Inside Al-Qaeda and The Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 – Syed Saleem Shahzad

Saleem Shahzad was brutally murdered when he was investigating new generation of Al-Qaeda leaders and their modus operandi in Pakistan and abroad. People in the know and those who were close to the journalist laid blame on the hawks in Pakistani military who were not happy with Shahzad’s investigations. He was perhaps about to uncover some unpalatable truths about Al-Qaeda’s links with some elements of Pakistani military, and for that he payed for his life.

This view is lent credence by the fact that Shahzad received death threats after he refused to back down from his investigative project, and named certain military people as responsible if he’s harmed. Not long after Shahzad’s murder the US troops found and killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

This book chronicles the story of Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the course of action they took when their normal operations were disrupted following the American invasion in 2001.

Taliban and their allies retreated to Pakistan’s tribal belt where they were tolerated by Pakistani military. In time the militants regrouped and launched a spectacular Spring Offensive of 2006 in Afghanistan and consolidated their grip in bordering areas. This stunned NATO forces who by that time had written off Taliban as a spent force. Little did they realise that Pakistan’s refusal to sever old ties with militants would turn out to be the main factor in the revival of the Taliban.

The narrative goes into great detail and claims that Pakistan facilitated Afghan Taliban factions and allowed them freedom of action on the condition that they would not engage in violent activities inside the borders of Pakistan. But Pakistan soon understood that armed non-state actors cannot be controlled at will once they acquire enough power and will to defy their masters. A motley bands of home-grown jihadists, who had been hitherto fighting alongside Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and separatists in Kashmir, turned their weapons on the people and state of Pakistan.

Pakistan has burned since 2007 and Shahzad, till he was killed in 2011, laid blame on the duplicitous policies of the Pakistan military establishment.

First published 2011

Real Men Keep Their Word: Tales from Kabul, Afghanistan by Akram Osman

Translated from the Dari by Arley Loewen

(Translation first published 2005)

This is the first ever collection of fictions in translation that I have read from an Afghan author. These stories cover a range of themes including honour, love and financial difficulties faced by ordinary people. A couple of stories depict the class-based hypocrisy of the rulers and powerful men against the backdrop of oppression on ordinary people.

I particularly enjoyed “A Free Coffin” which is a burlesque critique of a miser who is bent on saving little pennies when he is faced with the burial of a relative that he has to pay for. “The Secret Unleashed” and “The Moderate Politician” reveal the hypocrisy of a ruling class in Afghanistan which led to widespread disillusion and discontent among Afghan  masses.

The lead story titled “Real Men Keep Their Word” sharply portrays strong ethical values, ie unbending commitment to their word, unfaltering hospitality and even ubiquitous machismo Pashtuns are famous for . On the other hand, however, stories like “The Blind Eagle” and “A Crack in the Wall” didn’t carry much literary merit.

The foreword by Jamil Hanifi about Afghan novel writing and publishing history in Afghanistan was very informative. I had no idea things were so bad there with respect to Afghan publishing industry.

The translator, Arley Loewen, has chosen to translate Dari-specific expressions and idioms literally into English. For that reason the translations sometimes make an awkward reading. It would have been better if the local idiom was  translated into equivalent or near-equivalent English expression with an explanation of original Dari expressions in the footnotes. However the translator is of the view that translating peculiar Dari idiom into equivalent English idiom doesn’t do proper justice with the original and rich Dari expression in which the stories are originally written.

Afghanistan gets a great deal of bad press for all the wrong reasons. The society, its people, it’s culture and morals are lain under the burden of negativity that has gripped the country since Soviet forces invaded over three decades ago. This collection of stories present a different side of the society always under scrutiny of foreign “experts”.

I rate it at 3/5. Find the book on AMAZON.

Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror by Tariq Ali

(First published: 2005)

This oddly titled book is a collection of political commentaries written in the aftermath of London bombings of July 7 2005. It covers British politics and media coverage of “War on Terrorism” around that time.

It particularly discusses Britain’s role in the build up to the Iraq war. A leaked secret memo from 10 Downing Street made it clear even before 2005 that, as we know now, the dossier justifying the invasion of Iraq was known to be full of lies. The author contends that Tony Blair had already decided to back George Bush on Iraq, and only after having decided on that he (Blair) looked for evidence to justify his policy.

