Civil War is being Incited in Pakistan - a new murderous phase begins

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FACTBOX: Militants groups in Pakistan's Punjab province

Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:26am EDT
By Zeeshan Haider
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE59E0XI20091015

(Reuters) - Gunmen launched three coordinated attacks on Pakistani police centers in the city of Lahore in Punjab province on Thursday and at least five people were killed, police and city officials said.

Pakistan has seen a number of attacks in recent times linked to various Punjab-based Islamic militant groups.

Here are some facts about some of the major militant groups in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest province.

LASHKAR-E-JHANGVI

Sunni Muslim Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) is one of the most notorious al Qaeda-linked groups with roots in Punjab. It also has forged strong ties with the Pakistani Taliban groups operating in the tribal areas on the Afghan border.

A senior Lej leader, Qari Muhammad Zafar, appeared before a group of journalists in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan tribal region last week along with new Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud.

Zafar carries a $5 million reward from the United States on his head for suspected involvement in a bomb attack on the U.S. consulate in the southern city of Karachi.

LeJ emerged as a sectarian group in the 1990s targeting minority Shi'ite Muslims but later graduated to more audacious attacks, such as the truck bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel last year in which 55 people were killed as well as an assault on a Sri Lankan cricket team in which seven Pakistanis were killed. Six members of the team and a British coach were wounded.

Last Sunday Pakistani commandos stormed an office building in Rawalpindi and rescued 39 people held hostage by Islamist militants after a brazen attack on the headquarters of the army. More than 20 people were killed in related fighting.

The military identified the attack ringleader as Aqeel, alias Dr. Usman, a militant who survived and was arrested. Security officials said he was believed to be an LeJ member.

LeJ was outlawed in Pakistan in August 2001. Members are also involved in violence in Afghanistan.

A security official told Reuters about two dozen militants linked to LeJ and two other militant groups, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and a splinter faction of Jaish-e-Mohammad, were suspected to be behind several Punjab attacks in recent months.

SIPAH-E-SAHABA PAKISTAN (SSP)

SSP is a pro-Taliban anti-Shi'ite militant group based in central Punjab. The group was banned in 2002 but officials say its members were suspected of involvement in attacks in the province in recent months, including the burning to death of seven Christians on suspicions of blasphemy.

JAISH-E-MOHAMMAD

Jaish-e-Mohammad, or army of the Prophet Mohammad, is a major militant group with links to the Taliban and al Qaeda. It was banned in Pakistan in 2002 after it was blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.

The group was founded by firebrand cleric Maulana Azhar Masood shortly after his release from an Indian jail in exchange for 155 passengers of an Indian airliner hijacked to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in December 1999.

The group focused its fighting on the Indian part of divided Kashmir but later forged links with al Qaeda and the Taliban and was suspected of involvement in several high profile attacks including the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and an assassination attempt on former president Pervez Musharraf.

Rashid Rauf, a British militant suspected of being ringleader of a 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, was also a Jaish member. Masood was arrested by Pakistani authorities shortly after the group was banned but security officials say he has disappeared since 2005.

Jaish fighters are also involved in violence in northwest Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan.

LASHKAR-E-TAIBA

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or the army of Taiba. Taiba is the old name of the Muslim holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia. The group was founded in 1990 to fight Indian rule in Kashmir. It was blamed for the coordinated attacks on the Indian financial capital, Mumbai, in November last year that killed 166 people. LeT was also blamed for the late 2001 Indian parliament attack and was banned in Pakistan in 2002.

Seven LeT-linked militants are being tried in Pakistan for suspected involvement in the Mumbai assault but India is insisting Pakistan prosecute its founder, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who India says was the attack mastermind.

A U.N. Security Council committee last year added Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity headed by Saeed, to a list of people and organizations linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

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Beware Of The New Game In Swat, Tribal Belt
 http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/article_detail.php?id=643

The Americans and the pro-Indian Afghan security officials, in addition to the Indian intelligence outposts on Afghan soil, all have exploited Pakistani weaknesses in the area and pushed their own 'fake Islamists' inside to confuse the entire situation. Now when there is peace in Swat, this TTP comes into action to discredit the implementation of Shariah in the region.

By AHMED QURAISHI
Sunday, 5 April 2009.
WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
”Everyone knows that a public flogging like this one will create a stir. The fake Taliban who also call themselves 'Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan' [TTP] did this intentionally. And the Pakistani media played along, repeating the footage endlessly for ratings.

The problem is that this appears to be a deliberate attempt by these suspicious 'Pakistani Taliban' to derail the peace deal that has robbed them from the excuse to fight their own country and people by claiming that Shariah is not implemented.

This attempt is another indicator in the piles of circumstantial evidence collected over the past two years that proves that while most of the foot soldiers of the 'Pakistani Taliban' are our own misguided young Pakistanis, the real handlers behind this shadowy group are people with links to the border area with Afghanistan where, according to the latest statement by Interior Adviser Rehman Malik, some 4000 foreign fighters are present.

These foreign fighters are not the remnants of the jihad of the 1980s. These are professionally trained killers, experts in recruiting, organizing and unleashing 'death squads', and psyop experts. During President Musharraf's time, while he thought the Americans were his allies, CIA and Karzai's NDS and the Brits penetrated the Pakistani territory and established an elaborate network of their own operatives and spies on the ground. Tens of U.S. operatives fluent in Pashto and Uzbek and Chechen and other languages were released in the area and are still there. No one in Pakistan knows what they are exactly doing. When you see the strength of a fake Taliban like Baitullah Mehsud who has 25,000 fighters under his command, you wonder about his never-ending supply of money and modern weapons. He has never been chased by the Americans. CIA has started bombing some places under his command to convince the Pakistani military that the U.S. is not double crossing Pakistan.

The Americans and the pro-Indian Afghan security officials, in addition to the Indian intelligence outposts on Afghan soil, all have exploited Pakistani weaknesses in the area and pushed their own 'fake Islamists' inside to confuse the entire situation. Now when there is peace in Swat, this TTP comes into action to discredit the implementation of Shariah in the region. This Shariah has nothing to do with TTP. The deal was brokered and struck with genuine local known religious figures. The TTP is basically based in the tribal belt and is linked to Mehsud. Also remember that the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan, who are the real Taliban, have ceased their links with this TTP long time back. In fact many Afghan Taliban have directly and indirectly conveyed to Pakistani authorities that they are busy in Afghanistan and have nothing to do with TTP which pays lip service to fighting the Americans and focuses on killing Pakistani citizens.

News editors in our TV channels need to understand this. They should not have given these criminals who are hiding behind the name of 'Taliban' the satisfaction of giving a successful media blow to the peace deal. It is also interesting to note that everything the TTP and Baitullah Mehsud does - from attacking Lahore on the day Obama was to release his new Afghan policy, to trying to sabotage the Swat deal which Washington opposes, not to mention attacking Pakistani targets and kidnapping the Chinese- all of this generally ends up supporting the American designs in Pakistan.

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Militant attacks kill at least 36 in Pakistan

Story Highlights:

String of attacks targeted law enforcement authorities

Police station attacked in northwest Pakistan, coordinated attacks in Lahore

On Saturday militants attacked army headquarters in Rawalpindi

By Reza Sayah


A bomb disposal squad member removes a suicide jacket from a body at the FIA in Lahore on Thursday.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Militants launched a string of bold strikes against Pakistani law enforcement Thursday, leaving at least 36 police officers and civilians dead, authorities said.

At least 11 militants also died in the fighting, while others were missing.

Three nearly simultaneous assaults were carried out mid-morning in the eastern city of Lahore, said police spokesman Rai Nazar Hayat.

Militants stormed Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, along with two police training centers. The attackers gained entrance to each facility, setting set off explosives and taking hostages in some cases. At least 25 people died in the Lahore attacks. Watch a rundown of the day's attacks »

In northwestern Pakistan, a suicide car bomber hit a police station in the Kohat district, killing at least 11 people -- eight civilians and three police, said Kohat Police Chief Dilawr Bangish. A dozen people were injured in the attack.

The offices of several senior police and government officials are next to the police station that was targeted. Several military installations also are nearby.

Militant attacks have become increasingly bold in recent days.

At least 41 people were killed and 45 wounded in a blast Monday at a security forces checkpoint in northwest Pakistan. The explosion occurred in the Shangla district in the volatile Swat Valley.

On Saturday, militants attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, killing 11 military personnel and three civilians, according to the Pakistani military. Nine militants died in the attack. A total of 39 hostages were freed Sunday morning after being held by five militants at the army headquarters.

Journalist Nazar Ul Islam contributed to this report.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/15/pakistan.blast/index.html

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Bomb Explodes Outside School in Pakistani City of Peshawar

Thursday, October 15, 2009 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,566684,00.html

A bomb exploded in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Thursday, reportedly killing one child and injuring as many as five others.

Police said a car bomb exploded near a school in the Gulshan Rehman colony on the outskirts of Peshawar. The explosion occurred after school hours.

The area of Peshawar also serves a housing complex for local government officials.

Local police official Attique Shah told Fox News that the explosion was heard in the busy Kohat road area and medical personnel rushed to the scene. The injured were being transported to the hospital.

The blast capped a particularly bloody day in Pakistan. Gunmen attacked law enforcement facilities across the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday, while a car bomb devastated a northwestern police station, killing a total of 38 people in an escalating wave of terror.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Friday, October 16, 2009
13:45 Mecca time, 10:45 GMT
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009101673557638616.html
  
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Deadly blast hits Pakistani city  
 

The blast hit a building where suspects were being held for questioning over recent attacks [AFP]
  

 
At least 11 people have died in an explosion near a police office in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, police said.

The bomb was detonated at an investigation bureau in an army garrison of the city on Friday, Asghar Hussain, a police official, said.

The strike, which police suspected to be the work of a suicide car bomber, is the latest in a series of attacks that have killed more than 150 people in Pakistan over the past two weeks.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan said: "Peshawar's Inspector General said that police were following the explosive-laden vehicle when it exploded its cargo.

"It looks like this would have been a huge amount of explosives. There are fears that people are trapped under rubble," he said.

"An attack had happened here already once before ... We don't feel secure here, we don't know when it will happen again," Allah Ditta, a local resident, said.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and defence analyst, said: "Different terrorist groups are now trying to reassert themselves, because after the [Pakistani army] Swat operation and the death of Baitullah Mehsud, [the leader of the Pakistani Taliban] the impression was that they were in disarray.

"Now they want to demonstrate they are capable of taking action in any part of the country.

"They want to deter [security forces] from taking action in South Waziristan where action is expected against the Taliban."

Army offensive

Meanwhile, Pakistani forces attacked the Taliban in their South Waziristan stronghold on Friday with aircraft and artillery.


In depth :

  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan  
  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan

 
A day earlier, 40 people died in a string of attacks on security buildings in Lahore and bombings in the northwest.

The government says a ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan is imminent and the army has been stepping up its air and artillery attacks in recent days to soften up their defences.

Also on Friday, police said dozens of people had been picked up in overnight raids in slum areas of Lahore and neighbourhoods populated by Afghans.

"There has been considerable progress in the ongoing investigation. We have arrested dozens of suspects during overnight raids in Lahore," Haider Ashraf, senior police official at the  Manawan police academy, told the AFP news agency.

"These people are being interrogated. We are also trying to identify the terrorists who were killed yesterday," he said.

The US hopes that a Pakistani army operation in South Waziristan will help break much of the militant network that threatens both Pakistan and American troops across the border in Afghanistan. But the Pakistani army has given no time frame for the expected offensive.

It has reportedly already sent two divisions totalling 28,000 men and blockaded the area. Analysts say that with winter approaching, any push would likely have to begin soon to be successful.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies  
 
  
 
 
 

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New Taliban Leader Tells Pakistan Military: 'Reject U.S and Attacks Will Stop'


Wednesday, October 14, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,565985,00.html


Heavy and light weapons belonging to former Taliban militants are displayed.

The new leader of the Taliban in Pakistan has issued a stark option to the country's military: stop following American orders and we will stop our attacks, according to Sky News.

In the interview obtained by Sky News, Hakimullah Mehsud also said he will send his soldiers to the Indian border to fight there, once an Islamic state is created in Pakistan.

His words will be seen as chilling by Pakistan's neighbor.

They come as the U.S. Treasury declared the Taliban was thriving financially, while terror group Al Qaeda was suffering a cash crisis.

David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said the West had successfully cut off Al Qaeda's funds, according to Sky News.

This has manifested itself in the organization losing influence and weakened it substantially, he said.

Click here for more from Sky News.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Taliban-Leader-In-Pakistan-Hakimullah-Mehsud-Warns-Army-Stop-Following-US-Orders/Article/200910215405470?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15405470_Taliban_Leader_In_Pakistan_Hakimullah_Mehsud_Warns_Army%3A_Stop_Following_US_Orders

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South Asia
Oct 17, 2009 
 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ17Df01.html
 
 
Pakistan aid bill has explosive impact


By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - After 10 days of raging controversy centered in Islamabad, United States President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a major aid bill for Pakistan authorizing some US$7.5 billion in non-military assistance for the increasingly beleaguered country over the next five years.

The bill, which will more than triple the current level of non-military aid the US provides to Pakistan, had been designed as a dramatic show of support for the country whose full cooperation is seen as crucial to US hopes of defeating the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and destroying al-Qaeda, whose leadership is believed to be based in Pakistan's rugged frontier region.

"This law is the tangible manifestation of broad support for Pakistan in the US, as evidenced by its bipartisan, bicameral, unanimous passage in congress," the White House said, adding that Washington hoped to establish a "strategic partnership" with Islamabad "grounded in support for Pakistan's democratic institutions and the Pakistani people".

But, contrary to its intent, congressional passage of the bill on October 5 unleashed a major political crisis in Pakistan itself where the opposition and the country's powerful army rejected several of the conditions written into the bill as violating the country's sovereignty and dignity, whipping up already widespread anti-US sentiment in the process.

In an extraordinary "joint explanatory statement" aimed at appeasing that sentiment and annexed to the bill before Obama signed it, the new law's two main Democratic sponsors, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry and his House counterpart, Howard Berman, insisted that "the legislation does not seek in any way to compromise Pakistan's sovereignty, impinge on Pakistan's national security interests, or micro-manage any aspect of Pakistani military or civilian operations".

"This whole thing backfired badly," rued one administration official, who asked not to be identified. "It's left a very sour taste in everyone's mouth, here and in Pakistan."

The bill's signing came on the same day that the Pakistani Taliban mounted the latest in a 10-day series of devastating multiple attacks on key army and police facilities that highlighted Washington's longstanding concerns about the threat posed by the militants, who are regarded as closer to al-Qaeda than their counterparts in Afghanistan.

More than 30 people, including at least 19 police officers, were reportedly killed in several attacks, including one on an elite counter-terrorism training facility, in Lahore, the capital of Punjab. Those attacks came five days after Taliban guerrillas breached the security perimeter of the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi. Twenty-three people were killed in that raid, during which the assailants seized dozens of hostages.

The attacks, which were initially billed as retaliation for the August 5 killing, apparently by a US Predator drone strike, of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, are increasingly seen as designed to ward off a long-promised army ground offensive in the Taliban's and al-Qaeda's main stronghold of South Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The military cordoned off the area two months ago, and its air force has recently carried out bombing runs against targets there. The delay in launching the offensive, however, has frustrated officials here who regard it as a major test of the army's willingness to provide the kind of counter-terrorist cooperation Washington has long sought.

"If South Waziristan is indeed next, that would be a significant development," said Bruce Riedel, a South Asia specialist and former senior Central Intelligence Agency analyst, at the Brookings Institution earlier this month. Riedel chaired the White House's review on Afghanistan and Pakistan after Obama came to office.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US has provided Pakistan some $11 billion in aid, only a fraction of which, however, was devoted to non-military assistance, such as development assistance and support for political and economic reforms.

The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan was designed in major part to better balance military and non-military aid, particularly in the wake of Islamabad's return to civilian rule in early 2008, by offering significantly greater support for democratic institutions and civil society. Washington continues to provide about one billion dollars a year to the army.

While the senate version of the bill set a number of general conditions for disbursement of the aid, including a requirement that Pakistan is making "tangible progress in governance", such as gaining civilian control over the military and the intelligence agencies, the house version was both more specific and more demanding.

Under its terms, Pakistan could receive military aid only if the secretary of state certified that the civilian government exercised "effective civilian control over the military" and "demonstrated a sustained commitment" by "ceasing support" to terrorist groups and "dismantling terrorist bases".

This last reference focused on Quetta - where the Afghan Taliban leadership is believed to be based - and in Muridke - where a number of anti-Indian groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out last year's attack in Mumbai, are believed to run operations. These provisions, which could be waived by the president if it served the national interest, were incorporated into the final bill.

They nonetheless were seized on by the military high command in Pakistan which, in a formal communique directed at President Asif Ali Zardari, charged that the bill violated Pakistani sovereignty, an accusation echoed in parliament by the opposition leader, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, leaders of other parties, and the media.

Taken by surprise, Zardari, who had initially celebrated the final bill's passage as a major achievement of his administration, dispatched his foreign minister to Washington, apparently to try to work out a face-saving solution which came in the form of the two-page "joint explanatory statement" issued by Kerry and Berman.

"Any interpretation of this act which suggests that the United States does not fully recognize and respect the sovereignty of Pakistan would be directly contrary to congressional intent," asserted the statement.

In an editorial published on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal laid blame for the house version primarily on the 152-member congressional caucus on India and Indian Americans, which includes a number of influential Democratic and Republican lawmakers, for insisting on the offending language.

