Pakistan’s DAWN newspaper features a great investigative piece that details how its reporters tracked down (whereas other major papers failed) the family of Mohammed Ajmal “Babyface” Kasab (who may really be Mohammad Ajmal Amir) and listened to what they had to say. Kasab was, of course, the lone surviving gunman from the recent Mumbai attacks.
Ajmal Kasab…was supposed to belong to the village Faridkot in the Punjab. Media organisations such as the BBC and now the British newspaper Observer have done reports trying to ascertain the veracity of claims appearing in the media that the young man had a home there.At the weekend, the Observer in England claimed that it had managed to locate the house everyone was looking for so desperately. Its correspondent said he had got hold of the voters’ roll which had the names of Amir Kasab and his wife, identified as Noor, as well as the numbers on the identity cards the couple carried…
However, the man who said he was Amir Kasab confirmed to Dawn that the young man whose face had been beamed over the media was his son.
For the next few minutes, the fifty-something man of medium build agonized over the reality that took time sinking in, amid sobs complaining about the raw deal the fate had given him and his family. [Dawn]
I have commented before on SM about how much I disagree with using the term “evil” to describe men like Ajmal Kasab. To call them “evil” or “insane” (without clinical proof of insanity) in my opinion gives society an undeserved excuse. It allows us to isolate them as others, as subhumans. It allows us to feel superior in thinking that we were born good whereas these men were born bad. Their “affliction” is seen as having zero probability of transmission to good people like us. It just cannot spread. You are born evil. Then you go and talk to their parents and you realize the difference between how we were nurtured and how they were nurtured can’t really be pinpointed except for a few wrong turns and bad decisions that cascade into fanatic acts. The father continued:
‘I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,’ he told Dawn in the courtyard of his house in Faridkot, a village of about 2,500 people just a few kilometres from Deepalpur on the way to Kasur. ‘Now I have accepted it. This is the truth. I have seen the picture in the newspaper. This is my son Ajmal…’Indian media reports ‘based on intelligence sources’ said the man was said to be a former Faridkot resident who left home a frustrated teenager about four years ago and went to Lahore…
After his brush with crime and criminals in Lahore, he is said to have run into and joined a religious group during a visit to Rawalpindi.
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p>’He had asked me for new clothes on Eid that I couldn’t provide him. He got angry and left.’ [Dawn]
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p>I just finished watching Slumdog Millionaire. I know, I know. It is just a fictionalized drama. A few plot elements are very plausible though, especially the development of Salim as the movie progresses. Characters in the movies City of God and Syriana also follow similar trajectories. Bad choices and the bitterness of broken dreams lead to sociopathic tendencies.
While Amir was talking, Ajmal’s two ‘sisters and a younger brother’ were lurking about. To Amir’s right, on a nearby charpoy, sat their mother, wrapped in a chador and in a world of her own. Her trance was broken as the small picture of Ajmal lying in a Mumbai hospital was shown around. They appeared to have identified their son. The mother shrunk back in her chador but the father said he had no problem in talking about the subject. [Dawn]
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p>His own mother is often a terrorist’s last victim. It doesn’t matter that she and her husband may have tried to do right by their kids:
He modestly pointed to a hand-cart in one corner of the courtyard. ‘This is all I have. I shifted back to the village after doing the same job in Lahore. My eldest son, Afzal, is also back after a stint in Lahore. He is out working in the fields.’It is not and Amir Kasab repeats how little role he has had in the scheme since the day his son walked out on him. He calls the people who snatched Ajmal from him his enemies but has no clue who these enemies are. Asked why he didn’t look for his son all this while, he counters: ‘What could I do with the few resources that I had?’ [Dawn]
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p>Update: Here is Ajmal’s narrative of the path he took and it partially contradicts his parents.
