Re: Like 9/11, 7/7 was a Government Job
nkdat...@bigmailbox.net
wrote:
>
> Conspiracy fever: As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7,
> victims' relatives call for a proper inquiry
> By Sue Reid
>
Most countries have governments. Pakistan is unique. There, it is the
military and the spy agency that own the country. It stands to reason
that the ISI and the Pakistan Military have a direct hand in 7/7 and
an indirect one in 9/11:
http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13651.pdf
Pakistan’s Wars Within Islam
S Akbar Zaidi
sakba...@googlemail.com
[S Akbar Zaidi is a social scientist based in Karachi]
Economic & Political Weekly
Vol XLIV Nos. 26 & 27
June 27, 2009
Pakistan’s wars on both its western and eastern borders as well as the
war with itself, have been created by the very same institution – the
intelligence agencies within the security establishment. It is this
institution, which needs to be neutered politically in order to end
these wars. The choices are not between supporting or making one
interpretation of Islam over another, but between a democratic
position and a militaristic one.
About two months ago, a video of a 17-year-old girl being publicly
flogged by turbaned and bearded men from one of the many “Talibans” in
Malakand division in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), was
shown scores of times on the booming private television channel
network across Pakistan. The girl had been accused of adultery and was
being punished for the crime according to this group’s interpretation
of the sharia.
Later, one of the spokesmen of this faction of the Taliban said on
television that according to the Islamic practice of rajam the girl
should actually have been stoned to death, but the Taliban were
showing their leniency in this regard by letting her go lightly. While
there was some debate concerning the authenticity of the video, and
questions were asked about the whereabouts and punishment of the man
she was said to have committed this indiscretion with, the visual
image of a young girl screaming, created a huge response across wide,
varied and diverse sections of society in Pakistan. While the response
from women’s groups and “liberal” sections of civil society and some
political parties, was anticipated and expected, what concerns me here
is how Islamic parties, groups and organizations reacted.
Numerous demonstrations by Islamic parties and organisations were held
all across Pakistan widely condemning this treatment of the young
girl. Slogans were raised at these demonstrations that not only was
this treatment un-Islamic, so too were the Taliban who had perpetrated
this action. Even those Islamic organisations, which are normally
considered fairly militant themselves, distanced themselves from the
Taliban and stated that the latter was not following the principles
and ways of the sharia. Ulema from different maslaks – groups in Islam
or schools of thought, usually incorrectly translated as “sects” – had
a field day on television, arguing that Islam did not allow such
practices.
Moderate/Hard Line Divide
As a consequence of taking such positions and making these arguments,
militant Islamic parties and organisations were being called “liberal”
or “moderate” by the very limited standards that govern the use of
these words in the Pakistani media.
Similarly, political parties accused of ethnic cleansing and mass
killings as recently as 2007, were now being courted as being
“secular”. Analysts and columnists began writing articles arguing that
this divide between Pakistan becoming a moderate Muslim nation and it
moving towards Talibanisation, was the only political question of our
times worth discussing and addressing. Notwithstanding ideology,
belief or political and cultural practices, suddenly, as long as one
stood opposed to the Taliban, one was immediately considered to be
secular, moderate and liberal. This became the main, if not only,
criterion differentiating good Muslims from bad, good Pakistanis from
bad.
The main group which goes by the name of the Taliban in the NWFP, and
which has been the cause for much concern for many local, national and
international actors,the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was
responsible for literally butchering and beheading men belonging to
the Pakistani army and others accused of being not Islamic enough,
with such activities filmed and distributed via the internet across
Pakistan. They dug out bodies from graves and hung these already-dead
bodies in public squares in some towns in the Swat region of the NWFP
to teach other Muslims a lesson. They have claimed responsibility for
numerous suicide bombings all over Pakistan, at mosques and even at
funeral processions, targeting Shias and other Sunni maslaks in Islam,
and are said to have even killed Benazir Bhutto. They have
demonstrated the most brutal and barbaric behaviour towards Muslims of
differing faiths. Their latest high profile victim has been a well-
known and well-respected scholar belonging to the Jama’at Ahle Sunnat
in Lahore, who was killed in his seminary by a teenaged suicide
bomber. This vocal scholar had supported the military action underway
against the Taliban in the Malakand division and had issued a fatwa
that suicide attacks were un-Islamic. He had organized an anti-Taliban
seminar at his seminary just a few days before he was assassinated.
