Saudi donors most signifcant source of terrorism funding in Pakistan

[Azadkashmir]

it a triangle folks isreal, usa, saudis work together to destabilize muslim countries that are resisting the triangle hedgmony including rothschild central bank.

any muslim country with the potential to become powerful or has discovered oil , gas etc must be eliminated taken over by saudi backward version of islam or british rothschild islam, so this country never develops, stays backward easily managed by outside forces.

Saudis cant allow another muslim country that has potential to become oil exporter.
look at iran how they both challenging each other it bout oil but they say islam etc this and that.
that why you hear crazy things from saudi clerics with one eye to see, saying things like look kafir kill them kill take thier women as booty mashallah what good muslim you are.

recently they declared iranians as kafirs gog magog etc.
Iran too plays this game but much more sophiscated, the iranians are inteligent and support thier merceneries in number of ways economically, militarulliy, politically, and plays media propaganda. iranian clericas will say oh we are all muslims we shouldnt fight but undercover they increase hedgmony.

petro-dollar islam.

as soon as pakistan citizens start to get angry show hatred towards saudis watch how they will shake in thier boots and try to calm pakistanis with some money charity.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

DAWN

Perhaps there could be no greater sign of the dilemma confronting the Muslim world than the terrorist attack on one of the holiest sanctuaries of Islam.

The militants’ message was clear as Saudi Arabia was rocked by three separate, but apparently coordinated, acts of terrorism on Monday, the most shocking being the suicide blast outside the Prophet’s (PBUH) mosque in Madina, in which four security personnel were killed as they tried to prevent the bomber from entering the precincts. In other incidents, a Shia mosque in the eastern town of Qatif was targeted; details are sketchy about that incident, just as there was initial confusion about the Madina blast.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber had struck outside the US consulate in Jeddah.

The three bombings — with the Madina attack invoking particular revulsion — show that the militants can strike with relative ease across the kingdom. No claims have been made, but the militant Islamic State group is suspected of involvement.

Of course, there is a precedent for such violence in Saudi Arabia’s recent history: in 1979, hundreds of Salafi militants — ideologically on the same wavelength as ISIS and Saudi Arabia — occupied the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah.

That shocking episode ended in a bloody operation as security forces flushed out the militants from the grand mosque.

Clearly, the spirit of the grand mosque assailants has lived on and been reanimated in the form of the modern storm troopers of Islamist militancy.

Monday’s terrorist attacks point to a significant militancy problem in Saudi Arabia. As per official Saudi figures, there have been 26 terrorist attacks over the past two years.

The kingdom had also battled a violent Al Qaeda insurgency over a decade ago. Whether it is ISIS today or Al Qaeda 12 years ago, or the grand mosque assailants even before that, the fact is that militant movements find willing recruits from within Saudi society.

This is, of course, because for decades, the House of Saud has looked the other way as the regime used Salafi jihadists and clerics preaching a narrow sectarian and confrontational ideology.

For example, clerics in the kingdom have urged young Saudis to go abroad — to Syria, to Iraq — to fight other people’s wars, while the state has backed jihadists such as ISIS battling Damascus. Now these radical elements are turning their guns on internal targets.

Pakistan knows the folly of turning a blind eye to radicalism. The Saudis must act now to reverse course, or else considering the deep roots of puritanical jihadist elements within the kingdom, more chaos may well be in the pipeline.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI: Pakistan security forces pounded the camps of Jamaatul Ahrar terrorist group across the border in Afghanistan on Friday night and destroyed four camps and a training compound, military sources said.

The strikes were conducted hours after Afghan Embassy officials were summoned to the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, where they were handed over a list of 76 terrorists orchestrating terrorist activities in Pakistan from the Afghan soil. Pakistan has repeatedly warned the Afghan authorities to prevent the use of their soil for terror activities in Pakistan.

There has so far been no official confirmation regarding the developments from the Pakistani military or government, but informed sources told Geo News that the army targeted Jamaatul Ahrar sanctuaries across the border of Khyber and Mohmand tribal agencies. The camps were situated on the Afghan side of the porous border. The army targeted four terrorist camps in Friday’s strikes, besides destroying a training compound of Jamaatul Ahrar, the sources added.

There have been reports that several militants, including the deputy commander of Jamaatul Ahrar Adil Bacha, were killed in the strikes.

Earlier on Friday, Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa held a telephonic conversation with US General John Nicholson, Commander of Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in Afghanistan, conveying his concerns over continued acts of terrorism in Pakistan from Afghanistan, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement.

