The Enemy of My Enemy is???

Posted on by

How do you solve a problem like Maria Musharraf? It’s so dang hard to figure out what we should (much less can ) do with him. Lets be clear, by nearly any measure, he sounds like a pretty awful leader. And yet, perhaps he’s a Stalin in our conflicted time — someone we’d otherwise hate but whom other, more pressing international circumstances force us to extend a bit more, uh, courtesy than we’d like. If his umpteen missteps have brought us to the verge of actively “regime changing” him (a great read, BTW!), then perhaps this latest diatribe from the Hitler of our time (no, not Bush, sheesh) wins Mushie back a few more points –

Not in the Musharraf Fan Club Either

I talk to you today on the occasion of the criminal aggression carried out by Musharraf, his army and his security organs – the Crusaders’ hunting dogs – against Lal Masjid in Islamabad, and on the occasion of the dirty, despicable crime committed by Pakistani military intelligence – at the orders of Musharraf – against Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi when it showed him on television in women’s dress.

This is a message of blinding clarity to the Muslims in Pakistan, the Pakistani Ulema, and indeed, the Ulema in the rest of the Islamic world, and this crime can only be washed away by repentance or blood. I call on the Ulema in Pakistan and tell them: this is what you are worth to Musharraf, and this is the treatment that awaits you in the prisons of Musharraf’s hunting dogs, and this is what you are worth to the Crusaders. Musharraf and his hunting dogs have rubbed your honor in the dirt in the service of the Crusaders and the Jews, and if you don’t retaliate for your honor, Musharraf won’t spare any of you, and won’t stop until he eradicates Islam from Pakistan. Lowly Musharraf, who has sold his honor and religion to the Crusaders and Jews, is arrogant with you in the extreme and regards you with the utmost contempt, and treats you like animals and dogs, and only is satisfied by portraying you in the lowliest and most despicable light.

This is an eloquent message [from Musharraf] to every scholar and every free and honorable person in Pakistan: that resisting Musharraf, confronting him and demanding that he adhere to Islam and refrain from worshiping the Crusaders and Jews will only get you the worst types of contempt, humiliation and degradation.

Of his litany of complaints, it’s almost comical that perp-walking Ghazi on TV in a dress ranks quite so highly. Perhaps there’s some insight here into the Honor/Shame dynamic commentators have noted in the shadowy corners of Arab society that breed Zawahiris…. Whatever the case, if the other guys think he’s out to destroy Islamism, then perhaps there’s another twist to this Gordian Knot. A tough problem to solve indeed.

73 thoughts on “The Enemy of My Enemy is???”

  2. The Enemy of My Enemy is???

    Umm.. by that logic, the US should support the Shia militants in Iraq. Oh wait! But that could never backfire.

    As for Pakistan, all the articles I’ve seen and the Pakistanis I’ve spoken to believe that the Islamic fundamentalists are a minority, although a vocal one, and do not have much popular support. This was manifested in the Lal Masjid incident too, with a lot of the Pakistan press mocking the captured cleric in drag as “Auntie Aziz”. I think the U.S leaders have finally, in the past few months, come to the belated realization that Musharraf has been exaggerating the threat of militant control of Pakistan to make him seem like an excellent choice. Plus, keeping the mess in NWFP alive makes sure that there is no reduction in the constant flow of dollars from the US to help fight terrorism. Sort of, like a government contract – the worst thing you can do is to actually deliver on time, when you are being paid cost plus.

    Musharraf’s hold on power has become more tenuous due to the Justice Chaudhary incident, and he has been responding in increasingly dictatorial fashion closing down TV stations, and clamping down severely on newspapers. I really don’t think Zawahiri is a good way to decide public policy. That way, the Iraq war is one of the most brilliant ideas in recent years.

  4. One thing good that has emerged from this episode is that it has to an extent sanctioned military intervention in places of worship to fight extremism. Fingers crossed such situations will not recur (who am I kiddin’) but if they do in places like India hopefully the outcry against defilement will be tempered.

  5. One thing good that has emerged from this episode is that it has to an extent sanctioned military intervention in places of worship to fight extremism. Fingers crossed such situations will not recur (who am I kiddin’) but if they do in places like India hopefully the outcry against defilement will be tempered.

    I just remembered, didn’t commandos storm the Akshardham temple?

