Blasts hit Bhutto Karachi motorcade

[Illuminatus Primus]

The Library of Alexandria is the most famous example.

[Darth Wong]

As for the madrassas, the problem with madrassas is that they spring up to fill a void. A strong public education system would not create such a void. That's why the Religious Right in America opposes public education and would rather see it replaced completely by voucher-based private education.

[Stuart]

How is it the technical/urban class is moderate and in control of the government apparatus but this agency is clogged with mountain fundie-terrorist lunatics?

Mountain fundie-terrorist lunatics. That's good, I'll steal that for use elsewhere.

It's necessary to go back a little bit here. Pakistan has a problem when fighting India, the country lacks strategic depth. the Indians don't have to go very far before they start hitting vital things. Put another way, the Pakistanis don;t have much room to manoeuver. So, for decades (back to the 1960s at least) Pakistan has viewed Afghanistan as being part of its sphere of influence and a way of expanding its strategic depth. The ISI has always been at the head of that effort.

Now, to do that, the ISI had to develop close relations and a secure operating presence within Waziristan. The reason is that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is essentially artificial and cuts right across tribal and clan boundaries. People up there don't regard themselves as being Afghans or Pakistani, they are firstly members of a specific clan and secondly as Pushtuns. If there is a residual national identity, it comes a long way third, fourth or fifth. So, the ISI was exploiting those clan and tribal links to influence events in Afghanistan.

The problem is that trying to influence a clan-structured society means one has to be part of the clan-structured society. So, the ISI started recruiting its people from said clans. As time passed, those recruits worked their way up from entry-level positions to senior administrators and, of course, acquired recruiting powers themselves. Guess what, they recruited people in their own (clan and tribal) image.

Then came the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Having an established presence in the area, the ISI became the primary route through which arms and equipment was funneled to the anti-Soviet resistance. Guess what, the people who had been locally recruited and had worked their way up to positions of authority funnelled most of that money and equipment to their own clans and tribes. Especially the resistance groups that were Pushtuns - and by coincidence, they were also the most fundamentalist of the resistance groups. Handling money and equipment brings influence and power, having influence and power means gaining authority. The Waziristan recruits of a few years back moved rapidly up the ISI promotion ladder and gained a lot of authority.

At this point, they started to look ahead. They realized that the resistance in Afghanistan was taking a ferocious battering at the hands of the Soviet troops and they were, effectivley, being fought to exhaustion. There was a short-term need to provide recruits and reinforcements (to the groups fed by their own clans of course) but there was a long-term need to have a group at hand who would be able to take over in Afghanistan after the fighting was over.

Note the congruence here. If we call the traditional intelligence net the old-timers and the new Waziristan-recruited faction the newbies, the old-timers wanted a take-over group to bring Afghanistan into Pakistan's orbit, the newbies wanted a take-over group to bring Afghanistan into their idea of a perfect Islamic state. Both are working to the same end, their long term objectives differ.

The old-timers were outmanoeuvered, they didn't realize the extent to which their control of the ISI had been subverted by the newbies, nor that the newbies were filling the ISI ranks with recruits in their own image. In effect the old-timers were giving orders to an ISI that no longer existed while the newbies went ahead and did their own thing. The ISI had gone rogue.

That happens more often than one might think by the way. The French SDECE went rogue as well durng the 1960s and it took a lot of hard work to bring it back into line (as the DGSE).

So, by the time the Soviets were retreating from Afghanistan, the Taliban was set up and ready to move. The resistance groups finished off the job of exhausting themselves with in-fighting and the Taliban mopped up what was left. The rest is, as they say, history,

[Stuart]

During the Dark Ages, Christians became infamous for destroying all cultural artifacts that were not related to the Bible. There's a famous quote from that era, to the effect that Man does not need any other book.

True, but there wasn't the total elimination of any sort of other activity that distinguised the Taliban. For example, the Venerable Bede started writing the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, other histories were written, there were herbiaries and various other documents that were prepared, copied etc. There was popular, non-religious music, some of which survives, there was non-religious art, there were other non-religious aspects to culture. The Christian religion was certainly central, I wouldn't argue that, but it wasn't exclusive of all other forms of culture. The objective of the Taliban was that all other forms of culture were to be stamped out. No music, no form of popular entertainment other than reading from the Koran, no form of education other than reading from the Koran. That level of exclusivity is unique, or if it isn't, I've never heard of its equal.

