Refusing responsibility —Ejaz Haider

How should one open the story of the bombing of the mausoleum of 17th century poet Abdul Rahman, affectionately and reverentially called Rahman Baba by the Pashtun. Let me try.

“Islamist warriors won a great victory Thursday in the ongoing global jihad against the satanic western powers, especially the United States, when they successfully bombed and damaged the mausoleum of Rahman Baba, a Pashto sufi poet.”

I can see some readers shaking their heads in disapproval. How could the story begin thus; how could such an outrage be termed jihad?

Okay, how about this.

“Foreign intelligence agencies, inimical to Pakistan and Islam, hatched a conspiracy to get the mausoleum of Rahman Baba bombed as part of their nefarious agenda to discredit the Islamist warrior movement that is now coursing through the veins of the ummah.”

No? Not specific enough? Well, I didn’t give the full story. There is the sinister hand here of CIA, Mossad, and, yes, Indian R&AW. The second paragraph of the story runs thus:

“The bombing of Rahman Baba’s mausoleum is part of the campaign by these intelligence agencies which has earlier seen them perpetrate such acts as bombing girls’ schools, blasting CD and barber shops, threatening cinema houses and killing the Shia etc.”

Refusing responsibility —Ejaz Haider