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

[Satyagraha]

MQM sees plot to destroy Karachi’s peace \
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/13+mqm+sees+plot+to+destroy+karachi+peace-za-11

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Dr Farooq Sattar has said that conspiracies are being hatched to de-stabilise the city by destroying its peace.

The parliamentary leader of MQM in the National Assembly said at a press conference on Thursday that targeted killings in the city over the past two days were part of a conspiracy to destroy peace in Karachi.

Flanked by other party leaders and lawmakers, including Shoaib Bukhari, Kunwar Khalid Younis and Haider Abbas Rizvi, Dr Sattar said an MQM worker Mohammad Arshad was killed in Ayub Goth on Thursday afternoon while another worker, Khalid Ansari, was killed in Malir in the evening.

He said two terrorists riding a motorbike sprayed bullets on Mohammad Arshad while Khalid Ansari, who lived in Gulshan-i-Maymar, was killed in front of Student Bakery in Malir in the evening. He said Khalid Ansari was sub-union in charge in Karachi Water & Sewerage Board and belonged to the labour wing of the MQM.

Dr Farooq Sattar refrained from blaming any particular party for the killing, saying it was easy to pin the blame on a political party.

Referring to an incident near the Chief Minister House on Thursday, the MQM leader regretted the incident and said the MQM could also have protested in a similar manner, but it was time to show restraint and political wisdom.

He said Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah and Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq had talked to him and shown their concern over targeted killings of MQM workers. He said attempts were being made to de-stabilise the government as well as Karachi.

Dr Sattar said that his party would remain in close touch with the Pakistan People’s Party to foil any conspiracy and would contact other political parties who were not part of the government.

He called upon different political parties to refrain from the blame game.

[bigron]

Friday, June 05, 2009
13:41 Mecca time, 10:41 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/20096595617238308.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 





 
Pakistan mosque blast kills scores 
 
 
At least 40 people are feared to have been killed in a bomb blast at a mosque in a remote area of northwest Pakistan.

The blast occurred in the village in Upper Dir while worshippers were attending Friday prayers.

"Around 40 people are killed. The death toll is 40. We have no idea as yet how many have been wounded," Atif-ur-Rehman, the senior-most government administrator, in Upper Dir was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Another senior administrator said the death toll was between 40 and 42.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said the blast appared to have been caused by a lone suicide bomber in the area of Hayagai Sahrqie.

"The attack took place in a village near the border with Swat, in a mosque which takes care of about 250 families that have settled in that particular area," he said.

"It must be remembered that in Lower Dir the Pakistan military has been on the offensive [against the Taliban], and the government has been making no secret of the fact that there are elements trying to destabilise Pakistan."

Army offensive

The blast in Dir is the ninth bomb attack in the country since the army's offensive in the Swat valley began.

Earlier on Friday, police arrested suicide bombers in the capital, Islamabad, and nearby Rawalpindi, Pakistan's interior minister said.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was in Islamabad on Friday to consult with the country's leaders on what needs to be done after confronting the Taliban in Swat valley.

Elsewhere, a member of Pakistan's parliament and his family were wounded on Friday when a parcel bomb exploded in his home in the southern city of Karachi, police said.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[Satyagraha]

Karachi blast injures five
Updated at: 1226 PST,  Friday, June 05, 2009
http://www.geo.tv/6-5-2009/43542.htm

KARACHI: At least five people were injured when a blast occurred at the residence of MNA Yaqub Bizenjo of Balochistan in Karachi area of Defence, Geo News reported Friday.

The police sources said the blast occurred when a parcel was received there in Defence phase-6 at the residence of MNA from Mand, injuring Yaqub Bizenjo, his daughter Shah Bizenjo, brother Sanaullah Bizenjo, mother Naz Bibi and a relative Aziz Ali.

The two injured Sanaullah and Aziz were shifted to Jinnah Hospital and rest of the injured were rushed to a private hospital at Stadium Road; later on Sanaullah was shifted to the private hospital.

Police, before long, put security cordon around the bungalow in Khyaban-e-Rahat. The parcel bomb caused damage to the building.

SP Ashfaq Alam said the bomb was apparently wrapped in a parcel.

DIG South AD Khawja said the MNA Yaqub is also among the injured and has been shifted to the private hospital. According to doctor, Yaqoob sustained injury at his hand.

It should be mentioned that before the blast, at least seven parcel bomb blasts occurred in Karachi.

Yaqub Bizenjo belongs to Balochistan National Party (Awami) and defeated Zubaida Jalal of Muslim League-Q in the general elections on February 18, 2008.