The US and UK devised two schemes to justify Iraq war. First, they decided to trap Saddam through UN arms inspectors. They hoped that Saddam would refuse and that would provide a justification for the war but Saddam played a shrewd hand and circumvented the plan. Later on, lies about WMD were prepared, a big media hype was created and finally the invasion of Iraq was proceeded with.

The highlight of the book is in the detailed account of Blair government’s spat with the BBC. The BBC is often criticised for its uncritical war coverage in Iraq and its conformist approach toward government’s policy. This became true only after the ouster of the the Director General of the BBC, one courageous Greg Dyke, was engineered by Blair’s spin doctors.

A BBC journalist named Gilligan under Dyke’s instructions interviewed the UN weapons inspector David Kelly who informed the BBC that the evidence for the war in Iraq was completely made up. Later, David Kelly was found killed. His death was considered a suicide but something was amiss. This led to a big controversy which resulted into an inquiry led by Lord Hutton.

To cut long story short, the author argues, that it was Tony Blair and his chief spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, who made sure BBC is censured and its top positions filled with toadies who wouldn’t be critical of the government’s policies toward the Bush doctrine of war.

There is another long article that provides a detailed analysis of the role British media played in the run up to the war. It’s worth reading. There is another article about Britain’s current “first-past-the-pole” electoral system, which he calls “unrepresentative” system of a “representative” democracy.

One example of the system in place in the UK comes from 2005 general elections. Labour in that election got a mere 35% of the popular vote. Given the nature of the system, since all other parties got fewer votes than Labour, the later was to form the government and continue with its policies even though in real democratic terms Labour was unpopular with the majority of British voters.

The author argues for a change in the British electoral system towards more representative and accountable governance than this system currently produces. On my rating scale this book gets 5/5. AMAZON LINK

Movie: No Man’s Land (2001)

(Bosnian: Ničija zemlja); Countries: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium, Britain; Languages: Bosnian, English, French, German)

It’s a war drama by Bosnian director Danis Tanovic set in Bosnia during the war of the 90s. Three soldiers, two Bosnian and other Serb are trapped in no man’s land while neither side will allow the other to come and rescue them. Their problem is compounded as one of the injured Bosnian soldier is lying on a mine which will explode if he moves.

Since either side is unable or not allowed to come to rescue those soldiers, they call on the UN peacekeepers to step in. The UN commander refuses to lend help since the UN forces are there to keep peace and it’s beyond their mandate to get involved in these sort of situations. One officer, however, bypasses his superior and decides to step in. The operation ends in a horrible way.

It’s not full of action and doesn’t have an intense plot as in other war dramas. Nonetheless, it’s one of the most excellent war dramas I have seen. At times ridiculous and at times tragic, this film highlights just how the ultimate victim of war is humanity itself. My rating is 4/5. Here’s the IMDb Link.

The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam by Bernard Lewis

(First published 1967)

This is a rich account of the history of the rise and fall of Hashishin, or Assassins,who appeared in Persia and Syria in the 11th and 12th centuries. The book starts with a brief survey of the discovery of the Assassins and their ways in the then contemporary Western sources. Interestingly, in those accounts, the Assassins exemplify daring and devotion rather than terror and murder. There is a sense of amazement at their loyalty to their beliefs.

Later Western sources paint them as some kind of degenerate hedonists who indulged in drinking and women and sold their services of murder to the highest bidder. This is when the name Assassin, which is corruption of Hashishin, is taken to mean political murder and is still current in the English language. The author says that famous legend of the “Paradise of the Assassins” and wondrous tales associated with it are no more than a work of imagination and intrigue.

The book proceeds with a general introduction to the history of Shia-Sunni split and further Shia splits into Ithna `Asharis, Ismailis and other less significant Shia offshoots which are now extinct. At the time when the Abbasid Empire has become internally weak and disorganised, the only non-Sunni power to emerge in Islam to make its name were the Ismailis. They established Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt and ruled for circa 250 years before coming to an end at the hands of Salah al-Din ( Salahuddin or Saladin).

Isma`ilis represented a powerful and intellectual alternative to the Sunni orthodoxy which has become weak and no longer commanded confidence in the people. Isma`ilis seized that opportunity and with their systematic preaching and moral superiority over Sunnis and hence succeeded in converting a lot of people to their faith.

