf would raise oil prices stunningly and would certainly abort the tepid global economic recovery. Iran would have the option of plunging the world into a global recession or worse. There has been debate over whether Iran would choose to do the latter or whether the U.S. Navy could rapidly clear mines. It is hard to imagine how an Iranian government could survive air attacks without countering them in some way. It is also a painful lesson of history that the confidence of any military force cannot be a guide to its performance. At the very least, there is a possibility that the Iranians could block the Strait of Hormuz, and that means the possibility of devastating global economic consequences. That is a massive risk for the United States to take, against an unknown probability of successful Iranian action. In our mind, it was not a risk that the United States could take, especially when added to the other Iranian counters. Therefore, we did not think the United States would strike.Certainly, we did not believe that the Israelis would strike Iran alone. First, the Israelis are much less likely to succeed than the Americans would be, given the size of their force and their distance from Iran (not to mention the fact that they would have to traverse either Turkish, Iraqi or Saudi airspace). More important, Israel lacks the ability to mitigate any consequences. Any Israeli attack would have to be coordinated with the United States so that the United States could alert and deploy its counter-mine, anti-submarine and missile-suppression assets. For Israel to act without giving the United States time to mitigate the Hormuz option would put Israel in the position of triggering a global economic crisis. The political consequences of that would not be manageable by Israel. Therefore, we found an Israeli strike against Iran without U.S. involvement difficult to imagine.

The Current Evaluation

Our current view is that the accumulation of enough enriched uranium to build a weapon does not mean that the Iranians are anywhere close to having a weapon. Moreover, the risks inherent in an airstrike on its nuclear facilities outstrip the benefits (and even that assumes that the entire nuclear industry is destroyed in one fell swoop — an unsure outcome at best). It also assumes the absence of other necessary technologies. Assumptions of U.S. prowess against mines might be faulty, and so, too, could my assumption about weapon development. The calculus becomes murky, and one would expect all governments involved to be waffling.There is, of course, a massive additional issue. Apart from the direct actions that Iran might make, there is the fact that the destruction of its nuclear capability would not solve the underlying strategic challenge that Iran poses. It has the largest military force in the Persian Gulf, absent the United States. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from Iraq, which would further diminish the ability of the United States to contain Iran. Therefore, a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear capability combined with the continuing withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would create a profound strategic crisis in the Persian Gulf.The country most concerned about Iran is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. The Saudis recall the result of the last strategic imbalance in the region, when Iraq, following its armistice with Iran, proceeded to invade Kuwait, opening the possibility that its next intention was to seize the northeastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. In that case, the United States intervened. Given that the United States is now withdrawing from Iraq, intervention following withdrawal would be politically difficult unless the threat to the United States was clear. More important, the Iranians might not give the Saudis the present Saddam Hussein gave them by seizing Kuwait and then halting. They might continue. They certainly have the military capacity to try. In a real sense, the Iranians would not have to execute such a military operation in order to gain the benefits. The simple imbalance of forces would compel the Saudis and others in the Persian Gulf to seek a political accommodation with the Iranians. Strategic domination of the Persian Gulf does not necessarily require military occupation — as the Americans have abundantly demonstrated over the past 40 years. It merely requires the ability to carry out those operations. The Saudis, therefore, have been far quieter — and far more urgent — than the Israelis in asking the United States to do something about the Iranians. The Saudis certainly do not want the United States to leave Iraq. They want the Americans there as a blocking force protecting Saudi Arabia but not positioned on Saudi soil. They obviously are not happy about Iran’s nuclear efforts, but the Saudis see the conventional and nuclear threat as a single entity. The collapse of the Iran-Iraq balance of power has left the Arabian Peninsula in a precarious position.King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did an interesting thing a few weeks ago. He visited Lebanon personally and in the company of the president of Syria. The Syrian and Saudi regimes are not normally friendly, given different ideologies, Syria’s close relationship with Iran and their divergent interests in Lebanon. But there they were together, meeting with the Lebanese government and giving not very subtle warnings to Hezbollah. Saudi influence and money and the threat of Iran jeopardizing the Saudi regime by excessive adventurism seems to have created an anti-Hezbollah dynamic in Lebanon. Hezbollah is suddenly finding many of its supposed allies cooperating with some of its certain enemies. The threat of a Hezbollah response to an airstrike on Iran seems to be mitigated somewhat.

