Mystery surrounds the construction of 22 tunnels in secret locations where Pakistanis are barred. Tunnels would be necessary for a projected gas pipeline from Iran to China that would cross the Himalayas through Gilgit. But they could also be used for missile storage sites. Until recently, the P.L.A. construction crews lived in temporary encampments and went home after completing their assignments. Now they are building big residential enclaves clearly designed for a long-term presence.

What is happening in the region matters to Washington for two reasons. Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad’s collusion in facilitating China’s access to the Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a U.S. “ally.” Equally important, the nascent revolt in the Gilgit-Baltistan region is a reminder that Kashmiri demands for autonomy on both sides of the cease-fire line would have to be addressed in a settlement. Media attention has exposed the repression of the insurgency in the Indian-ruled Kashmir Valley. But if reporters could get into the Gilgit-Baltistan region and Azad Kashmir, they would find widespread, brutally-suppressed local movements for democratic rights and regional autonomy. -- Selig S. Harrison

Typically, they have angrily decried demands for affirmative action for ‘low’ caste Muslims as ‘divisive’, and even as a ‘conspiracy to destroy Muslim unity’ or even to ‘Hinduise the Indian Muslims’ at the same time as they make no effort to promote meaningful Muslim unity by, for instance, denouncing caste endogamy among the ashraf, making Muslim organizations more socially inclusive by incorporating more non-ashraf in decision making positions, or critiquing the divisive sectarianism of the mullahs, which takes the form of angry polemics between rival Islamic sects, each of which claims to alone represent Islamic authenticity. Behind such appeals of ashraf leaders to promote ‘Muslim unity’ in the face of ‘low’ caste demands for state-sponsored affirmative action, which they denounce as ‘divisive’ and ‘un-Islamic’, one can detect a distinct nervousness at the prospect of the numerically much more significant non-ashraf  threatening their claims to leading and representing the entire Muslim community. -- Yoginder Sikand, NeweAgeIslam.com

Ikhwanophobia.com highlights articles and statements by prominent Western media and political figures that are critical of the Brotherhood and Islam.

The website defines Ikhwanophobes - another term it coined - as those who believe Muslim Brotherhood members are religious fanatics, violent towards non-Muslims, and contemptuous of values such as equality, tolerance and democracy...

The Brotherhood, which supports Hamas in what it views as the legitimate armed resistance against Israel, has also been much criticised in the West for its position on suicide attacks inside Israel. -- Muhammad Shokry

Restrict Objectives Resolution to the constitution’s preamble — as was the original intent

Being neither an act of parliament nor a law, the Objectives Resolution was symbolically important but legally marginal — since a preamble could not be regarded as law. However, through the 1985 Eighth Amendment the Zia regime, as part of its Islamisation drive, extended its effect beyond being part of the preamble and included it as an operative portion of the constitutional text through the insertion of Article 2A. This led to legal chaos, since clauses in the Objectives Resolution such as those relating to the delegation of divine sovereignty, which were designed as symbolic, are now the basis for adjudication.--An editorial in Dawn, Karachi

Ankara has been involved in the NATO operation in Afghanistan from the beginning. The decision was taken by the centre-left government under Bülent Ecevit following the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. A year later, the pro-Islam AKP came to power. Yet despite its much more critical stance on the NATO mission, it too continued Turkey's involvement in Afghanistan. Turkey even assumed leadership of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) twice during this period. -- Cem Sey

In Britain, Queen Elizabeth is the "Defender of the Faith," not "Faiths." meaning that the monarch defends only the Protestant branch of Christianity as distinct from Catholic Christians and other major faiths. Furthermore, it is argued that in all Western nations religious ceremonies play a dominant role in state functions. Even academic terms in England, such as "Michaelmas," "Easter" and "Trinity" go back to the roots of Christianity.

