It’s mothers day again, America, 2010. The frenzy for fragrance-free flowers will make for a hectic Sunday morning. Everyone will be a feminist for the day. Mothers will lie in bed and watch the Sunday morning talk shows while fathers juggle kids and kitchens. The TV hosts will convey child-like heart warming messages of love to their mothers followed by mind chilling warnings of terrorists plots threatening to destroy the American way of life; The narratives will be conveniently juxtaposed. Americans will be assured of their essential goodness as the cold and evil nature of the terrorist is described in painstaking detail.
Of course terrorist don’t celebrate mothers day because “others” have no mothers. Where is the mother of Faisal Shazhad? Where is the mother of his children? We will never see or hear from them. They must be kept invisible less we get the impression that he may actually be a human being, birthed by a female of our very own species.
Likewise the American media will never show the images of Aafia Siddiqui’s mother crying as she recalls the last day she saw her daughter. They will never show the images of the children who were deprived of their mother for seven long years. And, we will never be allowed to hear from the mother herself, to explain why she could not recognize her own son.
Motherhood is indeed problematic for the War on Terror. Aafia Siddiqui was completely stripped of her motherhood during her early depiction as Al Qaeda’s number three. When news finally begin to emerge not only of her disappearance but that of her three small children she was suddenly recast from the evil scientist to “terror mom” whose job now was to “have lots of babies” and “raise lots of little jihadis”.
I have no doubt that many would argue; what about the terrorists attempts to take innocent lives depriving our mothers of their children and our children of their mothers? But all the more reason to hear from the mothers of alleged terrorists. Perhaps they can spare us the endless speculation on how and why their kids became terrorists. After all, they raised them?
It’s not just the mother’s of alleged terrorists who disappear, but all the mothers who are victims of the War on Terror often described as Wars of terror. Never in the American media does one see or hear the mothers of children killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never does one see or hear mothers of any of the U.S. soldiers killed or wounded. The only American mother who tries with monumental will to overcome this silencing, Cindy Sheehan, is marginalized by the mainstream media, as a bereft nut.
And when news of children being hurt or killed does inadvertently makes it’s way to the American media it is again blamed on the cold-hearted terrorists for “using their children as human shields”. In fact U.S. soldiers were shown on a recently leaked video indiscriminately firing on a van filled with unarmed civilians including several children. When the soldiers who were shooting realized that the children had been hit they laughed about it and said “well its their fault for bringing their kids into a battle”.
But this Mother’s Day, 9 years into the War on Terror, is the day to remember all those mothers who have been disappeared. It is also the time to demand to know the whereabouts of the latest mother to disappear the mother of Faisal Shazad’s two children, Huma Mian. Given the allegations of both the ISI as well as CIA’s involvement in the abduction of Aafia Siddiqui and her children; given the U.S. DOD’s own internal reports admitting its willingness to use family members including children in the interrogation of terror suspects; it is urgent that the public, Human Rights Watch, The Red Cross, and Amnesty International verify that Huma Mian and her children are safe and protected.
Motherhood is more than just problematic for the War on terror, it is fundamentally irreconcilable with it. You cannot celebrate mothers day if you tolerate war. Motherhood is about giving life, and war is about taking life.
Ibrahim Sajid Malick is a Pakistani-American writer, technologist, and social entrepreneur. He has been writing on Pakistani society and politics since 1986. He has held several media, communications, and technology positions for organizations large and small. Mr. Malick graduated from New School for Social Research with a master’s degree in anthropology. He holds several technology and management certifications. He works for a leading technology firm and blogs at www.ibrahimsajidmalick.com
Thank you for writing this heart wrenching article. I was thinking about it yesterday. How can Americans have two faces- one for their own people and another for the rest of us. Are our mothers less human? Why do are we treated like cockroaches. I am glad to reminded us all of Aafia Siddiqui today. May Allah All Mighty bless you and your family.
Happy mothers day!
Mother’s Day continues to this day to be one of the commercially most successful U.S. occasions.