Of course, many of the other residents of Faridkot are still in denial:
In interviews, residents variously claimed Kasab does not exist or is the son of a potter, a brick factory worker, a street vendor or is an 80-year-old man. “There is no Ajmal. There is no Kasab,” said Ali Sher, brother of the town’s mayor. “We have a list of each person who is registered to vote. There is no Ajmal…”“It is totally baseless. There is no Pakistani role. They are not Pakistani,” Sher said. “He might be Afghan. He might be another nationality. We don’t know that guy, so how can we know if it’s true?” [Washington Post]
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p>
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p>Does anything of Kasab’s story sound familiar? Sure it does. We have heard this many times before. Remember Dylan Klebold of Columbine? Here is a 2004 interview with his parents:
In their first interview since the Columbine High School massacre, the parents of one of the killers said they feel no need be forgiven and didn’t realize their son was beyond hope until after he was dead.“Dylan (Klebold) did not do this because of the way he was raised,” Susan Klebold told columnist David Brooks in Saturday’s editions of The New York Times. “He did it in contradiction to the way he was raised…”
“He was hopeless. We didn’t realize it until after the end,” Tom Klebold said. [USA Today]
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p>Finally, I recommend this great 2004 article from Slate which describes the differences between psychopathic murderers and other types (especially depressives):
…if you want to understand “the killers,” quit asking what drove them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were radically different individuals, with vastly different motives and opposite mental conditions. Klebold is easier to comprehend, a more familiar type. He was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems.Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as “nice.” But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. “Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people,” Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath. [Slate]
I’m not sure I’d call him a man– he’s not yet 21. I thought it was interesting that he ran away because his father wouldn’t/couldn’t give him new clothes for Eid and there he is, shooting innocents in his Versace T-shirt, and soon afterward asking for saline and pleading to live, although his orders were to shoot until he drops.
Shooting to kill and begging to live, that is.
Yes, I found that interesting too. It makes sense though right? The terrorists could provide him with the “bling” that he otherwise could not obtain.
i’m confused. the dawn piece seems to imply that the family last saw him four years ago, or am i misinterpreting it?
rediff has an article citing a GEO TV report saying this:
“Kasab, the lone gunman captured for the Mumbai terror attacks, told residents of his village in Pakistan’s Punjab province during his last visit there that he was going away for Jehad.
Kasab visited Faridkot village in Okara district of Punjab about five months ago and asked his mother to bless him before he embarked on Jehad, local residents were quoted as saying..
“He came to the village about five or six months ago. He told his mother he was going away for Jehad. He asked her to bless him and to leave his fate in the hands of Allah,” said an unnamed resident of Faridkot in what the channel described as secretly filmed footage.
The channel said most people of Faridkot and nearby Depalpur sub-district were reluctant to talk about Kasab on the record. However, in the secretly filmed footage, some residents were shown discussing his last visit to the village.
“A man from Faridkot said that on his last visit to the village, Kasab gathered a group of boys near a school and asked them to catch him. He demonstrated feats of wrestling to them. Then we heard that he had left home and joined a Jehadi group,” a man said.”
If the rediff rendition of GEO TV is correct, then did the family know he was going for jehad and couldn’t do anything about it or did they not know anything about it, as the DAWN article implies?
Abhi, I am not sure why you deleted my earlier comment, but your title here ‘The last victims’ implies that Ajmal and the others involved in the Mumbai killings are not terrorists but victims. Grown men who make considered decisions should be held responsible for their actions and Ajmal’s actions were terrorist in nature. It is inconsiderate of you to include them among the victims of the Mumbai massacre.
I am EXPLICIT in the post that I am talking about his parents. How you get from there to “others involved in the Mumbai killings…” is beyond comprehension.
And you know why I deleted your comment.
Good questions WGiiA. There may be more to this story yet. Some newspapers like the Washington Post were led by the mayor to a different Kasab family altogether. The truth may be murkier still. Not allowing loss of face is such an integral part of the culture that what is truth and what is a lie is hard to separate once the family decides it has to protect itself.
The society that nurtured these folks is evil. The people who lead, support or condone LeT/JuD are evil. There must be plenty of internet jocks who have contributed to these social organizations. How do Pakistani textbooks characterize India and Hindu culture? A huge percentage of Pakistanis sympathize with these folks (and its not 0.01 percent). To characterize Ajmal Kasab as inherently evil is besides the point and vacuously false. His actions are evil. Too late for his parents, village, and the larger Pakistani society.
5 · Kassapu-Kadaikaran said
Abhi is referring to the parents, not Ajmal, as the last victims. From comment #4 it is not clear if they knew if he was going to do something violent. No doubt VP & Ms. Roy will do a deep read of the “Eid dissapointment” being the fault of the rampant materialism caused by India’s adoption of neoliberal reforms.
