Of good liberals and good Taliban: A response to Feisal Naqvi and Najam Sethi – by Riaz Bin Al-Malik Hujjaji
After reading the latest editions of The Express Tribune and The Friday Times – especially those written by Good Liberals like Feisal Naqvi’s “There Will Be Blood” and Najam Sethi’s current The Friday Times editorial “Terrorism and National Consensus”, I am assured that ISPR is in good hands. As an avid Jamaati supporter of Sipah Sahaba Taliban (SST) I must commend both my Good Liberal Colleagues for their latest masterpieces of spin writing.
If Abdul Qadir or Shane Warne were as good at writing as they were at spin bowling, they would be lucky to be compared to writers like Hazrat Najam Bin Al- Sethi – currently the best spokesman for the Pious Patriotic Puttar Fauj. Some silly Boffins and rogues at Aabpara might have misunderstood him. I want to assure Pious Patriotic Puttar Fauj that Hazrat Al-Najam Bin Sethi is your most gifted and talented spokesperson. He is the Robin to your Batman, the Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes, the Hazrat Amr bin Aas to your Caliph Muawiya bin Abu Sufyan.
I must commend these Good Liberals for refining and developing Jamaati tactics like Omissions, Deflections and Blaming-the-victim.
Starting with Feisal Naqvi, I must commend him on not mud slinging our Pious Patriotic Puttar fauj even once during his article – after all, the whole world knows that it is the Lyari O Larkana (LOL) brigade that is responsible for all the terrorism in Pakistan. LOL is lead by dictator Zardari. Similarly, the second most violent terrorist group in Pakistan are the Khudai Khidmatgar movement that was founded by savage Pathan and RAW agent, Bacha Khan and consists of Girl Student Militias armed to the teeth with secular education and the Roman alphabets! It is now headed by Asfandyar Wali and here I must give credit to Pakistan’s Independent Corporate Media for blacking out Asfandyar’s anti-Taliban live press conference yesterday on Quaid Day.
Before proceeding any further, please take a pause to stand in solidarity with Sherry Rehman who was terrorized by the Septuagenarian wing of the LOL brigade in 2010 and her Taliban that her Jinnah Institute advocates in favour of. http://criticalppp.com/archives/28084 The Sipah Sahaba Taliban have been terrorized by girl students like Malala and Mehzar Zehra.
As I was saying, please commend Feisal Naqvi for not raising any fingers against the army and against the Supreme League of Justice Party (SLOP) – we all know that they are not responsible for any of the blood letting that is going on in Pakistan. A Good Liberal will never blame the Pious Patriotic Puttar Fauj the same way he curses elected PPP and ANP leaders. This is a brilliant “Blame-the-victim” tactic that was revolutionized by Caliph Muawiya when he held Caliph Ali (KW) responsible for the death of Sahaba Ammar Bin Yasir in the war of Siffin to avenge the murder of Caliph Usman. You see, Sahaba Ammar Bin Yasir was on the side of Caliph Ali (KW), so Caliph Muawiya bin Abu Sufyan blamed Caliph Ali for Sahaba Ammar-e-Yasir’s death.
That is why, today, it is only correct if we blame PPP and ANP for getting killed by the Taliban. We must never really blame Pious Patriotic Puttar Fauj for protecting our assets like Sipah Sahaba Taliban. Some might call this a contradiction but us ghairatmands know that nothing succeeds like Blaming the Victim tactics and I am so pleased that Feisal Naqvi is resorting to this tactic.
Thank you Feisal for not criticizing Pak Fauj and for distancing yourself from Shias.
In his weekly masterpieces, unofficial ISPR Spin Meister, Hazrat Najam Bin Al-Sethi blames the politicians for not reaching a consensus against Taliban. This is a stroke of genius especially when Hazrat Al-Sethi was part of Jinnah Institute that supports Mullah Omar Shura and Haqqani network. It is thanks to geniuses like Hazrat Al-Sethi that we have differences between Good Taliban and Bad Taliban and Afghan Taliban and Pappa Bear Taliban and Mamma Bear Taliban.