  6. That region is getting more and more dangerous but maybe Mushy’s bold move will pay off in two ways (a) get accolades and constant supply of money from the west by showing that he can be firm with fundamentalists (b) by making the country chaotic he can survive beyond Oct 2007

  7. Ghazi is taking this way too hard. He should take a cue from the famous B-movie director Ed Wood who was completely hetero and fought at Guadalcanal with a bra and panties under his uniform

    I think ASATA should send a counsellor over there to Pakistan to counsel Ghazi and advise him of the difference between non-sexual transvetism and transexualism before he develops some permanent neuroses

  8. I just remembered, didn’t commandos storm the Akshardham temple?

    Dude, in that situation it was Muslims causing the trouble too. But in a religious place not even of their own religion.

  9. Fair enough, Amitabh. It came to mind because I don’t remember there being any hand-wringing at all about the army entering the temple, though. But you’re right, it wasn’t the most important aspect of that incident.

    We do know what the government will do when a Hindu army marches on a mosque? I guess the real question is if Togadia and co. hide behind the murti with their trishuls.. what will the army do then?

  10. Rahul, you remember the hazratbaal incident, and the golden temple one? Taking out militants holed out in a mosque in India is a tricky issue, as was the case with sikh extremists. Somehow when you talk of Togadia and co (no matter how reprehensible) in the same breath as militants it doesn’t cut the cheeze with me. So I will ignore a conjecture on such a situation.

  11. We do know what the government will do when a Hindu army marches on a mosque? I guess the real question is if Togadia and co. hide behind the murti with their trishuls.. what will the army do then?

    I think what you’re asking is what will happen if the Indian army (which it is not clear to me should be considered a ‘Hindu Army’) marches on a hindu temple? With all due respect, I’m not sure if forcing an unnecessary comparison between Pakistan and India is useful. India (society as well as government) is not perfect, as so many incidents in recent history have shown us, but I don’t think the Indian Gov’t (for all its flaws) is remotely comparable to that of Pakistan, and I don’t think Indian society at this point in time is very comparable to Pakistan (they were similar back in 1947 but the gulf has widened every decade since then). And vicious as the RSS and the Hindutva crowd can be, would you really compare them with the hardest of the hardline Muslims?

  12. I think what you’re asking is what will happen if the Indian army (which it is not clear to me should be considered a ‘Hindu Army’) marches on a hindu temple?

    Nope, I was asking exactly what I stated: what the government will do when a Hindu army marches on a mosque. Like in Babri Masjid. (drawing an analog to Akshardham)

    spidy and Amitabh, as far as Togadia is concerned, I will admit I was engaging in rhetorical hyperbole, because the handling of Godhra and the Bombay riots set my blood boiling. I won’t make any more statements about this though, because I don’t think they are particularly useful, and can only derail the thread.

  13. Amitabh,

    Of course not, but it’s still healthy and fun to criticize the RSS–c’mon!!

  14. The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend. This is usualy a good strategy that sometimes work, but it somehow never seems to work for USA, in that it backfires.

    During the 1980’s the Israelis quietly helped Iran in their war against Iraq. At that time Israel was more afraid of Iraq and Saddam. Israel has also quietly helped India in every Indo-pak war including the time the Chinese Invaded. Remember the official hostility of the Congress Party in those days toward India. Now India and Israel have a love affair going on all levels. Israeli commandos are serving along side Indian soldiers at the border on the Saichen Glacier.

    American aid to the Mujahadin vs the Soviets went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar instead of the late Ahmad Shah Masood, although not intentionaly. Miliary and logistical support from US to the Mujahid was distributed through Pak ISI. They gave most to Hekmatyar. He was their favorite.

    I have a friend who is a retired Army Intel LtCol. who pleaded with State Dept. and some in congress, anyone who would listen. No change was made. We knew even back then that Hekmatyar was a evil but I guess just because he was Killing Soviets they did not care.

  15. you remember the hazratbaal incident

    spidy, I agree that was a mess, but it is so hard to get useful information. There is also the siege of Charar-e-sharif, which was destroyed in mysterious circumstances, with the terrorists claiming the Indian army burnt it down, and the army claiming it was foreign militants that did it. Unfortunately, there is such heavy censoring and denial of access to the press on these matters.

  16. Correction: I meant to say Congress Party’s hostility toward Israel.

  17. Remember the official hostility of the Congress Party in those days toward India.

    I know you meant Israel and not India…but if you take the word ‘official’ out of your sentence, and leave ‘India’ there…well, there would still be a lot of truth in that sentence too. The Congress Party’s actions in the post-Independence era can only be construed as hostility towards India.