It could be argued this way. In the Dark Ages Christianity, education and literacy were seen as ways of spreading the influence of the Church. In the Taliban, the elimination of education and literacy are seen as ways of spreading the influence of Islam.

[Stuart]

As for the madrassas, the problem with madrassas is that they spring up to fill a void. A strong public education system would not create such a void.

I agree. The problem is that a strong quality-based public education system costs a lot of money to run. A lot of countries simply don't have that level of resources. The madrassah are cheap to run. Just one religious nut-case reading from a book and everybody chanting back whatever he says. Have you seen films of these guys? A friend of mine teaches disabled children with special reference to deaf and mentally impaired kids. We were watching the news and there was film of the madrassah students with the weird, jerky movements that they use when making those recitations. Her immediate comment was that the kids she taught who had mental disabilities exhibited exactly identical movements.

The other problem is that strong, quality-based education takes time and commitment over a long period - which is a problem when the children are a vital part of the family economy. A madrassah doesn't demand that.

[Darth Wong]

During the Dark Ages, Christians became infamous for destroying all cultural artifacts that were not related to the Bible. There's a famous quote from that era, to the effect that Man does not need any other book.

True, but there wasn't the total elimination of any sort of other activity that distinguised the Taliban. For example, the Venerable Bede started writing the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, other histories were written, there were herbiaries and various other documents that were prepared, copied etc. There was popular, non-religious music, some of which survives, there was non-religious art, there were other non-religious aspects to culture.

Those happened in spite of the church. The same is true in Islamic countries today; those things happen in spite of the extremists, not with their permission. The church was so repressive during the Dark Ages that it even persecuted people for attempting to do mathematics.

The Christian religion was certainly central, I wouldn't argue that, but it wasn't exclusive of all other forms of culture. The objective of the Taliban was that all other forms of culture were to be stamped out. No music, no form of popular entertainment other than reading from the Koran, no form of education other than reading from the Koran. That level of exclusivity is unique, or if it isn't, I've never heard of its equal.

Organized education" is a fairly recent idea; in the past it was only the elites that got any kind of education at all, and they always had the luxury of ignoring the church if they wished. But the church itself was extremely repressive; it too opposed non-religious music, any kind of non-religious teachings, non-religious art, dance, etc.

It could be argued this way. In the Dark Ages Christianity, education and literacy were seen as ways of spreading the influence of the Church. In the Taliban, the elimination of education and literacy are seen as ways of spreading the influence of Islam.

I think you're confusing the medieval period with the Dark Ages. Education and literacy for the people would have been completely unheard-of in the Dark Ages.

[Darth Wong]

I agree. The problem is that a strong quality-based public education system costs a lot of money to run. A lot of countries simply don't have that level of resources. The madrassah are cheap to run. Just one religious nut-case reading from a book and everybody chanting back whatever he says. Have you seen films of these guys?

I saw insider footage from a radical Islamic extremist group based in the UK. That was scary enough.

A friend of mine teaches disabled children with special reference to deaf and mentally impaired kids. We were watching the news and there was film of the madrassah students with the weird, jerky movements that they use when making those recitations. Her immediate comment was that the kids she taught who had mental disabilities exhibited exactly identical movements.

The other problem is that strong, quality-based education takes time and commitment over a long period - which is a problem when the children are a vital part of the family economy. A madrassah doesn't demand that.

I seem to recall reading that Canadian schoolchildren had very short school days back during the agrarian colonizing period in the 19th century. Even a little bit of public school would be better than nothing.

[K. A. Pital]

I doubt the reason behind madrassa are their extreme cheapness rather than religious zeal - after all, no education at all would be yet cheaper than the madrassa. And even poorer countries can set up a good public education system (if not overpopulated) given the political will to do so.

Too bad Afghani islamists destroyed the government that the USSR supported in Afghanistan, it actually made significant progress in educating people, eliminating gender discrimination and illiterace. Sadly, that were also all the things that jihadis hate and find unacceptable. That was obvious, after the fall of that government into anarchy, a breed of uneducated, tribal-grown youth will rise, and with it groups like the Taliban. Attepts were made to lift Afghanistan from tribal feudalism. They failed, but Taliban's success relied on that failure precisely.

[Stuart]

Those happened in spite of the church.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle and the herbiaries I mentioned were written in monasteries with the active aid and support of the Church.

The same is true in Islamic countries today; those things happen in spite of the extremists, not with their permission.