In many European countries, political parties have prefixed the name of a religion, such as Germany's Christian Democratic Union and Christian Union in the Netherlands. -- Harun ur Rashid

Musharraf and the establishment were unwilling to compromise on Balochistan’s genuine economic and political demands. Instead of addressing Baloch grievances politically, the military government resorted to the brute force. Musharraf added fuel to the fire when he declared, “Don’t push us. It isn’t the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time you won’t even know what hit you.” Bugti was prepared for the consequences. During an interview in April 2006, he had predicted his death at the hands of the armed forces. “They have been given instructions that I and Nawabzada Balach Marri should be wiped out.”Islamabad’s erroneous policy of suppression has proved to be a failure. The killing of Baloch leaders has dealt a bloody blow to the fragile Baloch-Islamabad relations. Four years after Bugti’s death, Balochistan’s state of affairs represents a worsening scenario. Human rights violations are growing, tensions between Islamabad and the Baloch people have mounted, economic activities are at a lifeless level and poverty has increased manifold. As rightly pointed out by a foreign diplomat, Bugti “was a wise man. They (Islamabad) could have utilised him to reach out to the Baloch”. -- Sanaullah Baloch

Photo: Nawab Akbar Bugti

Gilgit-Baltistan has a history of thousands of years of exploitation of its ravines as battlefields by colonial and imperial forces. After 63 years of Pakistani presence, the position is no different. The province has become a military garrison and staging post for militants and Pakistani secret service agents. Today, there is one Pakistani soldier for every 25 local habitants.

The people of Gilgit-Baltistan have since faced humiliation, suffering and political and emotional exploitation at the hands of their Pakistani rulers who treat them as captives and their land as a colony. Their story of freedom and self-determination has been transformed by Pakistani rulers into one of subsistence and marginalisation. -- Engineer Ali Rinchen

The Jama‘at-i-Islami is, by far, one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world today, particularly strong in the countries of South Asia. Its influence extends far beyond the confines of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, and the writings of its chief ideologues have exercised a powerful impact on contemporary Muslim thinking all over the world. Much has been written about the movement, both by its leaders and followers as well as by its critics. Most of these writings have focused either on the Jama‘at’s ideology or on its historical development in India and Pakistan.  Hardly any literature is available on the evolution and history of the Jama‘at in the "disputed" state of Jammu and Kashmir. This is unfortunate, because here the Jama‘at has had a long history of its own, which has followed a path quite distinct from the branches of the movement in both India and Pakistan. Furthermore, the Jama‘at has played a crucial role in the politics of Kashmir right since its inception in the late 1940s, a role that has gained particular salience in the course of the armed struggle in the region that began in the late 1980s and still shows no sign of abating. ...

Ideology: The JIJK shares a common ideological framework with branches of the Jama‘at elsewhere, based as it is on the voluminous writings of its founder, Maulana Sayyed ‘Ala Maududi (1903-79). Maududi’s writings have been extensively studied elsewhere, and so need not detain us here. Put briefly, Maududi sees Islam as a complete ideology and code of life (nizam-i-hayat), covering all aspects of a Muslim’s personal as well as collective existence. For Islam to be enforced in its entirety, it is necessary for Muslims to struggle for the establishment of an Islamic state or states, ruled by the Islamic law. Democracy, or the rule of the people, is seen as un-Islamic, for it is said to go against the Islamic understanding of God as the sovereign authority and law-maker. For the same reason, Western-style secularism, the separation of religion and politics, is condemned. The JIJK expresses its commitment to this understanding in the preamble to its constitution, first adopted in November 1953, and later modified by its majlis-i-shura (Central Advisory Committee), first in March 1969 and then again, at a meeting of its majlis-i-irkan (Council of Basic Members), in August 1985. -- Yoginder Sikand, NewAgeIslam.com

Muslim scholars berate Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s attempts to add fuel to the Kashmir fire on Independence Day

