Sharia’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain When She Comes...
This article appeared in The Daily Mail, which is a prominent English language daily newspaper published in Islamabad (Capital of Pakistan). This is a follow up to this of mine posted on the 13:vii:2008 here at NER.
The NWFP cabinet while rebuffing [the] ultimatum of Baitullah Mehsud to frontier government to quit, Monday expressed the resolve that it would continue with its peace process and warned to come hard on elements bent upon challenging writ of the government.
“We have two options to settle the law and order situation either through talks or to use force,” NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said this while briefing the journalists about the decisions of the special meeting of NWFP cabinet held here with Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti in the chair that took up one point agenda of law and order.
The Minister said that NWFP government has clear policy to solve the law and order issue through jirgas and mutual understanding but government would use force against those elements who were not cooperating with it and not sitting on the table talks. “Police, FC and Army would be used against those disturbing development process and destroying peace,” he added.
He said that law and order situation was not good in the province but government would take measures to improve the situation. Answering a question, he made it clear that the NWFP government would complete its five years term and would not resign on someone’s deadline. “We would not resign by the threat of five-days deadline given by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Chief Baitullah Mehsud,” he said
And the measures that the Government will take will be to give in – read on!
.
The Minister said that the NWFP government would face all kind of challenges and would respect the mandate of the people. Mian Iftikhar said that mass mobilization campaign would be started in the province to create awareness in the people how to counter terrorism. “All parties including opposition would be taken into confidence for establishing peace,” he added.
He said that peace could not be restored in the province without people support. About Swat agreement, he said that the government had signed agreement with local Taliban and still abide by the accord. Government had released 19 Taliban and 8 would be released soon out of total 60 held Taliban, however it is not an easy job to release all of them as their cases are pending in courts.
He said that Army would be pulled out from Swat when situation would become normal there and 1999 Nizam e Shari Adl act would be implemented in three months time as agreed in the agreement. He urged the media to play its positive role in defusing tension and restoring peace. “Media should give confidence to people instead of spreading fear in masses,” he added. The Information Minister said that situation has improved in Hangu and Jirga was successfully negotiating the issue.
Yep, give in! Let Sharia reign, and the Devil take the hindmost!
The NWFP government has decided to deal firmly with the elements responsible for creating law and order situation in the province. The decision was made at the meeting of the provincial cabinet held here under the chairmanship of NWFP Chief Minister, Amir Haider Hoti here on Monday
.
Unidentified shooters killed Malik Shah Jahan, a tribal head who was supporting government policies, in Bajaur. According to details, the tribal head as well as the agency chief Malik Shah Jahan was heading to Khar the headquarter of Mehmand agency when he was shot dead by some anonymous shooters near Shandi Morr. Five others including the chief and Malik Ayyaz, were injured and transferred to Khar Hospital.
So, the supposedly democratically elected moderate Muslim government of a supposedly moderate Muslim allied country is prepared to abandon the people of Swat, until very recently a settled and prosperous inner province of Pakistan’s tribal area with a sophisticated and tolerant population (details about which
you can find here) to the brutal vicissitudes and corrupt vagaries of Sharia law without so much as a by-your-leave referendum (because they have no will or power to hold one) at the behest of a tiny group of terrorists. Simply put, the much vaunted and lauded Pakistani Government cannot keep control of even one small inner province when the homegrown idiot fanatics of Tehreek-e-Taliban say “Boo!” The fanatics order the Government to jump and the Government simply asks “How high?”
40 senior Taliban leaders established the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan -- the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan -- and appointed powerful South Waziristan Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud its leader.
The shura was made up of Taliban representatives from the seven tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan, Khyber, Orakazi, Bajaur, Mohmand, and Kurram, as well as the settled districts of Swat, Bannu, Tank, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohistan, Buner, and the Malakand division.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan demanded the Pakistani military halt operations in Taliban territory and release of their members. The Taliban also stated it would continue the fight against Coalition forces in Afghanistan.
‘Taliban Territory’! What happened to the sovereign state of Pakistan?
"The meeting participants have demanded an immediate end of the military operation being carried out in Swat, and given a 10-day ultimatum to the government to pullout troops from the area," the Nation reported. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan also demanded "the closure of the military checkposts in North and South Waziristan and release of all Taliban activists including former Lal Masjid Khateeb Maulana Abul Aziz."
“Our main aim is to target the US allies in Afghanistan but the government of Pakistan’s ill-strategy has made us to launch a defensive Jihad in Pakistan,” spokesman Maulvi Omar stated. “The government of Pakistan would be paid in the same coin now,” Mehsud said.
The consolidation of the disparate "local Taliban" movement is a logical step in the Taliban's insurgency campaign in northwestern Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban, while allied with al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, has operated as local groups. The creation of a unified Taliban movement in Pakistan will allow them to better coordinate both military and political operations inside Pakistan, as well as with the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda.
All the emphases herein are mine.
The Pakistani military, of course, complied. Staying alive in order to enjoy ones smart uniform and generous pension is so much better than dieing to defend ones country against primitive ignorance and violent, maniacal thugs driven only by a supremacist and racist belief drawn from a primitive interpretation of a quasi-religious ancient text.
Here, again, we see the carefully cultivated psuedo-victim mentality, also. Everyone else is at fault not Tehrik-i-Taliban – it’s the Pakistani Government’s ‘ill-strategy’ which has made the members of Tehrik-i-Taliban murder, loot, rape and pillage all across Swat and the other provinces of the North-West Frontier Territory, and driven tens of thousands of Swathis, and others, to flee to the home provinces in order to escape these murderous, self-righteous, self-centred, self-absorbed and blood-lust driven, modern-day thuggees of Islam.
When I was a child and holidayed in Swat (once) it was a quiet, relatively prosperous and civilised little backwater of a province (staggeringly beautiful) where people lived and let live. Today, it is a place of battle, a battle which we civilised people have lost to the uncultivated, barbarian hordes who are intent, in the name of Islam, on destroying everything which does not fit into their narrow, murderous and erroneous world view.
What of the huge, important Buddhist and Hindu archaeological remains in Swat? Do you think that they will survive the onslaught of these idiots? Of course they won’t! Already, looted artefacts are showing up in the salerooms of the West. Already, stories, as yet unsubstantiated, of destruction, of dynamiting, of the native population being forced to manually destroy with sledgehammers and picks these priceless indicators of the past, are surfacing. The Swat Museum – already attacked once by these idiots – has the footprints of the Buddha; tradition has it that the Buddha himself came to Swat and preached to the people there; Gandhara in Swat is the great Buddhist Kushan centre and has already been looted, so I’m told; but all that means nothing to these violent, pathological Islamist killers and destroyers driven only by the twin scents of blood and power – as they all are.
Obviously, it also means nothing to the so-called moderate Pakistani Government either, which is refusing to act to secure the UNESCO World Heritage Site – because they cannot and will not act against the Sharia extremists for reasons which I think we all know. It’s so much easier to sit comfortably in Islamabad and blame everyone else – that seems to be a recurrent theme in Islam, doesn’t it?
You can find the places mentioned in this post
using this map of Pakistan.
You will never find again the priceless remains that once were in Swat – the province in which the Bhagavad-Gita was first written down and read out loud.
And the beat of the Sharia drum goes on as the uninformed are led like sheep to the slaughterhouse. (H/t to JG.)