Then a man came and changed things: Hassan-e Sabbah.

He was a Qum born Ithna `Ashari Shi’i who was attracted by the vigour and activity of the Ismailis in Persia and so converted. He lived under taqqiyah due to Sunni threat (Persia was under Turk Seljuq Sultan who even controlled the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The Caliph was but a mere figure head with limited authority).

Hassan-e Sabah managed to win over the castle of Alamut in Northern Persia which was to become the headquarters of the Assassins for decades to come. It was there he started to organise the new group with the new preaching; calling people toward the living Imam (in Cairo) and training them in acts of violence and sabotage with the sole purpose of bringing down the existent Sunni order which he and his coreligionists saw as corrupt and unjust.

Around this time, precisely in 1094, the famous Must`ali-Nizari split in the Ismaili line of Imamate took place. Without going into details, the New Preacher, Hassan-e Sabbah and his group refused to accept Must`al’s son as the new Imam and held on to the belief in the Imamate of Nizar who, along with his sons, was imprisoned and perhaps murdered.

It was the time of decline for Fatimid Caliphate which suffered a decisive blow due to the split at the top. Meanwhile, in Persia, Hassan-e Sabah acquired neighbouring castles by scheming or invasion and begin to train devotees for his new campaign. One that of murder and terror.

The first victim to fell to the daggers of the Assassins was that of Vizier Nizam al-Mulk in Persia. Then a pattern was established, The Assassins particularly targetted civil rulers and commanders of armies along with Sunni divines and prefects of the cities. They never murdered due to religious differences what today we call the common man.

In difficult missions, the Assassin(s) assigned to the task would perfectly disguise himself, take their target in confidence and, finding the opportunity, assassinate him. Often the Assassins made no attempt to escape and accepted the punishment which was usually execution. In that they can be likened to the suicide bombers of the middle ages. Many Assassins were lynched and killed on spot after killing their target.

While the campaign of murder got underway, the Assassins acquired new castles and safe havens in the mountainous countryside of Persia, which were difficult to invade so that the ruling powers couldn’t take them out easily. At the same time Hassan-e Sabah sent his emissaries to Syria to establish their message there. After some unsuccessful attempts they succeeded in having a foothold in Syria.

Many men of importance fell to the Assassins among them two Abbasid Caliphs, a Seljuq Sultan, and also some Christian Crusaders in Syria. But their main enemy was not Christian Crusaders but the Sunni orthodoxy. There were two attempts on the life of Salah al-Din (Saladin) but he survived. The mission continued after the death of Hassan-e Sabah in 1124.

One of his successors, who was not a blood relation of Hasasn-e Sabah, also called Hassan, abolished the observance of Law, pronounced Qiyammah (Resurrection) and lifted the rules of halal and haram from the religion. He also is said to have proclaimed himself the direct descendent of Imam Nizar and hence the rightful heir to the Imamate. The later Nizari Imams descend from that person, which in time gave birth to the Aga Khans, one of them is still holding the office of Imamate for Nizari Ismailis today.

The Nizari faith flourished in Persia as much as it did whereas the Fatimid Caliphate met its end at the hand of Salah al-Din and the faith disappeared from Egypt. It became a small fringe group in Yemen in later centuries and then its leaders migrated to India. Today in India (Gujarat), while the Imam is in occultation, they have a Da`i who heads the sect as the deputy of the Imam.

The end of the Assassins came about in the 13th century. They had suffered defeats in Syria at the hands of Mamluk emir Baybark and setbacks in Persia after the Mongol Invasion. The Assassins at first collaborated with the Khan forces of Mongols in order to survive but this strategy did not work for them. one by one, their castles were taken first by Seljuqs and then by the Mongols. Finally, Alamut, their headquarter, also fell and the Assassins became a fringe phenomenon.

But for 250 years the Assassins filled the hearts of rulers with terror. Elaborate security measures were taken by cities and their rulers to protect themselves from the wrath of the Assassins. They wore iron shirts and kept constant guard on them. Salah al-Din didn’t even let anyone who he didn’t personally recognise get near to him physically for the fear of Assassins under cover.

The weakness of the book is that it doesn’t sufficiently explains the theological underpinnings of the Assassin movement. It is clear that the Assassins were deeply motivated by their religious ideology and missionary zeal. But what exactly convinced them to take such a course is not explained in the book.

