The discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.
Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.
US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. “We’re quietly seeing a geographical shift,” an intelligence officer said.
As the War on Terror enters a new decade with a new administration, ghosts from the Bush era are beginning to emerge from the dark corridors of hidden detention centers, secret renditions, and elusive intrigues.
One of those ghosts whose story has been haunting the imagination of the Pakistani public for several years and recently even in Europe, is now beginning to capture the attention of Americans bold enough to enter the war’s most ghastly graveyard.
It is the ghost of Dr. Aaffia Siddiqui, a Pakistani MIT graduate and mother of three, who disappeared from the streets of Karachi in March 2003 along with her 3 children, at the time age under 6 mos, 3, and 7.
For years her family searched for her desperately, at times believing the worst; that she was dead. Then suddenly, 5 years later the ghost appeared live in the flesh, 12,000 miles from where she had disappeared.
In September 2008 the MIT Mom was brought to a Manhattan Court Room to be indicted on charges of trying to kill American soldiers and being a member of Al Qaeda. She was frail, delusional, incoherent, and wounded with a bullet wound to her abdomen dressed so badly that the judge had to order immediate medical attention. Her mugshot picture portrayed unspeakable horrors.
During the pre-trial hearing Dr. Siddiqui appeared in a complete veil, unusal for her according to family members. Her court room outbursts and body language signified a completely broken human being. Although there has been no independent assessment of her mental condition, she was clearly paranoid and incoherent. Moreover, her family has been unable to see her or communicate with her.
Few American’s are familiar with the facts surrounding her case; even less are familiar with the shocking claims being made by her family and indeed, by a majority of Pakistanis. Pakistan was so concerned with her plight that there have been resolutions passed in the parliament demanding her release. Meanwhile the western media has portrayed her as the Mata-Hari of Al-Qaeda, the female version of Chemical Ali, the “mother” of all terrorist. And much of this continues even as the prosecution made a stunning reversal when they announced to the court on January 11th that they would “not be charging” her with any connection to “any terrorist group”; This includes any connection to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.
However to the family, to the majority of Pakistanis, and to her growing number of supporters throughout the world, she is in fact prisoner 650, known as the “Gray Lady of Bagram”, whose shreaks and cries were so disturbing that the prisoners went on a hunger strike to demand that the torture against her stop. Several released detainees have since identified Dr. Siddiqui as the same prisoner 650 and several human rights groups also maintain that she is indeed prisoner 650. In fact, the weeks before her sudden and mysterious appearance at a police station in Afghanistan, human rights groups had been intensifying their demands to have prisoner 650 identified and produced.
Even more disturbing than what may have happened to her is what has come of her two still missing children. Though the older child who is now 13, was returned to the family in Pakistan shortly after her arrest, there is no information on the whereabouts of her two younger children who should now be age 6 and 9. Whether or not the prosecution is able to prove its limited attempted murder case to an American jury, surely no one can deny the innocence of the two missing young children.
The case of Aafia Siddiqui raises a number of mysterious questions are still to be explored. Now that the prosecution has decided not to charge her with terrorism why was she placed on the FBI’s terrorist list to begin with? What happened to her during those 5 missing years. What was the level of cooperation between Pakistani and American intelligence in her pursuit and possible abduction? What does her case mean for the future of Pakistan, U.S. relations. How does her case redefine the war on terror and the meaning of law, liberty, and human rights in 21st century America? And, the most troubling and pressing question of all; where are the children?
The trial of Aafia Siddiqui will begin on January 19th at the S.D.N.Y. courthouse at 500 Pearl St. Manhattan, New York.
We are expecting her case to wrap-up in two weeks. Cell-phones and laptops are not allowed. So we will cover as real-time as possible.
At least 11 people were killed while 40 others injured as a suicide bomber struck a bus near a nursery at Shara-e-Faisal, Karachi.
CCPO Karachi Waseem Ahmed told the reporters that the explosion occurred when a motorcyclist rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a bus carrying the mourners.
