Why Pakistan Produces Jihadists

[chchajan]

I have noticed one thing, liberal american wesbite such as Huffingtonpost did not mention religion or country of origin in their headlines where as other neocon and of course indian website are all out on it. It is very commendable of someone to be fair and balanced especilly considering the sensitiviy of the topic.

This is a simple ploy to use one person to malign everyone, as far as I can see some Indians are having a field day with this. That is fine, go ahead and have your fun but do not complain when the same happens to you.

Also regarding the origin of the terrorist, one look at the amount of people from all Muslim countries currently residing in Afghanistan and FATA will shock most people.

They were there in the 80's and returned in the 00's. Its time to do a jihad on them.

when ur own national newspaper use that headlines then why blame indian
go and read some

 

[agni - kalam]

Not true at all, in fact a figment of Indian imagination. It's only Indians who think like that. I am on several other western and global forums and very few people point out Pakistan like the way you're claiming. Most of the times its Indians trying to convince the westerners about what you're saying.

if as u claim , the world doesnot see so,
the world will come to know of the reality, in the same way U.S. came to it after 9/11,

before 9/11 india was the worst victim of pakistan based terrorism in the 90s,

when india raised the problem of terrorism,

u.s. was supporting pak in subtle way until it came to its own homeland.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

This when Taliban are killing Pakistanis - muslims, hence overwhelming opposition, not to mention these talibans are actually RAW and Mossad proxies I can give you surveys from the same period where 42% pakistanis think LET are the good boys. This after the mumbai attacks. Only y'day articles in pakistni newspapers on how some locals at Ajmal Kasab's village think he did nothing wrong as it was against an 'infidel' country.

infidel is a religious identification.

Anti pakistan bias, may be. but those arguments are actually supported by the behaviour of some pakistanis themselves. my bias does not negate that.

This is the most recent poll. Previous polls on attacks on civilians and the use of 'terrorism' have similarly high percentages opposing them, so no, your argument does not negate my point.

When you suggest that some polls indicate support for the LeT, that ignores what the respondents to the poll believe the LeT to be. Do the respondents believe that the LeT is fighting Indian occupation forces in J&K and therefore support its struggle for Kashmiri freedom, or do they support the LeT because it attacks civilians?

Polls in Pakistan specifically on the question of terrorism and attacks on non-combatants over the past few years have come back showing strong opposition to the above, so my argument about 'Islamic Identity' not having anything to do with terrorism in Pakistan remains valid on that basis.

Your final point about the responses of some villagers to the role of Kasab in the Mumbai attacks - the responses of one or two individuals in the village Kasab belonged to cannot be taken as indicative of attitudes across Pakistan. Those attitudes are better reflected by polls such as the ones mentioned, and those polls show that the Indian hypothesis of 'Pakistan's Islamic identity being responsible' is clearly flawed.

 

[chchajan]

This is the most recent poll. Previous polls on attacks on civilians and the use of 'terrorism' have similarly high percentages opposing them, so no, your argument does not negate my point.

When you suggest that some polls indicate support for the LeT, that ignores what the respondents to the poll believe the LeT to be. Do the respondents believe that the LeT is fighting Indian occupation forces in J&K and therefore support its struggle for Kashmiri freedom, or do they support the LeT because it attacks civilians?

Polls in Pakistan specifically on the question of terrorism and attacks on non-combatants over the past few years have come back showing strong opposition to the above, so my argument about 'Islamic Identity' not having anything to do with terrorism in Pakistan remains valid on that basis.

Your final point about the responses of some villagers to the role of Kasab in the Mumbai attacks - the responses of one or two individuals in the village Kasab belonged to cannot be taken as indicative of attitudes across Pakistan. Those attitudes are better reflected by polls such as the ones mentioned, and those polls show that the Indian hypothesis of 'Pakistan's Islamic identity being responsible is clearly flawed'.

whenever they can not make any harm to pakistany people they are
good......... at any how (they kill innocent people in india) but when they
start attack on pakistanies itself (aasteen ke sap ) they become bad
good logic

good going .... its true face of ur people they dont mind killing of others

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

It would have been interesting to learn what the response of these people would have been had the poll been about Kashmir.