At the same time, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius complained that the administration, like Zardari, had been taken by surprise by the explosive impact of the bill.

"Richard Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, should have seen this one coming," he wrote, noting also that the Pakistani army had also manipulated the crisis to its advantage.

"The only benefit I can see here is a perverse one," he noted. "It may actually be easier for the Pakistani military to battle the Taliban and al-Qaeda if it's seen by the public as standing up defiantly to American pressure."

Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

(Inter Press Service) 
 
 

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ANALYSIS: Taliban bring guerrilla war to Pakistan's urban centers


South Asia News
By Nadeem Sarwar Oct 15, 2009, 14:36 GMT
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1507316.php/ANALYSIS-Taliban-bring-guerrilla-war-to-Pakistan-s-urban-centers


Islamabad - Pakistan's fight against terrorism is no longer limited to the remote mountainous districts along the Afghan border. Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have brought it to the major cities.

Thursday's bloody clashes and bombings show that the conflict will be prolonged and the sole nuclear-armed Muslim country is gradually heading toward an Iraq- and Afghanistan-like situation.

Wearing a suicide vest, a teenager assailant breached the security cordon at the headquarters of civilian Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) at around 09.30 local time in the eastern city of Lahore.

With an assault rifle, he fired indiscriminately at the people inside before being shot dead. When the security personnel cleared the seven-story FIA building, they found the bodies of four policemen and two civilian employees of the agency lying in blood pools.

Minutes later more groups of gunmen raided two police-training schools in the Manawan and Badian Road areas a few kilometres from Indian border.

Several dozen troops supported by snipers aboard three helicopters fought to bring the hours-long standoff to an end, killing six attackers. Three more terrorists blew themselves up when surrounded.

The total death toll stood at 26 - 10 security personnel, the same number of attackers and six civilians - by the end of the day.

For almost four hours Lahore's 10 million population found itself under siege at the hands of a bunch of skilled and determined terrorists.

As news of the attacks on the country's cultural capital went on air, the city's streets cleared as state offices were shut down and traffic disappeared from the roads.

'There was complete chaos in the city. People on their way to offices and business were receiving advice through phone calls and SMS to go to the safe places, while parents rushed to schools to get children back home,' said local journalist Younis Bath.

'Everyone feared that the next suicide bombing or gun attack might occur in his neighbourhood,' he added.

Hundreds of kilometers away in North Western Province the insurgents struck in two cities - the provincial capital Peshawar, and Kohat located 60 kilometers to the south.

Two bombings respectively at a residential area and a police station killed 12 people and injured two dozen more.

The deadly series had started with a suicide attack on the office of the UN World Food Program in Islamabad, and included a hostage drama at the military headquarters in the adjacent garrison city of Rawalpindi that left 24 people dead.

'They have brought the fight to the busy streets of our major cities, at our doorsteps, near the shopping centres and schools,' said analyst and columnist Haroon Rashid. 'Now we have only one choice - that is to go against them.'

The carnage in the major cities may well spur the military to take a tougher line against the mujahidin that it started to foster in the 1980s during Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1990s these holy-warriors - a mix of Pashtuns from Afghan-Pakistan border areas and young men mainly from Pakistani Punjab province - brought Afghanistan under a Taliban regime.

They also waged separately an armed struggle against Pakistan's arch-rival India in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, over which the two South Asian neighbours lay claim.

Observers say the biggest mistake was perhaps made by former military dictator Pervez Musharraf, who - although he joined international alliance against terrorism - allowed fleeing Taliban to make sanctuaries in tribal regions following the US invasion in Afghanistan in 2001.

The flawed policy blew back and a series of suicide bombings hit the country, especially by suicide squads and fighters of Tehrik-e- Taliban Pakistan, a loose alliance of terrorist outfits led from South Waziristan.

With the support of the United States, new President Asif Ali Zardari and army chief Ishfaq Parvez Kayani planned to take the fight against terrorism to the militants' stronghold of South Waziristan.

However, the militants have already brought the war to the country's heartland.

However bold the recent attacks might be, the militants have little chance of taking over Pakistan, which has the world's sixth- biggest army in terms of numbers.

They can, however, destabilize the country by creating fear and panic, and by further pulling down the country's ailing economy which is suffering from a flight of foreign capital.

Authorities still remain optimistic that they can handle the threat. Zardari said the bloodshed would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists.

'The enemy has started a guerrilla war,' Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. 'These attacks are a moment of reflection for us - but you will soon see these Taliban, these hired guns, fleeing.'

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Major attacks in Pakistan so far in October

The Associated Press
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/10/15/major-attacks-in-pakistan-so-far-in-october/
Oct 15, 2009 08:10 EST

A look at the major attacks in Pakistan in the past two weeks:

_ Oct. 15, 2009: Teams of gunmen attack three security facilities in the eastern city of Lahore, leaving at 27 people dead including several militants, while a suicide car bombing at a police station kills 11 people in northwestern Kohat district and another bomb kills a 6-year-old boy in Peshawar in the northwest.

_ Oct. 12, 2009: A suicide car bomb explodes near an army vehicle in a market in the northwestern Shangla district, killing 41, including six security officers.

_ Oct. 10, 2009: A 22-hour long raid and standoff at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi leaves nine militants and 14 others dead.

_ Oct. 9, 2009: A suicide car bomb in the northwestern city of Peshawar kills 53 people.

_ Oct. 5, 2009: A bomber dressed as a security official kills five staffers at the U.N. food agency's headquarters in the capital, Islamabad.

Source: AP News

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October 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/world/asia/16pstan.html?_r=2&hp

Pakistan Attacks Show Tightening of Militant Links

By JANE PERLEZ


Three coordinated militant attacks took place in Lahore on Thursday morning, including one at the police training center in Manawan, a suburb. Militants, dressed in police uniforms, stormed the training center and detonated suicide bombs. Police officers continued to watch over the center after the attack.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A wave of attacks against top security installations over the last several days demonstrated that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and militant groups once nurtured by the government are tightening an alliance aimed at bringing down the Pakistani state, government officials and analysts said.

More than 30 people were killed Thursday in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, as three teams of militants assaulted two police training centers and a federal investigations building. The dead included 19 police officers and at least 11 militants, police officials said.

Nine others were killed in two attacks at a police station in Kohat, in the northwest, and a residential complex in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province.

The assaults in Lahore, coming after a 20-hour siege at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend, showed the deepening reach of the militant network, as well as its rising sophistication and inside knowledge of the security forces, officials and analysts said.

The umbrella group for the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attacks in Lahore, the independent television news channel Geo reported on its Web site.

But the style of the attacks also revealed the closer ties between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and what are known as jihadi groups, which operate out of southern Punjab, the country’s largest province, analysts said. The cooperation has made the militant threat to Pakistan more potent and insidious than ever, they said.

The government has tolerated the Punjabi groups, including Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, for years, and many Pakistanis consider them allies in just causes, including fighting India, the United States and Shiite Muslims. But they have become entwined with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and have increasingly turned on the state.

The alliance has now stepped up attacks as the military prepares an assault on the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, where senior members of the Punjabi groups also find sanctuary and support.

“These are all Punjabi groups with a link to South Waziristan,” Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister, said, explaining the recent attacks.

In a rare acknowledgment of the lethal combination of forces, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that a “syndicate” of militant groups wanted to see “Pakistan as a failed state.”

“The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are operating jointly in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik told journalists, pledging a more effective counterstrategy.

In Washington, senior intelligence officials said the multiple coordinated attacks were a characteristic of operations influenced by Al Qaeda. But the officials said they were still sifting through intelligence reports to determine whether the attacks indeed marked an attempt by Al Qaeda to assert more influence over the Pakistani Taliban’s operations.

They said the assaults also might have been orchestrated by the Taliban to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader, and send a stark message that the insurgents could still carry out daring attacks without him.

The fresh violence highlights the expanding challenges as the Obama administration tries to bolster Pakistan’s civilian government and encourage the military to press its campaign against the Taliban.

On Thursday, President Obama signed a civilian aid package for Pakistan of $7.5 billion over five years. The package has prompted friction over conditions for the aid — like greater civilian oversight of the military and demands that Pakistan drop support for militant groups — which army officers and politicians considered infringements on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The White House issued a statement on Thursday noting the shared interests of the countries. However, in a sign of scant sympathy for the unappreciative reaction to the money, there was no signing ceremony.

The rise in more penetrating terrorist attacks may now add its own pressure on the Pakistani government to crack down on the Punjabi militants. It is time for the government to come out in public and explain the nature of the enemy, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of North-West Frontier Province.

“The national narrative in support of jihad has confused the Pakistani mind,” Mr. Aziz said. “All along we’ve been saying these people are trying to fight a war of Islam, but there is a need for transforming the national narrative.”

The jihadi groups were formally banned by the former president, Pervez Musharraf, after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Pakistan joined the United States in the campaign against terrorism.

But the groups have entrenched domestic and political constituencies, as well as shadowy ties to former military officials and their families, analysts said. Even since the ban, they have been allowed to operate in Punjab, often in the open.

Punjab is the major recruiting center for the Pakistani Army and it hosts more army divisions than any other province. Yet “these groups proliferate and operate with impunity, literally under the nose of Pakistan’s army,” said Christine Fair, assistant professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

A large congregation of jihadi groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, met six months ago in Rawalpindi, the city where the army headquarters was attacked last Saturday, said Mr. Sherpao, the former interior minister.

The nature of the Lahore attacks drove home the point that the “war has come to Punjab,” and that the government can no longer hide the alliance between the Taliban in South Waziristan and the forces in Southern Punjab, said Zaffar Abbas, a prominent journalist at the English-language newspaper Dawn.

Until the people are told the real situation, the government will never win the support of the people “to fight this bloody war,” Mr. Abbas said.

In fact, many Pakistanis do not see the jihadi groups as the enemy, said Farrukh Saleem, the executive director for the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “They feel America is in the region and the Pakistani Army is fighting for an American army and the jihadis have a right to retaliate,” he said.

The senior personnel in the security forces seem to understand the gravity of the militants’ strength and the durability of their network, Mr. Saleem said. But they cannot bring themselves to say publicly that those whom they created are coming back to bite them, he said.

The ringleader of the assault on the army headquarters on Saturday, identified as Muhammad Aqeel, was a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, according to the military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. Mr. Aqeel, who was captured alive, is also a former soldier in the Army Medical Corps, a background that appeared to have helped in planning the attack.

Two of the facilities attacked in and near Lahore on Thursday — the six-story building of the federal investigations agency, and a police training unit in the suburb of Manawan — were hit by militants in deadly assaults in 2008 and earlier this year.

The coordination of the attacks by three teams between 9 and 10 a.m. startled police officials as they scrambled to send commandos to each of the sites.

The raid on the headquarters of the Punjab elite police training school was seen as particularly insulting because its graduates, trained in counterterrorism techniques, are considered the pride of the province.

Five militants scaled a wall of the elite training school, where more than 800 recruits had just started classes, said Maj. Gen. Shafqat Ahmed, the officer commanding security forces in Lahore.

Six police officers were killed and seven were wounded in a gun battle that lasted more than two hours, police officials said. All five of the attackers were killed, they said.

Reporting was contributed by Salman Masood from Islamabad, Waqar Gilani from Lahore, Pakistan, Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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Pakistan faces new wave of Taliban attacks

Story Highlights:

Bomb detonates in border city of Peshawar, killing at least 13 people

Blast comes a day after a series of deadly militant attacks rocked Pakistan

At least 30 people died in wave of violence on Thursday


An armoured personnel carrier patrols along a street in Lahore, the scene of Thursday's deadly attacks.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/16/pakistan.blast/index.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's army chief briefed the country's top leaders Friday on the tenuous security situation as the government combats a new wave of attacks believed to have been orchestrated by Taliban militants.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani called on army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani to address the leaders of Pakistan's political parties, Gilani's spokesman told CNN.

In the high-level meeting, Kayani "gave a detailed briefing on the prevailing national security situation and its ramifications in the future," according to a statement about the session from the prime minister's office. Those who attended the meeting condemned recent militant attacks and "agreed that these elements pose a serious threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the state," the statement said.

Kayani was also expected to address an impending ground offensive in South Waziristan, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal region, according to an official in Gilani's office who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The official would not say if a decision would be made during Friday's meeting about the start date of the ground offensive.

Pakistan's military has stepped up its campaign against Taliban militants in the tribal region, carrying out airstrikes on militant hideouts in South Waziristan that military officials said are aimed at softening up targets before the ground troops move in. Watch CNN's Reza Sayah describe attacks »

Despite the military offensive, militants have continued to strike with relative impunity inside Pakistan -- raising concerns about the ability of the government's security forces to maintain control.

The latest militant attack happened Friday in Peshawar, when a suicide car bomber detonated near a police station, killing 13 people -- most of them civilians -- authorities said.

Security personnel opened fire on the car when the bomber drove through the gate of the police compound, said Shafqaat Malik, head of a police bomb unit. The vehicle exploded seconds later, Malik said.

The dead include three policemen, two women and a child, Peshawar police official Akhtar Munir said. Ten others were injured.

Friday's violence comes a day after militants launched a string of attacks that killed at least 30 Pakistani police officers and civilians, Pakistani authorities said. At least 10 attackers also died.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for three of the attacks on Thursday against two police training centers and the country's Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore.

Fears were shaken in Pakistan after a weekend standoff at Pakistan's army headquarters in Rawalpindi, outside Islamabad. The military blamed Taliban militants in South Waziristan for planning the attack in which five militants held dozens of hostages inside the army headquarters for some 22 hours. Eleven military personnel, three civilians, and nine militants were killed in the siege.

A day later, at least 41 people were killed and 45 were wounded in a blast Monday at a security forces checkpoint in the volatile Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan.

The attacks show "once again that the militants in Pakistan threaten both Pakistan and the United States," White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said Thursday.

He spoke the same day U.S. President Barack Obama signed legislation providing an additional $7.5 billion in assistance to Pakistan over the next five years. The Obama administration is working on a comprehensive review of U.S. strategy in both Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had rushed back to Washington this week to report on opposition inside the Pakistani Parliament to the Kerry-Lugar bill, which outlined a five-year package of non-military aid. Some Pakistani politicians claimed the aid bill was an American attempt to micro-manage Pakistan's civilian and military affairs.

-- CNN's Reza Sayah and journalist Nasir Habib contributed to this report.

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In Pakistan, crisis meeting held over violence hike
 
 
17/10/2009 12:46:00 PM GMT   
 
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/In-Pakistan-crisis-meeting-held-over-violence-hik.html

 
Pakistan's political and military leaders hold a crisis meeting to contain the rising tide of militancy in recent days that has killed dozens of people.

The meeting was called by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the same day (Friday) as yet another suicide bombing, this time in the north-western city of Peshawar, killed at least 12 people and injured fifteen others. Similar attacks left 42 people dead on Thursday.

The talks were aimed at finding a joint strategy on the ongoing threats the country is facing and measures to counter them. The leaders were also expected to discuss a ground offensive to flush out pro-Taliban militants from the South Waziristan region.

Pakistan's powerful military chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, briefed the country's political leadership, behind closed doors, on the security threats and efforts to counter them.

On Friday, a suspected pro-Taliban rocket attack killed three Pakistani soldiers and injured four others at an army camp in South Waziristan. Another blast destroyed the entrance of a police investigation bureau in Peshawar. The upper floor of a nearby mosque was also severely damaged. Three police officers were killed in the attack.

A statement issued at the end of the meeting said that the political leadership jointly observed that despite the successes in Malakand and Swat, the recent upsurge of terror incidents in the country pose a serious threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the state and called to "weed out these elements."

This is while pro-Taliban militants have warned there will be more bloodshed if the Pakistani army goes ahead with the planned operation in South Waziristan.
Source: Press TV
 

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With Friends Like the US, Pakistan Doesn't Need Enemies

Washington's clumsy attempts to strengthen Pakistan's government only serve to stoke a conflict approaching civil war

By Simon Tisdall

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23736.htm

October 16, 2009 "The Guardian" -- As the Obama administration dithers over what to do for the best in Afghanistan, neighbouring Pakistan is paying an increasingly heavy price. Like a spate of previous Taliban attacks in recent days, today's mayhem in Lahore underscored fears that the principal consequence of Washington's Afghan paralysis, albeit unintended, is the further destabilisation of the Pakistani state.

Pakistanis might be forgiven for wondering whether, with friends like these in Washington, who needs enemies? The rumbling row over a $7.5bn, five-year US aid package is a case in point. Imperious conditions attached to the bill by a Congress reluctant to send more unaccounted billions "down a rat hole", as Democrat Howard Berman charmingly put it, were condemned as insulting and colonialist in Pakistan.

By linking the cash to tighter civilian control of Pakistan's military, Washington was trying, clumsily, to strengthen Asif Ali Zardari's government. But it achieved the exact opposite. The president was accused of failing to defend the country's sovereignty, much as he has failed to halt escalating American cross-border air raids, and the occasional covert ground incursion, on targets inside Pakistan.

After hurried consultations in Washington, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, obtained an "explanatory document" from Congress this week that he said effectively waived some of the bill's more objectionable caveats. But this is unlikely to silence critics who draw on deep anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani public dating back to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the launch of George Bush's "global war on terror".

"Poll after poll shows Pakistanis increasingly do fear the threat posed by Islamic extremists ... but they believe the US is an even bigger danger to their country," Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying this week. Many Pakistanis rated the threat posed by the US to their independence and security above that from historical foe India, he said. "Any time you out-poll India as the bad guy in Pakistan you are in deep trouble."

