For the past two weeks, Bangladesh has been experiencing its largest demonstrations in two decades. Anti-Islamist Muslim Tarek Fatahsays it is “the first time ever in the Muslim world there has been a popular uprising against the fascism of Islamist parties.”
Unlike the Arab Spring revolutions, this uprising’s goal is not overthrowing a secular government, but protecting one.
The current government is led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a female secularist from the Awami League Party. Her party won in a landslide in December 2008, a remarkable—if mostly unnoticed—achievement in a 90 percent Muslim country.
Part of the reason for the victory was the party’s support for bringing justice to those responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in 1971 when Bangladesh broke from Pakistan. The Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), opposed independence and its student wing was involved in the bloodshed. (Read our interview with Saleem Reza Noor, a Bangladeshi-American, about JEI.)
Secret Pakistan BBC – Double Cross : This first episode investigates duplicity that emerged after 9/11 and disturbing intelligence reports after Britain’s forces entered Helmand in 2006.
In May this year [2011] , US Special Forces shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Publicly Pakistan is one of America’s closest allies – yet every step of the operation was kept secret from it.
Filmed largely in Pakistan and Afghanistan, this two-part documentary series explores how a supposed ally stands accused by top CIA officers and Western diplomats of causing the deaths of thousands of coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.
The documentary makers meet serving Taliban commanders who describe the support they get from Pakistan in terms of weapons, training and a place to hide.
The following two part article by written Patrick Poole last August exposes a 20 year influence operation by the Pakistani ISI that may explain US foreign policy towards Pakistan:
In Part One, I explored the court documents in the case of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Center (KAC) who admitted in a 26-page Statement of Facts at the time of his plea deal last December that he was an influence agent working for the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. He penetrated the halls of Congress and successive administrations over a 20-year period to help shape U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan’s favor.
As noted in the affidavit by FBI Special Agent Sarah Webb Linden that was the basis for the criminal charges filed in federal court against Fai, he was in constant communication with his ISI handlers, exchanging more than 4,000 emails between June 2008 and his arrest in July 2011. According to the FBI, the ISI spent more than $4 million funding Fai’s operation, funneling money to straw donors in the Pakistani-American community. The operation was coordinated by Zaheer Ahmad, a U.S. citizen living in Pakistan who was charged along with Fai in the case.
As I noted in Part One, while the establishment media reported on Fai’s arrest, the story virtually disappeared from all of the leading news outlets. But while the U.S. media was ignoring the scandal entirely, the matter was the subject of considerable media scrutiny in Indian and Pakistani media.
One curious episode that received no attention from the U.S. media was the strange death of Fai’s conspirator, Zaheer Ahmad.
Several months after Fai’s arrest, an extensive investigative piece (the only one ever published on the topic) by ProPublica noted Ahmad’s ties to Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. Mahmood had met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri prior to 9/11, wanting to help al-Qaeda obtain nuclear weapons. Ahmad told the ProPublica researchers:
In a phone conversation, Ahmad said he was free and working at Shifa. “Until this case is finished, I can’t discuss this,” Ahmad told a ProPublica reporter. “And it could be dangerous for you, too.”
Two days after the ProPublica exposé appeared, a bombshell report from the Hindustan Times placed Ahmad (Fai’s conspirator) at the meeting with Mahmood, Bin Laden, and Zawahiri just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Two days after that Hindustan Times article appeared tying him to the meeting with al-Qaeda leaders, Ahmad, who was living in Pakistan, dropped dead from a “cerebral hemorrhage”.
So within one week the following happened: ProPublica published an exposé examining Fai’s efforts on Capitol Hill on behalf of Pakistani intelligence; another report tied Fai’s charged conspirator in the case with meeting with Osama bin Laden just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks; and the conspirator dropped dead.
Yet that was not sufficient to stoke the curiosity of the American media.
Why did this story get buried?
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To summarize what we know of Ghulam Nabi Fai:
He came to the U.S. to study under one of the top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Ismail Faruqi, who founded the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which was identified by U.S. Customs as the hub of terrorism financing in the U.S.
