By Andrew L. Jaffee

I usually rag on the Hollywood stars, but there are exceptions, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who have “dared” to make a movie about the savage Islamist murder of reporter Daniel Pearl. Reports are now circulating that Brad and Angelina are receiving death threats because they are documenting Pearl’s execution. From the Columbus Dispatch:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have received threats on their lives from al-Qaida, The Indian Financial Express reports. The couple are shooting the film A Mighty Heart, based on the life of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in Pakistan in 2002. British security experts flew to Pune, India, after being alerted by neighboring Pakistan that the couple might be targeted because of the film’s political nature.

Remember that Pearl:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I have wondered openly about Pakistani President Musharraf’s claim to be the West’s “main ally” in the war against Islamo-fascism, but today’s airstrike by helicopter gunships against terrorists in the Bajaur tribal area near Afghanistan shows that Pervez just might be serious about cleaning his nation up. From the BBC:

At least 80 militants have been killed in an air strike by Pakistani forces on a madrassa (religious school) used as a militant training camp, the army says. …

The leader of the madrassa, radical cleric Maulana Liaqat Ullah Hussain, was among the dead.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

An Indian investigator on Saturday blamed Pakistan’s spy agency of orchestrating the July train bombings that killed at least 207 people in Mumbai, an accusation that could threaten the already shaky peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

- AP, Sept. 30, 2006

If true, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has put President Musharraf in an awkward position, more so than he is in already. Just today, he claimed to be the West’s “main ally,” yet a string of events this week involving Pakistan makes his claim slightly incredulous. I believe that he truly believes that a parliamentary/republican democracy is a goal for Pakistan, that Islamism is the world’s most dangerous problem, and that he fully intends to one day turn over power to the people. But putting these noble goals into practice is a high-stakes game for him because of: 1) the number of radical Islamists in Pakistan; and, 2) and because of the supposed “middle ground” he walks between appeasing the radical Muslims, and at the same time, trying to nudge Pakistan into the 21st century.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The Washington Post warns of “Pakistan’s Awkward Balancing Act on Islamic Militant Groups.” But if one looks closely at the actions of Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, it is clear that he has made his choice to side with the West, there’s no going back, and he is beyond the pale of reconciliation with his country’s lunatic Islamists. The scale has tipped to one side. It is time for Musharraf to explicitly say so and do so, as he’ll never appease Pakistan’s radicals. Here’s an excerpt from the Post:

The basic problem for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is that he is trying to please two irreconcilable groups. Abroad, the leader of this impoverished Muslim country is frantically competing with arch-rival India, a predominantly Hindu country, for American political approval and economic ties. To that end, he has worked hard to prove himself as a staunch anti-terrorism ally.

But at home, where he hopes to win election in 2007 after eight years as a self-appointed military ruler, Musharraf needs to appease Pakistan’s Islamic parties to counter strong opposition from its secular ones. He also needs to keep alive the Kashmiri and Taliban insurgencies on Pakistan’s borders to counter fears within military ranks that India, which has developed close ties with the Kabul government, is pressuring its smaller rival on two flanks.

There’s no way for Musharraf to “please” the Islamists. Let me explain point by point:

1. The Islamists tried to assassinate Musharraf twice in the short span of 11 days in December 2003. He survived one attack by a few seconds. Any idea how one would reconcile with one’s own assassins?
2. Pakistan and Israel’s foreign ministers met for the first time in Istanbul in September 2005 — a prelude to eventual full diplomatic relations. Musharraf initiated the new dialog. The Islamists surely see this move as an ultimate betrayal. Meeting with the Little Satan?
3. Don’t forget that Israel has forged strong strategic ties with India, Pakistan’s arch rival.
4. Musharraf has sought to break the ice between his country and India, the world’s largest democracy, and chock full of free-thinking, entrepreneurial apostate Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians. Relations between the two nuclear rivals are better than they’ve ever been since they gained independence from Britain. The Islamists are surely angered by Musharraf’s diplomacy. One only need look at the many Islamist terrorist atrocities wrought against India.
5. On On September 17, 2005 Musharraf spoke before the American Jewish Congress. Again, another slap in the face of the Islamic radicals.
6. Pakistani intelligence helped Britain thwart a plan to bomb airliners this month.
7. There is evidence that Pakistan might not be quite as radical as the politically-correct, hand-wringers of doom claim: “New research is calling into question the prevalence and increasing popularity of religious schooling in Pakistan, with survey data that show previous estimates of enrollment in Islamic madrassas to be far lower than widely reported.”
8. Finally, Musharraf’s military, probably his strongest power base, has specifically targeted and killed scores of Islamists and other militants in his own country. Just this week, Pakistan’s military offed one of the country’s major terrorist leaders, Sardar Akbar Bugti (”Bugti, the Sardar or chief of more than 200,000 Bugti tribesmen, was killed along with more than 35 of his followers when the Pakistan Air Force bombed his hideout in the Bambore mountain range in the Marri tribal area.”).

