Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Pakistan - India for Distraction

Today's serial blasts through portions of India may spell distraction for Pakistan's already busy military.

The government of India's Prime Minister Singh will figure out who soon enough, and whatever the call, it will have to defuse popular action based on animosity and suspicion involving Pakistan.

Security analysts and military intelligence officials said the Assam blasts, the worst attack in the troubled northeast, bore the hallmarks of strikes by militants. “These blasts look like the handiwork of terrorist groups from Bangladesh, as you need sophisticated militant groups to carry out such coordinated attacks,” Major General Ashok Mehta, a security analyst, told media in New Delhi. “It is quite possible that separatist groups are not involved at all,” Mehta added. [1]

Pakistan's government, which maintains a delicate balance between modernizing its culture and tolerating or taking advantage of anti-American, anti-western sentiment in general, may have the tougher job of making a decision about how it feels about its American and western allies and whether it can, because it must, lead its 165 million people on to a new track, a process that may start with reversing old assumptions about the state's so-called enemies, Israel included, and taking on other equally pernicious habits of mind, including the misguided notion that democratic, even "worldly" governments somehow displace the central importance of religion, including Islam, in everyday life.

Good government strengthens the presence of the divine and the importance of religion in the lives of the pious.

For mischief, militants point their accusing hands and words always toward others.

Reference

1. Correspondent: "Serial bombs kill 65 in India."  The Frontier Post, October 31, 2008: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ts&nid=2803

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Somalia - They're Back!

With luck, Somalia will provide material for Hollywood and other film and television writers for years to come, this presuming peace comes to it one day.  This day, however, is not that.  Here is the headline and reference to the reason it will not be so for some time yet:

"Islamists stone to death Somali woman for adultery."  Reuters, October 28, 2008: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LS38222.htm

According to the Reuters article, "The Islamists last carried out public executions when they ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them at the end of that year, but they have waged an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign since then, gradually taking territory back."

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Pakistan - Lashkar Tit-for-Tat

"Police said a group of assailants were trying to hustle militia chief Pir Samiullah from his home in the Mandaldag area to a getaway car when dozens of local tribesmen confronted them and snatched him back.

"Dilawar Bangash, the Swat police chief, said hundreds of Taliban later returned, seized three members of the militia and beheaded one of them on a road before a large crowd" (AP via Fox, October 26, 2008)

Although promised automatic weapons from China, Pakistan's growing tribal lashkar movement may have yet more guts than gunpowder for stopping the militants in their midst.

However, they also may have the inspired solidarity that comes of suffering coercion, kidnappings, and murders at militant hands, which applied would seem always terrifying, up close, and personal. The consequent development of volunteer tribal militia or "lashkar" has come too late in many places to ward off open warfare with the invading Taliban but not too late to narrow both the social and territorial filters through which militants have produced their most peculiar business and to forestall heavier state military intervention in their own areas of responsibility.

While the tribal lashkar accumulate successes, the time frame in which militants operate may add difficulty to local defense for there are always two parts to it: 1) defense against immediate militant-led threats and operations; 2) defense of tribal culture against the long-term struggle by the same to impose themselves on the tribes with unquestionable and absolute authority.

Bondage by any other name would be no different, and the tribes know it.

"The provocation for the Salarzais to raise their lashkar was provided by Taliban militants, who killed two tribal elders and a cleric for holding a meeting with political authorities in Bajaur's headquarters, Khar, in violation of their decree" (Yusufzai, October 2008).

There should be no question as to who has been out to subjugate whom.