For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards.
Mother’s Day will generate about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry’s annual revenue.
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We put our mothers above heaven, heaven below her feet…
you sell motherhood and then call it mothers day!
Very good column. Americans don’t respect our mothers. Free our beloved sister Aafia Siddiqi now! Jab tak sooraj chand rahay gaa aafia taira naam rahay gaa
Best piece I have read after his arrest. I know this author does not have a Muslim name but she is doing justice to us.
I really very much like her writings on Aafia sidiqi as well.
Pramilla,
You must be a mother and that is why you written such an eloquent column.
No harm would have come to her health, had Hillary Clinton, also a mother, before shooting off her odious bluster of severe consequences to Pakistan done a bit of self-introspection and given a little thought as to why American Muslim youths were getting radicalised so increasingly.
Even those incorrigibly conformist western media people, think tanks and intellectual stars who in the past would at the drop of a hat instantly point fingers outside have now begun talking, even if grudgingly, of homegrown terrorism. And a top American soldier, General David Petraeus, the chief of the Central Command, too had spoken of Faisal Shahzad, the naturalized Pakistani-American citizen suspected of the failed New York’s Times Square bombing, as a “lone wolf”.
And even that muddle-head of a Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik had after waffling into his confused mind for days finally settled down to accept that the suspect’s any Pakistani connection was yet to be established. If in spite of all that, Clinton yet persists that Faisal had received bomb-making training in Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal area, that doesn’t wash out the incontrovertible fact that he had imbibed radicalisation towards terrorism right inside the United States, not outside of it. As had had those five American terrorism-suspect youths, now in the custody of the Sargodha police. They too had landed here with the intent of terrorism. Not had they acquired this intent here. With their minds already made in the United States, they had arrived here to seek out some contacts or allies to carry out their intended terrorism. And the time has now come for people like Clinton to see the objective realities as those are and act accordingly.
Digging out scapegoats and whipping boys may help them to offload the lethal burden of a vicious murderous monstrosity on their backs but only transiently. But help them this would not in wrestling with this bestiality and wiping it out for good. That necessarily requires an unvarnished honesty in acknowledging the bitter truth in all its entirety and coming up with informed creative initiatives to cope with it.
Clinton shouldn’t forget either that the terrorism she and the people of her clan are so fond of berating Pakistan for is the horrid legacy that the United States and its allies, principally Arabs though no lesser the western, gifted to this wronged nation. This country was no hotbed of religious extremism or terrorism, ever. Throughout, its people have been predominantly a moderate lot, who though love their faith and feel proud of practising it, but never have had they worn any kind of religiosity on their sleeve. The rabid extremism that has come to infest them is in fact an endowment of America’s and its allies’ betrayal of this unsuspecting nation and the vile double game played by America’s CIA cunningly on our people during the so-called Afghan jihad against Afghanistan’s Soviet invaders and latterly in the ongoing spurious US-led war on terror, thanks to two of our collaborative self-perpetuating military dictators desperately hankering after international legitimacy for their illegitimate rules. Hillary may not have forgotten that their bete noires now are their erstwhile celebrated heroes. Jalaluddin Haqqani, as for one, was their favourite and richly-blessed Afghan mujahideen commander fighting their proxy war against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. And Osama bin Laden too was their much-sung hero who they extolled no end for abandoning his luxurious living to fight their proxy war, apart from funneling his precious billions of dollars in the war chest of the Afghan resistance. If they have turned back on their American chums, to blame are the American lords themselves, not the people of Pakistan who indeed have become an unwarranted quarry of these fallen-out buddies. And they are paying a heavy price on this count. Not only in fighting out the fanatics that the US-led invaders of Afghanistan had quite conveniently and cowardly let sneak into Pakistan after toppling the Taliban in a massive air strike. But also in coping with the bloody thuggery of the militants that in a diabolic double-game the CIA had spawned, armed and bankrolled in this country’s tribal region. Hillary must understand that this unfortunate nation has had enough of the skullduggery and dishonesty of America. That should be enough of it. And no tangible gain would occur to her and her folks if she and her clan keep building upon it. The roots of terrorism in America clearly lie inside the country, not outside. Cutting out those roots will harbinger all peace and security to the American people. Hurling threats to outsiders while keeping those roots untackled will keep the American lives insecure. She must think over it.
