State of Pakistan

The Wall Street Journal

November 20, 2009

If it accomplished nothing else, the Obama administration’s announcement last Friday to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan blew the Nidal Hasan murders out of the news. The KSM fiasco deserves all the attention it gets. What Hasan represents, however, is a more immediate concern.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an old-school jihadi. They sit in far-off redoubts, assembling terror teams of foreign nationals who now must figure out how to get themselves and their plot inside the U.S. Not impossible, but harder than before 9/11.

Hasan is new school. He is what’s known as a homegrown terrorist. Virtually all the Islamic terrorist plots thwarted in the U.S. in recent years were homegrown, not designed from afar by a KSM. Read more »

I wrote this article almost two years ago in November 2007. I think it is as relevant today as it was two years ago. Benazir Bhutto, after reading the article,  repeated the theme on December 2, 2007 in Peshawar.  In a major policy departure from her previous stance, she declared that negotiation was the only viable option,. I am posting this article here with a special request for the media. Please read carefully and between the lines!

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By Yousuf Nazar

The statement of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on November 11, 2007 that Pakistan’s unrest could distract its military’s War on Terror is appalling. The people of Pakistan with their country under emergency and thousands of freedom loving lawyers and activists in jail are worried about their country’s future, put at stake due to the blunders of a US-backed military general. They consider the insurgency on their northern frontiers – War on Terror for the US – a disaster brought upon them by a thoughtless American-designed and American-funded military campaign. Senator Joe Biden likens Pakistan to Iran in 1979. Both views appear to lack depth and show inadequate understanding of the issues. War on Terror is not at stake nor is Pakistan Iran of 1979. Pakistan could however become another post-2001 Iraq or God forbid, another, Balkan, if the US continues to use the two-pronged approach of military rule (direct or in disguise with a civilian facade) in Pakistan and military approach to the War on Terror in Afghanistan as a solution.   Read more »