Reference

Associated Press. "Officials: 41 Killed in Pakistan Fighting." Fox News.com, October 26, 2008: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444067,00.html

Bacha, Ali Hazrat. "Peshawar: Police sceptical (STET) of lashkars." Dawn, October 25, 2008: http://www.dawn.com/2008/10/25/local26.htm

Balala, Abdul Qayum. "About Dir, Swat & Chitral." From "The charming Swat" at SwatValley.com. Pakhtun.com: http://www.pakhtun.com/AboutSwat.htm

Bureau Report. "Villagers raise lashkar to deal with militants." The International News, October 10, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=140226

Coll, Steve. "Jalaluddin Haqqani." Return of the Taliban, Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/militants/haqqani.html; "The Stories of a Warlord and a Journalist", Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline//taliban/view/5.html

Correspondent. "15 die as people clash with militants in Swat." The International News, October 27, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18018

Correspondent. "Four kidnapped tribal elders beheaded." The International News, October 11, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17744

Correspondent. "Charmang tribes announce forming Lashkar against militants." The International News, September 30, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=138673

Correspondent. "Troops, Lashkar kill 15 militants in Bajaur." The International News, October 14, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17810

Correspondent. "Wazristan plunges into darkness." The International News, October 10, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=140232

Jan, Delawar. "Restive valley gathering courage to raise another lashkar." October 24, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=142809

Khan, M. Ilyas. "The Afghan-Pakistan militant nexus." September 10, 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7601748.stm

Morgan, David. "Pakistan plans to arm militias in tribal lands." Reuters, October 23, 2008: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23461990.htm

Schmitt, Eric, Mark Mazzetti and Carlotta Gall. "U.S. Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda." The New York Times, November 19, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/washington/19policy.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Unattributed. "14 Taliban killed in Bajaur clashes." The International News, October 15, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17817

Unattributed. "Taliban behead four elders in Bajaur." Daily Times, October 11, 2008: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C10%5C11%5Cstory_11-10-2008_pg1_2

Unattributed. "23 militants killed in Bajaur fighting." The News via Pakistan Press Foundation, October 9, 2008: http://www.pakistanpressfoundation.org/userMediaFilesDetails.asp?uid=14630

Yusufzai, Rahimullah. "The Tribes Fight Back." Newsline, October 2008: http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsOct2008/cover4oct2008.htm

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Pakistan - Invasion by the Kingdom?

The role of Saudi Arabia, its government and its nationals, and the spread of Wahhabi Islam through both approved overt and private and rogue private means looms large today, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the immediate civil agony experienced throughout Pakistan's border and frontier lands.

The idea that an invasion must be signalled by the presence of force in uniform, its equipage, and its banners may be belied by less obvious but equally powerful means.

In peace, the rapid expansion of an education system and favorable birthrates may as firmly transform a society as any steel. One simply wakes up one morning with the neighborhood substantially changed--enough to have the laws changed too.

One notch up -- in low intensity conflict, relentless assassination, threats of violence to coerce behavior, and the general inhibition of alternative ideas or paths may do it as well.

Small, vicious conflicts in remote regions of the world may not look like big, horrible, "shock and awe" warfare, but today try looking around for, say, a Jewish intellectual in Pakistan or a comparatively humanist Muslim like founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah or the poet Muhammad Iqbal.

Some, like Pervez Hoodbhoy, may be around, and the likes of Pervez Musharraf and the legacy military now under the wing of General Kayani knows much of modernity and western life, but few--my impression: counter it if you can--inside of Pakistan speak up publically for the west, its democracies, and its tolerance.

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When the records of the popular music group The Beatles made their way into the United States, helped along by concerts and hype, the phenomenon took on two permanent names: "Beatlemania" was one; the other, with the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds following, was "British Invasion." The arrival of The Beatles had its critics, for sure, but in retrospect, the conversion of one generation's "big band" sound to the basis for contemporary rock and roll would and should seem harmless enough to any but the bitter core of the puritanical. It is not without reason that folk music has been deemed "harram" and "unIslamic" through clerical megalomania.

That may be the pro-capitalist and comparatively light-hearted version of much darker and less remarked developments that erupt on the surface of the news as suicide and other bombings, well-armed Jihadi raids, and the expansion worldwide of the madrassah business (as late as 2005 in Pakistan, religious schools were required to report their incomes but not their funding sources, leaving the state to guess at the origins and politics of their backers).