Pramilla, I am thankful to you for standing up for Pakistani and Muslim men and women. Unlike, Ibrahim Sajid Malick, who seems to have sold his soul to the Americans, you are standing with the truth.
Regards,
Your Pakistani sister,
Fauzia
Putting lipstick on the pig doesn’t make her pretty. People Porkistan are a menace to society and they should that behind whipped.
@Your daddy: come on daddy i will put lipstick on your a*s. I will take you to LUNDiKOtal and FATA (F**k Americans and Talibal Alike).
@Fauzia Shahid: What makes Pakistan so uniquely conducive to extremism? … Pakistan proudly prosecutes its own people for a crime that exists in few countries: blasphemy…. Once this root cause is removed, a long-term solution of strengthening religious freedom through legislation and establishing a robust educational infrastructure will have a chance to work.
We are Pakistanis as well but we don’t have same rights. Why?
I respect your “motherhood”. I respect your opinion. But here are the facts. Faisal Shahzad is not the first one- he has simply joined a growing list of Western terror suspects inspired, trained or sponsored by extremists in Pakistan.
The son of an affluent air force commander, Shahzad was brought up in Pakistan but educated in the United States, where he got a job, settled his young family into suburbia and acquired citizenship.
But the American dream appeared to go badly wrong. Returning from a visit to Pakistan, he told US immigration officials he went to see his parents.
After his arrest on last week he has confessed to being trained in Pakistan to make bombs. Pakistan is yet to confirm a link between Shahzad and a specific militant faction, but investigators are pouring over who exactly he visited and where he went during a months-long stay in his homeland.
While the details are opaque, radicalised youth have long felt an irresistible pull to Pakistan as a nursery of modern jihad. The country’s borderlands with Afghanistan have been branded the headquarters of Al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden’s ideology of global jihad against the United States and its allies, rooted in the mountains of the Afghan-Pakistani border, has inspired myriad offshoot groups and galvanised alienated youth.
Accidents of history and geography have made the 27,200 square kilometres (10,500 square miles) of Pakistan’s tribal belt, which lies beyond any government control, a hotbed of Pakistani, Afghan and foreign militants.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States sowed the seeds by sponsoring Afghans to fight against the Soviets in the 1980s. The war put huge pressure on the Soviet Union but spawned jihadist groups and Al-Qaeda.
The 1980s ushered in a major state-sponsored Islamisation of Pakistani society. The military and intelligence agencies supported hardline groups as an instrument of domestic and foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Kashmir.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan pushed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda into the tribal belt, where mountains, thick forest and lawlessness provided the perfect haven.
Although much of the radical Islamic backlash against US policies is rooted in the Middle East, analysts say Pakistan, with its free media and political system, is a more fertile breeding ground than Arab police states.
Five Americans are currently on trial in Pakistan for allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack.
David Headley, the American son of a former Pakistani diplomat, has pleaded guilty before a court in the United States to surveying targets for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba ahead of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
Britain says the majority of its terror plots originate in Pakistan.
The mastermind of the 2005 bombings in London, and two of the four Britons who blew themselves up on the city’s transport system, visited Pakistan.
Sophisticated transport links make it easy to travel to Karachi, Lahore or Peshawar, where young people can meet political leaders or clerics who can put them in touch with militants.
A police investigator in Karachi, where Shahzad is believed to have spent time, said there were “many” madrassas and mosques in the city where educated people were being indoctrinated and manipulated.