Eliminating Iranian Leverage In Hormuz

I said that there were three counters. One was Hezbollah, which is the least potent of the three from the American perspective. The other two are Iraq and Hormuz. If the Iraqis were able to form a government that boxed in pro-Iranian factions in a manner similar to how Hezbollah is being tentatively contained, then the second Iranian counter would be weakened. That would “just” leave the major issue — Hormuz.The problem with Hormuz is that the United States cannot tolerate any risk there. The only way to control that risk is to destroy Iranian naval capability before airstrikes on nuclear targets take place. Since many of the Iranian mine layers would be small boats, this would mean an extensive air campaign and special operations forces raids against Iranian ports designed to destroy anything that could lay mines, along with any and all potential mine-storage facilities, anti-ship missile emplacements, submarines and aircraft. Put simply, any piece of infrastructure within a few miles of any port would need to be eliminated. The risk to Hormuz cannot be eliminated after the attack on nuclear sites. It must be eliminated before an attack on the nuclear sites. And the damage must be overwhelming. There are two benefits to this strategy. First, the nuclear facilities aren’t going anywhere. It is the facilities that are producing the enriched uranium and other parts of the weapon that must be destroyed more than any uranium that has already been enriched. And the vast bulk of those facilities will remain where they are even if there is an attack on Iran’s maritime capabilities. Key personnel would undoubtedly escape, but considering that within minutes of the first American strike anywhere in Iran a mass evacuation of key scientists would be under way anyway, there is little appreciable difference between a first strike against nuclear sites and a first strike against maritime targets. (U.S. air assets are good, but even the United States cannot strike 100-plus targets simultaneously.) Second, the counter-nuclear strategy wouldn’t deal with the more fundamental problem of Iran’s conventional military power. This opening gambit would necessarily attack Iran’s command-and-control, air-defense and offensive air capabilities as well as maritime capabilities. This would sequence with an attack on the nuclear capabilities and could be extended into a prolonged air campaign targeting Iran’s ground forces.The United States is very good at gaining command of the air and attacking conventional military capabilities (see Yugoslavia in 1999). Its strategic air capability is massive and, unlike most of the U.S. military, underutilized. The United States also has substantial air forces deployed around Iran, along with special operations forces teams trained in penetration, evasion and targeting, and satellite surveillance. Far from the less-than-rewarding task of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, going after Iran would be the kind of war the United States excels at fighting. No conventional land invasion, no boots-on-the-ground occupation, just a very thorough bombing campaign. If regime change happens as a consequence, great, but that is not the primary goal. Defanging the Iranian state is.It is also the only type of operation that could destroy the nuclear capabilities (and then some) while preventing an Iranian response. It would devastate Iran’s conventional military forces, eliminating the near-term threat to the Arabian Peninsula. Such an attack, properly executed, would be the worst-case scenario for Iran and, in my view, the only way an extended air campaign against nuclear facilities could be safely executed. Just as Iran’s domination of the Persian Gulf rests on its ability to conduct military operations, not on its actually conducting the operations, the reverse is also true. It is the capacity and apparent will to conduct broadened military operations against Iran that can shape Iranian calculations and decision-making. So long as the only threat is to Iran’s nuclear facilities, its conventional forces remain intact and its counter options remain viable, Iran will not shift its strategy. Once its counter options are shut down and its conventional forces are put at risk, Iran must draw up another calculus. In this scenario, Israel is a marginal player. The United States is the only significant actor, and it might not strike Iran simply over the nuclear issue. That’s not a major U.S. problem. But the continuing withdrawal from Iraq and Iran’s conventional forces are very much an American problem. Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability is merely an added benefit. Given the Saudi intervention in Lebanese politics, this scenario now requires a radical change in Iraq, one in which a government would be quickly formed and Iranian influence quickly curtailed. Interestingly, we have heard recent comments by administration officials asserting that Iranian influence has, in fact, been dramatically reduced. At present, such a reduction is not obvious to us, but the first step of shifting perceptions tends to be propaganda. If such a reduction became real, then the two lesser Iranian counter moves would be blocked and the U.S. offensive option would become more viable.