This way, whenever we want to protect our assets, we can always shift them to a safe category. Ofcourse, many times during last 5 years, PPP and ANP leaders say bad and defiant things against the Taliban which is why some of them had to be rapped on the knuckles. For instance, Sindhi Sorceress Benazir was against the Taliban from 1998 to 2007 when she died in a car accident as per Sethi’s friend, Musharaf. From Kerry Lugar Bill to India Peace talks, PPP have strayed from GHQ script and because of that, they are stupid – something that Al-Sethi loves to point out in his masterpiece theater show called “Aapas Ki Baat” (translation Gossip amongst Friends
For shifting all the blame to elected politicians and deflecting criticism from Pious Puttar Patriotic Fauj and its Judicial proxies, I nominate Hazrat Najam Al-Sethi for President of the Good Liberal Club. Like the Good Taliban, the Good Liberals are an asset for the underfunded and powerless Pak Fauj. Hazrat Al-Sethi has a distinguished record. Who can forget his flight in a military helicopter in 1976 – just like Malik Ishaq’s flight in a military helicopter in 2009.
During the height of the Movement to Restore Dictatorship, it was comrade Sethi who took the brave stance of abusing Benazir in semi public gatherings. For that he was rewarded in General Karamat’s caretaker Shura headed by Good PPP Patriot, Farooq Leghari.
Today also, comrade Hazrat Najam Bin Al-Sethi is fighting the good fight and doing his best to ensure that blame only falls on elected politicians and NOT on our Pak Fauj. The jealous LUBP folks call this “intellectual dishonesty”, “obfuscation” blah, blah, blah. I call it GHAIRAT.
Ps. If you are reading this Hazrat Al-Sethi, please give a raise to your employee and protégé Ali Chishti. Sipah Sahaba Taliban owe him big time for his advocacy of Maulana Tahir Ashrafi and Maulana Ludhianvi, chief of ASWJ. With Good Liberals like your team at the Friday Times and Jinnah Institute, the Pak Fauj and its brave Judicial Proxies will one day establish Caliphate ooops, Baghdad Model oops sorry, Bangladesh Model in Pakistan. Quid Pro Quo, I will use my blossoming popularity to convince the rogue elements at Aabpara that you are really on their side. Unless ofcourse this is like the Noora Khushti going on between Generals and Judges on Balochistan issue to laundry and rebuild old assets. Then, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I will play along.
Links to Hajjaji’s pearls of wisdom:
http://pakistanblogzine.wordpress.com/tag/riaz-malik-hajjaji/
Apt treatment of the pseudo liberal spin masters.
There will be blood
By Feisal H NaqviPublished: December 24, 2012
The writer is a partner at Bhandari, Naqvi & Riaz and an advocate of the Supreme Court. He can be reached on Twitter @laalshah
About a week ago, a 20-year-old by the name of Adam Lanza walked into a school in Newtown, Connecticut — a small town a few hours northeast of New York City. In the next 30 minutes, Lanza shot and killed 27 people before finally killing himself. Of those 27 casualties, 20 were children aged between five and 10.
The massacre at Newtown set off a firestorm in the US, with most of the anguish and the anger aimed at America’s notoriously lax gun laws. President Barack Obama announced at the funeral of the victims that he would be pushing for legislative changes to prevent future massacres. And The New Yorker spoke for many when it asked, “What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behaviour and to change its attitudes?”
By the end of the week, The New Yorker had its answer: the vice-president of the National Rifle Association responded defiantly that the answer to massacres like Newtown was to have more guns not less, because “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.” And pundits had already started scaling back their earlier optimistic predictions that American society would now support limits on guns.