“Most of the incidents in Pakistan are claimed by terrorist organisations with leadership hiding in Afghanistan,” General Bajwa told US General John Nicholson.“The COAS said that such terrorist activities and inaction against them are testing our current policy of cross-border restraint,” the ISPR said in a statement.

The US general expressed condolences on loss of precious lives in recent terrorist incidents and assured full assistance in response to General Bajwa’s concerns. The general also shared his plans to undertake special coordination at appropriate level between RSM, Afghan security forces and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the security forces have launched full-scale track down against terrorists after recent spate of terror attacks in the country and killed over a 100 terrorists as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asked the security forces to eliminate the terrorists by hunting them down inside and outside the country.

The Sindh Rangers and Police, during their separate encounters, gunned down 27 terrorists belonging to banned outfits, including Daesh, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Jamaatul Ahrar.

Spokesman for the Sindh Rangers said that in the early hours of Friday, soldiers returning from Lal Shahbaz Qalander's shrine from security duty were attacked on the Super Highway by armed terrorists. One soldier was injured in the attack.

The paramilitary force took positions and had an encounter with the terrorists. In the retaliatory firing by the Rangers, seven terrorists were killed. The Rangers also recovered sophisticated weapons from them. The encounter with the terrorists continued for 35 minutes.

The spokesman added that of the killed terrorists, three were identified while the identity of the remaining four was yet to be ascertained. The killed terrorists belonged to banned Daesh Mufti Abu Zar Burmi group. The killed terrorists were identified as Yaseen alias Chootu, who was the Naib Ameer of the group, and remained involved in target killings on religious and ethnic grounds and also led a chain of killers. Moreover, in 2012-13 he remained involved in sectarian killings. The second accused was Mohammed Arshad alias Noor Alam alias Shoaib who also remained involved in bomb blasts and sectarian killings. Another killed terrorist was identified as Hidayatullah who took training from Miranshah, and remained involved in target killings.

While the paramilitary force was busy in gathering information about the killed terrorists, they received intelligence-based information about the presence of terrorists in the Manghopir area. Thus in the wee hours of Friday, they conducted a raid at the prescribed location.

On seeing the paramilitary force, the terrorists resorted to firing and an encounter took place that lasted for more than an hour. The Rangers, after a brief encounter, gunned down 11 terrorists and during the search of their hideout, recovered a huge cache of weapons and explosives.

The spokesman added that the killed terrorists belonged to the banned LeJ and Jamaatul Ahrar. On the other hand, District Malir police during their Friday evening shootout gunned down nine terrorists, including a bomber.

SSP Rao Anwar said that he was informed that members of a banned outfit were present inside a house situated in the Northern Bypass area. Acting on information, he along with his staff carried out a raid. On seeing the police, the terrorists opened fire which was retaliated and an encounter took place. The police after a brief encounter killed nine terrorists.

SSP Rao Anwar said that one of the killed terrorists was a bomber who was later identified as Razee and according to source report, they were planning to carry out an attack upon the Rangers headquarters. He added that they have also recovered an MP-5, which was recently snatched by the terrorists during an attack on policemen in Karachi.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

The chief suspect behind Sehwan suicide bombing is reported to be involved in several other such attacks in Sindh.

The blast in Sehwan killed at least 88 precious lives last week and has been on of the deadliest attacks of Pakistan.

Other attacks in which suspect is involved, include a suicide attack in 2015 at an Imam Bargah in Shikarpur which killed 61.

The name of suspect is Abdul Hafeez Pandrani and he is a resident of Abdul Khaliq Pandrani village of district Shikarpur.

During the investigation, it has been found that he is the leader of the Hafeez Brohi group affiliated with the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) but now is reported to have joined Daesh.

Police and intelligence agencies suspect Pandrani to be the mastermind of the recent bombing. He is also alleged to be involved in several high-profile terrorist attacks in interior Sindh.

Pandrani, who belongs to the Brohi tribe, is named in the seventh edition of Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), Sindh, Red Book. The 35-year-old most-wanted terrorist, whose details are mentioned on page number 57 of the Red Book, is affiliated with banned LeJ.

He was also the key contact of LeJ Chief Asif Chotu, who was killed in an alleged encounter with CTD Punjab on January 18, this year. Chotu and Pandrani were responsible for carrying out deadly attacks in Shikarpur and other parts of interior Sindh.

Pandrani’s name also came up in the suicide bombing inside the Imam Bargah Karbala-e-Mualla of Lakkhi Dar, Shikarpur, on January 30, 2015, which killed 61.