Intense Obama administration pressure on Pakistan to root out the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Taliban Movement of Pakistan), close allies and collaborators of the Afghan Taliban, resulted in this spring's costly military offensive in Swat, in North West Frontier province, which displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Yet the Swat campaign is likely to be dwarfed by an imminent Pakistani army offensive in South Waziristan, in the ungoverned tribal areas adjacent to Afghanistan. Although senior Pakistani officials deny they are doing Washington's bidding, it's no secret that US commanders are increasingly focused on both sides of Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban militants and their foreign jihadi and al-Qaida allies have staked out common ground ignoring national boundaries.

Pakistan's Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who replaced Baitullah Mehsud after the latter was killed in a US drone missile strike in August, said in a recent video that attacks such as today's in Lahore would quickly cease if the government stopped behaving like a US lackey and broke its American alliance. If that happened, Mehsud said he would turn his guns on India, presumably in Kashmir. To many Pakistanis, that may not sound such a bad idea.

The realisation that Washington is stoking a conflict approaching all-out civil war is gradually dawning in the US. New York Post columnist Ralph Peters drew a comparison with post-invasion Iraq. "Civil war never quite happened [there]. Yet no one seems to notice that we're now caught up in two authentic civil wars – one in Afghanistan, the other in Pakistan," he said. By lumping the two together in one "Afpak" policy, the Obama administration had effectively made both problems worse.

Neither extra US troops, nor extra aid, nor more "hugs-not-slugs counterinsurgency nonsense" was the answer, Peters argued. "The only hope for either beleaguered territory (these really are territories, not authentic states) is a decision by its own population to fight and defeat the Taliban."

The impulse, fanned by this sort of imperial hubris, to get out of Afghanistan, or at least to narrow the fight to a counter-terrorism campaign against al-Qaida, has gathered US adherents in recent months. But a Washington Post editorial argued this week that with al-Qaida much reduced, the Taliban in both countries now constituted the main enemy. Pakistan was moving towards "full-scale war", it said. Pulling back in Afghanistan could have disastrous, possibly fatal consequences there, too.

By this measure and others, only one conclusion is possible: Pakistan is already so destabilised by US actions since 9/11 that it cannot be left to fend for itself. In such tortuous logic is found the death of empires.

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Pentagon ramps up direct military aid to Pakistan

Updated at: 0430 PST, Saturday, October 17, 2009
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=89287


 
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is ramping up delivery of military equipment long sought by the Pakistani army to fight militants, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Some $200 million worth of equipment and services already in the pipeline for Pakistan has started to arrive but officials declined to provide full details, saying many of the more sophisticated items were classified.

Some programs have run into resistance from Islamabad, which is wary of appearing too close to Washington, they said.

The U.S. military aid is meant to help Pakistan mount a long-awaited ground offensive against Taliban fighters in their South Waziristan stronghold along the border with Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are fighting a growing insurgency.

Hit by string of brazen militant attacks in the past 11 days that have killed about 150 people, Islamabad says a ground offensive by its troops is imminent.

"Each one of these attacks is troublesome," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. "But the Pakistan government remains committed to addressing the threat there."

Direct military aid from the Pentagon, officials said, would come on top of the equipment that Pakistan receives through normal foreign military sales overseen by the State Department. Officials say those sales vary year to year but generally total around $300 million annually.

U.S. government aid is a highly contentious issue in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment runs high, and Islamabad has thrown up obstacles to some of the Pentagon's proposals, including one to expand counter-insurgency training for the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, officials said. 
   
 

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Pakistan sends 30,000 troops for all-out assault on Taliban

Helicopter gunships, aircraft and artillery pound Waziristan mountain stronghold following a series of attacks by militants

Saturday 17 October 2009 18.06 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/17/pakistan-sends-troops-against-taliban

 More than 30,000 Pakistani soldiers launched a long-expected assault on the Taliban lair of South Waziristan today, following a fortnight of militant attacks that left 175 people dead and underlined the threat to Pakistan's stability.

Early clashes were reported to have claimed more than 20 casualties as government soldiers pressed in on the mountain stronghold from three sides, backed by helicopter gunships, warplanes and artillery. A fifth of the local population has fled in recent weeks.

The operation is Pakistan's largest ever drive against Islamist extremists. The army says that it has deployed the 30,000 troops against an estimated 10,000 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. The battle zone is the Mehsud tribal territory, whose impoverished villages have a long history of producing formidable tribal fighters. The Pakistan Taliban in the region are now led by Hakimullah Mehsud, the successor of Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in an American drone strike last August.

A successful operation is vital to Pakistan's stability. Over the last two weeks militants have launched a series of audacious attacks across the country, including the suicide bombing of a United Nations office in Islamabad, three simultaneous attacks on police sites in Lahore and, most brazenly, a 22-hour siege of the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend. Authorities said that most incidents were orchestrated by Waziristan-based commanders.

South Waziristan is also a notorious hub of al-Qaida fighters plotting against the west. "There is a huge presence of foreign militants," army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said tonight, describing them as Uzbeks, Arabs and north African Muslims. There has been frequent speculation that Osama bin Laden is sheltering in Waziristan, but many experts think it unlikely he would remain in such a heavily contested area.

Thousands of troops and allied tribal militias have sealed off entry points to the south, east and north of the Mehsud stronghold. Anwar Kamal, a tribal leader from neighbouring Lakki Marwat, said he had been asked to provide hundreds of armed villagers to seal off mountain passes leading from the area.

Military sources predicted the fighting would last at least six weeks and would concentrate on the Taliban strongholds of Ladha and Makeen. Some think it may take longer – the treacherous passes of Waziristan, many of which rise to 7,000ft, have frustrated invading armies since the time of Alexander the Great. In the 1930s and 1940s the British army fought a protracted campaign against forces led by a fierce local cleric known as the Faqir of Ipi. The Faqir evaded capture and died of natural causes in 1960.

The Taliban are expected to strike back with ambushes, suicide attacks and roadside explosions. In early fighting today a bomb rocked a convoy passing though Ladha district, killing one soldier and wounding three others, AP reported. Most information could not be corroborated – phone lines were cut to the area for most of today and foreign reporters are forbidden from entering the tribal belt without permission.

South Waziristan is the redoubt of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Two weeks ago its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, vowed to avenge the death of his predecessor, Baitullah, with attacks on Pakistani and US targets. Several of the subsequent attacks were co-ordinated with Punjab-based jihadist groups, highlighting the Taliban's alliances with other extremist groups.

Military, government and opposition political leaders met for a briefing on the operation on Friday in a show of national unity. The army made three failed attempts to negotiate peace deals with militants in Waziristan between 2004 and 2006. This time, it said, it was no longer prepared to talk.

But the army has made tactical compromises that leave western allies uncomfortable. In order to encircle the Mehsud area, it appears to have reached agreements with rival militant groups controlled by Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan and Qari Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan. Although less famous than the Mehsud-led TTP, they send many Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.

The offensive has triggered a flood of refugees, although the humanitarian crisis is not expected to be as severe as in Swat this summer, when an estimated two million people were displaced across Swat and neighbouring districts. Tariq Hayat Khan, the secretary for law and order in the tribal areas, said that 12,800 families had fled from South Waziristan in the last six weeks, from a population he estimated at 110,000 people.

Provincial authorities said they expected 250,000 people to be displaced by the operation. Many have fled to the town of Dera Ismail Khan at the southern end of North West Frontier Province. Western aid agencies offering relief items, however, are based across the river Indus in Punjab province due to security concerns.

The offensive is backed by the US, which considers Pakistan's tribal areas as a major rear base for Taliban fighters attacking Nato soldiers, even though South Waziristan does not share a border with Afghanistan. According to reports, the Obama administration is racing to send night-vision goggles and other equipment to aid the effort.

Meanwhile the US is continuing with its drone war – the latest strike, on Thursday night, hit a compound controlled by the warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan.

Rustum Shah Mohmand, a retired diplomat and analyst, predicted the operation would not be prolonged. "The area is too small and the militants are not supported by the people," he said. But, he added, even if it succeeded Pakistan's militant problem would not go away.

"One should be under no illusion that Pakistan will become quiet as a lake. This is not going to happen," he said. "There are entrenched militant groups across the country. And they will continue to attack."

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Sunday, October 18, 2009
14:09 Mecca time, 11:09 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009101833642763946.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan army strikes Taliban bases  
 

Security forces are on alert after several deadly attacks in areas bordering South Waziristan [AFP]



The Pakistani military says it has seized Taliban bases during the first day of a ground offensive in South Waziristan.

At least five soldiers and 60 fighters were killed in the first 24 hours of fighting, Pakistani officials said on Sunday.

As many as 150,000 civilians have left the area in recent months after the army made clear it was planning an assault.

But there are perhaps as many as 350,000 still in the region.

Security forces captured a Taliban stronghold at Spinkai Raghzai on Saturday after the fighters withdrew from their fortifications and took refuge in nearby mountains, officials said.

Earlier, the officials reported that gun battles were taking place outside Spinkai Raghzai as well as Kalkala and Sharwangai.

On two flanks

Intelligence officials said the ground troops were advancing on two flanks and a northern front of a central part of South Waziristan controlled by the Mehsuds.

The areas being surrounded include the Taliban bases of Ladha and Makeen, the officials said.

The army says about 28,000 soldiers are battling an estimated 10,000 Taliban fighters, including about 1,000 Uzbeks and some Arab al-Qaeda members.


In depth :

  Video: Civilians flee Pakistani army offensive
  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan
  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
  Blog: Unsung heroes in an unseen war

 

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Sunday, Hamid Nawaz, a former Pakistani general and military-affairs analyst, said he believed the army could complete its operations before the December snowfall.

"This is not going to be a set-piece battle ... the theatre of operations is only about 6,000sq km and there will only be pockets fo resistance.

"And efforts have been made to co-ordinate attacks with Nato troops as well as the Afghan army on the other side of the border to prevent anyone escaping."

The Pakistani offensive comes after a series of bomb attacks across the country over the past two weeks that have killed more than 170 people.

In the latest attack, at least 11 people died in two explosions near a police office in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday.

People are reported to be fleeing from the Shakoi and Zangra areas, with many moving through North Waziristan where a makeshift camp has been set up at Mir Ali.

Humanitarian angle

Wolfgang Herbinger, the country director for the World Food Programme, based in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said his organisation had readied itself for the exodus from the fighting.

"We have food stocks in nearby areas," he told Al Jazeera.

"As a United Nations organisation, we have been preparing for quite some time. We have had to anticipate in different parts of the country, including South Waziristan, that people will be on the move."


Facts: South Waziristan :

 -The district in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) borders Afghanistan, North Waziristan, the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan

 -It has a population of about 500,000 people, mostly tribal Pashtuns, a religiously conservative group that is known for being hostile to outside interference

 -The Pakistani Taliban holds territory mainly in the west-central region of South Waziristan, on the northern border with North Waziristan, towards the eastern town of Jandola and on the border with the North-West Frontier Province

 -The Pakistani Taliban's bastion is not on the South Waziristan-Afghan border

 -The army has launched offensives in South Waziristan before, initially in 2004 when it suffered heavy losses before signing a peace pact

 
For weeks the army has been using air and artillery attacks on Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan and a curfew was put in place on Saturday.

Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's high commissioner to the UK, said the offensive is difficult because the attacks are sporadic and spread out.

"It's difficult to fight them everywhere," he told Al Jazeera.

"That's why we were carrying out a softening operation through air raids and bombings. That's what we have been doing for the last four or five weeks.

"Now we think we are in a position to strike militarily on the ground in the spots we have been firing and mark them [Taliban] for attack. So I think we will be able to achieve our objective."

Imran Khan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "South Waziristan is where Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, is based.

"And the police say that the carnage we have seen over the last 12 days is being planned from South Waziristan.

"So this is a crucial operation to decapitate the head of the senior Pakistani Taliban leadership ... But there is always the problem that if you squeeze the Taliban in one area, they pop up in another."

The US hopes that a Pakistani army operation in South Waziristan will help break much of the opposition network that threatens both Pakistan and American troops across the border in Afghanistan.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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U.S. military chief visits as Pakistan battles militants


Story Highlights:

Regional U.S. military commander visits as Pakistan battles Taliban militants

Offensive in South Waziristan follows wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan

About 28,000 Pakistani soldiers have move into epicenter of Taliban activity

Military offensive has prompted exodus of tens of thousands of civilians
From Reza Sayah


General David Petraeus meets Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad on Monday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The regional U.S. military commander was visiting Pakistan on Monday as that country's military continued its massive ground offensive against Taliban militants in the restive northwest tribal region.

Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, was holding meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad. Also there, on a separate visit, was U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Gilani told Petraeus it was important that Pakistan and the U.S. work together "to bridge the trust deficit," according to Agence-France Presse.

Gilani called for more international aid for relief efforts and reconstruction in the tribal region of South Waziristan, a refuge and a power base for insurgents operating in Pakistan and along the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Petraeus said the United States "acknowledges the sacrifices of Pakistan in the war on terror," AFP said.

The visits of Petraeus and Kerry came as Pakistani ground troops, backed by air power, moved into South Waziristan.

The highly anticipated offensive follows a wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan and has prompted the exodus of tens of thousands of civilians, a U.N. refugee agency said.

Though the offensive is not the first, it is the most important, Pakistani military spokesman Major Gen. Athar Abbas told CNN, "because we have concluded that this area has become the center of gravity of the problem." Watch how the offensive began »

One military official said Pakistani troops had seized control of Kotkai, the home village of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and Talibancommander Qari Hussein. Hussein masterminded some of Pakistan's deadliest suicide attacks.

Strikes by jet fighters and helicopter gunships targeted militant hideouts in Kotkai and the villages of Badar, Barwand and Khisur -- all strongholds of the Taliban and their late leader Baitullah Mehsud, another official told CNN.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

For months, the military have targeted militant hideouts in South Waziristan and other hotspots in Pakistan's tribal areas. Earlier this year, troops launched a large operation targeting militants in the Swat Valley, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Despite such efforts, insurgents have continued to strike with relative impunity in Pakistan, targeting government, police and security locations.

The recent wave of deadly attacks has raised concerns about the ability of Pakistan's security forces to maintain control. The violence also has heightened internal and international pressure on the government to take swift and effective action.

Pakistani officials said about 10,000 to 15,000 militants linked to the Taliban or to al Qaeda operate in South Waziristan, a harsh terrain familiar to militants but difficult for others to navigate. About 28,000 Pakistani soldiers have moved into the epicenter of Taliban activity in the region to counter their activities, officials said.

CNN's Reza Sayah and journalist Nasir Dawar contributed to this report.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/19/pakistan.offensive.visit/index.html

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War next door creates havoc in Pakistan

by ERIC MARGOLIS

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59072&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 18, 2009

Pakistan, increasingly destabilized by the U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan, is getting closer to blowing apart.

Bombings and shootings have rocked this nation of 167 million, including a brazen attack on army HQ in Rawalpindi and a massive bombing of Peshawar's exotic Khyber Bazaar.

Pakistan's army is readying a major offensive against rebellious Pashtun tribes in South Waziristan. Meanwhile, the feeble, deeply unpopular U.S.-installed government in Islamabad faces an increasingly rancorous confrontation with the military.

Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, the Obama administration and U.S. Congress chose this explosive time to try to impose yet another layer of American control over Pakistan as Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama appears about to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Tragically, U.S. policy in the Muslim world continues to be driven by imperial arrogance, profound ignorance, and special interest groups.

The current Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, advanced with President Barack Obama's blessing, is ham-handed dollar diplomacy at its worst. Pakistan, bankrupted by corruption and feudal landlords, is being offered $7.5 billion US over five years -- but with outrageous strings attached.

The U.S. wants to build a mammoth new embassy for 1,000 personnel in Islamabad, the second largest after its Baghdad fortress-embassy. New personnel are needed, claims Washington, to monitor the $7.5 billion in aid. So U.S. mercenaries are being brought in to protect U.S. "interests." New U.S. bases will open. Most of this new aid will go right into the pockets of the pro-western ruling establishment, about 1% of the population.

Washington is also demanding veto power over promotions in Pakistan's armed forces and intelligence agency, ISI. This crude attempt to take control of Pakistan's proud, 617,000-man military has enraged the armed forces.

It's all part of Washington's "AfPak" strategy to clamp tighter control over restive Pakistan and make use of its armed forces and spies in Afghanistan. Seizing control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the key to its national defence against much more powerful India, is the other key U.S. objective.

However, 90% of Pakistanis oppose the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and see Taliban and its allies as national resistance to western occupation.

Violence

Alarmingly, violent attacks on Pakistan's government are coming not only from once-autonomous Pashtun tribes (wrongly called "Taliban") in Northwest Frontier Province, but, increasingly, in the biggest province, Punjab. Recently, the U.S. Ambassador in Islamabad, in a fit of imperial hubris, actually called for air attacks on Pashtun leaders in Quetta, capital of Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province.

Washington does not even bother to ask the impotent Islamabad government's permission to launch air attacks inside Pakistan.

Along comes the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Big Bribe as most irate Pakistanis accuse President Asif Ali Zardari's government of being American hirelings. Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, has been dogged for decades by charges of corruption. His senior aides in Pakistan and Washington are being denounced by what's left of Pakistan's media not yet under government control.

Washington seems unaware of the fury its crude, counter-productive policies have whipped up in Pakistan. The Obama administration keeps listening to Washington-based neoconservatives, military hawks, and "experts" who tell it just what it wants to hear, not the facts. Ottawa does the same.

Revolt

As a result, Pakistan's military, the nation's premier institution, is being pushed to the point of revolt. Against the backdrop of bombings and shootings come rumours the heads of Pakistan's armed forces and intelligence may be replaced.