Dear Anne P:
I am glad you pointed out that many of Pakistan’s problems today are rooted in its role as a US proxy state in the 1980′s. The Islamization of Pakistan ushered under Zia who received considerable support from the U.S. undermined the fabric of the entire society. It would help Pakistan if the U.S. publically took responsibility for that, as a first step. I am aware of the “all roads lead to Pakistan” thesis. However, if you want to control the conspiracy theories promulgated by its “free press”, let’s hear from the terrorists, from their families. Let’s find out why and how they chose this violent path. Because the average educated middle class Pakistani cannot understand how it could happen, hence the conspiracy theories. Pakistan can shut down maddrassas and ban militant groups but without more info on why or how this happens to otherwise normal people it is unclear what else they can do. Perhaps these people have psychiatric problems and Pakistan needs to invest in a massive mental health effort. We just don’t know. These terrorism narratives told in the western media are really devoid of context. As an anthropologist by training I’m perplexed by that lack of context. Ultimately,however, my point really was about motherhood. Let’s begin conversations, mothers to mothers about how we can end this violent cycle. That would be a true celebration of Mothers Day. By the way did you know that the real mothers day was begun by an antiwar activist.In the United States, Mother’s Day was first suggested after the American Civil War by social activist Julia Ward Howe. Howe (who wrote the words to the Battle hymn of the Republic) was horrified by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War and so, in 1870, she tried to issue a manifesto for peace at international peace conferences in London and Paris (it was much like the later Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation). During the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s, Julia began a one-woman peace crusade and made an impassioned “appeal to womanhood” to rise against war.
Pramilla u r wasting ur time defending paki pigs.
Is the US responsible for all that religious extremism in Pakistan? Before Zia-ul-Haq, Qadianis were declared non-muslims. Could Bhutto’s government send those anti-Qadiani rioters to jail and stood ground against a Sunni discriminatory demand? Bhutto belonged to a Shia family and he personally did not follow religion. There was some mysterious force that presented him the choice of being kicked out of power or declaring the qadianis as non-muslims. A few months after Jinnah’s death, an objectives resolution declaring Pakistan an Islamic republic where all laws would be in accordance with Quran and Islam, was imposed. The under-educated middle-class that colluded with afraid of extinction zamindars of India to claim that Muslims of India were a separate nation, were overwhelmed by maulvis who demanded that this new country of Muslims must have religion as its guardian. Under Zia-ul-Haq, we see the synthesis of the under-educated and maulvis. They became one, absolute, bigoted rulers of Pakistan. The US found fertile grounds for their anti-Soviet campaign in this already deeply affected country and they pursued religious bigotry to their end. Religious extremism and an aversion to modernity, education and research had already crept into Pakistan before the Americans started their war in Afghanistan. It is important to know the truth, if we want to come out of this predicament. Peace.
WASHINGTON DIARY: The terrorist question —Dr Manzur Ejaz
No other Muslim country sponsors private religious and sectarian militias for domestic use or to achieve strategic goals. Probably, every state, other than Pakistan, knows fully well that the rise of private militias is bound to threaten the state’s monopoly of using power and coercion
We may console ourselves by parroting the ‘conspiracy against Pakistan’ mantra over and over but the fact remains that most bombers are traced back to Pakistan. American-Jewish-Hindu conspirators may be out there to target Pakistan, but how does one explain the failed Times Square bombing attempt by Faisal Shahzad, or Aimal Kansi, all originating from Pakistan? It is a puzzling question if one goes a bit deeper.
Afghanistan is occupied by the US, Palestine by Israel and Kashmir by India, but how come none of the terrorists caught in Mumbai, Washington or New York is an Afghan, Palestinian or Kashmiri? Why do the nationals of these countries struggle on their own land instead of throwing bombs in far off places like Mumbai and New York? Therefore, the claim that terrorism, emanating from Pakistan, is triggered by the oppression of Muslims does not hold. If it was so, the bomber should be coming from occupied lands or other Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia as well. Therefore, an explanation other than ‘Muslim oppression’ has to be sought.
