India--Our True Friend in South Asia

The killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound less than 100 km from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad caused many Americans to question just how much of an ally the Muslim Islamic State is. We've heard all the arguments--that Pakistan provides invaluable help for our anti-Islamist efforts in South Asia, that it has suffered major losses at the hands of our enemies, and so forth. We also know that Pakistan was more of an ally during the Cold War than its rival India, whose premier PM, J Nehru, took it on a pro-Soviet course that did not vary until the USSR's fall. Times have changed, however; international alliances have shifted; and both countries could proffer charges against one another. But there is too much at stake to do that.

The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which begins next month, will create a power vacuum that the Karzai government is incapable of filling. Candidates to do so include China (which has been making strong moves in that direction), the Taliban (which remains active in the country--and the Obama administration is even looking to cut a deal with the Islamists), Iran (which has a Shi'ite group there in need of its "protection"), and Pakistan (which at the very least is suspect and unstable). None of them would make for a friendly South Asia. Yet, the Obama administration continues to dismiss the one regional power that would: India. Its interests are largely the same as the US, as are its major enemies; the specter of its increased influence is the one thing that scares the pants off the Pakistanis; it has the economic and military strength to check Chinese expansion; and it is, like the US and unlike the other candidates, a committed democratic republic.

There's still time--not a lot, but some; and the only path that has any chance of keeping Afghanistan and most of South Asia from falling under Islamist or Chinese control is a mature relationship between these two great powers: the United States of America and India. For more, see: India as the Solution to Afghan Power Vacuum.

An End to a Hindu India?

Jihad has come to India. The Obama administration and the State Department will tell you that it is nothing more than isolated acts by individuals and the New Delhi government will say you are stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment. But I have seen it for myself first-hand and know that this studied denial will find us caught as flat-footed in India as we were in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere. The difference is that India is an economic and military giant, with nuclear weapons and could be a cornerstone of any effective fight against radical Islam.

I have spent several years along India's 2545 mile-long frontier with Bangladesh, and have seen the impact Bangladesh's radicalization has had on its giant neighbor to the west. Amitabh Tripathi, who has been fighting against what he calls his country's "soft policies," noted that Bangladesh's Muslims "are not radicalized but their institutions are." Mixed with corruption on both sides of the border, that radicalization has produced demographic change in many strategic areas of India and given Muslim activists carte blanche throughout the country.
Each year in states like Uttar Dinajpur and West Bengal directly across from the Islamic state, we find that increasingly more mixed Hindu-Muslim villages are now all Muslim or Muslim-dominated. Gone are the roadside temples characteristic of places where Hindus practice their faith openly; gone are the sights of Hindu women dressed in their colorful saris and other vestments. They have been replaced by mosques and burqas. Last year, Tripathi and I met with Bimal Praminik, Director of the Kolkata-based Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations who has studied these population changes and is convinced they are integral to the jihad's that threatens us all, noting that the dominant culture for South Asian Muslims has become more "Arabic," than South Asian.

Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been disappearing for years; now we are seeing Hindus being replaced by radicalized Muslims all in India. Between 1981 and 1991, Muslim population growth in West Bengal actually exceeded its growth in Bangladesh. India’s Muslim population growth outstripped government predictions based on demographic factors (fertility and mortality). There had to be another element driving the change, which Pramanik and others identify as "illegal immigration from across the border."

Statistics might be the "smoking gun," but jihad's impact is more powerful in the testimony of its victims. In places as far afield as Deganga and Meerut, Hindu populations are fleeing Muslim violence and government inaction. Elsewhere, an elderly Hindu in the Howrah district told us how Muslims are taking over her property piece by piece. She even showed us a wall with a star and crescent on it that local Muslims built to identify it as dar al Islam. In another village, residents showed us the remains of a Hindu temple that Muslims recently destroyed after urinating on its holy objects. Most poignant was the testimony of a crestfallen mother in Norit whose 22-year-old daughter was abducted weeks ago by local Muslims. Abduction of Hindu women and girls in the name of Islam has been common in Bangladesh for years and is a key element in jihad: eliminating females of childbearing years from the gene pool and forcing them to "produce" Muslim offspring instead. It is now happening in India, according to victimized parents who told me about it in India's North and Northeast.

Our State Department will tell you that there is no jihad in India. They will hew the official line that the liberal Awami League government in Bangladesh has put an end to anti-Hindu actions there. A similarly weak government in New Delhi will parrot the same platitudes. Yet, their false palliatives bring no comfort to the scores of victims who have told us their stories; or the many others now unable to do so. Imagine what an Islamist India would mean.