Pakistanis are calling for the removal of the Zardari regime's strongman, Interior Minister Rehman Malik. Many clamour for the head of Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, my old friend Hussain Haqqani, who is seen as too close to the Americans. One suspects the wily Haqqani is also angling to get the U.S. to help him become Pakistan's next leader.

The possibility of a military coup against the discredited Zardari regime grows. But Pakistan is dependent on U.S. money, and fears India. Can its generals afford to break with patron Washington?

- eric.margolis@sunmedia.ca



 

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South Asia
Oct 20, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ20Df03.html 
 
Us and them

By Chan Akya

"As usual, your guys are bombing the wrong country."

This is what I said to fellow Asia Times Online contributor Spengler in a meeting a few weeks back, when the two of us were discussing Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban. For a while now, the two of us have had doubts about the United States/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strategy in Afghanistan and in particular their ability to handle the tactical aspects of the ongoing battle against the Taliban even as the larger goal of implementing democracy in the country looms as a long-term strategic goal.

All that was before the most recent spate of attacks on Pakistani military and police establishments apparently being orchestrated by the Taliban; the sheer scale and audacity of which bring into question the very existence of the Pakistani state. There must be a worried lot in the corridors of New Delhi, Washington and London these days as the sheer scale of the collapse in Pakistani military capabilities and morale relative to the resurgent Taliban finally takes center stage.

The most likely course of action eerily appears like the only one available now - a reinstatement of army rule in Pakistan in the guise of re-establishing security and a set of new arrangements between the Army and the Taliban to essentially relinquish Afghanistan and the Western parts of Pakistan to the control of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his cohorts.

In Triangulating an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008), I wrote:
Bleeding on its western flanks and ever watchful of its eastern border with India, the Pakistani military has limited options. Cooperating with the US or NATO is unlikely in the current political climate which ensures that increasing resources are misspent on the lost war pursuing al-Qaeda. Quelling an internal rebellion - no military man actually wants to die in combat, contrary to their popular image - would take an assumption of political power once again in the country with all the baggage this brings.

Taken to a logical extreme, the slippage of the Pakistani establishment to a quasi-vassal relationship with al-Qaeda ideologues appears all the more likely. Politicians will strike deals with extremist Islamic groups and seek to appease their grievances; these range from the heavy handedness of Pakistani police against the militant groups to the regrouping of madrassas across the country.

Meanwhile, the army is also likely to secure its own peace with the terrorist groups by calling off intensive operations and allowing for a return of an expanded Taliban state within Pakistani borders that calls the shots in Afghanistan. I don't believe it will take more than year for the current Afghan government to fall and make way for the Taliban when this happens.

The resulting theocratic state will be run essentially by today's al-Qaeda reservists, with the added advantage of possessing nuclear weapons. As epitaphs go, George W Bush could not wish for anything worse but sadly this does seem to his most likely legacy.
Things have gotten worse in Afghanistan. With the election-rigging essentially ruining whatever legitimacy that the government of President Hamid Karzai had in the country, popular resentment is all set to fuel the Taliban. Even the American media has finally acknowledged that Mullah Omar is back as the head of the Taliban, driving the insurgents and terrorists into the heart of the country as he appears ever more likely to take over Kabul yet again.

The New York Times reported on October 11:
In late 2001, Mullah Muhammad Omar's prospects seemed utterly bleak. The ill-educated, one-eyed leader of the Taliban had fled on a motorbike after his fighters were swiftly routed by the Americans invading Afghanistan ... Eight years later, Mullah Omar leads an insurgency that has gained steady ground in much of Afghanistan against much better equipped American and NATO forces. Far from a historical footnote, he represents a vexing security challenge for the Obama administration, one that has consumed the president's advisers, divided Democrats and left many Americans frustrated.
In effect, Afghanistan is a lost cause. Stand by for a resumption of mass murders, ethnic cleansing, large-scale crimes against women and children and an uninterrupted rise in the value of illegal drugs sold by the country to the rest of the world.

About three years ago, in an article titled Economics and Bamiyan (Asia Times Online, December 9, 2006), I wrote the following incitement to more coordinated action on the part of the interventionists:
The multinational approach to Afghanistan is flawed on many counts, but mainly because different agencies assume they are dealing with separate problems when in fact they are dealing with one. NATO forces are dealing with a resurgent Taliban, while various agencies are dealing with the mushrooming problems of opium cultivation, women's rights, health and education and the preservation of culture.

What business can you provide for a people who make their money on opium cultivation? The only alternative that carries sufficiently high margins is tourism, which is particularly suited to the rugged landscape of Afghanistan and its phenomenal history, even if many of the most interesting sites were destroyed by a succession of invaders. In a situation where the tourist industry assumes primacy, local populations have to protect their economic interests, which they achieve by maintaining a more open society. This has certainly been the experience in Turkey and Egypt, where radical Islamists are kept at bay not so much by the "war on terror" as good old-fashioned neighborhood policemen. Terrorists committing heinous acts at Luxor, were for example prevented from re-enacting their methods due to the immediate negative economic impact. Terrorists cannot operate without support from local communities - and failing to recognize this factor makes the process of reconstruction arduous if not impossible.

The primary strategy for the various multilateral agencies is thus to provide suitable incentives for the locals to step in and protect their own heritage. Convince the Afghans that a million tourists will visit any new Bamiyan site, and new Buddha statues will not only spring up, but also be more majestic than the ones destroyed. It might seem like an awfully long-term project, but the idea presents the only proven method of aligning local interests with those of the global community.
Looking at the Taliban, the key question is frequently asked but never really addressed. What actually allows these ramshackle fighters to stay fighting the US and NATO for over eight years now? The normal answer is drug money but there is of course another source namely donations from the Middle East. Drug money could account for half or more of the Taliban's revenues, so the answer isn't completely wrong.

Selling opium to Europeans and Americans allows the Taliban to fund itself wonderfully, attracting a lot of the local unemployed with promises of money as long as they grow a beard. Things have gotten so bad that the Taliban can now hire people who would otherwise have considered joining the Pakistani army, with higher pay, better weapons and lower casualties.

We shouldn't forget how it is that the Taliban took and held on to power the first time around. Having comprehensively destroyed the Afghan people through their attempts at introducing the Wahhabi version of Islam, the Taliban depended on sustenance provided by three countries: Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

The role of Pakistan is easy to discern, namely to sustain a feed pipeline for irregular acts of terror (see One man's terrorist ... Asia Times Online, October 3, 2009) ) besides expanding the strategic depth against its Indian foes. Meanwhile, the UAE (really it was all money from oil-rich Abu Dhabi) and Saudi Arabia provided funding to the Taliban in the name of fraternal love with Muslim brethren.

Of course, the consideration that a fanatical Sunni country could be used against the Shi'ite peoples of Iran never entered their calculation. This is part of the "global oil equation", which I will examine in more detail in a future article.
 
The high oil prices that helped to sustain the Taliban for much longer than local economic conditions would have warranted now exist once again. Continued sales of opium, meanwhile, provide the Taliban with the means to keep up their recruitment of armed combatants and controlling regional governors who are enriching themselves.

Anyone wishing to control the spread of the Taliban must therefore consider two aspects: the global trade in narcotics and secondly the per capita consumption of crude oil. Since both these indicators are more relevant in Western Europe and the United States, it suffices to focus attention on the two areas.

How the British Empire collapsed
Before delving into the most obvious strategy items left to control the Taliban, it is appropriate to examine the historical reasons for the collapse of the British Empire, if for nothing else but to tell ourselves that the status quo can indeed be changed with a bit of will.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this week, Zachary Karabell notes the following:
Consider what happened in 1946, when a cash-strapped Great Britain turned to the US for a loan. For 30 years or more, the British had been consumed by the threat of a rising Germany. Two wars had been fought, millions of lives had been lost, and the British treasury was dramatically depleted in the process. Britain survived, but the costs were substantial.

In spite of its global empire, a powerful military, and an enviable position at the center of world-wide commerce, in early 1946 the British government faced a serious risk of defaulting on its financial obligations. So it did what it had done at various points over the previous decade and turned to its closest ally for assistance. It asked the US for a loan of $5 billion at zero-interest repayable over 50 years. As generous as those terms seem today, such financing had been almost routine in years prior. To the surprise and shock of the British, Washington refused.

Unable to take no for answer, Britain explained that unless it received funds the government would be insolvent. The Americans came back with a series of conditions. They would lend Britain $3.7 billion at 2% interest, and the British government would have to abide by the 1944 Bretton Woods plan, which made the dollar rather than the pound sterling the reference point for global exchange rates and required Britain to make the pound freely convertible. Even more significantly, Britain had to end its system of imperial preferences, which meant no more tariffs and duties on goods to and from colonies such as India. These were not mere financial penalties: taken together, they meant the end of the British Empire.
While interesting from a historical perspective, Karabell perhaps understated the role of another bit of change over the same period - the decline of the opium trade. For it wasn't the textiles of India or the rubies from Myanmar that kept the great British Empire alive but rather the humble opium den.

Destroying the landscape of India with forced farming of opium and selling the finished product in China with handsome profits along the way, the British Empire essentially derived a quarter of its revenues or more from the opium trade; income that was readily useful in dealing with the pesky Prussians and Germans in World Wars I and II.

I would recommend readers examine the subject at length in tomes such as Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh and Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy by Carl Trocki which immediately come to mind.

When the Chinese stopped smoking opium in the early part of the 20th century, the ramifications were felt on the existence of the British Empire.

This is exactly the historical parallel to use. The idea of destroying the demand for heroin and other opium derivatives has apparently never entered into the calculation of the United States and NATO countries. To do that, they obviously will have to work on controlling their domestic populations, in effect taking the "war on terror" homebound, hitting at drug addicts internally.

That course of action isn't popular of course, but in the long run more likely to succeed in controlling the Taliban.

Oil
The same goes for the price of oil. If global oil prices can be pushed down, there is clear evidence that funding for fundamentalist Islamic groups also declines. Why then doesn't the American government impose a tax - say $2 per gallon - on the sale of gasoline in the US; following the lead of the Europeans? This would inevitably - and especially if the current rate of low economic growth continues for the interim - lead to a decline in the price of oil globally to adjust for the tax effect.

Jim Kunstler wrote the following about the generic supply of oil from the Middle East in his blog entry dated October 12, 2009:
The combination of extreme resource dependency and religious fanaticism is a fatal equation for the Middle East. They are angry, crazy and often savage people who own something we can't live without, and we are overfed buffoons, often savage ourselves, who think we can make them like us - whether they like it or not. Again, personally, I don't believe the status quo will persist a whole lot longer. The US economy is radically de-complexifying (ie crashing). Part of this will be expressed in the bankruptcy of US military capacity - at least where supporting troops-on-the-ground in foreign lands is concerned, and probably overseas bases, too. The US could get in trouble with other sources of foreign oil (think: Mexico) before anything chokes off the Middle East. But in one way or another, the US will soon become both capital-and-energy-resource-challenged to an extreme, perhaps to the extreme where we can't feed ourselves. Our problems in running the nation as it has been set up to run - as a colossal demolition derby with sideshows of bargain shopping and infotainment - are insurmountable if one accepts the majority view that it is "non-negotiable".
It is important to consider here that a tax on oil will have multiple follow on effects:
Reduction in the price of oil as pump prices cannot move up too much in the current economic climate. In effect, this counts as a transfer of revenues from the Middle East to the US government, channeled through the US consumer.

The initial shock of higher oil prices will push down US consumption, hurting the export-oriented economies of Asia. That in turn could prompt greater focus on domestic consumption in these countries and perhaps even realignment on the currency side (free floats).

An improved likelihood of carbon tariffs globally, which are designed to reduce per capita consumption of oil in the US and Europe, as well as more gradually, in Asia. This will also push down the use of fossil fuels in Asia, with China likely to fare the worst given its high emissions.

Increased focus on research and expenditure on new technologies to supplant the oil economy. Since the US, Japan and Europe have the lead on technological innovation, the initial benefits will perhaps be felt there more considerably. Gradually, other countries like China and India will also benefit from the new technologies.

There you have it - to defeat the Taliban, Americans and Europeans will need to curb demand for opium derivatives at home as well as destroy the stable revenues of the oil producing Middle Eastern countries. The wrong strategy would be to deal with the symptom without dealing with the cause appropriately; precisely why the current strategy is a colossal failure.

In effect, the US and NATO need to start "bombing" at home rather than in far-off countries: reduce the use of drugs and oil domestically if they ever want a real chance to control the menace that the Taliban have become, and will morph further into over the near term.

 
 

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Obama Steps Up Drone Bombings Despite Civilian Deaths

by Sherwood Ross
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59117&hd=&size=1&l=e

                                           

October 19, 2009

"Even if a precise account is elusive," writes Jane Mayer in the October 26th The New Yorker, "the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country."

Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., "the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President," Mayer reports.

In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.

At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has "multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets," the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.

Mayer writes, "the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force." Today, Mayer writes, "there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy." And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. "Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did," Solis is quoted as saying.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased."

And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, "there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war."

The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords "who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban," Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, "There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda."

It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is "aimed at terror suspects around the world," Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.

Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.

The magazine article reports the government plans to commission "hundreds more" of the drones, including "new generations of tiny 'nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window."

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer who formerly worked for the Chicago Daily News and other major dailies. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)




 

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Published on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Refugee Flood Reveals Human Cost of South Waziristan's Invisible War

Pakistani forces accused of hitting civilians • Up to 260,000 people may flee battle against Taliban


by Declan Walsh in Dera Ismail Khan

The war in South Waziristan started early for Ghufran. As Pakistani warplanes pounded the Taliban [1] stronghold of Ladha last week, in preparation for the ground offensive now under way, the 11-year-old boy and his family scrambled to safety across a range of jagged mountains.


A family from South Waziristan flee the battle zone to Dera Ismail Khan. (Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images)

They left behind a broken home, destroyed by the air force, but also something much more precious. Ghufran said his father stayed on to guard the family's worldly wealth: four goats, three sheep and a donkey. "I miss him already. I wish he came with us," the schoolboy said, a shadow falling across his face.

As fighting raged for a third day in South Waziristan todayrefugees flooded into Dera Ismail Khan, a dusty, danger-laced town on the southern edge of the tribal area. Aid workers there said they had registered about 160,000 people in six centres; they expect the figure to jump by at least 100,000 in the coming weeks.

People crowded into government registration centres, putting their names down for an aid distribution programme that had yet to begin. Expressing frustration, many said they felt trapped between American drone strikes, ruthless Taliban fighters, and an invading Pakistani force that threatened their property and lives.

Many gave accounts of indiscriminate shelling and warplane attacks that contrast with the military's insistence that its forces are taking care to avoid civilian casualties. Kasheed Khan said he carried his 90-year-old mother during a two-day journey out of Makeen, one of the main Taliban hubs. "They were targeting the civilians. I saw it myself. They were hitting vehicles and houses," he said. "They even demolished the main bus stand in Makeen." Now, he said, he was staying in a relative's house along with 50 other people.

"Not a single Taliban has been targeted. It's only the civilians who have been hit," said Marjan, a man with a henna-tinged beard from Tiarza Narai. But when he criticised the Taliban another man sidled alongside him and chastised him for speaking against the Taliban, sparking a row that almost came to blows.

The truth is hard to pin down in South Waziristan, where a bloody war is unfolding behind an invisible veil. Since the ground operation began last Saturday, pitting 30,000 government soldiers against an estimated 10,000 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, the area has been entirely cut off from the outside world. Phone lines are cut and it is impossible for journalists, foreign or local, to enter the battlezone.

Yet the broad strokes of the assault are clear. The army is punching into the territory of the Mehsud tribe, a natural fortress that has frustrated invaders for centuries, from three sides. Having captured several strategic heights, ground troops are fighting their way in from the periphery, while warplanes are bombing Taliban positions in the mountain redoubt at the centre of the area. The assault followed two weeks of militant attacks across Pakistan [2] in which more than 175 people died and included a 22-hour siege of army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

The army spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said 68 militants and nine soldiers had died since Saturday; the Taliban said many more soldiers were killed than reported.

Those fleeing the fighting are entering Dera Ismail Khan, a tense town beside the Indus river, an hour's drive south of the tribal area. The town has its own history of violence: for years Sunni and Shia sectarian extremists have attacked each other in mosques, bazaars and at funerals. Earlier this year motorcycles were banned from the city to prevent hit squads from carrying out drive-by shootings.

The influx of displaced people has renewed anxieties. This afternoon heavily armed anti-terrorist police patrolled the streets wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "No Fear". Shortly after, a burst of gunfire rang through the streets, warning shots fired by soldiers aboard a military convoy who, fearing a suicide attack, warned townspeople to keep back. Security forces have also arrested dozens of sectarian extremists, many of whom have links to the Taliban.

"It's a huge blow to the militants, who are mostly drawn from these sectarian groups," said Faiysal Ali Khan, head of Fida, which is spearheading the government's relief programme.

One official told the Guardian that military intelligence had picked up a Taliban sympathiser charged with funnelling funds to the militants from the Gulf states, where many Mehsud work as migrant labourers, last night.

Yet not all the gunmen were gone. At a petrol station in the town a gang of men with long hair and automatic weapons, many of them resembling Taliban fighters, hung out of the back of a gleaming new pick-up truck. Locals said they belonged to the Abdullah Mehsud group, a government-sponsored faction of the Mehsud tribe. Their leader, Zainuddin, was killed by a Taliban assassin earlier this year; now his brother Misbahuddin has taken over.

Although Dera Ismail Khan is groaning with war-displaced families, the government has yet to start distributing aid. An argument is brewing about whether the displaced should be housed in organised camps. Provincial officials says they will never accept living in tents, but aid workers warn the town's ability to absorb refugees [3] is close to straining point.

