Sada-e-Watan Sydney ™
sadaewatan@gmail.com
(Editorial Published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 15 August 2006)
Musharraf astride the tiger
PAKISTAN is a cricket-mad country, but
another kind of madness has been coming out of the world's second-most populous
Muslim nation. Pakistan has seen the nurturing and export of mass murder in the
name of Islamic jihad.
Last week's ambitious plot to unleash a mass bombing campaign out of Heathrow
Airport was the latest example. Most of those arrested in the Heathrow plot are
of Pakistani background, though born in Britain. Similarly, three of the four
murderers in the London bombings of July last year were members of the
million-strong Pakistani community in Britain. Pakistani terrorism cells have
also been implicated in the co-ordinated bombings on the Mumbai rail system in
India last month, in which more than 900 people were killed or wounded.
When the parliament of India was attacked in December 2001, all five of the
suicide terrorists killed by police were Pakistani nationals. Nine police died
in the gun battle that day. Pakistan's intelligence agencies were also deeply
involved in the illegal and successful campaign to acquire an "Islamic bomb".
The campaign, led by Dr A.Q. Khan, required a prolonged operation of industrial
espionage and theft supported secretly by the Pakistani Government.
The Pakistani Army is also thickly populated with Islamic militants, and gave
comfort to the fanatical Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan. India has
long complained that every year Pakistani terrorist groups such as
Lashkar-e-Taiba send thousands of insurgents into Kashmir with little resistance
from the Pakistani military. Even the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf,
has been the target of several assassination attempts by Islamic militants
seeking to overthrow the Government. In other words, General Musharraf has one
of the most difficult tasks in the world, with Pakistan aiding Western
intelligence agencies, such as last week's successful spoiling of the Heathrow
plot, while also managing Pakistan's complex and volatile population of 160
million Muslims.
The problems coming out of Pakistan lend support to the argument that the
decision by the President of the United States, George Bush, to invade Iraq was
a strategic disaster which managed to strengthen Iran, splinter Iraq,
destabilise the rebuilding of Afghanistan, and inflame Islamic fundamentalism in
Pakistan.
The events of the past week also illustrate, once again, that Islamic militants
require a large Muslim population in which to plan and operate with anonymity.
Britain has a population of 1.6 million Muslims, the majority of whom are of
Pakistani origin. British intelligence estimates that about a quarter of this
population is sympathetic to jihad. They may like cricket, but Western notions
of pluralism and tolerance appear to have barely touched this minority within a
minority.