However, the organization and effectiveness of the Taliban was such that during the duration of their stay in power they were able to eliminate the cultural activities of which they did not approve. Where such cultural activities continued, they did so in regimes where Islamofascist control was not absolute. In contrast, despite the absolute power of the church in the Dark Ages, they did allo, indeed encourage non-religious cultural work - again, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written in monasteries is a good example.

I think you're confusing the medieval period with the Dark Ages. Education and literacy for the people would have been completely unheard-of in the Dark Ages.

In a way, this is my point. During the Dark Ages mass illiteracy was the norm, not the exception. Thus the Dark Ages case of literacy being restricted to the nobility and clergy was maintaining the status quo rather than making a radical change. Thus the description of "conservative" applied there is accurate. However, in the case of the Taliban, literacy at a common level was quite common and they went out of their way to suppress and destroy it, in effect they deliberately attempted to deliteralize (is that a word?) and entire society. I can't think of that ever happening before and I believe it is truly unique.

[Sidewinder]

That happens more often than one might think by the way. The French SDECE went rogue as well durng the 1960s and it took a lot of hard work to bring it back into line (as the DGSE).

I didn't know that. Why did the SDECE go rogue, what did they do while rogue, and how were they reigned in?

[Starglider]

Pakistan has a problem when fighting India, the country lacks strategic depth. the Indians don't have to go very far before they start hitting vital things. Put another way, the Pakistanis don;t have much room to manoeuver. So, for decades (back to the 1960s at least) Pakistan has viewed Afghanistan as being part of its sphere of influence and a way of expanding its strategic depth.

Wouldn't that require massive Stalinesque efforts to move vital industry and population to Afghanistan? It's fairly pointless having 'strategic depth' if the enemy has already captured or destroyed nearly all your manufacturing and recruiting base.

[Sidewinder]

Pakistan has a problem when fighting India, the country lacks strategic depth. the Indians don't have to go very far before they start hitting vital things. Put another way, the Pakistanis don;t have much room to manoeuver. So, for decades (back to the 1960s at least) Pakistan has viewed Afghanistan as being part of its sphere of influence and a way of expanding its strategic depth.

Wouldn't that require massive Stalinesque efforts to move vital industry and population to Afghanistan? It's fairly pointless having 'strategic depth' if the enemy has already captured or destroyed nearly all your manufacturing and recruiting base.

It would be equally pointless if the vital industry and population in your "strategic depth" is destroyed by political bullshit-- see "Cultural Revolution" in China. In fact, if the Taliban was still in charge of Afghanistan, they'd probably order the dismantling of heavy and specialized industry (car and truck manufacturing and maintenance, electrical and electronic equipment, powerplants), with the exception of gun manufacturers, because heavy and specialized industry represent the modern secular world that they hate so much.

[Stuart]

I didn't know that. Why did the SDECE go rogue, what did they do while rogue, and how were they reigned in?

Essentially because of Algeria, the SDECE thought that the French Government was betraying the interests of France in abaondoning the Colony so their special action unit was effectively aiding the OAS. Once teh breach was made, they went their own way with a whole series of ops that the French government only found out about later. Eventually they were reigned in by effectively disbanding the group and replacing it with the DGSE. It's believed that the Rainbow Warrior sinking (three years after the SDECE was replaced by the DGSE) may have been the last hurrah of the rogue SDECE,

Wouldn't that require massive Stalinesque efforts to move vital industry and population to Afghanistan? It's fairly pointless having 'strategic depth' if the enemy has already captured or destroyed nearly all your manufacturing and recruiting base.

I'm not sure what the Pakistanis had in mind. It may be they saw Afghanistan as some sort of mountain fortress where they could wage guerilla warfare against Indian invaders but that sounds pretty naive to me. I can tell you why some countries did certain things but the logic behind some of those decisions escapes me. This is one of them; it's pretty well documented that Pakistani policy was to draw Afghanistan into their orbit in order to generate strategic depth but why they wanted to do that defies rational analysis.

[Stuart]

I doubt the reason behind madrassa are their extreme cheapness rather than religious zeal - after all, no education at all would be yet cheaper than the madrassa. And even poorer countries can set up a good public education system (if not overpopulated) given the political will to do so.

Most studies point to cost as a driving reason. All parents want their children to be better off than they were, education is the way to achieve that and some education is better than none. Madrassah purported to offer some education. Also add in mistrust of state schools, that's a bigf factor in southern Thailand. The problem is that education in a Madrassah only qualifies somebody to do two things, teach in another Madrassah or blow himself up.

