Category Archives: Taliban

Sharia courts begin work in Swat Valley with restrictions on women

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by Qaiser Felix
Women cannot go out unaccompanied or speak in public but must cover their heads. Girls’ schools could be closed for good. Local Catholics and Protestants fear for their future; some are starting to leave the region. Taliban militia leader threatens new judges; anyone not applying Sharia correctly will be removed from office immediately.

Peshawar (AsiaNews) – Sharia courts have begun to administer justice in the Swat Valley. With Sharia in place in Malakand area, women are no longer allowed to go out unaccompanied or speak in public. They must also cover their heads. Girls’ schools, essentially run by missionaries, could close for good, especially after recent bomb attacks. Although no one was injured in the blasts, about a thousands girls are now unable to go to class, about 95 per cent of whom are Muslim.The future of the region’s Catholics and Protestants, who number around a thousand, is grim. Many of them are labourers and street sweepers, but some work in hospitals and a few teach in missionaries-run schools. All of them fear discrimination and many have begun packing up to move to areas where Sharia is not enforced. .

Since the start of the year the Taliban have carried out hundreds of attacks against schools, video and CD stores and barber shops and all other activities they claim to be un-Islamic.

With the implementation of Nizam-e-Adl Regulations 2009, civilian courts no longer have jurisdiction in this area and have been replaced by Qazi (Islamic) courts and Qazis (Islamic judges).

More specifically seven courts are now in place in the Swat Valley after Tehreek-i-Nafaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) Taliban militias and the government of President Asif Ali Zardari reached an agreement to that effect. The Lower and Upper Dir districts, Buner, Malakand Agency, Shangla, Kohistan and Chitral districts are now under Sharia law.

North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Communication Minister Iftikhar Hussain said that the aforementioned courts will be the models other districts will follow when they will implement Sharia. This way the latter can come into effect without presidential approval.

In announcing the start of the new courts TSNM chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad said that Islamic courts will come under a new supreme court, the Darul Qaza. Two of its three qazis have already been selected; the third one will be designated in the near future.

Sufi Muhammad also said that if qazis do not correctly implement Sharia they will be replaced.

This has led the High Court in Peshawar to express concerns with respect to the TSNM chief’s threats, calling on NWFP authorities to ensure the safety of the judges.

Canadian women to be beheaded. This one is karmic justice.

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A Canadian women who converted to Islam and joined the chorus of typical anti western, America hating hyperbole slinging useful idiot leftists and then went to Pakistan to make a propaganda film for the jihadi’s, has been kidnapped, held for ransom and claims she will be killed at the end of the month.

I do not think I will be rushing to raise money for her release given that she actually raised money for them from her comfortable Vancouver abode.

Here is a link to her actual web site. This, to quote a senior member of the Anti Jihad, is the ugly face of Islam in the west:

Please see story from the Ottawa Citizen today:

Kidnapped Canadian says she will be killed

A Canadian woman being held hostage in northern Pakistan says her captors are planning to behead her at the end of the month if a ransom isn’t paid. In a video posted on the Globe and Mail’s website, a pale and haggard-looking Beverly Giesbrecht, 52, begins to cry as says her “time is very short.” “I’m going to be killed. As you can see,” said Giesbrecht pointing at a long knife hanging behind her, “I’m going to be beheaded just like the Polish engineer (Piotr Stanczak), probably by the end of the month.” The former West Vancouver resident was kidnapped in November along with three guides. Giesbrecht, who’s now known as Khadija Abdul Qahaar after converting to Islam, was taken while travelling to record video for a British journalist.

UPDATE: Ottawa Citizen

Here is an older article detailing just how bad this woman and her group of cheerleaders are…

Last September, a Vancouver woman named Beverly Giesbrecht published her personal reflections on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Giesbrecht, 52, used the opportunity to celebrate militant Islam. She talked about the “good news” that the Taliban in Afghanistan were killing NATO soldiers and she praised the “Iraqi Resistance” for killing Americans. The real enemy, she said, was “Zionist-controlled America,” and she called upon the Muslim Ummah — the worldwide Islamic community — to form a united front.

Canadian security officials undoubtedly read Giesbrecht’s manifesto, because they would have been monitoring her Internet site, one of the few openly pro-Islamist sites operating out of Canada. Giesbrecht has exactly the biography that would draw the attention of intelligence authorities.

According to her writings, she was ignorant of Islam until 9/11. The attacks captivated her, and she started living on the Internet, reading everything she could about al-Qaeda. “I remember sitting at five in the morning, exhausted … staring at the face of Osama bin Laden,” she wrote. “This man does not have the face of a cold-blooded killer.”

She started travelling to Egypt, Malaysia and other parts of the Muslim world, eventually converting to Islam and adopting the name Khadija Abdul Qahaar. There is no evidence that she has ever committed a crime, or is capable of doing so, but her evolution into a jihadist spokeswoman was a textbook narrative of radicalization.

