What price ignorance Dec 06

by Khurshid Anwer

 

My letter to the press -  Today the Sindh assembly stabbed Sindh in the back. Tarbela dam is the mainstay of agriculture in Sindh.

 

It has lost 30 percent of its storage capacity to silting and there is a corresponding decrease in the supply of water to Sindh.

While the demand in Sindh will go on increasing as the years go by, the supply from Tarbela dam will go on decreasing until one day it will stop completely.

Bhasha dam is at least fifteen years away. Of the other alternates to Kalabagh dam, only Akhori dam has a sizeable storage capacity but it is in Punjab and will meet with the same mindless objections. Also it will generate only 600 megawatts .

Bunji and Dasu dams which have sizeable generating capacity have negligible storage capacity. So how will Sindh cope with the ever rising demand of its ever rising population.

 

All this misery just because Kalabagh dam is in Punjab and in this day and age of technology we feel we cannot ensure equitable shares to all the stakeholders. What price ignorance?          Khurshid Anwer

Threat analysis and Situation report

By Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid

BrassTacks Threat analysis and Situation report which the treacherous media, idiotic politicians and the naive judiciary will NOT tell you:
Whatever we wrote in the last few weeks is rapidly being unfolded on all threat axis for Pakistan.

The US is now well and truly aggressive to provoke more wars within Pakistan and to force the Pak army to into a head-on collision with the tribes in North Waziristan and against Afghan resistance. The panic has already started to set in the tribes who are pondering over mass migration and exodus from the region, even towards Afghanistan where these Pakistani tribals would be easy prey for NATO and Indian military psy-ops operators to ignite their anger into rage against Pakistan and Pak army.
On the other hand, NATO is literally raining missiles in North Waziristan against pro-Pakistan tribals and against Afghan resistance.

The Drone warfare is now creating a major crisis for Pakistan army as the military leadership is coming under severe pressure and criticism from the nation over their failure to stop this blatant abuse of national dignity and slaughter of innocent citizens.

“The strategy deployed by NATO/CIA/RAW is:

1. To attack and destroy Pakistan’s surveillance and early warning systems of the Navy, PAF and army to incapacitate their military capability to forewarn of any invasion on the country.

2. The second axis is to ignite the sectarian wars in Pakistan, just as in Syria and Lebanon. Dozens of Shias are being assassinated in macabre style killings all across the country. Not just that it would ignite the local sectarian wars, it would also destroy Pakistan’s relations with Iran.

3. Massive attacks on Pakistan army continue in FATA, tribal areas and in Baluchistan to keep the army bogged down in internal high intensity wars and to bleed the military’s resources to weaken it substantially so that it is not able to resist the external invasion.

4. NATO is also testing the waters and challenging the Pakistan’s defenses on the Western theatre. After the attack on Salala check post last year, NATO had stopped coming close to the Pakistan border. But now, they are aggressively intruding closer and even attacking close to the Pakistan border.

5. NATO/CIA drone strikes have become more frequent, lethal and destructive. The objective is to ignite the tribes into open rebellion against Pakistan army for being “collaborators” of the US which is killing women and children of the Pakistani tribals as massive “collateral damage”.

6. In Baluchistan, security forces are being targeted in a renewed and bloody campaign led by both TTP and the BLA. The sudden upsurge in violence and its vicious intensity is coordinated with the other axis of violence in the country. In addition to the attacks on the forces, trains, buses and energy infrastructure is also being attacked to cripple the provincial administration and critical services.

7. Chinese assets, interests and personnel in Pakistan are being targeted to disrupt the strategic relationship between Pakistan and China.

8. The panic and chaos which this urban war has created is now breaking the back of national economy and morale, throwing the entire country into fits of panic and chaos. The desperate measures being adopted by the PPP regime are only adding to the meltdown and panic.

9. Pressure is also being increased on Pakistan to declare war on the Afghan resistance and against friendly own tribes in North Waziristan. The US strategy is to deploy Pakistan to do the fighting for the NATO. As the violence touches the red hot levels in the country and the army is already over stretched, US is forcing the army leadership to open new deadlier fronts which would totally destroy not just the army but also any prospects of Pakistan having any strategic assets in the Afghan Pashtuns. The war in North Waziristan would not hurt any TTP assets which may be there as they would simply draw the army in but them melt back into Afghanistan, leaving the army to fight the local tribes and afghan resistance.

10. Massive propaganda, information war and Psy-ops have also been launched by the Indians as well as the CIA to prove that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe, the country is in a meltdown and that Pakistan is involved in spreading violence and terrorism in the neighboring countries especially against US forces in Afghanistan and India.

The war against Pakistan is now crystal clear. It has reached the last stages of deployment while the Pakistan army is well and truly surrounded but still not responding on the entire axis. Every day lost in removing this regime will be paid in massive bloodshed and destruction of the state, society and the army.

Within the government, the anarchy reigns supreme. The government and the judiciary at war with each other oblivious of the grave existential threats the nation faces. Army has remained a silent spectator of this political and judicial war and this has indeed brought the country to the brink of annihilation. Pakistan army is the last hope in this total and complete anarchy and chaos. 

While the Pakistan army is indeed aware of the fatal encirclement of the state and the army, it is still reluctant to decisively intervene into the political chaos to salvage the country. The military leadership is still deliberating the crisis and has not made up their mind. In the next few weeks, they may not have the luxury of controlling the dynamics of the events, even if they want to then. Today, they can. After just a few weeks, the events would become out of control and then events would decide the destiny of the nation and the fate of its leaders. 

Saddam, Qaddafi, Mubarak and now Bashar ul Asad also thought that they have infinite amount of time at their disposal. For Pakistani leaders the moment of truth just seems around the corner now.

Pakistan army is only fighting back at the military axis but have no response strategy for political chaos, economic meltdown, media war and ongoing social chaos. On the military axis, they have achieved some major success in recent days.
The following news report about the assassination of a major TTP leader in Afghanistan is a clear indication that TTP is well and truly protected in Afghanistan and their wounded are being treated in Afghan military hospitals. The news report that he has been killed in a Drone strike is non-sense as CIA does not do drones in Kunar. The militant has been eliminated by a Pak army strike after he was returning to Afghanistan from an attack inside Pakistan.

The encirclement of Pakistan is rapid and total. Now the UN is planning to send in a mission to Baluchistan to observe HR violations. Baluchistan is the prized target of the US policy towards Pakistan to cut a strategic corridor to Afghanistan bypassing the mainland. In the past also, US has been taking great interest in the internal chaos of Baluchistan to use it as a pretext to intervene. The anarchy in Baluchistan is not total also with hundreds of training camps and terrorist bases operating from Afghanistan.

Within Pakistan, the political chaos is at its peak. 27th August would be another day of infamy in Pakistan’s history as the battles between the Supreme Court and the Government threatens to bring down the state itself.

Pakistan is not too far from becoming another “Syria”. The global media war, regional encirclement, UN intervention, support to insurgencies in FATA and Baluchistan, urban war through political terrorist gangs in Karachi, psychological warfare through the paid media and direct interference into Pakistan’s social and religious circles through US AID is now tightening the grip of US and India on Pakistan’s entire social, political, economic and military fabric.

The following picture is from Syria but it may pass as from being Pakistan also. This is what happens when armies are forced to fight urban high intensity wars within own cities. This is the 4thGW, where fighting lines are not on the borders but in the major cities and towns. The soldiers are not uniformed opponents from regular armies but rag tag urban insurgents backed by regional powers. You DO NOT fight a war within your own cities or else get what the Syrians are getting now and Iraqis and Libyans tasted before them.

 This is what is planned for Pakistan now but the leadership and the judiciary is stone dead, deaf, dumb, blind and even collaborative to the collapse. I only wonder how the history would judge this nation which saw it coming but decided to fiddle only ??

Now even if Pak Army intervenes, the cost of recovering the nation from this anarchic state would be staggering. If the army still does not intervene, then it will be all over within the next 4 months.

Khair inshAllah. Pakistan Zindabaad.

Terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly

‘by SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

''All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims..'' This comment, frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.
First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy . World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria . These terrorist attacks were not Muslim.
Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons. Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed. Nothing Muslim about them
In Palestine , after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians. The British, who then governed Palestine , rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel - Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon. Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.

In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatization agency. In Italy , the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In Europe , the Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organization for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organization.

Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labeled terrorist. They stretch across the continent. Possibly the most notorious is the
Lord's Salvation Army in Uganda , a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors. While the West amplifies the plight Muslim Darfour region in the Sudan , the Western media has rellatively ignored this Christian sponsored conflict next door in Uganda and the Eastern Congo that has done horrendous crimes against women and children.

Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable terrorist groups in the world. They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus. Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis, but the Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale and surprisingly more suicide bombings have been associated with Tiger (400+ in 2003-2007) than all bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. One such suicide bomber assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

In India , the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs. The United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets Muslims rather than the other way round. Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups, and so have Bodo strongholds in Assam . Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades, and Christian Nagas are still heading militant groups.

But most important of all are the Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of India 's 600 districts. They have attacked police stations, and killed and razed entire villages that oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader Meinhof Gang or Red Brigades). In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists.

In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly. There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the biggest killers in India .
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly and blindly follows the western media (they are the Brown British of the British Raj today, used to eating Roti and Roast Beef and BigMacs), and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups.
Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims, yet the subway bombings in London and Madrid are what Europeans remember today. The Baader Meinhof Gang, IRA and Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat, but after 9/11 Americans and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere anytime. So they focus attention on Islamic militancy. They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India : these pose no threat to the West.
Within India , Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150 districts, one-third of India 's area. But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware that this is an elite phenomenon.
The real threat to India today are the Maouist groups who are getting bigger in numbers, exponentially, now being joined also by poor Muslims youth especially in South India.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they break your bones, then you win" Mahatma Gandh
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon of the last few decades. It just has acquired a newer flavour.
It was there when man lived in caves, to the Middle Ages, to the classical Egyptian/Greek/Roman empires, to the European colonial era, to communist era, to the Nazis, to apartheid era, and today.
When we talk about terrorism it is not only by a group of individuals but also the states.
Since mankind started to live in communities it found a need to establish law and order in order to provide equity amongst the individuals sharing common resources. When this social order establishes injustices and ignores the inherent rights of others and disenfranchises the weak, then there are always a few who would take the law into their own hands without the consent of the community because the community has been rendered impotent by the greed of the most powerful.
When such disenfranchised groups get organized, both the powerful elite and the group of angry individuals have a showdown.
This is when both the parties lose their moral values of human decency on the pretext that "the end justifies the means" and this is when the innocent civilians get caught in the fight as the so called "co-lateral damage".
This carnage of the civilians in their midst continues until the injustices are addressed by the reasonable and thinking people and communities of the world.
For that reason the root of the post war resurgence in terrorism, whether one likes it or not, started and happens to be the plight of the six million Palestinians (both 15% Christians and 85% Muslims) who have been made homeless and humiliated for the last six decades or more and the unconditional support given to the state of Israel by some of the guilt ridden leadership in Europe, US and in the West, because of Europe's Nazi past.
The fact that these "terrorists" are born in the Muslims homes is incidental because Palestine has evoked natural sympathies from Muslims youth of the world in the beginning but now has evoked the same sympathies (the Gaza Flotilla) from the previously indifferent youth of the West too who were not only brought up in Christian homes but also in the Jewish homes too.
Remember that apartheid South Africa collapsed not only when the disenfranchised poor black communities were marching and protesting on the streets but when the youth of the world started marching with them in their own cities of the world in the seventies and eighties.
Also, more importantly, apartheid regime collapsed because the children of the white parents who supported apartheid in S Africa also started questioning their parents' crimes against humanity such that it not only bankrupted South Africa but also began to tear apart their white family structure too.