Resultantly, a man died while several others injured. The explosion was so powerful that it was heard many kilometers away from the site; clouds of smoke engulfed the area. Law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area, while rescue efforts were also kicked off and the injured were being shifted to the hospitals. Meanwhile, the President and Prime Minister strongly condemned the nasty terrorist activity and issued directives to provide best possible treatment to the injured. Interior Minister Zulfiqar Mirza sought blast report from CCPO Karachi.
“Shahid Afridi shocked us all when he took a couple of momentary breaks from sanity to chow down on the white ball like a mule on an apple in the final One-day International between Australia and Pakistan. It was some of the most bizarre footage I have ever seen from a game of cricket,” writes Michael Slater. -Video grab
News, comments and features from the international press on Afridi’s ‘bite’ and Khalid Latif’s take-down.
Australian cricketers must be messengers of peace in tackling racism
“Australia needs to start addressing the real issues. Indian students killed in Melbourne, Pakistanis assaulted on the field in Perth, blazing headlines around the world, a nation’s reputation dragged into the mud, and never mind that the PM is fluent in Mandarin and that many settlers from Africa and the Punjab and elsewhere are as happy as mankind can be. It cannot continue, in cricket or outside.” http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/australian-cricketers-must-be-messengers-of-peace-in-tackling-racism-20100201-n8×3.html
Shahid Afridi’s cheating defence: everyone does it
“Shahid Afridi shocked us all when he took a couple of momentary breaks from sanity to chow down on the white ball like a mule on an apple in the final One-day International between Australia and Pakistan. It was some of the most bizarre footage I have ever seen from a game of cricket,” writes Michael Slater. http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1007094
India
Experts for legalising ball tampering to even bat and ball contest
“When all that (ball-tampering) first came out and the ball was reversing … People were saying hang on, we can’t have that. We can’t have the ball swinging around after fifty overs. Well, why not? Why can’t we do that?” Fox Sports quotes former Australian bowler Brendon Julian, as saying.”
Aafia Siddiqui’s lawyer says the laws of science do not apply in the case against the Pakistani woman who is charged with attempting to murder US soldiers and FBI agents.
Siddiqui is accused of grabbing a US warrant officer’s M-4 rifle in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan and firing two shots at FBI agents and military personnel when being interrogated for her alleged possession of documents detailing a ‘terrorist’ plan.
On Monday, Siddiqui’s lawyer Linda Moreno said in the final stages of her trial in the Manhattan Federal Court that the “science” supported her testimony that she didn’t touch the weapon or fire it, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Where are the bullet holes? …Did the Afghanis take the bullet holes? …There is no physical evidence that an M-4 rifle was touched by Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, let alone fired,” Moreno said.
She went on to say that Siddiqui appears to have been interrogated in a “sort of a Bermuda Triangle of a room” in which the evidence of the alleged crime had disappeared before reaching the courtroom.
“According to the government, the laws of science don’t exist in that small room in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The laws of physics don’t apply.”
The prosecution says she burst from behind a curtain and attempted the ‘murder’ and was shot in the abdomen.
Last week, Siddiqui said she was concerned about being transferred to a “secret” prison by the US forces and was trying to slip out of the room when she was shot. “I’m telling you what I know. I walked toward the curtain. I was shot and I was shot again. I fainted,” she said.
The prosecutors condemned the defense as ‘lies.’ “She raised her right hand and she lied to your face. She lied and lied and lied,” Prosecutor Christopher LaVigne was quoted by The New York Daily News as saying in the closing arguments of the trial.
“We’re here, folks, because the defendant committed attempted murder. She had the motive to do it. She had the know-how to do it,” La Vigne was quoted by the Journal as saying, despite the accused’s insistence that she did not even know how to use firearms.
The defendant was thrown out of the trial twice after protesting over not being given “a chance to speak,” calling the trial a sham and saying her children had been tortured.
Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.
US officials allege that she was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.
She has been brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison on the attempted murder charges and life in prison on the firearms charge.
terrorists are no more representatives of their religion than Nazis or Communists were of Christianity. Kati Marton on calling a spade a spade.
I have spent the last two years studying the face of Terror. No, not the bearded, turbaned image of an Al Qaeda cave dweller, but another version, one that unspooled as I translated my family’s secret police file in the archives of the Hungarian Communist Party. The two faces are really not that different.
The communists, like Al Qaeda, started with a utopian dream of righting wrongs and empowering the powerless. Even the Nazis saw themselves in such a light: They would restore jobs and honor to their humbled countrymen. For all these movements, a more perfect world beckoned at the end of the rainbow. This is how they attracted their fanatical followers even as they used terror and fear to gain power.
It is Muslims who are the primary victims of Al Qaeda’s terror in the name of their religion.
I first saw the true face of fear when, as a six-year old whose parents had just been arrested, I was taken by uniformed agents of the state to the house of my mother’s best friend for shelter. But when that lady saw those agents of terror, she refused to open her front door, and my sister and I were left homeless.
Such regimes succeed because most people are not killers, and because most of us simply cannot imagine the unimaginable—the extreme brutality of these movements. Most of us cannot wrap our minds around factories whose sole product is death, or planes carrying men, women, and children suddenly turned into missiles.
Our mistake is not to see these dangers from the outset. We have to do a better job of calling terrorists what they are: enraged killers who are winning the propaganda war. For much too long, we have allowed cold-blooded murderers to label themselves and what they stand for.
But Al Qaeda is no more a descendent of the great Abrahamic religions than the communists who arrested, imprisoned, and tortured my parents were committed to creating a peoples’ paradise in Eastern Europe. If the Vatican was less than forceful in separating Christianity from the horrors of the fascists, so, too, are Islamic leaders too timid in stating that their religion does not condone or reward the killing of the innocent.
In newly opened communist secret police files, I learned for the first time that my father, Communist Hungary’s last independent journalist, was forced to stand facing a wall while two agents shouted obscenities at him for endless hours. Thus was he broken and forced to “confess” that he was a CIA agent. In desperation he tried to commit suicide. But first he tried to smuggle a letter to my mother instructing her to divorce him, marry a westerner, and make sure his children forgot him. This was the result of one of the twentieth century’s bold experiments on humans—and all in the name of the great utopian vision of a workers’ state, conjured up by a pair of nineteenth-century German philosophers, Marx and Engels.
The Nazis, too, had their grandiose labels and their promises. My grandparents did not survive that wave of insanity. For their crime of being less than 100 percent pure Hungarians (whatever that is), they were shoved into airless trains that took them to the gas chambers.
I wait for the great religious humanists of our day to say loudly and clearly that the underwear bomber has as little to do with Islam as the secret police officer who browbeat my father into a confession did with Marx’s utopia. It is true that when the Nazis were using the cover of Christianity in their persecution of Jews, the Vatican’s reaction was much too restrained. Today, it is Muslims who are the primary victims of Al Qaeda’s terror in the name of their religion. I cannot forget Mohammed Atta’s final instruction before he launched the 9/11 massacre: No pregnant woman, the killer prescribed, should be allowed near his grave, as that would “defile” his final resting place. Can any religion claim such a man as its own?
Arthur Koestler, a countryman of mine, himself seduced by the false god of communism, once noted, “a dispassionate observer from a more advanced planet, who could take in human history from Cro-Magnon to Auschwitz would come to the conclusion that our race is a very sick biological product.”
Our challenge is to prove Koestler wrong. We can start by not allowing cold-blooded killers to deceive us about who they are: murderers wearing different uniforms.
As the War on Terror enters a new decade with a new administration, ghosts from the Bush era are beginning to emerge from the dark corridors of hidden detention centers, secret renditions, and elusive intrigues. 