Shortly after Giesbrecht wrote her reflections on 9/11 last fall, she was kidnapped near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where she had gone to meet with and film the Taliban. The Taliban proved more unwelcoming than she expected, and this week a video surfaced of her pleading for help.
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Another singer silenced in Pakistan. NPR

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Pashtun Singer Gulzar Alam in Peshawar, Pakistan, in February 2003.


B.K. Bangash

Popular Pashtun singer Gulzar Alam practices behind closed doors at his home in Peshawar, Pakistan, in February 2003. AP

Click here to hear the audio NPR report and interview with this Pakistani artist

All Things Considered, March 12, 2009 · In Pakistan, Muslim religious extremists have long sought to ban secular music — and in some parts of the country, militants are enforcing their views with violence.

In areas controlled by the Taliban, CD stores have been destroyed or forced to shut down. Musicians have fled or been silenced, and fear is spreading even in areas where the Taliban is not in full control. One popular singer from the city of Peshawar no longer dares perform.

For Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Pakistan’s rugged northwest, the voice of Gulzar Alam could bring tears. Drawing on their favorite poets, he sang of love, pride and nationalist aspirations. He packed local halls and was the musician of choice for weddings. He was handsome, well dressed, with a bit of the matinee idol about him.

Now, he sits on the floor of a slum, wrapped in a traditional shawl. His shaggy hair and scraggly beard are shot with gray.

He laughs ruefully at what he has become: an old man before his time who cannot afford to shave.

Alam’s problems started seven years ago when a coalition of religious parties won elections in Pakistan’s northwest. The authorities harassed him, and a crowd attacked his house with rocks. He and his family fled south to Baluchistan.

Last year, after the religious coalition in the northwest was defeated, the new secular Pashtun government urged him to return — promising he would now be safe. It was a promise the government could not fulfill.

“Four months ago, performers were attacked as they returned from a function. Four musicians were injured, one was killed. No one is safe from the Taliban here. People have retreated into self-imposed censorship,” Alam says.

Once again, Alam began receiving threatening phone calls. He was shot at on the street.

He returned to Baluchistan, but found that the Taliban is now threatening musicians there, too. He tried to find gigs in the port city of Karachi, but there, he faced a different problem: ethnic violence against Pashtuns.

Back in Peshawar, he is afraid to perform. He has no source of income. After his elder brother turned him away, fearing the singer would put him in danger, Alam, his wife and five children sought refuge with other relatives. Now, three large families are crammed into three dank, dark rooms with no running water.

“It’s like falling from the sky to earth,” says Rukhsana Muqaddas, Alam’s wife. “Before this we had a very modern, wonderful life. We used to send our kids to good schools. Now, we can’t afford to educate them at all.”

Alam’s favorite song, a Pashtun ballad about loss of identity, has taken on a new meaning. Once the voice of the Pashtun downtrodden, Alam is now a member, his dreams of a peaceful Pashtun renaissance hijacked by the Taliban.

In downtown Peshawar, some music stores are still open. Arshat Khan has come from an outlying area, where all of the stores have been closed, to buy CDs of his favorite singers; Alam is among them. Although his old recordings are still on sale, there is no system of royalties. So while it may warm Alam’s heart to know he is loved, this doesn’t fill his children’s stomachs.

Khan says cultural life has come to a standstill.

“Life is colorless. … It’s like living in [a] world that is black and white. You have just to eat and excrete and live under perpetual fear,” Khan says.

And like Gulzar Alam, he expects the situation to get worse.

Another major attack on women’s rights in Swat

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Sometimes the most vicious attack on a people’s rights are the most subtle. While Vlad has in sadly much gory detail written about attacks on women to enforce barbaric policies, this next story I feel in an important way is considerably more serious.

Notice that I did not use the adjective ‘primitive’ to describe the Taliban’s treatment of women as frankly, there are many if not all societies that predate the Taliban and indeed predate Islam altogether where women had more value to society as well as power. Ancient Rome Greece and Egypt all have records of powerful women and while they may not overall have had the rights of men, certainly life would be better for them than it is under ‘true Islamic states’.

Now the story from Hindustan Times:

The Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Khyber tribal region have warned authorities not to issue national identity cards to women, saying the practice is un-Islamic.

Omar Farooq, the commander of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Khyber Agency, warned the National Database and Registration Authority that its offices would be attacked if it issued identity cards to women.

Farooq told reporters on phone from an unknown location that making identity cards for women went against Islamic rules. The Taliban will not allow women to obtain these cards, he said.

He also warned women that they would have to face the consequences if they went to NADRA offices to get themselves registered for the identity cards.

The Taliban in Swat valley of the North Western Frontier Province and parts of the restive tribal have banned girls education and barred women from visiting markets unless they are accompanied by male relatives.