Sultan Shahin, editor of NewAgeIslam.com, a popular portal which strives to reclaim Islam from the clutches of jihadists, provides a perspective on why an independent or Pakistani Kashmir can never be established and why it won’t survive if it does. Shahin, a virtual warrior against petrodollar Islam, says he recently had a heated argument with a Pakistani friend at an international conference. “When a muezzin calls for prayers, my mother tells me to go to a mosque. But I am sure your mother pleads with you not to visit the mosque because she is not sure if you will return alive from there,’’ Shahin told his Pakistani friend. “This is the reality,’’ he elaborates. “Kashmir too will be sucked into the cycle of sectarian and linguistic violence that is bleeding Pakistan almost every day. India can and should give greater autonomy to Kashmir, but for well-known reasons, it cannot afford to lose the state.’’--Mohammed Wajihuddin, The Times of India, Mumbai

While bleakly pessimistic readings of the escalating violence in the Kashmir Valley are already declaring that India's more than 60-year painstaking quest to retain the picturesque State within its Union has collapsed, there are strong signs that the situation can be easily pulled back from the brink. What is called for is not just deft political management but some transparent introspection that can be shared loud and clear between New Delhi, Srinagar and the people of Jammu and Kashmir. -- Malini Parthasarathy

The news from Bangladesh in the last few years has been consistently good, though we in Pakistan have learnt more about the spectacular political advances that country has made in the last year or so. The political advances should indeed be described as spectacular because in an era salient with the menace of Islamism and terrorism, Bangladesh has most wisely and foresightedly chosen to establish itself as a secular democracy. No doubt the political basis for it was laid when an Awami League government won a landslide victory in the December 29, 2008 elections, but the crucial decision was taken by the Supreme Court of that country, which declared Bangladesh a secular democracy in constitutional terms. -- Ishtiaq Ahmed

The perspective of seeing Iran possess weapons of mass destruction represents a threat that cannot possibly be regarded as comparable to any human rights violation whatsoever, and to know that an increasing number of countries of the region are beginning to realize the fact is, in itself, an important piece of news.

And I would add that, concerning the 41 bank accounts identified and frozen by the United Nations resolution, we should know that, 1) as Ambassador al-Kaabi himself admitted, the port of Dubai was in the process of becoming the hub of the very worst trafficking in nuclear materials; 2) even apart from nuclear materials, The Emirates are the third destination, after China and Iraq, of Iranian exports, which have tripled in the past four years; and, 3) of the 41 accounts targeted, nearly half are the property of the Islamic Republic itself, or of the corps of the Guardians of the Revolution. -- Bernard-Henri Lévy

How, in the face of the obvious opposition of the Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Leh (and probably most of the Shias of Shia-majority Kargil) to separation from India the champions of an independent Jammu and Kashmir can continue to claim to be the sole voice of the people of the state never ceases to amaze me. Gilani and other Kashmiri Islamist leaders consistently argue that what they want is for the whole of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, including Hindu-dominated Jammu and Buddhist-dominated Leh, to secede from India and form part of an independent ‘Islamic state’ of Jammu and Kashmir or else join Pakistan. They curiously ignore the obvious contradiction in their stance in this regard—opposing what they call ‘Hindu Indian colonialism’ in Kashmir while at the same time championing what, from the point of view of the non-Muslims and non-ethnic Kashmiris, would be Muslim Kashmiri colonialism in Jammu and Kashmir. ‘You cannot munch on your kabab and want your goat, too’, they need to be told, rephrasing a metaphor in a manner these men might be more comfortable with. 

Contrary to depictions in some sections of the Indian media, it is not that the Islamist project of the likes of Gilani and the Lashkar-e Tayyeba is widely shared by most Kashmiri Muslims. Not many of them, I wager, would want Kashmir to be ruled by the likes of the Taliban or even the Jamaat-e Islami. I personally know scores of Kashmiris, practicing Muslims, who vociferously insist that the radical Islamists’ version of Islam is not Islamic at all. Yet, few dare to speak out against the claims made in their name and that of their religion by the radicals: this could well cost them their lives, in the same way as speaking out against the claims of the Indian state over Kashmir has cost the lives of literally thousands of their people. -- Yoginder Sikand

But do we ever come across a word of gratitude, even gratitude expressed to God, for what “in practice already had become a Brahmin-dominated state” to have not gone the Pakistan way or the Islamic way?  