ISI: US Special Forces Back Terror Attack on Pakistan’s Kamra Base

ISI: US Special Forces Back Terror Attack on Pakistan’s Kamra Base
Militants who attacked the Minhas Air Base in the aviation city of Kamra had highly-sophisticated equipment and possessed a very tactical standard of guerrilla warfare training which no ordinary Taliban brigade has.
by Zaki Khalid

As the sacred Islamic month of Ramadan was at its peak in Pakistan, the serene city of Kamra near Islamabad (known as the Aviation City for housing a number of aircraft production/maintenance factories) was attacked by a horde of terrorists in the dark hours of the night.
The final overview of the attack made it clear that it was, fortunately, a humiliating failure for the improvised militants whose core objective was to give a series of strategic blows to the Pakistani military, especially the airforce since two very important assets of the country were parked at that base: JF-17 Thunder jets which were jointly manufactured with China and the Saab AWACS tasked with gathering aerial intelligence for the country’s defence establishment.
Had this terror operation proven successful, another major loss for the Pakistan Air Force would have taken place like the one before it when similarly-trained guerrillas managed to destroy Orion surveillance planes at the PNS Mehran base in the port city of Karachi.
However, thanks to the enhanced training for Pakistani Special Forces regiments such as the Special Services Group (SSG) Commandos and the exclusive Special Service Wing (SSW) Commandos of the airforce, a dreadful repeat was averted. Like the previous occurrence, the fingers were immediately raised towards India as the arch-rival.
But as my team presented in its report last year, this assertion is what was planned by the actual layout officials. The assortment of sophisticated hi-tech equipment, ammunition and training which the terrorists had was found to be too advanced for what the Indian intelligence RAW is capable of.
As always, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades were found along with suicide jackets. This time, there was a new addition: For the attack on PNS Mehran in Karachi, the militants then had static preset coordinates set for the operation and communicated just via satellite phones; but during the recent attack on Kamra, the terrorists besides these had real-time GPS enabled touchpads fixed on their bodies, two BlackBerry smartphones (exact quantity could not be confirmed from secondary source), infrared devices, daggers inside pockets and more items which were not disclosed by sources for various reasons.
As always, the planners always forget to leave their marks (mostly by accident), and this time the mark they left was that the GPS devices were of a make used only by US troops. They might not have had the intention to let the devices come in Pakistani hands since the recruits were strapped with suicide vests to blow themselves off after the stunt, but the vest-strapped attackers were all gunned down by sniper shots where only one blew himself up beforehand. This helped forensic experts from the ISI and MI gather evidence which remained intact. Using BlackBerry phones was a smart option because of its highly secure encrypted communication logs.
In an ominous backdrop, just a day before the attack, Leon Panetta held a press conference at the Pentagon in which he said:
“The great danger we’ve always feared is that if terrorism is not controlled in their country (Pakistan), then those nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands”
I am not saying that the attack was planned right after that overnight. Surely such pinpoint operations take months of regular practice before the recruits are sent on their mission by being told that they are ‘doing a great service to Islam‘.
The attacks are executed on symbolic occasions: that night was the most holiest night of Ramadan in the country and the Independence Day (August 14) had just passed. Pakistani security officials have maintained that almost all militants who come from Afghanistan are jointly trained by the Afghan NDS and Indian RAW or directly by the US, in this case the latter was found involved knee-deep.
“It is very easy to assess that the attackers were backed by a group more technologically advanced since the Afghan intelligence has considerably zero TECHINT capability and neither did our ground sources find any archived leads which showed that the Indian RAW had links to this particular misadventure,” said an official on condition of anonymity. “Almost all the militants were traced to the Khost area of Afghanistan. Leads from that region suggest that majority of the attackers comprised of recruits from various Kandaks (battalions) of the Afghan National Army Commando Brigade working under the directorate of the US Special Operations forces had been trained for incursion into Pakistan. They were deployed to the mainland of the country for a grand operation and had local assistance by Pakistani militia also”.
The Minhas Air Base has a false notion attributed to it. Miscreant journalists tasked with writing propaganda such as Declan Walsh of Guardian fame (now in the New York Times) wrote an article on the attack with the crispy headline ‘Pakistani Air Force base with nuclear ties is attacked‘.
Just where the heck did he come out with the supposed relation is beyond many; since my primary subject of discourse is intelligence affairs, I happen to be a regular reader of the DEBKAFile website which has close ties to the Israeli intelligence. The site had written a report titled ‘Two Pakistani N-bombs available to Saudi Arabia‘. An excerpt from the article reads:
‘Saudi Arabia has jumped ahead of Iran by obtaining the use of two Pakistani nuclear bombs or guided missile warheads. debkafile’s Gulf sources believe the weapons are ready for delivery upon royal summons in Pakistan’s nuclear air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Already delivered is a quantity of Pakistan’s Ghauri-II missile with an extended range of 2,300 kilometers. They are tucked away in silos in the underground city of Al-Sulaiyil, south of the capital Riyadh’
Pakistan indeed has nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia but the details aforementioned are quite distorted and far from reality. This is a separate topic for discussion and might be highlighted later someday. What is to be noted above is that it is DEBKAFile which is the first known news source to allege Kamra as a nuclear base whereas it is not factually true.
The Minhas Air Base was never used for emergency nuclear assembly neither is Pakistan’s National Command Authority so unprofessional that it will store disassembled warheads on a base which is in a region infested with growing threats from the CIA-sponsored Punjabi Taliban. For the part, this proves Mr. Walsh’s research is either absolutely faulty or it was purposely added for nefarious reasons known better to himself.
It has long been an American strategy to push for an Indo-Pakistan war. Admiral Mullen was the first to push for one, and so was McRaven, who is now at SOCOM. His successor Lt Gen Joseph Votel is proving to be even more of an enthusiastic officer. What is clear though is that whichever special operations team was involved, SOCOM or JSOC, the quality of intelligence which the attackers had was courtesy of the notorious CIA.
To be honest, the US gains nothing by destroying the Saabs and JF-17s under Pakistan’s possession. All this was meant, as I have been consistently saying, to provoke Pakistan into triggering a regional war. India could surely have garnered strategic leverage but it could not afford a misadventure into Pakistan of this magnitude. India’s RAW in association with the CIA already has its hands full providing for the TTP militancy in northern and central Pakistan.
I personally think that the American Task Force 373 (TF373) could be behind this attack keeping in light its bloody past and bases in Khost and Kunar from where major terrorism comes into Pakistan. However, it might not be so since the TF373 act as more of standalone contractors rather than trainers and the level of training imparted to the terrorist Afghan Commandos was very high which can lead one to safely suggest that such specified exercise could only be the handiwork of the elite US Special Operations forces scattered across Afghanistan.
But then why did the TTP accept responsibility for the attack?
“Routine PR,” says the official. “Tomorrow a false-flag happens in Europe or the US, they will be told to come out again and ‘accept responsibility’. Its all about repeatedly stressing that Waziristan is the supposed epicentre of global terror.
The Kamra attack is a notable addition to this demand. They are challenging the Pakistan Army to come to North Waziristan and believe me, the military leadership including General Kayani do not want to go there”.
“Has the military expressed its concerns with the government?” I asked.
“Yes it has. But to no avail”, came the reply.

Conclusion

I would like to reiterate what I briefed in my interview to Press TV not long ago. It provides a comprehensive summary of why the US is constantly provoking Pakistan’s military establishment and what adverse effects it could have for the entire world. Please spare out some minutes to listen to my statement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS9--J174A4&feature=player_embedded
Zaki Khalid is the Director and Chief Editor of www.terminalx.org, Pakistan's most authoritative portal on Defence, Intelligence and Geopolitics.
Source of article

Measuring Life

 

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

 
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. 

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. 
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete... 
Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. 
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again
Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: 
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Mullahs and Heretics

 

Tariq Ali

You are invited to read this free essay from the London Review of Books. Subscribe now to access every article from every fortnightly issue of the London Review of Books, including the entire LRB archive of over 12,500 essays and reviews.

I never believed in God, not even between the ages of six and ten, when I was an agnostic. This unbelief was instinctive. I was sure there was nothing else out there but space. It could have been my lack of imagination. In the jasmine-scented summer nights, long before mosques were allowed to use loudspeakers, it was enough to savour the silence, look up at the exquisitely lit sky, count the shooting stars and fall asleep. The early morning call of the muezzin was a pleasant alarm-clock.

There were many advantages in being an unbeliever. Threatened with divine sanctions by family retainers, cousins or elderly relatives – ‘If you do that Allah will be angry’ or ‘If you don’t do this Allah will punish you’ – I was unmoved. Let him do his worst, I used to tell myself, but he never did, and that reinforced my belief in his non-existence.

My parents, too, were non-believers. So were most of their close friends. Religion played a tiny part in our Lahore household. In the second half of the last century, a large proportion of educated Muslims had embraced modernity. Old habits persisted, nonetheless: the would-be virtuous made their ablutions and sloped off to Friday prayers. Some fasted for a few days each year, usually just before the new moon marking the end of Ramadan. I doubt whether more than a quarter of the population in the cities fasted for a whole month. Café life continued unabated. Many claimed that they had fasted so as to take advantage of the free food doled out at the end of each fasting day by the mosques or the kitchens of the wealthy. In the countryside fewer still fasted, since outdoor work was difficult without sustenance, and especially without water when Ramadan fell during the summer months. Eid, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, was celebrated by everyone.

One day, I think in the autumn of 1956 when I was 12, I was eavesdropping on an after-dinner conversation at home. My sister, assorted cousins and I had been asked nicely to occupy ourselves elsewhere. Obediently, we moved to an adjoining room, but then listened, giggling, to a particularly raucous, wooden-headed aunt and a bony uncle berating my parents in loud whispers: ‘We know what you’re like . . . we know you’re unbelievers, but these children should be given a chance . . . They must be taught their religion.’