"Where will they go? They can't just roam around," said one aid official.

Some displaced people said they felt like pawns in a game - a perception partly born of the area's historical role as a playground of empires. It is also a product of the popular cocktail of conspiracy theories that do the rounds in Pakistan about Indian, Iranian, Chinese and even American support for the Taliban.

In Islamabad General David Petraeus, the US central command chief, met the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, and the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. Washington is reportedly unhappy with a deal Pakistan's military has struck with other Taliban who are attacking western troops in Afghanistan.

"Sometimes you have to talk to the devil," an army spokesman told reporters in explanation.

 

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/20-2

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Pakistan hits Taliban, urges NATO to seal border

Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:24am EDT
By Hafiz Wazir
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE59I0L620091021?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest


The shadow of a bomb disposal team member falls on the site of a blast as he takes photographs at the International Islamic University in Islamabad October 20, 2009

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani helicopter gunships attacked Taliban bases near the Afghan border on Wednesday as the army urged NATO forces to seal the frontier to stem cross-border movement of militants.

Pakistani forces launched an offensive to wrest control of the lawless South Waziristan region on Saturday after militants rocked the country with a string of bomb and suicide attacks in recent weeks, killing more than 150 people.

Six people were killed in two suicide bomb attacks at the International Islamic University in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday, prompting authorities to order the closure of educational institutions across the country.

The order to close schools unnerved investors in Pakistan's main stock market which was 2.36 percent lower at 9,342.91 at 0750 GMT.

Remote and rugged South Waziristan, with its rocky mountains and patchy forests cut through by dry creeks and ravines, is a global hub for militants.

The offensive is being closely followed by the United States and other powers embroiled in Afghanistan.

The government forces initially faced light resistance but fighting intensified as soldiers approached the militants' main sanctuaries in the mountains.

Government forces attacked the militant strongholds of Makeen and Ladha with helicopter gunships and artillery on Wednesday, security officials said. Eight soldiers wounded in overnight fighting were evacuated to the nearby town of Dera Ismail Khan.

Fighting for control of the lawless area is seen a major test of the government's ability to tackle increasingly brazen insurgents who have carried out daring attacks across Pakistan, including on the army headquarters.

Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior Taliban commander known as "the mentor of suicide bombers," called the BBC on Tuesday to take responsibility for the attacks on the Islamic University and said the militants consider "all of Pakistan to now be a war zone."

The security officials said heavy exchanges of fire were taking place in Kotkai, Hussain's hometown and also the birthplace of Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud. The town is on the approach to a main base area.

Security forces briefly took control of Kotkai in fighting on Monday night but militants recaptured it in a counter-attack.

SEAL AFGHAN BORDER

As government forces pressed ahead with the Waziristan offensive, the military called on the NATO troops in Afghanistan to seal the border "to prevent cross-border movement and flow of weapons."

Pakistan Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) Chairman General Tariq Majid made the call during talks with Britain's Chief of Defense Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup.

Pakistani newspapers have in recent days reported that NATO forces had abandoned border posts opposite South Waziristan, raising the possibility of Afghan Taliban coming to help their Pakistani comrades, or of Pakistani Taliban fleeing.

Majid called for "synchronization of effort on both sides and sharing of real-time intelligence with reference to the ongoing operations," an army statement issued late on Tuesday said.

The army says 90 militants and 13 soldiers have been killed since the offensive was launched on Saturday but there was no independent confirmation of those tolls.

Foreign reporters are not allowed anywhere near the battle zone and it is dangerous for Pakistani reporters to visit. Many of the Pakistani media based in South Waziristan have left.

About 28,000 soldiers are battling an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban, including about 1,000 tough Uzbek fighters and some Arab al Qaeda members.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled from South Waziristan, with about 32,000 of them leaving since October 13, the United Nations said. Up to 200,000 people could flee, the army says.

The army has launched brief offensives in South Waziristan before, the first in 2004 when it suffered heavy casualties before striking a peace pact.

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Video: Civilians Killed in Pakistan Offensive

The number no one's counting

by Alan Fisher

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59161&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

October 20, 2009



The pictures are too gruesome to show. The charred bodies lie under a makeshift shroud. Someone near the camera holds up an identity card - giving one corpse a name, a history, a dignity that's now been stolen.

Nearby, the covered body of a child, no more than five or six. A victim of a battle the child didn't know even existed. In this place, at least four people have been killed. The figure could be higher. The army knows how many men it's lost. Every day it gives new figures for the number of Taliban it claims it's killed. But no-one seems to know how many innocent civilians are being killed in this conflict.

Exclusive pictures obtained by Al Jazeera show the damage the war in South Waziristan has brought to the town of Saroragha, which sits close to the Afghan border. These are the first images images of what's happening inside South Waziristan.
WATCH :

Civilians caught up South Waziristan fighting - 20 Oct 09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S3vJa7EpNQ&feature=player_embedded

As the camera moves slowly from left to right, villagers are picking through the rubble of their homes, trying to recover anything of value. These are not Taliban fighters but ordinary people caught up in a battle they knew was coming but had no way of escaping. The army has been pounding positions here for months, using fighter planes and helicopter gunships.  It insists the targets were Taliban. Homes have been wrecked.

It's hard to find out what's going on in the conflict zone. The army has sealed off the area to the media, but the pictures confirm it has gained ground in the area. Jundola is one of the gateways into the Taliban stronghold. It's clear the area is now under Government control. The fight to gain more ground closer to the centre of Taliban operations is going to be much fiercer and inevitably more bloody.



 

[Satyagraha]

Beware Of The New Game In Swat, Tribal Belt

The Americans and the pro-Indian Afghan security officials, in addition to the Indian intelligence outposts on Afghan soil, all have exploited Pakistani weaknesses in the area and pushed their own 'fake Islamists' inside to confuse the entire situation. Now when there is peace in Swat, this TTP comes into action to discredit the implementation of Shariah in the region.

By AHMED QURAISHI

Sunday, 5 April 2009.
WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
”Everyone knows that a public flogging like this one will create a stir. The fake Taliban who also call themselves 'Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan' [TTP] did this intentionally. And the Pakistani media played along, repeating the footage endlessly for ratings.

The problem is that this appears to be a deliberate attempt by these suspicious 'Pakistani Taliban' to derail the peace deal that has robbed them from the excuse to fight their own country and people by claiming that Shariah is not implemented.
 
This attempt is another indicator in the piles of circumstantial evidence collected over the past two years that proves that while most of the foot soldiers of the 'Pakistani Taliban' are our own misguided young Pakistanis, the real handlers behind this shadowy group are people with links to the border area with Afghanistan where, according to the latest statement by Interior Adviser Rehman Malik, some 4000 foreign fighters are present.

These foreign fighters are not the remnants of the jihad of the 1980s.
These are professionally trained killers, experts in recruiting, organizing
and unleashing 'death squads', and psyop experts.

During President Musharraf's time, while he thought the Americans were his allies, CIA and Karzai's NDS and the Brits penetrated the Pakistani territory and established an elaborate network of their own operatives and spies on the ground. Tens of U.S. operatives fluent in Pashto and Uzbek and Chechen and other languages were released in the area and are still there. No one in Pakistan knows what they are exactly doing. When you see the strength of a fake Taliban like Baitullah Mehsud who has 25,000 fighters under his command, you wonder about his never-ending supply of money and modern weapons. He has never been chased by the Americans. CIA has started bombing some places under his command to convince the Pakistani military that the U.S. is not double crossing Pakistan.

The Americans and the pro-Indian Afghan security officials, in addition to the Indian intelligence outposts on Afghan soil, all have exploited Pakistani weaknesses in the area and pushed their own 'fake Islamists' inside to confuse the entire situation. Now when there is peace in Swat, this TTP comes into action to discredit the implementation of Shariah in the region. This Shariah has nothing to do with TTP. The deal was brokered and struck with genuine local known religious figures. The TTP is basically based in the tribal belt and is linked to Mehsud. Also remember that the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan, who are the real Taliban, have ceased their links with this TTP long time back. In fact many Afghan Taliban have directly and indirectly conveyed to Pakistani authorities that they are busy in Afghanistan and have nothing to do with TTP which pays lip service to fighting the Americans and focuses on killing Pakistani citizens.
 
News editors in our TV channels need to understand this. They should not have given these criminals who are hiding behind the name of 'Taliban' the satisfaction of giving a successful media blow to the peace deal. It is also interesting to note that everything the TTP and Baitullah Mehsud does - from attacking Lahore on the day Obama was to release his new Afghan policy, to trying to sabotage the Swat deal which Washington opposes, not to mention attacking Pakistani targets and kidnapping the Chinese- all of this generally ends up supporting the American designs in Pakistan.

 

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Pakistan Soldiers Killed in Capital Ambush: Officials
 
 
22/10/2009 07:29:56 AM GMT   
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Pakistan_Soldiers_Killed_in_Capital_Ambush_Offici.html
 

 
Gunmen riding a motorbike ambushed a military jeep in Pakistan's capital, unleashing a hail of bullets that killed a brigadier and his driver in a brazen daylight raid on Thursday, officials said. It was the second attack in Islamabad within 48 hours, following a suicide attack that killed five people.
   
Thursday's attack on a senior-ranking officer came less than two weeks after militants staged an audacious ambush on the nearby army headquarters in Rawalpindi claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) movement. Security forces rushed to the upmarket residential district in the capital's G11 sector as the attackers fled on their motorbike, police said.
   
"Two people on a motorbike opened fire. They fired on a military vehicle, they killed a brigadier and a driver of the vehicle," a senior army official told AFP calling the incident a "terrorist attack". A hail of gunfire from three sides left the front and back windows of the green jeep riddled with bullet holes, spraying glass into the road. "Two (soldiers) are dead, including one officer. There is one wounded, he is an army soldier," Doctor Altaf Hussein, a spokesman for Islamabad's main PIMS Hospital, told AFP.
   
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Pakistan's military and security establishment have been increasingly targeted by extremists, embarrassing institutions considered the most powerful in the country.
 
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the deadly ambush, having said Wednesday that a string of attacks made the government "even more resolute in our commitment to eradicate the evil of militancy". Tuesday's university bombing was the seventh major militant attack in just over a fortnight and the first since the military launched what officials vowed would be a knockout blow against the Taliban in South Waziristan.
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Source: AJP
 

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
21:37 Mecca time, 18:37 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091021164232208863.html
 
FOCUS  
 
Pakistan's 'fight to the finish' 
 
 By Alan Fisher
 


Outside Pakistan's main army headquarters in the garrison town of Rawalpindi stands a makeshift memorial. It is covered with flowers and messages of support for soldiers who have died, particularly those killed when armed men stormed the compound earlier this month.

On the fence, hangs a large, white banner which tells the tens of thousands who pass this spot every day: "We sacrificed our today for your tomorrow." While we stand and wait for permission to film it, a young man steps forward, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

He salutes, and slowly bends to add his tribute to those already there. He takes a few steps back, bows his head and begins to pray silently. It is a simple and heartfelt tribute.

The shrine may soon have a few more names. Those of the soldiers killed in the offensive now under way in South Waziristan.

The army's voice

In another part of the complex we are introduced to Major-General Attar Abbas. He is the army's senior spokesman, the man who articulates the message the military wants to get out to the public.  He is smart and polite.  He has had a busy few days since the security forces launched their attack against the Pakistan Taliban led by Hakimullah Mehsud.


"This is a fight to the finish. There is no option of losing", Major-General Athar Abbas, Pakistani military spokesman
 

About 30,000 soldiers are involved in the operation he believes is vital for the army and the state.

"The people want this to finish off, because they are fed up from the acts of terrorism in their cities and their towns. They want this organisation which is responsible for so much of the mayhem and so much panic and terrorism, they want the military to finish the job," he says.

People knew the offensive was coming and 80,000 of them left the area, heading for safety.  It the past few days, they have been joined by another 25,000.  The army knows how many soldiers it has lost, and makes daily claims on the number of Taliban it has killed.

So I ask just how many civilians have died after being caught in the fighting.  He is certain: "None."

Apologies

When I tell him pictures from the area show the dead in the streets of one of the towns near the frontlines in South Waziristan, he apologies: "We deeply regret if there is a civilian casualty and we are with the grieved family at that.

"I have not seen the pictures you are referring too, but if it is true, we deeply regret in case there is a casualty.

"We are fighting a remote area, away from the population centres, we are doing all we can to avoid casualties."

For days, rumours have circulated that the government made a deal with two powerful, anti-US tribal chiefs to stop them joining the battle against them.

It has been reported that Taliban factions run by Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur would allow the army to move through their lands without being attacked. This would open up new fronts in the assault. In return, the army would ease patrols and bombings in the areas controlled by the two men.

The Pakistanis have been criticised in the past for making deals like this, but Major-General Abbas, while not confirming any agreement, says it is a sensible step which could bring long-term peace to the region.

"When the state is seen to have turned out the biggest bully from the area, it has defeated that and it is seen by everyone around to have done that, then it creates vibes all over the place.

"It radiates effects all around and, therefore, what we expect is that since we have broken the centre of gravity, we have made them see this bully has been defeated, the terrorist organisation, this network has been dismantled and thereby the effect, which is natural, sees others re-adjust to this new existing reality."

The battle in South Waziristan has, in some quarters, been described as the fight for the future of Pakistan.

The general doesn't disagree: "This is a fight to the finish. There is no option of losing this. It is very important to our people that we must win this fight, we must get rid of this organisation which is responsible for over 80 per cent of the acts of terrorism and mayhem in our country."

Opinion polls suggest that the Pakistani public support the action in South Waziristan although there are loud dissenting voices.

The army knows if Operation Path of Deliverance takes too long, if civilian casualties mount or their makeshift memorial gets much bigger, that support could quickly disappear.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
 
 
 
 

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U.S. Missile Strike May Undermine Pakistan Deal

Thursday , October 22, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569041,00.html


Oct. 21: In this photo released by Pakistan, troops hold their positions at a hilltop post in Shingwari, in the troubled region South Waziristan.

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — Soldiers fought for control of the Pakistani Taliban chief's hometown as they pressed an offensive along the Afghan border, while intelligence officials said suspected U.S. missiles hit territory controlled by another insurgent, threatening to undermine deals that keep some militants out of the battle.

Early Thursday, a pair of gunmen on a motorbike killed a soldier and a high-ranking army officer in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, police said.

The attack appeared to be part of a wave of bloodshed that has killed more than 170 people in Pakistan over the past three weeks, pressuring the military to launch the offensive in South Waziristan six days ago. The offensive is considered a critical test of nuclear-armed Pakistan's campaign against Islamist extremists who also are blamed for attacks on Western forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

The military is advancing on multiple fronts in South Waziristan, a tribal region home to al-Qaida fighters and Taliban insurgents who have focused on overthrowing the U.S.-allied Pakistani government.

The fight for the town of Kotkai is symbolically important because Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud and a top deputy, Qari Hussain, hail from there. Kotkai also lies on the way to the major militant base of Sararogha.

An army statement Wednesday said forces were engaged in "intense encounters" in hills surrounding Kotkai and had secured an area to its east. Two intelligence officials said troops had secured parts of the town and destroyed Mehsud's and Hussain's homes, but army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied that late Wednesday, saying there was no significant fighting inside the town yet.

The army believes Mehsud and Hussain remain in the region directing militants' defenses.

Security forces on another front cleared Khaisura, a village dotted with heavily fortified bunkers complete with six-foot (two-meter) thick concrete walls, the army said. The statement reported three more soldiers were killed, bringing the army's death toll so far to 16, while 15 more militants were slain, bringing their death toll to 105.

It is nearly impossible to independently verify information coming from South Waziristan because the army has closed off all roads to the region. Analysts say both sides have exaggerated successes and played down losses in the past.

The suspected missile strike Wednesday targeted Spalaga, a village with at least 1,000 homes in the North Waziristan tribal region. Two intelligence officials said at least two suspected insurgents were killed. Their identities were not immediately known.

All the intelligence officials interviewed Wednesday requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. has launched scores of missiles in South and North Waziristan over the past year, including one that killed former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in August.

But the latest strike was especially sensitive.

It hit territory controlled by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a militant leader the army has coaxed into remaining neutral during the offensive against the Mehsud faction in South Waziristan. Pakistan considers Bahadur, along with militant leader Maulvi Nazir of South Waziristan, lesser priorities because they focus on battling U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, not targets inside Pakistan.

Analysts said the missile strikes, which have long angered ordinary Pakistanis and motivated militant fighters, could stir fury among Bahadur's insurgents, straining the deals with the army.

"This has the potential of messing up the calculus of the Pakistanis," said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst with Stratfor, a U.S.-based global intelligence firm. "It could broaden the scope of the war for the Pakistanis, which they're not prepared for at this time."

Pakistan routinely condemns the American missile strikes as violations of its sovereignty, warning that the civilian casualties they cause deepen anti-U.S. sentiment and complicate the fight against terrorism.

But many suspect the two countries have a deal allowing the drone-fired attacks. U.S. officials rarely discuss the covert operation, but have said in the past that it has killed several top militant leaders and is too valuable to set aside.

The attack on soldiers in Islamabad occurred early Thursday when two gunmen on a motorcycle drove near an army jeep in a residential area, firing their weapons at the troops inside, police official Zaffar Abbas said. A soldier and a brigadier — a high-ranking army officer — died, while the soldier driving the car was wounded, said Waseem Khawja, a hospital official.

Footage on private Express television channel showed the bulletholes splattered on the green jeep's windshield. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Islamist extremists frequently target security forces throughout the country.