Fai later served as national president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), during which time, according to an email cited in the FBI affidavit, he began serving on behalf of his Pakistani ISI masters.
He then served on the Shura Council for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
The wife of ISNA’s longtime Secretary General and present Director of Interfaith Outreach Sayyid Syeed was one of the original incorporators of KAC. Syeed had preceded Fai as national president of the MSA.
According to IRS filings, KAC’s Pakistani intelligence influence operation was launched with a $20,000 loan from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to hundreds of mosques around the country.
No doubt these organizations would say that their associations with Fai are ancient history and that they had no knowledge that Fai was operating on behalf of Pakistani intelligence.
But Fai’s involvement with these organizations continues to this day.
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Federal prosecutors told the court in a sentencing memo that Fai’s cooperation with the FBI was lacking following his plea deal, particularly noting his lack of cooperation regarding “his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistani terrorist groups.” (p. 9, fn. 3)
The story of the Pakistani ISI’s 20-year penetration into the heart of Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon should have been big news, especially since the U.S. government has identified the ISI as a terrorist organization in military tribunal documents.
But it wasn’t.
The media savaged Rep. Michele Bachmann and her congressional colleagues for daring to request an investigation into organizations that the U.S. government has gone into federal court and identified as front groups for the international Muslim Brotherhood yet somehow still considers helpful outreach partners. The story of how these same Islamic groups and leaders rushed to the support of Ghulam Nabi Fai and hailed Pakistan intelligence’s influence man on Capitol Hill as a hero even after admitting his crimes should be equally major news.
But it’s even worse than that. Fai was not only supported by these Islamic organizations, he served in senior leadership of these very organizations, which the U.S. government continues to consult with to help shape our domestic and foreign policy. These very same organizations are welcomed into the halls of Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon to this day.
That’s the reason I believe the story of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Kashmiri American Council, and the Pakistani ISI is the biggest D.C. spy scandal you’ve never heard about.
The staggering implications of what federal prosecutors presented in court about this matter under any other circumstances would have shaken Washington, D.C., to its core. Instead, the political and media establishment closes their eyes in self-imposed blindness.
And in the end, it will be the American people who reap the consequences.
The number of civilian fatalities from terrorist attacks in Pakistan is rising on a similar trend line with U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan over the past 10 years.
The foreign aid isn’t working. It actually appears to be backfiring. More aid = more terror.
Although American financial aid to Pakistan has begun declining, there is no appetite in Washington, D.C., to stop spending taxpayer dollars to fund the de facto terrorist state of Pakistan. Sen. Rand Paul was right to push for at least making aid to Pakistan conditional. Although Sen. Paul’s latest effort was defeated, these findings should give some reason for reconsideration:
Sources: Congressional Research Service and SATP.org, graph by MoneyJihad
The possible correlation resembles the relationship between aid to the Palestinian territories and the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks.
Data for this graph were compiled from CRS and SATP reports.
Imran Khan, head of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), wears a turban while addressing his supporters in Musa Khel, in the province of Punjab on October 6. SAAD ARSALAN/REUTERS
In an attempt to take the heat off President Barack Obama for his foreign policy failures, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week boasted: “The buck stops with her.” Commenting on the terrorist attack in Benghazi that led to the killing of four Americans last month, Clinton says she is the one who should be held responsible for the security failure.
But Benghazi was just one in a host of failures in the past three years of U.S. foreign policy.
Perhaps Clinton can explain the wisdom of her ambassador in Islamabad granting a visa to Pakistan’s most notorious anti-American politician, Imran Khan, to come to New York next week to raise funds for his anti-American movement.
Khan has justified the Taliban war against the U.S. in Afghanistan as a “jihad.” He also refused to fully condemn the Taliban for attempting to assassinate the 14-year old Pakistani girl Malala Yousufzai. “Who will save my party workers if I sit here and give big statements against the Taliban,” Khan told a press conference after leading an anti-American procession by his party.
Earlier this year, he was granted permission to come to the U.S. and address an anti-American fundraiser in Houston on, of all days, the fourth of July! That event was cancelled after a number of congressmen made phone calls.
