Over 30 Dead in Rawalpindi Blast
A car bomb in the parking lot of the Shalimar Hotel in Rawalpindi was detonated on Monday morning. Aljazeera is reporting over 30 dead. 'Pindi, as locals abbreviate it, is a twin city of the capital, Islamabad, and is security-sensitive because army headquarters is located there.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani military's campaign against Pakistani Taliban militants in South Waziristan continued. A cell of expatriate Uzbek fighters is now being encountered.
Even though development aid holds out the best hope for resolving the problems of the Pashtun tribes with the central government, in times of war relief work becomes dangerous. The United Nations is now pulling its development workers out of the Pashtun areas of Pakistan, given that the current military operations are putting their lives in danger from the militants.
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posted by Juan Cole @ 11/02/2009 01:21:00 AM
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Hilary Clinton left Pakistan with a big smile on her face. She must have gotten exactly what she wanted from the Pakistani gov't and thus the big smile. Pakistani people are very concerned about the REAL reason her mission and why she left so happy. She then flew to Israel and met with Netanyahu. He was seen shortly afterwards with a big smile.
off topic: since you're a historian, I thought you might want to know this.
Iran's Year Zero:
Wikipedia: “The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely irrelevant, as it will (as an ideal) be purged and replaced from the ground up.
In Cambodia, teachers and intellectuals especially were singled out and executed as part of the above mentioned purge aspect of Year Zero.”
According to RFI, Fars news Agency reports: Head of the Institute for Research and Education Planning Hojat-ol-Islam Mohiyeddin Bahram Mohammadian has announced: “Monarchical dynasty has been eliminated from history textbooks”.
RFI points out the obvious fact that this move in essence deletes Iran’s entire history minus the past thirty years of the Islamic Republic.
Alongside other recent assaults on culture and academia, it seems the anticipated second Cultural Revolution within IRR, Islamist Rapist Republic, is well under way.
http://www.rfi.fr/actufa/articles/118/article_9197.asp
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, development aid is not the key to pacifying the Pakistani tribal areas or greater Pashtunistan. The tribal areas are in fact relatively prosperous, certainly by reference to the needs and wants of the local inhabitants if not to those of the Pakistani elite. The Taliban and foreign terrorists, funded by wealthy Arabs and Islamic charities, have indoctrinated the tribals, and it is necessary to drive out the terrorists by force--to separate the terrorists from their base of local support. Over time, it may then be possible through sustained support of educational initiatives to innoculate the locals against the anti-Western paranoia and delusional Islamic fundamentalist mania that have been cultivated by the terrorist groups. It will take a long time, though, and, unfortunately, significant portions of the Pakistani establishment, including elements of the government and the military, seem to have largely bought in to the al Qaeda ideology, although they are currently having some intramural disagreements over strategy, in particular over the scope and nature of their jihad, which has led to the current tussle in S. Waziristan.
Dr. Cole:
Any thoughts about the US acceptance of Israeli settlement expansion that has been effective policy for months and that was vocally emphasized by Hillary Clinton recently?
That may consume all of the good will Obama gained in his Cairo speech for Arabs.
Also the Balochistan bombing that killed several high ranking Iranian Guards commanders. That may have the same effect on Iranians.
Also Turkey has recently taken the most pro-Iranian nuclear stance of any country outside of Venezuela and Cuba.
It seems that US soft power in the greater Middle East has not returned to Bush levels, but has peaked and is now falling alarmingly quickly.
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