11-25-2005, 01:22 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>West propelled jihadi factories </b>
Pioneer.com
The Abu Salem case in Portugal and riots in France are facets of a colonial mindset which feed subversives all over the world, says Cecil Victor
The Portuguese caveat on the death penalty for Abu Salem and the genesis of the riots in France are facets of a coin that are a throwback to a colonial mindset which its present-day practitioners do not appear to want to shed - thereby feeding criminalisation and terrorism around the globe.
It is being made out that it was India's 'sovereign' decision to give an undertaking to Portugal that the death penalty would not be sought for Abu Salem for planning and executing the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, killing several hundred persons. But the brutal fact is that India was coerced into the undertaking out of fear of a rejection of its extradition treaty. It was nothing but a blatant exercise by Portugal of the concept of 'limited sovereignty', which itself is a defensive reaction to a rollback of colonialism by a resurgent nationalism.
That Portugal should impose the caveat even in the face of the simultaneous massive terrorist attack on the railway network in neighbouring Spain on the Iberian peninsula underscores the insensitivity to the cause and effect of international terrorism, even as the former colonial power's mouth - what are increasingly being seen to be inane - claims to fighting terrorism.
The horrendous French experience of widespread riots across the country is a legacy of French colonialism forced into retreat by Arab nationalism in North Africa. It forced Charles de Gaulle to quit Africa decades ago, but the pejorative 'Beurs' were chickens that came home to roost as campfollowers of the 'French Foreign Legion'. The current generation is the children of those who collaborated with the French in the north African wars. It should be no great surprise that they came to believe in French promises of 'egalite' and have now revolted at being pushed to the fringe of French society.
Signs of French intolerance of these alien cultures that had pushed roots into its soil were in abundance in recent times in the insistence on bans on religious symbols that accentuated their difference. Integration was only marginal and suburbanised.
Whether it is a 'clash of cultures' or a 'clash of civilisations' is as yet debatable, but the effect is frightening. And, India has been the victim of both the terror of colonialism as well as of terror as a tool of neo-fundamentalism engendered by a resurgent colonialism. The two-nation theory first implemented by the British in Ireland and Palestine was launched on the subcontinent, and its lasting effect lies in the graduated exercise of its inherent fundamentalism. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan became occasion to ratchet upwards Islamic fundamentalism, of which there was an existing reservoir in Pakistan.
It paid dividends in forcing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but the vacuum in Afghanistan was sought to be filled by a motley group of fundamentalists divided in their tribal loyalties and unable to remove that thorn in their flesh - the Lion of Panjshir, Ahmed Shah Masood.
Perceiving that its 'strategic depth' was pocked with inconsistencies, Pakistan decided to go whole hog. It trained a special breed of Islamic fundamentalists in its madarsas, and fed them on jihad and the promise of a score of 'houris' in heaven in the afterlife. Thus was born the modern suicide killer. As a weapon of first resort (the second being conventional arms as in Kargil backed by the threat of first use of nuclear weapons as the last resort), the Taliban won Afghanistan for Pakistan while the world was looking elsewhere.
Afghanistan became the crucible for the International Jihad Council and the emergence of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the nucleus of a worldwide network of Islamic fundamentalists with cravings for the Caliphate. This bloodthirsty horde was supported by the logistical network of the Pakistan Army's ISI and generous helpings of petrodollars from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world.
Because this network helped the Western world to undermine the Soviet Union, it turned a blind eye to Pakistan's activities till the US itself was attacked on 9/11. But the lesson is only half-learned. The Iraq misadventure was launched on false evidence and pernicious perceptions seeded with the same germs as in Ireland, Palestine, the Indian subcontinent, the Soviet Union, etc. The dragon seed of Islamist fundamentalism was dispersed more widely than ever, and the coalition forces in Iraq became magnets for the maggots.
The infection, far from being controlled, is spreading. Britain was infected, so is Europe. Suddenly, far-away Australia has discovered that its ocean-bound cocoon is no longer a safe haven. It was, it must be admitted, alert to the danger and managed to stop a murderous module of terrorists from attacking their mainland. Apparently, they have learned something from their Bali experience. Not so Jordan, which has just got a lesson in geopolitics of the kind that was Lebanon of the 1970s.
The malaise will burgeon and bloom if efforts continue to undermine, as through the Portuguese and European Union demarches, statal institutions like the judiciary and the armed forces of nations that are the target of external aggression through clandestine means.
More particularly so, if it is laced with dishonesty as in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the myriad of mini concentration camps that have been set up in newly independent nations that were, during their coalition within the Soviet bloc, accused of just these same kinds of crimes against humanity.