CTD Sindh arrested a suspect, identified as Khalil Ahmed, for facilitating the attack. According to the interrogation report of Ahmed, a copy of which is available with Geo.tv, Pandrani provided him with a cart for the reconnaissance of Karbala-e-Muallah’s surroundings.

Ahmed also confessed to the interrogators that the suicide bomber, Ilyas, stayed in Pandrani’s village. Upon Pandrani’s instruction, Ahmed dropped the suicide bomber and another facilitator, Rahim, near the Imam bargah. Later, Ilyas blew himself up killing 61 people who were offering Friday prayers.

Pandrani also played an integral role in the failed terrorist attack during Eid-ul-Azha prayers in Shikarpur, last year.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

ISLAMABAD: A Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter group on Wednesday confirmed a Pakistani militant accused of involvement in attacks on GHQ and Sri Lanka’s cricket team in 2009 was killed in a US drone strike.

The unmanned US aircraft targeted a car carrying Qari Mohammad Yasin, also known as Ustad Aslam, on Sunday in the southwestern Afghan province of Paktika bordering Pakistan. Qari Yaseen who was the top commander of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was killed in a US drone, the outlawed TTP Jamaat ul Ahrar group said.

TTP JA spokesperson Asad Mansoor in a statement also confirmed Yaseen was the mastermind of the attacks on GHQ and Sri Lankan team in 2009. The TTP JA spokesperson described Yaseen as the “best adviser, trainer and teacher” among the militants, who was organising most of the attacks in Punjab.

Yaseen is the second senior LeJ leader to be killed in Afghanistan in six months. Qari Ajmal, another senior leader of the LeJ, wanted for organising the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team was killed in October 2016.

Security officials insist that like many others, senior LeJ commanders have reportedly crossed into Afghanistan following military operations in tribal regions of the country. Most of the LeJ commanders are thought to be living in Paktika province with TTP Mehsud factions.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

DAWN

AFTER a succession of army chiefs reluctant to hand over the baton of command, we saw Gen Raheel Sharif retire right on schedule last November — only to un-retire, as we now know, to lead the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT). The name brings to mind the scimitars of yore.

And with reason: IMAFT is the brainchild of Saudi Arabia or, to be more exact, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is, in order of importance, son of King Salman, deputy crown prince, defence minister, chief of the royal court, and chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs. He is also 31 years old; around the time Raheel Sharif was commanding an infantry brigade, the prince — as per Saudi paper Al Jazirah — was in tenth grade.

That’s not to say the prince’s age should be held against him, but his rise at home has coincided with the kingdom’s fall abroad. While its arch-enemy Iran props up allies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is beset with its own woes, courtesy low oil prices and riotous spending.

That’s where this grand alliance comes in: the House of Saud may be rattled, but it’s putting its best foot forward. Unveiled by the prince in 2015, IMAFT aims to fight the militant Islamic State group in particular and ‘global terrorism’ in general. And by offering Raheel Sharif its command, the Saudis have pulled off a coup (pun unintended); the man led a stunning turnaround in Pakistan’s war, the largest inland counterinsurgency in the world. In many ways, he is IMAFT’s redeemer – which marks the start of everything that’s wrong with this picture.

He may be the right general, but this is the wrong alliance.
To turn to the issues at hand, there’s Iran first and foremost. Doubtless, ever since the revolution, Pak-Iran ties have been testy. The ayatollahs are every bit as complicit in sectarian high jinks as Riyadh: backing the ghastly Assads, remote-controlling Hezbollah and massing militias for Baghdad.

But it is also our neighbour, a partial cure for our gas woes and, as Western sanctions are lifted, a trade partner with a future. To embrace an alliance that excludes Iran, Iraq, and Syria is a political message wrapped in a sectarian bow. Pakistan’s success is defined by its neutrality: a parliamentary democracy siding with neither Sunni kings nor Shia theocrats.

Second, a Saudi vanity project is the wrong vehicle to be fighting ISIS and affiliates anyway. As Kamel Daoud puts it, “Daesh [IS] has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex.” The kingdom may make the right noises, but it refuses to go after the radical Salafist trends it has encouraged for decades. The Saudi financiers privately bankroll bandits abroad, and will continue to create other Daeshes.