"One of the elemental features of madrassah education is what madrassah administrators now call "comparative religion." In practice, this involves comparing and contrasting one interpretative school vis-a-vis another, for example Sunni vs. Shia, or Deobandi vs. Barelvi. It also involves radd, or refutation, whereby students learn to counter the arguments of a sectarian system and defend their own tradition's worldview" (Fair 2008).

C. Christine Fair, with ample empirical evidence, contends the Islamic religious schooling systems in Pakistan, a remarkably varied lot, contribute far less to the supply of militant soldiers than may be too often supposed, but, she says, "One should not conclude, however, that madaris do not contribute to the militancy problem."

More, a little bit later this evening.

For immediate and odd juxatoposition:

Jirga violence leaves 16 dead F.P. Report
October 27, 2008
MATTA: A clash between members of a Jirga and Taliban has claimed 16 lives in Matta Tehsil of Swat. Three important commanders including Mulla Shamsheer are among the killed while the Taliban have taken 60 people hostage.
http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ts&nid=2798&ad=27-10-2008

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Saudi Invasion?
By INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2008 4:20 PM PT
War On Terror: The State Department plans to double student visas issued to young Saudi men. This time, it says, they'll all be vetted for terror ties.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=293758606605909

Other Reference

Fair, C. Christine. The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008.

Shackleford, Rusty (pseudonym). "AlQaeda.com: The Internet as Global Madrassa." The Jawa Report, June 18, 2008: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/193028.php

Staff. "Editorial: Welcome change of guard at ISI." The Daily Times, October 1, 2008: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C10%5C01%5Cstory_1-10-2008_pg3_1

Wikipedia: "Abdul Rabb Rasul Sayyaf": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rasul_Sayyaf

 Rothstein, Roz. "Tashbih Sayyed, friend and fighter, dies at 66." The Jewish Journal, May 31, 2007: http://www.jewishjournal.com/obituaries/article/tashbih_sayyed_friend_and_fighter_dies_at_66_20070601/

Sayyed, Tashbih. "Preachers of Prey." Pakistan Today, January 3, 2003: http://www.paktoday.com/prey.htm

Spencer, Robert. "Remembering Tashbih Sayyed." Jihad Watch, May 28, 2007: http://jihadwatch.org/archives/016654.php

Spencer, Robert. "Tashbih Sayyed, 1941-2007." Jihad Watch: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016589.php

Yamani, Mai. "Analysis Wahhabism." Interview with Vali Nasr, an authority on Islamic fundamentalism; Maher Hathout, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California; and Ahmed Ali, a Shi'a Muslim from Saudi Arabia. Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/wahhabism.html

Zaidi, Supna. "Lawful Islamism's Greatest Attack Yet: The OIC Resolution Against Defaming Religion." Muslim World Today: October 10, 2008, reprinted on the Middle East Forum web site: http://www.meforum.org/article/1994

Pakistan - Corrupt Taliban?

"In a dramatic move, Taliban militants kidnapped one of their senior commanders, Abdul Khaliq Haqqani, in the restive North Waziristan Agency for his alleged involvement in embezzlement of “donations” collected for “Mujahideen”.

Militant sources said Taliban fighters led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur picked up Abdul Khaliq from his office in Miramshah and drove towards Mirali subdivision."

Given the severity of Sharia as only the Taliban may promote it, one may wonder what Haqqani was thinking. Add to that the Taliban's tenacious pursuit of its goals . . . .

If Haqqani, who else?

Reference

Yusafzai, Mushtaq. "Taliban detain colleague over funds embezzlement." The International News, October 25, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=143043

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Christopher Hitchens - Briefly on Religion and Human Sensibility

Source: WizardJim. "Christopher Hitchens being a BAMF." YouTube, July 26, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DKfJfKb5y0&feature=related

I don't know what "BAMF" stands for in this instance, but I suspect it's an epithet meaning "great, good, and powerful."