So instead of indulging in an “awkward balancing act,” President Musharraf needs to lay his cards on the table, shut down Pakistan’s virulent Islamist madrassas, crack down on militants, and move the country out of the religious Stone Age into a modern, civilized society. To think that Musharraf could find a rapprochement with radical Islam is like believing Neville Chamberlain’s claim of “peace in our time” in 1938 — a worthless peace of paper signed with Hitler. You know what happened next.

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By Randy A. Sprinkle

At the time I began writing this piece, though many news organizations and commentators have weighed in on several recent events that have caught the world’s attention lately, there is one commentator that has been quiet. His absence poses a question that is asked about him every now and then, but mostly every now: Just where is Osama bin Laden? No one can definitively answer that question - at least no one who is talking; but for me it is time to ask that question again.

One reason why I revisit the question is the recent revelation of a planned al Qeada attack on the New York City Subway system. A New York Times article citing author Ron Suskind, reported that in 2003, U.S. intelligence had discovered a design for a makeshift device that could produce deadly cyanide; furthermore, that there was a plan to use a series of such devices in a coordinated attack on the New York City subway system.

U.S. intelligence learned of the plot after an informant close to Al Qaeda leaders told U.S. officials that bin Laden Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama’s #2) had canceled the plan in January 2003. (Hmmmm… Binny Boy out of the office at the time?)

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I regularly watch the NBC nightly news at 6:30 PM daily. When at least 345 Muslims were trampled to death by other Muslims at the Hajj, NBC briefly mentioned the event — it was the fifth story, not the headline; a footnote, if you will. The anchor, Brian Williams, looked a bit guilty while he swept another Muslim atrocity under the rug. Yet a U.S. airstrike aimed at killing al-Qaeda’s #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was the top headline on NBC last week.

The NBC report bemoaned the airstrike’s killing of 18 civilians, chided the U.S.’s faulty intelligence, and partially blamed Pakistani President Musharraf for being too soft on terrorists. The story’s video was mostly devoted to angry Islamists chanting, “Death to America!”

Well, well. Will NBC even mention today’s revelations from the provincial government of Bajur, a Pakistani tribal region sharing a border with Afghanistan:

“Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack,” the statement said, citing the chief official in the Bajur region where Damadola is located.

“It is regrettable that 18 local people lost their lives in the attack, but this fact also cannot be denied, that 10-12 foreign extremists had been invited on a dinner,” it said.

The Washington Post reports Pakistani “confusion” over the airstrike’s circumstances:

Confusion over the incident deepened in Pakistan because of contradictory official statements. Although the administrator of the Bajur tribal region where the strike occurred said four or five foreign terrorists had been killed, the federal information minister said there was “no information about the presence of any foreign terrorists” in Bajur. “Such a violation of our territories will not be tolerated next time,” he said.

[Pakistani President] Musharraf’s government has come under intense conflicting pressures as it tries to cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts without provoking influential domestic Islamic organizations. Those groups can easily arouse the emotions of devout Muslims who are suspicious of American motives in the region.

The only confusion here is Pakistani government vacillation over what side it will choose to take in the war against Islamo-fascism. President Musharraf has made that choice already, but not forcefully enough. After all, he has survived several assassination attempts by Islamists.

In September, Musharraf initiated talks with Israel for the first time ever. The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan met in Turkey. Pakistan initiated contact as thanks for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Turkey helped broker the unprecedented meeting.