This assassination of the cleric from the Jama’at Ahle Sunnat in
Lahore in June, once again, like the flogging video, brought
widespread condemnation from a wide section of society, but
particularly from Islamic groups and parties. Protests were held
across Pakistan once again, and anti-Taliban slogans were raised and
scholars and students insisted that the Taliban be held accountable
for this crime. Once again, the credentials for being a moderate,
secular, liberal and patriotic Muslim and Pakistani depended on the
extent to which one went in condemning the barbaric atrocities of the
Taliban. Other criteria, at this moment in time, were to be held in
abeyance.
Are the Taliban “terrorists”, “anti-state”, “enemies of Islam” or, are
they Muslim representatives within Islam, who interpret the sharia in
a particular manner? Does the dominance of the Taliban not simply
reflect the fact that Pakistan’s many Islams are at war with
themselves?
These are difficult questions to address, as numerous issues and facts
are clouded in great ambiguity. However, one thing is probably clear.
This particular brand of Taliban which has been active in Pakistan in
recent years is not rooted simply in interpretations of any “Deobandi”
Islam, as some scholars claim. This is not simply a Deobandi/Barelvi
war of ideology being fought with the help of suicide bombers and
sophisticated weaponry, especially when it is mainly the Taliban who
are doing the killing, with other maslaks simply on the receiving end.
While some Taliban fighters may claim some sort of Deobandi tradition
and allegiance, as I have argued recently (EPW, 9 May 2009), this
belief in a continuation of a 19th century Deobandi tradition is
deeply flawed. The ruptures and discontinuities which mark many
religious movements in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, are far sharper
and give rise to a very different set of analysis. While the last
quarter of 19th century India was a field in which the then Ahle
Sunnat va Jama’at and the Deobandi clerics disputed, debated, argued
and fought over theological interpretation, the killings of Jama’at
Ahle Sunnat scholars by the Taliban suggest that far more is at stake
than simply theological disputation.
There is just too much evidence – academic, journalistic, diplomatic,
and speculative – which clearly points to a key role of Pakistan’s
military establishment in supporting and building up, individuals and
groups, which go by the name of the Taliban in Pakistan. And, it is
not just this group called the “Taliban”, which has found support from
the Pakistani military, but countless other jihadi outfits have also
been created to play some role in the military’s “Grand Plans” for the
region as a whole. Without such support and protection, such leaders
could not be able to move about and even live, with such impunity as
they do. Journalistic accounts exposing the military’s armed
“strategy” in the Swat and Malakand region point to this collusion, as
do much other evidence. The military has created and protected so many
of such militant Islamic leaders that it has probably lost count. The
latest case of the leader of the TTP, Baitullah Mehsud, following the
killing of the Lahore scholar is a case in point.
Role of Intelligence Agencies
If it is true, as the media reports claim, it seems that the military
has finally decided to strike against Baitullah Mehsud, one of the
many Taliban leaders the military helped create. The decision to
withdraw support to Baitullah, it seems, rests on the premise that he
has begun to interfere too much, and too randomly and independently,
in Pakistan’s Islamic wars and is now a threat to Pakistan itself.
Yet, just as Baitullah was propped up some years ago, some new anti-
Baitullah leaders, also belonging to the Mehsud tribe, have appeared
to give exclusive interviews on private channels condemning Baitullah.
Baitullah Mehsud is now being portrayed not so much as an anti-Islamic
militant, but as an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and
of India. The new anti- Taliban offensive seems to be an anti-India
offensive, where a great deal of information and speculation has been
provided regarding India’s Afghanistan operations. The number of
embassies and consulates, the training of the Afghan police, a road
being built through Iran to the Persian Gulf, and numerous other
pieces of evidence are all being cited as proof of India’s aspirations
to undermine Pakistan. The claim that Baitullah Mehsud is being funded
by India, opens up another anti-India front, this time on Pakistan’s
western borders.