Internal Tension in Tehran

At this point, we would expect to see the Iranians recalculating their position, with some of the clerical leadership using the shifting sands of Lebanon against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, there have been many indications of internal stress, not between the mythical democratic masses and the elite, but within the elite itself. This past weekend the Iranian speaker of the house attacked Ahmadinejad’s handling of special emissaries. For what purpose we don’t yet know, but the internal tension is growing.The Iranians are not concerned about the sanctions. The destruction of their nuclear capacity would, from their point of view, be a pity. But the destruction of large amounts of their conventional forces would threaten not only their goals in the wider Islamic world but also their stability at home. That would be unacceptable and would require a shift in their general strategy. From the Iranian point of view — and from ours — Washington’s intentions are opaque. But when we consider the Obama administration’s stated need to withdraw from Iraq, Saudi pressure on the United States not to withdraw while Iran remains a threat, Saudi moves against Hezbollah to split Syria from Iran and Israeli pressure on the United States to deal with nuclear weapons, the pieces for a new American strategy are emerging from the mist. Certainly the Iranians appear to be nervous. And the threat of a new strategy might just be enough to move the Iranians off dead center. If they don’t, logic would dictate the consideration of a broader treatment of the military problem posed by Iran.

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7. September 2010 by admin.

HINDVI SWARAJ

The youth rose in rebellion. Shivaji wrote in 1645 AD to one of his compatriots severely protesting against the allegation of being faithless to the Shah of Vijapur, and appealed to the superior morals by reminding him that the only faith they pledged was not to any Shah, but to God alone. Did he not in the company of Dadaji, his guardian, and his comrades solemnly swear in the presence of God on the summits of Sahyadri to fight to finish and establish “Hindvi Swaraj”, a Hindu-Pad-Padshahi in Hindustan (India)? “GOD IS ON OUR SIDE AND HE SHALL WIN!”

This word, “Hindvi Swaraj”, coming from the pen of Shivaji himself, reveals, as nothing else could have done, the very soul of the great movement that attired the life and the activities of Maharashtra for a hundred years and more. Even in its inception the Maratha rising was neither a parochial nor a personal movement altogether. It was essentially a Hindu movement in the defense of Hindu Dharma to overthrow the alien muslim domination, for the establishment of an independent, powerful Hindu Empire.

It was not only the leader of Marathas who was actuated by this patriotic zeal, but it was more or less shared throughout his camp and his country. The people were as fully conscious of the patriotic spirit that actuated the efforts of Shivaji, as he himself was. He was hailed everywhere as the deliverer of the Hindus.

And even those, who still ranged themselves on the Muslim side were doing so either through their natural failure to conceive that a rebellion against the great Muslim Padshah could ever succeed, or through a natural hesitation to accept the lead of young and raw enthusiast as Shivaji must have appeared, to the more callous and calculating minds,a s well as to those who had vested personal interests in the permanence of the Muslim rule.

But to Hindus in general, not only in Maharashtra, but throughout the Deccan and even in North, he was the one great champion of their cause, the chosen hero of his race, who was destined to win the political independence of his Land and his Race. History, tradition and literature of that period teem with passages and events that give noble expression to his popular regard and appreciation which the mission and work of Shivaji, Ramdas and their generation won throughout Hindudom, district after district, and town after town, longed and pressed for the coming of Marathas under Shivaji and rejoiced to see Muslim flag being torn asunder from its flag-staff and the sacred Geruva of the Marathas rise and wave triumphant in its stead.

to cite only one example to subtantiate this statement, let us refer to the letter which the people of Savnoor sent to Shivaji when the Hindus of that district could no longer tolerate the Muslim rule.

“We are groaning under the tyrannical sway of the aliens and our dharma is trampled under foot. Come! O, Champion of the Hindu faith, come! O, destroyer of the wicked and the unbelieving aliens’ rule! Here we are at mercy of the Muslim General, Yusuf, and his army, who because we sympathize with Thee and conspired to invite our Hindu compatriots under Thee, have made us prisoners in our own house, place guards at our gates, and are trying to starve us by interdicting food and water. So turn thy nights into days and come, O Deliverer of the Hindu Race!”

