Posted on 07/16/2005 11:15:55 PM PDT by MadIvan
Irrespective of whether you are dealing with the disaffected youth of Leeds or a brainwashed Jihadi at a madrassa on the North West Frontier, the inescapable conclusion is that Pakistan forms the epicentre of Osama bin Laden's unremitting campaign of terror against the West.
This unpalatable, yet irrefutable, truth will no doubt come as a shock to Tony Blair and the other coalition leaders who have placed such faith in President Pervez Musharraf's ability to rein in al-Qaeda's murderous activities. It was, after all, Mr Blair who helped to persuade the Pakistani general to decide whose side he was on after President George W Bush issued his "you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists" dictum in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
When Mr Blair flew to Islamabad in October 2001 he was under no illusions about the role that Pakistan's infamous ISI intelligence service had played in creating the Taliban, and had been briefed by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) chiefs about the activities of A Q Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani bomb, in clandestinely proliferating nuclear technology to such unsavoury regimes as Libya and Iran.
Even so the dictates of realpolitik required Messrs Blair and Bush to get the Pakistanis on side so that they could focus their energies on tackling the more pressing issue of overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan and destroying bin Laden's terror infrastructure.
In return for helping to round up al-Qaeda operatives and generally assisting with the coalition's war effort, General Musharraf was promised, and has received, hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid. Four years on, it is looking increasingly as though Mr Blair, in particular, has got the raw end of the bargain.
Let us gloss over the complicity of renegade sections of Pakistan's ISI in facilitating the escape of bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual leader, at the end of the Afghan war, and ignore the fact that we still do not know the full extent of A Q Khan's nuclear criminality (because Musharraf insists on preserving his national hero status). It is now clear that the West's courtship of General Musharraf is in deep trouble.
Last week's revelation that two of the London bombers had spent time in Pakistan is depressingly familiar. Virtually every British subject known to be involved with al-Qaeda, from Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, to the two British suicide bombers responsible for blowing up a Tel Aviv bar in May 2003, had visited Pakistan in the months leading up to their terror attacks. And in each case it appears that individuals who, in the main, left these shores nurturing nothing more sinister than a youthful sense of ennui returned with a burning desire to commit murder and create mayhem.
As the shocked relatives of the 22-year-old bomber Shehzad Tanweer explained last week, the young athletics enthusiast underwent a radical transformation after he spent a few months last year in Pakistan studying the Koran and Arabic. Tanweer, it now transpires, had spent his time studying at a madrassa, a religious establishment where the students are required to devote their entire energy to studying the Koran.
There are thought to be an estimated 20,000 such places in the country - the Pakistani authorities are unable to provide an accurate number. Many provide an important and valuable education for the children of poor families who would otherwise have no schooling.
But a significant number have a far more sinister agenda: inculcating the cult of martyrdom and sacrifice into their pupils in the hope that the blood of these naive young Muslims will one day enable the Islamic creed to conquer the entire world.
Even more alarming for our security forces is the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of the young British Muslim men and women who are sent to study at Pakistan's madrassas return to these shores filled with the conviction that it is their Islamic duty to sacrifice their lives as suicide bombers.
As one senior British security official commented last week, sending a British Muslim to a Pakistani madrassa "is the equivalent of sending them to a bin Laden boot camp".
Both Washington and London have in the past urged President Musharraf to curtail the Islamic brainwashing taking place in the madrassas, but Pakistan's response has been at best half-hearted, mainly because the country's military and intelligence community fully support the Islamic agenda that the madrassas represent.
All this must now change if Pakistan wants to remain a key coalition ally in the war on terror. Many of the intelligence failings that enabled the London bomb attacks to take place were caused by the inability of the security forces to track the activities of British nationals visiting Pakistan.
Lulled into a false sense of security by Pakistani assurances that they had the extremists under control, British intelligence seems to have missed the fact that a new, better organised al-Qaeda network has developed since bin Laden's eviction from Afghanistan.
One of the more remarkable aspects of the London bombers was that, even though they had been radicalised to the point where they were prepared to carry out suicide bomb attacks, they took great care not to give any indication to their friends or family of their fanatical outlook. As one of Tanweer's relatives lamented last week, "there was nothing in his behaviour to show us that anything had changed".