One cannot say that the Assassin phenomenon is s purely Nizari phenomenon. Because the first famous murder of the Assassins, one that of Nizam al-Mulk, had already been committed before Mustali-Nizari split occurred. So there must be some other factors at work, peculiar to Ismailism in Persia, which must have caused the sectaries there to embark on such a course.

We also cannot say that Hassan-e Sabah was directed from Cairo. At no point this was true. He already spent some time in Cairo before settling in Alamut but he was actually banished by the military commander of Fatimid forces for unknown reasons. But we know for sure that Hassan-e Sabah, his successors, and his followers were foremost in asserting the right of the deposed Nizar to Imamate. There were many Nizaris in Egypt but they seem to have dwindled into insignificance, and later extinction, after the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate.

This book particularly concentrates on the Assassins of Persia. Their brethren in Syria don’t get sufficient coverage.

So this is a useful book if you are interested in the subject. My book rating: 4/5

A Letter to Pakistan by Karen Armstrong

(First published 2011)

Karen Armstrong attended the Karachi Literature Festival 2011 and spoke on themes of religious harmony and inter-faith dialogue. Her speeches were largely based on her latest book “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life“. She took the opportunity to write a compressed version of her book with particular reference to Pakistan. Being a den of terrorists and their large support among the religiously demented people, Pakistan’s socio-cultural mess was the obvious choice for the special attention.

Reading the book, or rather booklet, I was reminded of something a Muslim guy said while listening to a non-Muslim about how peaceful Islam was. “We Muslims love to be told that our religion is one of peace.”

Her efforts are well meant and she raises some very important aspects of our religion which Muslim societies have either forgotten or stopped believing that they make up the core of their religion. It is about the ethics of being human and about compassion. She takes the reader through 12 steps to lead compassionate lives; of how we should look at ourselves and the world and try to form a response which is in line with Islam as well as our humanity. The purpose is to improve things through self reflection and action rather than condemning the other and resorting to acts of violence.

She makes an interesting point about Jahiliyah, the primal condition of mankind. She argues that jahiliyah is very much alive today in every society in the world. She says she see jahilyah in her native Britain, recognises it and makes an effort to engage with jaahils to change their attitude. There is also jahiliyah in Muslim world and that we Muslims should also make an effort to correct it at home. Her point is that we should start correcting ourselves at home before we can point fingers to others.

Some of the twelve steps to compassionate life is learning about ‘compassion’, ‘looking at your own world’, ‘compassion for yourself’, ’empathy’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘action’; it ends at ‘recognition’ and ‘understanding your enemies’ so you don’t hate them for hate’s sake but for the sake of justice. I don’t like the term she uses because it sounds characteristically Christian and is open to misunderstanding, i.e. ‘loving your enemies.’

In short, it is an attempt by a renowned scholar of religions to make Muslims practice the core of their religion instead of succumbing to the view of religion as a demarcater of difference and as a political tool to wrap up all grievances in. My book rating 3/5

PUBLISHER’S LINK

Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia by Ayesha Jalal

(First published 2008)

It is a brilliant exposition of the concept of Jihad in Islam, its theological origins, various manifestations and the way the concept was understood and acted upon by the believers with particular reference to the Muslims of the Subcontinent

It is not one of those feel-good apologia for Jihad that try to hammer out the “true” meaning of the concept in Islamic scriptural canon. It is more an attempt to put the concept in its proper context and explain how Muslims of South Asia throughout history have understood and implemented it.

Jalal argues that Jihad is a concept central to Muslim theology. It forms the basic core of Islamic ethics. She called Jihad “a struggle to be human”. She identifies the trends that led to different understandings of Jihad expounded by different Muslim theologians and rulers with reference to the reality of time and place they lived in.

The Indian Subcontinent, says the author, presents an interesting case study because here the power rested in the hands of Muslims but the population which they ruled was, and is, overwhelmingly non-Muslim. So in order to coexist successfully with the “infidels” and to rule the land in relative peace, Muslim rulers and theologians understood the concept of Jihad on a different level than by their counterparts in predominantly Muslim regions such as Arabia, Persia and Central Asia.