Ignore Indian events at our own Peril

For the past year, I have been saying that the political center in India is collapsing. The re-election of the left-centrist Congress Party last year only masked this inevitable decline because the finale might not come this year, or maybe even next; but it is coming, and when it does it will be with an explosion heard round the world. I was in India for just over two weeks in February, and during that time noted:

• Relations with fellow nuclear power Pakistan deteriorated in a hail of harsh rhetoric and threats such that the Obama administration sent Senator John Kerry to try and “calm” tensions.
• Pakistan first refused to join in scheduled talks with India about the former’s involvement in a 2008 terror attack that killed almost 200 Indians.
• Later, they agreed to talk only if they focused on Kashmir—a territorial dispute between the countries that has sparked skirmishes, continued terror and counter-terror operations, and all out wars between the two. India wanted to focus on terrorism, but acquiesced and said they would consider the matter but insisted the talks concentrate on terrorism.
• While this was happening, Islamists launched another deadly Islamist terrorist attack, this time on Pune, a major Indian city of over 5,000,000 people, that at last count took 13 lives and left over five dozen injured.
• Initial investigations identified the terrorists as Indian citizens, known as Indian Mujahedeen who are committed to replacing India with an Islamist state.
• Subsequent investigations confirmed that fact and added that the operation likely was directed from Pakistan.
• The Indian government announced that American Islamist David Headley gave his captors information about the “Karachi Project” that was carried out by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. He said the ISI brought sympathetic Indian Muslims to Pakistan, trained them in terrorist techniques, and returned them to India where they were to await further instructions to carry out terrorist attacks.
• Communist insurgents, known as Naxalites, abducted a government official in the state of Bihar and refused to release him until the government caved into their demands, one of which was for the Indian government to end its, very effective, military crackdown on the Maoist revolutionaries.
• Naxalites carried out a half dozen military operations against the government and people of India. Among the many terror operations were at least two of particular note. They launched a particularly gruesome attack on an unarmed paramilitary camp in which more than two dozen soldiers were shot or burned alive; and an unknown number of wounded were seized and taken to undisclosed locations as hostages. They also attacked an unarmed village in the Jamui district of Bihar because its inhabitants refused cooperate with their insurgency. They murdered several villagers, including some who were burned alive when the Maoists torched homes in the village.
• Islamists carried out several terror attacks, mostly in Kashmir, but in other areas of India, as well. The attacks killed both civilians and military personnel indiscriminately.
• The government’s anti-terror squad prevented another half dozen Islamist terror attacks, seizing 200 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 600 detonators, and 200 gel sticks from known Muslim terrorists, in one raid in Gujurat (a state that has been a rallying cry for Islamists after violence there in 2002. The government also detained two British nationals caught at a hotel near the international airport with high-tech devices for monitoring and tracking air traffic.
• Students rioted—and as of the time I left were still rioting—at an Indian university in Hyderabad in the South of the country At the time I left India, one student was near death after self-immolating as part of the protest.

Imagine the media coverage if any one of those things occurred in the United States. Yet, from what I could glean from the Internet and elsewhere, it appears that our own media (except for a few journals that ran my articles) devoted far more ink to Tiger Woods than to all of these events combined. India is a nuclear power, as is the United States. India, like the US, is a major target of international jihiadis. Its other primary adversary also has nuclear weapons as do those of the United States. Both countries are among the largest and most populous nations on earth. Both are among the world’s most important economic powers. And both countries are critical if Islamist and communist imperialism and terror are to be defeated.

Indians are questioning the United States' reliability as an ally in the war against radical Islam. Our continuing aid to Pakistan--aid which even former Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf admitted had been channeled against India--is incomprehensible to most Indians without relying on cynicism about politics; and the Obama administration's policies have led most anti-Islamists to conclude that his administration would sacrifice allies like Indian and Israel if it meant even a superficial friendship from America's worst enemies.

Does the US Support Pakistan over India?

From Nehru to Obama: Why the US supports Pakistan

Poll after poll shows that Americans view India, not Pakistan, as their ally; a kindred democracy fighting a common Islamist enemy. Nevertheless, when I was in India throughout March, the question I was asked most frequently was “Why is the United States supporting Pakistan?” Even before President Obama’s March 27 speech, trepidation had been building. Admitted supporters of the US President told me in Delhi’s Connaught Place that Obama’s pro-Pakistan tilt varied from their pre-election expectations. One aspiring journalist expressed a growing sentiment that Obama’s actions are meant to “insure that the American people are safe,” regardless of “lives of other people of other countries.” But Obama’s speech pledged an addition $1.5 annually to Pakistan and identified it—not India—as an ally in fighting the Taliban.