The Newtown massacre and its aftermath are instructive because they show that Pakistan’s pathological society is not unique in its pathology. As I write these words, the newspapers lying crumpled around me all carry banner headlines announcing the demise of Bashir Ahmed Bilour in a suicide attack. Page after page praises his bravery; page after page laments our inability to unite in anger against his killers. Which again begs the question: what will it take to wake us up? What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behaviour and to change its attitudes?
The honest answer is that I don’t have the faintest clue. About a month ago, a remote controlled bomb was recovered from under the car of famed journalist Hamid Mir. The recovery of the bomb had been preceded by news reports stating that the TTP had decided to strike against journalists like Mr Mir who had condemned the attack on Malala Yousufzai. And after the fortuitous recovery of the bomb, the TTP expressly accepted responsibility, saying that it had wanted to kill Mr Mir because of his criticism of the TTP and its tactics.
Mr Mir’s response to his brush with death was instructive. On the day the TTP took responsibility, he began his show with an oddly defensive monologue in which he denied being an enemy of Islam and hinted broadly that even if the TTP were actually the ones who had carried out the attack, they were only tools being used by others upset by Mr Mir’s efforts in favour of an independent judiciary and the Muslim world.
As I watched Mr Mir’s show and waited for the defiant condemnation of the TTP that never came, I imagined a scene as surreal as the one unfolding in front of me.
Somewhere on a psychiatrist’s couch, a TTP spokesman is holding forth. “Doc, what do we gotta do to be taken seriously? We killed BB; they blamed Musharraf. We shot Malala; they blamed the US. We beheaded an SHO in Peshawar and I thought people would compare us to Grendel; we didn’t even make the front pages! We attacked the Peshawar airport and people worried about tattoos. We killed polio workers and even a Harvard-educated lady senator thought it could have been a conspiracy. I swear the next time this happens, I’m gonna set someone on fire outside the Islamabad Press Club! Maybe that way we’ll finally get some respect.” And then the psychiatrist leans forward and murmurs “Have you considered changing your PR agency? I have a brother who’s got lots of great experience, knows all the right people …”
Back here in the real world, I am still bemused by our national confusion. I was, for example, stunned to learn that the late Bashir Bilour was the brother of Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, our railway minister. Why was I stunned? Because three months ago, Bilour the senior called the Taliban his ‘brothers’ and offered to pay a US$100,000 bounty for whoever would kill the idiot responsible for the blasphemous anti-Islam video. Note, by this time, Bashir Bilour had already survived at least two assassination attempts by the TTP. So, Haji Sahib was referring to his brother’s murderers as his brethren.
Really, how complicated is this? There are people trying to kill us. They have repeatedly announced that they would like to destroy our Constitution, kill the educated ones and subjugate the rest. Since 2007, they have killed more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers and more than 20,000 civilians. Our options are either to fight back or be killed. But it looks like we would rather be victims.
All I can say then is to count me out of the list of idiots. Despite my Shia heritage, I have no interest in being a martyr. My sentiments instead are those of General George S Patton: “No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.”
Let me add one thing more. These are days whose history is being written in blood. There will come a time though when the blood will stop flowing. And then there will be an accounting. The people of this country will look back and ask why their leaders were so quiet for so long.
That moment of accountability may or may not be in the lifetime of those currently in charge. But even if it happens after those currently in power have passed on, our people will be justified in digging up the bones of their current leaders and hanging them as traitors to this country. The people will have their revenge. And it will not be pretty.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 25th, 2012.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/483824/there-will-be-blood-2/
———
Terrorism and National Consensus
145 58
The recent attack on Peshawar airport by TTP terrorists has raised several important questions regarding national security, civil-military relations and media perceptions. Unfortunately, the fact is that on a core concern of national security – the army chief has admitted that the existential threat to Pakistan is internal and not external – the key players are not on the same page for one reason or other. Consider.