[bigron]

Obama’s “Af-Pak” War: Destabilizing a Nuclear Nation

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford




Pakistani troops patrol a street in Mingora, the main town in Swat valley, June 3, 2009. REUTERS/Aamir


June 4, 2009



A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

Go to page for flash player:  http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54858&hd=&size=1&l=e



President Obama has succeeded in putting his mark on Afghanistan and Pakistan, in ways that will come back to haunt the U.S. Two million people have been displaced by the Pakistiani army's scorched earth campaign against the Taliban - actions demanded by the Obama administration. "The Pakistani people are universally aware that their army was browbeaten, bullied and coerced, superpower-style, to launch a scorched earth attack on Taliban-influenced regions." The administration is destabilizing Pakistan, and deepening its people's hatred for the U.S.

 

 

Obama’s "Af-Pak" War: Destabilizing a Nuclear Nation
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"Humanitarian disaster will lead inevitably to a profound political crisis and even greater Pakistani hatred of the United States."
No one can deny that the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater of war now belongs to President Obama. He campaigned for the privilege to put his own theories of war into action in the region, which the White House and Pentagon now refer to as "Af-pak." It’s doubtful that Afghans or Pakistanis think of themselves as living in Af-Pak – but, it’s all the same to the Americans. Obama, the candidate, vowed to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the focus of his efforts, and to disengage from Iraq. There is no evidence that Obama ever intends to leave Iraq, but he has put his stamp on Afghanistan and created a humanitarian disaster in Pakistan. That humanitarian disaster will lead inevitably to a profound political crisis and even greater Pakistani hatred of the United States. When people whose government has a hundred or so nuclear weapons get mad at you, that’s a serious problem.
Two million people have been displaced from the Swat region of Pakistan. That’s in addition to the hundreds of thousands previously uprooted in the border regions with Afghanistan. The latest exodus is the largest forced movement of people since Pakistan was formed out of the old British India, in 1947. Americans may think that the two million Pakistani refugees – the entire population of Swat – are more angry at the Taliban than they are at the Pakistani government, and not upset at all at the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people of Swat were ordered to leave their homes to create a free-fire zone for the Pakistani army. Anything that moves in the region is considered to be Taliban. Refugees in the camps tell stories of whole extended families being wiped out by government airpower and artillery. The Pakistani army isn’t winning any hearts and minds in Swat, just as it has few friends in the border regions, which the army treats as "Injun Territory," in the Old West American sense of the term.
"Pakistanis will at some point overthrow a government that is subservient to the country they hate most in the world,
besides India: the United States."
But that’s no sweat off Obama’s back, right? Pakistanis will blame their own government for mistreating millions of citizens, right? Wrong. The Pakistani people are universally aware that their army was browbeaten, bullied and coerced, superpower-style, to launch a scorched earth attack on Taliban-influenced regions. In other words, the Pakistani army is following United States orders. And this public perception is correct.
The end result is that U.S. policy is destabilizing the Pakistani nation – which has enough problems keeping control of diverse peoples thrown together within British-drawn borders. The U.S. and its corporate media justify bullying Pakistan by invoking a kind of "White Man’s Burden." The Pakistanis refused to understand that the Taliban were destabilizing the Pakistani state, the Americans said. Actually, it is the Americans that are destabilizing Pakistan by making its government and army look like tools of foreigners in the eyes of the people. The Taliban could never take over Pakistan. But Pakistanis will at some point overthrow a government that is subservient to the country they hate most in the world, besides India: the United States. What will the Americans do, then? Invasion of a nuclear state of 170 million people, is not an option. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
 


 

 

:: Article nr. 54858 sent on 05-jun-2009 04:41 ECT


www.uruknet.info?p=54858

Link: www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Caf-pak%E2%80%9D-wa
   r-destabilizing-nuclear-nation

[bigron]

June 5, 2009

Taliban Stir Rising Anger of Pakistanis

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/world/asia/05refugees.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all


Pakistanis waited for bread in Swabi on Thursday. More Photos :
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/04/world/20090605-REFUGEES_index.html


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A year ago, the Pakistani public was deeply divided over what to do about its spreading insurgency. Some saw the Taliban militants as fellow Muslims and native sons who simply wanted Islamic law, and many opposed direct military action against them.

But history moves quickly in Pakistan, and after months of televised Taliban cruelties, broken promises and suicide attacks, there is a spreading sense — apparent in the news media, among politicians and the public — that many Pakistanis are finally turning against the Taliban.


Mardan, a town south of Swat, has absorbed many of the people churned up in the fighting. More Photos :
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/04/world/20090605-REFUGEES_index.html

The shift is still tentative and difficult to quantify. But it seems especially profound among the millions of Pakistanis directly threatened by the Taliban advance from the tribal areas into more settled parts of Pakistan, like the Swat Valley. Their anger at the Taliban now outweighs even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.

“It’s the Taliban that’s responsible for our misery,” said Fakir Muhammed, a refugee from Swat, who, like many who had experienced Taliban rule firsthand, welcomed the military campaign to push the insurgents out.