  18. Rajesh,

    Your Hekmatyar point is well-taken, but I didn’t get the Israeli point–how is that supposed to show that “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend” is mistake….sorry if I’m being thick here–just didn’t catch the analogy.

  20. Rajesh Haricharran,

    I have been reading your comments. I think you have lot of half-baked ideas and stories, sometimes down right wrong ideas even though you have been with league of men.

    It is true India “officially” kept a distance from Israel in past, due to the Muslim population at home, and non-aligned movement.

    However,

    The truth is India and Israel have had long contacts, in fact, in 1977-78, General Moshe Dayan, the icon of Israel and then Defense Minister visited India in a disguise, sans his eye patch and a fake beard. As of today, Israel is the second largest arms supplier to India after Russia.

  22. Rob, I was not sure if you were referring to me in post#19 (now I am being thick 🙂 ) but just in case. The Israeli point was to show that the strategy sometimes work. I guess using the Israel/India relationship was a poor analogy because these two countries were never openly hostile. I should have stopped at the Iran/Israel example.

  23. While Musharaff has indulged in a lot of crap when it comes to promoting Islamic fundamentalism for the singular purpose of creating mischief in Kashmir, he is not in the same evil league as Stalin. Musharaff has not been evil to his own people, well except for the pesky dictator thing he likes to do. Musharaff is not some religious zealot. Zia was a nasty SOB(ha, remember when Reagan praised him ala Marcos). Stalin was evil to his own people too. A lot more evil.

  25. Rajesh,

    Yes, sorry not to specify you in #19–my bad–that happens with blogging, I guess. We’re on the same page, essentially.

  27. I do not think Musharraf is Stalin. In some ways, he has been good to his people and his country. He knew when to ditch Taliban, and cash in with US. He looks after his country interest quite well. In long run, Pakistan is better off with democracy but then politicians there are Class-I thugs.

    On Lal Masjid, it is very tricky situation. He has depended on hardliners for support, and he knows that they can set off a very dangerous chain reaction. I think Zia has done permanent damage to Pakistan by radicalizing its fabric in 70s, and CIA also is complicit.

    Musharraf should have responded earlier, and then political fallout might have been minimal but I guess he was leery in putting hand in the hornet’s nest. But at least he did it.

  28. Extremists, as in the case of the Pakistani muslim students who want to impose their “religious way of life” on others, are like the weeds in a garden. If you let them be or allow them to grow, they will kill your good plants, overtake and ruin the whole garden. The only way to get rid of them is to uproot them one by one as soon as they sprout and to make sure that no seeds are left to be propagated. Weeds are best left where they should be – in the wild.

    In our society of non-violent, peace loving, free thinking,law abiding, righteous people, who settle differences through words not weapons with the use of their freedom of thought and not some imposed religious dogma disguised as the “word of God”, extremists should be treated as the criminals that they are and should be kept out of the population.

  29. Kush,

    Yes, for sure the CIA & the Saudis would fund anything that moved that was anti-Soviet, and indeed are responsible in no small part for the radicalization (still hopefully just a minority) that we see today.

  30. Karma,

    Ummmmmm–ok–where exactly is “the wild” these days. You sound a bit eliminationist in practice, which is not something I want to sign up for.

  31. Kush Tandon, “I think you have lot of half-baked ideas and stories, sometimes down right wrong ideas”. This is your opinion and everyone is intitled.

    :It is true India “officially” kept a distance from Israel in past, due to the Muslim population at home, and non-aligned movement.:

    :However,

    :The truth is India and Israel have had long contacts, in fact, in 1977-78, General Moshe Dayan, the icon of Israel and then Defense Minister visited India in a disguise, sans his eye patch and a fake beard. As of today, Israel is the second largest arms supplier to India after Russia.: I completly agree. This may interest you:
    http://www.jcpa.org/cjc/cjc-katz-f05.htm

  33. Rajesh,

    That is an interesting read. Thanks.

    It reminded me of three things:

    a) Thousands of Jews found refuge in India during WW II.

    b) Indian film industry, Bollywood’s founding fathers and mothers were Indian Jews (some of them), actress like fearless Nadia, etc.

    c) Israeli tourists in India are big, big numbers.

  34. Israeli tourists in India are big, big numbers.

    Yep, India is a popular backpacking destination after their military service. An Israeli couple I know actually set up friends of theirs on a date in Goa when they were both traveling there 🙂

  35. Rob, I am quite sure there no Israeli female soldiers at the front lines in India. I can’t be certain however if there are any at other military locations in India.

    I was going to send you a link with some nice pics of Israeli females in uniform but the site is down.