The “sectarianism” of the 1990s when the Shias and Sunnis were
militantly exterminating each other, was said to be masterminded by
Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. Similarly, the differences between
the Jama’at Ahle Sunnat, Shia and other maslaks, notably the Deobandi
and the Saudi Arabian-sponsored Wahabi, have been manipulated to
result in widespread terrorism and killings in Pakistan in recent
months. While there have always been differences and divisions within
Islam with its supposedly 73 sects/maslaks, the element, extent and
order of militancy, murder and mayhem, which now defines Pakistan’s
Islam, could not have progressed to this scale without support and
funding from state agencies. It should be amply clear that these are
not theological niceties being contested in seminaries.
Pakistan’s wars on both its western borders and its eastern one, as
well as Pakistan’s war with itself, have been created by the very same
institution. It is this institution, which needs to be neutered
politically in order to end these wars. Hence, the choices are not
between one interpretation of Islam and another, but between a
democratic position and a militaristic one. For political parties and
organisations to be called “liberal”, “moderate” or “secular”, must
necessarily require more stringent standards than simply taking an
anti-Taliban position. An anti-Taliban position must necessarily be an
anti-military and pro-democracy one, not one which simplistically
distinguishes between moderate and hard line Islam.
>
> Today almost four years on, the images of that dreadful morning are
> etched into our minds: the woman in the haunting white burns mask
> being helped to safety; the shell-shocked businessman in a suit with
> his hair and shirt matted with blood; the crippled No 30 bus with its
> roof blown off; the mangled wreckage of smouldering Tube trains.
> The country's worst-ever terrorist atrocity during London's morning
> rush hour on July 7, 2005, shattered for ever the heady euphoria in
> which the capital was basking the morning after winning the bid for
> the 2012 Olympics.
> That afternoon, Tony Blair - who was hosting the G8 summit on global
> poverty in Gleneagles, Scotland - returned to Downing Street to
> pronounce that the attack was an act in the 'name of Islam'.
>
> Later, at a meeting of the Government's national emergency committee
> COBRA, London's anti-terror police chief Andy Hayman told senior
> ministers that he suspected suicide bombers.
> And so the story of 7/7 that we have come to accept was pieced
> together: four British Muslims - Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad
> Tanweer, 22, Jermaine Lindsay, 19, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - blew
> themselves up using home-made explosives, killing 56 and injuring 700
> on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus.
> They had travelled on a mainline train from Luton into King's Cross
> Thameslink Station in London, each carrying a heavy rucksack of
> explosives.
> It is a version of events that has been endorsed by a high-level
> Parliamentary inquiry and a government report, both published in May
> 2006 ten months after the event, based on 12,500 statements, a police
> examination of 142 computers and 6,000 hours of CCTV footage.
> The report insisted that the bombers acted on their own, constructing
> explosives from chapatti flour and hair bleach mixed in the bath at a
> flat in Leeds, Yorkshire, where all four had family and friends.
>
> It concluded that the Muslim bombers were not controlled by a
> terrorist mastermind, but inspired by Al Qaeda ideology picked up on
> extremist websites.
> But families of the dead victims and an increasing number of 7/7
> survivors claim there are inconsistencies and basic mistakes in the
> official accounts that need explanation.
>
> And they are demanding a full public inquiry to answer key questions
> about what the Intelligence Services and the police did and did not
> know before the bombings.
> Meanwhile, the Government's determined refusal to meet their demands
> is having a very dangerous side-effect - fuelling myriad conspiracy
> theories about 7/7. Books, blogs and several video documentaries point
> to oddities in the official accounts.
>
> Alarmingly, some of the conspiracy videos are being hawked around
> mosques throughout the country to whip up anti-British sentiment.
>
> For the most outlandish and offensive of them suggest that the attacks
> were not the work of Muslim terrorists at all, but were carried out by
> the Government to boost support for the Iraq war.
> The survivors are so intent on an independent inquiry that they are
> now taking legal action in the High Court to try to force the Home
> Secretary Alan Johnson to authorise it.
> Campaigner Diana Gorodi, whose sister Michelle Otto, 46, was one of
> those killed, explains: 'It's just very hard for us to believe four
> people got up in the morning, put bombs together on the basis of
> information from the internet and managed to throw London into chaos
> and to create a tragedy. It's impossible for me to believe those four
> individuals acted on their own.'