It is needless to state that Shivaji did not turn a deaf ear to this moving appeal of his co-religionists beyond the borders of Maharashtra. Hambir Rao, the famous Maratha Captain,hastened to the scene, inflicting crushing defeats on the forces of Vijapur in more than one battlefield, delivered the Hindus from Muslim clutches and rid that district of their rule.

Having out in order his little jagir, comprising Poona and Supa, and organizing the 12 mavals (districts) when he was but 14-16 years old, Shivaji, with his chosen band, took Torana and other important forts by tactful surprises and daring raids. After gaining one of his most decisive victories over the forces of Vijapur under Afzal Khan, Shivaji came in open conflict with the Moguls. Having routed several of their captains and generals now surrendering, now surprising, but always outwitting them, he struck such a terror in the hearts of his foes that even Auranzeb thought it prudent to drop opposition for a while and lure him into trap. But Shivaji proved more than a match even for an Auranzeb in his intrigues, and frustrating his treacherous designs at Agra, escaped unscathed from captivity and reached Raigadh safely. The war with Moguls was resumed and Sinhgadh was re-captured by Shivaji. Several other captains distinguished themselves by inflicting crushing defeats on the Muslims wherever they met, till at last Shivaji thought it prudent and safe to have himself formally crowned as the Hindu Chhatrapati - the champion of HIndu Dharma and Hindu Civilization. Since the fall of Vijayanagar, never had a Hindu Prince dared to have himself crowned as an independent ruler, as a Chhatrapati. This coronation broke the spell of Muslim superiority in arms. Never again did they prove a match for the hindus in the battlefield.

The results seems miraculous even to actors themselves, Ramdas, himself the high priest of that war of Hindu Liberation, sings in one of his mystic utterances of the vision he had seen and the triumphantly asserts that much of what he had seen in his vision had already come to pass.

“In utter darkenss I dreamt: behold, the dreams are realized. Hindustan is up, has come by her own and those that hated her and sinned against God are put down with a strong hand. Verily, it is a holy land and happy. For, God has made her cause His own and Auranzeb is down. The dethroned are enthroned and enthroned are dethroned! Actions speaks better than words. Verily, Hindustan is a holy land and happy; now that Dharma is backed up by RajDharma, Right by Might, the waters of Hind, no longer defiled, can enable us once more to perform our ablutions and austerities.”

It was this consciousness of fighting under the banner of God that made Shivaji, when he succeeded in founding an independent Hindu Kingdom, to lay it all at the feet of his consciousness of a great mission that made Ramdas return it all to his illustrious disciple as a trust to be administered for the good of man and to Glory of God.

The stirring appeal and the battle song that the Maratha trumpet sounded from the summits of Sahyaadri in the name of Dharma and Hindu-Pad-Padshahi touched and roused all hinduism far beyond the borders of Maharashtra and made them feel that the cause that was being fought out by the Marathas aimed at nothing short of the deliverance of the Hindus and Hindu Land from the hated alien bondage.

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4. September 2010 by admin.

How the US army protects its trucks – by paying the Taliban

Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through – and it’s the Taliban who profit

The lawyers for Hamed Wardak and NCL Holdings, Mishcon de Reya say: NCL and Mr Wardak learned of the contracting opportunities for the provision of trucking services in Afghanistan from the “fedbizopps” website, which is hosted by the US Government, and open to all, with all of the stringencies required in such an exercise. NCL competed for the contract according to the advertised criteria and were awarded it on the merits of its tender in a fair and open exercise. Neither NCL nor Mr Wardak were the recipients of the contract because of Mr Wardak’s connections in Afghanistan. The contracts were not awarded unfairly. Although each tendering party has been awarded transit contracts with a value of up to US$360 million for a period of two years, NCL have so far, nearly half way through the first year, performed contacts to the value of US$18.5 million. Mr Wardak and his family have dedicated their political lives to the welfare of Afghanistan, in vocal opposition to the Taliban. He does not directly or indirectly provide funds to the Taliban. There is no evidence that any money from NCL was received by the Taliban.

On 29 October 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahideen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1998.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin, President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn in a separate case.

The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan [its senior personnel are ex-British army, many of them from Special Services]. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA ^­ officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.