Do we ever wonder what would be our situation if we were living as a religious minority in an Islamic state? Do we ever move our lips or lift our little finger in support of the religious minorities living in Islamic states next door? Well, what to support them, we have hounded out the one Muslim lady who dared to speak for them in Bangladesh? There are so many Hindus and even Hindu ladies who fight for our causes in this country: would we like the Indian system to hound them out of the country and of course, not get any refuge anywhere else, certainly not in a Muslim country? … 

We have tens of thousands of mosques and madrasas running throughout the length and breadth of this country, but one of our mosques, a dilapidated and disused one, was demolished by people who were characterised by the Supreme Court as miscreants, and we blew that into an issue of our religious freedom in the country. We have still not solved that problem and allowed it to fester, to our nation’s detriment. Do our intellectuals take time off fighting the system and tell us it is not in our interest to allow a cancer to grow. The mosque is gone. We apparently don’t worship bricks and soil. Bricks too are gone in any case. Why can’t we initiate an amicable solution, as it would be in our own interest too? We need a plot of land to pray, we can pray anywhere in the area. Why do we need to blow it out of all proportion, make it such a big issue, when the country – the system - is allowing us to have as many mosques and madrasas as we wish?

An analysis by Sultan Shahin, editor, NewAgeIslam.com

The chief justice’s defiant ‘no’ to a uniformed army chief last year was admirable. His defiance today may prove disastrous in a situation where it is critical to support the coalition and ensure its survival, even at the expense of an individual. From the president, one can hardly expect any such magnanimous and wise gesture. But from the chief justice, such a unilateral and unconditional gesture could open the doors to a new era in Pakistan even if the president stubbornly clings to his position. The failure of the coalition will throw us back into the lap of undemocratic forces who are only waiting for such an opportunity, writes Beena Sarwar, senior Pakistani journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Karachi.

Maybe all former great powers go through a post-world domination identity crisis, but in Britain these days the gap between the centuries when this was the land of answers and the current climate of a million and one questions feels well worth minding. Among the nation's current preoccupations (aside from "Are Madge and Guy Ritchie really getting divorced?"), are "How and when will Gordon Brown ever leave?" and "If the Americans could elect George W. Bush not once but twice, how do we know they won't inflict another imbecile on an unwitting world", asks LISA VAN DUSEN  

The Left - the CPM in particular - has always portrayed itself as the standard bearer of Indian secularism. M K Pandhe, a CPM politburo member and chief of the party's trade union wing, has now showed up the Left's double standards. Pandhe has warned the Samajwadi Party that it could lose its Muslim support base if it backed the UPA government on the Indo-US nuclear deal. He said Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav should think twice before going with the UPA government on the deal because "an overwhelming majority of the Muslim masses are against it". Pandhe's statement confirms what some people have suspected. Though the CPM might publicly profess to be secular, it is as susceptible as the BJP or the Samajwadi Party to the temptation of communal politics.

Paradoxically, Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of Al-Qaeda, the most extremist Sunni organization, which has joined, in the full sense of the word, the Iranian apparatus. The alliance between the two enemies began in the wake of the defeat of Al-Qaeda and the organization's flight from Afghanistan to all Sunni countries. The first group of Al-Qaeda, which was led by Egyptian national Saif Al-Adel, and included Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, fled to Iran immediately after the fall of the Taliban regime., writes veteran journalist, currently general manager of Al-Arabiya News Channel Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed

BARACK Obama needs to give a speech about Iraq. Otherwise he will find himself in the unusual position of having being prescient about the war in 2002 and yet being overtaken by events in 2008. The most important reason to do this is not political. Iraq is fading in importance for the public and, to the extent that it matters as an electoral issue, most people agree with Obama's judgment that the war was not worth fighting, says FAREED ZAKARIA, Editor of Newsweek International in this insightful piece.