Third, why fight Zarqawi’s boys at all? IS of Iraq and the Levant is not Pakistan’s problem: its Pakistani chapter, ISIS-Khorasan Province, is. It claimed responsibility for murdering Ismailis in Karachi’s Safoora Goth, massacring lawyers in Quetta, and bombing the Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar. That Islamabad has ‘approved’ its ex-chief fighting ISIS abroad, when it can’t even acknowledge the group’s presence at home, is distressing.

Fourth, that very approval — floating an NOC without parliamentary involvement — points to unease on both sides of the aisle. The appointment has already been opposed by Safron minister retired Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch and PTI chairman Imran Khan alike.

Lastly, what else are we getting ourselves into? Will it involve Yemen, a string of war crimes? Will it involve Syria’s slaughterhouses? The Middle East is the one place on Earth more complicated than ours, yet we’re bent on learning that the hard way.

Take Jordan: we’re told that, had then brigadier Ziaul Haq not quashed Black September, King Hussein might not have survived 1970. But the conflict is a perfect example of how nothing can be isolated in the region — PLO fighters fleeing Jordan streamed into Lebanon, which led to civil war (and the birth of Hezbollah). In Syria, the humiliation made the elder Assad launch a coup, installing mass murderers in Damascus for half a century. As one gentleman put it, “Everything is connected to everything else.”

Then, as now, the region is a powder keg soaked in petrol: what we sow there, we shall reap here — once we’re done with the entire Afghanistan-reaping first.

Raheel Sharif retired as the most successful army chief in a generation because he fought the right war for the right reasons. We still have much to learn from him. He should remain in the country he rescued rather than be reminded of why it needed rescuing in the first place.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Reuters

Laskhar e Jhangvi has emerged as the bloodiest and most ruthless anti-Shia outfit in Pakistan, which has seen a rise in sectarian attacks in recent years, mostly targeting Shias, who make up 20 per cent of the population.
“We are investigating the LJ connection behind the Ismaili attack and one of the arrested suspects is linked to LJ,” a security official involved in the probe told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“LJ wanted to gain attention of IS for its financial needs and the attack on Ismailis provided the perfect choice as it got international attention."

Returning fighters

Senior intelligence officials and militant sources say LJ cadres have fought in Syria and returned inspired by ISIS, which has won global notoriety for its brutality and slick propaganda operation.The returned fighters are working with a new generation of middle-class, educated, self-radicalised 'jihadists' to try to raise the black flag of the ISIS “caliphate” in Pakistan.

An intelligence officer who has tracked LJ for years said the group, based in the southern part of Punjab, had sent hundreds of fighters to Syria.“The new cadre of militants going to Syria and Iraq, these militants are mostly educated people with middle-class backgrounds,” the intelligence officer told AFP.
Over the past decade the patchwork of militant groups that make up the Pakistani Taliban have largely focused on waging a domestic campaign against the government and armed forces.

But a former LJ militant who produces online propaganda material for terror groups said for young militants in Pakistan, all the talk now is of ISIS and the Middle East.“Many jihadists particularly from Punjab went to fight in Syria and some died,” he said.

“Unlike the past, news from Syria, Iraq and Yemen is the most debated and shared item on extremist-militant forums in Pakistan." Security analyst Amir Rana said. LJ had fighters in Iraq since 2013, and even set up a training camp there.“The Salafi ideological and operational association between Pakistani militant groups and ISIS is not new, Pakistani militants were part of ISIS since its inception,” he told AFP.

“The actual threat for Pakistan is the return of LJ militants fighting in Iraq and Syria, as they would add to the sectarian violence here."

Silent surge

LJ, founded in 1996, a militant arm of ASWJ (formerly known as Sipah Sahaba), has been behind some of the worst attacks on Shias in Pakistan's history, including two huge bombings in the southwestern city of Quetta in 2013 that together killed nearly 200 people.

The security official said the group was now seeking to expand its operations.
“LJ is growing from an anti-Shia organisation to an organisation with trans-national interests,” he said.The group has been accused of carrying out attacks in Afghanistan and has also begun targeting Sunni Barelvis, Christians, Hindus and other Muslim sects.

“For the last two years, there is evidence that the organisation is involved in attacking minorities in urban centres where they have established strong bases, especially in Karachi,” he said.“But LJ has claimed responsibility for hardly any of those incidents — usually militant organisations with no structural or organisational existence have claimed responsibility for attacks carried out by LJ,” he added.

He said LJ maintained a strict cellular structure, with individuals in one unit unaware of the existence of others, and sometimes drew militants from other groups for specific missions.