Now Khan is coming to New York on October 26 to speak at a fundraising dinner and Eid celebration. In a promotional e-mail, the American organizers of the event claim: “All the money raised will be used to change the political as well as social structure of Pakistan by implementing the law across the board, Insha’Allah (Allah be willing).”
The “law” Imran Khan wishes to “implement” in Pakistan with the help of money raised in America is Sharia: “As Muslims we are bound by Sharia and if the Taliban are enforcing that, we should welcome it, not be fearful of it.”
If there was any doubt left in anyone’s mind about the agenda of Khan, here he is again praising Sharia law: “The liberal class is afraid of Sharia law. They say if Sharia comes people’s hands will be chopped off. I say, what is wrong with Sharia law. Sharia is what makes us human.”
A teenaged peace activist and advocate for the education of girls in Pakistan was targeted by the Taliban Tuesday. Malala Yousufzai, 14, admired across Pakistan for exposing the reality of life under the Taliban, was shot in the neck and head while on her school bus. Another girl on the bus was also wounded. Both girls remain in critical condition.
Malala was the recipient of Pakistan’s first National Peace Prize last November, a prize instituted to award a child under 18 who contributes to peace and education.
As her school bus was ready to leave the private school run by Malala’s father, a bearded gunman approached the bus and asked which of the girls was Malala. One girl pointed to Malala, who denied her identity. The gunman proceeded to shoot them both.
Taking responsibility for the brutal attack, Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said by telephone, “This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter,” as reported by the Associated Press.
Malala lives in the Swat Valley — nicknamed the Switzerland of Pakistan — which was once a popular, local tourist spot. Islamists began their takeover of the valley in 2007. The territory provided a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters since it is near the border of Afghanistan.
By 2008 and for the next two years, the valley fell completely into their hands. Strict Sharia “justice” was meted out – women were not permitted to go out shopping and those who were considered immoral were whipped; opponents were beheaded, girls schools (as well as some boy’s institutions) were closed and/or destroyed – a total of close to 200.
Even though the Pakistani military launched an attack against the Taliban to root them out of the valley, their efforts were only partially successful.
Malala began speaking out against the atrocities of the Taliban at the age of 11, when she wrote a blog for the BBC under the pseudonym of Gul Makai. In 2009, she began speaking out in favor of the education of girls.
Malala is well-known and loved across Pakistan. The attack provoked anger among Pakistani’s, long-suffering the Taliban’s history of violence toward women in their country. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf condemned the attack and called Malala a daughter of Pakistan.
One of the girl’s cousins, Azizul Hasan said, “This attack cannot scare us, nor the courageous Malala. This cowardly act cannot deter Malala to give up her efforts.”
Kamila Hayat, a senior official of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said Malala’s activism sent a global message that Pakistani girls could fight for their rights. But she is now concerned that the attack would prevent other parents from letting their children speak out against the Taliban.
“This is an attack to silence courage through a bullet,” Hayat said. “These are the forces who want to take us to the dark ages.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday she told Congress she’s designating the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network as a foreign terrorist organization.
Associated Press
An Aug. 22, 1998, file photo shows Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the militant group the Haqqani network, speaking during an interview in Miram Shah, Pakistan.
The move may complicate relations between Washington and Islamabad, which U.S. officials say has ties to the group. Clinton said she made the decision in accordance with legislation signed into law Aug. 10 that gave the department until Sunday to decide whether the Haqqani Network met the criteria for designation.
The designation bars anyone from knowingly supporting or doing business with anyone in the Haqqani Network, and it freezes all U.S. property the group has any ownership interest in.
“These actions follow a series of other steps that the U.S. government already has taken against the Haqqanis,” Clinton said in a statement.
Dubbed “the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war” in a New York Times profile last year, the group has been tied to some of the deadliest attacks in the region. It built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion, smuggling and trucking, the profile said.
But the U.S. had until Friday targeted individual members with sanctions, rather than go after the network as a whole.
Given the regular contact that Pakistan’s intelligence service has with it, designating the Haqqani Network as a foreign terror organization could carry the implication that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism because of its support for the group, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Some officials cited by the Journal, mainly at the State Department, have argued in the past that designating the Haqqani Network would prevent the U.S. from entering into negotiations that would end the Afghan war. Those officials said the designation is merely symbolic because many of the network’s known leaders are already under sanctions from the Treasury and State Departments.