Verbatim statement of Kasab himself, as published in the Outlook Magazine
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081210&fname=ajmal&sid=1
As per the statement published in the Outlook (cited in #10), Kasab himself mentions how he spent time at home in between different training sessions. So it is not as if the parents did not know what was going on.
As per Kasab, 3 trainees ran off during the final stage of training!! One funny moment in an anotherwise chilling narrative.
8 · sn said
This is true, it is fact that the govt school textbooks promote hate. The Karachi set we interact with go to elite schools that prep them for Ox-Cam/Ivy schools and they can claim ignorance of this to the media. But this guy is a fourth standard dropout based on his interviews, I doubt he had much of an opinion at all about India. He wanted to establish himself in strongarm robbery and was rerouted to terrorism. I blame the Pakistani army officer corp & feudal lords that steal from the American taxpayer and keep the average Pakistani poor. V.Prashad should take a position at a Pak university and get these people to act in their class interest.
If such an organization is in the heart of Pakistan, it must enjoy tremendous support. It is hard to see how such institutions and their agenda of hate can be dismantled. Kids are taught to hate the “other” (India, Hindus) from the beginning. IEDs and AK-47s come much later.
Without doubt, you are the enemy’
Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist who was captured alive in Mumbai, is supposed to have studied here, according to his interrogators, and it’s time to ask some straight questions.
So did Kasab study here, in Muridke? “Even if he did, we are not responsible for what any one of our students do after passing out.”
Do you support the Lashkar-e-Taiyyebba? “We used to.”
You used to? “Yes, we were like-minded but the group was banned after Indian propaganda following the attack on its Parliament which was done by the Jaish-e-Mohammad and not the LeT. We use to provide logistical help to the Lashkar, collect funds for them and look after their publicity.”
Did you also provide them with arms?
“They must have bought weapons with the money we gave them. They were obviously not using the money to buy flowers for the Indian army.”
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/letspecial/index.html
Victims? I just love how this “account” in Pakistani Govt’s fav poodle pub who also happens to have the largest exposure to the West. Ties up all the loose ends after 2 weeks so we can all cue to the pity party.
What about the reports or the accounts in the other rags where locals said you had to be moron to not now the area was actively recruited down to daily loudspeaker calls for Jihad, LeT posters and or that the family dissapeared early that Saturday. How about in 6months, maybe the Dawn can miraculously find this family again before they seek untrackble relatives and we’ll see how well their doing or maybe if they put up any Shaheed posters that sell so well there.
I do like how we had to play up pan-“desi” victims angle and go so far as to conflate it to the Columbine tragedy and some slate psychology. That’s a SM twofer.
This shows there is hope for humanity. They were probably told they were going to have to sit through a seminar in exchange for a free night in an Azad Kashmir timeshare when things got out of hand
If you want to read a “rags” type report why bother coming here at all? Would you rather I regurgitate a story that contains lots of fist waiving and hand ringing? I’m not going to play to the crowd. I am going to write about my views. Feel free to filter me out.
“Ms. Roy will do a deep read of the “Eid dissapointment” being the fault of the rampant materialism caused by India’s adoption of neoliberal reforms.”
she has a surprisingly belated, but predictable piece The Guardian. amongst other things (some reasonable to me, some not) she says this: (Side A being Hindu extremists and Side B being Muslim extremists)
“On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially “Islamist” terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.”
After giving a rundown of the various ugly neuroses of both a Muslim and a Hindu extremist (being rather more pithy about the failings of the Muslim extremist, although she throws in this charitable concession: ” If that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.):
she comes to this conclusion: “So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.”
