An End to Pakistan--or a New Beginning?

For some time now, I have familiarized myself with several nationalities living in what is now Pakistan:  Baloch, Sindh, Pashtun, Kashmiris, Gilgit Baltistanis, Punjabi Hindus, and others.  Since Pakistan's creation in 1947--a statement by the Indian Subcontinent Muslim League that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together--these national groups have been chafing under various forms of oppression and the attempted eradication of their national characteristics.

Pakistan is an artificial, polyglot rump state that was once part of a large "Indian" entity; in 1971, its lost its remaining, non-contiguous Bengali portion (then called East Pakistan) when it broke away to form Bangladesh.  What makes Pakistan different from India, the other part of the British Raj's partition of the greater subcontinent?  Although Pakistan did not declare itself an Islamic Republic, with Islam as the official state religion, until 1956; it was in fact created as a Muslim-dominated country.  This is contrary to the history of India, which has maintained its status as a secular state, with no official state religion. Additionally, Indian authorities come from a range of its subgroups and nationalities.  Pakistan is and has been dominated by one:  Punjabis, and specifically Muslim Punjabis.  Further, although India has seen many incidents of serious inter-communal violence by Muslims and Hindus against one another; the minority Muslims enjoy a range of protections that the state has enforced with vigor.  Such has not been the lot for Hindus in Pakistan who complain--with a good deal of evidence--that Pakistan is guilty of an anti-Hindu jihad.  I have been to the camps in New Delhi of Hindu refugees from Pakistan and taken the refugees' testimony of their oppression--both in violent incidents and in regular day-to-day oppression of Hindus, including forced conversion which the government does not criminalize.  Thus, in Pakistan's 1951 census, Hindus were counted at 12.9 percent of the population.  In 2014, they were down to 1.85 percent with a net decrease in population of about 17 percent.  In contract, from 1951 to 2011, Indian Muslims grew from 9.8 percent to 14.2 percent with a net increase in population of almost 400 percent.

Internationally Pakistan has a well-founded reputation for oppressing its own people, supporting an intelligence service that has been defined by some countries as a terrorist group, proliferating nuclear weaponry, massive corruption, and sponsoring worldwide terrorism, especially against India.  These national groups--especially the Baloch (predominantly Muslim), the Pashtun (predominantly Muslim), and the Sindhi (predominantly Hindu)--offer a way out of this morass.  All of them have a history that eschews an official religions and welcomes others as equal members of the same polity; regardless of faith, they are strongly anti-Islamist; they believe in allowing different ethnic and national groups to develop as nations (whether within a confederation or independently); and they are fighting against the human rights atrocities that have become daily life for many inside the nation of Pakistan.  The next few years will be critical.  Pakistan and China have been developing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which the Pakistanis believe will make them immune to demands from democracies and those fighting radical Islamic terror.  That expansion of Chinese dominance all the way to the warm water port of Gwadar in Balochistan, threatens both US and Russian interests and could be the basis for the sort of common interest cooperation suggested by US President Donald Trump.  Many youth among the Baloch and Pashtun, have been looking for the West to support their insurgencies but are finding that the only real support they get is from Islamist groups.  If we do not support these efforts, it's likely that more will join with Islamists in the (probably mistaken) hope that it will bring relief to their peoples.  And there are regional implications:  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi already has expressed support for the Baloch and has interests in what happens to its perennial rival; Afghanistan often identifies as a Pashtun state; and Balochistan is occupied by both Pakistan and Iran.  There are many restive national minorities in both countries.  Pakistan is only about half Punjabi; and Iran is only about 40 percent Persian.  There is a lot of opportunity to keep those terror-supporting nations busy trying to stay together as states, such that their pursuit of international goals would be suppressed.

We have the opportunity, and many of the leaders of these groups have told me they are hopeful of a change in US policy that will help their causes while they together end up advancing US interests. But the clock is ticking.

BETRAYAL: USCIRF PROMOTES RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION

In its just released report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) ignored overwhelming evidence of Bangladeshi government complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus, while rejecting the path of cooperation with India, choosing instead a sterile form of confrontation.

·        USCIRF was established by Title II of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.  Its mandate is to “facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom [and make] policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress.”

·        Along with a misguided minority in Washington, it has for years sullied the reputation of current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and observant Hindus with discredited claims of his complicity in anti-minority violence.