This story quite literally seeks to officially remove the actual status of women as human beings by the state. Women will not be able to have identity cards symbolically of course meaning they can have no identity as individuals but practically, no access to the state whatsoever. Imagine yourselves with no legal papers. I feel this story is considerably more important than the western media does clearly as there appears to be no reports on it whatsoever.

I humbly beg you all to please forward this link to the original source on this, the Hindustan times to any and all media you may know. This cannot go unnoticed and keep in mind. if Obama is to be taken at his word, these are the people he suggested reaching out to.

Democracy in Afghanistan

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The idea that democracy is a foreign ideal perpetrated on the people of Afghanistan by outsiders is a misconception writes Khorshied Samad in the March 7 edition of the Ottawa Citizen. On the eve of International Women’s day, the wife to the Afghanistan ambassador to Canada and former correspondent and Kabul bureau chief for Fox news is clear in her assessment on democracy in the war torn and much troubled country: “while Afghans remain critical of some aspects of the NATO mission over the past eight years, they believe in further developing democratic values and structures as a safeguard against extremism and injustice that are considered universal threats”.

Samad continues to write: ” the misconception that democracy is alien to Afghanistan’s society is wrong. Afghan women fought for and achieved certain important rights prior to the Taliban”. In fact, the 1964 Afghan constitution recognized men and women as equal citizens under the law with equal rights and women were active in all professional fields until the Taliban takeover. Now, ” the volatile security situation and certain archaic norms continue to put pressure on women and limit women’s and girl’s roles in public life, denying them the full enjoyment of their rights. Human right’s violations including domestic violence, rape, child marriage and honour killings are still reported”.

” Increasing U.S. military forces and reinforcing NATO coalition troops are a necessary strategy, especially during an election year, in overcoming the Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgency plaguing Southeastern Afghanistan”. Samad believes that military action is not the sole solution to Afghan’s reformation. To ensure that Afghanistan does not fall into failed state status, focused nation-building and reconstruction which would allow for the seeds of democratic values to flourish must  be implemented by outside efforts. ” This is necessary to ensure that a healthy civil society can grow and develop, protecting such ideals as freedom of speech and equal rights for all citizens, which are upheld in the 2004 Afghan constitution. Afghans do not want to abandon these accomplishments”.

What is there to dispute? How can there be opposition to the will, testament and hope of the ordinary Afghani?

We are told time and again that culture is relative and that we have to allow for this relativity; to understand the actions of these cultures within the context of the modern world. That is fine, insofar as we can strive to make those allowances. But by the same token, we surely cannot see this culture effectively understanding or applying the necessary responsibilities required to establish a true democracy in the modern sense, Taliban or not.  The overall illiteracy rate is astonishing despite apparent strides in eduation. Afghanistan guarantees women equal rights and a quarter of the parliamentary and provincial council seats yet few candidates are women. Girls are forced into hiding for seeking an open education and their teachers either beaten or killed. Does Khorshied Samad consider the abundant failings of an ancient culture incapable in it’s ability to realize the obligations and responsibilities that democracy demands a fruitful stride? Is there any recognition of the loss of troops in aiding this seemingly endless transition? What role does the Afghan government play in the perpetual dysfunction of a nation constantly on the brink of collapse and it’s failure to acknowledge women as full persons?

Today Canada realized it’s 112th troop lost. A good friend of mine stated that if we don’t go into Afghanistan to win, then one soldier’s life lost is one too many; if we go to win, then 10,000 lost is very few.

“As we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, we are reminded that Afghanistan still has much work ahead. Hopefully with the continued support of the international community its young, fragile democracy will flourish so the Afghan people can become truly self-sufficient, live in peace and security and with hope for the future” Samad writes and I couldn’t agree more. We can hope that this fragile democracy finds it’s surest footing and lasting promise first and foremost from the Afghani people themselves supported not by outside forces but by it’s own government committed to a future of stability, equality and peace.

Obama declares war lost in Afghanistan, reaches out to taleban?

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This from MSNBC and NYT

Image: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan

Spencer Platt / Getty Images
U.S. strategy against the Taliban now focuses on rooting extremists out, as in this patrol on Feb. 18 where villagers in Afghanistan’s Shembal Valley were asked whether any fighters were nearby. President Barack Obama is weighing whether to modify that strategy to also reach out to more moderate Taliban elements.
By Helene Cooper and Sheryl Gay Stolberg

updated 51 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.

Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.

In a 35-minute conversation with The New York Times aboard Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Obama reviewed the challenges to his young administration. The president said he could not assure Americans the economy would begin growing again this year. But he pledged that he would “get all the pillars in place for recovery this year” and urged Americans not to “stuff money in their mattresses.”

Women in Swat.

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Feminists, human rights groups, damn it people in general where the hell are you? Where is the apartheid week on campus for woman’s rights?