Would they have still not supported what they consider as 'freedom fighting' and we consider as 'terrorism'?

That would have been DKDPKP (dood ka dood, pani ka pani).

For that matter it would be interesting to know the response of Indians on whether they support India's support for what we would call terrorists in East Pakistan and you would call 'freedom fighters'. On this forum at least a poll is not necessary, since we know that most Indians posting here support India's decision to train and send in 'terrorists' (by our account) into East Pakistan. So what does that say about Indians?

On a similar note, what about the fact that Americans support those who fought the British in their war of independence - attacks on non-combatants and other atrocities were committed by both sides in that war as well. Or what about American support for the Mujahideen against the Soviets, or various other militias/rebels in Latin America and elsewhere against the communist threat? Are Americans supportive of terrorism?

The question, as I pointed out to Fateh, is not just that people support XYZ group, but what they think that group does, and whether they support attacks on non-combatants. On the latter count the various polls in Pakistan over the years support my contention that Pakistanis overwhelmingly oppose terrorism, and therefore Pakistan's Islamic Identity has nothing to do with the current terrorism we see.

So 'doodh ka doodh air pani ka pani to ho gya', the problem is that the Indians posting on this thread are neither drinking doodh nor pani, but poison laced with anti-Pakistan prejudice and hatred.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

whenever they can not make any harm to pakistany people they are
good......... at any how (they kill innocent people in india) but when they
start attack on pakistanies itself (aasteen ke sap ) they become bad
good logic

good going .... its true face of ur people they dont mind killing of others

I'll give you one post to show me where exactly I said that attacks on innocents in India are fine while those in Pakistan are not, or to show me a credible poll supporting that contention.

Otherwise I expect you to retract your comments and delete your hate filled post.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

before 9/11 india was the worst victim of pakistan based terrorism in the 90s,

That is speculative BS. The insurgency in Kashmir was no more terrorism than India's support for rebels in East Pakistan.

There is no evidence that Pakistan supported actual attacks against civilians in Kashmir or India. Did militants commit atrocities in Kashmir? Yes, but so did the Indian security forces.

 

[tapsumbong]

First of all let me start by saying that we know that all Pakistanis are NOT terrorists, and debating on this issue from that angle, the real issue and debate gets hijacked and we end up no where. So please don't insult our intelligence because we can clearly see that in a population of 170 million, a mere handful, say 50,000 radical islamists doesn't make the whole country terrorists. But the bottomline, and truth is that there is a Pakistani connection to most if not all terrorist activities in the world, and that connection is: either it was carried out by Pakistani origin people and/or trained in Pakistan. So can we please isolate this issue and deal with that. There are enough radicalized Pakistanis and there are enough means (terror camps, veteran jihadis and sanctuaries) available, in Pakistan itself, to those radicalized to manifest there disenchantment in the form of terrorist activities not only in Pakistan but all over the world. Since Pakistanis, like other South Asians, are well- educated and talented and thus spread all over the world, so this is indeed a grave problem that cannot be just dismissed by trivializing this issue by making it a generalization issue.

Now I know most of you will say that its because of Afghan Jihad, but afghan jihad ended over 20 years ago, what has kept those jihadis and that machinery running for 20 yrs, which is close to a generation. People that were not even born during the Afghan Jihad are today's terrorists, so you cannot say they were radicalized by that cause. That responsibility falls solely on Pakistan, for continuing those jihadists and that machinery by supplying not only the fuel, the cause, but also the cannon, young foot soldiers. Taking an excerpt from the Dawn article, "“They never tire of condemning the extremists but also never take any practical step to purge them,” he observed.", thats the crux of the matter. No matter what legitimate causes Pakistanis believe in, Kashmir or US foreign policy or Indian hegemony, to perpetuate the terror mechanism based on these causes is only going to result in what we see happening today, and there is only one country and citizen hurting the most in all this, and its Pakistanis, and thats the reality.

 

[EyelessInGaza]

I'd like to congratulate Pakistani forummers, most of whom have behaved with maturity except the inevitable outliers. AM here and Sparklingway in another thread, as usual, your posts were a pleasure to read.

I had not posted so far in this thread and others like it (the NYC business) because a lot of it smacks of schadenfreude, and I outgrew that a decade or more ago.