U.S. officials hope that Pakistan will eventually broaden its fight to include all insurgent factions, and have routinely dismissed peace deals as tools that strengthen insurgent groups. But for now, some American officials have said it is logical for the Pakistani military to target its top internal enemy.

The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan against about 12,000 Taliban militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs.

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Reports of indiscriminate bombing in South Waziristan

By James Cogan

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59173&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

A Pakistani paramedic examines a Fatima Gul, a baby girl who was allegedly injured in a suspected U.S. missile strike in Spalaga village, at a local hospital in Miran Shah, the main town of the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009


WSWS, October 21, 2009

The first five days of the Pakistani offensive against Taliban and Mehsud tribe militants in the agency of South Waziristan have produced minimal military gains and a rapidly developing humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands of terrified civilians flee the fighting.

In the northern area of South Waziristan, the army has made little progress in advancing from its base at Razmak to capture the main Taliban-held town of Makeen, just five kilometres away. The Taliban have another stronghold at the town of Ladha, which is located seven kilometres south of Makeen. Both towns are being subjected to air and ground bombardment.

The roads out of the area have been sealed by army roadblocks and the entire agency has been placed under a military curfew. Phone lines have been cut off. Civilians seeking to escape are being forced to walk out of the war zone under constant threat of attack. People from Ladha spoken to by the Dawn newspaper reported that a family of 12 had been killed on the roads, most likely by an air strike.

Before the offensive began on Saturday, at least 112,000 civilians had already fled South Waziristan and registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees. UN spokeswoman Barbara Billi Bierling told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the "number of refugees could go up to 250,000 in the next few weeks as the conflict could go much longer". It is feared that tens of thousands of other civilians who have fled their homes will be trapped inside the agency, without access to adequate food or shelter.

Kasheed Khan, who managed to carry his 90-year-old mother out of Makeen, told Guardian correspondents at an aid station in the town of Dera Ismail Khan on Monday: "They were targeting civilians. I saw it myself. They were hitting vehicles and houses. They even demolished the main bus stand in Makeen." Another man said: "Not a single Taliban has been targeted. It’s only civilians who have been hit."

Fazlu Rehman, a displaced person in Dera Ismail Khan, told the Associated Press: "There is a lot of bombardment—on houses, on mosques, on madrassas [religious schools], on everything."

A doctor, who had relatives arrive from Makeen on the weekend, told the BBC: "The winters are really harsh in Waziristan and people are trying to move out before it becomes really cold. Otherwise it might be too late. My family arrived a few days ago. It was a very difficult journey as they had to travel on foot… They had to overcome bomb explosions and curfews. They are with me now and everyone is fine, although a few people suffer from flu and exhaustion. There are 33 of us now in our house… If the war against the terrorists in Waziristan continues for a long time, how are we going to keep going?"

Troops attempting to advance from the town of Jandola, in the south-east of South Waziristan, are engaged in heavy fighting with militants around the village of Kotkai, which has the symbolic importance of being the birthplace of the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud.

A military spokesman told the Dawn newspaper yesterday: "The troops have yet to enter Kotkai and it seems they [the Taliban] want to defend this stronghold at all costs." McClatchy Newspapers was told that Mehsud tribal leaders have rejected an appeal from the head of the Pakistani military, General Ashfaq Kayani, which called on them to "rise collectively" against the Taliban and collaborate with the offensive.

Anonymous military sources also told McClatchy Newspapers that seven soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a militant counter-attack to drive the army from ground it had gained around the village. The military claims that the civilian population of 6,000 has fled—most likely to preempt criticism of the indiscriminate bombing that is reducing the entire village to rubble.

Troops are reported to have by-passed Kotkai in order to take the town of Sraragha, possibly in an attempt to link up with forces advancing from Wana, in the south-west of the agency. Troops are said to be already fighting the Taliban in the Sherwangai area near the town of Kaniguram, which is just located seven kilometres to the south of Ladha.

If successful, the pincer movement from the north, south-west and south-east will push the Taliban into a small kill zone between Ladha and Makeen. The Pakistani government has stated it will not agree to any ceasefire. Its intention is to slaughter as many of the 10,000 to 15,000 militants in South Waziristan as possible and permanently occupy their former bases and training camps.

The military claims that as many as 100 Taliban have been killed so far, at the cost of about 15 Pakistani troops. There is no official estimate of civilian casualties.

A Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, contacted media outlets yesterday to criticise them for only reporting government propaganda. He claimed that at least 40 soldiers had been killed in the fighting around Kotkai alone. Beyond general details, however, little of what is claimed by either side can be verified. The Pakistani government has sealed the agency off to the media, while the barbaric kidnapping and murder of journalists by Islamists meant no reporters risked entering the militant-held areas of Waziristan before the offensive began.

Across Pakistan, the Waziristan offensive has created a climate of fear and uncertainty. Taliban leaders had warned of retaliation across Pakistan if the offensive proceeded. Over the past two weeks, as many as 200 people have been killed in attacks across Pakistan, mainly on police and army facilities.

Two suicide bombers struck yesterday at a women’s cafeteria and classroom at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, killing four students and wounding as many as 42 others, mainly young women. Some public schools and universities in Punjab province had already closed for the week in response to threats. In response to the latest bombing, provincial governments in Sindh, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province ordered public and private universities and schools to close, in some cases until next week. In Punjab, a closure has been ordered until "further notice".

There are concerns in security circles that the ethnic Punjabi-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Kashmiri militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed have joined the Taliban to wage a war against the pro-US government of President Ali Asif Zardari. Hundreds of suspected Islamic radicals have been detained for interrogation by the security forces over the past several weeks

Military operations are also being intensified in ethnic Pashtun tribal areas outside Waziristan, which the government had claimed were brought under control by previous offensives. As many as 24 Islamist militants were reportedly killed in raids in Mohmand, Bajaur and Orakzai agencies on Monday. In the Swat Valley district of North West Frontier Province, 28 alleged Taliban were arrested during house searches.





 

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FLAMES FROM AFGHANISTAN IGNITE PAKISTAN

by Eric S. Margolis

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59184&hd=&size=1&l=e


October 21, 2009

The eight-year war in Afghanistan has now set Pakistan on fire. What began in 2001 as a supposedly limited American anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has now become a spreading regional conflict.

Pakistan’s army just launched a major ground and air offensive against rebellious Pashtun tribes in wild South Waziristan which Islamabad claims is the epicenter of the growing insurgency against the US-backed government of Asif Ali Zardari.

It’s likely the rebellious Pashtun tribesmen will simply fade into the mountains, leaving the army stuck garrisoning major towns and trying to protect roads. A similar uprising in Kashmir has tied down 500,000 Indian soldiers and paramilitary police.

Washington, by contrast, is delighted. It has long been a key US goal to press Pakistan’s tough army into fighting both Pashtun rebels in Pakistan, and the Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan has long hesitated doing so, loathe to wage war on its own tribal people. The US is paying most of the bills for the Waziristan offensive.

Washington has been urging Pakistan’s governments to attack South Waziristan, not the least because these formerly autonomous tribal badlands are believed to be sheltering al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Bombings and shootings have been rocking Pakistan, a complex, unstable nation of 167 million, including a recent brazen attack on army HQ in Rawalpindi and a massive bombing of Peshawar’s exotic Khyber Bazaar.


Meanwhile, the feeble, deeply unpopular US-installed government in Islamabad faces an increasingly rancorous confrontation with the military and angry opposition groups who accuse it of betraying Pakistan’s national interests.

Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, the Obama administration and US Congress chose this explosive time to try to impose yet another layer of American control over Pakistan. This heavy-handed action comes at a time when Nobel peace prize winner Barack Obama considers sending thousands more US troops to Afghanistan.

Tragically, US policy in the Muslim world continues to be too often driven by arrogance, ignorance, and special interest groups.

The current Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, advanced with President Barack Obama’s blessing, is ham-handed dollar diplomacy at its worst. Pakistan, bankrupted by corruption, feudal landlords, and the previous Musharraf military regime, is being offered US $7.5 billion over five years – but with outrageous strings attached.

Washington denies any strings are involved. But few in South Asia believe the cash-strapped US is handing over $7.5 billion for the sake of altruism.

The US wants to build a mammoth new embassy for 1,000 personnel in Islamabad, the second largest after its Baghdad fortress-embassy. New personnel are needed, claims Washington, to monitor the $7.5 billion in aid. So US mercenaries (aka `contractors’) are being brought in to protect US interests and personnel. New US bases may also be in the cards. Most of this new aid will go right into the pockets of the pro-western ruling establishment, about 1% of the population.

Washington is also reportedly demanding some form of indirect veto power over promotions in Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence agency, ISI. This crude attempt to exert more US influence over Pakistan’s 617,000-man military has enraged the armed forces and set off alarm bells.

It’s all part of Washington’s `Afpak’ strategy to clamp tighter control over restive Pakistan and make use of its armed forces and spies in Afghanistan. Seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the key to its national defense against a much more powerful India, is the other key US objective. Many Pakistanis believe the US is bent on tearing apart Pakistan in order to seize its nuclear arsenal.

Ninety percent of Pakistanis oppose the US-led war in Afghanistan, and see Taliban and its allies as national resistance to western occupation. But, at the same time, many non-Pashtun Pakistanis strongly oppose the tribal rebellion in Northwest Frontier Province and want the army to crack down on the wildmen of the Northwest Frontier. Interestingly, the British Raj had similar problems with these warlike tribesmen a century ago.

In an alarming development, violent attacks on Pakistan’s government are coming not only from once autonomous Pashtun tribes (wrongly called `Taliban’) in Northwest Frontier Province, but, increasingly, in the biggest province, Punjab. Recently, the intemperate US Ambassador in Islamabad, in a fit of imperial hubris, actually called for air attacks on Pashtun leaders in Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province.

Washington does not even bother to ask the impotent Islamabad government’s permission to launch air attacks inside Pakistan. Pakistan’s government is only informed after the attacks, which often cause heavy civilian casualties.

Along comes the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Big Bribe as most irate Pakistanis accuse President Asif Ali Zardari’s government of being American hirelings. Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, has been dogged for decades by charges of egregious corruption. His senior aides in Pakistan and Washington are also being denounced as foreign stooges by what’s left of Pakistan’s media not yet under government control. We heard similar accusations against the US-backed governments of Iran and Egypt.

Washington seems unaware of the fury its heavy-handed, counter-productive policies have whipped up in Pakistan. Like the Bush administration in Iraq, the Obama administration keeps listening to Washington-based neoconservatives, military hawks, and `experts’ who tell it just what it wants to hear, not the hard facts.

As a result, Pakistan’s military, the nation’s premier institution, is being pushed to the point of revolt. Against the backdrop of bombings and shootings come rumors the heads of Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence may be replaced by the Zardari government. My Pakistani military and intelligence sources report growing unrest in the middle ranks against the pro-US leadership.

Pakistanis are calling for the removal of the Zardari regime’s strongman, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, a former policeman. He was even refused entry into military HQ in Rawalpindi last week.

There are rising calls for the head of Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, my old friend Hussain Haqqani, who is accused of being too close to the Americans. One suspects the adroit Haqqani might become Washington’s preferred Pakistani leader if Asif Zardari’s government crumbles or is ousted.

The possibility of a military coup against the discredited Zardari regime grows. But Pakistan is dependent on US money, and deeply fears India. Can its generals afford to break with patron Washington?

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009




 

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South Asia
Oct 23, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ23Df03.html 
 
Where Pakistan's militants go to ground

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - The massive Pakistani military operation currently underway against militants in the South Waziristan tribal area is the brainchild of General Stanley McChrystal, the top United States commander in Afghanistan. The aim is to spread the Taliban-led Afghan insurgency into Pakistan. This, it is reasoned, will make it easier to deal with the insurgency in Afghanistan with a blend of military operations and political deals.

This draws Pakistan, already mired in political and economic crises, into an ever-deepening quagmire. The country has become a playing field for operators of all shades. These include Iranian Balochi insurgents, over a dozen Pakistani militant groups linked with the Taliban or al-Qaeda, the US Central Intelligence Agency's network, security contractors associated with the American establishment, and last but not the least, agent provocateurs. Pakistan, one of the booming economies of Asia just two years ago, seriously risks becoming a failed state.

The mood in the country was further dampened on Tuesday with the inexplicable twin suicide attacks on the International Islamic University of Islamabad. At least six people were killed, including three women and the two attackers. All but one of the victims were students.

The university is one of the most credible centers of Islamic learning in the country; among its graduates is Dr Abdullah Azzam, the founder of Maktabul Khidmat - the organization set up with Osama bin Laden in the 1980s to provide money and recruit fighters around the world - and a mentor of Bin Laden.

The bombers would have had to pass through at least four checkpoints to reach the university. What has shocked people is that they did not attack security personal along the way, or choose any number of other establishment targets.

There is now a perception in the country of a reign of terror, worse even than during the three times since independence in 1947 that Pakistan was at war with India.

On Thursday, gunmen killed a soldier and a high-ranking officer in Islamabad, and in a separate attack, a district court in the capital was targeted. More than 170 people have been killed over the past three weeks in terror attacks.

Prior to the attack on the university, many schools and educational institutes were closed over security fears in the wake of the South Waziristan operation. These were mostly in North-West Frontier Province, Islamabad and its twin city, Rawalpindi. Following the attack, all the country's educational facilities have now been closed. The chief minister of Punjab province, Shehbaz Sharif, said it was impossible to provide security for pupils against terrorists.

The authorities have announced the arrest of scores of militants, especially from the southern port city of Karachi, but no one knows who is in charge of security. Is it American contractors in connivance with provincial home departments and the police? Is it the military apparatus? There is speculation that the military is split on the question of foreign intervention in the country.

Rumors abound of US fighter-bombers from the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier, bombing militant hideouts in South Waziristan.

There have been media reports that officials of the Sihala Police Training College near Rawalpindi have been barred by US security officials from going to the facility as it is being used to store explosives.

The reports claim that the commander of the college, Nisar Khan Durrani, in a letter to the inspector general of police in Punjab, expressed concern over the activities of US security officials at the institute and at the alleged storage of high explosives. The college is situated about 20 kilometers from Pakistan's nuclear Kahota Research Laboratory.

A US Embassy statement reacted angrily to the reports. "The US Embassy was disappointed by a media report today that attributed nefarious purposes to the Sihala law-enforcement training facility. The report was factually incorrect and mischievous. The 512 Pakistani police officials who have trained at Sihala could easily set the record straight."

The statement continued: "Since 2003, the United States has provided training in a variety of counter-terrorism-related skills to Federal and Provincial police officials at the Punjab Police College in Sihala. The specific courses of training are identified in complete cooperation with the relevant authorities of the Government of Pakistan who approve all of the course selections. The students are selected for participation in the courses by federal and provincial law-enforcement authorities. The use of the Sihala training facility itself was proposed by the Pakistan government. The existence of the facility is transparent. There is no 'monitoring' equipment located at the facility and all materiel present at the facility is for the exclusive use of the law-enforcement personnel receiving training."

Nevertheless, a clandestine and growing American intervention in Pakistan is beyond doubt, and Asia Times Online contacts in New York close to the American establishment squarely point to McChrystal as the sole architect of this.

An article by Pakistani analyst, Dr Farrukh Saleem, published in The News International on July 12, 2009, reflects on McChrystal's AfPak vision and US counter-insurgency measures in Pakistan.
McChrystal has served as director, joint staff and also as commander, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Major-General McChrystal ran Baghdad's Camp Nama, the "Nasty Ass Military Area", where prisoners were tortured to spill out beans on Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. JSOC forces were credited for capturing Saddam Hussein and McChrystal was later credited for the death of al-Zarqawi. The top US commander in Afghanistan was commissioned in the US army in 1976 and most of what McChrystal has done over the past 33 years remains classified. Newsweek called the JSOC as "the most secretive force in the US military". And, Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist of The New Yorker, told Gulf News that [former US vice president] Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan. In an interview with Gulf News (May 12) Hersh said that there is a special unit called the JSOC that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities.
Against this background, it can be argued that the US will concentrate on Pakistan in its search for Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Bin Laden and other top Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders.

However, the US intervention in Pakistan is already having unintended consequences. Either through American operations or as a result of operations taken under immense American pressure, dozens of militant groups linked with the Taliban who were previously well tracked by Pakistani security agencies are now on the loose.

The Pakistani Taliban are not the only problem. The insurgency in Balochistan province and general lawlessness, especially in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, are no less a threat than the Taliban.

North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the Taliban have a strong foothold, are the main focus of the security situation in the country. Yet, almost 85% of southwestern Balochistan is beyond the control of the state.

There is also a large Balochi community in Lyari in Karachi, the country's biggest city and its financial and industrial capital. Lyari is the stronghold of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, which uses underworld connections there to intimidate opposition politicians.

Beyond criminals, the area is a haven for insurgents, including those from al-Qaeda, the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi (an anti-Shi'ite group linked to al-Qaeda), the Taliban and, importantly, Iranian Baloch insurgents from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) and other Iranian Baloch organizations.

Before his capture in Rawalpindi in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Balochi al-Qaeda operator charged with masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, alternated between two residences - one in the Kalakot area of Lyari because of his links with the Ramzi Baloch tribe, and the other in Ibrahim Hyderi, another Balochi slum in Karachi. He was arrested only when he left these places for operational reasons and moved to Rawalpindi.

The same Kalakot area is still the home of Balochi insurgent Dost Mohammad, an underground leader of the MEK, now working in coordination with the Americans against Iranian interests in the region.

