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[R. S. Refugee]

Anwaar Hussain: 'The Neocons' greatest sin'


Of all the sins that the Neocons have committed, of all their deeds and misdeeds, of all their devious misconducts, there is one act of theirs that by far surpasses all the rest of their acts of omission and commission. And that is giving rise to a tidal wave of resurgence of Islamic radicalism from Africa to Indonesia.

Allow me to explain.

I was born in a moderate Pakistan and grew up to adulthood in General Zia's America inspired Jihadi times. I witnessed firsthand the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet juggernaut and the sudden mushrooming of American funded Jihadi outfits all over Pakistan to counter that. I saw the eventual decimation of the Soviet forces by those resistance fighters and the fateful demise of the Soviet Union, as the world knew it, as a result of that. I was younger then and was awed by the reported heroics of these Islamic fighters who stood in the way of a godless, alien force that wanted to subjugate not just Afghanistan but all the bordering countries in to absolute submission. I could rattle out of the names of all the 17 or so resistance organizations in Pakistan and Iran that were conducting operations inside Afghanistan. I remembered the names of all of their leaders. They were my heroes.

After a job well done, the Americans packed their bags and left, leaving behind Afghanistan to the same outfits that by then had started to show their true colors in a ruthless power struggle.



Amidst this chaos, I saw first hand the rise of Taliban, a movement the birth of which was midwifed by the ISI of Pakistan with a not-so-subtle help from America's CIA. I read about their heroic struggle to put an end to the internecine feuds of the power greedy warlords. In the end they did bring about a modicum of calm to that unfortunate country. The Taliban movement was started by ethnic Pathans and I, being one myself, had tremendous sympathy for their cause and their method.

Then the dream started to turn sour.

Reports started coming in of Taliban's' brutal massacre of the Hazara people of Afghanistan, an ethnic minority much despised by the Pathans for the unpardonable sins of being different in their looks and for being a part of Northern Alliance that resisted the Taliban's bid to rule over Afghanistan. Reports also started pouring in of macabre punishments meted out to ordinary criminals in Kabul's stadium. Men and women were stoned to death for the sin of adultery. Some women were stoned for the crime of their own rapes as they could not produce four pious witnesses who saw the act from close quarters as required by Taliban's interpretation of Shariah Laws. The killing of people was turned into a patent pleasure for a people deprived of all other entertainment in the name of Shariah. The Taliban banned all forms of television, imagery, music and sports. Even kite flying was declared a sin and a crime. Men were required to keep their beards at a specified length and women were forced to shroud themselves in thick bolts of cloth at all times. Women were also routinely beaten in Kabul's' streets for 'improper behavior' by the religious police..

One night I saw I saw a video of the execution of two Afghan women activists by the Taliban. To this day I wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night from recurring nightmares.

That was also the night I developed insomnia for ever.

A little before that, the ruling Mullahs in Iran too had declared themselves the sole translators of the Divine and started whipping people, amputating their limbs and stoning them to death in the name of God. They fought a punishing eight years war with Saddam's Iraq. The Mullahs threw in their young men in women into that war promising them martyrdom and heavens even though they were fighting another Muslim people and not the so called 'infidels'.

Concomitantly, in Pakistan too extremist forces started calling the shots and that manifested itself in non-stop sectarian killings. Moderate voices hushed down and went into an impotent silence. The country of my birth launched itself firmly upon a course strewn with the blood, bones, and bodies of innocent victims. The whole nation slowly caged itself into an obscenity of horror in the name of God.

All these developments threw me into a conflicting state of mind and forced me to take a closer look at all religions, not just my own. With immense information, material and references now freely available on the internet, I soon started to think the hitherto unthinkable. I realized that I was a Muslim just because I was born into a Muslim faith and would have as fervently preached, practiced and defended any other faith had I been born into that. Since the fundamentalists of other faiths were not ruling countries as the Taliban and the Iranian Mullahs were at the time, my distaste for these radicals grew with each passing day. I was not alone in this thinking. There were people galore who, much more knowledgeable now in the just dawning information age, were finding it easy to break the choking stranglehold of the Mullah on themselves and their religion.

With that came the beginning of the end of my romance with the Taliban type of religion that was more interested in whipping, amputations and stoning of people, zeroed in on women and shook to its very roots every time a woman unveiled herself.

Then came Neocons on the scene and, through their villainous agenda, changed every thing for people like me.

Initially, one even sighed with relief on the demise of the repulsive Taliban despite the fact that it came with the blood of thousands of innocent Afghanis. It was better to be dead rather than be the living dead under the brutal edicts of Taliban likes, I argued to myself.

This feeling, though, was short lived.