The giggles were premature. A few months later a tutor was hired to teach me the Koran and Islamic history. ‘You live here,’ my father said. ‘You should study the texts. You should know our history. Later you may do as you wish. Even if you reject everything, it’s always better to know what it is that one is rejecting.’ Sensible enough advice, but regarded by me at the time as hypocritical and a betrayal. How often had I heard talk of superstitious idiots, often relatives, who worshipped a God they didn’t have the brains to doubt? Now I was being forced to study religion. I was determined to sabotage the process.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that my father’s decision may have had something to do with an episode from his own life. In 1928, aged 12, he had accompanied his mother and his old wet-nurse (my grandmother’s most trusted maid) on the pilgrimage to perform thehajj ceremony. Women, then as now, could visit Mecca only if they were accompanied by a male more than 12 years old. The older men flatly refused to go. My father, as the youngest male in the family, wasn’t given a choice. His older brother, the most religious member of the family, never let him forget the pilgrimage: his letters to my father always arrived with the prefix ‘al-Haj’ (‘pilgrim’) attached to the name, a cause for much merriment at teatime.

Decades later, when the pores of the Saudi elite were sweating petro-dollars, my father would remember the poverty he had seen in the Hijaz and recall the tales of non-Arab pilgrims who had been robbed on the road to Mecca. In the pre-oil period, the annual pilgrimage had been a major source of income for the locals, who would often augment their meagre earnings with well-organised raids on pilgrims’ lodgings. The ceremony itself requires that the pilgrim come clothed in a simple white sheet and nothing else. All valuables have to be left behind and local gangs became especially adept at stealing watches and gold. Soon, the more experienced pilgrims realised that the ‘pure souls’ of Mecca weren’t above thieving. They began to take precautions, and a war of wits ensued.

Several years after the trip to the Holy Land my father became an orthodox Communist and remained one for the rest of his life. Moscow was now his Mecca. Perhaps he thought that immersing me in religion at a young age might result in a similar transformation. I like to think that this was his real motive, and that he wasn’t pandering to the more dim-witted members of our family. I came to admire my father for breaking away from what he described as ‘the emptiness of the feudal world’.[1]

Since I did not read Arabic, I could learn the Koran only by rote. My tutor, Nizam Din, arrived on the appointed day and thanks to his heroic efforts, I can at least recite the lines from the opening of the Koran – ‘Alif, lam, mim . . .’ – followed by the crucial: ‘This book is not to be doubted.’ Nizam Din, to my great delight, was not deeply religious. From his late teens to his late twenties, he had worn a beard. But by 1940 he’d shaved it off, deserted religion for the anti-imperialist cause and dedicated himself to left-wing politics. Like many others he had served a spell in a colonial prison and been further radicalised. Truth, he would say, was a very powerful concept in the Koran, but it had never been translated into practical life because the mullahs had destroyed Islam.

Nizam Din soon realised that I was bored by learning Koranic verses and we started to spend the allotted hour discussing history: the nationalist struggle against British imperialism, the origins of terrorism in Bengal and the Punjab, and the story of the Sikh terrorist Bhagat Singh, who had thrown a bomb in the Punjab Legislative Assembly to protest against repressive legislation and the 1919 massacre of Jallianwallah Bagh. Once imprisoned, he had refused to plead for mercy, but renounced terrorism as a tactic and moved closer to traditional Marxism. He was tried in secret and executed by the British in the Central Jail in Lahore, a 15-minute walk from where Nizam Din was telling me the story. ‘If he had lived,’ Nizam Din used to say, ‘he would have become a leader the British really feared. And look at us now. Just because he was a Sikh, we haven’t even marked his martyrdom with a monument.’

Nizam Din remembered the good times when all the villages in what was now Pakistan had Hindu and Sikh inhabitants; many of his non-Muslim friends had now left for India. ‘They are pygmies,’ he would say of Pakistan’s politicians. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Tariqji? Pygmies! Look at India. Observe the difference. Gandhi was a giant. Jawaharlal Nehru is a giant.’ Over the years I learned far more about history, p0litics and everyday life from Nizam Din than I ever learned at school. But his failure to interest me in religion had been noted.

A young maternal uncle, who had grown a beard at an early age, volunteered to take on the task. His weekly visits to our house, which coincided with my return from school, irritated me greatly. We would pace the garden while, in unctuous tones, he related a version of Islamic history which, like him, was unconvincing and dull. There were endless tales of heroism, with the Prophet raised to the stature of a divinity, and a punitive Allah. As he droned on, I would watch the kites flying and tangling with each other in the afternoon sky, mentally replay a lost game of marbles, or look forward to the Test match between Pakistan and the West Indies. Anything but religion. After a few weeks he, too, gave up, announcing that my unbeliever’s inheritance was too strong.

During the summer months, when the heat in the plains became unbearable, we would flee to the Himalayan foothills, to Nathiagali, then a tiny, isolated hill resort perched on a ridge in a thick pine forest and overlooked by the peaks. Here, in a relaxed atmosphere with almost no social restrictions, I met Pashtun boys and girls from the frontier towns of Peshawar and Mardan, and children from Lahore whom I rarely saw during the winter became summer friends. I acquired a taste for freedom. We had favourite hiding places: mysterious cemeteries where the tombstones had English names on them (many had died young) and a deserted Gothic church that had been charred by lightning.

We also explored the many burned houses. How were they burned? I would ask the locals. Back would come the casual reply. ‘They belonged to Hindus and Sikhs. Our fathers and uncles burned them.’ Why? ‘So they could never come back, of course.’ Why? ‘Because we are now Pakistan. Their home is India.’ Why, I persisted, when they had lived here for centuries, just like your families, and spoke the same language, even if they worshipped different gods? The only reply was a shrug. It was strange to think that Hindus and Sikhs had been here, had been killed in the villages in the valleys below. In the tribal areas – the no-man’s-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan – quite a few Hindus stayed on, protected by tribal codes. The same was true in Afghanistan itself (till the mujahedin and the Taliban arrived).

One of my favourite spots in Nathiagali lay between two giant oaks. From here one could watch the sun set on Nanga Parbat. The snow covering the peak would turn orange, then crimson, bathing the entire valley in its light. Here we would breathe the air from China, gaze in the direction of Kashmir and marvel at the moon. Given all this, why would one need a multi-layered heaven, let alone the seventh layer that belonged to us alone – the Islamic paradise?

One day, to my horror, my mother informed me that a mullah from a neighbouring mountain village had been hired to make sure I completed my study of the Koran. She had pre-empted all my objections. He would explain what each verse meant. My summer was about to be wrecked. I moaned, groaned, protested, pleaded and tantrumed. To no avail. My friends were sympathetic, but powerless: most of them had undergone the same ritual.

Mullahs, especially the rural variety, were objects of ridicule, widely regarded as dishonest, hypocritical and lazy. It was generally believed that they had grown beards and chosen this path not out of spiritual fervour, but in order to earn a crust. Unless attached to a mosque, they depended on voluntary contributions, tuition fees and free meals. The jokes about them mostly concerned their sexual appetites; in particular, a penchant for boys below a certain age. The fictional mullah of the storytellers and puppet-shows who travelled from village to village was a greedy and lustful arch-villain; he used religion to pursue his desires and ambitions. He humiliated and cheated the poor peasants, while toadying to landlords and potentates.

On the dreaded day, the mullah arrived and, after eating a hearty lunch, was introduced to me by our family retainer, Khuda Baksh (‘God Bless’), who had served in my grandfather’s household and because of his status and age enjoyed a familiarity denied to other servants. God Bless was bearded, a staunch believer in the primacy of Islam, and said his prayers and fasted regularly. He was, however, deeply hostile to the mullahs, whom he regarded as pilferers, perverts and parasites. He smiled as the mullah, a man of medium height in his late fifties, exchanged greetings with me. We took our seats round a garden table placed to catch the warming sun. The afternoon chorus was in full flow. The air smelled of sun-roasted pine needles and wild strawberries.

When the mullah began to speak I noticed he was nearly toothless. The rhymed verse at once lost its magic. The few false teeth he had wobbled. I began to wonder if it would happen, and then it did: he became so excited with fake emotion that the false teeth dropped out onto the table. He smiled, picked them up and put them back in his mouth. At first, I managed to restrain myself, but then I heard a suppressed giggle from the veranda and made the mistake of turning round. God Bless, who had stationed himself behind a large rhododendron to eavesdrop on the lesson, was choking with silent laughter. I excused myself and rushed indoors.

The following week, God Bless dared me to ask the mullah a question before the lesson began. ‘Were your false teeth supplied by the local butcher?’ I enquired with an innocent expression, in an ultra-polite voice. The mullah asked me to leave: he wished to see my mother alone. A few minutes later he, too, left, never to return. Later that day he was sent an envelope full of money to compensate him for my insolence. God Bless and I celebrated his departure in the bazaar café with mountain tea and home-made biscuits. My religious studies ended there. My only duty was to substitute for my father once a year and accompany the male servants to Eid prayers at the mosque, a painless enough task.

Some years later, when I came to Britain to study, the first group of people I met were hard-core rationalists. I might have missed the Humanist Group’s stall at the Fresher’s Fair had it not been for a spotty Irishman, dressed in a faded maroon corduroy jacket, with a mop of untidy dark brown hair, standing on a table and in a melodious, slightly breathless voice shouting: ‘Down with God!’ When he saw me staring, he smiled and added ‘and Allah’ to the refrain. I joined on the spot and was immediately roped into becoming the Humanist rep at my college. Some time afterwards when I asked how he had known I was of Muslim origin rather than a Hindu or a Zoroastrian, he replied that his chant only affected Muslims and Catholics. Hindus, Sikhs and Protestants ignored him completely.

My knowledge of Islamic history remained slender and, as the years progressed, Pakistan regressed. Islamic studies were made compulsory in the 1970s, but children were given only a tiny sprinkling of history on a foundation of fairytales and mythology. My interest in Islam lay dormant till the Third Oil War in 1990.[2]The Second Oil War in 1967 had seen Israel, backed by the West, inflict a severe defeat on Arab nationalism, one from which it never really recovered. The 1990 war was accompanied in the West by a wave of crude anti-Arab propaganda. The level of ignorance displayed by most pundits and politicians distressed me, and I began to ask myself questions which, until then, had seemed barely relevant. Why had Islam not undergone a Reformation? Why had the Ottoman Empire not been touched by the Enlightenment? I began to study Islamic history, and later travelled to the regions where it had been made, especially those in which its clashes with Christendom had taken place.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all began as versions of what we would today describe as political movements. They were credible belief-systems which aimed to make it easier to resist imperial oppression, to unite a disparate people, or both. If we look at early Islam in this light, it becomes apparent that its Prophet was a visionary political leader and its triumphs a vindication of his action programme. Bertrand Russell once compared early Islam to Bolshevism, arguing that both were ‘practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world’. By contrast, he saw Christianity as ‘personal’ and ‘contemplative’. Whether or not the comparison is apt, Russell had grasped that the first two decades of Islam had a distinctly Jacobin feel. Sections of the Koran have the vigour of a political manifesto, and at times the tone in which it addresses its Jewish and Christian rivals is as factional as that of any left-wing organisation. The speed with which it took off was phenomenal. Academic discussion as to whether the new religion was born in the Hijaz or Jerusalem or elsewhere is essentially of archaeological interest. Whatever its precise origins, Islam replaced two great empires and soon reached the Atlantic coast. At its height three Muslim empires dominated large parts of the globe: the Ottomans with Istanbul as their capital, the Safavids in Persia and the Mughal dynasty in India.

