A rchive Date
[ 01-10-2020 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Pakistan ]
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[https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/fatah-pakistans-joan-of-arc-frightens-its-generals
Pakistan's Joan of Arc frightens its generals
Tarek Fatah
Sep 30, 2020
Last week it was reported that the RCMP had charged one Shehroze Chaudhry, a 25-year-old Pakistani-Canadian, with faking his involvement in the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
Chaudhry, who was apparently away in Pakistan for school between 2013 and 2016, Arabized his social media name as ‘Abu-Huzayfah’ upon his return to Canada, claiming he had been away fighting alongside the Islamic State.
Here was a young man living the fantasy of killing non-Muslims as well as non-religious Muslims who according to Sharia law deserved to die.
Except, he was perhaps too afraid to go the extra mile that another Pakistani Islamic terrorist did in Paris the same day the news of Chaudhry’s fake jihad was exposed.
Ali Hassan, a young man also from Pakistan, carried out a revenge attack at the former Paris office of the French magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’, stabbing two people using a meat cleaver before he was chased by an Algerian man and wrestled to the ground.
Hassan and Chaudhry were worlds apart that day, but both came from the same place that has produced the world’s leading Islamic terrorists — from the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to the London 7/7 bombers, the Mumbai 27/11 terrorist attackers on India and our very own failed jihadis in the Toronto-18 case – Pakistan.
Behind this unending fervour of jihad is the Pakistan military-industrial complex, that was first exposed by the courageous Pakistani author Ayesha Siddiqa in her book “Military Inc”.
Robert Hathaway of the Woodrow Wilson Centre says the book is “an incisive look at the largely hidden economic empire run by and for the benefit of Pakistan’s military.” He adds, “This courageous book will not please Pakistan’s generals.”
Right in our backyard are hundreds of retired Pakistan military officers who have formed the “Pakistan Armed Forces Association of Canada PAFAC” based out of Mississauga, where events are held to celebrate Pakistan military’s accomplishments despite the fact it has lost every war they have fought against India.
I wrote to PAFAC president Major (ret’d) Muhammad Irfan asking him how many retired Pakistan military officers have settled in Canada, but I didn’t get a response.
The anger against Pakistan’s military that rules the country with an iron fist has so far been muted. Five thousand political activists have simply disappeared while in the last month alone dozens of journalists have been arrested, with military-backed goons calling for the genocide of Shia and Ahmadiyya Muslims.
However, for the first time, the usually compliant people of Punjab have risen in revolt. Last week the streets of Lahore echoed with slogans against the Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Bajwa: “Bajwa Kutta Haaey Haaey”. (Curses on the dog General Bajwa).
It’ll be an extraordinary development for the entire region and the world if Pakistan’s military is overthrown by street power and replaced by democratically elected politicians who order the army back to the barracks. But it seems the world is more interested in a picturesque Belarus and Minsk rather than worry about a nuclear-armed state sponsor of terrorism led by jihadi generals.
We better wake up and back the democratic forces in Pakistan. And there is a key player that is leading the ordinary folks whose toil is stolen by its military.
Her name is Maryam Nawaz and she is Pakistan’s Joan or Arc. The dignified daughter of the exiled former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has created a grand coalition of formidable yet dispirited political giants ranging from the Left to the Religious, the Baloch nationalists and Sindhi activists to the Pashtuns of the north and her own Punjabi backyard.
There is hope in the troubled land of terror where hate is fuelled by the military’s secret internal security service, the ISI.
Maryam Nawaz may die at the stake like Joan of Arc, but her sacrifice will bring peace with India, liberate that beautiful land that attracted the likes of Alexander and gave birth to Guru Nanak of the Sikhs and was washed by the mighty Indus in the shadow of the Himalayas.
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 World Fact Book (CIA]
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