On September 17, Musharraf spoke before the American Jewish Congress and said:

According to the Holy Quran and our Holy Prophet, Jews and Christians are the ‘People of the Book,’ belonging to the same spiritual tradition. … Our experiences and histories intertwine in many regions of the old world and most significantly in the Holy Land.

According to the BBC :

… in July 2003, President Pervez Musharraf called for a national debate on the possibility of opening diplomatic ties with Israel.

There were a few rumbles in reaction to this news. But Pakistan’s teeming masses of hysterical Islamists reacted rather mildly, relatively speaking, e.g., there weren’t quite as many car-swarms as expected. After Pakistan and Israel announced that their foreign ministers met in Istanbul, the BBC reported that Islamist reaction in Pakistan to the news was “muted.”

Musharraf has already opened the Pandora’s Box by cooperating with Washington (somewhat) and initiating contacts with Israel. His country’s Islamists want to kill him, so why hesitate now? It is do or die — side with the civilized world or sit around wringing hands about what the extremists think, and end up dead.

by Phyllis Chesler
Middle East Quarterly*
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/794
* Cross-posted with permission

On December 21, 1961, when I returned from Afghanistan, I kissed the ground at New York City’s Idlewild Airport. I weighed 90 pounds and had hepatitis. Although I would soon become active in the American civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and feminist movements, what I had learned in Kabul rendered me immune to the Third World romanticism that infected so many American radicals. As a young bride in Afghanistan, I was an eyewitness to just how badly women are treated in the Muslim world. I was mistreated, too, but I survived. My “Western” feminism was forged in that most beautiful and treacherous of countries.

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The Times of India today quotes Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf:

There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that this country is a moderate country and moderate forces have reasserted themselves and religious forces have gone down.

I’d say he is almost half right. Moderate forces may be resting a bit easier. The proof in the pudding is in the eating. In September, Musharraf initiated talks with Israel for the first time ever. The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan met in Turkey. Pakistan initiated contact as thanks for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Turkey helped broker the unprecedented meeting.

On September 17, Musharraf spoke before the American Jewish Congress and said:

According to the Holy Quran and our Holy Prophet, Jews and Christians are the ‘People of the Book,’ belonging to the same spiritual tradition. … Our experiences and histories intertwine in many regions of the old world and most significantly in the Holy Land.

According to the BBC :

… in July 2003, President Pervez Musharraf called for a national debate on the possibility of opening diplomatic ties with Israel.

There were a few rumbles in reaction to this news. But Pakistan’s teeming masses of hysterical Islamists reacted rather mildly, relatively speaking, e.g., there weren’t quite as many car-swarms as expected. After Pakistan and Israel announced that their foreign ministers met in Istanbul, the BBC reported that Islamist reaction in Pakistan to the news was “muted.”

Could it be either 1) a grudging acceptance of the Jewish state, one which cannot be destroyed militarily or by terrorism, or 2) that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza has deflated anti-Israeli sentiment?

Musharraf lived in Turkey from the ages of 6 to 13 and, very interestingly, considers Kemal Ataturk his personal hero. I say this is very interesting because Ataturk founded Turkey and insisted that the country be modern and secular.

Pakistan’s president has survived several assassination attempts, yet has stuck to his course. Today he said:

Claiming that his government had broken most of the radical gangs and terrorist outfits, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said his grip on power was strong and moderate forces had reasserted themselves in the country.

That may be a bit optimistic, but let us hope that Musharraf continues to seek the strength of his youthful convictions, when he considered Ataturk as a role model.

How often have you heard the cliche, “One is a freedom fighter, one is a terrorist. Can you tell the difference?” Is discernment so difficult?

Hamas terrorists recently murdered a Palestinian police commander and two civilians. “Palestinian police officers have broken into the parliament in Gaza to demand a crackdown on the militant group Hamas,” according to the BBC. [1]

How does Hamas celebrate? It fills a truck with homemade explosives, and then drives that truck through dense crowds of Palestinian civilians. When the truck accidentally explodes, killing 15 children, women, and men, what does Hamas do? It blames Israel and fires rockets at Israeli civilians.

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