A good place for a historian of Islam to start would be 629 AD, or Year 8 of the new Muslim calendar, though that had yet to come into being. In that year, 20 armed horsemen, led by Sa’d ibn Zayd, were sent by Muhammad to destroy the statue of Manat, the pagan goddess of fate, at Qudayd, on the road between Mecca and Medina. For eight years Muhammad had tolerated the uneasy coexistence of the pagan male god Allah and his three daughters: al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat. Al-Uzza (the morning star, Venus) was the favourite goddess of the Quraysh, the tribe to which Muhammad belonged, but Manat was the most popular in the region as a whole, and was idolised by three key Meccan tribes that Muhammad had been desperately trying to win over to his new monotheistic religion. By Year 8, however, three important military victories had been won against rival pagan and Jewish forces. The Battle of Badr had seen Muhammad triumph against the Meccan tribes despite the smallness of his army. The tribes had been impressed by the muscularity of the new religion, and Muhammad must have deemed further ideological compromise unnecessary. Sa’d ibn Zayd and his 20 horsemen had arrived to enforce the new monotheism.

The keeper of Manat’s sanctuary saw the horsemen approach, but remained silent as they dismounted. No greetings were exchanged. Their demeanour indicated that they had not come to honour Manat or to leave a token offering. The keeper didn’t stand in their way. According to Islamic tradition, as Sa’d ibn Zayd approached the beautifully carved statue of Manat, a naked black woman seemed to emerge from nowhere. The keeper called out: ‘Come, O Manat, show the anger of which you are capable!’ Manat began to pull out her hair and beat her breasts in despair, while cursing her tormentors. Sa’d beat her to death. Only then did his 20 companions join him. Together they hacked away until they had destroyed the statue. The sanctuaries of al-Lat and al-Uzza were dealt with in similar fashion, probably on the same day.

A seventh-century prophet could not become the true spiritual leader of a tribal community without exercising political leadership and, in the Peninsula, mastering the basics of horsemanship, sword-play and military strategy. Muhammad had understood the need to delay the final breach with polytheism until he and his companions were less isolated. However, once the decision to declare a strict monotheism was taken, no concessions were granted. The Christian Church had been forced into a permanent compromise with its pagan forebears, allowing its new followers to worship a woman who had conceived a child by God. Muhammad, too, could have picked one of Allah’s daughters to form part of a new constellation – this might even have made it easier to attract recruits – but factional considerations acted as a restraint: a new religious party had to distinguish itself forcefully from Christianity, its main monotheistic rival, while simultaneously marginalising the appeal of contemporary paganism. The oneness of a patriarchal Allah appeared the most attractive option, essential not only to demonstrate the weakness of Christianity, but also to break definitively with the dominant cultural practices of the Peninsula Arabs, with their polyandry and their matrilinear past. Muhammad himself had been the third and youngest husband of his first wife, Khadija, who died three years before the birth of the Islamic calendar.

Historians of Islam, following Muhammad’s lead, would come to refer to the pre-Islamic period as the jahiliyya (‘the time of ignorance’), but the influence of its traditions should not be underestimated. For the pre-Islamic tribes, the past was the preserve of poets, who also served as historians, blending myth and fact in odes designed to heighten tribal feeling. The future was considered irrelevant, the present all-important. One reason for the tribes’ inability to unite was that the profusion of their gods and goddesses helped to perpetuate divisions and disputes whose real origins often lay in commercial rivalries.

Muhammad fully understood this world. He belonged to the Quraysh, a tribe that prided itself on its genealogy and claimed descent from Ishmael. Before his marriage, he had worked as one of Khadija’s employees on a merchant caravan. He travelled a great deal in the region, coming into contact with Christians, Jews, Magians and pagans of every stripe. He would have had dealings with two important neighbours: Byzantine Christians and the fire-worshipping Zoroastrians of Persia.

Muhammad’s spiritual drive was fuelled by socio-economic ambitions: by the need to strengthen the commercial standing of the Arabs, and to impose a set of common rules. He envisioned a tribal confederation united by common goals and loyal to a single faith which, of necessity, had to be new and universal. Islam was the cement he used to unite the Arab tribes; commerce was to be the only noble occupation. This meant that the new religion was both nomadic and urban. Peasants who worked the land were regarded as servile and inferior. A hadith (a reported saying of Muhammad’s) quotes the Prophet’s words on sighting a ploughshare: ‘That never enters the house of the faithful without degradation entering at the same time.’ Certainly the new rules made religious observance in the countryside virtually impossible. The injunction to pray five times a day, for example, played an important part in inculcating military discipline, but was difficult to manage outside the towns. What was wanted was a community of believers in urban areas, who would meet after prayers and exchange information. Unsurprisingly, peasants found it impossible to do their work and fulfil the strict conditions demanded by the new faith. They were the last social group to accept Islam, and some of the earliest deviations from orthodoxy matured in the Muslim countryside.

The military successes of the first Muslim armies were remarkable. The speed of their advance startled the Mediterranean world, and the contrast with early Christianity could not have been more pronounced. Within twenty years of Muhammad’s death in 632, his followers had laid the foundations of the first Islamic empire in the Fertile Crescent. Impressed by these successes, whole tribes embraced the new religion. Mosques began to appear in the desert, and the army expanded. Its swift triumphs were seen as a sign that Allah was both omnipotent and on the side of the Believers.

These victories were no doubt possible only because the Persian and Byzantine Empires had been engaged for almost a hundred years in a war that had enfeebled both sides, alienated their populations and created an opening for the new conquerors. Syria and Egypt were part of the Byzantine Empire; Iraq was ruled by Sassanid Persia. All three now fell to the might and fervour of a unified tribal force.

Force of numbers didn’t come into it – nor did military strategy, although the ability of the Muslim generals to manoeuvre their camel cavalry and combine it with an effective guerrilla-style infantry confused an enemy used to small-scale nomadic raids. Much more important was the active sympathy which a sizeable minority of the local people demonstrated for the invaders. A majority remained passive, waiting to see which side would prevail, but they were no longer prepared to fight for or help the old empires.

The fervour of the unified tribes, on the other hand, cannot be explained simply by the appeal of the new religion or promises of untold pleasures in Paradise. The tens of thousands who flocked to fight under Khalid ibn al-Walid wanted the comforts of this world.[3]

In 638, soon after the Muslim armies took Jerusalem, Caliph Umar visited the city to enforce peace terms. Like other Muslim leaders of the period, he was modestly dressed; he was also dusty from the journey, and his beard was untrimmed. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who greeted him, was taken aback by Umar’s appearance and the absence of any attendant pomp. The chronicles record that he turned to a servant and said in Greek: ‘Truly this is the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet as standing in the holy place.’

The ‘abomination of desolation’ did not remain for long in Jerusalem. The strategic victories against the Byzantines and the Persians had been so easily achieved that the Believers were now filled with a sense of their own destiny. After all, they were, in their own eyes, the people whose leader was the final Prophet, the last ever to receive the message of God. Muhammad’s vision of a universal religion as precursor to a universal state had captured the imagination, and furthered the material interests, of the tribes. When German tribes took Rome in the fifth century, they insisted on certain social privileges but they succumbed to a superior culture and, with time, accepted Christianity. The Arabs who conquered Persia preserved their monopoly of power by excluding non-Arabs from military service and temporarily restricting intermarriage, but although willing to learn from the civilisations they had overpowered, they were never tempted to abandon their language, their identity or their new faith.

The development of medicine, a discipline in which Muslims later excelled, provides an interesting example of the way knowledge travelled, was adapted and matured in the course of the first millennium. Two centuries before Islam, the city of Gondeshapur in south-western Persia became a refuge for dissident intellectuals and freethinkers facing repression in their own cities. The Nestorians of Edessa fled here in 489 after their school was closed. When, forty years later, the Emperor Justinian decreed that the school of Neoplatonic philosophers in Athens be closed, its students and teachers, too, made the long trek to Gondeshapur. News of this city of learning spread to neighbouring civilisations. Scholars from India and, according to some, even China arrived to take part in discussions with Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Christians and Syrians. The discussions ranged over a wide variety of subjects, but it was the philosophy of medicine that attracted the largest numbers.

Theoretical instruction in medicine was supplemented by practice in a bimaristan (hospital), making the citizens of Gondeshapur the most cared for in the world. The first Arab who earned the title of physician, Harith bin Kalada, was later admitted to the Court of the Persian ruler Chosroes Anushirwan and a conversation between the two men was recorded by scribes. According to this the physician advised the ruler to avoid over-eating and undiluted wine, to drink plenty of water every day, to avoid sex while drunk and to have baths after meals. He is reputed to have pioneered enemas to deal with constipation.

Medical dynasties were well established in the city by the time of the Muslim conquest in 638. Arabs began to train in Gondeshapur’s medical schools and the knowledge they acquired began to spread throughout the Muslim Empire. Treatises and documents began to flow. Ibn Sina and al-Razi, the two great Muslim philosopher-physicians of Islam, were well aware that the basis of their medical knowledge derived from a small town in Persia.

A new Islamic civilisation emerged, in which the arts, literature and philosophy of Persia became part of a common heritage. This was an important element in the defeat by the Abbasids, the cosmopolitan Persian faction within Islam, of the narrow nationalism of the Arab Umayyads in 750. Their victory reflected the transcending of Arabism by Islam, though the last remaining prince of the Umayyads, Abdel Rahman, managed to escape to al-Andalus, where he founded a caliphate in Córdoba. Rahman had to deal with the Jewish and Christian cultures he found there, and his city came to rival Baghdad as a cosmopolitan centre.

Caliph Umar’s successors fanned out from Egypt to North Africa. A base was established and consolidated in the Tunisian city of al-Qayrawan, and Carthage became a Muslim city. Musa bin Nusayr, the Arab governor of Ifriqiya (present-day Libya, Tunisia and most of Algeria), established the first contact with continental Europe. He received promises of support and much encouragement from Count Julian, the Exarch of Septem (Ceuta in Morocco). In April 711, Musa’s leading lieutenant, Tarik bin Ziyad, assembled an army of 7000 men, and crossed over to Europe near the rock which still bears his name, Jabal Tarik (or Gibraltar). Once again, the Muslim armies profited from the unpopul-arity of the ruling Visigoths. In July, Tarik defeated King Roderic, and the local population flocked to join the army that had rid them of an oppressive ruler. By the autumn, Córdoba and Toledo had both fallen. As it became clear that Tarik was determined to take the whole peninsula, an envious Musa bin Nusayr left Morocco with 10,000 men to join his victorious subordinate in Toledo. Together, the two armies marched north and took Zaragoza. Most of Spain was now under their control, largely thanks to the population’s refusal to defend the ancien régime. The two Muslim leaders planned to cross the Pyrenees and march to Paris.