Fear of death stalks women in Swat. From Dawn.com

Saturday, 07 Mar, 2009 | 11:27 AM PST |

Veiled young women sit attend a class at a vocational training center at Gulkada area in Swat valley. —AFP


Veiled young women sit attend a class at a vocational training center at Gulkada area in Swat valley. —AFP


PESHAWAR: Terrified, locked up at home and courting death if they go out alone, women oppressed by extremists in Swat have nothing to celebrate on International Women’s Day.

Nearly 100 years after the annual day was created to mark the struggle for equal rights for half the world’s population, most women in Swat look blank and go silent when asked about gender rights and discrimination.

They’re too frightened to speak in public. They can only leave the confines of their homes accompanied by a male relative, their bodies hidden in veils.

‘How can I tell you my name, are you crazy? I was told not to give my name to anyone because the Taliban could hurt me,’ one girl in the ninth grade told AFP by telephone from the former ski resort.

The girl’s dreams of becoming a doctor are over. She worries the Taliban will stop her finishing school, regardless of her parents’ support.

‘My mother told me I can do anything, but my inner soul is shattered.’

‘Tell me if you stop women getting an education where will a sick woman go? Do you want her to go to a male doctor? I was told that education is compulsory for every man and woman in Islam but the Taliban destroyed our schools.’

Militants have destroyed 191 schools in the valley, 122 of them for girls, leaving 62,000 pupils with nowhere to study, local officials say.

Huma Batool – not her real name – is a 42-year-old mother of two who dices with death to teach girls at a private school in the region’s main town Mingora.

‘We have to veil ourselves and wear shuttlecock burqas. We are not safe even at home.
We fear the Taliban all the time. Life is becoming worse and worse for women in Swat,’ she told AFP by telephone.

Educated and financially self-sufficient, she cannot even pop to the shops without a male relative, leaving her frequently couped up at home for hours, waiting for a suitable escort to become available.

‘You cannot imagine how I manage to get to school, practically every day I think about leaving the job and sitting at home.’

‘Life bores us to tears. There is no entertainment. We can’t even think about cable TV, cinema, film and music. Imagine I can’t even go shopping or to the bazaar as women are banned by Taliban.’

Salma Javed, 35, is a nurse at a local hospital, where women – however sick – can only be admitted if accompanied by a male relative.

‘Every woman fears she will be killed if she comes out, so even sick and pregnant women have to visit hospital with their husbands.’

Salma would love to leave, but she cannot scrape together the money to set herself up in Peshawar.

‘Now we are waiting to see what will happen after the peace deal, but let me tell you things will not change for women,’ she said.

The only light in Shahnaz Kousar’s life is that the Taliban – at least for now – are allowing her to go to school in Mingora. But outside her 10th grade classroom, the daily pleasures of shopping and make-up are gone.

‘We are now totally depending on Taliban. There’s not a single shop left where I can go and buy cosmetics, all shops selling women’s things are either closed or empty.’

‘I remember when I used to go to this market with my mother and sisters, but now it seems like a dream.’

The cost of surrender. Christians in Swat

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Here is a link from Asianews on an attack on a Christian community in Swat. In case anyone doesn’t know, the government of Pakistan has surrendered to the Taliban/Al Queda coalition by giving them a homeland in the formerly wonderful Swat Valley.

The Pakistanis refer to it as a peace deal however it is indistinguishable from a surrender in as much as the Taliban now enforces the most draconian version of sharia law similar to what was the norm in pre 911 Afghanistan including but not limited to, the killing of musicians, the public hanging of dancers bodies and flogging and murder of anyone who breaks the most arcane Muslim rules. An example might be, having pants that are too long or not properly shrieking “Allah” when slaughtering animals for meat. The bold is mine as there are illustrations here of an ongoing thread at VTB about Islam and the arts.

Please find the text of the article below:

PAKISTAN
Muslims attack Christian community in Punjab
One woman has been killed, and 28 people have been injured at the Presbyterian church in Songo. Violence is on the rise in the Swat Valley and in the northern regions. Thousands of people are fleeing after the introduction of sharia, including many teachers and entire families. In Takhtbhai, in the district of Mardan, there have been bomb attacks on 16 music stores.

Peshawar (AsiaNews/Agencies) – One woman has died and 28 people have been injured in an attack on the Presbyterian Christian community in the village of Songo, in the district of Gujranwala, province of Punjab. The attack took place on the evening of March 2: at 8 p.m., a group of Muslim inhabitants opened fire on the faithful who had gathered in the church for prayer. The woman, named Shakeela, died on the spot, while other members of the faithful suffered injuries of various kinds while they were seeking to flee from the bullets or to protect the pastor. The attackers broke the windows of the church, destroyed the Bibles and the other prayer books, and removed the cross from the roof of the building.