The growing support for the fight against the Taliban could be an important turning point for Pakistan, whose divisions about its Islamic militancy seemed at times to imperil the state itself.

But it is an opportunity that could just as quickly vanish, analysts and politicians warn, if Pakistan’s political leaders fail to kill or capture senior Taliban leaders, to help an estimated three million who have been displaced, or to create a functioning government in areas long ignored by the state. “This is a profound moment in our history,” said Javed Iqbal, the top bureaucrat in the North-West Frontier Province, the area of fighting. “My greatest fear is whether there is sufficient realization of this among people who make decisions.”

On Wednesday, in an audiotape, Osama bin Laden specifically cited the fighting in Swat and Pakistan’s tribal areas, blaming the Obama administration for the campaign and for sowing “new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America.”

American officials are keenly aware of the potential of the refugee crisis to spawn militancy. Less than a quarter of the $543 million the United Nations has requested for refugees has arrived, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry.

On Thursday, Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, visited refugee tents as part of a three-day trip to spread the message that the United States was trying to help. The Obama administration had requested an additional $200 million, he said, noting that it was providing more aid than all other countries combined.

Even so, anti-American feelings still run high in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis blame the United States and the war in Afghanistan for their current troubles.

Pakistanis have long supported the Taliban as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan. Unlike Afghans, they have never lived under Taliban rule, and have been slow to absorb its dangers.

But that is changing, as the experience of those Pakistanis who have now lived under the Taliban has left many disillusioned.

Over more than a year of fighting, the militants moved into Swat, by killing or driving out the wealthy and promising to improve the lives of the poor. Finally, the military agreed to a truce in February that all but ceded Swat to the Taliban and allowed the insurgents to impose Islamic law, or Shariah.

The prospect of Shariah was alluring, said Iftikhar Ehmad, who owns a cellphone shop in Mingora, the most populous city in Swat, because the court system in Swat was so corrupt and ineffective. But the Taliban’s Shariah was not the benign change people had hoped for. Once the Taliban took power, the insurgents seemed interested only in amassing more, and in April they pushed into Buner, a neighboring district 60 miles from Islamabad.

“It was not Shariah, it was something else,” Mr. Ehmad said, jabbing angrily at the air with his finger in the scorching tent camp in the town of Swabi. “It was scoundrel behavior.”

Daily life became degrading. A woman was lashed in public, and a video of her writhing in pain and begging for mercy stirred wide outrage. Taliban bosses ordered people to donate money. Cosmetics shops and girls’ schools were burned.

By the time the military entered Swat last month, local people began leading soldiers to tunnels with weapons and Taliban hiding places in hotels, the military said. “These people, six months back, weren’t willing to share anything,” said a military official who was involved in planning the campaign. “Gradually they’ve been coming out more and more into the open.”

There has also been a change in other parts of Pakistan, like Punjab, the most populous province, where people used to see the problem of militancy as remote, said Rasul Baksh Rais, a professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Now the province has become a target of suicide attacks, most recently last week in Lahore. Mr. Rais cited changes in news coverage of the military campaign and a strong stand by the political parties, even some of the religious ones, as evidence of the shift. “The tables are turned against the Taliban now,” he said. “They are marginalized.”

But the underlying causes that have allowed the Taliban to spread — poverty, barely functioning government, lack of upward mobility in society — remain. Mr. Iqbal is now working frantically to fill those gaps. New judges have recently been identified for Swat, he said, and about 3,000 new police officers will be selected this week.

The Pakistani military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss future operations, said troops would have to remain in Swat for at least six months. Support for the Taliban has not evaporated entirely.

Early this week, on a searing hot street in Mardan, a town south of Swat that has absorbed many of the people churned up in the fighting, a tall man with a long beard, Muhammed Tahir Ansari, grew angry when asked whether the refugees approved of the military operation. “It is illogical to think that people would be happy about this tense situation,” he said curtly.

He was from a charity run by Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the principal religious parties that tacitly support the Taliban, and was directing a frenzied effort to distribute water and hand-held fans.

The government, meanwhile, was nowhere in sight.

Irfan Ashraf contributed reporting from Swabi, Pakistan, and Mardan, Pakistan.

[Satyagraha]

Mastermind of Police-15 building attack arrested: Police  
Updated at: 2355 PST,  Friday, June 05, 2009

http://www.geo.tv/6-5-2009/43578.htm

 LAHORE: The joint investigation team of intelligence agencies has arrested a man from Multan who allegedly planted explosives in the van used in the attack on Police emergency response building in Lahore.

According to intelligence sources, man named Qari Saeedullah alias Commander Khalid Bin Walid was the man who planted explosives in the van used in 15-building attack.