“It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials admits. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10% of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts – hundreds of millions of dollars – consists of payments to insurgents.

Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the complex web of connections that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and a good place to pick up this thread is a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings.

Like the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan. What NCL Holdings is most notable for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghan’s current defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahideen against the Soviets.

Earlier this year, the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named as one of the six companies that would handle all the US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.

Striking contracting gold

At first the contract, for “host nation trucking”, was large but not gargantuan. But over the summer, citing the coming “surge” and a new doctrine, “Money as a weapons system”, the US military expanded the contract 600% for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: “Service members will not get the food, water, equipment and ammunition they require.”

Each of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360m, or a total of nearly $2.2bn. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10% of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defence minister’s well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.

Host nation trucking does, indeed, keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. “We supply everything the army needs to survive here,” one American trucking executive told me. “We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles.”

The epicentre is Bagram air base, just an hour north of Kabul, from where virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the army calls “the battlespace” – that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.

The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: “The army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.”

That is something everyone seems to agree on. Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the host nation trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: “You are paying the people in the local areas – some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force – to move your trucks through.”

Hanna explained that the prices charged are different depending on the route. “We’re basically being extorted. Where you don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.”

Sometimes, he says, the fee is high, and sometimes it is low. “Moving 10 trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It’s based on a number of trucks and what you’re carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying Mraps [mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles] or Humvees, they are going to charge you more.”

Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. “If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially.”

The private security industry in Afghanistan has developed quite differently from the private military model seen in Iraq, where firms such as Blackwater were arms of the US government. The industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. “Every warlord has his security company,” is the way one executive explained it to me.

The heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don’t really protect convoys of US military goods here because they simply can’t; they need the Taliban’s co-operation.

One of the big problems for the companies that ship US military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. Insurgents are “shooting the drivers from 3,000ft away” with Kalashnikovs, a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. “They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that’s just a joke. I carry an AK – and that’s just to shoot myself if I have to!”

The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna points out, “An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade – you are going to lose.”

That said, at least one of the host nation trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International (FHI). Instead of payments, it tried to fight off attackers. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but insiders in the security industry say that FHI’s convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.

Watan’s secret weapon

For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, “What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat.”

He is an army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he is not happy about what is being done. He says that, at a minimum, American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off. “Most escorting is done by the Taliban,” an Afghan private security official told me. He is a Pashto and former mujahideen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. “Now the government is so weak,” he added, “everyone is paying the Taliban.”

To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. “Two Taliban is enough,” she told me. “One in the front and one in the back.” She shrugged. “You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible.”

Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by the Popals, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war – to the south and to the west. If the army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.

Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan has a deal with the local warlord who controls the road.

Watan’s secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.

According to witnesses, Ruhullah works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4×4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Ruhullah is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah “charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300km.”

Security, extortion or insurance?

It is hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly – security, extortion or a form of “insurance”. Then there is the question, does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That is impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route says, “He works both sides . . . whatever is most profitable. He’s the main commander. He’s got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows.”

Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, is reputed to pay. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan and Commander Ruhullah’s convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 a month for Watan’s services. To underline the point, NCL, operating on a $360m contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister’s son, is apparently paying millions a year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai’s cousins, for protection.

Cleaning up what looks like cronyism may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline from Department of Defense contracts to potential insurgents. Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS is a well-run service, trusted by the international forces. The NDS delivered what I’m told are “very detailed” reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies. The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the US was to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.

The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Colonel David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents?

“The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at forward operating base Shank in Logar province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board, 10-20% goes to the insurgents. My intel [intelligence] guy would say it is closer to 10%. Generally, it is happening in logistics.”

In a statement about host nation trucking, the US army’s chief public affairs officer in Afghanistan, Colonel Wayne Shanks, says international forces are “aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring”. He adds that, in spite of oversight, “the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent”.

In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that – as with so much in Afghanistan – the United States doesn’t seem to know how to fix it.

This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current edition of the Nation magazine

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4. September 2010 by admin.