The victims of the attacks say that this was a premeditated action, and recount that in the previous weeks they had received a number of threats from the attackers. The authors of the attack have been identified, and a report against them has been filed at the local police station. The Pakistan Christian Post says that for now, the security forces have turned down the request for investigations on the attackers. For this reason, the burial of the woman’s body has been delayed, to permit an autopsy in evidence of the attack.

The attack in Songo is added to a long list of violent events that are now being seen more or less everywhere in Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The attacks are carried out by the Taliban, but also by ordinary people, and they are not coming to an end in the Swat Valley, where a fragile ceasefire has been attained by the government, thanks to the concession of introducing sharia in that district and in the district of Malakand.

During the night of March 5, the Taliban blew up 16 CD and DVD stores in Takhtbhai, in the district of Mardan northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP. It is one of the many places in the province that in recent months have come under the grip of the Taliban. In February, it was the theater of attacks against girls’ schools, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, and in spite of the fact that the agreement between the Taliban and the government provides for the reopening of schools to girls, many are afraid of fresh violence.

Since the beginning of the year, people have been abandoning the Swat Valley by the thousands. These include many families and a number of teachers, who have formally stated that they are going on vacation. One mother who left the district recounts: “All the best teachers from my children’s schools have left. I do not think they will go back. According to my relatives there, many children have gone back to school, but there are now too few teachers.”

Iran giving taliban missiles capable of taking out helicopters

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I wonder if this explains the recent statement from the Harper Government in Canada about Canada’s position on troop deployment and untenability of the war in Afghanistan.

From Stratfor.com

Canada: Afghan Insurgency Can’t Be Defeated – Harper
March 1, 2009
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on March 1 said the insurgency in Afghanistan will not ever be defeated, and that Canada will not send more troops to the country without an exit strategy, Reuters reported. Afghanistan needs a government that is able to manage the insurgency, can improve its governance, and is not viewed as foreign-installed, Harper said in a CNN interview.

From The Times of India
Iran is supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with surface-to-air missiles capable of destroying a helicopter, according to American intelligence sources.

They believe the Taliban want to use the SA-14 Gremlins missiles to launch a “spectacular” attack against coalition forces in Helmand, where insurgents claim to be gaining the upper hand.

Although British and American helicopters operating in southern Afghanistan are equipped with defensive systems to deflect an attempted strike, the SA-14 can evade such counter-measures.

It was a shoulder-held SA-14 supplied by Iran that was used by Iraqi insurgents to shoot down a helicopter over Basra in May 2006. Although the Iranians are not natural supporters of the Taliban, they have been willing to assist them in the past in order to prevent Britain and the US gaining influence in the region.

Special forces have previously intercepted arms shipments from Iran that would have helped the Taliban intensify a roadside bombing campaign that has killed 40 British troops over the past 18 months, including three last week.

However, coalition forces only became aware of the presence of SA-14s two weeks ago when parts from two of them were discovered during an American operation in western Afghanistan.

“The weapons are out there and we thought it was only a matter of time before they got one or two into the south,” said a defence source. “A Taliban spectacular against British or American troops would reinforce an increasing view among ordinary Afghans that the Taliban are gaining the upper hand.”

In the past eight months, small arms and rocket-propelled grenade attacks on British helicopters in Helmand have increased.

Links for Feb 27 2009

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In this article, Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate speaks out on Hollywood hypocrisy focusing on Sean Penn. This is a good and well written piece although Im sure none of the content will be unfamiliar to readers of VTB. I feel its worth posting as part of an ongoing thread here about the left, the arts, and Islam. He does miss one movie though, the recent comedy, ‘An American Carol’ which is a fairly typical Hollywood comedy in formula but rather cathartic for those of us looking to Hollywood to present some truth to those of us who have at least one eye open to the world. I have seen it three times now.

I say cathartic because at last someone had the raw balls to point at Hollywood hypocrisy, show the dangers of Islam to the west and to woman’s rights and so on, and mock Islam the way Hollywood should mock anyone friend or foe. I might add that Gary Bauer does neglect one point. That artists themselves are the first targets of Islam once they have the power to do so. We see this today in the Swat valley, recently a favorite tourist spot with much local dance and music now the new homeland to the Taliban where artists and dancers have their mutilated corpses left out on display in prominent areas of villages to get the message out faster of what will not be tolerated. The Taliban recently also made a public threat that they would send suicide bombers on to any bus within Pakistan which played music or showed movies. (I doubt they would make an exception for Sean Penn’s recent film ‘Milk’ where he played a gay rights activist somehow.) The bus drivers immediately complied. Who wouldn’t. Pakistan cannot protect their own largest safest hotels. How can they protect every single peasant wagon.

Speaking of Afghanistan, we pushed the Taliban out of there did we not? and saw a new more liberal government put in its place we are still fighting and dieing for over there. Yet strangely we have the death sentence for one Afghan merely for suggesting misogyny was an extremist misinterpretation of Islam and that the ‘true Islam’ saw men and women as equal. He also questioned why Muslim women could not have four husbands. His sentence because of large public pressure from the west was commuted to life in prison. The above link is an article about how his brother is in Italy asking for help to free this man from prison. Again, why are we spending billions and some of our finest young men to protect a regime which seem to be ‘Taliban lite’.