The social and political conditions in the Subcontinent before and during the British Raj form the background of this study. Muslim rulers and theologians, owning to the difficulty of ruling a non-Muslim population, tended to understand Jihad as ethical struggle to be good rather than putting the non-Muslims to constant warfare. There had been divergences in this approach with disastrous consequences. For instance in the case of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and theologians like Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi, both of whom leaned toward harsher measures against the non-Muslims.

The policies of Muslim rulers of the Subcontinent, in general, since the days of Delhi Sultanate, were in contrast to the Muslim rulers of Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia who emphasized the more militant aspect of Jihad, and launched military attacks on non-Muslim lands. This behaviour can be seen in the various incursions of the Muslim lords into the Subcontinent. Jalal holds that all of them conquered India under the pretext of Jihad though their real purpose was money and land (For instance, the devastating attacks of Mahmud Ghaznavi, Nader Shah, Ahmed Shah Abdali etc all were labelled Jihad). This the author sees as subversion of the concept of Jihad and a departure from its theological meanings. Rightly so.

The book then moves on to the subject of Jihad in colonial India. There is a detailed chapter on what is now being called the first incident of modern Jihadist terrorism. A group of Muslims led by Sayyid Ahmed and Sayyid Ismail waged an armed struggle against the “infidels” during the years 1826-1831. All of them were killed. These men were deeply affected by the theology of Shah Waliullah Dehlavi, who spent some years in Makkah when Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab was still alive, and got acquainted with the rising Wahhabi ideology in the peninsula. Thus the Jihad of Sayyid Ahmed and his followers is seen as the first manifestation of modern Wahhabi jihadist extremism in the Indian Subcontinent.

The next section details the lives and works of some Muslim intellectuals who understood and explained their anti-colonial nationalism in the colours of Jihad. For them it was a noble thing to do and perfectly in line with Islam. Figures like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Ubaidullah Sindhi, Muhammad Iqbal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Jamal al-din Afghani (though Iranian but the one who left a deep mark on the thinking of some Indian Muslims during his sojourns in India) is discussed in detail.

Finally, the last section, which is instructively titled “Islam Subverted: Jihad as Terrorism?”, gives a lot of pages to the man who is rightly called the architect of modern Jihad: Sayyid Abul ‘Aala Maududi; His philosophy of Jihad, his antics and his politics are analyzed in great detail. Almost all modern Jihadi groups and their mentors intellectually go back to Maududi and before that, to Shah Waliullah.

On the scale of 1 to 5, I will give this book 5.

AMAZON LINK

Sectarian War: Pakistan’s Sunni-Shia Violence and its links to the Middle East by Khaled Ahmed

(First published 2011)

This book is one of the most comprehensive and impartial accounts of sectarianism in Pakistan. It evaluates the development and solidification of Pakistan’s religion-based nationalist discourse through the decades and charts the origins and politics of Pakistani sectarian organisations and explains how the Sunni-Shia schism in the Middle East was shifted to Pakistan in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, and how it turned into a proxy war between Iran and Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia with the connivance of Pakistani military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. The book further links recent sectarian violence in and out of Pakistan with the shift in Al-Qaida’s focus to include Muslim targets which were perceived to be “collaborating” with the West in the so called War on Terror. Read below for details:

After gaining Independence from Britain, the Pakistani leadership attempted to divide people on the basis of religion, into Muslims and non-Muslims, under what the they termed as “the ideology of Pakistan”. This attempt at carving a uniform and homogenous identity in an otherwise extremely diverse country, with a mosaic of different Islamic sects, cultures, languages, ethnicities and, indeed, religions, was bound to turn the society into a cesspit of sectarianism. This not only led to the exclusion of non-Muslim religious minorities, who were practically delegated to the status of second class citizens, it also led to the chastisement of minority Muslim sects who were seen by some sections of Sunni majority as deviant and therefore, outside the pale of Islam.

The first practical expression of this ideology reached its crescendo in anti-Ahmadis riots of 1952 (a sect considered heretical by mainstream Muslims). The lack of meaningful state policy to deal with the outlandish demands of mainstream Islamic parties led, in 1974, to the declaration of Ahmadis as “heretics” and therefore “non-Muslim” by the democratically elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It was just the beginning. It was only a matter of time before sectarian groups turned on other minority Muslim sects. Shia Muslims, by logical extension, became their next target.