But at this time I do have a related point to make.

The man who apparently put a bomb in NYC, the man on trial for his life in Mumbai, the men who shot an ex ISI officer a few days ago, the men who the PA is fighting on it's western borders, the men who I think are even now planning to cross over to India in Kashmir- these men and others like them are all threads weaved into the same tapestry.

You cannot unweave one thread or two and hope the tapestry survives. It has to be then whole thing, or nothing at all.

This is coming from an Indian, but the only long term solution I can see is that all 'non state' actors or extremists (call them what you will) in Pakistan are eliminated, regardless of who they are. Not one, not the 'good' or the 'bad' extremists - all of them.

Yes,hard as it sounds, IMO that also means the apparatus that exists to give armed support to and fighters to the Kashmiri movement (And yes, AM, before you ask, I have no proof that such an apparatus exists. )

Before you jump on me, hear me out. I know India isn't an innocent. In fact I know India used to support extremism in Sri Lanka. I know this first because - I guess it's history now so I can talk of it- a relative of mine (a cop) actually ran a training camp for the LTTE in the early 80s.

Our support for the LTTE and interference in SL led us into (a) An unnecessary military op with close to a thousand dead or wounded, (b) Years of trauma (c) A dead prime minister.

What did it get us in the end?

But we learnt the next time round. And Prabhakaran is dead, may he rot in hell.

Pakistan has the same choice. It is a much harder choice than ours, but the basic question is the same, and so, IMO the answer.

@tapsumbong: You a Russell Peters fan?

 

[notsuperstitious]

This is the most recent poll. Previous polls on attacks on civilians and the use of 'terrorism' have similarly high percentages opposing them, so no, your argument does not negate my point.

When you suggest that some polls indicate support for the LeT, that ignores what the respondents to the poll believe the LeT to be. Do the respondents believe that the LeT is fighting Indian occupation forces in J&K and therefore support its struggle for Kashmiri freedom, or do they support the LeT because it attacks civilians?

Polls in Pakistan specifically on the question of terrorism and attacks on non-combatants over the past few years have come back showing strong opposition to the above, so my argument about 'Islamic Identity' not having anything to do with terrorism in Pakistan remains valid on that basis.

Your final point about the responses of some villagers to the role of Kasab in the Mumbai attacks - the responses of one or two individuals in the village Kasab belonged to cannot be taken as indicative of attitudes across Pakistan. Those attitudes are better reflected by polls such as the ones mentioned, and those polls show that the Indian hypothesis of 'Pakistan's Islamic identity being responsible' is clearly flawed.

So almost 8 years after Pakistan govt banned LET (albeit only nominally) for being a terrorist organisation, one year after Pakistan govt arrested some LET men for mumbai attacks, if you are saying the people of pakistan (and a good 42&#37 support LET as kashmiri heroes, then i must say thats very very naive.

Its naive because a terrorist supporter DOES not support terrorism in a vacuum, its a not a human sacrifice cult. he does not in his mind say lets kill some women and children randomly today as is implied by your flawed logic. There is always an EXCUSE, a CAUSE in supporting terrorism, terrorism is not a cause, its the METHOD. And in the case of pakistan a shockingly high percentage supports use of such methods - depending on the cause and causes will ALWAYS be there, if not local, global. And this same justification of terrorism under whatever cause is support of terrorism, and those folks in Faridkot represent the 42%, while almost certainly opposing the (pakistani) taleban (because they are india's stooges!)

So if you ask them, do you support killing of an innocent woman, child or a man, i think thy'll all say NO, but then they'll go on to support LET and just modify the defnition of 'innocent' - just an example of how it probably works.

This is why The generalisation about Pakistan comes up, and its not fair, but Pakistanis will have to fight it the right way, and attacking Indians for 'having a field day' is not that way.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

This is coming from an Indian, but the only long term solution I can see is that all 'non state' actors or extremists (call them what you will) in Pakistan are eliminated, regardless of who they are. Not one, not the 'good' or the 'bad' extremists - all of them.

Yes,hard as it sounds, IMO that also means the apparatus that exists to give armed support to and fighters to the Kashmiri movement (And yes, AM, before you ask, I have no proof that such an apparatus exists. )

Before you jump on me, hear me out. I know India isn't an innocent. In fact I know India used to support extremism in Sri Lanka. I know this first because - I guess it's history now so I can talk of it- a relative of mine (a cop) actually ran a training camp for the LTTE in the early 80s.

