If you have not received any e-mail from us lately, announcing the posting of new articles on our Web site, there is reason for it: A few weeks ago, our Web site fell victim to a virus attack. The virus destroyed everything we had in our computer, including all Web files on The East-West Inquirer.

Recreating the entire Web site from scratch has been quite a laborious task. However, with some help from our hosting company, we succeeded in doing it. A major disappointment right now is that we have not been able to recreate the file containing the e-mail addresses of valued readers like you. When that file was readily accessible, we had the pleasure of being continually in contact with you. We are anxious to revive that pleasure. For that, we need your help.

Please send us your e-mail address so we can reconstruct our ‘Friends of The East-West Inquirer’ address book. Please send it to editor@eastwestinquirer.com. In doing so, you will also be reassuring us that you appreciate what we do and that there is a core group whose readership we can always count on.

Our goal is to make sure that the contents of our publication reach people like you and, through you, your friends and their friends. If we achieve that goal, we will have the satisfaction of having done something to keep alive issues that concern all of us.

 --Editor and Publisher

March 14, 2004

[Archived on March 30, 2004]

           Our former web-hosting company was acquired by another company and the acquisition resulted in a protracted legal battle. Though the new company promised to continue the hosting service uninterrupted, in early July we received an e-mail from them saying that they no longer had access to our web files. Our web site suddenly went blank. That is, we painfully realized that all the time, energy and money we spent since we started the web publication had been wasted. We became one of the numerous victims of corporate acquisitions which have become part of our culture. Once we know the whole story, we will bring you the true picture of the villain in this drama.

            Right now, we are in the laborious process of recreating all the files that lie scattered in our computers. As we succeed in recreating each file, we will upload it on our site and bring it to you. We hope to be able to ferret out all files with their integrity fairly intact. The process is time-consuming and frustrating. Please bear with us until we complete it.

July 9, 2003

Akhil Hussain, Ahmedabad, India

July 12, 2003

[Archived on August 18, 2003}

*    *    *

New York

Jan.18, 2002

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing this on behalf of millions around the world who want to see your country and India living in peace as friendly neighbors. The speech you delivered on Saturday, January 12, gives us hope that working toward that goal is not a totally futile task.

At the very least, the policy against terrorism that you enunciated in the speech and the follow-up actions you began in its wake have prompted India to pull back from the brink of war, at least temporarily. You can make that pullback permanent by not letting up on your follow-up actions: rounding up all terrorists, no matter under what garb they operate; shutting down their training camps; severing their ties, direct or indirect, to your military; and denying them access to financial means. We are aware that you have a Himalayan task ahead. It is worth your while undertaking it. Peace and prosperity in South Asia depend largely on your successfully completing that task.

With that, you will have overcome a major hurdle in the path toward solving the problem that poisoned the relationship between your country and India over the 50-odd years of their existence. Both countries should realize that the problem will have to be solved one day. One cannot think of a moment more opportune than now to start working toward that solution. Because of its latter-day link to terrorism, it has received the attention of the world now. Don’t let the moment pass by.

The problem, of course, relates to Kashmir. It has often been referred to as the unfinished business of partition. It was unfinished in the sense that Kashmir's future--whether it should accede to India or Pakistan, as did other princely states of the time--was left undecided when the two countries were created in 1947 by partitioning the erstwhile British Raj. None had ever thought that the problem would fester for this long and cause this much miseries to the people of India, especially those living in Indian-ruled Kashmir.

The two wars the two countries fought over it proved to both that a military solution is not even worth considering. And the proxy war your country has been waging against India through terrorist outfits for over a decade now added another dimension to the problem. It got inextricably linked to international terrorism which the civilized world is currently fighting to crush. That is, the Kashmir problem is no longer a bilateral one concerning only India and Pakistan.

We have heard ad nauseam the sentiment about Kashmir you expressed in your speech: "Kashmir runs in our [Pakistanis’] blood." You have heard Indians assert time after time that Kashmir is an integral part of India and that the only dispute is over the part of it that Pakistan has been holding illegally since 1947. Where does it take the two countries? To a path of spilling more innocent blood in the name of Kashmir? Until you give up rhetoric like this, it is impossible to find a solution that all parties can live with. Rhetoric like this will have the same effect as the preachifying of some mullahs in their effort to win supporters for their so-called jihad. As you know, they have been deceiving gullible young men into believing that paradise is guaranteed to them if they die in a jihad. For them, any war against Indian ‘infidels’ is jihad.

That brings us back to another issue you dealt with in your speech: the greatest disservice the mullahs have done to Pakistan in particular and Islam in general. India has its quota of poison-emitting mullahs, too. It took a lot of guts on your part to say that you are determined to rein them in. Without first putting them in their place, you will never be able to "take this country [Pakistan] on the path of progress."