But military leaders in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon, according to the Journal report, urged for the designation to increase pressure on the group and on Islamabad.
Last week, American officials said Badruddin Haqqani, a senior member, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Badruddin was placed under U.S. sanctions in May 2011 for being an operational commander for the group.
More coverage of the designation is available here, here and here
Save the Children has worked in Pakistan since 1979
SAVE THE CHILDREN IN PAKISTAN
Helped seven million people in 2010
Pakistan is one of the agency’s biggest programmes
Helps war and flood victims and refugees from Afghanistan
BBC: Save the Children’s foreign staff have been ordered to leave Pakistan within two weeks, the aid agency confirms.
It says it has been given no reason for the order, but correspondents say the move is thought be fall-out from the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.
After the raid a Pakistani doctor was arrested for helping the CIA track him.
Pakistani intelligence officials accuse Save the Children of involvement – the group denies the claims. Six of its 2,000 staff in Pakistan are foreigners.
The charity, which has operations all over the world, has worked in Pakistan for more than 30 years. Correspondents say it is not thought the forthcoming expulsions will have any significant impact on its operations in the short term.
A Save the Children spokesman in London told the BBC that the charity was seeking “clarification” from the Pakistani authorities in relation to the expulsions. The spokesman said it was not yet clear whether the agency would be allowed to send replacement expatriate staff.
The Pakistani government has so far not officially commented on the expulsions.
Dr Shakil Afridi was arrested after it emerged he had been running a fake vaccination programme on behalf of the CIA as part of efforts to track Bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in May last year.
The US authorities say Dr Afridi provided “very helpful” information for the raid and have called for his release.
Although Pakistan and the US are ostensibly partners in the fight against militancy, the Pakistani authorities viewed his actions as treason.
Associated Press reports that the Pakistani cleric accused of framing an 11 year-old Christian girl (who is said to have Downs Syndrome) for insulting Islam may himself be charged with the same crime.
A witness in the mosque recently testified that Khalid Jadoon Chisty planted pages of the Quran in the Rimsha Masih’s bag among other papers that she had burned to force the Christians out of Islamabad. (In the poverty-stricken area where the incident occurred, it common that residents burn paper for cooking fuel.)
Police arrested Chisty Saturday, an unprecedented move in Pakistan, where harsh blasphemy laws are often used to persecute Christians and Hindus and push non-Muslims out off of their land.
Meanwhile, in an equally unprecedented move, the chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, a grouping of Islamic clerics, Hafiz Mohammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, said in an emotional press conference that he would personally guarantee the safety of the girl if she is released from prison and demanded an investigation of the incident. Ashrafi has a teenage Downs Syndrome child himself.
Ashrafi , who was accompanied by other senior clerics, lambasted Chisty. He also revealed that Chisty was acting for a group of locals who, for three months, wanted to flame the fires of antagonism to get the Christians to flee the area so that a madrassa could be built on their property.
Two more witnesses have since come forth to implicate Pakistani authorities arrest Chisty Chisty, since the original witness, Hafiz Mohammad Zubair, came to the police last week – two weeks after the girl had been arrested.
The Guardian reports that Gabriel Francis, a lawyer in Pakistan’s Supreme Court, said the atmosphere of fear surrounding the blasphemy law most likely kept Zubair from speaking out earlier.
“It is very hard to come forward when in previous cases a governor and a minister were killed for speaking out,” he said. The former minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, as well as the former governor of the Punjab, Salman Taseer were both assassinated last year after they publicly criticized Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
Ashrafi, for his part, said “There is no problem with the [blasphemy] law – only the implementation of the law is the problem.”
After the accusations were made against the girl, an angry mob demanding retribution appeared at the police station. As per the plan, the Christian community fled en masse, fearing they would be attacked next.
As is often the case in blasphemy charges, Muslim mobs are not interested in waiting for the police to investigate, but rather take “justice into their own hands,’ as evidenced by a case last July where an angry mob stormed the police station where a man was being held on charges of blasphemy, beat him to death and set his body on fire.