I dearly love reading Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair (and through his hardcover volume God Is Not Great) and would have him up for coffee and conversation in the mountains any time. (Yes, that's an open invitation).

As a Jew, God haunts me, and I believe, but as a human, I choose to indulge quite in curiosity, the exploration of culture, language, and psychology, and trust that should God somehow work through me, then he has got me working in the arts and humanities where I belong and much good may be done.

Thank you, Chris, for broadening and honing my outlook.

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Pakistan - CFR Interview with Husain Haqqani

Quite frustrating, sometimes, just passing along someone else's up-to-date information . . . .

Bajoria, Jayshree.  "The Capital Interview: 'Fighting Terrorism is Pakistan's Own War':  Interview with Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States."  Council on Foreign Relations, October 21, 2008: http://www.cfr.org/publication/17567/capital_interview.html?breadcrumb=%2Fissue%2F135%2F

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Pakistan - Google Jude Kenan Mohammad and Taj Mohammad and

 . . . that industrious, grassroots, rock bottom, right priced arms factory Darra Adam Khel.

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For gratuitous thrills:

Source: ollorock. "Where all terrorists get thier ammo and wepons!"  YouTube, April 22, 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma7GL9q6z90&feature=related

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Now back to my two cents . . . .

Click for the result from Google (Taj Mohammad Dara Adam Khel).

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SUNA_enUS250US250&q=Taj+Mohammad+Darra+Adam+Khel

I have already seen a watch board reference to Jude Kenan as potentially another "American Taliban", but the second row seat to history--observation via the Internet--leaves yet much to be desired.

The two-plus-two: 

Florida college student Jude kenan Mohammad recently got caught by police at a checkpoint in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, a region restricted to foreign travelers, and he tells police he was traveling to visit with his parents. 

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"Lawyer Ghawas Khan, who appeared for the accused, told journalists that Jude had come to Pakistan to meet his father Taj Mohammad, a resident of Darra Adamkhel."  Source: "Charsadda: US national sent to judicial lock-up," Dawn, October 20, 2008: http://www.dawn.com/2008/text/local22.htm

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What sleuth would not want to look up Taj Mohammad of Darra Adamkhel?

The search at the top of this post turned up reference to a bombing that involved a victim named "Taj Mohammad":

"Meanwhile, the music centre blast victims, Ajmal and Taj Mohammad, were shifted to the KDA Divisional Medical Hospital for treatment. It was the second blast during the last twenty-four hours in Kohat in which 19 shops were destroyed."  Source: BBC Monitoring, June 23, 2008, "Pakistan - Media Safety: Northwest Cable Services Suspended After Taleban Threat": http://www.newssafety.com/index.php?view=article&catid=125%3Apakistan-media-safety&id=5205%3Anorthwest-cable-services-suspended-after-taleban-threat&option=com_content&Itemid=100401

Another "Taj Mohammed", close to "Mohammad", lists as an Afghani warlord on a page with Darra Adam Khel, only the mentions are in separate articles.  Not much to go on with that.

There was a "Taj Ali" visible, sort of, from the Google search page, and what seemed to be a phone system number for him . . .  I'll leave the international dialing (and the Urdu) to others.

One more time: "On Saturday night, four Bugti tribesmen were injured when a bomb exploded in the Sui area.

Sources said that pro-government Wadera Taj Mohammad Mundrani and his two brothers had been targeted by militants."

Source: Karachi News, Dawn, September 8, 2008: http://www.karachipage.com/news/Sep_08/090808.html

Was the son traveling to the aid of his injured father?

I don't know.

Here's the thing--and the thing to fight: speculation.

Bloggers, especially the better reputed among us, may need to refrain from guessing at missing data.

Mine is not a Jihadi watch site.

I'm not looking for terrorists.