The book then focuses on the history and dynamics of anti-Shia politics in Pakistan. The most vehement opposition against Shia community came from the Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is ideologically closer to the puritanical Wahhabi sect (the official religion of Saudi Arabia) than Barelvi branch of Sunni Islam, which happens to be the largest Islamic sect in Pakistan. Three major factors contributed to the systematic targeting of Shia.

First, the success of the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the perception that it supported Pakistani Shia against that country’s Sunnis. The Arab Sunnis, fearful of Iran exporting its Revolution to countries like Pakistan, moved in to counter Iran by arming anti-Shia sectarian groups in Pakistan. Second, the rise to power of Islamist Zia-ul-Haq, a Deobandi army general whose religious sympathies lay with Saudi Arabia. And third, the US-Saudi backed Jihadi resistance to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which further strengthened the Deobandi sectarian-cum-jihadi groups.

Anti-Shia edicts were already pouring in from certain Deobandi seminaries of Pakistan in the 50s, 60s and 70s but with little appeal. Pakistani politics and the society were not yet polarized to the point of these edicts having any larger, practical effect. However, in 1986, when the afore-mentioned three major factors were in full swing, an Indian Deobandi scholar called Manzur Naumani, fearful of the Islamic Revolution of Iran and its outreach, published a collection of religious edicts from classical Sunni jurists to the contemporary scholars with the singular aim of apostatising the Shia Muslims. It had a profound effect on sectarian politics in Pakistan.

Naumani’s anti-Shia credentials were already established with the publication of a polemic against Ayatullah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. An organisation funded by Saudi Arabia, Rabita al-`Alam al-Islami, tr. Muslim World League, commissioned the said polemic to be translated, among other languages, into Arabic and English. Some Pakistani Deobandi scholars lauded Naumani’s anti-Shia anthology and circulated it widely among their seminaries and general public. Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the flagship Shia-killing politico-sectarian outfit, was created just a year ago, in 1985, with the tacit approval of General Zia-ul-Haq who was fearful of Iranian Revolution spilling into Pakistan. Naumani’s anthology couldn’t have come out at a better time.

The mayhem started.

The book documents major Shia massacres committed by Saudi funded Deobandi outfits during the ‘80s, including the Parachinar massacre and the Gilgit massacre of Isma’ili Shia. The Shia Turi tribe of Parachinar (concentrated in border regions with Afghanistan which was then a major supply route of so called Mujahidin fighting the Soviets) did not cooperate as they naturally looked toward newly formed Islamic Shia government in Iran. For instance, the famous Allamah Arif Hussain al-Hussaini, later assassinated, was a Turi Shia with intimate ties with Iranian leader Ayatullah Khomeini. This did not sit well with the Saudi-backed jihadi groups.

The sectarian conflict was, in large measure, one-sided. The Sunni sectarian groups killed Shia without discrimination. On the contrary, the Shia militant group, Sipah-e-Muhammad (SeM), created specifically to defend Shia properties and lives didn’t participate in the killing of ordinary Sunnis. Instead it targeted those Sunni elements which were responsible for inciting the killings of Shia and took part in it. In effect, the sectarian conflict of the ‘80s, thanks largely to the policies of General Zia-ul-Haq, was politicised to such an extent that it become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who supported their respective loyal groups with arms and money, turning Pakistan into a cesspool of sectarianism.

The last section of the book takes a critical look at the sectarian shade in the politics of Al-Qaida. The author links Shia killing in and outside Pakistan post 9/11 with Al-Qaida’s policies. Not many view Al-Qaida as having a sectarian nature, which, according to the author, is a view based on limited information.

So long as Al-Qaida, lead by Osama bin Laden, remained under the influence of its ideologue, Abdullah Azzam, it prime focus was to target and harm Christian and Jewish “infidels”. However, an important shift took place within the terrorist organisation when it fell under the influence of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He expanded the target base to include Muslim “collaborators” and made them the prime target of attacks. Henceforth almost all Muslim countries and Muslim minorities unsympathetic to Al-Qaida became potential targets. The Shia Muslims, who did not share Al-Qaida’s view of Jihad, were viewed, in the case of Iraq, as collaborating with the United States and therefore legitimate targets. Al-Zawahiri allowed the rabidly anti-Shia Al-Qaida operative, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to attack the Shia in Iraq.