One cannot help thinking that Pakistan’s relationship with India would not have deteriorated to this deplorable level if you had addressed the problem of terrorism much earlier. For a long time, you were in a state of denial on this matter. You knew all the time to what extent the intelligence wing of your military, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was responsible for the growth of terrorist outfits in your country. Because some of the terrorists masqueraded as Kashmiri freedom fighters, you decided to look the other way. You even went about saying that the help your government had been giving them was only in the form of "moral support." You should have known that they used the cause of Kashmir as a cover for their campaign of destruction only to gain the support of your government and reasonable-minded people like you. Their goal has always been destruction of India as it exists today.

Those terrorist groups that are in cahoots with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda also have as their goal the destruction of all infidels in the world. Infidels, in their archaic interpretation of Islam, are not only the five billion non-Muslims in the world, but also all moderate Muslims who don’t toe their line. All my Muslim friends, who are among the finest human beings I have known in my life, are on their infidel list. I am afraid you and your doctor brother living in this country may also be part of that list. What sin can one associate with your brother, who my friends say is an absolute gentleman? He loves Indian curry and Hindi music. You think Osama bin Laden and his ilk can stand anyone who loves infidels’ curry and music?

We are glad to note that you have, at last, come around to recognizing how nefarious their activities are. The question is: Why did you wait this long to do it? More important, did you have to wait until an outside power put pressure on you to do it? The present eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with India could have been avoided if you had read the writings on the wall at the right time.

You may recall the fiasco in which your talks last year with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India ended. The reason was your refusal to recognize cross-border terrorism, hatched in Pakistan and exported to India, as the main problem between the two countries. The relationship between the two, which had never been smooth, strained further since then. The December 13 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament that killed 14 people, including five attackers, brought it to the boil.

India was able to identify the culprits soon after the attack. They were members of two terrorist groups based in your country, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Army of the Pure) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (the Army of Muhammad). India demanded of you that action be taken immediately to shut their activities and that their leaders be brought to justice. Your response was that "the proof is inadequate." Some in your government even went to the extent of spreading the canard that the attack was stage-managed by India to besmirch Pakistan. Please let those juveniles know that they have a lot of growing up to do.

You knew full well that the two groups had already been implicated in numerous other attacks on India. One of them had also been held responsible for the attack in October on the Jammu and Kashmir legislature that killed 40 people. Your response to the December 13 attack gave the impression that you were still not convinced that they were terrorist organizations. You did know at the time that the Bush administration was well on its way to making the formal declaration adding the two outfits to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The declaration came in a matter of days, on December 26.

Hardly had the ink dried on the declaration when you began cracking down on the members of the groups and freezing their bank accounts. You didn’t ask the Bush administration to prove their culpability before doing it. We all know the reason: if you had refused to do what the declaration had expected you to do, Pakistan would have been put on the pariah list of those harboring terrorists. It needs emphasizing that the present American-led war against international terrorism is also directed at those who harbor terrorists.

This is not to say that the U.S. declaration and the action you have so far taken have brought an end to terrorism in the subcontinent. Lashkar-e-Taiba is reportedly continuing its activities under a different name, Jamaat-Al-Dawa. The base of its operation, the report says, has been shifted to Muzafarabad, the capital of the part of Kashmir that is under your control. If you are serious about crushing terrorism, which you have announced to the world you are, you should not allow yourself to be fooled by the change-of-name-and-locale tactic of any group. We will applaud you if you act without waiting for another order from America.

Waiting to do things, which are otherwise admirable, until America puts pressure on you is making you look like one who does not have a mind of his own. It is also embarrassing to the people of Pakistan. Your somersault on the policy with regard to the Taliban rule in Afghanistan is another case in point. The Taliban would not have come to power but for the material and personnel support provided by your country, especially the infamous ISI. And but for that support, they could not have continued in power for six years and succeeded in committing all those atrocities against innocent Afghans. You cannot blame the Afghans if most of them despise Pakistan today.

After the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the Taliban earned the wrath of all civilized people in the world. Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, which was responsible for the Sept. 11 attack, and for a few more before that, was headquartered and nurtured in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Even Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two other countries, apart from Pakistan, that had the stupidity to accord diplomatic recognition to the Taliban, severed their ties to them in a matter of days after the tragedy. You teetered. When the rest of the world shunned the Taliban like the plague, you allowed their ambassador in your country to continue singing their praise, especially the praise of his butcher boss back home, Mullah Muhammad Omar. You stopped him and later derecognized the Taliban only after the United States asked you to do so.

The decisions that you made to join the international coalition against terrorism and distance yourself from the Taliban are all right decisions. We also understand that you made them at considerable risk to your person and position. But by dillydallying until pressure came from elsewhere, you gave rise to a perception that you did not make those decisions of your own volition. You should have known that vacillation by leaders on the most critical issues confronting the world can cause immeasurable harm to humanity. History is replete with evidences to prove it.

It is our hope that the phase of indecisiveness is over. The hope is based on the determination you displayed in you speech to root out terrorism from the soil of Pakistan. We have been watching with admiration the actions you have since taken in pursuance of the promises you made to the world in the speech. Please don't let up. Please don’t let down your well-wishers like me who have reposed great faith in you.

--M.P. Prabhakaran

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