Meanwhile in Egypt, a trial awaits another man who converted to Coptic Christianity from Islam, a faith which predates Islam in Egypt by centuries, who will likely get the death sentence. This is a good article about his ordeal. I do like the analogy about how North Korea, the Soviet Union and Islam all insist they are the best possible systems of thought and way of life and yet kill anyone who leaves. Makes ya wonder just a little bit.

Lastly, this video from an Israeli Arab. Whoever the hell you are buddy, thank you very much for doing this. This video I’m sure, will mean a great deal to many of us. It certainly does to me. Found on Occidental Soapbox

More on Pakistan from Stratfor.com

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This from Stratfor.com

Anyone who is interested in non partizan geopolitics really should get a membership. These guys get a lot right and just the raw news without the analysis is worth the price of admission. This is the best source of information on geopolitics and military activities as well as political there is out there. Below is the two paragraphs I may post on this issue without violating terms of use. But its worth trying them out and reading the whole thing.

February 25, 2009 | 1731 GMT

Summary
Pakistan’s federal government imposed governor’s rule in Punjab, the country’s largest province, Feb. 25 after the Supreme Court ruled Punjab’s chief minister as ineligible for office. This is a preemptive move by the central government to try and contain large-scale protests by the country’s legal community, which is demanding the restoration of the judiciary. The tussle comes at a time when the country is already politically and economically weak and the military is likely far too distracted with the jihadist insurgency to step in and quell such political brawls, boding ill for the security of the country and the wider region.

Analysis

Pakistan’s federal government, led by the Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP), on Feb. 25 suspended the provincial legislature and government and imposed governor’s rule for two months in Punjab, the country’s largest and most powerful province. Punjab is controlled by the country’s other major political force, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), led by two-term former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Earlier, Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared Sharif and his younger brother, Punjab’s chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, as ineligible for public office. The elder Sharif had previously been barred from holding public office; his younger brother’s disqualification represents the central government’s intention to go for the PML-N’s jugular, thereby destabilizing Punjab’s provincial government. Supporters of the PML-N are protesting the central government’s decision, holding demonstrations across the country. Protesters reportedly burned tires and damaged public property.

This from Spiegel.de on Swat and Pakistan:

Bowing Down to the Taliban

By Susanne Koelbl

Pakistan is capitulating to the Taliban in the picturesque Swat Valley, where the Islamists have introduced Sharia law. Now the militants’ triumph threatens to encourage radicals throughout the region.

The defeat was celebrated as if it had been a victory. The chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province greeted a delegation from the local Taliban. The Taliban officials, with their long beards and turbans, had come to the chief minister’s house to sign a treaty. After arriving in pickups and large limousines, the men were seated on velvet armchairs and served food on silver trays.

Then the pious foes of the government in Islamabad were given a coveted piece of Pakistan as a gift.

Under the agreement, which the men and the governor signed with much ceremony, the Taliban will be permitted to implement their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the Swat Valley and other adjacent districts at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range. “Today is a historic day,” said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the chief minister of the provincial government, clearly straining to put a positive spin on the Taliban’s assumption of power. “An old demand of the people has been met. The new regulation will provide a more efficient legal system.”

It was a blatant lie. Most Pakistanis are shocked by the prospect that, in the Swat Valley, thieves could have their hands cut off and adulterers could face stoning in the future. Such punishments were in fact already possible under Pakistani law, but have never been carried out in the past.

Visit the link above to read the rest of the article and view the photo gallery. But the best thing is the film from Australia’s Four Corners a few posts down from here. This situation must not be under estimated for its severity and implications to the rest of the world.

Pakistan. If you read or see nothing else this week…

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Make it this post. This is the most accurate and detailed documentary done so far on the deteriorating situation in Pakistan concerning Taliban and Al Queda in the Swat valley. This is extremely serious. I will be adding information all night on this but watch the documentary for the love of god, freedom, your wife and children, any Jewish friends you may have, for anything you hold sacred. If you think this isn’t going to happen here, wherever here is, I have news for you. It already is.

Add to this new information about the near total impotence of the civilian government in Pakistan, the army’s likely inability to step in and stabilize the country as it did in the early 90s, and today’s dismissal of the premiere of the largest province in Pakistan the Punjab.

I will be adding more to this post over the next 24 hours. There is a lot of information about Pakistan emerging rapidly but I want this video up now. Everyone simply has to see this.
Special thank you to Muslims against Sharia, a most excellent blog for providing me the embed code and for Australia’s four corners for making this. Sit down, get a drink, and watch.