Rather than obtain permission from the Caliph in Damascus, however, they had merely informed him of their progress. Angered by their cavalier attitude to authority, the Commander of the Faithful dispatched messengers to summon the conquerors of Spain to the capital; they never saw Europe again. Others carried on the struggle, but the impetus was lost. At the Battle of Poitiers in October 732, Charles Martel’s forces marked the end of the first Muslim century by inflicting a sobering defeat on the soldiers of the Prophet: naval bases remained in the South of France – at Nice and Marseille, for example – but, for now, Islam was largely confined to the Iberian peninsula. A century later, the Arabs took Sicily, but could only threaten the mainland. Palermo became a city of a hundred mosques; Rome remained sacrosanct. Xenophobic northern Italians still refer to Sicilians as ‘Arabs’.

In 958, Sancho the Fat left his cold and windy castle in the Kingdom of Navarre in search of a cure for obesity, and went south to Córdoba, the capital of the western caliphate and, thanks to Caliph Abderrahman III, Europe’s main cultural centre. Its closest rival lay in distant Mesopotamia, where a caliph from another dynasty presided over Baghdad. Both cities were renowned for their schools and libraries, musicians and poets, physicians and astronomers, mullahs and heretics, and also for their taverns and dancing girls. Córdoba had the edge in dissent. There, Islamic hegemony was not forcibly imposed; there had been genuine debates between the three religions, producing a synthesis from which native Islam benefited greatly.

The Great Mosque in Córdoba could only have been created by men who had participated in the city’s intellectual ferment. The architects who built it in the eighth century understood that it was to represent a culture opposed to the Christian one which chose to occupy space with graven images. A mosque is intended as a void: all paths lead to emptiness, reality is affirmed through its negation. In the void, only the Word exists, but in Córdoba (and not only there) the Mosque was also intended as a political space, one in which the Koran might be discussed and analysed. The philosopher-poet Ibn Hazm would sit amid the sacred columns and chastise those Believers who refused to demonstrate the truth of ideas through argument. They would shout back that the use of the dialectic was forbidden. ‘Who has forbidden it?’ Ibn Hazm would demand, implying that they were the ones who were the enemies of true faith. In Baghdad they spoke half in admiration, half in fear, of the ‘Andalusian heresy’.

It would be hundreds of years before this culture was obliterated. The fall of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in al-Andalus, in 1492 marked the completion of that process: the first of Europe’s attempted final solutions was the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian peninsula. When he visited Córdoba in 1526, Charles I of Spain rebuked his priests: ‘You have built what can be seen anywhere and destroyed what is unique.’ The remark was generous enough, but Charles had not realised that the mosque had been preserved at all only because of the church that now lay inside it.

At the beginning of the 11th century, the Islamic world stretched from Central Asia to the Atlantic coast, though its political unity had been disrupted soon after the victory of the Abbasids. Three centres of power emerged: Baghdad, Córdoba and Cairo, each with its own caliph. Soon after the death of the Prophet, Islam had divided into two major factions, the Sunni majority and a Shia minority. The Sunnis ruled in al-Andalus, Algeria and Morocco in the Maghreb, Iran, Iraq and the regions beyond the Oxus. The Fatimid caliphs belonged to the Shia tradition, which claimed descent from the fourth Caliph, Ali, and his wife Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet. The Fatimid caliphs had ruled parts of North Africa and lived in Tunisia till a Fatimid expeditionary force under the command of the legendary Slav General Jawhar captured Egypt, and Jahwar established a dynasty complete with caliph and built a new city – Cairo.

Each of these regions had different traditions, and each had its own material interests and needs, which determined its policy of alliances and coexistence with the non-Islamic world. Religion had played a major part in building the new empire, but its rapid growth had created the conditions for its own dismemberment. Baghdad, the most powerful of the three caliphates, lacked the military strength and the bureaucracy needed to administer such a large empire. Sectarian schisms, notably a thirty-year war between the Sunni and Shia factions, had also played their part. Key rulers, politicians and military leaders in both camps had died in the years immediately preceding the First Crusade. ‘This year,’ the historian Ibn Taghribirdi wrote in 1094, ‘is called the year of the death of caliphs and commanders.’ The deaths sparked off wars of succession in both Sunni and Shia camps, further weakening the Arab world. The notion of a monolithic and all-powerful Islamic civilisation had ceased to have any purchase by the beginning of the 11th century, and probably earlier.

In 1099, after a forty-day siege, the Crusaders took Jerusalem. The killing lasted two whole days, at the end of which most of the Muslim population – men, women and children – had been killed. Jews had fought with Muslims to defend the city, but the entry of the Crusaders created panic. In remembrance of tradition, the Elders instructed the Jewish population to gather in the synagogue and to offer up a collective prayer. The Crusaders surrounded the building, set fire to it and made sure that every single Jew burned to death.

News of the massacres spread slowly through the Muslim world. The Caliph al-Mustazhir was relaxing in his palace in Baghdad when the venerable qadi[4] Abu Sa’ad al-Harawi, his head clean-shaven in mourning, burst into the royal quarters. He had left Damascus three weeks earlier, and the scene he encountered in the palace did not please him:

How dare you slumber in the shade of complacent safety, leading lives as frivolous as garden flowers, while your brothers in Syria have no dwelling place save the saddles of camels and the bellies of vultures? Blood has been spilled! Beautiful young girls have been shamed . . . Shall the valorous Arabs resign themselves to insult and the valiant Persians accept dishonour . . . Never have the Muslims been so humiliated. Never have their lands been so savagely devastated.

The Crusaders settled in the region in the course of the 12th century, and many Muslim potentates, imagining that they were there to stay, began to collaborate with them commercially and militarily. A few of the Crusaders broke with Christian fundamentalism and made peace with their neighbours, but a majority continued to terrorise their Muslim and Jewish subjects, and reports of their violence circulated. In 1171, a Kurdish warrior, Salah al-Din (Saladin), defeated the Fatimid regime in Cairo and was acclaimed Sultan of Egypt. A few months later, on the death of his patron Nur al-Din, he marched to Damascus with his army and was made its Sultan. City after city accepted his suzerainty. The Caliph was afraid that Baghdad, too, would fall under the spell of the young conqueror. Though there was never any question of his assuming the Caliphate itself – caliphs had to be from the Quraysh, and Saladin was a Kurd – there may have been some concern that he would take the Caliphate under his aegis, as previous sultans had done. Saladin knew this, but he also knew that the Syrian aristocracy resented his Kurdish origins and ‘low upbringing’. It was best not to provoke them, and others like them, at a time when maximum unity was necessary. Saladin stayed away from Baghdad.

The union of Egypt and Syria, symbolised by prayers offered in the name of the one Caliph in the mosques of Cairo and Damascus, formed the basis for a concerted assault against the Crusaders. Patiently, Saladin embarked on an undertaking that had until then proved impossible: the creation of a unified Muslim army to liberate Jerusalem. The barbarousness of the First Crusade was of enormous assistance to him in uniting his soldiers: ‘Regard the Franj,’ he exhorted them.[5] ‘Behold with what obstinacy they fight for their religion, while we, the Muslims, show no enthusiasm for waging holy war.’[6]

Saladin’s long march ended in victory: Jerusalem was taken in 1187 and once again made an open city. The Jews were provided with subsidies to rebuild their synagogues; the churches were left untouched. No revenge killings were permitted. Like Caliph Umar five hundred years before him, Saladin proclaimed the freedom of the city for worshippers of all faiths. But his failure to take Tyre was to prove costly. Pope Urban despatched the Third Crusade to take back the Holy City, and Tyre became the base of its operations. Its leader, Richard Plantagenet, reoccupied Acre, executing prisoners and slaughtering its inhabitants. Jerusalem, however, could not be retaken. For the next seven hundred years, with the exception of one short-lived and inconsequential Crusader occupation, the city remained under Muslim rule, and no blood was spilled.

The Crusades had disrupted a world already in slow decline. Saladin’s victories had temporarily halted the process, but the internal structures of the Caliphate were damaged beyond repair, and new invaders were on the way. A Mongol army from Central Asia led by Timur (Marlowe’s Tamburlaine) laid siege to Baghdad in 1401, calling on the Caliph to surrender and promising that if he did so, the city would be spared. Foolish and vain till the last, the Caliph refused, and the Mongol armies sacked the city. A whole culture perished as libraries were put to the torch, and Baghdad never recovered its pre-eminence as the capital of Islamic civilisation.

Despite its presence in India, which its armies had first entered in the eighth century, and, later, in north-western China, and despite its merchant fleets trading in the Indonesian archipelago, in southern China, and off the east and west coasts of Africa, Islam’s centre of gravity was by the 14th century moving in the direction of the Bosphorus. On four occasions Muslim armies had laid siege to Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Christianity. Each time the city had survived. But from 1300, the frontier emirate of Anatolia began slowly to eat into Byzantine territory, and in 1453 old dreams were realised and the ancient city of Byzantium acquired its present name: Istanbul. Its new ruler was Mehmet II, whose forebear, Uthman, had founded the dynasty bearing his name over a hundred years earlier.

The Ottoman dynasty inaugurated its reign by opening a new Islamic front in South-East Europe, just as Islamic civilisation was about to collapse in the Iberian peninsula. In the course of the 14th century, the Ottomans took Hungary, swallowed the Balkans, nibbled away at the Ukraine and Poland, and threatened Vienna. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, a majority of Muslims lived under the rule of the Ottoman, the Safavid (Persian) or the Mughal (Indian) empires. The Sultan in Istanbul was recognised as Caliph by the majority and became the caretaker of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Arabic remained the religious language but Turkish became the Court vernacular, used by the ruling family and administrative and military elites throughout the Empire, though most of the religious, scientific, literary and legal vocabulary was lifted from Persian and Arabic. The Ottoman state, which was to last five hundred years, recognised and protected the rights of Christians and Jews. Many of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal after the Reconquest were granted refuge in Ottoman lands and a large number returned to the Arab world, settling not just in Istanbul, but in Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus.

Jews were not the only privileged refugees. During the wars of the Reformation German, French and Czech Protestants fleeing Catholic revenge-squads were also given protection by the Ottoman sultans. Here, there was an additional political motive. The Ottoman state closely followed developments in the rest of Europe, and vigorously defended its interests by means of diplomatic, trade and cultural alliances with major powers. The Pope, however, was viewed with suspicion, and revolts against Catholicism were welcomed in Istanbul.

Ottoman sultans began to feature in Eur-opean folklore, often demonised and vulgarised, but the sultans themselves were always conscious of their place in geography and history, as evidenced in this modest letter of introduction sent by Suleiman the Magnificent, who reigned from 1520 to 1566, to the French King:

I who am the Sultan of Sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of crowns to the monarchs on the face of the earth, the shadow of God on Earth, the Sultan and sovereign lord of the White Sea and of the Black Sea, of Rumelia and of Anatolia, of Karamania, of the land of Rum, of Zulkadria, of Diyarbekir, of Kurdistan, of Aizerbaijan, of Persia, of Damascus, of Aleppo, of Cairo, of Mecca, of Medina, of Jerusalem, of all Arabia, of Yemen and of many other lands which my noble fore-fathers and my glorious ancestors (may Allah light up their tombs!) conquered by the force of their arms and which my August Majesty has made subject to my flaming sword and my victorious blade, I, Sultan Suleiman Khan, son of Sultan Selim, son of Sultan Bayezid: To thee, who art Francis, King of the land of France.

