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| India-Pakistan |
| Chocolate and haughty disdain from the nawab |
| 2006-08-30 |
| Akbar Khan Bugti on jihad: “What use have I got for a God that needs me to fight His battles?” President General Pervez Musharraf has been singularly unsuccessful at finding Osama bin Laden in his cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border. But at the weekend the general showed his ability to reach into cavernous realms when he killed a 79-year-old tribal chieftain called Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. The nawab, educated at Aitcheson College, the Eton of the British Raj, died when his “cave complex” (in war-on-terror-speak) collapsed after a raid by commandos. The Baloch sardar, who lived in accordance with the precepts of Nietzsche and Genghis Khan, disdained those of inferior breeding and intellect, British daily newspaper The Telegraph wrote on Tuesday. But he did have a habit of getting up people’s noses. Apart from denting Musharraf’s ego by greeting him with a tirade of missiles during a presidential visit to Balochistan, the nawab was in the habit of saying that the military leader “had just come down from the trees”. He also upset former premier Benazir Bhutto when he called her husband “a son of a camel wallah”. They may, for all I know, have been neighbours, but bin Laden was one person with whom the nawab would not have shared his campfire. The British District Gazetteer of 1906 noted that the Bugtis were “intellectually, perhaps, the least bigoted” of the region’s hill tribesmen. Against the backdrop of Pakistan’s endemic obscurantism, the nawab relished shocking brother Muslims with blasphemous diatribes. On jihad, he said: “What use have I got for a God that needs me to fight His battles?” He will be sorely missed by theologians across the country. In my experience, it was never easy to visit the nawab. A trip to see him in April involved floating across a wide canal on a tractor inner tube, hiking along rock-strewn ridges and a nocturnal camel ride. Billeted in a cave, surrounded by his warriors and living on chocolate bars, the nawab thrived on the austerity of his quixotic campaign for tribal autonomy. On a previous visit some eight years ago, when the nawab inhabited his ancestral fort, he had warned: “Do tell me when you set off, or someone may take a pot-shot.” In the event, he had my brother and me arrested on arrival. Each morning for a week he sent a posse of Kalashnikov-toting tribesmen to our jail, where they delivered a breakfast of chillied fried eggs from the back of a pick-up truck and then drove us to his residence for our daily audience. |
| Posted by:john |
| #7 perhaps it is a crack in Islam's building The Balochis have seen, first hand, what an "islamic welfare state" is all about ... an excuse for outsiders to take their land and natural resources.. colonization by fellow muslims - Punjabis etc. They no longer buy the brotherhood argument. No ummah for many of them. |
| Posted by: john 2006-08-30 15:59 |
| #6 Nietzche and Gengis Khan did less harm than Mo. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-30 14:45 |
| #5 "Nietzsche and Genghis Khan"? Yeesh. Bugs inna head, baby. |
| Posted by: mojo 2006-08-30 12:21 |
| #4 Oh and the projected flag of Balochistan has a multipointed star on it and NO half moon. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-30 08:50 |
| #3 An interesting is that the "governement in exile of Balochistan demands all Urdu and Punjabi speaking Muslims to leave Balochistan or else... and adds that non-Muslims can remain. Of course this so called governemnt in exile can be a single guy in a basement but perhaps, perhaps it is a crack in Islam's building. One that we should try to enlarge along similar cracks in Iran or North Africa. The day a Muslim country rejects Islam the whole buildiong will crumble (but we all know how Muslms deal with dissidents and you can count on Jihadists travelling to that country in order to prevent it). |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-08-30 08:23 |
| #2 President General Pervez Musharraf has been singularly unsuccessful at finding Osama bin Laden in his cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border Is Osama in the habit of 'taking the mountain air' outdoors in his Barca-lounger? |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-08-30 00:16 |
| #1 He also upset former premier Benazir Bhutto when he called her husband “a son of a camel wallah”. That must have gone down well over tea |
| Posted by: john 2006-08-30 00:11 |