According to a Reuters report, the LeJ by 2004 had became a powerful terrorist organization with increasing support from Al Qaeda. The new, never-before-known expertise of LeJ cadres proficient in bomb-making and suicide bombings came from the same source. With time, the LeJ had established its contacts with extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas (FATA). The new ‘friends’ were mainly Uzbek, belonging to the notorious Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who had taken refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas as US operations in Afghanistan continued.

With the formation of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007, many of the LeJ’s factions started operating in urban areas under its umbrella. The rise of an insurgency in FATA and a sudden increase in terrorist attacks all over Pakistan proved to be very beneficial for the LeJ as the main concentration of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) was diverted towards fighting the more powerful rebellion of the TTP. The LeJ’s undeclared alliance with the TTP came to limelight when the responsibility for 2008 Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad was claimed by the TTP.

When TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in 2009, Hakimullah Mehsud took over. He is credited with forming a proper alliance with the LeJ. Under his command, the TTP began targeting minority sects in tribal areas and claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on Shias. But the major joint terror strike by the TTP and LeJ was witnessed in 2009 which was a first-of-its-kind and took the entire nation by surprise.

It was the siege of Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters or the GHQ in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. 5 out of 10 terrorists who stormed the GHQ belonged to Punjab-based extremist organisations, mainly the LeJ; the other 5 belonged to the TTP. A successful special forces hostage rescue operation ended the siege, but resulted in the martyrdom of two SSG commandos and two civilians.

THE SAUDI CONNECTION

In the Punjab town of Jhang, LeJ’s birthplace, SSP/ASWJ leader Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi describes what he says are Tehran’s grand designs. Iranian consular offices and cultural centers, he alleges, are actually a front for its intelligence agencies.

“If Iranian interference continues it will destroy this country,” said Ludhianvi in an interview in his home. The state provides him with armed guards, fearful any harm done to him could trigger sectarian bloodletting.

Ludhianvi insisted he was just a politician. “I would like to tell you that I am not a murderer, I am not a killer, I am not a terrorist. We are a political party.”

After a meal of chicken, curry and spinach, Ludhianvi and his aides stood up to warmly welcome a visitor: Saudi Arabia-based cleric Malik Abdul Haq al-Meqqi.

A Pakistani cleric knowledgeable about Sunni groups described Meqqi as a middleman between Saudi donors and intelligence agencies and the LeJ, the ASWJ and other groups.

“Of course, Saudi Arabia supports these groups. They want to keep Iranian influence in check in Pakistan, so they pay,” the Pakistani cleric said. His account squared with that of a Pakistani intelligence agent, who said jailed militants had confessed that LeJ received Saudi funding.

 

[salarsikander]

And yet ISI and MI doesn't know about this ??

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Fareed Zakaria
Washington Post

This week’s bombing in Manchester, England, was another gruesome reminder that the threat from radical Islamist terrorism is ongoing. And President Trump’s journey to the Middle East illustrated yet again how the country central to the spread of this terrorism, Saudi Arabia, has managed to evade and deflect any responsibility for it. In fact, Trump has given Saudi Arabia a free pass and a free hand in the region.

The facts are well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19  9/11 terrorists.

And we know, via a leaked email from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Salafi groups in the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group of foreign fighters in ISIS and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

ISIS draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi/Salafi version of Islam. As the former imam of the kingdom’s Grand Mosque said last year, ISIS “exploited our own principles, that can be found in our books. . . . We follow the same thought but apply it in a refined way.” Until the Islamic State could write its own textbooks for its schools, it adopted the Saudi curriculum as its own.

Saudi money is now transforming European Islam. Leaked German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques, schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant Salafist version of Islam throughout Germany.

In Kosovo, the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall describes the process by which a 500-year-old tradition of moderate Islam is being destroyed. “From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Shariah law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam. . . . Charitable assistance often had conditions attached.

Saudi Arabia’s government has begun to slow many of its most egregious practices. It is now being run, de facto, by a young, intelligent reformer, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who appears to be refreshingly pragmatic, in the style of Dubai’s visionary leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. But so far the Saudi reforms have mostly translated into better economic policy for the kingdom, not a break with its powerful religious establishment.

Trump’s speech on Islam was nuanced and showed empathy for the Muslim victims of jihadist terrorism (who make up as much as 95 percent of the total, by one estimate). He seemed to zero in on the problem when he said, “No discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists . . . safe harbor, financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment.”