That baffled Indians since Pakistan has shown a decided inability and lack of desire to take on Islamist terrorists, while Indians have been laying down their lives in that struggle. Even Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher seemed uncomfortably aware of the inconsistency. Shortly after Obama spoke, a CNN-IBN correspondent asked Boucher if he thought the Pakistanis had the “ability and willingness” to fight the Taliban as Obama said they would.

“Let me put it this way,” Boucher replied. “We talked to all the senior people there…and they said they wanted to.”

They “wanted to”? That was Boucher’s ringing support? No wonder Indians are concerned. Many Americans are working to change that policy, but India has a role in that, too. For US policy can be traced in part to Indian decisions decades ago.

People in the US State Department are no different than their counterparts elsewhere. They depend on contacts and authoritative people “on the ground” worldwide; people with inside information and expertise impossible to garner from halfway around the world. In the 1950s, Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru made a critical decision to minimize contacts with the US and thereby gave Pakistan that exclusive role. In 1955, he founded the Non-Aligned Movement, which was nonaligned in name only. Look at Nehru’s cohorts: Gamal Abdul Nasser, whose Egypt was a major Soviet ally and large recipient of Soviet aid; and Josip Broz Tito, while a communist gadfly, solidly in that camp; Marxist Kwame Nkrumah; and Indonesia’s Sukarno, aligned with China and North Korea. India itself became dependent on Soviet aid and welcomed legions of Soviet advisors and experts. Only in the early 1990s did India realize it backed the wrong side in the Cold War and had to re-orient its policies.

For almost four decades, when US diplomats and advisors needed someone with inside information, they would call their contacts who all were Pakistani and who helped their careers. It is no wonder that experts advising Obama see the world through that Pakistani prism and believe them when they say they will fight the radicals. Those decades-long relationships still hold sway. Moreover, Indian leaders often allow their desire to be politically correct on other issues—such as Iraq and at times Israel—take precedence over Indian interests. But all is not lost.

Washington is a city crawling with lobbyists. Everyone has them, including India. The challenge facing them must be to make India Washington’s major source of information; to convince people to call an Indian, not a Pakistani, when they need good information about South Asia. That must be a priority for everyone from the Indian embassy to paid lobbyists and Indian officials who meet with their US counterparts. They also should push their own plans to counter Pakistan’s. For instance, Obama spoke of regional cooperation. Since Indian troops were so successful against Kashmiri terrorists, let them take on that fight, so Pakistan can move its troops from there to fight the Taliban. That only makes sense if Obama and the Pakistanis were serious about cooperating and fighting terrorists.

There are a myriad of ways to do it and people in the US ready for it. That is the challenge facing those who want to see a change in US policies in South Asia.

Extra! Extra! Make bad decisions; get paid for them.

The Taliban are cutting through Pakistan like a knife through butter; the Pakistani government has responded by ceding parts of the country to the terrorists and ignoring the extensive Talibanization of its intelligence service, military, and bureaucracy. David Kilcullen, former adviser General David Petraeus, recently said that Pakistan could collapse within six months; and February report from a task force chaired by no less than former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said: “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure.”

So, what is the Obama administration’s response? Throw US taxpayer money down the rat’s hole. Or in the words of one mainstream Indian journalist regarding US policy: “Terrorism pays!” Obama’s policies are alienating South Asian allies who are laying down their lives fighting the same Islamist enemy we face. They are enabling a Pakistani government that is using our tax dollars to fight our Indian friends; a government that is content to see its country thoroughly Talibanized and to come down on the wrong side of every international conflict, helping the people they are supposed to be fighting; a government that again has agreed to cede parts of the country to the Taliban and let Sharia become the law of those lands. And Obama’s actions tell the Islamists that they can continue “cleansing” Pakistan and Bangladesh of their Hindus, and we will not say a word.