·        Its recently-released 2015 annual report continues that effort, using questionable material to claim religious freedom abuses in India, and attributes it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent election and "Hindu nationalist groups," while calling forced conversion of Hindus "media propaganda." When USCIRF staff brought the allegations to me for my advice, I provided evidence refuting it.

·        Fewer and fewer people and organizations continue this sterile line given Modi’s election as India’s Prime Minister, his actions since that election, the growing importance of India’s relations with other democracies, and India’s Supreme Court having cleared Modi multiple times.

·        USCIRF’s action is consistent with a pattern of anti-Hindu bias.

·        Its report on Pakistan, where Hindus face intense violence and have been reduced to one percent of the population, USCIRF calls violence against Hindus “allegations,” while not similarly qualifying the claims of any other minority group.

·        Its report on Bangladesh calls violence against Hindus “occasional,” despite sending staff on a fact-finding trip in which my associates provided ample and vetted evidence of ongoing ethnic cleansing of Hindus and the Bangladeshi government’s complicity that have reduced Hindus from one in five Bangladeshis to as few as one in 15.

·        In August 2014, I arranged a meeting between an Indian government representative and USCIRF’s Chairperson at which both parties agreed on a path of cooperation to undo decades of mutual animosity and work together toward common understandings.  In the end, USCIRF rejected cooperation and chose the course of confrontation instead with an increasingly important US ally.

·        Hindus are being persecuted out of existence in Bangladesh and Pakistan.  Yet, USCIRF minimizes or ignores that—despite being given ample evidence to the contrary choosing instead to pursue discredited accusations against one of our most sincere allies.  I have direct evidence of all of this and stand by my accusations against USCIRF and the government of Bangladesh.

·        USCIRF’S decision was a disservice to both India and the United States, to religious minorities in South Asia, and to the cause of religious freedom worldwide.  It also called its impartiality into question and with it that of the United States government.

The Death Throes of Pakistan's Hindus

I just returned from a month in India during which time an incredible number of significant events were occurring. My primary mission in going was to document and raise awareness of the ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus. I found plenty, including evidence of ongoing attacks on them both in Bangladesh and in West Bengal, India. The border between the two is so porous that terrorists and contraband move freely with and without the help of India's Border Security Force or West Bengal police. But I also witnessed the tragic beginning of the end for Pakistan's Hindus. Once one in five Pakistanis, they have been reduced to one percent of the population.

But as the Taliban take over ever larger chunks of that country, that remnant of a people is streaming across the border into Indian Punjab. The stream became a torrent with the Taliban's seizure of the Swat Valley earlier this year. Hindu refugees report attacks and threats by the Taliban, as well as officials telling them to leave the country "or else." The February agreement between the Taliban and the Zardari government ceded the area to the former and allowed Sharia law to be imposed on Swat's 1.2 million inhabitants.

President Obama has used this agreement as a model in his stated quest for "moderate Taliban." But not only does the agreement countersign ethnic cleansing, it also failed even before Obama's anticipated speech on US policy in the region. Just hours before the President spoke, one of the Taliban parties to the agreement, Tehrik e Taliban, abrogated it with a terror attack on a mosque in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, and has engaged in other terrorist attacks subsequently.

One Hindi language channel quoted a Taliban spokesman confirming that his group was pulling out of the agreement not to attack elsewhere in Pakistan because, he said, it would be contrary to Allah's wishes to limit Sharia to the Swat Valley. Yet, no major media in India, the US, or elsewhere made this connection.

Even more shameful, no media or government has protested the ethnic cleansing of Pakistan's Hindus, who are being finished off by the Taliban. All governments involved in the region are just allowing it to happen,too. What kind of a world do we live in when India will not defend Hindus attacked for being Hindus; when the US ignores the atrocity; when not a single human rights group or the UN utters a word of protest?

What is happening to Pakistan's Hindus is a crime, but a crime that is largely accomplished. There remain 13,000,000 Hindus in Bangladesh subject to the same attacks, the same racist laws, and the same intention to eradicate them. Worse, the battle is spilling across the open border into India, and it is changing the demographic balance in the region. It is also allowing terrorists into the country whose intention is to undermine the very nation of Hindustan.

My mission is to prevent that, to prevent the murders and other atrocities, even if I am the only voice of protest to cry out about this crime against humanity.

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?