Too bad Afghani islamists destroyed the government that the USSR supported in Afghanistan, it actually made significant progress in educating people, eliminating gender discrimination and illiterace. Sadly, that were also all the things that jihadis hate and find unacceptable. That was obvious, after the fall of that government into anarchy, a breed of uneducated, tribal-grown youth will rise, and with it groups like the Taliban. Attepts were made to lift Afghanistan from tribal feudalism. They failed, but Taliban's success relied on that failure precisely.

I agree, there's nothing more I can say or add to that. It's a tragedy that the invasion of Afghanistan happened when it did but the cold war timing made the result unavoidable, If it had happened under Eisenhower, the U.S. government would have muttered "so they want to run around in mountains, good luck to them" and gone back to sleep. If it had happened after 9/11 we'd have been cheering you on. But it had to happen under that dolt Carter when he was looking for something to pretend to get tough over. What can you expect from a Southern Baptist?

[Starglider]

I can tell you why some countries did certain things but the logic behind some of those decisions escapes me. This is one of them; it's pretty well documented that Pakistani policy was to draw Afghanistan into their orbit in order to generate strategic depth but why they wanted to do that defies rational analysis.

I'm curious what your strategy would be, if you were tasked in 1972 (immediately after the India-Pakistan war) with preventing another invasion, and ultimately finding a way to capture border territories from India.

But then I'm also curious what if any geopolitical strategy you think the USSR should have followed to actually win the cold war. Presumably that's something the US planners spent a lot of time thinking about.

[MKSheppard]

Both Iran and Pakistan are much more complex than this suggests and the events taking place in both are the results of trends that have been developing for decades (for example, there was a powerful and well-established fundamentalist plot against Mossadegh in Iran back in the 1950s. If the Shah hadn't got him, they would.)

This is interesting and the first I know of it. Was the Shah aided in the 1950s-1960s by the British also? One of my books; I forget which one it was, possibly Norman Friedmans "The Fifty Year War" says that one of the reasons the US began moving into the Middle East in the late 1960s and 1970s was because the British, who were mostly responsible for keeping things under control (witness a lot of british small operations in the area during the 1950s) were simply exhausted financially, and could no longer afford to police the area.

[Elfdart]

With a terrorist threat like that, Musharraf can order the security forces to be more ruthless in cracking down Islamofascists. Hopefully, the Islamofascists will either see the light and stop trying to kill everyone who's not an Islamofascist, or get killed.

It will take more than "security forces" to put the fundies in their place. It will take a huge army to comb Waziristan and other strongholds and shoot the bastards. Anything else is pissing up a rope. Musharaff can't do that, for a variety of reasons.

[Elfdart]

Both Iran and Pakistan are much more complex than this suggests and the events taking place in both are the results of trends that have been developing for decades (for example, there was a powerful and well-established fundamentalist plot against Mossadegh in Iran back in the 1950s. If the Shah hadn't got him, they would.)

This is interesting and the first I know of it. Was the Shah aided in the 1950s-1960s by the British also? One of my books; I forget which one it was, possibly Norman Friedmans "The Fifty Year War" says that one of the reasons the US began moving into the Middle East in the late 1960s and 1970s was because the British, who were mostly responsible for keeping things under control (witness a lot of british small operations in the area during the 1950s) were simply exhausted financially, and could no longer afford to police the area.

The British were the ones who came up with the idea of overthrowing Mossadegh long before Dulles got on board. The overthrow of the democracy in Jordan in 1957 was also a British idea, with Uncle Sam piling on.

[Stuart]

I'm curious what your strategy would be, if you were tasked in 1972 (immediately after the India-Pakistan war) with preventing another invasion, and ultimately finding a way to capture border territories from India.

Pretty much what Pakistan has done since that war. Step one is to make any attack by India too painful to contemplate. That means a relatively well-equipped force structure combined with nuclear weapons. The idea there is that if India invades, she'll get so badly mauled that she'll be wide open to other enemies.

As to recovering border territories, this can't be done directly. it has to be done by inciting unrest and insurgency in the area (using the Moslem population as a base) in the hope that eventually the Indians will find them too much trouble to be worth staying. Add in some ethnic cleansing to drive the Hindu population out and hope.

