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:: Opinion : By Harold A. Gould |
Pakistan's impending 'Cambodian Moment'
The latest news from the Hindu Kush makes one thing painfully apparent: The Taliban/Al Qaeda jihadistani quasi state, "Jihadistan Emirate", has achieved critical mass. It has now metastasized into a killer disease that threatens the survival of Pakistan's fragile democracy.
Keeping the Wolf from the Door: Stemming the Taliban Tide
Despite its volume and intensity, the hyperbole emanating from the chattering class still fails to do justice to the complexities and the challenges presently confronting the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as the mainstream leadership in all camps, including the U.S., gropes to develop a strategic formula for keeping the jihadi wolves from the door. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared on Sunday (Feb. 27th): The "most worrisome" part of the U.S,-led war in Afghanistan has become the havens the Taliban and other insurgents have carved out in neighboring Pakistan. "I think as long as they have a safe haven to operate there, it's going to be a problem for us in Afghanistan."
Lashkar and Hamas: Tone-Deaf Extremism on the Islamic Periphery
Events of the past month in Mumbai and Gaza have much in common. At the very moment when political rapprochement between Israel and her Muslim neighbors on the western perimeter of Southern Asia, and India and Pakistan on its eastern perimeter, seemed to be getting somewhere, along came the fanatics, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas, out of the woodwork to spoil the party.
Jihadistan: A guerrilla nation that Pakistan cannot control
In the face of the mounting military, political and ideological threats emanating from the Taliban-Al Qaeda sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, it is wrong to think that the US should sit on its hands while Pakistan makes timorous efforts to rein in the Islamic extremists.
Has Jihad Succeeded as an Alternative to Western Civilization?
Seven years after the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City, it is legitimate to ask the question whether Osama bin Laden and the movement he founded, al Qaeda, has successfully brought Western Civilization, or indeed even the Islamic world, any closer either to capitulation or to destruction in the name of his version of the Grand Caliphate, governed by Shariah Law, which his pursuit of contemporary Islamic Jihad espouses. The world, after all, has paid an extremely high price for Osama's attempt to restore the Seventh Century fundamentalist version of the morally and socially utopian society which he and his followers contend that Muhammad intended. Tens of thousands of mostly innocent human beings have perished in the conflagrations which the pursuit of this apocalyptic fantasy has spawned. Only recently, bombings of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and the U.S. Embassy in Yemen have once again underscored the addiction of Islamic extremists to abject violence on behalf of their cause.
India and the U.S. as Nuclear Role Models
Speaking of the enigmatic aspects of Chinese and Indian conduct on the world stage, especially respecting the recent collapse of the Doha trade round, Fareed Zakaria, adopted a characteristically philosophical stance, declaring that the complexities involved in the quest for understanding and reconciling the differences between nations "is difficult, but we still have to try." While it is customary, he continues, "to criticize these countries for all their shortcomings," the fact is that "our goal should be the opposite. We should make them feel empowered so they see themselves as rules- makers, not free-riders on the global system." (Washington Post , August 4th, emphasis added))
'Jihadistan' in Hindu Kush - the rise of a terrorist state
A recent Washington Post article speaks of the surge in Al Qaeda media propaganda emanating from an online web network known as as-Sahab (translation: "the clouds") and produced in their "in-house propaganda studio", located, not surprisingly in "a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan".
South Asia's tryst with democracy here to stay
In our understandable preoccupation with the political events unfolding in Pakistan, we may be doing an injustice to an equally compelling process that is taking place across much of South Asia. While we focus our attention on the struggle of democracy to emerge in Pakistan, India's western frontier, very little notice has been taken of a comparable democratic process that is struggling to be born in Nepal, on India's northern frontier.
Handling Pakistan's Democracy: A New Challenge for US' Diplomacy
Henry Kissinger, of all people, has declared in a recent OpEd published in the Washington Post and elsewhere, that the US would do well to recognize that "the internal structure of Pakistani politics is essentially out of the control of American decision-making." This is truly a remarkable statement coming as it does from one who in his heyday rivaled John Foster Dulles in doing his utmost to assure that the internal structure of Pakistani politics remained subservient to US strategic interests and anathema to India's.
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