    I met a few over here who told me they have visited India after leaving the army and how much they like India and want to go back.

  36. From the article Rajesh linked to:

    Those Indians who read English know that the country’s greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century, Nissim Ezekiel, was Jewish. He was a professor at Mumbai University and passed away a few years ago. Esther David is a very popular novelist and so is Anita Desai.

    Anita Desai (Kiran Desai’s mom) is Jewish? I remember reading a poem or two by Ezekiel. The one I remember most is something about a scorpion, it was such a painful read!

  37. The article also talks about how Indians are not anti-semitic etc. This is true, but I also don’t think the full horror of Nazism is appreciated in India. Indians still fondly remember Subhash Chandra Bose and I think the Amar Chitra Katha talks about his daring escape from India and meeting with Hitler. Whatever his other virtues might have been, aligning with the Axis forces seems like a completely morally vacuous move. Similarly, the restaurant owner in Navi Mumbai (not Bandra, right 🙂 who named his restaurant Hitler’s cross, and decorated it with swastikas – it took a lot of protesting to get him to fix that, if I recall correctly.

  39. Kush,

    All true, and good. Still neither group would never inter-marry–except for a few who are viewed as freaks by both sides. Weird world we live in.

  40. Kush Tandon, Kush, You are most welcome. and you may also like this portal, not all the links are active. http://www.haruth.com/AsianIndia.html

    If you like I can send more sunch links on the India/Israel relationsip through your email since the moderator may not like it if I take up thread space for this.

  41. Accordin to the Taliban,Jihadis all the problems in world are because of the Jews. Any idea on this obsession with Jews? When there are 900 million Muslims in the world, why are they so obsessed with 20 million jews?

  43. Rajesh, Indo Israeli alliance may well have started as what you term an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ alliance, with similar perceived threats and hence a camaraderie between the two countries. Otherwise historically there has been so little interaction between these two groups of people, and even today the alliance is mostly military in nature. An example supporting this theory would be as Rahul pointed out, the relative ignorance of most Indians as to the magnitude of the holocaust, or even about the origin of Israel.

    Of course official posturing especially on the part of India would argue otherwise.

  45. Having said that, I find it fascinating that there are Indian groups that claim Jewish ancestry, so I might be wrong in my assumption of little Indo Jewish interaction prior to the WW2. There is a mizo group which has also claimed to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Mizos are mongoloids and if their claims are true, how far back in history would this lost tribe have had to come to India to adopt the local appearance.

  46. Spidy

    I believe this is all changing now read the links in my posts #31 #40 #44.

  47. According to the Taliban,Jihadis all the problems in world are because of the Jews. Any idea on this obsession with Jews? When there are 900 million Muslims in the world, why are they so obsessed with 20 million jews?

    It’s a weird issue, I agree–Islamists (Taliban, Wahhabi, e.g.) see Jews as not only the “last of the White Colonials” (weird since Jews, Zoroastrians & Christians had been living in the Levant–Mesopotamia-Persia for a long time before the Arab conquest–not that this means other people haven’t moved in over the centuries too–they have–like the Turks–in that sense the Arabs aren’t exceptional) but it is weird to hate Jews, kinda like if you hated Armenians or Jains or Copts or Georgians or Parsis.

  48. NyTimes insists that Mush does not have popular support and that US should no longer support him. Indian newspapers tow a similar line: they insist that Mush is in place solely due to the military, and that people in Pakistan do not support him. The caveat is that this is standard official Indian propaganda: that the Pakistan military and the ISI control Pakistan, and that the Pakistan peoples are peace-loving.

    The reality I suspect, is that he has the support of Islamic hardliners as well; that his popular support is not negligible (most democracies do not have 100% support for their leader); and that the “popular uprisings” against him are orchestrated by the political parties, PML, PPP. Note also that Pakistan is very feudal like India; and democracy is not that different from a dictatorship.

    In general however, NyTimes is right; propping up self-proclaimed dictators has negative externalities. I’m not a big fan of the enemy of enemy is my friend doctrine because of its powderkeg unpredictability.

  49. I should also admit that my views of Musharraf were indelibly moulded when I was an adolescent: poor old Vajpayee had ambled over to Lahore to sign a peace declaration, and even while he was there, Mushy was architecting the Kargil war. Such open skulduggery left me with both admiration; and a wariness.

  50. If you like I can send more sunch links on the India/Israel relationsip through your email since the moderator may not like it if I take up thread space for this.

    Sure, do. Thanks