Even before this development Al-Qaida accepted within its ranks those jihadist militants who doubled as part-time Shia killers in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Thus the author concludes that Al-Qaida and its militant allies, unlike previously believed, have a distinct sectarian nature. The book also includes a study of inter-Sunni violence between Deobandi/Ahl-e-Hadith and Barelvi schools. Most attacks were aimed at Barelvis who were viewed by hardline Deobandi sectarian groups as not being “Muslim enough” and therefore legitimate targets.

This book is a scathing indictment on the role Deobandi militant nexus played in turning Pakistan into a cesspit of sectarianism and terrorism. A big share of blame lies with the Pakistani establishment which fostered ties with those groups in pursuit of strategic advantage in Kashmir and Afghanistan at the cost of great social instability at home and abroad. It’s a must read for those who want to acquaint themselves with the intricacies of sectarianism in Pakistan and Islamist terrorism in the region.

My rating definitely 5/5. Look it up on AMAZON.

The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad by Tariq Ali

(First published 2010)

This is a detailed analysis of, as the author dubs it, the first 1000 days of Obama’s presidency. The book critiques Obama’s domestic and foreign policies and concludes that, contrary to the expectations of the world, the president has done nothing of note to bring the “change” he so fervently promised to his people and to the world. In his characteristic way of naming chapters, Tariq Ali calls him the “President of Cant”.

The argument goes that save for Obama’s stance on the Iraq War, he hadn’t promised anything fundamentally different in the first place. So it shouldn’t have been expected of him to roll back the American imperial project. His policies in Af-Pak, his stance on Iran and his staggering silence on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was there to be seen since before he was elected.

At domestic front Obama turned out to be a one-dimensional politician who looked for “consensus” and “compromise” to the point of killing any major reforms which the country direly needed. Handling of the financial melt down and Health Care reforms both get a detailed treatment in the book. The author predicts that Obama will probably be a one-term president.

My rating 5/5. Get the book on AMAZON

India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation? by Stanley Wolpert

(First published 2010)

Stanley Wolpert is back with his latest analysis of the conflicts that plague India and Pakistan. In this book he briefly traces the history of conflict between the two countries, with emphasis on the issue of Kashmir for which, after over six decades, there is no solution in sight. He goes through various national and international initiatives to solve the conflict of Kashmir and explains why they have always failed. The most realistic and viable solution to the problem, according to Wolpert, is for Pakistan and India to agree on thee current Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir as International border, for he believes that no attempt to swap or hand over territory to either country is likely to work. In other words, both countries should end their claims on territories currently under the control of the other.

Woplert’s main concern is the possibility of a nuclear conflict between the two neighbours. He argues that no two nuclear armed nations have ever been situated so geographically close to each other. Indian and Pakistani capitals and other metropolises are only less than 10 ballistic-missile minutes away from each for nuclear strikes. This raises the the fear of a completely devastating nuclear war if perchance one of the countries decides to go that way.

Tracing the history of the escalation of tension in 1999 after Kargil fiasco, of attacks in 2001 on the Indian Parliament by Pakistan-based jihadists, Mumbai train bombings in 2006, and yet again attacks on Mumbai by the same Pakistan-based terrorists in 2008, popularly dubbed as India’s 9/11, he argues that there is not only a high chance of two powerful armies going to conventional war with each other but also of a terrifyingly devastating nuclear war, which may wipe hundreds of millions of people off the map in no time.

Woplert believes that the world is quite indifferent to the dangers posed by the continued conflict between the two nuclear armed neighbours as well as to the plight of hundreds of thousands innocent Kashmiris who bear the brunt of torture and oppression on daily basis. It is high time the world focused its attention on continuing Indo-Pakistan conflict and its root cause , ie., the issue of Kashmir.

One weakness of the book is that it is too short to cover comprehensively the topic at hand. I wish it was twice the size it actually is. More emphasis is put in recounting the Pakistani side of political intrigue whereas Indian political scene and its policies in Kashmir get little attention. At times the narrative sounds more like a charge-sheet of the follies of Pakistani establishment in mishandling the conflict than highlighting its dynamics and contours in a less partial manner.

This is a small book. Good for those who want a concise overwiew of the 64 year long conflict between India and Pakistan as well as three (four, including Kargil) wars fought between the two countries. My rating 3/5. Look it up, as usual, on AMAZON.