> Rachel North, a 39-year-old strategy director who survived the King's
> Cross Tube bombing, adds: 'We need a public inquiry. It was the
> public, after all, not the politicians, who were attacked. Let the
> public know what risks they run and tell them why there are those
> living among them who seek to kill for an ideal.'
> Central to the puzzle is which train the four Muslims caught from
> Luton to London on the morning of the bomb blasts - bearing in mind
> that the three separate Tube explosions at Edgware Road, Aldgate and
> King's Cross occurred together at exactly 8.50am, followed by the red
> bus an hour later near Tavistock Square.
>
> The official reports said the bombers got on the 7.40am train from
> Luton which would have arrived at King's Cross in good time for them
> to board the Tube trains.
> However, the 7.40am train never ran that morning. It was cancelled.
> The Government has since corrected this information - but only after
> the error was raised by survivors - saying the bombers actually caught
> an earlier train, the 7.25am from Luton, for the 35-minute journey to
> King's Cross. It was due to arrive in the capital at 8am.
> Yet this throws up more questions than it answers. For this train ran
> 23 minutes late because of problems with the overhead line which
> disrupted most of the service between Luton to King's Cross that
> morning. It arrived in London at 8.23am, say station officials.
> According to the July Seventh Truth Campaign - another group calling
> for a public inquiry - this again places the official version of the
> bombers' travelling times in doubt.
> A still CCTV photo of the four bombers arriving at the station in
> Luton is the only one of the four men together on July 7.
> Controversially, no CCTV images, either still or moving, of them in
> London have ever been released.
> The Luton image is also contentious: the quality is poor and the faces
> of three of the bombers are unidentifiable. The conspiracy theorists
> say it could be a fake.
> This photo is timed at four seconds before 7.22am. But if this were
> the case, the men would have had just three minutes to walk up the
> stairs at Luton, buy their £22 day return tickets and get to the
> platform, which was packed with commuters because of the earlier
> travel disruptions.
>
> The Truth Campaign group is equally sceptical about the bombers'
> supposed arrival time at King's Cross.
> They say it takes seven minutes to walk from the Thameslink line
> station to the main King's Cross station, where there is an entrance
> to the Tube network.
> Police say the four men were seen on the main King's Cross concourse
> at 8.26am, although no CCTV footage has ever been made public.
> But is this possible? How had the men got there in three short minutes
> after getting off the Luton train at 8.23am?
> And it is such inconsistencies that are fuelling the deepening
> concerns. This week, a television documentary on BBC2 called
> Conspiracy Files 7/7 revealed the existence of a conspiracy theorist's
> 56-minute video called Ripple Effect.
> It accuses Tony Blair, the Government, the police, and the British and
> Israeli Secret Services of murdering the innocent people who died that
> day to stir up anti-Islamic fervour and create public support for the
> 'war on terror'.
>
> It alleges that the four British Muslims were tricked by the
> authorities into taking part in what they were told would be a mock
> anti-terror training exercise. What they weren't told, the video
> alleges, was that the Government was going to blow them up, along with
> other passengers, then pretend the four were suicide bombers.
> Without any evidence, the Ripple Effect video accuses government
> agents of setting off pre-planted explosives under the three Tube
> trains and on the bus.
> It suggests that the four Muslims were not, in fact, on any of the
> Tube trains, claiming that they missed them altogether because of the
> train delays on the Luton to London line.
> It adds, astonishingly, that because the four did not get onto the
> Tube on time, three of them were murdered by police at Canary Wharf
> later that morning and the fourth - the bus bomber - ran off.
>
> Outrageous though these claims are, the video has become an internet
> hit. More worryingly, it is playing on the fears of Britain's Muslim
> community.
> Even some senior Islamists believe the events of 7/7 were fabricated.
> As Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham's Central Mosque,
> says in the BBC2 documentary: 'We do not accept the government version
> of July 7, 2005. The Ripple Effect video is more convincing than the
> official statements.'
> Mr Naseem, a well-educated man, had made 2,000 copies of Ripple Effect
> for members of his mosque. Research has revealed that even before the
> contentious video came out, one in four British Muslims thought the
> Government or the Secret Services were responsible for the 7/7
> atrocities. Now the number of doubters is growing.
