Poverty-Causes-Islamic Radicalization/Terrorism Alert. You know, like multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden, who opted to live the life of a jihadist hiding in caves, all because he was...broke? What's strange is that this sort of thing is usually peddled by Westerners, but here it's a Pakistani official who is trying to make this connection. All well and good to create more jobs; but to think that that's the solution is beyond naive. Besides, that increased economic activity can quite easily be used to fund the jihad.
"Jobs to curb Talibanisation: ANP," from the Daily Times, Pakistan, October 13 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
PESHAWAR: The NWFP government is planning to increase economic activity in the province to curb the wave of Talibanisation, Awami National Party (ANP) working committee member Gul Mina Bilal said on Sunday.She said in a statement that the Taliban were misguiding unemployed youths, who were joining their ranks. However, the provision of employment opportunities would help end Talibanisation in the province, she added.
From the classic movie, wherein Beeltejuice declares:
Sorta like islam.....
All well and good to create more jobs; but to think that that's the solution is beyond naive.
Why think that a solution is what they seek? It's also a good sales pitch to get more foreign aid. People won't fall for the "we're fighting our jihadists and that takes money" line anymore. Now it's: we have all these poor youth who need to know they have a future.
It's not naive. It's calculating.
Besides, that increased economic activity can quite easily be used to fund the jihad.
An unintended (?) consequence. Can't be helped. We can't let the prospect of jihad for a few prevent us from helping the masses, now can we?
Every youth we save (?) today will help (?) us tomorrow.
Why assume all that activity will fund the jihad? We have to look on the bright side! We're saving some people and they will come over to our cause and help us eliminate the jihad.
/sarc off
"No Infidel Man's Burden""
Does the United States, and the West in general, have a responsibility to fix what is broken in Afghanistan? As a poster to this website put it recently: “The only option I see is for the armed forces of the western nations fully occupy afghanistan, subdue them and colonize them for at least two generations and teach them civilized life."
Absolutely not. That would end, once and for all, any chance of sensible support, within the Western world, for dealing with the worldwide Jihad, and especially with the problems of Da'wa and demographic conquest within the Western world. What happens in Europe is far more important than whether primitive tribesmen, who will hardly be weaned away from Islam by Infidels, fight with each other or do not fight with each other.
The Pentagon should right now be arranging only to supply local warlords who may, in promoting themselves, do our bidding. Let Afghanistan collapse into warring fiefdoms, as long as those warlords keep Al Qaeda and the Taliban at bay. And they can do so, if they are supplied with weaponry, and if there are on the ground only Afghanis or others of interest (for example, soldiers from Tadjikistan). Others who are also worried about the Taliban can at the same time supply what they can (e.g. Kazakhstan might help with American bases for the odd bombing run, and with some of that oil money as well).
Resources must be husbanded, not squandered. The American public will lose all interest -- the very interest it has been so hard to sustain -- in fighting a war of self-defense against the Jihad if the American army is now deployed in large numbers to Afghanistan. In fact, the Infidel presence in Afghanistan should be reduced to the point of near-nothingness. As long as America is seen as the source of money, money, money (as it is seen in Iraq), plausible locals will insist on the Americans remaining, and doing much of the fighting, and all this ridiculous "rebuilding" which has nothing to do with limiting the power of the global Islamic jihad.
We can only lose, we can only become confused, when we begin to think that maybe this or that group is composed of people who hold to Western sensibilities. We, the Infidels, and especially the naive Americans, are permanently out of our depth when we are dealing with those for whom smiles and deception are a way of life.
Instead of working to rebuild Afghanistan or any other Muslim polity, we should work to divide and demoralize the forces of the global jihad. We can do this in many ways, among the chief being by pointing out the obvious. For example, we should be pointing out all the ways in which Islam is a vehicle for an Arab supremacist ideology, one which requires non-Arabs to exhibit a kind of historical amnesia about, or indifference to, or contempt for, all that is pre-Islamic about their past.
By refusing to help -- helping with the Jizyah of foreign aid, helping with all that rebuilding -- Infidels can do more to help themselves. In the end, this will also help the peaceful Muslims around the world. Let them discover, over the next many decades, what has been done to their societies by the inshallah-fatalism of Islam, and by the habit of mental submission that is encouraged by Islam, and by the willingness to endure despotism because in Islam political power cannot be located in the will of mere people, but only in the Will of Allah as codified in the Shari'a or Holy Law of Islam -- which mere mortals, men who count for nothing except to the extent that they submit to the revealed will of Allah, can only hope to approximate.
Let Muslims themselves begin slowly (as Kemal Ataturk did, and as others have) to understand that all of their political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures, of their states, of their societies, whether in Dar al-Islam or Dar al-Harb, are a direct result of various Islamic doctrines and assumptions.
That cannot be imposed by Infidel armies. That can best occur by the U.S. limiting its contacts with Muslim countries, and not helping them out. It can best be accomplished by forcing them to help each other out, or to dissolve into internecine warfare, Muslim against Muslim.