Our support for the LTTE and interference in SL led us into (a) An unnecessary military op with close to a thousand dead or wounded, (b) Years of trauma (c) A dead prime minister.

What did it get us in the end?

But we learnt the next time round. And Prabhakaran is dead, may he rot in hell.

Pakistan has the same choice. It is a much harder choice than ours, but the basic question is the same, and so, IMO the answer.

@tapsumbong: You a Russell Peters fan?

ELG:

You won't find me disagreeing with the need to dismantle ALL militant groups, whether they be Kashmir focused or Pakistan focused. I made this point when I first joined this forum, that support for a violent insurgency in Kashmir is a policy that has outlived its usefulness. At the time Musharraf was busy wooing MMS with his 'out of the box solutions' and the composite dialog was going great guns. While the composite dialog has collapsed, the drop in the level of the insurgency in Kashmir has remained consistent.

So based on that I would argue that almost a decade of essentially non-existent Pakistani State support for Kashmiri insurgents does point to a movement away from violent proxies. That said, have all the Kashmiri groups been attacked and dismantled along the lines of the TTP? NO, and there are a few reasons for that.

First, I don't think the GoP saw that as necessary given they believed they had enough control over them to prevent the groups from attacking India. That belief obviously proved wrong with Mumbai, and at least some members of the LeT.

Secondly, without some sort of tangible progress on Kashmir, attacking the Kashmir focused groups is likely to drive them underground and likely link up with the TTP and AQ. These groups would also have a powerful message to continue to appeal to the masses - the GoP sold out Kashmir and Kashmiris at the behest of India - and that appeal could potentially provide resources enough to continue operations, primarily targeted against the Pakistani State, which only adds to terrorism problem being faced by Pakistan.

There are two potential ways out of the impasse IMO:

1. Pakistan is able to exert a degree of control over all of FATA and the PA starts handing over responsibilities to the local security forces, and is therefore able to tackle any potential fallout from taking on the Kashmir focused groups.

2. There is movement on Kashmir and the GoP is able to sell that to the people (and the Kashmiri groups) and then be able to act against them if they refuse to disarm.

 

[tapsumbong]

@Eyeless: Yes man I am a big Russell Peters fan.

Would also like to reiterate and further your point, yes India's hand is also not clean, it backed LTTE, trained them, armed them, but learnt its lesson quick and decisively and became LTTE's sworn enemy way back in early 90s. Look what happened, LTTE is gone after 20 years. India didn't perpetuate LTTE so that she can hedge her bets in Sri Lanka and do its bidding, the reason thrown around for Pakistan maintaining ties with Afghan Taliban in order to have a hold in Afghanistan. India has cordial relations with Sri Lanka based on economic and cultural exchanges rather than extremist mechanism. India also realized in time that supporting LTTE could also lead to Indian Tamils radicalizing and then starting their own campaign in Tamil Nadu, remember we also have a sizeable number of refugees in India from the Lankan civil war. Exact same thing is happened in Pakistan, Afghan Taliban gave birth to Pakistan Taliban and look what happened.
India also did the same in Bangladesh with Mukti Bahini and exacted its pound of flesh, and I can understand Pakistan's pain and their reasoning to do the same with India. But that was then and this is now, I wasn't even born in 1971, and I think most of the Pakistanis on this forum were not as well, so again to carry that baggage right now and look through things in that lens is simply not reasonable. Also, India didn't perpetuate Mukti Bahini to do its bidding in Bangladesh and keep a hold on Bangladesh forever.

South Asia needs to get past its wars and reasons for conflicts, and yes its easier for me as an Indian to say that, but just as India and Indians realized in the 90s that a better economy and development is the sole guiding light for a country, I think others in South Asia will have to realize that too and THEN see things from that context.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

So almost 8 years after Pakistan govt banned LET (albeit only nominally) for being a terrorist organisation, one year after Pakistan govt arrested some LET men for mumbai attacks, if you are saying the people of pakistan (and a good 42%) support LET as kashmiri heroes, then i must say thats very very naive.