The tolerance shown to Jews and Protestants was rarely, if ever, extended to heretics within Islam, however. The mullahs ensured that punishment was brutal and swift. To deter heresies they jealously safeguarded their monopoly of information and power, opposing all moves to import a printing press to Istanbul. ‘Remember Martin Luther,’ the qadi warned the Sultan. The Reformation could be supported because it served to divide Christianity, but the very idea of a Muslim Luther was unacceptable. The clerics knew the early history of Islam and were determined not to repeat it.

Unlike Christianity, Islam had not spent its first hundred years in the wilderness. Instead, its early leaders had rapidly found themselves at the head of large empires, and a great deal of improvisation had been required. According to some scholars, the first authorised version of the Koran was published some thirty years after the death of Muhammad, its accuracy guaranteed by the third Caliph, Uthman. Others argued that it appeared much later, but Koranic prescriptions, while quite detailed on certain subjects, could not provide the complete code of social and political conduct needed to assert an Islamic hegemony. The hadith filled the gap: it consisted of what the Prophet had said at a particular time to X or Y, who had then passed it on to Z, who had informed the author, who in turn recorded the ‘tradition’. Christianity had done something similar, but confined it to four gospels, editing out or smoothing over contradictions along the way. Scholars and scribes began collating the hadith in the seventh and eighth centuries, and there have been ferocious arguments regarding the authenticity of particular traditions ever since. It is likely that more than 90 per cent of them were invented.

The point is not their authenticity, however, but the political role they have played in Islamic societies. The origins of Shi’ism, for example, lie in a disputed succession. After Muhammad’s death, his Companions elected Abu-Bakr as his successor and, after his death, Umar. If Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, resented this, he did not protest. His anger was provoked, however, by the election of the third Caliph, Uthman. Uthman, from the Umayya clan, represented the tribal aristocracy of Mecca, and his victory annoyed a loyalist old guard. Had the new Caliph been younger and more vigorous he might have managed to effect a reconciliation, but Uthman was in his seventies, an old man in a hurry, and he appointed close relatives and clan members to key positions in the newly conquered provinces. In 656 he was murdered by Ali’s supporters, whereupon Ali was anointed as the new Caliph.

Islam’s first civil war followed. Two old Companions, Talha and al-Zubair, called on troops who had been loyal to Uthman to rebel against Ali. They were joined by Aisha, the Prophet’s young widow. Aisha, mounted on a camel, exhorted her troops to defeat the usurper at Basra, in what has come to be known as the Battle of the Camel, but it was Ali’s army that triumphed. Talha and al-Zubair died in the battle; Aisha was taken prisoner and returned to Medina, where she was placed under virtual house-arrest. Another battle took place, in which Ali was outmanoeuvred by the Umayyads. His decision to accept arbitration and defeat annoyed hardliners in his own faction, and in 661 he was assassinated outside a mosque in Kufa. His opponent, the brilliant Umayyad General Muawiya, was recognised as Caliph, but Ali’s sons refused to accept his authority and were defeated and killed in the Battle of Kerbala by Muawiya’s son Yazid. That defeat led to a permanent schism within Islam. Henceforth, Ali’s faction – or shiat – were to create their own traditions, dynasties and states, of which modern Iran is the most prominent example.

It would have been surprising if these military and intellectual civil wars – tradition v. counter-tradition, differing schools of interpretation, disputes about the authenticity of the Koran itself – had not yielded a fine harvest of sceptics and heretics. What is remarkable is that so many of them were tolerated for so long. Those who challenged the Koran were usually executed, but many poets, philosophers and heretics expanded the frontiers of debate and dissent. Andalusian philosophers, for example, usually debated within the codes of Islam, but the 12th-century Córdoban, Ibn Rushd, occasionally transgressed them. Known in the Latin world as Averroes, he was the son and grandson of qadis, and his other grandfather had served as the Imam of the Great Mosque of Córdoba. Ibn Rushd himself had been the qadi in both Seville and Córdoba, though he had to flee the latter when the mullahs banned him from entering the Great Mosque and ordered his books to be burned. These clashes with orthodoxy sharpened his mind, but also put him on his guard. When the enlightened Sultan Abu Yusuf questioned him about the nature of the sky, the astronomer-philosopher did not initially reply. Abu Yusuf persisted: ‘Is it a substance which has existed for all eternity or did it have a beginning?’ Only when the ruler indicated his awareness of ancient philosophy did Ibn Rushd respond by explaining why rationalist methods were superior to religious dogma. When the Sultan indicated that he found some of Aristotle’s work obscure and wished it to be explained, Ibn Rushd obliged with hisCommentaries, which attracted the attention of Christian and Jewish theologians. The Commentaries served a dual function. They were an attempt to systematise Aristotle’s vast body of work and to introduce rationalism and anti-mysticism to a new audience, but also to move beyond it and promote rational thought as a virtue in itself.

Two centuries earlier, Ibn Sina (980-1037), a Persian scholar known in the Latin world as Avicenna, had laid the basis for a study of logic, science, philosophy, politics and medicine. His skills as a physician led his employers, the native rulers of Khurasan and Isfahan, to seek his advice on political matters. Often, he gave advice that annoyed his patrons, and had to leave town in a hurry. His Kanun fi’l-tibb (‘Medical Canon’) became the major textbook in medical schools throughout the Islamic world – sections of it are still used in contemporary Iran. His Kitab al-Insaf (‘Book of Impartial Judgment’), dealing with 28,000 different philosophical questions, was lost when Isfahan was sacked during his lifetime by a rival potentate: he had lodged his only copy at the local library.

The stories of Ibn Hazm, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd demonstrate the potential for semi-official thought during Islam’s first five hundred years. The last two, in particular, chafed at the restrictions of religious orthodoxy, but like Galileo after them, chose to live and continue their researches in preference to martyrdom. Others, however, were more outspoken. The ninth-century Baghdad heretic, Ibn al-Rawandi, wrote several books that questioned the basic principles of monotheism. The Mu’tazilite sect, to which he had once belonged, believed that it was possible to combine rationalism and belief in one God. They questioned the Revelation, rejected predestination, insisted that the Koran was a created and not a revealed book, and criticised the quality of its composition, its lack of eloquence and the impurity of its language. Only Reason dictated obligation to God.[7] Ibn al-Rawandi went further still, arguing that religious dogma was always inferior to reason, because only through reason could one attain integrity and moral stature. The ferocity of his assault first surprised, then united Islamic and Jewish theologians, who denounced him mercilessly. None of his original work has survived, and we know of him and his writings mainly through Muslim and Jewish critics’ attempts to refute his heresies. However, he also makes a remarkable appearance in the work of the poet-philosopher Abu al-Ala al-Ma’ari (973-1058), whose epic poem Risalat al-Ghufran (‘Treatise on Forgiveness’), set in Paradise and Hell, has Ibn al-Rawandi berating God: ‘Thou didst apportion the means of livelihood to Thy creatures like a drunk revealing his churlishness. Had a man made such a division, we would have said to him: “You swindler! Let this teach you a lesson.”’

TThe guardians of Islam during the Ottoman period knew this history well and were determined to prevent any challenge to Muslim orthodoxy. This may have preserved the dynasty, but it sank the Empire. By keeping Western European inventions, ideologies and scientific advances at bay, the clerics sealed the fate of the caliphate. But in the view of the majority of Muslims, the Ottomans had preserved the Islamic heritage, extended the frontiers of their religion, and, in the Arab East, created a new synthesis: an Ottoman Arab culture that united the entire region by means of a state bureaucracy presiding over a common administration and financial system. The Ottoman state, like other Muslim empires of the period, was characterised by three basic features: the absence of private property in the countryside, where the cultivator did not own and the owner (the state) did not cultivate; the existence of a powerful, non-hereditary bureaucratic elite in the administrative centres; and a professional, trained army with a slave component.

By abolishing the traditional tribal aristocracy and forbidding the ownership of landed estates, the Ottomans had preserved their position as the only dynasty in the Empire, and the only repository of a quasi-divine power. To combat dynastic threats, they created a civil service recruited from every part of the Empire. The devshirmesystem forced Christian families in the Balkans and elsewhere to part with a son, who became the property of the state. He was sheltered, fed and educated until he was old enough to train in the academy as a soldier or bureaucrat. Thus Circassians, Albanians, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians and even Italians rose to occupy the highest offices of the Empire.

Traditional hostility to the ploughshare determined the urban bias of the dynasties that ruled large tracts of the Islamic world, but to what extent was this attitude also responsible for the absence of landed property? This was not a local phenomenon: not one of the caliphates favoured the creation of a landed gentry or peasant-ownership or the existence of communal lands. Any combination of these would have aided capital-formation, which might have led to industrialisation, as it later did in Western Europe. The sophisticated agricultural techniques employed by the Arabs in Spain can be adduced to prove that working on the land was not taboo, but these techniques were generally confined to land surrounding towns, where cultivation was intense and carried out by the townsfolk. Rural land was rented from the state by middlemen, who in turn hired peasants to work on it. Some of the middlemen did become wealthy, but they lived and spent their money in the towns.

In Western Europe, the peculiarities of the feudal system – the relative autonomy enjoyed by village communities organised round communal lands, combined with the limited but real sovereignties of vassals, lords and liege lords – encouraged the growth of small towns in the Middle Ages. The countryside still dominated, but political power was feudal power – that is, it wasn’t centralised. In the towns, trade and manufacturing was controlled by the guilds. In this arrangement lay the origins of modern capitalism. The subordination of the countryside in the Islamic world, with its a rigidly dynastic political structure dependent on a turbulent military caste, meant that the caliphates could not withstand the political and economic challenge posed by Western Europe. Radical nationalist impulses began to develop in the Ottoman lands as early as the late 18th century, when Turkish officers, influenced by the French Revolution and, much later, by Comte, began to plot against the regime in Istanbul. The main reason that the Ottomans staggered on till the First World War is that the three vultures eyeing the prey – the British Empire, tsarist Russia and the Habsburgs – could not agree on a division of the spoils. The only solution appeared to be to keep the Empire on its knees.

The First World War ended with the defeat of the Ottomans, who had aligned themselves with the Kaiser. As the triumphant powers were discussing how to divide their booty, a Turkish nationalist force led by Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) staked its claim to what is now Turkey, preventing the British from handing over Istanbul to the Greeks. For the first time in its history, thanks to Ataturk, Islam was without a caliph or even a pretender. Britain would have preferred to defeat and dump Ataturk, while hanging on to the Caliph, who could have become a pensioner of imperialism, kept for ceremonial occasions, like the last Mughal in Delhi before the 1857 Mutiny. It was the discovery of black gold underneath the Arabian desert that provided the old religion with the means and wherewithal to revive its culture while Britain created new sultans and emirs to safeguard their newest and most precious commodity. Throughout the 20th century, the West, to safeguard its own economic interests, supported the most backward, despotic and reactionary survivals from the past, helping to defeat all forms of secularism. As we know, the story is unfinished.