Imagine A World Where Everyone Is A Muslim An American Muslim author wrote a huge volume to counter-attack the book of Ibtihal. He called his book; “Imagine a World With Everyone a Muslim.”Written by Dr. Thomas Ahmed His book too was sold in large numbers. It was really an amazing and interesting work and deserved some praise. He imitated the writing style of Dr. Ibtihal and began his book by saying, “Yesterday night I had a beautiful dream. In my dream, I woke up in a world with everyone a Muslim. I asked the people around me where the Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews went. They told me they had all willingly embraced Islam.” As the prophet Muhammad prophesied, that Allah had given him the entire earth planet as a mosque for prayer. Allah fulfilled his promise and made the light of truth to shine in each and every heart. I shouted praises and thanked Allah for the great victory that Islam achieved. Then, I began a tour around the globe to see how the world would look with everyone a Muslim. I began my world trip by visiting Europe. Every country I went to I saw women dressed up decently with the Islamic clothes covering the tempting parts of their bodies. I had never seen any thighs or hips of a woman. No woman was exposing half of her breasts or putting on tight jeans and shirts that revealed her sexual body. The only part of the woman I was able to see was her face. I had never seen a boy and a girl holding hands and walking shamelessly in the streets of Europe. In the public transportation women sat on one side and men on the other side. Women seemed to be happy and contented by sitting separately. No woman was physically touched or harassed by men. I left Europe and travelled to the United States of America. When I landed in New York, I felt as if I landed in Makka. Men wore long beards and white Islamic clothes. Everyone was carrying a rosary in one hand and in the other hand a copy of the Qur’an. There were no gangs in New York. When I asked what happened to those thousands of gangsters, I was told since America implemented the Shari’a law the gang activities were reduced gradually until the last gang leader was executed in public. Every thief got his hand cut off. No man and woman were permitted to live together without marriage. Many married men and women were stoned to death because of their adulterous relations. Unmarried women and men were scourged with hundred lashes for unlawful sexual relations. The Shari’a law made the Americans devout Muslims and compelled them to visit the mosques five times in a day without fail. The FBI and other American police were given the right to arrest everyone found roaming on the streets during the prayer time. I went to the beaches to see what change had happened there. To my surprise, I found all the beaches in America were converted into fishing places. The Islamic government in the White House considered the beaches as the places of vices where Satan used the bare-naked bodies of women to entice men to commit adultery, take drugs, and kill their fellow human beings. At that time, America had an eternal president who was ruling the White House forever like el-Gaddafi of Libya and Mubarak of Egypt. Only death could remove him from power. President Muhammad Ahmed Mahmud Al-Ameen had been ruling in the White House for a decade and a half.All places of entertainment were officially closed after America adopted the Islamic rules. There were no more cinemas, casinos, nightclubs, bars, etc. Men were encouraged to spend their free time at night in prayer. Women were discouraged from going out of their houses unless it was necessary such as going to school, work, or to the hospital in case of sickness. Moreover, women were discouraged from working in places where men could spend time with them in seclusion. The government of America nullified all drivers’ licenses that the American women used to possess during those dark years of unbelief. It was a crime for an American woman to drive a car. Girls were not allowed to ride bicycles. Female students travelled in buses from their houses to schools. American jails were almost empty most of the time. All maximum-security penitentiaries were shut down for lack of prisoners. The Shari’a law solved the problem of the huge amount of money that the government used to spend on keeping criminals in prisons. Every one who stole got his hand cut off. Every gangster was beheaded. All drug dealers got their heads chopped off. Every adulterer and adulteress were scourged with one hundred lashes. Every rebellious wife got beaten by her husband. Children were flogged by their parents in homes and scourged by their teachers at schools. In that way, children were well disciplined by their parents and teachers. Those kids who continued to be rebellious the law controlled them. I left America and traveled to the Middle East. I felt paradise had come to earth when I landed in Palestine. There were no more Muslims and Jews killing each other. Everyone had become Muslim. I traveled around the other Arab countries and I found people were living in peace and harmony. People sometimes left their shops and stores open and went to pray. No one ever dared to stretch his hand and steal a thing that did not belong to him. I went to Iraq and I did not find American marines, I traveled to Afghanistan, and I did not see the NATO troops. Taliban were ruling the country of Afghanistan. The so-called Islamic terrorists became main leaders of all Muslim and Arab countries. Muslims were able to restore the Caliph. All countries in the world accepted the President of the United States of America, Muhammad Al-Ameen as the Supreme Caliph and the rulers of other countries became governors under his control. The Supreme Caliph in the White House had the right to change any governor without giving any reason for that. The only country that rebelled against the Supreme Caliph was Iran. The Supreme Caliph tried to solve the problem of Iran through diplomacy but he could not. When Iran began to influence the Shiites of Iraq which finally led to civil war the Supreme Caliph in the US hit the rebellious country with nuclear weapons and erased it from the world map. Therefore, I was