Recently I wrote a piece for Pajamas Media looking at the looming disaster approaching Pakistan. Liberals, anti-Americans, and anti-Zionists around the world never stopped griping about the iron hand of former President General Pervez Musharraf during his reign, but his fist seemed to keep the radicals at bay, as does the grip of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Musharraf infuriated the Muslim world when he spoke to the World Jewish Congress and suggested he looked forward to good relations with Israel. It is amazing he is still alive. Although some feel Musharraf had a hand in the death of Benazir Bhutto, her friendship towards Jewish communities around the world must have contributed to her death knell.
Now we have an interesting situation in Pakistan, but I would like to look at a crisis in Great Britain that even made the network news in the United States. In mid-April Assistant Police Commissioner Bob Quick, at that time involved in anti-terrorist operations at Scotland Yard, was forced to resign after photographers captured the names of both intelligence agents and terror suspects on a sheaf of papers in his hand. The Evening Standard, usually a staunch supporter of anti-terror operations, published the images in what I call the “Seymour Hersh syndrome” (he who revealeth information that would have been treason during the Second World War); despite pleas from the intelligence services, the media obsessed on the documents and insisted on making a song and dance about them. They detailed what amounted to a massive operation to stop a large contingent of terrorists.
Because of the release of the images a massive anti-terror swoop had to get under way immediately. Twelve young men, eleven of whom are Pakistani nationals, were arrested in Manchester, Liverpool, and Clitheroe under suspicion of extremist activities. Just as the April school holidays were about to be unleashed on parents, the nation was told the police had foiled a massive string of attacks — on shopping malls and other major popular British locales — but that the leaked photographs had meant the operation had not been as comprehensive as MI5 had envisaged. In plain-speak, the op had to go ahead before anyone was ready.
On April 22 it was announced that all of the suspects had been released because the Crown Prosecution Service did not have enough evidence to charge any of the twelve men and the courts would not grant an extension for detention without charge. They are to be deported. The Muslim Council of Britain has condemned this move along with the panic generated by the prospect of a “Muslim terror plot”; Inayat Bunglawala, a ubiquitous Anglo-Muslim spokesman who must be on television, radio, and in the newspapers more often than I have had hot dinners, has called the police operation “dishonorable.”
The Pakistani High Commission in London is pleading for the young men to be allowed to stay in the United Kingdom as they are desperately poor and need to complete their studies. It is also seeking an apology for the arrests.
What does this have to do with the Taliban taking over Pakistan as I write this piece?
The thousands of young men who migrate from Pakistan to the United Kingdom each year to study and who eventually settle into arranged marriages are, according to the Muslim writer Yasmin Alibhai Brown, fodder for terror because the tradition of arranged marriages generates a legion of frustrated boys who “need an outlet.” Yasmin is no friend to Israel but to her credit she does not engage in the knee-jerk tactic used by other European and British journalists who blame Israel for the actions of every angry young Muslim. Her theory is an interesting one: miserably unhappy boys can easily be turned into terrorists when their day is spent listening to radical imams and attending incendiary lectures in British madrassas. They return home to a loveless marriage and cannot wait to return to the mosque for companionship and inspiring sermons.
During the police raids, covered with considerable depth on British television and in the print media, emphasis was placed on the curious process by which young Pakistanis are allowed entry to the United Kingdom. There are agencies inside Pakistan given the sole brief of providing young men with visas and papers that afford them a year of study in a British school of English. Some young people apply through the traditional channels for admission to British universities but still need permission to enter and study. The media stressed the “supermarket” nature of this process that many feel allowed potential terrorists to gain entry to Britain.
In turn, Pakistan’s leaders answered these accusations by asserting they were trying their damndest to prevent terrorists from emigrating. Now that the raids have resulted in the release of all twelve but the proposed deportation of eleven, the aforementioned Pakistani embassy in London and Anglo-Muslim community organizations are enraged. The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK)’s bloggers assert that “Sky Jews” (Sky News channel) influenced the public’s thinking on the raids.
Meanwhile the Taliban march towards the capital of Pakistan and politicians across the globe raise alarm bells. As Douglas Murray and I pointed out two years ago at an event in London, though we supported the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, Pakistan should have been the focus of the United States and its allies. Its madrassas have been producing incendiary speeches by radical imams and though Saudi Arabia is equally to blame for similar fodder, Pakistan poses an existential threat to neighboring India. It is an ideal stepping-off point for Afghanistan’s reversion to a Taliban dictatorship and expansionist intentions. The intelligence services and police have been silent about the eleven young men arrested and now being deported, but one does not have to be a rocket scientist to deduce that there was good reason to send them away from the British homeland. Pakistan is the Wild West now that Musharraf is gone and Britain must be vigilant about the arrival of thousands of young “students.”
As the situation in Pakistan worsens my inclination would be for the British government to place severe restrictions on entry of Pakistani nationals and for the “easy visa” study program to be halted without delay.
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