www.stand4islam.blogspot.com: Control of Eurasia: Back to the drawing board!

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In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

31 Jan 2010

Control of Eurasia: Back to the drawing board!

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of US cold war policy had stated as far back as 1997 in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives,’ that for the United States, control of Eurasia - the region encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan and their neighbours in the states of the former Soviet union - was a prime goal of post cold war US military and foreign policy. He said in his book ‘whoever either controls or dominates access to the region is the one most likely to win geopolitical and economic prize.’

Condoleezza Rice confirmed this view in January 2006 "One of the things that we did in the State Department was to move the Central Asian republics out of the European bureau, which really was an artefact of their having been states of the Soviet Union, and to move them into the bureau that is South Asia, which has Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. It represents what we're trying to do, which is to think of this region as one that will need to be integrated, and that will be a very important goal for us."

US presence in Afghanistan has always been due its aims of protecting its interests against a resurgent Russia and China. However after nearly a decade of the war on terror the US finds Ukraine — once a shining beacon of pro-Western color revolutions — back in Moscow’s fold, with the Caucasus on its way and the Baltic States the next Russian targets. The US needs to redeploy its troop’s in order to counter Russian resurgence. STRATFOR, a widely known mouthpiece for the CIA confirmed America’s wider aims in the region: “The US has had the ultimate aim of preventing the emergence of any major power in Eurasia. The paradox however is as follows – the goals of these interventions was never to achieve something – whatever the political rhetoric might have said – but to prevent something. The United States wanted to prevent stability in areas where another power might emerge. Its goal was not to stabilise but to destabilise, and this explains how the United States responded to the Islamic earthquake. It wanted to prevent a large, powerful Islamic state from emerging. Rhetoric aside the United States has no overriding interest in peace in Eurasia. The United States also has no interest in winning the war outright……the purpose of these conflicts is simply to block a power or destabilise the region, not to impose order.”

Reconciliation

Like Iraq, the US is attempting a similar strategy in Afghanistan of utilising regional surrogates, corrupt warlords, and through political compromises to maintain an acceptable level of violence, whilst constructing the necessary political architecture that will protect its interests. All political settlements are useless in Afghanistan unless the Taliban are participants, as they control most of Afghanistan’s territory. The governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have confirmed meetings with the Taliban for such purposes as numerous Western politicians have called for dialogue with the Taliban. The Taliban, despite their vowed statements that they would never enter into negotiations while Afghanistan was under occupation, have not denied such meetings with the Karzai government. Abdussalam Za'eef, the former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan in September 2008 clarified to Reuters that certain Taliban elements travelled to Saudi Arabia in September 2008 and met the Saudi King and Afghan officials.

The US needs to bring the Taliban into a political settlement – which Pakistan will be central to; but it will also use its military option to force the Taliban into this political settlement through targeted strikes against key Taliban personnel. The aim is to weaken the Taliban, so political reconciliation becomes the only practical option. The Pakistan government is central to this as the Taliban insurgency cannot be halted until Pakistan and the United States reach a consensus over reconcilable and irreconcilable Taliban. The United States lacks the intelligence to draw the distinction between reconcilable and irreconcilable elements. Pakistan is the one entity that does have the intelligence and connections to do so, however the US does not trust many elements within Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Interstate Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and the army. This is why such elements are consistently termed ‘rogue’ elements.

The Taliban have the upper hand in Afghanistan through successfully intercepting US supply lines and through an insurgency the US is unable to contain. Talks with the Taliban are still in their early stages and have been painstakingly slow, due to America’s occupation with the global economic crisis. By all indications the US is now attempting to bribe the Taliban into a political deal, which in any language is an admission of failure.

The Western powers, since Obama’s inauguration have been preparing the ground for reconciliation with the Taliban. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled plans on the 22nd January 2009 to reintegrate Taliban fighters into the political mainstream in Afghanistan. On the 23rd January 2009 British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in Washington in order to brief US lawmakers and officials on the London 28th January 2009, stressed the need to reach out to the Taliban. “We do not conflate or confuse Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” he told a US Senate panel. “The Taliban leadership do not have as their principal aim Al Qaeda’s violent global jihadist agenda.” Hamid Karzai also announced a package of incentives, offering money and jobs to encourage Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and return to civilian life. A few days before the London conference Nato's top commander in Afghanistan US General Stanley McChrystal outlined the direction he will be taking the Afghan conflict: "I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome." Asked if he thought senior Taliban could have a role in a future Afghan government, he said: "I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past. As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting." Similarly in an interview with the New York Times, United Nations special representative Kai Eide called for some senior Taliban leaders to be removed from a UN list of terrorists, as a prelude to direct talks. "If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority," Mr Eide said. "I think the time has come to do it."

The week before the London conference saw an increased push for negotiations with the Taliban by virtually all interested parties, including the British, Americans, Turkey, Afghans and Pakistan in multiple conferences in Istanbul, Moscow and The Hague. It is this context the Afghanistan conference that took place in London on the 28th January 2009. It took place in the context of enlisting support form coalition patterns to commit to a new plan to bring the Taliban into a political settlement that will allow for a reduction of troops as the insurgency would have subsided – in time for the US general elections due in 2012. The civilian surge, as the conference went to some lengths to outline is the colonial West attempting to consolidate their hegemony on Afghanistan when they have failed to defeat the Taliban. However all such plans are useless unless the Taliban who control more than half of Afghanistan can be brought into America’s ‘Iraq model’ in South Asia.

Conclusions

The US has been humbled by the Taliban after nearly a decade of war, which has lasted longer than both the world wars combined. As a result of America’s apparent weakness the challenges stemming from her competitors have grown in size and scope and today are much stronger. Whilst US aims to gain a permanent presence in the region to counter China and finish its post Cold war project of bringing all the former Soviet republics under US control. Russia however, has managed to take advantage of America’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its weakness in achieving its aims to strengthen itself in the Former Soviet republics. The US today has no problem in negotiating with its enemy the Taliban who apparently provided sanctuary to those who carried out 9/11. This is nothing other than the acceptance of defeat, the US will never be able to defeat the Ummah no matter how many from amongst the Ummah are duped through bribes and wealth. Allah (swt) confirms this in the Qur’an:“They seek to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths; but Allah refuses but to perfect His light, though the disbelievers may resent it. It is he who sent His Messenger with guidance and the truth, in order that it may prevail over all other ways of life, even though the polytheists may detest it.” [Surah At-Tawba ((9): Ayat 32-33]

[Extracted from article ‘US Surrogates Meet in London to end Legacy of Failure’ by Adnan Khan, January 2010]

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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”

[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]

"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"

[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]

"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."

[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]

"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."

[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]

"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."

[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]

“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”

[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]

"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."

[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]

"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."

[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]

“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”

[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]

"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"

[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]

"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."

[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]

"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."

[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']

"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"

[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']

"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.

[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]

"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"

[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]

"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"

[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]

“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”

[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]

“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”

[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]