But Trump was talking not of his host, Saudi Arabia, but rather of Iran. Now, to be clear, Iran has its geopolitical agenda in the Middle East and supports some very bad actors. But it is wildly inaccurate to describe it as the source of jihadist terror. According to an analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by Leif Wenar of King’s College London, more than 94 percent of deaths caused by Islamic terrorism since 2001 were perpetrated by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other Salafi jihadists. Iran is fighting those groups, not fueling them. Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.

Trump has adopted the Saudi line on terrorism, which deflects any blame from the kingdom and redirects it toward Iran. The Saudis showered Trump’s inexperienced negotiators with attention, arms deals and donations.

The United States has now signed up for Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy — a relentless series of battles against Shiites and their allies throughout the Middle East. That will enmesh Washington in a never-ending sectarian struggle, fuel regional instability and complicate its ties with countries such as Iraq that want good relations with both sides. But most important, it will do nothing to address the direct and ongoing threat to Americans —Salafi jihadist terrorism. I thought that Trump’s foreign policy was going to put America first, not Saudi Arabia.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Asad Rahim

AS we all now know — despite the best efforts of the mainstream press — twin blasts tore through Parachinar recently, killing scores. Parachinar in turn proved to be part of a hideous week that saw attacks on police in Quetta and Karachi, and a massive oil tanker disaster in Bahawalpur.

And though desperation followed disaster, no one was listening. Long deaf toward any province that’s not Punjab (and within Punjab, any place that’s not Lahore), the Muslim League has — even by its own high standards — stuffed quality cotton wool in its ears.

It began as badly as it ended: the prime minister left London to rush to Bahawalpur. The naysayers were unimpressed: prior attacks in Fata and two other provinces didn’t shatter his complacency, so why this? We hoped he would prove them wrong.

Instead the naysayers were proven right. Bahawalpur is part of Punjab. Parachinar is not. Quetta is not. Karachi is not. As of this writing, the prime minister has visited one of the above, and none else.

It seems all lives are equal, but some are more equal than others.

The same can’t be said for his rivals. When it comes to Parachinar, the PPP may be credited with trying and failing; the PTI for trying and succeeding. But the ruling party can’t be credited with anything at all, because it never tried in the first place.

What it did do made matters worse: announcing a million rupees for the family of each martyr — half of what was pledged to the Bahawalpur families already. When it comes to compensation, the prime minister may have been paraphrasing Orwell: all lives are equal; some are just more equal than others.

Even otherwise, chopper rides and compensation packages weren’t about to cut it in Fata (just as Bahawalpur’s millions were no substitute for burn units). Had Nero been more skilled at playing the lyre, Rome would still have burned.

It would be best to turn to the root causes instead: sectarianism being the first. We’re told sectarians aren’t terrorists or — more recently — that terrorism isn’t sectarian. We read a circular to that effect by the military and, before that, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar told the Senate that sectarian outfits shouldn’t be equated with terror groups — besides, the Shia-Sunni war had been raging for 1,300 years anyway. No and no, actually. We know sectarianism is terrorism because the law says so. Section 6(c) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, literally defines terrorism as “the use or threat [of action…] made for the purpose of advancing a religious, sectarian or ethnic cause”. Equally ironic is the fact that the ATA was brought in by the same Muslim League 20 years ago, to combat a wave of sectarian attacks in the wake of the Mehram Ali bombings.

As to the myth of the 1,300-year Shia-Sunni war, the minister would be better off reading journalist Murtaza Hussain: Sunnis and Shias have lived together in peace “to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the world”, as centuries of coexistence (between the Ottomans and Safavids to name one example) stand testament.

We now turn to the actual nature of state failure in Parachinar, and setting things right.

First, having endured everything from jihadi training grounds to Taliban sieges, Parachinar needs to be construed less as a boxing ring for Afghanistan-related hijinks than as a part of Pakistan proper.

Second, decades of inertia towards sectarian militants in Kurram Agency have now culminated in 2017, with the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and its affiliates attacking Parachinar in January, March, and June. It’s now or never.

Third, Saudi financiers allegedly continue to fund these maniacs, while Pakistan’s lending its former army chief to Riyadh has done us few favours. That funding must be cut, and Raheel Sharif must return.

Fourth, there are reports that Iran is knee-deep in Parachinar, recruiting Shia locals for Syria via its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That Pakistani citizens be used as cannon fodder for the Assads is intolerable.

Fifth, those demanding clampdowns on social media — against those rightly calling this attack sectarian — would best read Jahanzaib Haque and Omer Bashir’s investigative report in this paper instead, and go after the actual offenders.