I'm looking for little stories that contribute to larger ones that have immutable structures. 

The experience is a little bit like standing in a dark room watching an image develop on a sheet of paper.  It comes up slowly out of the white, first the shades, then out of the shades the dark lines, and then fixed and washed and taken out into the light, if we're lucky, we find in our hands a picture that tells a story and with great tonal variation and depth.

It has been a few days since the young man first made the news, and I have to admit, and possibly others should as well, that from the Internet, I know very little about Jude  Kenan Mohammad and his father Taj Mohammad of Darra Adam Khel.

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Pakistan - The De-Rock, De-Roll Generation

Say, who would want to spoil the fun down at the cyber cafe and video shop?

Meet Abdul Wakeel, 20, of Mohmand Agency.  Quoted in The International News, he is alleged to have said to an interrogator, "“I developed friendship with Ziaullah, who owned a shop selling religious cassettes in the city, almost a year ago. He was the person who taught me how to make a bomb with the help of a second-hand clock and a few dynamite sticks.”

According to reporter Javed Azziz Khan, an investigator disclosed that Wakeel had undergone a two-month training in Mansehra.  The interrogation report says the youth confessed to working with a gang responsible for eight cyber cafe and video store bombings.

Reference

Khan, Javed Azziz.  "Youth confesses to have blown up eight net cafes."  The International News, October 16, 2008: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=141321

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Pakistan - Neurotica's Baghdad Past - Islamabad's Prophecy?

"If the forces leave, watch how Hakeem will give the South to Iran on a silver plate, watch how the Kurds will take the North, they deserve it, I mean after all, they atleast are united towards building their own state. Oh and let me not forget Baghdad, Baghdad will be the rogue state, that of Militias, Dharists and Bin Ladens. Yeah hell why not let the forces leave, we dont need them, we have everything under control. Oh let them leave, we are sooooo ready to takeover now. So ready!!! Whats another million Iraqi getting killed??? Its just another statistic on a piece of paper....Damn you, damn everyone who calls themself a Patriot and a nationalist. You are no where near the true meaning of these words. No where near!!! What BULLSHIT!!! "

Source: Neurotic Iraqi Wife. "That Pitiful Purple Finger". November 25, 2006: http://neurotic-iraqi-wife.blogspot.com/2006/11/that-pitiful-purple-finger.html

We're about two years out from the neurotic one's rant and much has changed: Iraq has its own police force, a stable if controversial government, Kurdistan is at peace, Sunni remnants of AQ, perhaps, seem to be turning on Christians this week (inside supremicist mentalities, there is always one more group to "cleanse"), and General Petraeus has moved on to thinking about getting his troops home to America over the course of a few years, hoping the new order holds and improves.

Next: Afghanistan.

Co-located: Pakistan.

Of the two, it's Pakistan I worry about.

The state, even with ten years of liberal dictatorship behind it, has not altered the educational path of the majority of Pakistani children.

While violent Jihad is not the only way, it would seem the way most likely promulgated through a conservative, Saudi-subsiized, ubiquitous Qur'an-centered madrassah system, where religion--and often enough, fear and the vain foundations of Islamic war--may be more easily taught than art, English, engineering, literature (Urdu), math, and science.

The good news: the form of warfare pursued by militants has proven so indescriminate, horrific, and unreasoning that it may well put many communities off the fundamentalist track in religion -- all religion -- once and for all and install around religious guidance, appropriately, the five pillars of a better, more peaceful, and more sustainable society:

Business

Community

Education

Energy

Security

Killing is easy.

Taking care of people--that's hard.

"Neurotica" left Iraq seven days ago (October 6, 2008: http://neurotic-iraqi-wife.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-baghdadi-trance.html).

I am uncertain as to the mix of her motives, which includes opportunity in "AD" (Abu Dubi?), for leaving, but whatever they may be, it would seem too often the good souls with means who depart these thoroughly brutalized patches on the earth's skin.

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