UstaadKhan Blogs

POLICE IN northwestern Pakistan have arrested an armed American man close to the Afghan border where he said he was on a mission to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

They detained Gary Faulkner, a 52-year-old construction worker, after a 10-hour search in the country’s lawless tribal areas.

Officers said he told them he planned to “decapitate” the al-Qaeda leader. He was carrying a 40-inch sword, a handgun and dagger, and was equipped with night-vision goggles.

A local police officer, Mumtaz Ahmad Khan, said: “We initially laughed when he told us that he wanted to kill Osama bin Laden.” Bin Laden has evaded capture ever since the 9/11 attacks that shocked the world and turned al-Qaeda into a global terror brand. Analysts believe the 53-year-old Saudi has slipped back and forth across the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, relying on networks of tribal supporters in a region where central government holds little sway.

Last month, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan’s lawless border regions – and that he was being protected by Pakistani government officials.

However, some analysts also believe he may be dead, pointing out that video messages featuring the jihadi leader have all but dried up in recent years. Rumours have long circulated that he is struggling with kidney disease, or was badly wounded in an airstrike.

The tantalising prospect of tracking down such a notorious criminal has attracted a small band of bounty hunters and fantasists, lured by a $25 million (€20 million) FBI reward offered for information leading to his capture.

Mr Faulkner’s solo mission is the latest bizarre twist in the world’s highest-stakes game of hide-and-seek. He told police he visited Pakistan seven times.

On this occasion he arrived in the country at the start of the month and travelled to the district of Chitral, a mountainous area close to the Afghan border that attracts adventurous tourists for its hiking.

He was assigned a police guard – common in an area where foreigners are targeted by kidnap gangs. When he checked out without informing his minder, police launched a manhunt, according to Mr Khan, who was involved in the investigation.

“A search operation was launched and we found him 14 kilometres [nine miles] short of the Pakistan-Afghan border. He was trying to enter Nuristan,” said Mr Khan.

Nuristan is a stronghold of the Afghan Taliban, and along with Chitral is often mooted as a possible bin Laden safe haven. As well as his weapons, Mr Faulkner was also carrying a book of Christian verse.

“He said 9/11 caused colossal losses to the US, therefore he wanted to locate Osama bin Laden and his friends,” added Mr Khan.

He apparently told police: “God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him.” Mr Faulkner is being questioned by Pakistani intelligence agents.

Pakistan must stop helping the Taliban if Afghanistan is to ever see peace, said a former Canadian and United Nations diplomat.

Christopher Alexander who spent six years working in Afghanistan — first as Canada’s ambassador, and then as a UN envoy — says the Taliban would have folded up shop by now were it not for the support given to the insurgency group by Pakistan’s military establishment, especially the Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence.

Alexander made the explosive comments Monday before the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence.

The former diplomat and now declared candidate for the Conservative Party said the world needs to be open and frank about Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan’s ongoing struggle.

Pakistan has several seats on local military councils that plan the insurgency throughout Afghanistan, said Alexander.

“These networks, whose leadership, fundraising, training, bomb-making, supply and planning centres are based overwhelming on the territory of Pakistan, constitute the primary threat to peace and security in Afghanistan today.”

As for the Taliban’s role in recent peace talks with the Karzai government, Alexander said: “The Taliban doesn’t want peace. They don’t want a piece of the pie; they want to blow up the pie.”

FBI special agent Richard J. Kolko confirmed the arrests of the New Jersey suspects.

The arrests of two more Americans as would-be jihadists recently, as they were trying to board flights from New York City to Somalia, is a warning that the face of terror may be changing. Threats not only come from abroad; they can be homegrown.

Domestic terrorism is not new … as this area, home to the late Timothy McVeigh, is all too aware. And the two New Jersey men unmasked by an undercover New York City police officer and arrested as they headed toward hoped-for terror training were just the latest episode in domestic arrests that started with the Lackawanna Six shortly after 9/11.

So far, there have been 49 cases of radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism within the United States, and 133 arrests. And so far, the would-be terrorists have proven, thankfully, inept.

But it only takes one. And America must not let down its guard.

“There is no long mile between the terrorist wannabe and the lethal zealot,” Rand Corp. analyst Brian Jenkins testified May 26 before the House Homeland Security Committee.

