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Date Posted: 04:59:06 03/18/02 Mon
I posted the second paragraph of this article over the weekend. The thread was deleted and I got an e-mail warning to "desist" posting anti-Pakistan materials.
It's from THE FRIDAY TIMES!!!!!!?????!!!!!!
My best guess is it was Alisha having a temper tantrum.
After Daniel Pearl’s execution
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Khaled Ahmed's
A n a l y s i s
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Sheikh Umar Saeed
‘Also, the Musharraf government has to fashion its response to Umar’s confession that he was an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agent. During interrogations by a joint team of security officials belonging to the US and Pakistan, sources said they were shocked when Umar volunteered to describe his role in the explosion outside the Jammu & Kashmir state assembly building, the attack on the Indian parliament on December 13 and the American Center in Calcutta in January. His confessions show that all these (incidents) had the ISI backing and that he claimed to be on their payroll’
The death of the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was confirmed on 21 February 2002. The following three days were Eid holidays, two of them without newspapers. No comment was available till February 26, but on that day too most of the top Urdu columnists did not offer comment, although there was ample reference to the United States, mostly negative. In the following days too, surprisingly, the Urdu press refrained from comment, except that some editorials regretted the dastardly act which was ‘against the sprit of Islam’. The pattern was to regret the death while condemning the United States as an aggressor against Muslims. The English language press was outspokenly condemnatory of the killing without castigating the United States.
Weekly Takbeer (28 Feb 2002) began with the routine disavowal of the violent act from the point of view of Islam, but then followed up with an angry accusation that America was now like a mad bull drunk with the sense of its own power, subjecting human beings of all regions to cruelty. It pointed out that Daniel Pearl was a Jew but his parents had migrated to the United States from Israel 40 years earlier. The effort was not to see his Jewish identity as a dubious fact that could be relevant to his execution. On the other hand, editor of Urdu daily Ausaf writing in English-language weekly Independent (28 Feb), Hamid Mir, wrote that ‘the kidnappers knew that Daniel Pearl was a Jew and he had Israeli citizenship too. His father Yehoda Pearl admitted to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that his son was an Israeli and that his grandmother still lived in Israel’. It was important that Pearl was an Israeli Jew and that he was based in India, a double whammy in the lexicon of Pakistani intelligence services.
Importance of hating America: It would be interesting to give here a sampling of the opinion expressed by Urdu columnists after Pearl’s death. On 26 February, the following comment appeared. In daily Pakistan, JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman said he was saddened by the death of Daniel Pearl but America too should learn to behave and not be cruel towards the Muslims. He said the entire Muslim world was expressing hatred of the Americans for their anti-Islam policies. That was why America had to reform itself first. Daily Jang reported after Eid that most mosque leaders of prayer on Eid told their audiences that it was tough time for Islam in the entire world and the Muslims were undergoing great hardship because the Christian west had decided to restart its crusades. Jamaat Islami leader Munawwar Hassan said in Nawa-e-Waqt that the entire world had united against Islam and only the Muslims were dying all over the world. Dr Israr Ahmad of Lahore said that Pakistan was being forcibly converted to secularism as Satan’s own state. Quoted in daily Din,leader of Insaf Party Imran Khan told people in Manga Mandi that there was law of the jungle in the world and America could dishonour anyone it liked. An editorial in Nawa-e-Waqt said it was wrong to have killed Daniel Pearl but the death could have been a reaction to the savage America policy, which was being enforced under the pretext of fighting terrorism. If the Americans deprived other people of their rights they would render their cities unsafe. Therefore America and its people should seriously think of abandoning this policy.
On 27 February 2002, columnist Abdul Qadir Hassan, writing in Jang, said that after September 11 Pakistan had been made a target by America with its most cruel policies. In our region America’s new Israel was Bharat which was Pakistan’s enemy number one. America was ruthless in its attitude and Pakistan had the misfortune of being Muslim and a possessor of the atom bomb. Despite promises of financial help it had given nothing substantial to Pakistan. Now America had turned against Ajam (Iran) after having sorted out the Arabs. Pakistan was in the struggle of zahir (apparent) and batin (concealed). Columnist Javed Chaudhry, whose comment in favour of faithful American girls during his visit to the United States made history not long ago, said in Jang that in these times of New World Order zulm (evil) was that which America accepted as zulm and muzlum (victim) was he whom the White House certified as muzlum. ‘Who are we maimana (lambs) to question this? Let us then like good lambs accept the punishments meant for others and die silently.