With the invasion of Iraq, a modern secular state albeit ruled by a thug, the neocons started to unfold their real agenda. With the uncovering of their massive lies and the surfacing of reports of their insane butchery of Iraqi people, their mask came off within days. Beneath the shining facade of freedom, democracy and liberty, one found the hideous contours of mindless greed and naked ambitions. They soon bared their yellow fangs at the entire Muslim world in general, and at Iran and Syria in particular. Not very much later, they started a proxy war through Israel with the Hizbollah of Lebanon that rages on even as these lines are being written.

But lo and behold. Something extraordinary started to happen.

The Mubaraks, the Abdullahs and the Musharrafs of this world wilted like wax in the face of neocons' onslaught. They shook and trembled like thin reed in the morning winds. All the nationalist and secular forces in the Muslim world that should have resisted this by-then-thoroughly-exposed-offensive, evaporated into thin air and, in the process, stood totally discredited. Their place was taken by Islamist forces which became the only element in the entire Muslim world able to stand squarely on their legs, eye ball to eye ball with the neocons' forces, in the US/Israeli blitz on the Muslim world.

Due to the senseless arrogance and idiocy of the neocons, the arc of crises started spreading like wildfire from the seashores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan. This entire region is now in tumult with the Neocons fanned flames of unrest and revolt spreading like jungle fire in a forty knots wind. If the "war on terror" was meant to wrestle and control radical Islam, the neocons have now given it a momentum it could never have hoped to achieve on its own.

Consider the following.

Even as these lines are being written, Islamists are battling Israel in Gaza, engaging their forces in Lebanon, fighting the US occupation in Iraq, clashing with the American-propped Karzai puppet government and the coalition forces in Afghanistan and bringing Pakistan army's American-urged campaign to a screeching halt in North and South Waziristan. In fact in Afghanistan, the Taliban are in an unparalleled resurgence since their demise.

Then again, the only country having the nerve to stand up to Americans is none other than the Mullah-run Iran that is not only defending its right to nuclear power but providing succor to Hamas and Hezbollah. Even Syria, otherwise a secular country, finds itself in alliance with Islamist forces of Iran and Lebanon.

Not very far back, the Sunni Taliban and the Shia Iran were sworn enemies. Today, thanks to the neocons' absolute foolhardiness, they find themselves as allies battling a common enemy. Hamas has already stunned the world with a resounding victory at the polls. Iran is defiant, Syria remains uncompromising and now Hezbollah is taking on the might of the conceited Israeli army in a way no Arab army has ever done.

This puts me in a personal quandary. The earlier quoted instances of the Taliban types' brutality gave birth to the secular in me. I do not any more follow the rituals like I used to and find the Mullah's hate sermons no more than the blabbering of a dangerous idiot.

But when I look around the Muslim world, the ground reality instantly gives high voltage shocks to the liberal secular in me. I find that that the only forces resisting the neocons' ghoulish empire building excursion are none other than the very radical forces I so despised thus far. If these resistance forces are drawing their inspiration for all this from Islam, or their version of it, so be it. After all, the suicide bombers of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, admittedly the deadliest liberation organization on earth that makes the Al Qaeda legions look like a bunch of kindergarten kids, too must be drawing their inspiration from some set of beliefs.

The time has come to decide- just like George Bush, the neocons' poster boy, once said-"You are either with us or against us." For me, and millions more like me in the Muslim world, the option has now boiled down to being with the assailant or the victim, the tormenter or the tormented. The choice, I think, is abundantly clear.

The following courageous words of Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, have been addressed to the bigheaded Israelis. These also serve as a chilling reminder to the gutless Muslim leadership to reach back and rediscover their lost spine.

"You are fighting a people who have faith such as no one else on the face of the earth possesses... who take pride in their history, their civilization and culture, who also possess material power, expertise, knowledge, calm, imagination, determination and courage. In the coming days it will be between us and you, God willing."

http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=27171&mode=nested&order=0

[W.T.Carl]

I guess it is time to start killing Muslims.

[bucheon bum]

i just wasted a few minutes of my life.

[deadman]

Excellent article.

[Mastaoos69]

[Summer Wine]

[flip ant]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

The main reason why there are terroists is cause mideast regimes , elties, and the media there teach hate and incite violence for their political objectives.

[bucheon bum]

[ddeubel]

Quote:

These people

You have shown your colours...........people who use this term have a "quiet bigotry" and don't even know it. I called Joo on his use of "these people" several months back. I call you on it -- get rid of your latent bigotry and get educated about the issues.

I didn't like the article either. Not because it was anti-Bush but because it doesn't arrive at the proper conclusion --- stop the hate, stop picking up the guns and bombing, stop the revenge. Start talking by saying, I won't kill you............unconditionally.

I can't believe those who would even contemplate using that term "these people..." . Sounds facist. Unfortunately not anywhere close to being out of dead.

DD

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[Nambucaveman]

Hello All,

If this thread turns into a flaming war, then it will get yanked. Debate the facts as you want, but if things get out of hand then it will be stopped.

[Mastaoos69]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[ddeubel]