The alliance of the Iranian Jundallah - responsible for the suicide attack on top Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders on Sunday - and the Pakistani anti-Shi'ite Laskhar-e-Jhangvi's Balochi members was also set up in Lyari. Members of the Laskhar have carried out several high-profile murders of Shi'ites in Balochistan and then taken refuge among the more than 600,000 residents of Lyari.

The MEK also became a part of this strange alliance, illustrating how various interests, which include anti-revolution forces, Baloch insurgents, Islamists and American proxies, mindfully or unmindfully, have made an alliance against the Iranian regime. Al-Qaeda later entered into this alliance to exploit Jundallah for its own purposes.

Abdul Malik Rigi, the Iranian Balochi leader of Jundallah, lived in Lyari. He was known as a Baloch nationalist and as a drug smuggler. He moved around in off-road vehicles and kept a gang of 20 to 25 youths around him at all times. Last year, he was in Mehmoodabad, a slum in Karachi close to the upscale Defense Housing Authority. Here he had a quarrel with another group and gunshots were exchanged in which he was injured.

A former gang member of Rigi told Asia Times Online that initially he was in the Baloch Liberation Organization (BLO) and in those days he moved freely from his Lyari base to Turkey, carrying heroin. He was never caught due to deep penetration within the corrupt security forces of both Pakistan and Iran, who turned a blind eye to the drug smugglers in return of money.

A few years ago, Rigi changed after interaction with the banned Pakistani outfit, Sepah-e-Sahaba, in Lyari. His anti-Iranian stance as a Balochi shifted to one of being anti-Shi'ite. At a later stage, he joined hands with Sepah's breakaway faction, the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, the anti-Shi'ite and al-Qaeda-linked militant organization.

Through this connection, Rigi went to the Afghan province of Zabul, but the Taliban refused him entry into their ranks and due to his suspicious background of having links with US intelligence, he was driven out of Afghanistan.

This year, through his Laskhar connection, he was introduced to al-Qaeda, which was in desperate need for someone to help them in Iran. Al-Qaeda's main interest was to use Iran as a passageway. Their previous good ties with Iran were badly disturbed due to the massacre of Shi'ites in Iraq.

Rigi assured al-Qaeda of his help and in return al-Qaeda agreed to support his initiative in Iran against the Iranian regime. Where Rigi operates at present is a big question. All that is known is that he has had three different sanctuaries in the recent past: Lyari in Karachi, the coastal areas of Pakistani Balochistan and in Iranian Balochistan.

In many ways, Lyari is a microcosm of the world of militancy. Neither the Americans nor the Pakistan has the wherewithal to block the militants' arteries; thanks to Pakistan's socio-political infrastructure, the militants have made space for themselves with "natural arrangements" all over the country. From these areas they can strike anywhere, at any time, in the country or in the region. General McChrystal has a real fight ahead by the taking his battle to Pakistan.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

 
 
 

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South Asia
Oct 23, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ23Df02.html
 
Islamabad dismayed by 'dithering' US

By Zahid U Kramet

LAHORE - As White House officials continue to debate the call of the United States' military chief in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for an additional force of 40,000 to win the war against Taliban insurgents in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, the overall impression in Pakistan is that rather than any decisive victory, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are now looking for a face-saving exit to leave Pakistan to face the brunt of the fallout - once again.

Unsurprisingly then, Pakistan has been guarded about launching committed strikes against the Taliban holing up in the porous Af-Pak border belts in the past. And, while it has embarked on a 30,000-strong military mission to crush the insurgency in its South Waziristan tribal area following attacks on its security
apparatus in Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad by suspected Taliban militants, reservations remain.

On these, Dan Twining pertinently asked last month in an encompassing Foreign Policy article [1], "Why should the Pakistani military take on the militant groups that regularly launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan when the NATO targets of those attacks will soon slink away?" This is the thought that holds the public's attention in Afghanistan, and particularly in Pakistan.

Twining pleads the case of the West staying the course in Afghanistan, if primarily for the reason of "shaping Pakistan's future" when he argues, "Proponents of drawing down in Afghanistan on the grounds that Pakistan is the more strategic prize have it only half right: if Pakistan is the strategic prize, it should be unthinkable not to press for victory in Afghanistan given the spillover effects of a Western defeat there."

Henry Kissinger, in his Newsweek column "Deployments and diplomacy for Afghanistan" [2], agrees in principle to a troop ramp, but empathizes with US President Barack Obama's dilemma, where he could be damned for not acceding to McChrystal's request for more troops, and damned if he accepts the US Afghanistan commander's surge request should it fail to deliver on the count of the "classic anti-insurrection strategy: to build a central government".

Identifying the Taliban and al-Qaeda as a single entity, the feted former US secretary of state supports a troop surge, after reminding that empowering the central government in Kabul with overriding authority had failed in the past due to Afghanistan's "multi-ethnic" tribal composition. But Kissinger also supports incumbent US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's proposal of bringing Afghanistan's "neighbors, or near neighbors - Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Iran" - on board under a new NATO regional umbrella to confront "international terrorism".

Selig S Harrison in his Boston Globe article titled "Overcoming our failed strategy in Afghanistan" [3] shares this view, but with a notable difference. Harrison opts for a dominant Indian position in Kabul and singles out Pakistan's security agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), as culpable for India's fear of encirclement "by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan", to bring the proposal under the shadow of clouds.

Here's the other rub: it's NATO's presence that is resented, not just by the fundamentalist al-Qaeda-Taliban groupings, but arguably by Russia and China, which have their own anti-insurgency alliance in the the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They are hardly likely to consign this alignment to the backburner and opt for a new understanding under NATO oversight in the region - especially when they see the America's allies weak in their resolve to combat the insurgency.

Iran, too, is a closed chapter. After Sunday's bombing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and tribal chiefs meeting in the province of Sistan-Balochistan, the Guards chief, General Mohammad Jafri, is reported to have said of Abdul Malik Rigi (the head of the Jundallah group claiming responsibility for the attack), "Rigi has direct contact with the American and British intelligence services." General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Guards' ground forces, was equally reprimanding in saying, "The terrorists were trained in a neighboring country [Pakistan] by the Americans and the British."

With Russia, China and Iran thus practically out of the picture, the US is left with no option but to fall back on a Pakistan army already tackling the insurgency on its side of the border. But Pakistan has requested General David Petraeus, commander US Central Command, to check infiltration into Pakistan, while its government has asked visiting Senator John Kerry, on a visit Islamabad to clear the air on the Kerry-Lugar grant, to expedite payment of the Coalition Support Fund for the "war on terror" to be effectively pursued.

Meantime, Pakistan has come under siege with the recent "Godless, kill in God's name" attack on Islamabad's International Islamic University, where eight were killed, three of them young women, and 29 wounded. With the public dazed by this happening and wondering whether this was an expression of fundamentalist antipathy toward co-education across the board, or whether this was tooled by out-of-state-actors suspected by many as the cause of the unrest, the government had no choice but to order the closure of all schools and colleges across the country.

Almost unanimous in their condemnation of the US intervention in Afghanistan for the rise of the Taliban at the outset, Pakistan's analysts questioned the worth of a US troop surge. Former Pakistan ambassador to the US and Britain, Dr Maleeha Lodhi, for one, warned a US Senate Committee that a troop escalation in Afghanistan would have a negative effects on Pakistan, but summarily dismissed "a cut and run" policy. She recommended instead "a comprehensive strategy with political, economic and military components" aimed at a political solution.

Around the same time, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal quoted Pakistan's Foreign Minister [4], Shah Mehmood Quereshi, saying in response to a question on a US pullout from Afghanistan, "This will be disastrous. You will lose credibility. If you go in, why are you going out without getting the job done? Why did you spend so many billion dollars and lose so many lives? Why did we ally with you?" And regarding the consequences, he predicted "more suicide bombings" with an emboldened Taliban, no longer pressed by coalition forces, knocking at Islamabad's doors.

This view pervades Pakistan's government circles and when such sages as the Brookings Institute's Bruce Riedel, interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations, present the perspective of an Obama perplexed over "How many troops? For what purpose? Where will they be deployed? What are the rules of engagement?" it does nothing to restore the confidence of a besieged regional ally.

In short, the fine line between "rethinking" and "dithering" to which Riedel refers, is fast fading and Obama needs to strategize on his Afghan policy now if he want to make an impact.

Notes
1. The stakes in Afghanistan go well beyond Afghanistan by Dan Twining was published in Foreign Policy on September 30, 2009.
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/30/the_stakes_of_afghanistan_go_well_beyond_afghanistan

2. Deployments and diplomacy for Afghanistan by Henry Kissinger was published in Newsweek on October
3, 2009.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216704

3. Overcoming our failed strategy in Afghanistan by Selig S Harrison was published in the Boston Globe on October 12, 2009.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/12/overcoming_our_failed_strategy_in_afghanistan/

4. US Credibility and Pakistan was published by the Wall Street Journal on October 1, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574443352072071822.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion


Zahid U Kramet, a Lahore-based political analyst specializing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, is the founder of the research and analysis website the Asia Despatch.

 
 
 

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Did Blackwater attack Islamic University ?    Students think so !


by Moin Ansari
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59228&hd=&size=1&l=e



Rupee News

ISLAMABAD – A large number of students from different universities of the Capital, on Wednesday, took to the streets against the brutal killing of their colleagues in terrorists’ twin blasts on International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI) on Tuesday.

They were of the view that the main purpose to target the IIUI was to isolate Pakistan internationally, as more then 56 countries’ students are enrolled in the IIUI, adding that their majority was enrolled in the Faculty of Sharia and Law which was targeted, thereby exposing the intentions of the culprits.

Hassan Javed, a student at Sharia and Law Faculty at IIUI, said that misleading concept of Interior Minister Rehman Malik to announce 'Special Student Task Force’ to counter the terrorists turned the peaceful environment of the campuses into a battlefield. He lamented that in the presence of well-equipped law enforcement agencies there was no need to involve the students into security related issues. "Furious response of the IIUI students at the arrival of Rehman Malik showed the prevailing hatred against the rulers," he said.
Asim, a student at IIUI, opined that there was a foreign hand behind the recent terrorist attacks in Iran to create a rift between Iran and Pakistan. He claimed that more than 20 students of the University were martyred in the twin blasts. He demanded of the government to separate itself from the US and its so called war against terrorism.

The National Students Federation (NSF) held a protest demonstration at National Press Club Islamabad to condemn the attack on Islamic International University and to express solidarity with the affected students. NSF members were holding placards and chanted slogans against the terrorists.

Nazish Zahoor said that under no circumstances could the killing of students at IIUI be justified. He said that only a long-term change in the policies of the state would be able to counter the trend of young people being drawn to extremist ideologies.




 

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Friday, October 23, 2009
13:06 Mecca time, 10:06 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/200910237243413748.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Blasts hit Pakistani cities  
 

 
A large car blomb has struck the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to witnesses - the second attack nationwide on Friday morning.



Police said that about 10 people were wounded in Friday's bombing which occurred in a restaurant car park in the upmarket area of Hayatabad in Peshawar.

"It is a car bomb. There are 10 people wounded and the blast took place in a parking area of a restaurant in Hayatabad," Fazal-e-Amin, a police official at the scene of the attack, said.

Waseem Shah, a journalist with Pakistan's Dawn TV, told Al Jazeera: "The occupants of the car parked the car in a small restaurant, also housing a wedding hall, snooker club and video club where youngsters visit."

Shah said that there are no government or military links to the area.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, in Islamabad, said: "This neighbourhood is supposed to be a safe neighbourhood. But it has been rocked by kidnappings for ransom over the past year.

"We've heard a local government official condemn the attack, saying in very clear terms that this was an attack against innocent civilians. When you attack restaurant parking lots you are attacking the population of Pakistan.

"The Taliban for their part have said that they only attack security apparatus."

The explosion occurred barely hours after a suicide bomb blast left at least seven people dead and nine others wounded at a military base near the country's capital.

The attack in Islamabad occurred close to the Kamra aeronautical facility, about 80km west of the city.

Surge in violence

The assailant was reportedly riding a bicycle and detonated the bomb when stopped at a security checkpoint on the access road to the complex, police said.

 
Fakhar Sultan, the district police chief, said two air force personnel were among the dead.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The complex at Kamra or its workers have been targeted at least once before.

In December 2007, a suicide car bomber struck near a bus carrying children of air force employees, wounding five of them.

The Kamra and Peshawar blasts follow a gun attack on a military vehicle on Thursday in Islamabad which killed a brigadier and his driver.

Two men had approached the vehicle on a motorbike and sprayed bullets at it before fleeing.

Millions of students have been kept at home this week as Pakistan shut all schools and colleges after a suicide attack on Tuesday at a university.

On October 10, fighters staged an ambush on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. It was later claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban in  Pakistan.

Almost three weeks of attacks by the Pakistani Taliban have left about 170 people dead.

Security meeting

The surge in violence comes as the military's offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan enters its seventh day.

Exclusive report: Thousands flee South Waziristan as the conflict escalates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adSUG3XX-ns&feature=player_embedded
 
Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, in Islamabad, said: "Everywhere, as far as the Taliban is concerned, is a legitimate target if it involves the security forces, the police and the army.

"Everyone is wary of what will happen next and because of this the prime minister [Yusuf Raza Gilani] has summoned a special security meeting in Islamabad which will take place today.

"He has summoned senior advisers and politicians, including representatives from the provinces and also people who can feed into the process, to see how they can try to cope with the problems that they are facing."

Gilani condemned the Kamra attack and vowed that the government would not waver in its resolve to "root out terrorism".

"They  knew that when the South Waziristan offensive started that there was always the possibility of a backlash and that's what we are seeing," our correspondent said, referring to the Pakistani authorities.

"[The government] is aware that they have to do something, because people are scared. You can see it on the streets, in the fact that there is not as much traffic around as usual, that the markets are quieter, cinemas across the country are reporting that attendances are down.

"The army said earlier this week that their intention was to target what they described as the biggest bully in the neighbourhood.

"They believe that if they can confront and defeat the Taliban in South Waziristan, then other groups around the country will adapt to the new realities.

"It's a risky strategy. If it fails, it allows others to push on with their agenda and carry out attacks."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

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U.S. Drones Aiding Pakistani Military Offensive

Pakistan's acceptance of U.S. military help for its push into South Waziristan marks a first and shows how the Obama administration intends to put pressure on terrorists operating in the region

FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/23/aiding-pakistan-offensive/
Friday, October 23, 2009


The U.S. is sharing data obtained from CIA-operated Predator drones with Pakistan in its offensive against militants operating in South Waziristan. (AP)


In a significant shift, the U.S. military is assisting the Pakistani army in its offensive on militants in South Waziristan by providing valuable surveillance video and intelligence gleaned from CIA-operated unmanned aircraft, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times.

The assistance -- the first time Islamabad has accepted such help -- includes images from armed Predator drones gathering intelligence for the sold purpose of aiding the Pakistani offensive, Defense officials told the newspaper.

Providing the information, while helpful to the Pakistanis, also shows how the Obama administration intends to put pressure on terrorists operating in the region as the White House overhauls its strategy for Afghanistan, officials said.

Recent attacks on Pakistan have rattled the government, likely swaying officials to accept American help in striking the militant stronghold.

On Friday, a homicide bomber struck a checkpoint near a major air force complex in the northwest, killing seven people, the latest in a surge of militant attacks this month.

The attacks have killed more than 170 people and showed the gathering strength of an insurgency that has spread out from border areas and is now firmly allied with other militant groups elsewhere in the nuclear-armed country.

"We are coordinating with the Pakistanis," the Times quoted an unnamed senior U.S. military official as saying. "And we do provide Predator support when requested."

American assistance is considered controversial in Pakistan, which wants to avoid appearing dependent on the U.S. government or military. However, a Pakistani military official confirmed to the Times that the U.S. was helping provide a "composite picture" of the enemy.

In the last 18 months, U.S. drone missile strikes have killed at least 13 senior Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal region.

"The Pakistanis are getting more and more serious about the militant threat," the source told the newspaper. "You are going to see more sharing as trust develops and assurance develops that they are using the information for effective operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban."

Pakistan, which began its current offensive in South Waziristan seven days ago, is under intense pressure to eliminate Islamist militant groups sheltering in its northwest that also attack U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The military has battled them in various districts, losing hundreds of soldiers, but questions remain about its overall strategic commitment to the fight.

The army has previously moved into South Waziristan three times since 2004. Each time it has suffered high casualties and signed peace deals that left insurgents with effective control of the region. Western officials say Al Qaeda now uses it and neighboring North Waziristan as an operations and training base.

Read more from The Los Angeles Times :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-pakistan23-2009oct23,0,660132.story

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Pakistan fighting sparks exodus

Aljazeera.net

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59245&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 22, 2009
Watch :

Exclusive report: Thousands have fled the combat zone


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zexlrXFjKyg&feature=player_embedded


Tens of thousands of Pakistanis have been forced to leave their homes in South Waziristan as the Pakistani military enagages in fighting with the Taliban.

Many people have escaped to neighbouring Dera Ismael Khan, the largest city outside the conflict zone, while about 38,000 ground and air troops are attempting to eliminate about 10,000 Taliban fighters in the region.

The exodus from the region has intensified since the ground offensive's launch six days ago, and more than 100,000 people are said to have been displaced so far.

More than 150,000 civilians had already left Pakistan's South Waziristan in recent months, as the Pakistani military prepared to launch its offensive in the remote, rugged region along the border with Afghanistan.

The authorities say up to 200,000 people may flee in the coming weeks, but the government does not expect to have to house them in camps, because most have relatives in the region.

Humanitarian challenge

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that humanitarian access to people in need remained the key challenge for agencies, given the volatile security environment in the displacement areas.
 