How CIA used Spy Equipment Devices to Hunt Pak Nukes-

stories told by Black-water Agent

We were all wondering what Pakistan’s plan was for its nuclear warheads. We knew it had 76 enriched uranium warheads with 5 – 25 kilotons of explosive yield each. We also knew it was working on plutonium fissile materials and had well over 100 tons of raw uranium buried in the hills of Baluchistan. It was a God-awful mess of reckless development.
We knew Pakistan wasn’t afraid to hand off its warheads to some of our worst enemies, and the country had already sold nuclear secrets for oil, gas, and economic trade agreements to North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya to name a few. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which uncharacteristically and unexplainably oversaw the country’s nuclear program, was also growing increasingly cooperative with China. We felt there was much reason for concern over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
In November 2004, I was given a series of briefs over a three-day period by former Senior Pakistani Military Officers. These men were educated, well traveled, and religious in their beliefs, family oriented and professionally respectful toward everyone in our group. Some unpolished, but very knowledgeable British and American scientists also attended the briefings. The former Pakistani officers conducted a brilliant briefing about Pakistan’s Nuclear Program since it’s inception in the 1970s and made very pointed statements about the ISI’s exclusive control of the country’s nuclear arsenal and its dangerous habit of recklessly moving nuclear warheads.
The briefing also included details of a Pakistani nuclear scientist’s visit to Afghanistan to consult with Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaida terrorist network and the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan of the late 1990s that was orchestrated, planned and executed by Pakistan’s ISI. The General also mentioned China’s now-growing cooperation with the ISI in the advanced production of lighter plutonium warheads for miniaturization and fitment on Chinese missiles made from stolen US and British technology. Plutonium weapons are lighter and have a higher explosive yield than weapons based on enriched uranium, which have been the mainstay of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Those weapons are now showing signs of decay due to purity contamination in the early stages of the uranium enrichment processes. By the time we heard this, everyone in the room was silent. The briefing had hit a deep nerve.
I intervened and asked, is it not the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s right and duty to oversee the nuclear power development in Pakistan? Also, why would an intelligence services organization like the ISI be in the business of massing a nuclear arsenal? Is it not the central government’s job to ensure that any nuclear energy program is managed and operated by its country’s qualified personnel?
The room went silent again and everyone started shaking their heads in approval, except the Pakistani military officers giving the briefing. They were looking at me and nodding their heads in disapproval. But I understood people from this region of the world usually shook their heads from side to side whether they agreed or disagreed. I was understanding of the culture and bodily gestures they commonly express. The highest ranking officer, Brigadier General Naseer, looked out at our group and was about to say something when one of the American scientists stopped him and stated that he would take it from there.
The American scientist was a nuclear weapons expert and was employed by the Department of Energy. He looked a bit scraggly—long hair, a beard, slacks and a short sleeve shirt. He said: “ I understand that all of you here have been selected by our government to attend this briefing. You all have impeccable credentials and are unusually skilled in specific areas of your profession. We’re all grown men, and I’m going to fast forward a bit here and get to the heart of a very sensitive matter.
“Last week, an elite team of Navy SEALs attached devices to the hull of a luxury yacht off the coast of U.A.E. and
deployed powerful miniature surface water devices that enhanced eavesdropping. On board were three high-ranking Pakistani ISI general officers with Iranian officials to discuss the sale and transfer of nuclear arms to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Furthermore, it has been leaked through a Saudi Arabian official, many years before—whose identity is anonymous—that Saudi Arabia has already made a purchase from the Central Government of Pakistan for 13 enriched uranium nuclear warheads in a long-term oil-for-arms deal. The three ISI officials, who have been identified, are in charge and in control, by succession of Rank and Authority, of various sites that store these warheads and are rouge profiteers conspiring to make the sale and transfer without Pakistani government knowledge.”
“What has been discovered thus far is that the movement of the enriched uranium warheads may occur within the next three to six months, or when there is an event within the country or region that would warrant authorized movement of the warheads from the highest level of Pakistani leadership and power. It is most likely at that time, the ISI General Officers would move three warheads into the possession of Iranian handlers”.
An American General Officer and two company personnel came into the room, and the Pakistani generals along with the American and British scientists were escorted out. The lights were turned on, and my group all filed into another room. We went to lunch, and no one talked. But there was no doubt we could feel the energy of mind vibes at lunch. What was next, we were all thinking. We didn’t have to wait long.
It’s 2004, the US and its allies were at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pakistani government is virtually in a perpetual state of economic default due to expenditures in nuclear development, increased military budgets, cuts in social and food programs for its people and a deep rooted hatred of its neighbor, India. A secret intelligence agency virtually ran everything in and out of Pakistan and killed its own leaders who were determined to either harness or diminish its power and authority, much like the Nazi Gestapo of World War II. The agency was out of control, and the ISI’s own leadership was now in the radical Muslim, “Islamic Jihadi” nuclear black market business.
Planning went into effect to locate Pakistan’s nuclear warheads that were to be sold to Iran.A large team was assembled and assigned various known routes to transport the weapons—rail, air, road, tunnels, ports. Highly sophisticated electronics with powerful penetrating x-ray, sensors, cameras, Geiger counters, radiation-exposure detectors, cellular GPRS eavesdropping devices, even remote satellite command was employed. This was going to be a huge undertaking of diligent efforts on everyone’s part to make this work like a Swiss clock.
My primary responsibility was Aviation Operations Surveillance, and I had all the resources at my disposal I could imagine. I was assigned six crack aviators with impeccable flying skills beyond reproach. These guys were the best we had to offer. There was a team of excellent technicians; all were combat-hardened, proven leaders with solid backgrounds in ethical and moral professionalism. If one of them screwed up, he admitted it, took full responsibility, and held himself to a high standard of maturity while ensuring whatever it was didn’t happen again.
Our home base of operations was in the desolate desert of Afghanistan with operational teams in Pakistan at key sites where the nukes were stored and maintained. I operated out of an airbase in Pakistan with a small fleet of Helicopters and Cessna Caravan Turboprops that were owned by the US and under the operational control of the Pakistani Ministry of Interior.
However, The exact number of planes and helicopters in Pakistan, to include their color, markings, registration numbers, interior and even the scratches or marks on the fuselage were staged just over the border in Afghanistan. In other words, for all the aircraft we had in Pakistan, we had exact lookalikes in Afghanistan that could easily intrude Pakistani Airspace at anytime.
Whenever the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, the Pakistani military, gave the US a mission in Pakistan, the teams in Afghanistan were alerted, given the Pakistani transponder and IFF codes so they could fly covertly over the border into Pakistan to scout any new evidence of moving nukes. In the meantime, the fleet that had always been in Pakistan flew the usual, day-to-day missions. Without the Pakistani Transponder and IFF Codes, our aircraft were sure to be shot down in these highly sensitive areas. We lucked out every time, and these guys never knew what was going on.
Our Cessnas were loaded with highly sophisticated ground-penetrating radar panels inside the cargo holds that emitted a lot of energy on a newly discovered frequency and band that isn’t recorded in any technical literature. We were searching for the enriched uranium signatures below ground, in buildings, on trains, in tunnels, you name it.
No Pakistani-deployed sensors ever picked up the slightest signature of electronic interrogation from our sweeps and it if it was there, we had no problems finding it. The floors and crew compartments of all our aircraft were flamed sprayed with a layer of lead to prevent exposure to the crews and sensitive equipment. The aircraft exterior control surfaces were enhanced with static wicks that dissipated electricity generated through the airframe and improved grounding discharge through landing gear contact with the earth upon landings. We went undetected.

SHAKY GROUND
On 8 October, 2005, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in the North West Frontier Province struck with a destructive force never before seen in Pakistan. Some estimates put the number killed at 84,000 including 1,400 killed in China. All planes and helos we had in Afghanistan at home base immediately went into action as the US was very concerned that now was the time these rogue ISI generals would move the nukes. In addition, the Department of Energy was very concerned that a possible nuclear processing facility was leaking radiation as detected through satellite sensor readings. The Pakistani government knew about the leak, kept the information secret, and had issues getting qualified personnel to the location due to washed-out and debris-covered roads. It was a complete mess, and the Pakistanis had their pride and honor at stake for their inability to handle an emergency of this magnitude.
The Pakistani government is always claiming the need for and arguing for more and more aid and assets from the US. However, this time DOE was very concerned about Pakistan’s aging uranium enrichment processing plants, and it was a well known fact that the Pakistanis needed to bypass roads and get experts to the damaged facilities via air ASAP. The decision was made by DOE to approve funding for the purchase of six more Bell 412s through the Pacific Northwest Nuclear Laboratory. Knowing a great deal about the Pakistani Military Aviation Maintenance Programs and the caliber of technicians and pilots they possessed, this was just a Band-Aid compared to the gushing wound the services lacked.
The program manager for the company I was working for as my cover requested I immediately move air assets from the airbase where I was stationed. I communicated this request to the teams in Afghanistan, and a fully loaded Cessna Caravan landed at the airfield where I was with no issues whatsoever. The Pakistani Military understood the immediate need to get all air assets to the affected region as soon as possible. As we were en route to Qasim Air Base, all equipment was powered on and the surveillance ops were all now in full swing. I had to make a pit stop for fuel and passengers in Multan, and was soon back up and heading into the devil’s lair. Our mission this day was to actually land at Chaklala Air base and electronically interrogate a large hanger and adjacent facilities, as there were reports of a possible movement of warheads from this location.