Columnist Azam Sultan Suhrawadi wrote in Khabrain that not even liberal people in Pakistan felt proud of the new friendship between Pakistan and the United States. While the liberals wanted Pakistan to be a moderate state they thought that the friendship with US was without honour. The author stated that Pakistan should at once write a pact of free trade with China, like the one between Mexico and the US, and remove its support of the US. Ex-ISI chief General (Retd) Hameed Gul told Jang that America was the enemy of Pakistan because it was trying to make Pakistan into a secular state. He was addressing a meeting of the Jamaat Islami in Lahore. According to Nawa-e-Waqt, Ayatollah Jannati addressed a gathering in Tehran and sent up a bad-dua (curse) against George Bush and Ariel Sharon in his inimitable shola-biyan (fire-breathing) fashion. He told Allah that if He wanted to fill the breasts of the Muslims with light He should forthwith put Bush and Sharon to death.
Pir Gilani and the ISI: Earlier newspaper comment had sketched Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani, the man Daniel Pearl was keen on meeting, as a violent man; but as time went by, his image began to clear up. Hamid Mir in weekly Independent quoted above wrote: ‘When I came to know that Danny Pearl wanted to see Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani I thought he was safe and would come back. I knew quite well that Gilani was not a hardliner and was not recognised by the militants as their sympathiser, primarily because of his deep links with some officials of the intelligence agencies.’ On the other hand, editor Ausaf, Hamid Mir thought that Sheikh Umar Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar were dangerous people airing their violent anti-shia views in the Karachi journal Zarb-e-Momin. He claimed asking press secretary to the president Major-General Rashid Qureshi why ‘people with dubious links were allowed to move around freely.’ The truth of the matter is that both the men had been earlier reported to enjoy ISI protection as they moved in areas where at the least the entry of Maulana Masood Azhar was officially banned. The Larkana administration had found, when it moved to arrest him for violating the ban, that his gun-carrying guards were actually ISI officials!
Pir Gilani was soon found by Pakistani authorities to be innocent, although on March 5 fresh investigation was started against him, probably at the request of the Americans. On 26 February, he had himself started talking to the press as if he had been ‘cleared’. Quoted in daily Din, he said that he had known that someone (Daniel Pearl) would be sent against him from America who would meet me and then disappear which would be followed by the accusation that he was kidnapped or killed by Gilani. He said as long as Daniel Pearl’s corpse was not found this conspiracy will run its course. He said America had done this to trap him because he had converted thousands of Americans to Islam and built as many as 22 settlements there. He said he received four thousand dollars as vice chancellor of a university in America, but his property was only in Mianmir, Lahore. He said the American embassy in Islamabad had offered a man several bags full of dollars if he would kill Gilani. He said America was so intolerant of his Islamic activity hat he was attacked many times there. Gilani was released from confinement in the case of Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping.
Sheikh Umar Saeed and the ISI: If Pir Gilani was linked to the intelligence services of Pakistan, so was Sheikh Umar Saeed. That he was running Jaish-e-Muhammad after the ban placed on it and the arrest of its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, proved that he was doing the ISI’s jehad in Kashmir. Wrote weekly Independent (Feb 28): ‘Also, the Musharraf government has to fashion its response to Umar’s confession that he was an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agent. During interrogations by a joint team of security officials belonging to the US and Pakistan, sources said they were shocked when Umar volunteered to describe his role in the explosion outside the Jammu & Kashmir state assembly building, the attack on the Indian parliament on December 13 and the American Center in Calcutta in January. His confessions show that all these (incidents) had the ISI backing and that he claimed to be on their payroll’. This was not the only evidence that the ISI was behind the violent personalities brought to the fore by the incident of Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping. The fact, which Pearl was actually investigating, was that the banned terrorist organisations were not really out of the field. The conclusion was drawn by many that the ISI really didn’t want its terrorists shut down. The Americans offered a cover in return for cooperation when on 4 March secretary Powell stated that the ISI was not involved in the killing of Daniel Pearl. However, Ms Benazir Bhutto disclosed in her article in daily Pakistan (7 March 2002) that the man who had set up Daniel Pearl’s last meeting in Karachi was a former officer of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (MI). This MI agent had also been an important link with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.
On 5 March 2002, daily Jang however carried a statement by interior minister General (Retd) Moinuddin Haider saying the banned terrorist militias were still functional and that their continued activities worried his government. The same day Kamran Khan wrote in The News that the interrogation of Sheikh Umar Saeed had turned up no hard evidence, that the those arrested were tough guerrilla types who simply refused to confess, and that Sheikh Umar Saeed himself, who had earlier owned up the kidnapping, was now refusing to speak on the advice of his lawyers. He reported that the police had failed to collect any evidence that would stand up in the court of law linking him to the death of Daniel Pearl. Given this situation in Pakistan, the national opinion is expected to turn more radically against the United States and the Musharraf government. Already the American TV networks have discussed a survey showing Pakistan as being the most anti-American Muslim country together with Indonesia.
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Feedback: 
She had another outburst
Re: Alisha's post is gone