The TTP is relentlessly targeting the military that has lost over 3000 soldiers in the war to date. Some terrorist attacks, as on the GHQ in Pindi and Mehran Naval Base in Karachi, etc, have been downright audacious. Yet, apart from the Swat operation 2007-08, there has been no focused attempt to uproot the TTP from its hideouts in Waziristan. The military is constrained by four factors.
First, it doesn’t want to create the public impression that it is “going into Waziristan” only because the Americans have said it must “do more”. Earlier this year, it determined the time was right, but Leon Panetta, the US Defense Secretary, announced that a “joint operation” in Waziristan was on the cards, prompting the Pakistanis to issue a swift denial and call off the operation.
Second, the military leadership is wary of taking additional casualties. COAS General Ashfaq Kayani has been internally sapped by a string of developments – an unprecedented three years extension in service that hasn’t gone down well with the rank and file, the Raymond Davis affair, the US Navy Seal raid to kill and extract Osama Bin Laden, the botched-up Memogate witch-hunt, mishandling of the NATO supply routes blockade, and aspersions on the business conduct of his brothers – and is therefore hesitant to take the brunt of decisions that could rebound on him.
Third, the civilians, both in government and opposition, have shown no inclination to bail the military out. The PPP government has been dragging its feet on the anti-terrorism law proposed by the military, both to facilitate nabbing, holding and prosecuting terrorists but also to avoid charges of violating human rights that could have an adverse impact on military and financial assistance from the US because of strict Congressional oversight of such violations. It has also absolved itself of such decision-making after being stung by the military on the Kerry-Lugar Bill and Memogate. Understandably, it is reluctant to shoulder the burden of ordering the military into Waziristan when the media, mullahs and opposition parties – in particular Imran Khan who represents the populist third force that is threatening both mainstream parties in the forthcoming general elections – are poised to condemn it for “pursuing an American agenda”. It doesn’t help when the military leadership is loath to openly admit that “this is our war”.
Fourth, the military’s Afghanistan end-game strategy for Afghanistan is still wobbly. It wants to protect its Mulla Umar – Haqqani network assets and help them get a key position in Kabul after the Americans leave but it doesn’t have the will or ability to break the nexus between its assets and liabilities – the TTP is a liability but it is inextricably networking with the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Fifth, the military is also keen to remain on the right side of the vernacular media and mullahs that remain part of the problem rather than the solution. Many journalists and religious leaders are still prisoners of misplaced religious nationalism. They say the TTP is an Israeli-India-American conspiracy against Pakistan because “Muslims cannot possibly kill Muslims”, or variations of the theme. For example, a section of the media has made a big issue of a tattoo (of a painting by a Peruvian artist given to erotica, sorcery and fantasy) on the back of an Uzbek terrorist, claiming it as proof of the non-Muslim identity of the foreign devils because “mutilation of the body is forbidden in Islam”. Evidence suggesting the opposite is blithely ignored. Many Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have been found with tattoos because they were “inspired” by foreign jihadis from Muslims countries worldwide where tattoos are part of the local culture – especially in the countries of Central Asia where it is a growing art form – after they made Afghanistan their base area in the 1980s. Indeed, Abu Musab al Zarqavi, the tattooed Al-Qaeda terrorist from Jordan who served time in Afghanistan and wrought havoc in Iraq until he was killed by a drone strike in 2006, was the one man who symbolized the new Al-Qaeda culture imported into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Zarqavi introduced beheadings, suicide bombings, kidnapping for ransom, hostage taking and attacks on the Shia as new elements in Al-Qaeda ‘s strategic armoury.
A national consensus against terrorism is lacking because there is no clear demarcation of civil-military rights, responsibilities and power on the one hand and the place of religion in Pakistani nationalism on the other. Unfortunately, there is no party or leader on the Pakistani horizon who is ready to shake us out of this hopeless situation.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20121221&page=1
GEhLIx Adipex
Can understand how Naqvi plays golf in the evening now.