This is just one of the many new tactics al-Qaeda has developed as it seeks to maintain its campaign of terror. And despite the fact that many operational aspects of the cell that carried out the London bombings were home grown - the DIY explosive, for example - British intelligence remains convinced they received guidance from al-Qaeda veterans.
"The degree of sophistication demonstrated by the London bombers is not something you pick up off the internet," says a senior British intelligence officer. "The timing of the attack, the coordination of the bombings; this all indicates they had outside help."
Not surprisingly, much of the British effort to prevent further attacks will now focus on Pakistan and the ability of al-Qaeda to recruit naive British Muslims to their cause. And if we are to have any chance of success, then President Musharraf must decide whether he is really with us in the war against Islamic fanaticism.
Even if they seriously wanted to crack down on extremist activity, I doubt they could go to far with it. Musharraf's actions in support of the war on terror have already caused a great deal of backlash from Pakistan's fundamentalists.
It's a tricky balance, getting as much cooperation without causing his government to be overthrown by fundamentalists.
The last thing we want, I presume, is a bunch of maniacs who are functionally equivalent to the Taliban taking control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
This is what Porter Goss meant in his interview....we know where Bin Laden is....Pakistan.....and if we moved on him in an operation....Mush's government falls.
What concerns me about the amount of money Iraq is costing is that it is such a small fraction of the muslim world. If we had to go into a place like Pakistan the costs would be an order of magnitude higher.
I think the strategy if Musharraf died, would be to back up the most pro-state next guy in line. Musharraf I really believe wants Pakistan to become a modern wealthier nation, but he is only so powerful.
As much as I hate our overbearing government sometimes, Pakistan suffers from no state in areas. And all the renegade people and groups head there, to thrive in the chaos.
I agree.
Pakistan was a terrible idea in 1948, and it has not aged well.
Pakistan was a radical Islam country from its founding. It is the melting pot where the Deobandist muslims of the Indian subcontinent mixed with the Wahhabi muslims of southern Arabia to form the current Taleban and the other radical islamic organizations.
All this happened with the cooperation among the ISI, CIA and British intelligence, under the delusional theory that they could use islamic radicals to destabilize the southern Soviet Union and western China without blowback in the rest of the world.
Pakistan is no friend to the West.
It also has the "Islamic bomb".
As long as they are rapidly growing stronger while we expend our strength, why should they do anything?
Perhaps, but the fact remains that we, and now the Brits, have misplaced trust in Musharraf. Pakistan's meager attempt to dismatle it's terror infrastructure is more attractive than anything India can be depended upon to deliver.
If India had its druthers, this would be the #1 item on the Indian PM's agenda in meetings with Bush - not the plea for support for membership to the SC of the disgraceful UN. If India has the aspirations and potential for a world power, I'd expect Mr. Singh to convince and obtain the support of Bush for a course of action that India can and will take against Pakistan. A shade of the single-mindedness of Indira Gandhi vis a vis East Pakistan, is probbably not misplaced here. After all, it suffers as much if not more from the terror emanating from Pakistan.
India's inability, diplomatically or otherwise, to thwart a thriving terrorist epicenter right on it's door-step, and failure in enlisting the support of the US and UK, isn't exactly the kind of stuff that world powers are made of.
We have plans to either take control of their nukes or destroy them.
Umm,that's not exactly as comforting as saying that they don't have nukes& besides planning & implementation are 2 distinct things.You honestly expect the Pakistanis to hand over their "crown jewels" without a fight(aka ie. a launch on India or US bases in Central Asia)?????????????
There is nothing comforting in the nuclear world. Pakistan has them. We have to deal with that. We have plans to control them or destroy them if islamists take control. It ain't pretty. I do not expect that pakistan would willingly hand over their "crown jewels" in the event of a coup. I don't think India would stand off if that happened either. I do think that the US would lightly scold India if they took care of the problem.
>>Let us gloss over the complicity of renegade sections of Pakistan's ISI
More damn stooopidity. "renegade sections" LOL!
But he's half right.
As we glossed, let's keep glossing over.
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