Author: Robert Spencer
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: September 5, 2005
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19312
I have long maintained that today's
global jihad calls for a reconfiguration of American alliances. The sham
friendships the United States maintains with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and
other jihad-exporting states may be motivated by political expediency -
and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, economic necessity - but no one can maintain
that in view of America's long-term strategic and security interests that
in the long run they represent sound foreign policy. It will probably take
a Manhattan Project to find new energy sources, should one ever be initiated,
to enable Washington to exert any meaningful diplomatic pressure over the
House of Saud; the same constraints, however, do not exist in the case
of Pakistan. In this case, a viable alternative immediately presents itself:
the U.S. can and should strengthen ties with India.
Pakistan's President Musharraf has
promised to rid his unhappy land of Al-Qaeda ever since 9/11 and before;
however, for a complex of reasons he has been able to do little or nothing
to affect this. The jihad is epidemic in Pakistan. Jihad training camps
dot the landscape - including those that investigators charge that Lodi,
California resident Hamid Hayat attended in 2000, 2003, and 2004. Hayat
allegedly planned to bring the jihad violence he learned there back to
the United States. An Afghan intelligence officer remarked: "We know where
a lot of these training camps are. We have their names. And we've given
the Pakistanis all the information we have. We're waiting for Pakistan
to show the willingness to fight."
He may be in for a long wait. The
training camps are not there by accident: Pakistani madrasas are veritable
"universities of jihad." At least two of the July 7 London bombers attended
such madrasas. Speakers at the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection
of Human Rights recently described them as "nurseries of death and destruction."
Even textbooks approved by Musharraf himself foster notions about the necessity
of Muslims to fight so that Islamic law will reign supreme. One textbook
declares: "At present, jihad is continuing in different parts of the world.
Numerous mujahedin [holy warriors] of Islam are involved in defending their
religion, and independence, and to help their oppressed brothers across
the world." Democracy? It isn't on the program: "When God's people are
forced to become slaves of man-made laws, they are hindered from practicing
the religion of their God. When all the legal ways in this regard are closed,
then power should be used to eliminate the evil. If Muslims are being oppressed,
then jihad is necessary to free them from this cruel oppression." Osama's
sentiments exactly. Musharraf recently ordered foreign students out of
Pakistani madrasas, but it is the Pakistani students who are the problem.
Pakistani mosques are likewise epicenters
of Islamic intransigence and exhortations to violence. After the July 7
bombings, authorities in Pakistan arrested 56 imams on charges of making
"provocative speeches" during their Friday sermons; ten others were arrested
for selling audiotapes of those sermons. The nation's political system,
meanwhile, is heavily influenced by the notion that Islamic law must reign
supreme in any legitimate state - a principle that forms the cornerstone
of bin Laden's agenda. Osama himself, of course, has most likely found
shelter (and may continue to do so) in the wild Pakistani highlands. That
shelter, of course, is offered and protected by rank-and-file Pakistanis
who share the terrorist mastermind's outlook on life.
Nor is this sentiment limited only
to the rank-and-file. A Kashmir jihad leader recently praised Pakistani
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed for his role in establishing jihad
training camps in Pakistan: "Sheikh Rashid has played a great role for
Kashmir's liberation. He used to support the frontline Jihadis, but very
few people know about his contributions." Rashid declined comment. However,
on other occasions he has said that "our faith remains incomplete without
jihad." Meanwhile, it has come to light that former Pakistan premier Nawaz
Sharif met with Osama several times in the late 1980s. When bin Laden exhorted
him to aid the jihad in Kashmir, Sharif assured him: "I love jihad."
What can America can do with a friend
and ally like this? We can turn to India and strengthen our ties with that
state, which has suffered the depredations of jihad violence for centuries.
This is precisely the sort of shift that President Bush implied was imminent
when he declared that "you're either with the terrorists or with us." Pakistan
is, quite obviously, with the terrorists; India, on the other hand, is
not. But the ship of state is not so easily turned. Concerted effort is
now needed to demonstrate to Americans that a more vigorous alliance with
India is in our best national security interests. A group called the US
India League, of which I am proud to serve on the Advisory Board (along
with, among others, Daniel Pipes, Alan Keyes, Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer),
is laboring to precisely that end -- and is holding a reception at the
Heritage Foundation in Washington on September 19 to publicize its efforts.
(For information, consult www.usindialeague.org.)
It's time for America to say: You're
either with the jihadists or you're with us. India can and should be working
side-by-side with us in this great struggle for freedom and human rights.
