Under their very noses!

Osama bin Who? - A decade of denials and downplaying from Pakistani leaders.

Excerpt: (October 2010)

"Pakistan's Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani rejected a NATO official's claim on Monday that al Qaeda Chief Osama bin Laden is living comfortably in a house in the northwest of Pakistan, saying there was no basis to it. 'This is speculation because if he knew it, it would be actionable intelligence and we would act on it.'"

Comment: One wonders whether Pakistan is a true ally!

Is Pakistan is the root of the problem?

Patrick Cockburn: Pakistan is the root of the problem

Excerpt:

It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the West to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.

The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. In Pakistan, he writes, "a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies".

Comment: I'm not sure the answer to the question is yes. I invite comments.

Arif and Kathleen Khan's story

The Believers

Excerpts:

'They were sweethearts,” the Rev. Albert Martin said. “He led her, and she followed him willingly and cheerfully. That is all biblical, you see.”

Martin was remembering Arif and Kathleen Khan, a missionary couple whom Martin’s church, the Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, N.J., had sent to Pakistan eight years ago. There, this August, the couple were shot to death in their home by three suspected killers ....



Kathleen, the daughter of scarcely observant Christians, grew up enthralled by the stories of missionaries that filled the New Jersey church where her parents sent her for Sunday school. And Arif, born and raised in Pakistan, the son of a preacher in the country’s small Christian community, felt called to carry his faith into nations hostile to the message he brought. They met at a seminary in Massachusetts and married, and soon Arif, who had become an American citizen, led her and their two young children to live in Iran; the family quickly found themselves fleeing Ayatollah Khomeini’s fundamentalist revolution. Next the Khans made their home in another Islamic country, which Martin would not specify for fear of endangering the missionary that Trinity Church now sponsors there. Arif was banished. In 1999, with their children grown, he and Kathleen settled in Islamabad, their home until their murder. Arif knew the risks of proselytizing. He had, shortly before his marriage, been jailed for weeks in Pakistan for preaching Christ’s power in the streets with his father. “He was a marked man,” Martin said. “He talked of dying for Christ as though it was having a mole removed.”

Comment: For more see the sermons page of Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, NJ. Also: The Pakistani Christian Post

Pakistan: the little I know

Target: Pakistan - Losing in the West, the jihadis hit Pakistan, with its nuclear prize.

Excerpt:

"In Pakistan there are two fault lines. One is dictatorship versus democracy. And one is moderation versus extremism." Thus did Benazir Bhutto describe the politics of her country during an August visit to The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York. She was assassinated yesterday for standing courageously, perhaps fatalistically, on the right side of both lines.

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Comment: Kathee and I were talking this morning about the little we know about Pakistan. What I know about Pakistan is from two major sources:

1. Long lost friends from Colorado: M Khan, B Khan, and their Father H Khan. (First names omitted for their privacy. Last name is common in Pakistan!). I met M while taking a C programming class. A friendship developed and we met on numerous occasions. We had dinner in his home, met his Father, met his Brother. We had M and B and H in our home as well. We met many Pakistanis and many Afghanistanis as well. M's parents arranged his marriage and I wanted to go to Pakistan for his wedding. It was more than a year before M's wife could come to the United States and join him. We had M and his bride in our home. I know a lot about Pakistan from M. M's wife had a pet monkey in Pakistan and I learned enough about pet monkeys to know I would never want one.
   
2. From Dr Viggo Olsen, author of Daktar. Dr Olsen was a Baptist medical missionary to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). His books provide a first hand testimony to the history of Pakistan and Bangladesh. We were privileged to meet him in a casual home setting when I was a Pastor in New Jersey.
   

Strangely the Pakistan that M Khan presented to me was a country friendly to the West, a country I wished I could visit. M brought a massive pictorial of Pakistan to our home and as we viewed page after page he spoke to me about his experiences growing up and living in Pakistan.

The tragic murder of Benazir Bhutto puts Pakistan in the forefront of the news. My hope for Pakistan is a moderate democracy. My fear for Pakistan is that Islamic fundamentalists will gain control of Pakistan's 60 some nuclear weapons!

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CT: Remembering Benazir - An Indian Christian mourns the charismatic Pakistani leader

Excerpt:

Pakistan stands at the center, geopolitically, for much of what is yet to happen between Islam and the rest of the Western world. More so, I believe, than the Middle East or even Iraq or Iran, not only because of its enormous Muslim population (more than 160 million), but also because of its growing brand of radicalism, which, due to Al Qaeda's influence, is gaining control of Islamic radicalism worldwide.

Newsweek: What About the Nukes? Despite its claims, Pakistan's nuclear weapons are vulnerable.


Excerpt:

Over the years I have had the opportunity to discuss the loose nukes issue with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on three separate occasions. On each he insisted that there is no possibility that corrupt custodians or terrorists could steal the country's nuclear weapons and materials. But in the third of these conversations, which occurred in December 2003, just a week after terrorists came within a second and a half of blowing him up, I managed to penetrate his standard defense. How plausible is it, I asked, that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is more secure than the president of the country himself? His answer: well, there you may have a point.

A witch's brew that includes political instability, a burgeoning Islamic insurgency, a demoralized army and an intensely anti-American population, puts Pakistan's nuclear weapons at risk.