[Peace-discuss] Fw: [laborsmilitantvoice] Obama's Gift to Pakistan

[John W.]

I don't know about all the rest of this, but it seems that the Taliban
dislike music and musicians about as much as they dislike gender equality:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090615/od_nm/us_musicians



On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 6:59 AM, unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net> wrote:


> ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Richard Mellor <AACTIVIST at IGC.ORG>
> *To:* laborsmilitantvoice at yahoogroups.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 18, 2009 2:55 PM
> *Subject:* [laborsmilitantvoice] Obama's Gift to Pakistan
>
>
>
> I thought this was an interesting article about the situation in
> Pakistan I wondered what Farooq thinks about it.
>
> Richard
>
> June 17, 2009
> A Civil War
> Obama's Gift to Pakistan
>
> By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN
>
> A civil war is brewing in Pakistan. Thanks to President Barack Obama,
> who is shifting the American war from Iraq to "the real enemies"
> operating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cash-strapped Pakistan could
> not defy Obama persuasion and decided to wage a war against its own
> people, the Pashtuns inhabiting the Northern Province and the tribal
> areas of Waziristan. Decades ago, Pakistan waged a similar war
> against its own people, the Bengalis in East Pakistan. In 1971, the
> Pakistani military charged to wipe out Mukti Bahini, a Bengali
> resistance force, paved the way for the nation's dismemberment. In
> 2009, the military is charged to eliminate the Taliban, a Pashtun
> resistance force. History is repeating itself in Pakistan-as it
> frequently does for nations that do not learn from past mistakes.
>
> With a willful caricature of the Pashtuns, who are successfully
> resisting the occupation of Afghanistan, Obama advisers are forcing
> Pakistan, a subservient ally, to help win the war in Afghanistan.
> This help is suicidal for Pakistan. The civil war will unleash
> intractable sectarian, ethnic, and secessionist forces. As the
> warfare intensifies in coming months, Pakistan will face economic
> meltdown. If the civil war spins out of control, Pakistan's nuclear
> assets would pose a security threat to the world, in which case
> Pakistan might forcibly be denuclearized.
>
> Pashtun Caricature
>
> A failing war in Afghanistan has persuaded American policymakers to
> generate a make-believe caricature of the Pashtuns, the dominant
> ethnic group in Afghanistan. For all practical purposes, the Pashtuns
> are now subsumed under the title of the Taliban. The caricature is
> simple and compelling: It highlights the Taliban as the paramount
> enemy without ever mentioning the Pashtun resistance to the
> eight-year old occupation of Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters are
> presented as religious brutes addicted to oppression and violence,
> who wish to impose a barbaric version of Islam under which there is
> no concept of individual freedom, particularly for Muslim women.
>
> To further distort the Pashtun resistance in Afghanistan, the Taliban
> are co-equated with the Al-Qaeda, an undefined terrorist group
> allegedly scheming to detonate weapons of mass destruction,
> particularly against the United States. Burqas, floggings, and
> beheadings are accentuated to paint a repulsive caricature of the
> Taliban. In this caricature, no mention is made that the American
> bombings of villages, extra-judicial killings, torture, and secret
> prisons have failed to subdue the Pashtuns in one of the poorest
> countries of the world.
>
> Pashtun Code
>
> Credit goes to President Obama for rightfully diagnosing the fact
> that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan cannot be separated from the
> Pashtuns of Pakistan across the Durand Line- a more than 1600 miles
> long border that ineffectively separates Afghanistan from Pakistan.
> Nearly 41 million Pashtuns live on both sides of the border; around
> 13 million in Afghanistan and twice as many (28 millions) in
> Pakistan. Concentrated in geographically contiguous regions of
> Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pashtuns live in big cities, small
> towns, and remote villages. Kabul, Kandahar, Peshawar, Swat, and
> Quetta are their big cities. Going back thousands of years, the
> Pashtuns are united through culture, dialects, and traditions. Most
> have embraced the Sunni sect of Islam. Like other cultural groups,
> however, the Pashtuns have fused Islamic laws with their pre-Islamic
> honor code, known as the Pashtunwali.
>
> Pashtunwali is the unwritten Pashtun Code that regulates social
> behavior and interactions with foreigners. This Code belongs to the
> Pashtuns, not just to the Taliban. Hospitable and gracious, the
> Pashtuns go out of their way to respect and protect guests and
> strangers. Invaders, however, are killed without mercy. Nang (honor)
> is the founding principle of the Pashtun Code. Khushal Khan Khattak
> (1613-1689), a Pashtun warrior and a poet, summed up the nang
> principle in decisive words: "Death is better than life when life
> cannot be lived with honor." Badal (revenge) is the integral part of
> honor. Badal requires that insult be avenged with insult, death with
> death, and no price is too high to seek revenge. Until the revenge is
> taken, the Pashtuns are restless, anxious, and uncomfortable with
> themselves. Forgiveness is available if the injury were
> unintentional. No forgiveness is rendered to invaders and occupiers.
> No enemy is too strong to deserve any exception to the Pashtun Code.
> Brits, Sikhs, Moguls, Russians, and Americans, whoever violates the
> Pashtun Code faces an unremitting resistance until badal has been
> consummated. Mighty armies have perished in the land of Pashtuns.
>
> Revenge and Civil War
>
> Since 2001, Pakistan has been resisting the pressure to join the
> American war against the Pashtuns. A war against the Pashtuns of
> Afghanistan is also a war against the Pashtuns of Pakistan, and vice
> versa. No concept of the nation-state or territorial integrity could
> separate the Pashtuns across the border-certainly not when the
> Pashtun lands have been invaded and occupied. No vilification of the
> Taliban could similarly separate them from their Pashtun tribes, even
> if the Taliban subscribe to a strong religious ideology. For the
> Pashtuns, the Taliban behavior is deeply rooted in nang and badal of
> the Pashtun Code. The divide and rule policy practiced in Iraq, which
> pit Sunnis against Shias and Kurds against Arabs, cannot work against
> the Pashtuns. Discounting the Pashtun Code, Americans continue to
> ignore this writing on the wall.
>
> Betting on changing the lessons of history, the Obama White House has
> coerced Pakistan to close the doors of negotiation and begin to kill
> the so-called Taliban. Pakistani leadership knows that the Pashtun
> tribes cannot abandon their sons and brothers whether the invading
> armies label them Taliban, miscreants, or terrorists. The suicide
> attacks in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi reflect nang and badla of
> the Pashtun Code. The foremost Pashtun loyalties are to their own
> people and to their own Code. The Pashtun Code, long before the
> advent of Islam, has been their way. In order to receive billions of
> dollars from the United States, the Pakistani leadership has
> succumbed to the caricature of the Taliban and plunged the nation
> into a civil war with the Pashtuns, the nation's second largest
> ethnic group.
>
> Liaquat Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University in
> Topeka, Kansas, and the author of the book A Theory of International
> Terrorism (2006).
> --
> "Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism
> are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and
> women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets
> the most swill." -James Connolly 1910.
>
> Richard Mellor
> AFSCME Local 444 retired
> Oakland CA
> http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/
> http://www.myspace.com/unionguy510
> http://www.clnews.org
>
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