Meanwhile, as that spectacle of internecine warfare and endless Muslim cruelty is on display, even those in Western Europe who have lost all sense of themselves, and who have permitted themselves to allow their own worst mental pathologies -- anti-Americanism and antisemitism -- to be exploited cleverly by an army of mujahedin and their ideological collaborators (or simply venal Western hirelings of Muslim states and interests), may come to their senses, and at long last strive to undo and reverse their own intellectual and moral errors, errors that have harmed not only the United States and Israel but above all, themselves.
[Posted by Hugh at April 20, 2006]
I guess 'why fight the Americans and not be employed, when we can be employed by the Pakistani goverment and fight the Americans'.
A career of double-dipping.
I bet the Americans will even pay the salary of these new employed Taliban fighters.
Pakistan is already employing fighters and training them to fight against India and Kashmir.
Hugh's posting above, may be reduced to two words:
Tough Love.
"I bet the Americans will even pay the salary of these new employed Taliban fighters."
-- from a posting above
Of course they will. Not meaning to, but the American government, that has transferred $30 billion to the government of Pakistan, in direct military and economic aid, and in debts cancelled, since 9/11/2001 alone, fails to realize that the money it gives the government of Pakistan goes to buy weapons for an untrustworthy army (some of whose officers and men are fanatical Muslims, and murderously hostile to Infidels, and some of whose officers and men are merely ordinary Muslims, and deeply hostile to Infidels), or to temporarily rent the loyalties of people to whoever is running Pakistan at the time the money or jobs are distributed, and =not to Infidels, of any kind, ever.
And the chance to force Muslim states and societies to recognize the ways in which Islam itself contributes to, or causes, their economic and other kinds of disarray, will be lost, or continually put off, the more Infidels give aid, aid of every kind, when no aid whatsoever should be given to Muslim states or peoples by those who, in the ideal Muslim future, would be made to suffer under Muslim rule.
They know how to talk that talk.
Yep, its a sales pitch to get more foreign aid. Just like the thug-in Chief recently demanded
100 $ billion to keep Pakistan -a failed nation built on nothing but Islam, with nukes- alive.
http://sheikyermami.com/2008/10/05/paki-thug-in-chief-demands-100-billion-to-save-pakistan/
No more jizya.
No more money (or men) down the rat-hole - *especially* when the western world needs all its wits and resources to climb out of financial collapse, a collapse quite probably exacerbated by all the non-Muslim money and manpower that has been burned to no purpose, in Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and Iraq.
"Fanaticism plus Machiavellianism plus brutality = Islamic Pakistan": David McCutchion, Indophile scholar (1930-1972).
"At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having"...
Winston Churchill, writing in exasperation, concerning the British attempts at kingdom-building in Iraq, to the then PM Lloyd George, 1 September 1922 (from Martin Gilbert, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL IV, Companion Volume Part 3, London: Heinemann, 1977, pp. 1973-74).
Let's hear that again: "An ungrateful volcano, out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having".
A completely accurate description of Iraq as viewed by an intelligent and prudent non-Muslim, ca 1922; but it does equally well as a description of any number of places today, chief among them, Iraq 2008, and Afghanistan 2008, and Pakistan 2008, but also Egypt, and Turkey, and Indonesia, and yes, despite all that oil, Saudi Arabia, and every other supposed Muslim 'ally' of any non-Muslim country.
From article: he said in a statement that the Taliban were misguiding unemployed youths, who were joining their ranks.
Partly true. The Taliban are not 'misguiding', they are 'guiding' according to the supreme guide book, the Quran.
From article: However, the provision of employment opportunities would help end Talibanisation in the province, she added.
Not true the one thing the Taliban does is provide employment. You may consider the Afghanistan Taliban fully employed. Jihad is not only their obligation and duty, it is their employment.
I don't think they have a very good benefit package, but that's because Allah does not provide employment benefits...No paid holidays, no personal time off, no sick time, no overtime pay, but they do get a check at the end of the month and a 10lb bag of falafel flour.
That's if they live. If they die, Allah awards them with 72 virgins, a twenty pound bag of falafel mix, and some grapes.
Well worth it for grape and virgin starved Talibanies...
No more jizya.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 10:02 PM
While I fully agree with your sentiment, dumbledoresarmy, the reality is that with POTUS in Islam's pocket, US Tax-dollars will continue to flow in the form of jizya, all over Dar Al-Islam. Needless to ad that POTUS is also Commander-in-chief, who included terrorists as 'allies' in the phony 'war-on-terror', which was faught for the safety and security of the terrporists. America, in all it's grand wisdom was lied into this pointless war, which has only helped the terrorists. Since POTUS is in a position to pay-off his debts to the wahhabbis (for financing his failed businesses), and as long as it doesn't go from his pocket, how do you suppose jizya will stop?
MORE JOBS???
I thought for sure they were bloody Socialists in a bums rush to get on Allah's payroll in Paradise. The- will Gigolo for Food and Wine- kind.