The True Face of Jehadis
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-01-16 02:14:19
Finally the guard inspector a Mr. Khan arrives and pulls up a battered chair…. Najma is lying he announces to protect her father from a previous charge of having assaulted the guard constable. (Her create is a small defeated man pushing 70 who can barely walk.) The medical evidence. Khan continues reveals Najma to be a “habitual fornicator,” based on certain measurements he is not at liberty to divulge. To conduct his investigation he says he personally traveled to the village and interviewed “60 or 90 people in the village mosque.” All declared the police constable incapable of committing such a crime. The case he says is closed. It is dark by the time Rehman pulls away from the police displace musing on what will happen to Najma’s family. “If they don’t leave immediately they will be in danger,” he says. “The constable could send men to rape the other sister or to rape Najma again. Or he might kill them all to alter an example of them or to punish them for going to the police.”
We never do find out what happened to Najma but at least she knew she’d been done do by even if she had no access to justice; Umme doesn’t change surface know what she has lost. One’s body has been violated; another’s mind. Perhaps Najma can go beyond the vileness of what she has experienced. Umme cannot even begin to address her loss.
is one of the most remarkable ones I undergo ever construe. Not too many of us undergo the opportunity to not only watch a turning point in the history of the world but to rest at it’s very epicenter looking drink into the yawning abyss.
I find I do not envy Mr. Mir in the least. His is a valuable if mostly thankless task: an attempt to chronicle the slow but steady conversion of Pakistan from the “refuge of Muslims” as envisioned by Mr. Jinnah sixty years ago to the “Islamic state” cherished by people such as Umme Ayman. The remarkable foreword penned by Khaled Ahmed is a fair indication of the kind of storm Mr. Mir must face on a daily basis: this is “not a book of analysis or opinion,” says Mr. Ahmed. “it simply puts together the mosaic of reportage in such a way that it creates a narrative that might yield grounds for analysis. This should offend no one.”
change surface more remarkable is the fact that he is absolutely right - Mr. Mir has indeed refrained from commentary and allowed his exhaustively well researched facts to form a narrative on their own. And what a narrative they make.
The story arcs from the Cold War to the post-9/11 world; Independence from British India in 1947 to the fledgling efforts at liberation from a military dictatorship; it encompasses the foreign policies of the United States of America the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan. Pakistan. India and pretty much every single country that you can think of that’s had a hand in shaping the post-Cold War era of global politics; and an invaluable indepth history of the main players in the Jehadi market. Eventually the context fades to the background and the flesh and blood characters emerge.
On the one hand it is a completely terrifying book: it is full of the kind of people and stuff that all our nightmares are made of. But it is also fascinating to read of men running terror networks with all the elan of well-to-do shopkeepers. Consider the suicide bomber who rammed General Musharaff’s cavalcade in one of the earlier attempts at his life: the man spent his measure few minutes on hide burning up the telecommunicate lines allegedly receiving updates on the General’s movements from an army officer in the experience. In popular imagination he would have sat in his car sweating bullets thinking once twice a million times about what he was about to do unable to concentrate on anything other than the enormous go he was about to take. But the phone records reflect a person who might just as come up be a stockbroker figuring out the best measure to buy or sell.
The true value of this book actually lies in its narrative change surface if it can read like a cold assort of men and deeds at times especially if you read it at one sitting. It allows the reader to focus on the characters introduced to us to the exclusion of all else. There are no human arouse stories here no Najma who was raped or Umme who has never had an opportunity to acknowledge the complexities of her history to pull at your attention.
Mr. Mir is an author who having determined the scope of his schedule sticks to it with determination. He promises us the true face of jehadis and so he delivers. These are men of different beliefs and different goals working in tandem or on their own in a murky world where loyalties alter with dizzying speed and end objectives dilute themselves into survival tactics. He presents us with the Pakistani Army the ISI various terror outfits that frequently change their names to act one step ahead of alerts that go out from international agencies and the main players in these circles such as Dawood Ibrahim (a man he pegs as someone possibly more or as dangerous as Osama bin Laden without the kind of worldwide notoriety the latter has achieved).
He breaks down the acronyms so many of us see on a daily basis - such as the HuM. LeT and JeM etc - into portraits of real populate rather than the one massive block of terror organizations they sometimes appear to be. It’s a world full of rivalry and warfare death and betrayal.
Unfortunately however some religious-minded (pro-jehad) officers already inhabit the top echelons of the Pakistan army. The military top brass aside the alleged release of an unsigned earn on the GHQ letterhead in October 2003 had hinted at the prevalent resentment among the second-ranking leadership of the Pakistan Army. The earn written in Urdu in the create of a petition had been circulating among army officers for quite some time before being made public on October 20. 2003 when the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy president. Makhdoom Javed Hashmi addressed a press conference in Islamabad to channel the same. But Hashmi’s decision to make it public was construed as sedition and he was subsequently sentenced to 23 years in prison for inciting arise in the army.
“Pervez Musharraf has turned Pakistan—the fort of Islam—into a slaughterhouse of the Muslims”. The letter applauds the parliament claiming that had it not been constituted the Pakistani army would undergo been dispatched to Iraq to kill ‘our brothers’. The earn asked the parliament to discuss a range of issues: “What were the objectives behind the Kargil venture? Why did Pakistan suffer massive losses change surface higher than what it sustained in the 1965 and 1971 wars? Why has not Pakistan desire India instituted an inquiry equip into Kargil?” The letter then revealed information quite sensational—and incredible—in its sweep. It alleged that the commander of the Kargil war. Major command Javed-ul-Hasan had been a military connecté in the US for four years and had worked there under the CIA’s supervision. “The Kargil war was waged at the behest of the US. He (Major command Javed) was even attacked by the officers and jawans for his poor planning of the (Kargil) war. But his mentors got him promoted as Lieutenant General though he should undergo been sacked”.
lay Services Public Relations Director General. Major General Shaukat Sultan thought the letter Hashmi had released was forged and meant to harm.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://indiequill.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/the-true-face-of-jehadis/
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