Links for February 18 2009 tennis and Pakistan

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Two stories about Israel and tennis. A match in Dubai where Israeli teams had qualified had to be re worked when the nation of Dubai refused to allow in any Israeli’s despite having signed an agreement to abide by all rules of the world class tennis championships. The Israeli players qualified and where to be allowed to play. Dubai cancelled the visa to let the Isreali’s enter the UAE. I didn’t blog that actually at the time but now that Sweden, while allowing the match to go forward, has banned any spectators from attending for ‘safety reasons’ much like many Scandinavian cities told Jewish kids not to attend school for their own safety and we have something that looks a lot like late 30s Germany despite the thin veneer of a reason. Apparently, so many Muslims in Sweden created such a ‘Fuhrer’ that the authorities felt they had to prevent any attendees at all.

Here is a rather prophetic posted essay from Gates of Vienna dating back to 2004. I think given the events since then especially the response by the Muslim community starting during the defense against attacks from Gaza by Isreal and continuing to this day, its a worthwhile read.

The big story I think of the week so far, (and it’s only Wednesday) is the question of the ‘peace deal’ with the Taliban over the implementation of sharia law in the Swat Valley. I also have not posted a great deal about it because there is just too much wrong with the articles I have read. Firstly, I cannot understand how allowing a  hostile force to implement a reign of terror on the people of Swat is anything other than a surrender. How is it a peace deal or a compromise of any kind? The Taliban has already blown up as many schools for girls as they can. What makes Pakistan think they will stop? This is a large part of sharia law. No education for women except Quoran. Many are fleeing the area mostly women, artists and anyone not wishing to be killed by the flimsiest whims of some Muslim cleric for a seemingly arbitrary breach of this 7th century law. One man was killed for having his pant cuff to low down and he was apparently a good observant Muslim. Also, according to www.stratfor.com some reports seem to show the US very against this deal while other stories show the Obama Administration as supporting it.

No matter how you look at it, it is very bad. Add to this the admission that the Mumbai attacks where planned at the top of the Pakistani military machinery and we have a serious question as to the degree to which Pakistan is any kind of ally at all. Not to mention recent revelations about Musharaff’s known collusion’s with Al Queda and the Taliban using US money and materials to aid them.

Some sites are suggesting that the Pakistanis should allow Taliban to have Swat in exchange for peace with Pakistan. This is absurd of course. Anyone following Pakistan would know that just as one example, The Taliban have threatened to blow up any bus playing Music or movies if they did not stop this practice immediately. They did of course. This was just the first victory. Taliban/Al Queda will not stop until Pakistan is another sharia state and similar to the Afghanistan of the Taliban. Not to mention control of the nukes. Given that the ISI Pakistan’s intelligence inter service agency may have planned and trained the Mumbai attackers as well as supplied the attacks on India of serial concurrent bombings of commercial and tourist areas with commercial explosives its insane to think that giving them a state on the doorstep of Pakistan will do anything except accelerate the process of the destruction of Pakistan as a nation state altogether.

Pakistan caught double bluffing the US on the war on terror

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From The Times online UK:

Pervez Musharraf was playing ‘double game’ with US


Outgoing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf inspects a guard on honor before leaving the presidential house in Islamabad, Pakistan

Mr Musharraf has reacted angrily to the books allegations of double-dealing

Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Editor

Washington sent Special Forces into Pakistan last summer after intercepting a call by the Pakistani army chief referring to a notorious Taleban leader as a “strategic asset,” a new book has claimed.

The intercept was ordered to confirm suspicions that the Pakistani military were still actively supporting the Taleban whilst taking millions of dollars in US military aid to fight them, according to the “The Inheritance,” by the New York Times correspondent David Sanger.

In a transcript passed to Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence in May 2008, General Ashfaq Kayani, the military chief who replaced Pervez Musharraf, was overheard referring to Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani as “a strategic asset”. The remark was the first real evidence of the double game that Washington had long suspected President Musharraf was playing as he continued receiving US military aid while aiding the Taleban.

Mr Haqqani, a veteran of the anti-Soviet mujahidin wars of the nineties, commands a hardline Taleban group based in Waziristan and is credited with introducing suicide bombing into themilitants’ arsenal.

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Washington later intercepted calls from Pakistani military units to Mr Haqqani, warning him of an impending military operation d esigned to prove to the US that Islamabad was tackling the militant threat.

“They must have dialled 1-800-HAQQANI” a source told Mr Sanger. “It was something like, ‘Hey, we’re going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram’.”

The intercept was the clue that led the CIA to uncover evidence of collusion between the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and Mr Haqqani in a plot to carry out a spectacular bombing in Afghanistan. Two weeks later, India’s Embassy in Kabul was bombed, killing fifty-four people and prompting a CIA mission to Islamabad to challenge the government with their evidence.

The first cross-border strike took place in early September without Islamabad’s knowledge after Washington concluded that no one could be trusted with the information.