On Monday, Christy was charged with desecrating the Quran, an offense which can be punished by life in prison. Authorities say he may also be charged with fraud, planting evidence and making false accusations.
Nonetheless, Pakistani authorities continue to hold the accused girl in a high-security prison for the third week and say that she will remain in jail until at least Friday due to a lawyers’ strike which has postponed her bail hearing twice.
Daily Times, By Aliya Mirza: LAHORE: As many as 2,000 women and girls from various minority sects were forcibly converted to Islam through rape, torture and kidnappings, while 161
people were charged with blasphemy in 2011, according to a report by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC).
SPARC released the report on Tuesday at a press conference at a hotel.
The report read that minorities make up three to four percent of the country’s population but remain sidelined in state policies. In 2011, extremists killed governor Salmaan Taseer and federal minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti, as both were advocating minority rights by calling for amendments in the country’s controversial blasphemy law.
After the 2011 floods, 130,000 Hindus were forced to leave their homes and 86,500 ended up on streets of various cities in Sindh. Whereas 27 Hindu children were kidnapped for ransom from different parts of northern Sindh. The primary school enrolment rate of scheduled caste Hindu girls is only 10.2 percent. Ahmadi students have been especially targeted by the hate
campaigns. In Hafizabad, 10 Ahmadi students, including seven girls and a
teacher, were expelled from school on account of their religious affiliation.
Violence against children: The report also read a total of 2,303 instances of sexual abuse were recorded from various parts of the country. The actual number is larger as many cases go unreported. In majority of the cases,
people close to the child (parents or relatives) or officials who are supposed
to give them protection are the abusers. For instance, policemen are involved in
more than 60 percent of sexual abuse cases of street children. The number of
acid attacks rose from 65 to 105 in 2011. A majority of the acid attacks involve
women and girls between the ages of 15 and 25.
Child labour: According to a study by SPARC, most of the child domestic workers in Pakistan are aged between 10-15 years (sometimes five years old children are also employed). In the absence of official statistics, it is impossible to assess the magnitude of bonded labour, but it is estimated that 1.7 million people are engaged in bonded labour in Pakistan.
Juvenile justice: The number of juveniles detained in prisons increased from 1,225 in 2010 to 1,421 in 2011. Punjab has the highest number of juvenile offenders (833), Sindh 318, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 241 and Balochistan has 40 juvenile offenders.
Education: Pakistan ranks second in the global ranking of countries with the highest number of out-of-school children with the figure estimated to be about 25 million. Seven million have yet to receive some form of primary schooling. As many as 9,800 schools were reportedly affected in Sindh and Balochistan due to floods. Around 600,000 children of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are reported to have missed one or more years of education due to ongoing militancy.
Pakistan has the lowest youth literacy rate. Only 59 percent females are literate as compared to 79 percent of males in the age group of 15 to 24 years. There are around 51.2 million adult illiterates in Pakistan. Only 65 percent schools have drinking water facilities, 62 percent have toilet facilities, 61 percent have a boundary wall and only 39 percent have electricity.
Health: According to the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2011, 43 percent children born in Pakistan are afflicted by stunting (low height for age). The rate of child mortality in Pakistan is 87 deaths per 1000 births. Although full immunisation coverage of children between the ages of 12-23 months has increased from 78 per cent in 2008-09 to 81 per cent in 2010-11, it is still short of the MDG target for Pakistan (90 per cent for the years 2010-11). It is estimated that at the start of 2011 Pakistan was accounting for nearly 30 per cent of all polio cases recorded worldwide with 197 cases reported from different parts of the country.
Floods: The 2011 floods affected 4.8 million people, half of them children (an estimated 500,000 below the age of five). It is estimated that over 2.5 million men, women and children still lack essentials of life such as clean water, adequate food and durable shelter. The floods left over 2.4 million children and 1.2 million women vulnerable and exposed; lacking access to safe drinking water, sanitation and healthcare.
When the five House Republicans rose up to call for scrutiny of enemy efforts to influence our government, they were not speaking hypothetically. The effort is very real. And the enemy is now so brazen, so confident about the inroads it has made, that it publicly closes ranks around its operatives even after their treachery has been laid bare.