ADNI
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Pioneer.com
The Abu Salem case in Portugal and riots in France are facets of a colonial mindset which feed subversives all over the world, says Cecil Victor
The Portuguese caveat on the death penalty for Abu Salem and the genesis of the riots in France are facets of a coin that are a throwback to a colonial mindset which its present-day practitioners do not appear to want to shed - thereby feeding criminalisation and terrorism around the globe.
It is being made out that it was India's 'sovereign' decision to give an undertaking to Portugal that the death penalty would not be sought for Abu Salem for planning and executing the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, killing several hundred persons. But the brutal fact is that India was coerced into the undertaking out of fear of a rejection of its extradition treaty. It was nothing but a blatant exercise by Portugal of the concept of 'limited sovereignty', which itself is a defensive reaction to a rollback of colonialism by a resurgent nationalism.
That Portugal should impose the caveat even in the face of the simultaneous massive terrorist attack on the railway network in neighbouring Spain on the Iberian peninsula underscores the insensitivity to the cause and effect of international terrorism, even as the former colonial power's mouth - what are increasingly being seen to be inane - claims to fighting terrorism.
The horrendous French experience of widespread riots across the country is a legacy of French colonialism forced into retreat by Arab nationalism in North Africa. It forced Charles de Gaulle to quit Africa decades ago, but the pejorative 'Beurs' were chickens that came home to roost as campfollowers of the 'French Foreign Legion'. The current generation is the children of those who collaborated with the French in the north African wars. It should be no great surprise that they came to believe in French promises of 'egalite' and have now revolted at being pushed to the fringe of French society.
Signs of French intolerance of these alien cultures that had pushed roots into its soil were in abundance in recent times in the insistence on bans on religious symbols that accentuated their difference. Integration was only marginal and suburbanised.
Whether it is a 'clash of cultures' or a 'clash of civilisations' is as yet debatable, but the effect is frightening. And, India has been the victim of both the terror of colonialism as well as of terror as a tool of neo-fundamentalism engendered by a resurgent colonialism. The two-nation theory first implemented by the British in Ireland and Palestine was launched on the subcontinent, and its lasting effect lies in the graduated exercise of its inherent fundamentalism. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan became occasion to ratchet upwards Islamic fundamentalism, of which there was an existing reservoir in Pakistan.
It paid dividends in forcing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but the vacuum in Afghanistan was sought to be filled by a motley group of fundamentalists divided in their tribal loyalties and unable to remove that thorn in their flesh - the Lion of Panjshir, Ahmed Shah Masood.
Perceiving that its 'strategic depth' was pocked with inconsistencies, Pakistan decided to go whole hog. It trained a special breed of Islamic fundamentalists in its madarsas, and fed them on jihad and the promise of a score of 'houris' in heaven in the afterlife. Thus was born the modern suicide killer. As a weapon of first resort (the second being conventional arms as in Kargil backed by the threat of first use of nuclear weapons as the last resort), the Taliban won Afghanistan for Pakistan while the world was looking elsewhere.
Afghanistan became the crucible for the International Jihad Council and the emergence of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the nucleus of a worldwide network of Islamic fundamentalists with cravings for the Caliphate. This bloodthirsty horde was supported by the logistical network of the Pakistan Army's ISI and generous helpings of petrodollars from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world.
Because this network helped the Western world to undermine the Soviet Union, it turned a blind eye to Pakistan's activities till the US itself was attacked on 9/11. But the lesson is only half-learned. The Iraq misadventure was launched on false evidence and pernicious perceptions seeded with the same germs as in Ireland, Palestine, the Indian subcontinent, the Soviet Union, etc. The dragon seed of Islamist fundamentalism was dispersed more widely than ever, and the coalition forces in Iraq became magnets for the maggots.
The infection, far from being controlled, is spreading. Britain was infected, so is Europe. Suddenly, far-away Australia has discovered that its ocean-bound cocoon is no longer a safe haven. It was, it must be admitted, alert to the danger and managed to stop a murderous module of terrorists from attacking their mainland. Apparently, they have learned something from their Bali experience. Not so Jordan, which has just got a lesson in geopolitics of the kind that was Lebanon of the 1970s.
The malaise will burgeon and bloom if efforts continue to undermine, as through the Portuguese and European Union demarches, statal institutions like the judiciary and the armed forces of nations that are the target of external aggression through clandestine means.
More particularly so, if it is laced with dishonesty as in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the myriad of mini concentration camps that have been set up in newly independent nations that were, during their coalition within the Soviet bloc, accused of just these same kinds of crimes against humanity.
ADNI
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