The main difference appears to be the perpetual indoctrination of morbid ideology and state sponsorship of private religious militias in Pakistan: no other Muslim country, even theological states like Saudi Arabia or Iran, sponsors private religious and sectarian militias for domestic use or to achieve strategic goals. Probably, every state, other than Pakistan, knows fully well that the rise of private militias is bound to threaten the state’s monopoly of using power and coercion.
In addition, the US funding and concoction of international jihad — never a part of Muslim ideology before the anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan — broke the camel’s back. Pakistani Muslims were always vulnerable to such a disastrous worldview because of the indoctrination based on fictional history of the Muslim invasion and conquest of India.
Most importantly, the Indian Muslims led by immigrants from north and central Asia had a streak of pan-Islamism. They seriously believed that they had conquered India, not for economic gains, but to spread Islam and end ‘kufr’. They had a typical imperialist mindset to perceive themselves as civilisers of the pagans and backward people. Like all colonists, the idea of universality of their faith or worldview and its imposition was essential to justify their occupation. The British, and later on the Americans, have used similar logic for colonialism and imperialism.
The Muslim intelligentsia, particularly the historians, presented exaggerated and distorted characterisations of their invading patrons. Every Muslim ruler was presented as a destroyer of idols and appropriator of pagan wealth. The numbers were fudged and exaggerated to make their patrons more palpable to occupiers/immigrants and the audience back home in north and central Asia.
For example, Mahmud of Ghazni is presented as the destroyer of the Somnath Temple, who took back home gold and silver loaded on 100 camels and horses. Ms Thapar, an Indian historian, has proved that old manuscripts (Pali, Gujrati, etc) do not show that Mahmud ever reached Somnath or it was ever a significantly wealthy Hindu temple. Instead, it was a local temple rarely maintained by the local Hindu rajas. Furthermore, given the size and impoverishment of the population of those days, the amount of gold looted from Somnath does not make any sense. Most probably, it is a make-believe story concocted by Muslim court-historians. It suited Hindu nationalists too to make a case against Muslim occupation and, therefore, they did not challenge it either.
The converted Muslims remained backward and looked up to the invader/immigrants’ intellectual leadership and adopted their worldview. After the decline of the Mughal Empire, the Muslim intelligentsia never gave up the idea of Muslim domination and was always keen to start revivalist movements. Like their perception of fictional history, they were so detached from world reality that while Turkey was taken over by the secularist Kemal Atatürk, Indian Muslims were demonstrating for the restoration of the Usmania (Ottoman Empire) caliphate. The movement for the restoration of the ‘Khilafat’ was the most farcical, to say the least. In those days a ‘danda force’ led by a lunatic named Ilam Din in Lahore exhibited the crude violence a Muslim revivalist movement can resort to.
Whichever way one interprets the twists and turns of the history of the Pakistan movement, the new Muslim state inherited the traditional Indian Muslim mindset. The invader/immigrant worldview of history was the ethos of the Pakistani state from the very beginning. Even Jinnah’s personal secular thinking and lifestyle could not sway the traditionalists and in a couple of years Islamisation was put on the agenda through the ‘Qarardad-e-Maqasid’ (Objectives Resolution). School curriculums were structured by the traditionalists, specifically the Deobandis, portraying the Muslim invasion of India as an act of benevolence by great Muslim emperors. Even invaders like Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali, who just came for loot and plunder, were portrayed as great men. Pakistan’s naming of its missiles after these invaders’ names shows how much the morbid worldview of traditionalist Muslim history has been transferred to our new generations.
The core of the Pakistani establishment has always remained loyal to the traditionalist Indian Muslim skewed worldview. Even secularists like General Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could not change this discourse in a substantial way. In this backdrop, when Ziaul Haq intensified the process of Islamisation and private religious/sectarian militias were sponsored by the state, the dynamics of theocratic radicalisation and destabilisation were unleashed. The US funding and training of these militias transformed them into a lethal force. They were deployed against the Soviets and then against India, but ultimately they were going to threaten the state of Pakistan and its cohort superpower, the US.