General Kayani, a former ISI chief, became army chief when Mr Musharraf relinquished that post in 2007, a year before he was forced to quit as president. Worryingly for Washington, General Kayani remains Pakistan’s army chief.

Mr Musharraf reacted angrily to the book’s allegations of double-dealing, which appeared in the Pakistani press for the first time yesterday. “Get your facts correct, I have never double-dealt,” Mr Musharraf told Pakistani television stations.

“There is a big conspiracy being hatched against Pakistan, to weaken the Pakistan army and the ISI to weaken Pakistan.”

Mr Sanger’s book, detailing the foreign policy challenges inherited by the Obama Administration, was published in the US last month. In it, US intelligence officials also speak of their fears that Islamist militants might launch a spectacular attack on Indian soil in the hope of ramping up tensions on the subcontinent, leading Pakistan to deploy its nuclear weapons

Links for Feb 16 2009

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First, some good news. As readers here may know, we have had a continuing thread questioning the value of the Canadian support of the current government in Afghanistan. There have been so many incidents of Islamic sharia implemented under the new more ‘liberal’ government that one wonders if we aren’t just replacing one theocratic brutal regime with ‘Taliban Lite’. Here is a photo shoot and article about a peace march, for once actually wishing for peace as opposed to being for war but on the other side, from of all places, Toronto. Pashtun’s, one of the indigenous tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan and actually one of the tribes for which the anagram name of Pakistan was forged, are trying to raise awareness of how the Taliban is in fact destroying all attempts to build civilization by the Pashtun, destroying all schools for girls and you can bet changing the curriculum for boys to limit it to Quran, Islamic studies and basic rocketry. This is encouraging. Where is the media? same place as always. Out for a drink and looking through their Rolodex for someone at the CIC or Canadian Arab federation to tell them what they are allowed to print. From Atlas Shrugs. The article itself seems a little hastily written but the facts are solid. The Swat Valley in Pakistan is now a Taliban stronghold so much so that the Taliban, now a solid partner of Al Queda is successfully making demands on Pakistan proper to implement sharia. At least this article makes an excellent counter position to ours at Vlad as to why we should be in Afghanistan. If for nothing else, for the Pashtun.

Im sorry to have to post this one. Obama’s administration is taking the US into Durban II, the anti western and anti Semitic hate fest this one based on the preparatory statements made, seem to show it as being far more virulent than Durban I was. Here is an article which shows the best case scenario. Naivete on the part of the Obama admin. I hope Anne Bayefsky, the author of this article is correct and it is nothing more insidious or opportunistic than merely a deluded sense of what he can accomplish for western liberal democracy by US attendance. Thanks to Fred at Gayandright for sending me this. Sample below:

In a major foreign-policy decision taken over the weekend, President Obama has decided to legitimize the United Nations’s “anti-racism” forum known as Durban II. State Department officials announced in a press release buried on Saturday, that starting today the United States will attend for the first time the preparatory meetings of this controversial U.N. conference. The “Durban Review Conference,” scheduled for April in Geneva, is the progenitor of the anti-semitic hatefest that took place in South Africa in early September 2001.

The searing images of the demonization of America and Jews on the U.N.’s global stage, and the terrorism in New York 72 hours later, should have made joining this revived forum for U.N.-driven hate inconceivable. But President Obama seems intent on learning the lessons of history — and the relationship between hatemongering and violence — the hard way.

Here is a depressing article but well backed up with facts and stats about the use of rape of women by Islamists as a weapon of jihad. Te clip below deals with the issue in Australia but goes into detail about how rape was a central tool of Islamics in India along with links to chapter and verse of hadith explaining the ‘logic’ behind it.

The Sydney gang rapes, committed by groups of Muslim men upon Australian women, are still fresh in memory. The men taunted the women while raping them, saying that the women “deserved it” because they were not covered and staying at home as Islam commands women to do.

Now this phenomenon, already so pronounced with small muslim populations (The 2001 census showed the UK had 1.5 million muslims), evolves into something even more sinister as the muslim population rises. Women are kidnapped (they simply vanish in the vast network of “Islamic centers”), used to commit terrorist acts, and so on. Let us look at some such incidents in India in the past few months. First, a bit of historical and theological background.

The very first accounts of the muslim invasions of India, by Mohammed Bin Qasim in 712AD, talk in some detail about the women captured and sexually enslaved. Indeed, it is described as one of the major accomplishments of the subjugation of the Hindus…

Do go to the link to read the rest it’s crucial that we in the west examine India for a template of what is occurring in western lands now. The article ends with this caveat: “Remember, women are always Islam’s first victims.” I am not personally sure if they are the first, but they are certainly the most numerous.

Below, please find a video discussion from FOX news with Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, Tarek Fatah and Nonie Darwish Discussing stealth jihad and Islamic Radicals in the United States.