Articles of the year 2007

Today I know the anger the Americans felt when the Daniel Pearl murder was discovered.. The fury, the desire for cold revenge, I have felt it all. For when the gruesome Al Qaida tape was aired on a Pakistani channel, showing the decapitation of the Pakistani Soldier by a 14 year old child, being egged on by his handler dressed as a pious Mullah, turned my stomach. The executioner coolly swinging the sword, a scrawny, only just teenager, waiting for the command, had me riveted. The victim, head bowed, was not a rapist, or murderer, sentenced to death for a specific crime, but a regular soldier, a Pakistani from a poor background, who had joined the Pakistan Army, as it is a career with a future. Yes death is a risk, but in the Army the risks have been minimized. And so we have never really wondered for these youths, for the life they lead, it is rough, but certainly more comfortable than the siblings left behind. I am sure he did not truly understand what crime he had committed, nor did the executioner truly understand the enormity of his action, or the irrelevance to the Islam that is our religion, he has been weaned on a diet of hatred financed by Arab money, this is the great game now in its 200th year.

The monster Jehad now Qaeda initially created by the CIA and the Pakistan Army, now has no Body, and the controllers are as nebulous as Spectre in the Bond books, but their strategy and troop combat manouvers could teach West Point and Sandhurst a thing or two, and it certainly looks as if they are winning in Iraq. They have not yet shifted their focus, but we should realize that we are now the Faranghi, with the rank of enemy. The US and Pakistan Soldiers are easily identifiable, in their uniforms, but the Qaeda troops are dressed as civilians, the same as our populous, with the one major difference they are deadly, and expert killers.

Musharraf should order an immediate blockade of the entire area, no food no water nothing; Nothing, till they deliver the men who committed this atrocity. The damage they have done to our Army cannot be minimalized. 19 of our soldiers at the mercy of a rag tag bunch of scruffians. The Cobra gunships should be used to lay waste to the entire area...Some people are suggesting that they should be Nuked, (Just shows that we also have extreme radical elements, who think irrationally) but it would be such a waste,-- the positive side would be that the areas would be uninhabitable for 500 years,---- which is not such a bad idea. I am sure every Pakistani must be fuming, and looking for revenge. I am sure of one thing, a couple of more attacks on similar lines, and a beard will be hard to find. For the blind rage of the crowds will focus on the new enemy--- the Beard. Maybe the Army should target the beards within their ranks, and have a new oath to swear on, and obey.

We need for the Army to apply the new relationship with the Qaeda units. For the attack on a Pakistani Jawan will go a long way to establish the new agenda of the Alqaeda for every one to see. No longer should the US assume or imply that the Army is not doing its best, especially after the 5 min tape showing the gruesome scenes of decapitations that bear disgusting testimony to the suffering of our soldiers aired on our TV.

At this point, we the people, are truly fed up with the harangues being blared fromall the mosques, exhorting us, to root out from amongst us, the unfaithful and the impure. I am hoping that the Army will use this video to show their Jawans that the attacks on the Jawan, and the decapitation is showing that the Mullah that addresses them daily has a very dangerous, and now deadly, fallout, so that what can start as an innocent sermon can eventually be twisted into a vicious rant with fatal consequences.What is just as alarming is the silence from any quarter on the video released by the, none of the political parties has chosen to comment, neither has the ISPR. Surely this matter is too important to ignore, and the silence in itself sends dangerous signals. This savage brutality should be highlighted, and an angry response from the right quarters that indeed the matter is under the urgent attention of the best, and most competent persons available.—not just silence.