Good for her. she’s picked which set of extremists she prefers. but she surely cannot expect anyone to take her shrill, hysterical unbalanced (in being disingenous and not a fair, equal-opportunity critic) analyses seriously?
she also quotes suketu mehta out of context to make a self-righteous point. i didn’t wholly agree with his piece, but she’s done him a disservice. sometimes i think these indian “leading lights” of English-language literature see getting their self-important thoughts into the foreign press more important for their ego/bragging rights/credibility than because they actually care. perhaps she’s miffed that he beat her to the punch in getting into a prestigious publication this time.
sorry this is long and off-topic, but i’ve tried to give this woman a chance because i always thought she was at least well-meaning and had some courage to speak out for everyone. but she now seems to be a bit of a nitwit who the stupid booker committee unwittingly gave voice to when they named her mediocre novel the best of that year. they ought to be punished for that:)
abhi, i think parents – whether columbine or kasab’s or anyone else’ – often fool themselves into thinking they can control their children’s obvious problems or that it will just go away or fool themselves into thinking that they knew nothing about their children’s activities. and it’s no surprise that parents’ first instinct is to protect their own family.
I agree that the parents become victims in such cases. Thats why i think, its not the fault of the parents, but the fault of an eco-system that lets religious extremism flourish. A small minority is vocally against the extremism but majority of society is either in denial about the extremism or condones it on foolish religious grounds. In that respect it is not quite like Klebold and Harris, because the American society does not condone gratuitous violence and there is enough vocal opposition towards it.
Dissappointed young men abound in the world…but the conditions necessary to make Jihadis of them only exist in some places…we do need to blame the culture and/or religion involved if we see a clear and repetetive pattern. As for the parents being victims, it really depends on how much they (and the surrounding village, because as they say it takes a village to raise a child) aided and abetted by providing some sort of tacit religious or cultural support to the Jihadi mentality. I understand that he was probably an irreligious lout turned criminal turned (later) Jihadi, but there is a systemic problem that lead to the choices he made. Similar young men in other situations merely remain louts turned criminals.
16 · Abhi said
Abhi assuming that the parents did know that Ajmal was about to do something violent, based on his recounting, what culpability would you assign to the parents?
Thanks Abhi for posting this piece. It’s really unfortunate that young men like Ajmal Kasab become indoctrinated and join terrorist groups often because of poverty and lack of any other options. If the Pakistani government had been accountable to the people and had focused more on education and human development, rather than spending inordinate amounts of money on the military, maybe we wouldn’t be in the state we are in today. There was an article in the NYT a while back about young men joining militant groups because they pay more than joining the police. I agree with other posters that the school textbooks are biased and preach hate, and that religion is used to justify acts of terror, but I think it’s a lot easier to indoctrinate/brainwash people when their lives are so miserable that they don’t have much to lose by becoming suicide bombers. This is why we see most terrorists coming from impovrished backgrounds (although of course the 9/11 terrorists were mainly middle-class and educated).
personally, i found the story of the cop who sacrificed his life to make the capture of kasab possible compelling. kasab rolled out of the car onto the ground and tried to play dead, but started shooting when the cops came close. one of the cops, who was armed only with a lathi, held on to the barrel of the ak-47 to prevent him from shooting the other cops, and continued to do so, even as he was racked by bullets, till the other cops managed to beat kasab up with their lathis till he fainted. I believe the cop’s name is tambe. without his sacrifice of his life, even kasab would likely not have been captured alive.
the story was on rediff. the cops set up a double roadblock in girgaum and boldly confronted these two terrorists in the skoda even though many of them only had lathis, i think the few armed with guns had revolvers.
To people who may not realise, this is very interesting code for caste status…which still matters in rural Pakistan.
21 · Kabir Altaf said
Yeah! So easy for young men to get indoctrinated na! They just have no options available to them. I wonder what rest of poor young men around the world are waiting for, why don’t they pick up a gun and start killing innocent people
I can guess what motivated poor dear Mansoor Miyan , it must be the angst due to having a great job, lot of money and living in a country/city that provided all the opportunities. You know what, it could be the technology that he was made to work on, may be he was given no option but to do .Net while he was totally into Java. What a colossal tragedy for poor Mansoor and his poor parents. Parents who are defending him sitting on a couch in an apartment that Mansoor Bhai paid for. Sooo much tragedy going around these days. Tsk Tsk.
That is why I believe it is absolutely necessary to crush Hidutvawadi fundamentalists. Saala they all should be killed.
If this had been a group of 20 year White skin heads from impoverished West Virginia or Arkansas who attacked a group of Sikhs or Muslims would we be having such a nuanced discussion about why they weren’t really evil racists but rather misguided youths who had no opportunity to choose a better life. If anything people would be saying how they grew up hating because that is what their parents and family taught them. But here we have this carefully analyzed psychological profile of a vile killer like Kasab who guns down a child for crying.