not able to visit Iran because it did not exist any more. I was told that America threatened to use weapons of mass destruction to hit any country that refused to accept Islam. The White House and the Pentagon were following the hadith of the prophet in which he said, ‘’I have been commanded to fight the people until they bear witness that there is no God except Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, if they say it they uphold from me their wealth and bloods.” Countries that were totally destroyed and erased from the world map because of their refusal to convert to Islam and submit to the Supreme Caliph of the White House and used military force to combat against the invading armies of the Muslim Mujahedeen were Iran, Australia, India, China, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Denmark, Netherlands, and Canada. Those countries and their inhabitants were turned into desolation. I could not understand how a super power country like the United States of America was forced to convert to Islam whereas less powerful countries like those that resisted conversion were destroyed. I asked someone to explain to me that riddle. I was told that America was not converted through military force. An African American applied the law of Tayyiqia until he reached the White House as a senator.Then, he continued to act as a Christian until he won the general election and became the President of the United States of America.As soon as he won the election and occupied the White House as a head of the States, he declared himself to be the First Muslim Man to rule America.Of course, he did it gradually and in a very subtle way.First, he began to open the door and help some African American Muslim leaders to work in the society by winning Americans to Islam. In one of his speeches, he admitted openly he was a Muslim before he was brainwashed by his non-Muslim relatives and converted to Christianity. Then, he delivered another speech and said he found more religious tolerance and brotherhood in Islam than Christianity. In order to support his point he referred to the example of the famous boxer Muhammad Ali Kelly who was once a persecuted and ill-treated Christian and then converted to Islam. He said he found the justification of Kelly were compelling and his testimony of being a Muslim more promising. To cut a long story short towards the end of the second year in his reign the African American President of the United States of America surprised the world one particular morning when he declared his conversion from Christianity to Islam. The congress tried desperately for a year to impeach him for lying to the public before his election but it could not succeed. Article 18 of the Charter of Human Rights stood in the way of impeaching the converted president of the USA. Article 18.Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. After his conversion, the Muslim president succeeded first in converting each and every African American to Islam. Politics and ethnicity played important roles to the mass conversion of the African Americans. Christianity was made to represent slavery, racial discrimination, and the cause of all the ills that had befallen the African Americans whereas Islam became the symbol of brotherhood and freedom from the exploitation of the white men. Some African American Muslim leaders called for African Americans’ Liberation Movement (AALM). The new movement did not only convince African Americans but led many white Americans to forsake Christianity. The Muslim leaders openly preached in their mosques and public places against the Church and condemned it as the place of hypocrisy and deception. Many churches were forced to shut down due to the lack of membership and funding. Before the president ended his second term in power, half of America became Muslims. The new president elected was African American Muslim. This new president began persecuting the remaining Christians. By this time, many Christian Americans began a mass immigration to Canada and Europe. This immigration helped Islam to have a stronger grip in America.When Muslims became the majority in the States, there was public pressure on the White House to forsake the man-made laws and implement the divinely revealed laws of God. On the fourth year of his reign, the second African American Muslim President applied the Shari’a law and declared himself as Caliph.Then, began the American Islamic Invasions to other countries of the world. The first country that was invited to Islam and refused to accept it was the neighboring country Canada. The Pentagon used weapons of mass destruction to destroy Canada and erased it from the world map. Then, followed forced conversion of the other European countries. The United Kingdom willingly and gladly accepted Islam. This happened because there was military alliance between the two super power countries. After that, the countries of the world were converted one after the other. All Arab and Muslim countries joined the new Super Power Muslim country and accepted the President of the USA as the Supreme Caliph. Those rebellious countries, where Satan still had a strong hold on its leaders were invaded and hit with the weapons of mass destruction. During those invasions around two billion people perished. Millions of books were written in description of how those wars were fought and who were the outstanding military leaders in those wars. After those wars, Islam became the One World Religion and the Shari’a law was implemented all over the world.When I heard that the entire world applied the Shari’a law and Islam became the religion of everyone I shouted “Allah Akbar” and I woke up from my sleep and behold it was a dream.” Diana Stone wrote: “Dr. Ahmed, I’m reading your book, Ibtihal and Muslims’ Liberation Movement. You did an outstanding job of providing more information about Islam in one book than I have read anywhere. Writing it in a novel format made it easier to understand and retain the information. It’s a massive volume you must have spent years working on it”. Chapter 175 from my book, “Ibtihal and Muslims’ Liberation Movement”. Click on this link to view the book. http://www.publishamerica.net/product56703.html

