Maura Moynihan | Ilhan Omar: An American agent of Pakistan-CPC Wahhabi lobby?

From April 20-24, 2022, Ilham Omar, US Democratic Congresswoman from Minnesota, made a surprise visit to Pakistan, where she had multiple meetings and photo ops in Islamabad with new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and newly ousted PM Imran Khan, toured Lahore, took a helicopter ride to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), posted a Twitter video selfie peering over the bridge at the Line of Control, and held a press conference in Muzaffarabad, PoK’s capital, saying: “I don’t believe that it (Kashmir) is being talked about to the extent it needs to in the US Congress but also with the administration.”

This instantly became one of the biggest news stories in South Asia, but the US corporate media has remained totally silent. The US embassy in Islamabad posted no photos or press releases on Ms Omar’s provocative actions, statements and high-level meetings, Ms Omar’s office refused to speak to journalists, and US state department spokesman Ned Price said the Congresswoman had gone to Pakistan on a “private trip”.

But after the spokesman of India’s external affairs ministry Arindam Bagchi described Ms Omar’s statements about India as “condemnable”, the story blew up on the social media. Now many people are asking: who exactly funded US Rep. Omar’s “private trip” in which she blatantly attacked India, a vital US ally?  Is her fealty really to the United States, where she immigrated at age nine from war-torn Somalia? Or is she yet another Democrat among the many identified in the superb writings of Prof. Mahadev Nalapat, who states: “Democrats are beholden to the Sino-Wahhabi lobby”. Nalapat told a television channel: “Kashmir is a target for the Sino-Wahhabi network. Who is funding Omar? Numerous blog posts suggest that her trip was funded by the Pakistani government. And this is OK with the White House?”

Apparently so. At a Seattle fundraiser in April 2022, President Joe Biden accused India of “human rights abuses”, but said nothing about the horrific human rights abuses of the Taliban, or the Communist Party of China’s Uyghur genocide, or the naked fascism on display in Shanghai, Beijing and across the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping’s “Zero Covid Policy”. Since coming to office in January 2021, the Biden administration has stripped Communist China of tariffs and sanctions, which 80 per cent of American support, and has done nothing to hold the CPC to account for releasing hell with Covid-19, but consistently attacks India with blacklists and sanctions as well as official statements, totally unbefitting conduct towards an ally and strategic partner.

Ilhan Omar most certainly advances the agenda of the CPC-Wahhabi lobby. During US congressional testimony in 2019, Ms Omar maligned Aarti Tikoo Singh, an Indian journalist who has documented three decades of the jihadist campaign waged against Kashmiri Pandits in their ancestral land. Despite her feminist posturing with the hard-left Democratic “squad”, Ms Omar has said nothing about the reform of Sharia law, which has angered a number of Muslim women intellectuals and bloggers, nor has she ever spoken of the gangrapes and forced sterilisations of Uyghur Muslim women, and the extermination of the Uyghur and Kazakh peoples in CPC’s huge concentration camps.

It is implausible to suggest that Ilhan Omar was the first US politician to fly to Pakistan to meet the new government and have a military escort to the Line of Control to post a Twitter video provoking the Kashmir question, without the knowledge and approval of the US embassy in Islamabad. Since President Biden’s catastrophic retreat from Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan has been deluged with terror attacks, inflation, food and petrol shortages, and stability is fast collapsing. Every week the US consulates in Lahore and Karachi post security alerts for US citizens and officials. But Rep. Omar’s trip to the LoC of PoK doesn’t even get a mention on the US state department’s website?

Ms Omar drew a lot of ire from Pakistani officials and journalists for her glowing posts about discussions with Imran Khan on “combatting Islamophobia” while Mr Khan was publicly blaming the US government for his ouster. On April 21, 2022, Dawn reported: “There have been several explanations about her trip, even though she has in the past never shown any interest in Pakistan… Omar’s meeting with Mr Khan had been directly scheduled by her office through a US-based Pakistani businessman, a PTI leader said.”

The US media is also infiltrated by the CPC-Wahhabi network, pushing false narratives about India, while covering up the crimes of Chinese Communists. The American media is largely not reporting on Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, all CCP Belt & Road Initiative partners, now sinking into debt and economic collapse, or that India faces armed conflict on its eastern front from Chinese-occupied Tibet, and on its western front from Afghanistan’s Taliban government, newly armed with $85 billion in US weaponry. Last week PLA generals and Chinese Air Force jets were filmed at the Bagram airbase, 400 km from China’s Xinjiang province.

India is awakening to the dangers of the Sino-Wahhabi lobby. American friends of India are alarmed by the conduct of the Democrats who insult India while condoning the crimes of the Chinese Reds and the jihadists. Now they are coming for Kashmir. Ilhan Omar, who is a darling of the liberal media and late-night talk shows, idolised by “Woke” progressives, has made it clear which side she is on.