Sulabh,
I never implied that all people who become terrorists do so because of poverty/lack of other options. In Mansoor’s case what motivated him was something else, perhaps religious ideology. However, it is true that low levels of education and development and high levels of poverty make it much easier to brainwash people under the cover of religion than better material conditions. It’s really a classic economic argument. And I don’t know where you got anything in my post that led you to make that remark about “crushing Hindutvawadis”… I think that link is in your head rather than in anything I wrote.
Abhi,
regarding the “clinical definition” of sociopath–isn’t it simply a matter of rationale behind the murderous act? That Kasab thought only about the likelihood and severity of the punishment associated with his crime and not about the terrible human cost of mass murder, i.e. that he didn’t think his actions were immoral (and was incapable of doing so) but did think his night likely to end with him dying in a firefight with commandos?
Some respect please. His name is Tukaram Omble.
1 · Amrita said
Maybe, “Idiot” is more of an appropriate term?
Just got these two links.. anybody here who can translate it ?
http://express.com.pk/epaper/PoPupwindow.aspx?newsID=1100533603&Issue=NP_LHE&Date=20081203
http://express.com.pk/epaper/PoPupwindow.aspx?newsID=1100533604&Issue=NP_LHE&Date=20081203
From the article…
Can Dawn elaborate? and…
This sounds like some detached observer – rather than one of the biggest newspapers in Pakistan.
Was really hoping for more.
What is the reputation of Dawn inside Pakistan for fairness?
“Dawn” is one of Pakistan’s leading English language newspapers. It’s sort of “The New York Times” of Pakistan.
why ask why?
these men were vermin and i do not have any need to understand what they do, why they do it, etc. and have no moral ambiguity on this matter.
if the only purpose to be served by this deep analysis is to find a way to separate this guy from the rest of the wahhabi fundies who mouth off in mosques in the rest of the world … rest assured – there is no difference. they’re cut from the same cloth and destruction of india, israel, uk and the usa is what they want. these guys are planning for jannat by shooting down babies. you can sit down and chart out the fine points. it’s too much trouble for me.
it’s not up to the masses or the special forces to police the nutters – it’s for the neighbors and relatives and co-religionists to close down the madrasas and the masjids if they preach destruction of the non-muslim society.
Kabir, That i know. But, playing devil’s advocate for a moment, what if the article is part of Zardari’s PR? The first sentence sounds very sceptical of Indian media – and then i thought the article would go on to poke holes in the Indian media’s story. All they claim is to have confirmed the Indian media’s story. Its almost as if they want to potray the whole Mumbai attack as the failings of a young man when we all know these young men do not act alone.
Finally! Something that shows some human elemant, not reducing things down to “islamofascism.” Great post.
15 · louiecypher on December 13, 2008 12:15 PM
blockquote>This shows there is hope for humanity. They were probably told they were going to have to sit through a seminar in exchange for a free night in an Azad Kashmir timeshare when things got out of hand
Let me understand this right. You mean they were probably told they have to sit through a seminar in exchange for a free night stay in Taj India? And the other three ran off!
The early news reports did’nt get the terrorist’s name right. That is what led to the denials that he was from Pakistan. His real name is Mohammad Ajmal Amir.
22 · liberal said
Ditto for me. I wish they caught a few more of the terrorists live like that.
30 · 3rdEye* said
Let me guess since it stamped 2012, that’s the JuD or your garden variety “Pakistani Charity” glorious 5 year plan to conquer the Gujarati’s and Marathi’s? I kinda feel left out.
Well, atleast we know they’re still behind on Photoshop. Someone ask Steve Jobs to open a Apple store in Peshawar. :p
A youth disillusion by poverty in India would probably join a criminal gang, whereas in Pakistan they get sucked into a bigger and more organized terror establishment that operates across border. It is what is available around that makes the difference. Also, role models such as bollywood or cricket stars, to seeing direct benefits of education can also channel energy in different direction: e.g. in UK, Indians are more geared towards education than Pakistanis.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read any other comments yet.