The same philosophy underlies Obama’s foreign policy and domestic blunders. Pakistan’s difficulty is the product of bad and self-seeking decisions. For years, radical Islam has been making serious inroads throughout Pakistani society, but its leaders deliberately chose to ignore it. They did so partly out of fear—fear that radicals might assassinate them; fear that they might alienate a bloc of voters; fear that the radicals would successfully use their opposition to paint them as Zionists or pro-American. And they did so out of greed—greed for the graft that would continue flowing from the minions that were taking direction from the radicals; graft from the billions in petrodollars that were funding radical activities. They did so out of wishful thinking that the radicals would either fade away or join the ranks of other civil servants, more concerned with personal enrichment than any philosophy or social goal. And they did so in some cases because they agreed with the radicals’ short term goals. Now Obama is paying them for a promise (to undo the damage their bad decisions have wrought.

America’s crisis, like Pakistan’s, has an ideological component. The ultra-liberal Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to loan money to people who did not qualify for them with draconian consequences for any bank that dared stay with traditional mortgage criteria even if the applicant was a minority. There was also a greed component in the cushy roles and extensive contributions by lenders to Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) to ignore warnings about the system and use their positions to rubber stamp rather than oversee. But most importantly, our problems stem from bad decisions: bad decisions by the auto makers which turned once gold standard businesses into train wrecks; bad decisions by lenders to continue making bad loans; and bad decisions by home buyers to borrow more than they could repay and pretend that their incomes supported the lifestyles they demanded. And how has Obama “taught them a lesson”? By paying them for it.

Rewarding bad behavior—whether in Pakistan or the United States—will do only one thing and that is encourage more bad behavior. Obama did not tell the Pakistanis, “You knew Islamists were taking over your society but chose not to oppose them. Now, in order to get the aid we can offer and become a true ally, you have to change.” Nor did he tell those Americans who made bad business, lending, or borrowing decisions, “The one thing we will not do is enable your bad behavior with the money of Americans who made good decisions.” Instead, he has committed the United States to a policy that seeks to make the untenable viable; that promises not to force people to take responsibility for their bad decisions; that insures bad behavior will continue with regular rewards compliments of US taxpayers.

Obama's Afgh-Pak Policy Already Unraveling

Delhi, India. United States President Barack Hussein Obama unveiled his much awaited South Asian strategy in a globally televised speech last night (Indian time). Today many Indians told me, as one put it, that Obama “lived up to his middle name by showing the face of a pro-Pakistan US policy,” a critical component of which that policy is to find “moderate Taliban” with whom the United States and its allies can negotiate a peace. Imagine if in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt said the US was going to look for moderate Nazis who could negotiate peace. Americans would have been outraged then, and history would show the policy to have been a calamitous mistake. Fortunately, we do not have to wait for the passage of history since those moderate Taliban have already provided evidence that the policy is terribly flawed.

Obama’s template for it is the agreement earlier this year between the current Pakistani government and the Taliban that gave the latter control of Pakistan’s Swat Valley and accepted the imposition of Sharia law there. In exchange, the Taliban “promised” not to launch further attacks against the Pakitani government. Yet just hours before Obama’s speech, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque located in the Khyber region near the Pakistan-Afghan border. So far, the dead or injured number at least 170 of the 250 worshippers. The mosque was completely destroyed. Most news outlets reported the event as a message to Obama that defeating the Taliban will not be easy and that the “militants” could strike at Pakistan pretty much at will. The media also said that no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. All of that is true, but very few outlets reported the fact that several security sources have evidence that the attack was the work of Tehrik-e-Taliban, a deadly Islamist group headed by Batullah Mehsud. What makes that especially significant is that Tehrik-e-Taliban and Mehsud were one of those “moderate Taliban” that entered into that agreement in the Swat Valley. One of the Hindi language channels reported that the group’s spokesman claimed it abrogated the treaty because “it is against the will of Allah to fight for Sharia only in Swat Valley, that all of Pakistan must be under Sharia.”

It took only a month for these “moderates” to do what Hamas, Hizbollah, and other radical Islamists terror groups have done consistently; treating all agreements with us as nothing more than temporary respites valid only until they believe it in their interests to fight. It is a clearly established pattern among these groups yet no one in the Obama Administration seems able to make a connection.

Clinton Smiles in the midst of South Asian disaster

Rudrapur, India. If Americans (or anyone else) needed proof that our government is hopelessly lost in South Asia, this morning’s Indian papers provide all the confirmation they need from a beaming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising the Pakistanis for “themselves resolving [their] difficulties.” What idiocy! While President Asif Ali Zardari and his political rival Nawaz Sharif resolved their personal rivalry (because the military “convinced” Zardari that it would be in his best interests to give into Sharif), Clinton’s belief that this deal can “stabilize civilian democracy and the rule of law” in Pakistan would be laughable were it not so tragic.


