I come from a tribal family from Pakistan and was brought up to respect the religious wishes and inclinations of all people. This meant that my mother and sisters never wore the veil, and even when my mother visited the tribal areas for the first time in 1942 and wanted to wear a veil, my father told her she should not wear it if she did not wish to. My uncles and aunts were initially shocked by my mother turning up in a sari and no veil, to which my father replied that religion was a personal matter.

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The Current Discussion: CIA Director Michael Hayden says al-Qaeda is more or less defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should the Bush administration take credit? How much?

When wars are fought with an adversary who is largely invisible, how can one make the assertion that the war is over? CIA Director Michael Hayden says the war against al-Qaeda is over –“more or less.” Now if ever there was a wishy-washy statement, that is one. The question now is, is it “more” or is it “less”? The entire gambit of media output coming from the Bush Administration on Iraq, Afghanistan and indeed the al-Qaeda is so distorted and mixed up. At the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the ensuing months, as the management of Iraq literally fell apart under the worst public management ever done by Mr. Paul Bremen and others, an insurgency against the U.S. flared up. This was, and is, a domestic movement, nothing to do with al-Qaeda or others. While some attacks have been attributed to and even claimed by the al-Qaeda of Iraq, this was largely a splinter element. Thus, to defeat the al-Qaeda is not consequential in Iraq. What is consequential is the larger issue of managing the country and bringing about order in a country where insensitivity to the aspirations of the people has led to the worsening of the situation.

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