Pakistan fears Three fronts, not Two, War on Terror

War on Terror

Pakistan fears Three fronts, not Two

By Irfan Husain

Oct 25: Any general’s worst fear is to have to fight on two fronts. This is one reason why Pakistan’s Army has been reluctant to move troops away from Pakistan’s border with India, as the GHQ’s perception is that Pakistan’s old foe is still Pakistan’s biggest threat.

And even though 28,000 troops are now fighting the Taliban in South Waziristan, the bulk of the Army still faces east.

Against this backdrop, imagine how many sleepless nights the prospect of a "third front" must be causing. The recent attack by Jundallah in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province has raised the spectre of hot pursuit into Pakistani Balochistan.

Although this is not an imminent prospect, there are Iranians who are itching to cross the border to crush this terrorist group that has been a thorn in their country’s side since it was established in 2005 by its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

Jundallah (not to be confused with Jandola, a Pakistani terrorist group) came into being to supposedly protect the rights of the Sunni Baloch in Iran. However, its close links with drug smugglers and the Taliban in Afghanistan make it anathema to Tehran, and its deadly campaign against the Iranian state has caused scores of casualties.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan-fears-three-fronts,-not-two/war-on-terror/d/1990

Colonizing Iraq: The Obama Doctrine?, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Colonizing Iraq: The Obama Doctrine?

By Michael Schwartz

10 July, 2009

Acting in the dark of night, in fact, seems to catch the nature of American plans for Iraq in a particularly striking way. Last week, despite the death of Michael Jackson, Iraq made it back into the TV news as Iraqis celebrated a highly publicized American military withdrawal from their cities. Fireworks went off; some Iraqis gathered to dance and cheer; the first military parade since Saddam Hussein's day took place (in the fortified Green Zone, the country's ordinary streets still being too dangerous for such things); the U.S. handed back many small bases and outposts; and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proclaimed a national holiday -- "sovereignty day," he called it.

All of this fit with a script promisingly laid out by President Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. More recently, in his much praised speech to the students of Egypt's Cairo University, he promised that the U.S. would keep no bases in Iraq, and would indeed withdraw its military forces from the country by the end of 2011.

Unfortunately, not just for the Iraqis, but for the American public, it's what's happening in "the dark" -- beyond the glare of lights and TV cameras -- that counts. While many critics of the Iraq War have been willing to cut the Obama administration some slack as its foreign policy team and the U.S. military gear up for that definitive withdrawal, something else -- something more unsettling -- appears to be going on.

http://newageislam.com/colonizing-iraq--the-obama-doctrine?/islam-and-the-west/d/1541

Is it America’s war or Pakistan’s?, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Is it America’s war or Pakistan’s?

How should one open the story of the bombing of the mausoleum of 17th century poet Abdul Rahman, affectionately and reverentially called Rahman Baba by the Pashtun. Let me try.

“Islamist warriors won a great victory Thursday in the ongoing global jihad against the satanic western powers, especially the United States, when they successfully bombed and damaged the mausoleum of Rahman Baba, a Pashto sufi poet.”

I can see some readers shaking their heads in disapproval. How could the story begin thus; how could such an outrage be termed jihad?

Okay, how about this.

“Foreign intelligence agencies, inimical to Pakistan and Islam, hatched a conspiracy to get the mausoleum of Rahman Baba bombed as part of their nefarious agenda to discredit the Islamist warrior movement that is now coursing through the veins of the ummah.”

No? Not specific enough? Well, I didn’t give the full story. There is the sinister hand here of CIA, Mossad, and, yes, Indian R&AW. The second paragraph of the story runs thus:

“The bombing of Rahman Baba’s mausoleum is part of the campaign by these intelligence agencies which has earlier seen them perpetrate such acts as bombing girls’ schools, blasting CD and barber shops, threatening cinema houses and killing the Shia etc.”

http://newageislam.com/is-it-america%E2%80%99s-war-or-pakistan%E2%80%99s?---/war-on-terror/d/1230

In the Land of Taliban, A Mother Bravely Campaigns For President, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

In the Land of Taliban, A Mother Bravely Campaigns For President

The mother with an important but dangerous job sat down to write a goodbye letter to her two young daughters. Just in case, she thought. The Taliban could get lucky this time and finally kill her.

Fawzia Koofi, who is campaigning for the presidency of Afghanistan, began by writing this to her 10- and 12-year-old.

"Today I am going on political business to Faizabad and Darwaz. I hope I will come back soon and see you again, but I have to say that perhaps I will not."

If she didn't come home, she wrote little Shuhra and Shaharzad, they should take their mother's advice on how to get on without her.

"First," she wrote, "don't forget me."

Finish school, live independently, stay with your aunt, study abroad. All the money their mother has in the bank, it's all theirs. Spend it wisely, on school.

"A girl needs an education if she is to excel in this man's world."

Explore the world. Be brave. Make your country a better place.

"All of us human beings will die one day," Koofi wrote. "Maybe today is the day I will die. But if I do, please know that it was for a purpose."

Despite her security detail receiving a message that the Taliban had planted a bomb under her car, she went, and made it back home safely. This is Koofi, someone who believes without question, even since childhood, that purpose has always guided her. Luck was just something that always showed up when she needed it.

She had come from a place where nothing was expected of a woman to being the first female elected to Afghanistan's Parliament, a body reformed after the war. Every outing was a risk.

An episode in 2010 proved that. As Koofi's convoy traveled near Kabul, shots were fired at cars carrying her, her daughters and sister. Her security fired back. It was a chaotic nightmare, but they made it out alive.

The close call with death is one of many detailed in her new memoir "The Favored Daughter," released as buzz began building about her campaign to become President Hamid Karzai's successor.

The country's presidential election is slated for 2014. Under the latest timetable, all U.S. troops are supposed to be gone from the country then.

http://newageislam.com/islam,-women-and-feminism/new-age-islam-news-bureau/in-the-land-of-taliban,-a-mother-bravely-campaigns-for-president/d/7651

New Yorker depicts Obama as radical Muslim: sparks uproar

New Yorker depicts Obama as radical Muslim: sparks uproar

By Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

Tuesday 15 July 2008 (11 Rajab 1429)

The Obama campaign is not amused. “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds concurred: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

http://www.newageislam.com/new-yorker-depicts-obama-as-radical-muslim--sparks-uproar/muslims-and-islamophobia/d/232