America’s Muslim-American community plays a huge role in maintaining our guard. It has indeed been helpful … the local chapter of the Muslim American Public Affairs Committee has been recognized for its work with the FBI … but there must be no let-up in community condemnation of terrorism and the organizations that support it. (more…)

 by Dennis Prager

Hazem Farouq (C), a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian who boarded the aid flotilla attacked by Israel

With the exception of the United States, nearly all the world’s nations; newspapers, radio and TV news stations; the United Nations; and the world’s Leftist academics and organizations have condemned Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident. The characterizations of the Jewish state range from a society so evil that it should not be allowed to exist to a villainous nation that is responsible for a) the suffering of millions of innocent Palestinian men, women and children; b) the lack of Mideast peace; therefore c) the Muslim world’s anger at the West; and therefore d) Islamic terrorism itself.

Let’s hope the world is right.

Israel is almost totally isolated. A visitor from another planet would have every reason to report back home that the greatest problem on planet earth was this planet’s Jewish state. Though Israel is the size of the American state of New Jersey and smaller than El Salvador, and though its population is smaller than that of Sweden, Burundi and Bolivia, it is the most censured country in United Nations history.

Let’s hope the world is right.

Though Israel is a thriving liberal democracy for all its citizens, including the one out of five that is Arab (83 percent of whom are Muslim), with an independent judiciary and press; though it signed an agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state; though it returned to Egypt every inch of the Sinai Peninsula, a land mass larger than Israel itself with major oil reserves — the world deems Israel a villain. (more…)

By Zahid Malik:
   Terrorism cannot be measured by the number of suicide bomb blasts in Pakistan and abroad because such a yardstick may be quite misleading. In my view terrorism is a state of mind and you never know that there may be a person in your office or near your home or maybe in your own home, having some traces of terrorism. If we consider operations Rah-i-Raast and Rah-i-Nijat in Swat and FATA and ongoing operations in Afghanistan and the rest of the world, it is difficult to identify a terrorist until he physically acts openly and that is why such operations though eliminate the hard cores, yet one never knows how many remnants still exist there. After a great deal of soul searching and exchange of views with academicians and scholars, I have come to the conclusion that this state of mind cannot be changed unless and until the causes of terrorism are not duly addressed.
  

 I curse Samuel P Huntington who floated the dangerous and divisive theory of “clash of civilizations” nearly fifteen years ago which explicitly refers to terrorism as the conflict among the Islamic civilization and other civilizations, particularly the West perhaps on behalf of neocons which was not only picked up but magnified around the world. Huntington replaced conflict among classes by conflict in civilizations, eventually even amongst religions. This disastrous and catastrophic theory was overblown to such an extent that a stage has now come that when a baby in Washington is born, it is imbibed with the inherent notion of equating Islam with terrorism. There is a hidden sense of fear in the United States and some people suddenly wake up during sleep fearing terrorist attack because of the highly biased notion floated by Huntington. (more…)

A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner at Manchester Airport, Photograph by: Phil Noble, Reuters

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – As Mahnaz Shabbir thought about a coming flight, she grew worried about the full-body scanners used at some airports.

Kansas City International Airport will be one of 11 airports getting body scanners by this summer, federal authorities announced last week. The scanner coming to KCI would be installed at a security checkpoint serving Southwest Airlines.

Shabbir is concerned that the scanners might compromise the modesty teachings in Islam. Other religious groups, such as Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians, express similar views.

The question is whether religious teachings on modesty will be trampled in the march toward better security.

“In Islam, both men and women should dress modestly,” said Shabbir, who does diversity training. “Women covering their arms, chest and hair are part of being modest, even though some Muslim women may not cover their hair and even wear sleeveless tops.

“But the body scan is going underneath our clothing and going where nobody should be looking except your spouse and your physician. So when some strange person, even in another room, is looking at you, my thought is, ‘Oh, my gosh, who is looking at my body?’” (more…)

Manchester and Heathow are the first airports in Britain to have full-body scanners. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

Two women, one a Muslim, have become the first people to be barred from boarding a flight because they refused to go through a full-body airport scanner.

Manchester airport confirmed today that the women, who were booked to fly to Islamabad with Pakistan International Airlines, were told they could not get on the plane after they refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons.

The women had been selected at random, said the airport.

The Muslim woman decided to forfeit her ticket and left her luggage at the airport. Her companion also left the airport saying she did not go through the scanner on medical grounds because she had an infection. (more…)