 
The UNHCR also reports that in addition to aid given to individual families, assistance will need to be extended to hospitals, schools and other public facilities that may come under strain with large influxes of people.

Arianne Rummery, a spokeswoman for UNHCR told Al Jazeera that, at present, there are about 125,000 refugees to whom gaining access was a key challenge.

"Even the areas that they are going to in Dir Khan and Tank districts, lower down in the North-West Frontier Province, are very volatile from a security point of view.


in pictures
Pakistan's Jalozai refugee camp  :
http://english.aljazeera.net/Services/Gallery/Default.aspx?GalleryID=20091022165411599735
 
"People are mainly being hosted by their extended-kin networks in their host communities. The tribal elders are able to use their networks to ensure that people have somebody to stay with.
"So it is not a critical situation where people don't have shelter at the moment. But obviously as the situation goes on these communities will come under more strain."

Aid centre beatings

Earlier on Thursday, baton-wielding police beat back refugees crowding an aid distribution centre run by Pakistani authorities in Paharpur town, about 45km outside Dera Ismail Khan.

"We came here for bread, but the police beat us up," said Rahmatullah Mehsud - one of the injured new arrivals in the town. "There the Taliban were messing with things and the army was showering bombs. Here we have to bear the clubs."

But Javed Shaikh, an aid administrator, said there was plenty of food, but refugees were "impatient".

"There are some policemen deployed who are fed up with the indiscipline of the people," Shaikh said.

Pakistan's offensive is considered a critical test against the Taliban, blamed for attacks inside the country and on Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

More than 170 people across the country have been killed over the past three weeks in a wave of attacks blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.

In the latest attack, Pakistan's police said unknown assailants killed an army brigadier and his driver on Thursday after firing on their military vehicle in the capital, Islamabad.

Qamar Ahmed, an official at the police emergency department, said witnesses saw two men on a motorcycle drive up to Brigadier Moin Haider's vehicle and unleash a hail of bullets at point blank range.

An army statement on Thursday reported two soldiers killed in the South Waziristan operation, bringing the army's death toll to 18, while 24 Taliban fighters were killed on Thursday, bringing to 129 fighters, their death toll during the offensive.



 

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Refugees don't think Pakistan's anti-Taliban efforts are serious

By Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers Saeed Shah, Mcclatchy Newspapers
Thu Oct 22, 6:16 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20091022/wl_mcclatchy/3339415
 
DERA ISMAIL KHAN , Pakistan -- The Pakistani army's latest offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan , probably the country's most significant anti-terror operation since 2001, so far has failed to convince residents of the frontier area that the state is finally determined to wipe out the Islamic extremists.

Tribesmen from the Mehsud clan who are flooding out to escape the fighting in the lawless region that borders Afghanistan , guardedly tell of dreadful subjugation by Taliban extremists and their al Qaida allies, who control the area.

The evacuees also remain unconvinced that the army has turned against militants. None of the roughly dozen people interviewed by McClatchy reported seeing any ground troops in the war zone.

Even the anti- Taliban militia, made up of the few Mehsuds willing to stand up to the extremists, aren't sure whether they can have faith in the army, even though their militia is quietly supported by the state.

"The government has used the people like toilet paper, used them and thrown them away," thundered the spiritual leader and founder of the anti-Taliban Mehsud militia, Maulvi Sher Mohammad, in an interview.

The Mehsud tribesmen have been forced to abandon their homes for the third or fourth time since 2004 to escape periodic army operations against the Taliban , only to see the authorities cut peace deals and to discover upon their return that their area was under even tighter extremist control. The Pakistani Taliban is based in the part of South Waziristan that's occupied by the Mehsuds.

A deep, corrosive cynicism persists even though Pakistan carried out a successful operation earlier this year that largely eliminated the Taliban from the Swat valley. The early indications of the South Waziristan ground offensive, launched on Oct. 17 , are that it's more serious than anything the army has undertaken in the past.

Nevertheless, interviews suggest that Pakistan remains a long way from winning the hearts and minds of the people of South Waziristan , although doing so is essential to clearing this rugged area of Islamic extremists, Afghan insurgents and al Qaida commanders, who've all made it their sanctuary.

Many of the refugees from South Waziristan also claim that the homes of ordinary people are being bombed and that civilians are dying in an intense and indiscriminate aerial bombardment, further eroding their support for the operation.

Mohammad, a burly cleric who lives behind high compound walls in the town of Dera Ismail Khan on the edge of South Waziristan , guarded by gun-toting young men, said that he wouldn't ask his fellow tribesmen to rise up yet.

The army is hoping that a traditional militia from the tribe, known as a lashkar, will fight alongside it. Mohammad's outfit, known as the " Abdullah Group " after former Guantanamo Bay prison camp inmate Abdullah Mehsud, is the state's best hope.

"We cannot fight alongside the army because my people do not yet know whether the army and the Taliban are friends or enemies," said Mohammad. "When we see the army crush them (the Taliban ), then we'll believe."

Three times in the past, the army has agreed to a ceasefire and peace terms with the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan . Each time, the Taliban took bloody revenge on those who'd sided with the state.

Mehsuds remember bitterly how in 2005, following such a deal, a Pakistani army general literally embraced the then- Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, and called him "a soldier of peace." A U.S. missile strike killed the militant leader in August.

The army complains that it was never before given a solid political mandate to rout the Taliban until this year, and that Pakistani public opinion previously didn't favor fighting a movement that claimed it was acting in the name of Islam.

Critics allege that the military, especially its Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, saw strategic benefit in having Taliban guard Pakistan's northwestern border.

Few of the South Waziristan refugees interviewed by McClatchy were willing to candidly speak about the Taliban , out of fear that they'll have to go back to face the militants.

"It is 100 percent wrong to say that the Mehsud are in favor of the Taliban ," said a teacher, who asked for his name not to be used and who left his home in the Ladha area of South Waziristan . "We only 'support' the Taliban when we're there (in South Waziristan ) to save our lives and our property."

The leadership and foot soldiers of the Taliban are dominated by the Mehsud tribe, whose home territory occupies around half of South Waziristan . The army offensive is confined to that part of South Waziristan occupied by the Mehsud tribe Under Baitullah, the traditional tribal leaders of the Mehsuds were systematically butchered or driven out of South Waziristan , removing a rival source of authority.

Baitullah also turned the Pakistani Taliban from a group that fought "infidel" international forces in Afghanistan to a movement at war with its own Muslim homeland, a twist of jihadist logic that came straight from al Qaida .

Many Mehsuds said they'd support an operation if they thought it was real. Instead, some of them said that the country's army acts intermittently against the Taliban just to keep U.S. aid flowing.

"This fight (in South Waziristan ) is for American dollars. The government always has some deal with the Taliban . It is ordinary people who suffer," said student Zahidullah Mehsud, who thought he was around 19 years old, as he lined up at a registration center for those displaced by the operation. "This is all an ISI game."

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)

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Drone Assassinations Are Only Making Things Worse


by Jacob G. Hornberger
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-22.asp

Jane Mayer, author of the great book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, was interviewed yesterday on NPR on the CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan. She discussed the morality and legality of those attacks as well as their adverse consequences.

Last summer CIA Director Leon Pinetta announced cancellation of an assassination program that the CIA was going to implement.

Yet, how are these drone attacks in Pakistan any different from an assassination? Suppose, for example, a CIA assassin sneaks into Pakistan, spots a suspected terrorist sunbathing on the top of a house, and blows up the home, killing the suspect and everyone in his family.

That’s the type of assassination that Pinetta presumably put a stop to.

Assume, however, that a CIA official in Northern Virginia uses his computer to direct a drone over the house, spots the suspected terrorist, and drops a bomb on the house, killing the suspect and everyone else in the house.

Apparently, that’s considered okay.

What’s the difference?

The CIA justifies these attacks on the old Bush rationale that terrorism is an act of war, not a criminal offense, and that the war on terrorism is a real war, just like World War II or Vietnam.

Yet, that’s just plain false, which is repeatedly confirmed by criminal prosecutions for the federal crime of terrorism that are regularly carried out in federal district court. Examples include the federal prosecutions of Jose Padilla, Zacharias Moussaoui, and Ali al-Marri. Would federal judges be presiding over such trials if terrorism wasn’t a federal criminal offense as defined by the U.S. Code? Of course not. They would have been dismissing the criminal indictments at the inception of the proceedings.

Thus, the notion that terrorism is an act of war is bogus, as is the notion that a “war on terrorism” is a real war.

Let’s not forget also that there is no constitutionally required congressional declaration of war against Pakistan and, yet, amazingly and virtually without objection, the U.S. government is now killing people in that country with impunity.

Even worse, the drone attacks are killing family members, friends, and relatives of the suspects who are targeted for death. As New York Times columnist David Rohde, who was held captive in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Taliban has been pointing out in a series on articles about his captivity, the drone attacks are producing enormously high levels of anger and rage against the United States.

Another justification for the drone attacks in Pakistan is that that country is serving as a sanctuary for insurgents in Afghanistan, who are opposing the 8-year occupation of that country by the U.S. government (which invaded without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war).

U.S. officials says they have to continue occupying Afghanistan for the next several years, maybe decades, in order to prevent the Taliban from regaining power. The notion is that the Taliban would provide a sanctuary for al-Qaeda.

But that’s a ludicrous rationale because it’s obvious that the occupation and, now, the expansion of killing into Pakistan are producing the very thing that the U.S. government fears most — terrorists.

Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, terrorists don’t need a Taliban sanctuary in Afghanistan to plan attacks against the United States. All they need is a hotel room or a house somewhere. So, the principal rationale for continuing to occupy Afghanistan is ridiculous, especially given that the occupation is churning out new terrorists at an ever-increasing rate.

Thus, why wouldn’t the U.S. be better off simply exiting Afghanistan and bringing the troops home? After all, they’ve had a free hand to kill terrorists to their heart’s content for more than 8 years, and the situation is worse than ever. If they exited the country and came home, at least they would no longer be serving as a permanent terrorist-producing machine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is preparing to once again raise the debt ceiling, which will permit the U.S. government to stack more debt onto the existing mountain of U.S. debt. Coincidentally, the New York Times business section carried an article yesterday showing the enormous damage that ever-increasing debt owed by the Japanese government is doing to Japan. Wouldn’t the same principles apply here?

Too bad President Obama is failing so dismally with his much-vaunted campaign promise of change. A good place to have begun would have been to bring the troops home from both Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only would that have made America safer but also more economically secure.
 

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. .

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150,000 people await assistance in South Waziristsn: Naimatullah


The News International

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59267&hd=&size=1&l=e

The News, October 23, 2009


KARACHI: President Al-Khidmat Foundation Naimatullah Khan has demanded of the government to end the military operation in tribal areas as it is further deteriorating the situation.

In a statement issued here on Friday, he said conditions in Pakistan are same as of Gaza. ''At least 0.15 million people have lost their homes in South Waziristan besides schools, seminaries, mosques and infrastructure conditions completely destroyed.

He said shelter camps are in fragile condition, the displaced people have to face tough cold weather while hundreds of thousands children are out of school as the schools are destroyed.

He demanded of the government to provide medical facilities, shelter camps and other facilities to affectees. He also appealed to media and people of Pakistan to come forth and assist the deprived people of tribal areas.





 

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Saturday, October 24, 2009
00:55 Mecca time, 21:55 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091023203625769142.html
   
Focus  
 
Fear grips Pakistan after attacks  
 
By Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher in Islamabad
 
http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images//2009/10/23/2009102321559685436_20.jpg
 There have been three attacks around the capital, Islamabad, in recent days [AFP]

It's a clear sign of the worry and tension that grips Pakistan.

In the upscale F6/3 sector in the heart of the capital Islamabad, the Kohsar market would normally be packed. But the shops are empty, the coffee shops which normally would be packed, have just a handful of customers, the streets are deserted.

Suddenly a young boy races out of the mosque. His face is flushed and he's breathing heavily with worry. He rushes his words, telling us he saw a man leave a package and then run out.

People hang around warily near the entrance. A police officer appears and goes inside. It's clear the boy - who is nor more than 13 or 14 years old - is shaken.

It's a false alarm and everyone gives a nervous laugh and shake their heads, but all are quietly grateful for the youngster's vigilance.

Prime target

We walk around the market, looking at the stalls, talking to the shop owners.

This is a place popular with foreigners and dignitaries who live nearby. That would make it a prime target for attack. And that's why the streets are so empty.

With three attacks in and around the capital over the past few days, you know that everyone is wondering where next.

One trader tells us: "I used to sell 20 cartons of water a day – now I have trouble selling that in a week".

Suresh Kumar has run his store here for four years. It sells a wide range of goods, from pashminas to boots. It used to provide a good living for him, his son and their one employee.

Business slow

But security worries have put him on the brink of closure.


"Because of this terrorism, all these explosions all over the country, people are scared and don't come to the markets ..." , Suresh Kumar, shop owner
 
"Because of this terrorism, all these explosions all over the country, people are scared and don't come to the markets so business is very slow," he says.

"If it continues in this way for much longer we'll have to shut down our store.

"Before the attacks foreigners were our main clients. My business has slowed down. What am I talking about? I have no business."

It's not just the markets and it's not just Islamabad.

Across the country, people are reporting quieter roads, cinemas almost empty, and businesses desperate for customers. People are staying at home. No one wants to take a chance. No one wants to be the next target or the next victim.

Potential threats

We stop a couple of men and ask them what they think.

One man works as a watchman. He says he can't relax. Every car is a potential threat, every new face to be regarded with suspicion.

"The problem is that we all look the same, we're all Muslims so we can't tell who is a traitor and who is good," he says.

Just a few steps away – a slightly younger man, with a salt and pepper beard, listens to what has been said. He seems more relaxed, more composed. His message though is very much the same.

"Every person is afraid. Every person is worried that they may die at any given moment. No one is safe anywhere. Every single person is afraid for themselves," he says.

The Pakistani government knew when it launched its offensive in South Waziristan there would be a backlash. Now it has to work out how to deal with it.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
 
 
 
 

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Saturday, October 24, 2009
14:20 Mecca time, 11:20 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/200910248183370810.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan says 'Taliban town seized'  
 

Attacks in major cities have followed the Pakistani military's offensive against the Taliban [AFP]
 

 
The Pakistani military says it has captured Kotkai, the hometown of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, in the country's South Waziristan tribal belt.

The army launched a military offensive last week, pitting around 30,000 Pakistani troops against an estimated 10-12,000 Taliban fighters.

"Security forces took control of Kotkai overnight and a clearance operation is in progress," a security official told the AFP news agency on Saturday at the start of the second week of the anti-Taliban offensive.

"It is a major breakthrough because it was the stronghold of Taliban and hometown of Hakimullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain."

Hussain is an alleged trainer of suicide bombers.

Stronghold pounded

Another security official said ground forces had surrounded Kotkai for the past three days as jets and helicopter gunships strafed fighters' positions.

"Security forces entered Kotkai late on Friday after they had secured important heights behind it," the official said.

The army has promised to make the Taliban leadership a particular target of their offensive and sealed off the main road into Koktai last weekend.


In depth :

Go here for foll links:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/200910248183370810.html
-  Video: Attacks put Pakistan on edge
-  Video exclusive: South Waziristan's civilians suffer 
-  Video: Civilians flee Pakistani army offensive
-  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan
-  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
-  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
-  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
-  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
-  Blog: School's out

 
In another development, a suspected US missile attack in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt bordering Afghanistan has killed 14 suspected fighters and injured several more, officials said.

Missiles believed to be fired by a US-operated pilotless aircraft on Saturday hit a hideout of Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in the Damadola area in Bajaur tribal district.

"Fourteen militants, including foreign fighters, were killed in the attack that destroyed the fortified structure," a Pakistani intelligence official said.

The region has become a stronghold for fighters who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban rulers in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.

Although the Pakistan government has said the ongoing South Waziristan offensive will deal a decisive blow to the fighters, they have apparently succeeded in carrying out repeated retatliatory attacks.

On Friday, a bomb attack outside a Pakistani air force base near Islamabad, the federal capital, killed eight people, including six civilians and two air force personnel.

Separately, an explosion killed at least 17 people travelling on a bus to a wedding in the northwestern Mohmand region.

In a third violent incident, a large car bomb struck in a restaurant car park in the city of Peshawar, the main city of NWFP province, wounding about 10 people."

'Legitimate target'

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, in Islamabad, said: "Everywhere, as far as the Taliban is concerned, is a legitimate target if it involves the security forces, the police and the army.

"Everyone is wary of what will happen next and because of this the prime minister [Yusuf Raza Gilani] has summoned a special security meeting in Islamabad which will take place today.


FROM THE BLOGS
Return to Jalozai
By Imran Khan in The Asia Blog  :
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2009/10/22/return-jalozai
 

"He has summoned senior advisers and politicians, including representatives from the provinces and also people who can feed into the process, to see how they can try to cope with the problems that they are facing."

Gilani condemned the Kamra attack and vowed that the government would not waver in its resolve to "root out terrorism".

"They  knew that when the South Waziristan offensive started that there was always the possibility of a backlash and that's what we are seeing," our correspondent said, referring to the Pakistani authorities.

"[The government] is aware that they have to do something, because people are scared. You can see it on the streets, in the fact that there is not as much traffic around as usual, that the markets are quieter, cinemas across the country are reporting that attendances are down."

Our correspondent said the army officers believe that if they can confront and defeat the Taliban in South Waziristan, then other groups around the country will adapt to the new realities.

"It's a risky strategy," he said. "If it fails, it allows others to push on with their agenda and carry out attacks."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies