American home grown terrorists sentenced in Pakistan

From the New York Times of June 24, 2010,

A Pakistani court sentenced five American Muslim men who had been arrested in Punjab Province to 10 years of labor in prison on Thursday for conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks, in a case that amplified worries about the radicalization of Muslims in the United States.

We spend a lot of time in America trying to understand the mindset of young men and, perhaps, women, who yearn for a jihadist lifestyle.

Experts say that the young Americans, often children of integrated Muslim immigrants, are not immune to the calls of jihad by militant organizations, which play on feelings of frustration and confusion about identity common in young, first- and second-generation men.

Once again, let's blame "confusion of identity" for sending these young men off the path. Perhaps a Muslim lifestyle is to blame; perhaps it is a lifestyle that cannot coexist within America's melting pot. Nonsense, there are many sects and people of deep religious belief whose children do not dream of jihad and martyrdom. Stop blaming society and point the finger where the trouble lies-- propagators of those who would harm us picking on susceptible and impressionable young men to do their dirty work.

Well, that's what I think. Read the full story.

Wall Street Journal - The War on Terror Goes On

The editors of the Wall Street Journal add up the results of the past few weeks on the war on terror.

The main credit here goes to the folks in the intelligence community that our friends on the left love to hate.

Credit goes as well to Barack Obama, who as President has abandoned much of his previous opposition to proven antiterror measures like warrantless wiretaps, and who has only stepped up the campaign of targeted hits on terrorist ringleaders. He's fortunate the Bush Administration left him with a potent intelligence team and the precedent of taking the fight, pre-emptively, to the terrorists on their home turf.

Highlights:

• U.S. special forces operating in Somalia killed top al Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed to have been a planner in the November 2002 bombing of a hotel in Kenya in which 15 were killed.
• Also killed in recent days was senior al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri—via a U.S. drone attack in western Pakistan—and Indonesian terrorist mastermind Noordin Muhammad Top, suspected in the July bombing of two Jakarta hotels.
• A British court convicted three men for an August 2006 plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic. The convictions were obtained largely on the strength of communications intercepts—possibly warrantless—gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a report by Britain's Channel 4.

Doesn't sound like a very high "body count" does it? But as the premise behind body counts has long been debunked, I, too, think it's been a good week.

Read the full editorial.

Stephen M. Flatow

Open Season on Christians in the Islamic World

Phyllis Chesler writing in the Chesler Chronicles comments on the fate of Christians in Muslim lands.

For centuries, Muslims committed genocide against Hindus in India and what is now Pakistan. Today, in Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey, Pakistan, Gaza, and Iran, it’s open season on Christians.

She asks,

When will Westerners truly understand that it is not only the West that has engaged in imperialism, racism, colonialism, and capitalism, but that the so-called East has done so too? African and Arab Muslims had a heavy hand in the African slave trade and, to this day, still keep slaves; Islam is a primarily imperialist venture which has colonized huge tracts of other people’s land. And, how would anyone describe the traffic in oil, drugs, and sex slaves which Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are currently engaged in as anything other than rank capitalism?

Read Open Season on Christians in the Islamic World

India's Partition of 1947 - Is the world still paying a price?

Anyone familiar with the motion picture Gandhi will recall the plea made by Hindu leaders to their Muslim counterparts for the latter to drop their demand that India be partitioned and thereby create the Muslim state of Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks, organized from outside India, and a list of many more, are symptomatic of Muslim "disaffection." Identifying that disaffection is easy according to some. Norman Berdichevsky, writing in New English Review, takes a different approach.

A few academics and editorial writers claiming to be scholars and quite a few liberal pundits/observers, have argued that some blame for the recent atrocious acts of terror in Mumbai should be put on India’s Hindus by stressing that the terrorist group of “disaffected Muslims” carrying out the outrage of random murder of civilians was “probably funded from outside India." They believe as Fareed Zakaria stated in Newsweek, that Indian Hindus “had it coming” because "One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

He continues,

This view is not just wrong and short-sighted, it is symptomatic of why India has become a major target for terrorism that enjoys widespread support not only in Pakistan but in the wider Muslim world. Hatred of India stems from a psychological need to link India and Israel as guilty in the “injustice” Muslims believe they have suffered and to deflect blame and muddy the waters by shifting responsibility for the Partition of India in 1947 to the Hindus and conjuring up the vision that the Jews and Zionism did precisely this in Palestine in 1948. Nothing is further from the truth.

Berdichevsky explores the similarities and dissimilarities between India and Israel and the partitions that created the modern states. But he does not brook the argument that the creation of modern Israel was foisted on a Muslim population.

The truth of the 1948 partition in Palestine is that the Muslims rejected it totally and any possibility of living in peace alongside a tiny Jewish state. Instead they aided in the invasion of the country by the regular armies of six Arab states plunging their homeland into war and ending as defeated refugees. Had they accepted it, the great majority of Palestinian Arabs would today be enjoying the rights of their own independent homeland without the bloodshed of the last sixty years and a minority of them would be citizens of a much more secure, serene and tolerant Israel, untroubled by the threat of constant renewed warfare and terrorism.

Read the full article A Tale of Two Partitions: India 1947 and Palestine 1948 here.

New Report Links Pakistan to Mumbai Attack

The New York Times is covering the release of a report "compiled by Indian authorities and officially shared Monday with the Pakistani government."

"The information seems designed to achieve at least two Indian objectives. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the attackers were sent from Pakistan. The dossier, a copy of which was provided to the New York Times, contains photographs of materials found on the fishing trawler they took: a bottle of Mountain Dew soda packaged in Karachi; pistols that bore the markings of a gun manufacturer in Peshawar; Pakistani-made items like a matchbox, detergent powder and shaving cream.

Second, the information seeks to rally international support for the Indian effort to press Pakistan on its handling of militants. It contains a list of 26 foreigners killed in the Mumbai attacks, and chronicles India’s efforts in recent years to persuade Pakistan to investigate suspects involved in terror attacks inside India and shut down terror training camps inside Pakistani territory. In its final pages, it demands that Pakistan hand over “conspirators” to face trial in India and comply with its promise to stop terrorist groups from functioning inside its territory. It was shared this week with diplomats from friendly nations; one described it as “comprehensive,” another as “convincing.”

Pakistan and India have not been on the best of terms since Pakistan was created following the grant of independence to India by the British in the late 1940s. Border wars between the two countries have popped up from time to time over the past 60 years. One might say, "OK," so there have been skirmishes along the border, so what?

The "what" is this-- India and Pakistan both possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan has exported its technology to places like Iran. India continued nuclear bomb testing long after it was fashionable to do so. Stable countries? To some, no. Driven by religious fervor and an inferiority complex, Pakistan seeks to reach its place in the sun. India, by sheer population size, dwarfs Pakistan.

Will the report heal the rift between India and Pakistan? No, but it could give the Pakistani government a pretext to crack down on extremist groups and their backers.

Read more here

Mumbai Terror Attacks - What's the local news saying?

The story surrounding terror attacks lasts only as long as there's room on the front page. One day's crisis becomes next week's old news. The memory of its victims soon fades away. So I thought I would take a 5 minute look around the news about the Mumbai terror attacks. To my pleasant surprise, a major story has arisen.

From the Associated Press, December 8, 2008, "Pakistan arrests suspected Mumbai plotter."

"Security forces overran a militant camp on the outskirts of Pakistani Kashmir's main city and seized an alleged mastermind of the attacks that shook India's financial capital last week, two officials said Monday."

Is this event a demonstration of resolve by Pakistan or a one-act play to get India and the United States off its back?

From the Times of India – "26/11 terrorists trained by Pak army, navy instructors: Report"

"The ten terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks were among 500 men trained to "elite" commando standards by the Pakistani army navy instructors and were directly supported by the ISI, a media report here said on Sunday.

"The Indian intelligence have the names of the 26/11 terrorists' ISI trainers and handlers and have intercepted internet phone calls between them, The Sunday Times said."

Much is still to be revealed about the plotting, planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks. Mourning for the lost will soon become, however, a private affair.

Happenings in the Back Country of Pakistan - Police living and leaving in fear

MSNBC says "Pakistan police losing terrorism fight" and lays out an AP report: Officers outgunned and underfinanced compared with insurgents .

"BADABER, Pakistan - Brothers Mushtaq and Ishaq Ali left the police force a month ago, terrified of dying as their colleagues had — beheaded by militants on a rutted village road before a shocked crowd.
They went straight to the local Urdu-language newspaper to announce their resignation. They were too poor to pay for a personal ad, so the editor of The Daily Moon, Rasheed Iqbal, published a news story instead. He has run dozens like it.
"They just want to get the word out to the Taliban that they are not with the police anymore so they won't kill them," said Iqbal. "They know that no one can protect them, and especially not their fellow policemen."

Tough crowd these Taliban. But importantly, the Pakistan government does not seem interested in bolstering their police by paying them more money, or dare I say, taking the battle against the Taliban seriously.

Some ally we've got there in Pakistan.