The Pakistani establishment is forced to undo these private militias but at the same time it is trying to stick to the core traditionalist ideology. It has not confronted the essence of its self-created problem and has not found an alternative ideology to govern and achieve its strategic goals. The entire political establishment has grown up with the traditionalist Pakistan ideology. Therefore, sometimes, the National Assembly committees are more conservative than the bureaucracy and military establishment.
All in all, Pakistan remains very far from undoing the debilitating received traditionalist worldview that is the mother of every kind of religious extremism, sectarianism and proliferation of religious monasteries and militias.
@Malik Rashid: Rashid bhai you are the best. No body else tell these people that we are not Muslims because Zia made us Muslim. We are Muslim and religion is in our DNA. Poem for you:
Listen you Americans and listen well
We laugh as we see your drones fly overhead
We laugh because we can smell your fear
Why else do you need drones to fight children with rocks?
A battle of honor is between equals
We challenge you, you who have sold your honor
Come to us as equals; so that we can show you how to die with honor
We laugh at you because we know, that not in a million years
Will one of you ever have the guts to stand up to one of our children
Without hiding behind an array of weapons that the American tax payer gives you
We laugh at you, because that is what every warrior does
When he faces an army of cowards.
Listen and listen well
It is not whether we live or die that is important
It is how we live and how we die
Ask yourself: How would you like to be remembered?
Without respect, despised and accursed through the centuries,
Or blessed, honored, your passing mourned.
Allah is our witness: We lived with honor; begging for no favors
And He is our witness: That today we die with honor; on our feet
Fighting until the last breath leaves our body; even if all we have in our hands are stones
He is the witness over us both
As you kill us and as we die
And to Him is our return
Listen and listen well
On that Day, my little baby who you killed last night
Will ask Him for what crime she was murdered
Prepare your answer,
For you will answer to Him
I swear by His Power: You will answer to Him
I don’t believe there is such an act called terrorism which involves muslims!!!
America which is fueled off of money,lust,drugs,sex,greed,and the list goes on…. Moves and acts how it wants to and if anyone act back it uses the Media to portray acts of terrorism which were only acts of defense!!! Every day innocent muslims die everyday,men,women and children!! Not only from America but from all non-muslims!! Theres two people in this world those who believe in (swt)Allah and bow there heads five times a day to the floor for his mercy and then theres the non-believer, as muslims we must come together and act as one Ummah!! Until then this will continue to go on!!! So I’ll keep you and this madness in my prayers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY MASSAGE IS THAT; HOW YOU ALL CAN DECIDE ABOUT HER ARE YOU ALL JAGGED THAT YOU DECIDE IT GOOD OR IT BAD
THAT TRUE OR THAT IS WRONG
I think your article is heavily biased, I may hate america like many Pakistanis but fact of thematter is America is as much reposible for the war as is the other side.
Aafia siddiqui maybe a suffering mother but she chose to go to war with the United States and had she been an Indian Agent we would have done the same thing. Similarly majority of the people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been by the Al Qaeeda Car bombs (and these arent figures of the US they are of the muslim NGOS based there..out of the 600 000 killed in Iraq more than 500 000 have been a direct result of car bombings).
War is a bad bad thing, its built to take lives and takins any side is simply wrong. In my opinion the Americans are as much responsible for the grieving mothers as the other side.
Since the creation of Pakistan, all sects have been living in harmony in our country. Each sect was given its rights and freedom of expression and none of the segments was subjected to dominance by others. Unfortunately at the behest of foreign hands sectarian disharmony erupted in the country resulting in tension between Shia and Sunni communities.
Inter-sectarian disharmony was exploited by the hostile anti-Pakistan agencies, which geared up their nefarious efforts to destabilize Pakistan on sectarian and ethnic grounds. Involvement of these hostile agencies is evident from sectarian rifts in different cities, including the Kurram Agency in FATA, where sectarian clashes have resulted in heavy losses. Recent attacks on Shia procession in Karachi on Ashura and Sunni procession on Eid-e-Milad un Nabi as well as target killing of prominent religious leaders like Mufti Saeed Ahmed Jalalpuri and Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem in Karachi seems to be the planned effort of hostile intelligence agencies to create unrest and instability in the country. There is a need to address this issue at appropriate level. Suitable media response on the subject must also highlight the importance of the issue in order to counter misperception and misinterpretation of Islam as main cause of terrorism.