> At Friday prayers recently, Dr Naseem asked the congregation to raise
> their hands if they did not accept the government version of events.
> Nearly the entire gathering of 150 men and boys did so. He then urged
> his audience to collect free copies of Ripple Effect at the back of
> the mosque.
> The respected chairman has since said that the identities of the
> bombers were discovered by the police suspiciously quickly. 'When a
> body is blown up, it is destroyed. How is it that the identification
> papers found at the bomb scenes of these men were still intact? Were
> they planted?'
> That is another suggestion in Ripple Effect. So who is behind this
> dangerous video?
> He is 60-year-old Yorkshireman Anthony John Hill who lives in Kells,
> County Meath, Ireland. He is currently under arrest there and fighting
> extradition to Britain. Police here want to interview him on a charge
> of perverting the course of justice after he sent a copy of his video
> to a jury member in a terrorist case.
> Mr Hill made Ripple Effect at his own home and is the narrator.
> In many ways, it is an amateurish affair: the dialogue is jumbled and
> hard to understand. But that begs the question, why is Ripple Effect
> having such an impact?
> The answer is that muddled in with the wild theories of a government
> plot are some questions that are hard to ignore.
> Why did the four bombers get return tickets to London if they were on
> a one-way suicide mission? Why are there no CCTV images of the four
> together in London even though the city has thousands upon thousands
> of such cameras in public places?
> Why did so many survivors of the Tube bombings say that the explosions
> came upwards through the floor of the trains, not down, as would be
> the case if a backpack blew up inside? And why do no passengers on the
> London-bound Luton train clearly remember the four bombers with their
> huge rucksacks on that fateful morning?
> By the most extraordinary coincidence - Ripple Effect says it is a
> billion-to-one chance - there was a mock terrorist exercise going on
> in London that day. This was revealed by the organiser and former
> Scotland Yard officer Peter Power on BBC Radio 5 in the early evening
> after the atrocity.
> He said: 'At half-past nine this morning we were running an exercise
> for a company of over a thousand people in London based on
> simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where
> it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my
> neck standing up.'
> And what of the menacing suicide videos that Khan and Tanweer made
> before the bombings, which were released on the internet after the
> attacks? The Ripple Effect video has an answer for this, too.
> Mr Hill explains on it: 'The oldest would be asked to make a "suicide
> video" prior to the mock training exercise in order to make it as
> realistic as possible... the second oldest would also be asked to make
> a similar video, as a back-up, just in case anything went wrong or the
> oldest pulled out of the exercise before the date.'
> Fact or fiction, it does not matter. The impact of the video is
> swaying Muslim feeling. The BBC2 documentary shows worshippers in the
> Birmingham mosque commenting on 7/7 after seeing Ripple Effect. One
> elderly man states: 'There can be little doubt that the Government did
> this themselves to these four young men.'
> Another adds: 'We have been deceived by the British authorities, and
> Muslims have been framed for these attacks. They are lying from A to
> Z.'
> Few are more concerned than Rachel North, the King's Cross Tube bomb
> survivor, about Ripple Effect and the discontent it is stirring up:
> 'If people in mosques think the Government is so antagonistic towards
> them, that they're actually willing to frame them for a monstrous
> crime they didn't commit, what does that do to levels of trust? That
> is a problem for everybody in this country.'
> She says the video's central tenet - that 7/7 was faked to demonise
> Muslims and sway public opinion in favour of the 'war on terror' - is
> like throwing petrol on a fire.
> Like her, many responsible people - and they include former Scotland
> Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick, former anti-terror
> chief of London police Andy Hayman (who oversaw the police response to
> 7/7) and David Davis, until recently Tory Shadow Home Secretary - now
> support the call for an independent investigation into the bombings.
> Paddick himself said this week, the torrent of rumours about 7/7 was
> harming relations between Muslims and the rest of Britain: 'Hopefully
> there will be people in the police service, the security service and
> Whitehall who will realise how important it is that every attempt is
> made to counteract these conspiracy theories.'
> As the fourth anniversary of the London bombings approaches next
> Tuesday, they are words the Government would be wise to heed.