The LeT/JuD has a significant PR campaign and social services network in Pakistan. Couple that with the low popularity of both the Musharraf and PPP regimes and the perception that they are 'America's lackeys', and not every move the GoP takes is viewed as 'Kosher'. The JuD also ran a very public legal campaign to get its name cleared, and called for a trial in an international court to validate the UN decision to declare it a 'terrorist group' - the UN does act very opaquely when listing entities as 'terrorist'. Add in the extensive JuD social services network of hospitals, clinics, schools, orphanages, etc. their relief activities in disaster affected areas (Kashmir earthquake, IDP's) and it is not hard to see why they are still popular amongst so many in Pakistan.

Its naive because a terrorist supporter DOES not support terrorism in a vacuum, its a not a human sacrifice cult. he does not in his mind say lets kill some women and children randomly today as is implied by your flawed logic. There is always an EXCUSE, a CAUSE in supporting terrorism, terrorism is not a cause, its the METHOD. And in the case of pakistan a shockingly high percentage supports use of such methods - depending on the cause and causes will ALWAYS be there, if not local, global. And this same justification of terrorism under whatever cause is support of terrorism, and those folks in Faridkot represent the 42%, while almost certainly opposing the (pakistani) taleban (because they are india's stooges!)

What is naive here is your inability to look beyond a 'headline' and analyze and understand the underlying dynamics behind popular support for organizations such as the JuD. Support for the JuD or LeT is certainly not because they are believed to be going around killing innocents.

And when you say 'supports the method'. most polls from Pakistan indicate an opposition to suicide bombings and the killings of innocents, as I pointed out before, so what 'method' are we talking about?

As I pointed out to Toxic, most Indians on this forum still support the Indian training and support to 'terrorists' in East Pakistan, despite knowing what devastation that caused and the atrocities committed by the East Pakistan rebels - how does your logic apply to that then? What part of India's identity would you say lends itself to overwhelming support for terrorist activities in East Pakistan?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

But that was then and this is now, I wasn't even born in 1971, and I think most of the Pakistanis on this forum were not as well, so again to carry that baggage right now and look through things in that lens is simply not reasonable.

I cannot really believe that so long as Indians, at least the ones on this forum, continue to glorify Indian actions in 1971.

If your comments really are sincere, condemnation of Indian actions, in training and supporting East Pakistani terrorists/rebels, would go a long way in validating that sincerity.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Now I know most of you will say that its because of Afghan Jihad, but afghan jihad ended over 20 years ago, what has kept those jihadis and that machinery running for 20 yrs, which is close to a generation. People that were not even born during the Afghan Jihad are today's terrorists, so you cannot say they were radicalized by that cause. That responsibility falls solely on Pakistan, for continuing those jihadists and that machinery by supplying not only the fuel, the cause, but also the cannon, young foot soldiers. Taking an excerpt from the Dawn article, "“They never tire of condemning the extremists but also never take any practical step to purge them,” he observed.", thats the crux of the matter. No matter what legitimate causes Pakistanis believe in, Kashmir or US foreign policy or Indian hegemony, to perpetuate the terror mechanism based on these causes is only going to result in what we see happening today, and there is only one country and citizen hurting the most in all this, and its Pakistanis, and thats the reality.

The Afghan Jihad may have been 20 years ago, but the repercussions of the Afghan Jihad continued long after that. The warlords and criminals competing for power, the anarchy, crime and violence, the millions of refugees - all of that was impacting Pakistan, more than any other nation, and Pakistan chose to do something about it, a decision that at the time made perfect sense.

Pakistan's support for the Taliban did not come out of a desire to see 911 happen or the Bamiyan Buddha's blown up, it came about becasue Pakistan was tired of a hostile Kabul continuously trying to instigate rebellions in Pakistan and claiming its territory, and an Afghanistan that was exporting millions of refugees, drugs, weapons violence and crime to Pakistan. And it was not just Pakistan that saw the Taliban as a good option for stabilization - many other Pashtun notables, the current Afghan President Karzai and his family among them, supported the Taliban rise to power.

So this was not about keeping the 'jihad machinery running for 20 years' but about a series of policy choices to stabilize Afghanistan that at the time had support from many Afghans as well.