Despite apologists for the Pakistani mess, the Taliban is cutting through that country like a knife through butter. Moreover, as it does, this government that Clinton praises cut a deal with “moderate Taliban” that ceded Pakistan’s Swat Valley to the it, allowing its imposition of Sharia law on over 1.2 million people. This is precisely the course now recommended by the Obama Administration and Obama himself! The Swat Valley, it should be noted, is only 100 miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. While we worry about Iran, we might soon see an Islamist State that already has nuclear weapons. And Obama and Clinton smiling about it like a couple of Cheshire cats.

Their allies who made the deal claim that it was “not capitulation but the price of peace.” Yeah, much like unconditional surrender was the price of peace for Germany and Japan after World War II. But that’s Pakistani democracy for you—and Obama’s surreal notion of finding moderate Taliban.

All the while, they are content to allow what has become a river of misery to flow from Pakistan to India’a Punjab: a mass exodus of Pakistani Hindus. This remnant of a community was once one in five Pakistanis and has been reduced to one percent of the population. With Taliban forces in effective control over greater portions of the country, the Hindu population is fleeing fast, either after atrocities have been committed or just ahead of them. According to several informants among them, Taliban officials told them to get out of the country fast or face “dire consequences.” Those officials had a personal stake in that, too, as Pakistan’s Enemy Property Act then gives them the right to seize that “non-Muslim” land and distribute it to a Muslim; likely a relative, ally, or purchaser. Clinton’s praise for this government under which this problem has only grown is consigning the Hindus of Pakistan to extinction through death, forced conversion, or flight. The Pakistan government said this was not “capitulation but the price of peace.” Tell that to the millions streaming across this sad border. They are also victims of a deal with “moderate Taliban,” such as President Obama said he wants to make elsewhere in South Asia.

Are we still smiling Secretary Clinton?

Are my Sources better than CNN's?

My news sources must be so much better than CNN’s and others’ because I keep coming across things that they do not have. The most recent item was the death of an Islamic clergyman this week in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Moulana Hafez Hamidullah passed away quietly at his residence at the age of 63. He was an influential member of the Bangladesh Khelafat Andolan (BKA), a religious and political association of fundamentalist Muslims, very prominent Islamic clergyman, and Vice Principal of a madrassa. Despite the media’s seeming obsession with Islam, there was no mention of Hamidullah’s passing anywhere.

Yet, this very religious Muslim cleric was consistently outspoken in condemning “all forms of militancy in the name of religion.” He preached interfaith harmony based on mutual respect and was (along with the BKA) outspoken defenders of Bangladesh’s “Muslim Zionist,” Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was arrested and tortured after exposing the rise of radical Islam in his country and urging relations with Israel, continues to publish Bangladesh’s only openly Zionist newspaper. The BKA also joins with Choudhury in urging an end to Bangladesh’s prohibition on travel to Israel and in promoting relations with the Jewish State.

While I never met Hamidullah, Choudhury and I met with two of his colleagues in Dhaka in 2007. The first part of our hours-long meeting was rather tense and focused on our profound differences, especially about Israel and the United States’ role in fighting Islamist terror. Although we remained at odds on many points even after our uncensored interfaith dialogue, as I remarked, “Well, we’re not throwing bombs at each other, are we.” We thus “agreed to disagree” and actually found several shared values. Thus followed a warm relationship marked by rigorous honesty and mutual respect. They even published a statement that “neither the Zionists nor the Americans are the real enemy of the Believers and the Muslims.”

Yet prominent media and organizations do not even mention these or other Muslims who have stood against terrorism carried out in their name. For if they did their agenda of what Judea Pearl called “normalization of evil” fails. Like President Obama’s pledge to speak respectfully with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who espouses goals that are contrary to the principles of freedom and justice for which people have struggled for centuries; that agenda is premised on accepting those goals as a reality we must acknowledge. It is the same philosophy that attempts to turn Hamas into a legitimate player in the Middle East. Those who push dialogue with the world’s Ahmedinejads have, by doing so, turned any war on Islamist extremism into a war on Islam itself by incorrectly accepting extremism as basic to Islam. The existence of Muslims—especially highly religious Muslims—who are fighting that extremism, upsets their ideological apple cart.

So, is it the media’s and their political cronies’ ideological agenda; or does my unfunded, one-man operation just have far more extensive news resources than CNN, the networks, AP, and everyone else put together?