I’m a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy Wall Street myth; I’m partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.
The people have 435 representatives serving in the House and another hundred in the Senate. Of these 535, a total of 288 are Republicans – 241 and 47 in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. Of these, only five House conservatives – five – have had the fortitude to raise concerns about the Islamist connections of government officials entrusted with positions enabling them to shape U.S. policy.
Think about that. Republicans purport to be the national-security party. For decades this claim was well founded, starting with Ronald Reagan’s clarity in seeing the Soviets as enemies to be defeated, not accommodated. President Reagan’s plan for the Cold War was, “We win, they lose,” and he pulled it off because he was not under any illusions about who “they” were.
But something happened to the GOP in the Bush years. For all the welcome understanding that Bill Clinton was wrong – that the jihad could not be indicted into submission – the Bush administration never learned a fundamental truth that Reagan knew only too well: You cannot defeat your enemies unless you understand them, and you cannot even begin to understand them if you are too craven to name them.
As they gather in Tampa for their quadrennial showcase, Republicans, but for the 1 percent, remain timorous on the subject of America’s enemies. Oh, they’ll tell you that we must confront “terrorism” and crack down on the “terrorists.” But that’s not much different from claiming to be against “burglary” and “burglars.” Terrorism is a vicious crime, but it becomes a national-security threat only when it is an instrument of an ideology that aims to destroy our country. What made the terrorist organizations armed and trained by the Soviets in the Sixties and Seventies a threat was the Soviets, not the terrorism.
America’s enemies are Islamic supremacists: Muslims adherent to a totalitarian interpretation of Islam who, like Soviet Communists, seek to impose their ideology throughout the world, very much including the United States. Terrorism is an offensive strategy they use, but it is only one arrow in the quiver. Its chief utility, moreover, is not that it will coerce surrender on its own; it is the atmosphere of intimidation it creates. That dramatically increases the effectiveness of the enemy’s several other offensive strategies - legal demands for concessions, media campaigns, infiltration of society’s major institutions, and influence operations against government.
The most disheartening thing about the modern Republican party’s dereliction – about its accommodation and empowerment of our enemies under the delusional guise of “Muslim outreach” – is that it flies in the face of the Bush Justice Department’s signal counterterrorism achievement.
That was the 2007-08 Holy Land Foundation case. For once, political correctness and the fear of being smeared as “Islamophobic” were shelved. In the course of convicting several Hamas operatives, prosecutors proved that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in a far-flung enterprise aimed, in the Brothers’ own words, at “eliminating and destroying” our way of life “from within” by means of “sabotage.” The Bush Justice Department not only showed that what the Brotherhood calls its “grand jihad” (or “civilization jihad”) is real; Justice shed light on the ideology that fuels this enterprise, and expressly identified many of the global Brotherhood’s accomplices.
Alas, this achievement is one today’s Republicans prefer to ignore. The party of Ronald Reagan would have worn it like a badge of honor. Today’s GOP would rather engage our enemies and call them our friends – not understand them, call them what they are, and defeat them. Today’s Beltway Republicans save their wrath for the occasional conservative – the messengers who embarrass them by illustrating how small the big time has made them.
Did you know, for example, that when the Republican establishment had its hissy fit over the inconvenient 1 percent – when John McCain and John Boehner led the shrieking over their five conservative colleagues’ purported scaremongering over Islamist influence-peddling – the fact that this influence-peddling effort exists had just been proved in court?
As Patrick Poole, one of few to cover the case, has observed, it is the biggest spy scandal you’ve never heard about. Right around the time McCain and Boehner were dressing down the 1 percent last month, Ghulam Nabi Fai was finally heading off to prison. He had pled guilty last December to acting as a secret foreign agent against our government.
In sum, Fai was paid millions of dollars over two decades by the Pakistani intelligence service to push its agenda through a D.C.-based front, the Kashmiri American Council. You haven’t heard much about it because it is a Muslim Brotherhood operation through and through, one that demonstrates exactly what the 1 percent is warning about.