But then I'm also curious what if any geopolitical strategy you think the USSR should have followed to actually win the cold war. Presumably that's something the US planners spent a lot of time thinking about.

Step One would be to decouple Western Europe from the USA. This would be done by military means (creating weapons systems that threaten Europe but not the USA and then asking will America trade New York for Brussels) and political means (inciting anti-American and pro-neutrality feeling in Europe)

Step Two would be to absorb the decoupled Europe into the Soviet block by a mixture of political and economic subversion.

Step Three would be to complete the absorption of western Europe by replacing the exiting governments with Soviet puppets using rigged elections, manufactured unrest etc

Step Four would be to use the economic and industrial strength of Europe to eliminate the American economic and production capacity advantages

Step Five use subversion and international adventurism to cut the US off from foreign supplies of energy and raw materials while neutralizing American attempts to counter with the enlarged Soviet forces from Four

Step Six, having isolated the United States from its sources of supply and trade, watch the country collapse and repeat steps two to four in the USA.

[Stuart]

This is interesting and the first I know of it. Was the Shah aided in the 1950s-1960s by the British also? One of my books; I forget which one it was, possibly Norman Friedmans "The Fifty Year War" says that one of the reasons the US began moving into the Middle East in the late 1960s and 1970s was because the British, who were mostly responsible for keeping things under control (witness a lot of british small operations in the area during the 1950s) were simply exhausted financially, and could no longer afford to police the area.

The British (not the CIA) were the primary foreign players in Iran up to the mid-1960s. However, the internal situation was enormously complicated. The players included moderate nationalists (like Mossadegh), extreme nationalists, absolute monarchists, constitutional monarchists and extreme religious fundamentalists. And that's just the larger groups.

Mossadegh was the classic moderate who starts revolutions and we all know what happens to them. He was too monarchist for the non-monrachists, not nationalist enough for the nationalists, too religious for the secular socialists and nowhere near religious enough for the fundamentalists under Kashani. Somebody was going to get him and everybody had plans to do just that. It's even arguable that Operation Ajax saved his life.

My guess is that if he hadn't been removed by Anglo-Americab action, there would have been another coup from somebody or other, Kashani was certainly gearing up to overthrow him (Mossadegh knew it and was beginning to get desperate). If that had happened, we'd probably have seen Kashani in power by the mid-1950s.

[Stuart]

It will take more than "security forces" to put the fundies in their place. It will take a huge army to comb Waziristan and other strongholds and shoot the bastards. Anything else is pissing up a rope. Musharaff can't do that, for a variety of reasons.

It's worse than that. If the Pakistani Army starts creating massive casualties in Waziristan, its going to turn into a full-scale civil war. Its the clan structure again, the clans will start fighting, not because they support the Taliban but because the Army killed Uncle Achmed and clan honor demands we whack a few of them in return.

[Pelranius]

I wonder what the likelihood of Chinese intervention is if civil war breaks out in Pakistan?

[MKSheppard]

That's why the Religious Right in America opposes public education and would rather see it replaced completely by voucher-based private education.

Except theres a broad spectrum of "private" (read paid education) educational services from secular academies to "Catholic" schools, where probably half their student population isn't Catholic, but their parents send them there because the Catholic schools are light years better than the abmysal public schools.

And Catholic schools aren't like madrassas, where only the Bible/Koran is taught, theres' a lot of science education, et al.

[Darth Wong]

That's why the Religious Right in America opposes public education and would rather see it replaced completely by voucher-based private education.

Except theres a broad spectrum of "private" (read paid education) educational services from secular academies to "Catholic" schools, where probably half their student population isn't Catholic, but their parents send them there because the Catholic schools are light years better than the abmysal public schools.

The solution to abysmal public schools is to improve them, not to abandon the whole idea of public schooling.

And Catholic schools aren't like madrassas, where only the Bible/Koran is taught, theres' a lot of science education, et al.

And how about fundie schools like the splinter private schools in Alberta that hand out anti-Semitic textbooks? They're just as radical as any madrassa.

[Sidewinder]

I wonder what the likelihood of Chinese intervention is if civil war breaks out in Pakistan?

China is also having problems with Muslim separatists. (Strangely, the Taliban is using Chinese-made weapons, leading to suspicions that China is supporting the Taliban to weaken American forces there.) I suspect China will back Musharraf to keep the Pakistani government an ally, not the Islamofascists who want to kill the Chinese infidels and take Xinjiang with them.