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2. September 2010 by admin.

Pakistan’s human cockroaches

The writer is a columnist, and TV and radio anchor fasi.zaka@tribune.com.pk

Source Link: http://tribune.com.pk/story/42158/pakistan/

Pakistan, you are a failed state. Not because of Zardari. Not because of America. But because you are a failed people, all of us undeserving of sympathy. We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don’t spread it to other people, other countries.

These were words I posted on a social networking website. I have an unusually negative mindset these days. It happened after I saw the video of the two teenage brothers brutally clubbed to death by a crowd frenzied with blood thirst in Sialkot. The police watched gleefully. The video has blurs at certain parts, but even this sensible sensitivity does not prevent one from seeing mists of blood flaying from the heads of these teens as they are hit relentlessly, and remorselessly, again and again.

The murderous crowd was truly representative of the richness of Pakistan. Some wear jeans, others shalwar kameez, some were bearded, others clean shaven. The Pakistanis had gotten together to have some fun.

Do not be shocked. This wasn’t isolated, it’s just that the crowd wanted to make sure their orgasmic moment could be captured for later viewing, at one’s pleasure. We blame our ill-educated brethren for the barbarity we witness, but that’s a self-serving lie.

The middle and upper classes are immune to education it seems. They hold opinions of everyday violence even if they have never raised their hand at anyone. If you believe Jews are the scum of the earth, all Ahmadis deserve to die or that Hindus are inferior, well why not two teenage boys?

I want Pakistanis to feel shame, in fact a substantial loss of self-esteem would be great. This is the only way for us to begin to doubt ourselves and the incessant excuses we make. Yes, the world is right to add restrictions on our visas, to see us as dangerous. If for even a while we felt we were the cockroaches of the human race, maybe we would get to the point we stopped the lies we tell ourselves and let this continue.

The fact is, if we had real democracy, there would be no internet in Pakistan, women would not be allowed out of their homes, education would come to a standstill and we would begin a programme of killing off every minority. Thank you corrupt generals and politicians, you keep this at bay with some sense of being answerable to a world that still has some humanity in it, even if you don’t.

And please, no excuses, no excuses. Don’t give us that, “If only there was true Islam they would be better”. I think a thousand years is enough, we can’t wait longer. And there was no America in existence for most of that, or even western colonialism.

You want to know just how sociopathic we are? In response to these killings some are happy to say we deserve earthquakes and floods. Typical. Don’t change yourself, but give credit to the indiscriminate and inhumane forces of nature. The floods are a tragedy, an atrocity and should never be used to bolster an argument that really only demands self-reflection.

And please, in your self-reflection don’t call us animals, most of them are benign vegetarians. Also don’t blame Sialkot; they were just unlucky because they are subject to scrutiny. There is so much more out there.

There is such a sense of sickening moral superiority in Pakistanis, it needs to be addressed. All we care about is foreign policy, eager to point out the hypocrisies of the world, silent on our domestic, or even local life. Why should the world take what you say seriously, why should you be a regional power, or a leader in the comity of Islamic nations?

Truth is, there is only one way to get change, and it’s not hanging the people who killed these boys. It is raising your voice to contradict people who advocate death for others, no matter who they are speaking of. To internalise that murder of any kind, for anyone is wrong. Sounds easy? Well just try it.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 24^th, 2010.

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