FINAL APPROACH, MAY DAY, MAY DAY
As we entered Islamabad Airspace I made the usual calls to the tower at Qasim Airbase, gave tail number, heading, altitude, passenger and crew numbers. We were given clearance to enter airspace and as we reached the threshold between Qasim and Chaklala, I initiated an emergency call: “May day, May day! Experiencing power loss and smoke in the cockpit!”
I had tripped a simulated smoke generator, and from the tower at Chaklala Airbase, they could see we were in trouble. But Chaklala Airbase was not authorizing a US aircraft to land at Chaklala. I made another emergency “May day” call over the emergency net frequency and reported total engine failure as I oriented our flight path to the active runway on final. From our position, we could see Pakistani military vehicles scrambling on the runway to prevent our landing. I nosed it over, increased speed, turned on landing lights and proceeded with approach. The aircraft was at max gross weight, we had Pakistani military passengers and a ½ load of fuel. Off to our right, we could see the target hanger and a roadway along its side. The Pakistani troops guarding that hanger facility had mounted up in vehicles and were blocking the freaking runway.
My APR-39 was indicating a surface to air missile laser lock on the aircraft. We knew from intel surveillance that it was the French-design Crotale 2000 SAM System. By now, my pucker factor was a 10 and my co-pilot’s anal retention dropped to zero. If there was a launch, we would be vaporized.
I continued with the emergency calls: “May Day, May Day.” By now, the Pakistani Military passengers were yelling, screaming, saying their prayers to Allah. As soon as I was five feet off the runway, I applied max power on the engine, full feathered the prop and landed with the smoke generators blowing some serious smoke. I immediately steered the aircraft to the roadway next to the target hanger and reported a stuck throttle with braking difficulty. The Pakistani vehicles were all over the roadway waving us down, trying to get us back on the active, but I stayed the course and requested emergency fire vehicles. By now, we were scanning for warheads. “BINGO!” We got three major hits on the scope and the computers were recording everything in real time at the home base in Afghanistan. By the time I got to the other end of the hanger, we had the evidence we were looking for.
I brought the aircraft to a stop, killed the smoke generator, engines and stowed the landing gear light. I made communications with the tower that I was going through emergency shutdown procedures. Before I could thank all my passengers for flying with American Eagle flight 1 from Multan to Islamabad, they were already piling out, looking blue, pale and a little loose in bladder control. Now we were surrounded by Pakistani troops all pointing AK-47s at us. I felt one wrong move, and we’d cut to Swiss cheese. So I put my hands up in the air, and my crew did the same. They opened the door and had us deplane and lie flat on the ground. We were searched and a young captain walked up and asked in English, “Who’s in charge?”
I rolled my head to where he was standing and said I was. He then asked me to get up, and when I did I recognized the man as Captain Javed, a young arrogant officer who was an Aviator in Training. He immediately recognized me: “Mr. Larry! My God, man! What happened?” He ordered his troops to stand down into the low ready, and I explained we had taken on fuel in Multan and experienced engine failure before landing with a loss of oil pressure and high temperature readings from the power gearbox.
The Captain was concerned for us and stated we were in a highly restricted area that was off limits to even the Pakistani Military. He was shitting bricks when another vehicle pulled up and it was Colonel Imtaz, the ISI officer in charge of Chaklala Air base. He was more calm and relaxed and looking like the spitting image of Barney Fife of Mayberry RFD with his big bug eyes. The captain vouched for me, my credentials and crew and stated that I was an Aviation Advisor for the Department of State working as an instructor through the Ministry of Interior. Examining all my ID cards, Colonel Imtaz immediately ordered a search of the plane. (Like the Pakistani’s had any clue what they were looking at!)
Captain Javed told the Colonel all was OK, and that there were only relief supplies on board, which were our travel bags, toolbox and some boxes of aircraft oil. The passengers also were telling the Colonel that if it wasn’t for me and my Co-Pilot, they all would have died. By now my Co-pilot was telling everyone not to forget their box lunches and peanuts! Captain Javed had wanted to qualify in my aircraft, and he was a major kiss ass since I was posted as an instructor. He was always wanting to impress upon me his skills and knowledge as an aviator, but he was a marginal pilot at best.
Finally Col. Imtaz was satisfied with the search of the plane and our engine-failure story. About this time, my co-pilot, “Knuckles,” a big, corn-fed Alabama boy, says to Col. Imtaz, “Where’s the titty bar! Any liquor in this place?” Looking at Col. Imtaz, Knuckles puts this huge dip of snuff in his mouth and lets out a fart! He then reaches for his US Marine Corps K-Bar, pulls it out, and starts picking at a sore on his palm. I wanted to laugh so hard it made pee. Colonel Imtaz was fixated on Knuckles and didn’t know what to say. He looked confused, like he was thinking of a response for Knuckles. Still being surrounded by Pakistani troops, I told the Colonel, “Excuse me for a minute sir,” and took about six steps away and started to piss like a Texas jack ass.
The Pakistani soldiers were all looking at the Colonel and me. The roadway was slanted, and the soldiers started to move out of the way as the river of piss headed for them. Col. Imtaz, also looking at me, was speechless and called Captain Javed over. They walked toward the Colonel’s vehicle and were talking. Col. Imaz got into his vehicle and left the area. Captain Javed came over and said I had to stop pissing, that I was embarrassing him in front of the soldiers, who were all still in shock and staring at me. I told Captain Javed: “Dude, sorry! But I was on a freaking four-hour flight, had engine failure, made an emergency landing, and almost had my head blown off! Ya’ think I would have just pissed in my flight suit?”
Not hearing any response from Captain Javed, I looked over at him and he was staring like the rest of those morons. I finally said, “Hello, hello!” Captain Javed then ordered the troops to push the Cessna to a mooring spot right next to the hanger. Knuckles and I tied it down and got our bags. While Knuckles was talking to Captain Javed, I cycled a remote satellite transmitter that signaled we were OK and on Chaklala Airbase. I ensured the ground-penetrating radar system was completely grounded and the battery disconnected. We got a ride to the Officer’s Club and called U.S. Marine Corps Post 1, US Embassy, Islamabad for a ride ASAP. The young Marine on the other end patched me through to transportation, and our ride was on its way to take us to the safe house.

LEAVE NOW…ER, NEVER MIND
Captain Javed came over to the table where we sat and ordered coffee and tea. He conveyed to us that the aircraft had to be flown out of here by tomorrow or the Pakistani military was going to tow it. I immediately made a call to Qasim Airbase and requested a technician be transported to Chaklala to repair the Cessna by 7 PM that same day. I explained to Captain Javed that the technician had to eat dinner and would come afterward. Our tech knew exactly what to do upon arrival and made a big deal to the Pakistani’s that the work was complicated. I also mentioned to Captain Javed that I wanted to give him the rating on the Cessna and that if he wouldn’t mind accompanying me on flights to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for the relief efforts, he would surely have enough time behind the wheel to receive the rating with no problems. His eyes lit up like alfalfa and buckwheat staring at a bar of soap. I did this to diffuse the tensions over having the Aircraft moored next to a hanger that was surrounded by troops and seemed suspicious. Col. Imtaz was also on his case to move the aircraft ASAP.
Captain Javed agreed and stated that he would get authorization from his superiors immediately. I mentioned to Knuckles that I would stay behind while he went with the driver to the safe house to shower. By this time it was approaching 7PM and the technician was escorted up to the aircraft by a group of Pakistani soldiers. I told the tech to open the engine doors and that I would get inside the cockpit to do some checks.
By this time, we had an audience, and even the security cameras all around the place were on us recording our every move. We had to make our efforts look good. The tech removed the igniters and cleaned them, replaced a gearbox pressure sensor and went through throttle checks. After about four hours, Knuckles came back, and we went through the preflight checklist, cranked the engine, prop feathering and brake checks. All comms were good, and we asked for permission to taxi to the active. The tower denied permission, and we stayed there for about 10 mins at engine idle listening to U2 and keeping our cool. We needed to get the hell out of there now.
Again I made the tower call and permission was denied. I was then instructed to power off and proceed to the Operations Center. We all just looked at each other and expected the worse. We didn’t know if we’d just been had. But I gave the hand signal for no one to talk as I felt we may have a listening device on board or worse. I did exactly as the tower instructed and looking out at the tower, we could see a lot of military vehicles there and more pulling up all the time. Were we going to be arrested? A jeep drove up to the plane and ground troops in the vicinity rushed the plane and surrounded it. I was then told by a Pakistani military officer that I was needed in the Operations Center and the crew was asked to go to the ready room of the Pilot’s office. We were being separated.
The driver took me over to Operations, and a room full of Pakistani officers was looking at me when I came through the door. I looked around and wanted to know what the problem was. A Brigadier approached and asked why I decided to land at Chaklala instead of Qasim Airbase—since Qasim was the base I should have landed at. I quickly told him, “Sir, I had to turn the troubled aircraft into the wind. I was loosing altitude and power, carrying six passengers. I was dropping like the stock market trying to keep the ship stable. Thinking quickly, I also knew you had a longer runway and emergency fire vehicles here. Which I reported and received no assistance from your fire brigade when I landed! The aircraft was full of smoke from a faulty engine oil pressure sensor that was leaking oil onto the engine, which your crews installed back at the airbase!”
The Brigadier then asked why I had pulled off the runway. “Why didn’t I stop on the active?” I asked. “I had to pull off onto the access road because your military vehicles were blocking the active, and I had to avoid a collision that surely would have resulted in a major incident, loss of life and aircraft. Furthermore, sir, the United States military and all its resources available are lending assistance to your country in a major disaster relief effort to save over a million people that have been trapped in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province)! My crew and myself have been working around the clock to repair the aircraft, move it to Qasim AB at this time and get some rest before daylight. Do I need to inform my Ambassador?”
By now all the officers were shaking their heads, “No.” Looking around, the Brigadier apologized and ordered the tower to give clearance immediately.
When I walked out of there, I was trembling with fear, and I knew I had just saved everyone’s ass. In the background was one of the ISI Generals who had made the deal to sell the nukes to Iran. He sat there listening to every word I had to say. The Brigadier actually had looked at him when I was done talking, and it was the ISI General that gave a hand signal to release us.
I got my guys on the aircraft, we mounted our PVS6 Night Vision Goggles and flew just 10 minutes to Qasim Airbase. We landed, got out of the ship and a new American crew from Afghanistan got in and flew the heavily equipped nuke hunter out of there toward the south. We quickly got into the waiting Suburban and went straight to the safe house without anyone saying a word. When we arrived, we went to our rooms, showered and went to sleep. It was a hell of a long day, but we made a major play in the discovery of the loose nukes.

THREE CARD MONTE
The next day was a day like any other day. The team assembled downstairs, and we all drove back down to Qasim Airbase to assist in the earthquake relief efforts. When we arrived at the tower, I noticed the Cessna Caravan that I usually fly that had always been based out of another airbase was there on station. We managed to pull off this three card monte because when I flew from Chaklala to Qasim, the original Cessna that we always use in country was just 30 minutes away at another airbase. When I took off from Chaklala, the other aircraft took off from the base it was pre-staged at, when I landed at Qasim, we all got off and changed crews. The new crew explained to Qasim Control Tower that they were taking the aircraft for a test flight. As they did, they flew in the direction of the replacement plane and as they passed each other, Transponder and IFF frequencies were swapped. This left the replacement aircraft returning to Qasim and the Nuke Hunter transmitting on another code and frequency that was Pakistani, back to Afghani airspace.
Captain Javed was there at the tower waiting for us and wanting to learn all he could about flying and I was happy to oblige. The relief efforts went on for over two months, and he was qualified afterward.
The mission was a complete success and all teams recalled back to Afghanistan. What we had discovered was a Boeing 737 Saudi Arabian airliner inside the hanger that was fitted for cargo use and having three enriched uranium, 25 kiloton bombs on board. The Saudis claimed to have absolutely no knowledge that the plane was theirs. But little did they know, the corrupt ISI generals were selling to the Iranians what the Saudi’s had already purchased from the Pakistanis in exchange for oil. The US immediately came forward with this information to the Pakistani and Saudi Arabian governments, including the recordings from the luxury yacht as well.
Strangely enough, the Pakistani ISI generals suddenly disappeared without a trace and were replaced within a few days of this disclosure.