Islam is a complete code of life. It teaches humans to develop faith in God and learn spirituality by serving the humanity through good deeds, sense of accommodation, altruism, peace and tranquillity. Islam allows all religious factions and sects to practise their faith respecting fully their belief, system and extending religious harmony towards them. Islam promotes brotherhood and respect for fellow human beings. Killing of innocent people is forbidden in Islam as Holy Quran says “killing of a human being is equivalent to killing of the entire human race.” Miscreants and terrorists have propagated wrong concept of Islam and jihad for their vested interests. They have misinterpreted verses of the Holy Quran to promote their cause and have polluted the minds of innocent youth. The ulema from different schools of thought have declared suicide attacks as haraam because these attacks victimize poor and innocent people. Fatwas (decrees) have also been issued by ulema against terrorist activities on different occasions. This unanimous edict of the ulema from various sects in Pakistan leaves no doubt that suicide bombing and terrorist attacks are totally un-Islamic. The government and ulema should continue their active role in denouncing terrorism and suicide bombing so that true version of Islam is promoted. Understandably enough the malicious designs of terrorists against Pakistan are obvious. Terrorism and extremism in all its forms and manifestations need to be eliminated at all costs. The whole nation is determined and motivated to fight terrorism and expose that the militants are conspiring against Pakistan, creating trouble, disrupting law and order while challenging the writ of the government at the behest of foreign elements. It is necessary to promote the need of opening up a dialogue process with the Taliban who are not hardliners demonstrating the government’s efforts to settle the issue. There is also a need to project the sacrifices and successes of the security forces as there is no example in the history of what the Pakistan military has accomplished. The success, achievements and sacrifices made in order to restoring peace in the country by the security forces must be highlighted. The nation must mobilize to eliminate the militancy by identifying the hideouts, social links and vulnerabilities of the militants.
That the victory in South Waziristan is being consolidated, the operation has ended and focus shifted on development work in FATA, it must be projected in a proper way. The drone attacks are counterproductive as these are encouraging anti-American sentiments amongst the masses. The COAS has clearly stated that the military operation has been conducted without US help and Pakistan being an ally of the US does not mean that Pakistan will obey every diktat of the US. There is the downward tendency in the motivation of the militants and the perturbed attitude of the Taliban commanders over the shortfall of their human force. There is no denying the fact that the Indian RAW is involved in creating unrest in Balochistan. RAW-terrorists’ racket is working against Pakistan and has plans to spread sectarian violence in Karachi while mosques and cantonments are their prime targets in other cities. The Lahore blasts were conducted by RAW as Hindi words were written on the remains of arms and weapons recovered from the ruins. India is using Afghan soil to sponsor terrorism in Pakistan.
Recently India has sent additional troops to Afghanistan. Presence of more Indian troops in Afghanistan would be of serious concern for Pakistan. More than 100 Pakistani Baloch dissidents have been sent to India by Indian consulate located in Kandahar for six months training. The handlers of the dissident Baloch elements plan to assign different targets in Balochistan and Sindh province. Indian strategy to de-stabilize Pakistan through Afghanistan indicates old Indian game plan derived from a similar Indian strategy of 1971 used to destabilize the erstwhile East Pakistan before launching physical attack in support of Mukti Bahini of Bengali youth. This shows that India does not let any opportunity go waste in harming Pakistan. On the other hand Indian spree of building dams and barrages on Pakistan’s rivers can bring the two nuclear powers closer to the brink of a war.
The construction of more than 60 dams by India on almost all rivers flowing into Pakistan is a clear cut violation of the Indus Water Treaty. By this India is blocking Pakistan’s legitimate share of water. The newly constructed dams are changing the course of major rivers flowing into Pakistan.
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