No one is born a terrorist; terrorists however are born in to a culture which encourages terrorism via financial, moral and spiritual support. Though Kasab’s immediate family may not be at fault, the environment around them which supports organizations like Lashkar are at fault. The rest of the world does not have to deal with the parents; they have to deal with Lashkar and the terrorists they nurture. The focus should be on that, not in some impotent family deep in the malaise which is also suffering. By trying to humanize the parent’s pain, you are diluting the message of hate and murder which these organizations send; you never know how his family would have acted if Kasab had come back alive would you?
35 · noname said
If you understand Urdu, check this out . It’s the softer side of islamofascism that you’re trying to cuddle up against. At 1:45 the guy positively brims over in glee that 10 people wreaked such havoc in india. imagine what 11 thousand such mujahideen would do. people such as this feed on pawns like kasab. they alternate positions of victimhood with that of jehad depending on whether they have someone’s front or back to them.
28 · khoofia said
easy, easy. i said “i believe” precisely because i wasn’t sure of his name, and if it isn’t amply clear from the rest of the post, i greatly admire his bravery.
This is a cancer on Islam. The Islamic world was up in arms over a few cartoons, but nothing but denials and obfuscation when 10 good muslim boys wreak havok in Mumbai. Not sure who the writer was, but imagine if 10 Hindus had done the same thing in Karachi or Mecca.
From the Outlook link above: “While we were in search of fire-arms we saw some LeT stalls at Raja bazaar, Rawalpindi, on the day of Bakri-id. We thought that, even if we procured fire-arms, we could not operate them. Therefore, we decided to join LeT for weapon training.”
They openly recruit such vermin? Is it that easy to locate the LeT or trainers?
Vikram Chandra basically says the same thing in this recent interview with Outlook India, in which he reflects on the Mumbai attacks.
I swear I’m not a Vikram Chandra groupie, but he keeps being relevant, so I’d just like to add Sacred Games to the list of artwork dealing with the making of terrorists. There aren’t any specifically Muslim terrorists in the book, but the inset about Adil, the brilliant but impoverished and low caste Bihari boy who later becomes a Naxal, is a good illustration of how great potential is tapped by the wrong forces when the right forces don’t give it a proper chance.
Also, Manish makes some compelling inferences from Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day on how rogue organizations like the Taliban and LeT are formed and sustained.
44 · vikram said
there has been nothing but unequivocal condemnation from muslims from various classes of society in india, afaik.
kasab seems to be a classic story of an amoral, weaselly lowlife who’s always taken the seemingly easy road at every turn – whether it be criminality, terrorism, or right down to the end, trying to roll out and play dead to escape being shot to death by cops (unlike the driver of the car, who was quick-thinking/premeditated enough to turn on the windshield wipers and fluid to prevent the cops from seeing into the car at the roadblock), and then singing like an insistent busker in the parisian subways now that he has been caught. (this is not to minimize both the radical madrassa culture that has significantly burgeoned in pakistan in the last decade, or the poisonous role of the pakistani army and isi in enabling and encouraging terrorism).
I feel a certain level of sympathy for boys like this…only because I see child soldiers from the DRC, or wealthy corporation-like terrorist organizations feeding on the frustrations and misplaced ambitions of youth…if they are impoverished youth than the brainwashing is even more despicable to me…
I am utterly furious when I see bloodied photos of VT station, but I also get equally angry when I see kids who are ok with blowing themselves up because they’ve never been taught to think for themselves. Maybe this guys IS a victim, in a sense…
Btw, does anyone know about wahhabi influence in South Asia?
you do not have the facts then. the obfuscation, if any, may be restricted to whackos. out here the media is afraid of the nuclear powers going head to head and tries to play the sage, nodding its head in assumed ambivalence; and the coverage is muted and somewhat pussy. all this you are reading here is old stuff. some Pakistani journalists have been as outraged at mumbai and there have been regular op-eds from across the border in the hindustan times. the last one i read recalled the hadith that forbid the killing of the innocent even in war – and was appalled that the attackers were portrayed as followers of islam. they speak of the karachi madrasas that preach hate and of the army+isi that have a stranglehold on the pakistani government. if you are even peripherally connected to indian media you would have seen the widespread condemnation from the imams and the celebrities of the muslim faith.
Aawww..That’s too bad.
You think?
M. Nam