The alleged terrorist was preparing another similar van when he was arrested on a tip-off.

He has been shifted to unknown location for investigation.

[Satyagraha]

60-kg explosive material recovered from vehicle
 Updated at: 2006 PST,  Friday, June 05, 2009

http://www.geo.tv/6-5-2009/43569.htm

 MUZAFFAR GARH: Muzaffar Garh police seized a vehicle traveling from Karachi to Kohat and recovered 60 kilograms of explosive material from it.

According to police sources, the police took the vehicle into custody near Khanpur Baga Sher upon finding during the vehicle’s search 6 packets of explosive material measuring over 60 kgs.

[Satyagraha]

High-Value Prisoners Killed in Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/world/asia/07ambush.html?ref=global-home

June 7, 2009

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants ambushed a military convoy that was carrying two high-value prisoners on Saturday, killing the two prisoners and a soldier, highlighting the reach the militants still have north of the capital, a month after a military campaign against them began.

The prisoners, captured during the military’s campaign in the Swat Valley, were important part of the leadership of the area. They were deputies of Sufi Muhammed, the spiritual leader whose son-in-law Fazlullah, leads the Taliban there.

Mr. Muhammed leads a banned group called Tehrik-i-Nafaz-i-Shariah-Muhammadi, or TNSM, which was closely linked to the Taliban. He was the leader who concluded a controversial peace deal with the Pakistanis government in February, seen as a capitulation to militants. His deputies were Muhammed Alam and the group’s spokesman, Amir Izat Khan, the military and locals said.

A spokesman for Pakistan’s military, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said by telephone that the attack happened at 5 a.m. near a village called Sakha Kot just north of Peshawar, the regional capital. A convoy of about six military vehicles was stopped when it hit a bomb in the road, General Abbas said.

General Abbas said it was still unclear what the reason for the ambush was, and why the prisoners themselves were killed during the course of it. Five soldiers were also wounded.

“I would say that it’s premature to conjecture that they were out to rescue them or to kill the security forces,” he said.

The attack seemed to underscore the continued vulnerability of Pakistan’s security forces, as they continue to fight a campaign against the Taliban. Military commanders have said the fight would be over within days, but since that announcement, a suicide bomber has struck and the ambush took place.

The United States has been pressing Pakistan to take action against its spreading Islamic insurgency, and strongly supports the military campaign. On a three-day visit to Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s top envoy to Pakistan, praised the military’s efforts, as a fresh start in the fight.

The military has conducted two previous campaigns against militants in the area, but neither were successful, in part because it pulled back before completing the job.

“I am personally quite convinced that they are utterly serious about this issue,” Mr. Holbrooke said at a news conference in Islamabad on Friday.

[bigron]

Saturday, June 06, 2009
16:34 Mecca time, 13:34 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/2009664211976501.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Swat leader's aides die in attack 


The attack on the convoy in Swat followed a bombing at a mosque in neighbouring Lower Dir [Reuters] 

 
Two aides of a Muslim leader in Pakistan's Swat valley have been killed in an attack on a military convoy, Pakistani army reports have said.

The convoy was hit by a roadside bomb on Saturday as it transported the two men, who had been detained two days earlier, from the town of Malakand to Peshawar in the country's northwest.

One soldier was also killed in the attack.

The men were aides to Sufi Muhammad, the Swat religious leader who had negotiated a failed peace agreement between the government and the Taliban in Swat.

"Spokesman Ameer Izzat and Mohammad Alam, a deputy of Islamist cleric Sufi Muhammad, died in the terrorist attack," a military statement said.

The men were arrested on Thursday, along with three Afghan nationals.

Motive unclear

It was not clear if the attackers were attempting to free the prisoners, or even if they knew that the two men were in the convoy.

"I wouldn't rule out that they were targeted or killed on purpose," Major-General Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, said.

"They were killed as a result of an IED [improvised explosive device] exploding on the side of the road ... There are a number of daily, IED incidents in this area," he said.

Rasul Bahksh Rais, a political scientist at Lahore University, said that the killings may have been deliberate to prevent Alam and Izzat from giving away information to military intelligence officials.

"I think it was a targeted killing by the militants because they could identify the whereabouts of some of the militant [leaders]," he told the Express 24/7 television network.

"They were high-value targets."

Sufi Muhammad had brokered a deal that allowed the Taliban to enforce its interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, in Malakand district, in return for its fighters laying down their arms, but the deal fell apart in April, soon after it was instated.

Suicide blast

The convoy attack comes just one day after a suicide bombing at a mosque in Upper Dir, which borders Swat, killed at least 30 people.

+++++++

In depth (visit page for following links)

Videos:
 Refugees return to Buner devastation
 Frontier police battle Pakistani Taliban
 Exclusive: Swat exodus continues
 Swat's fleeing Sikhs
 Inside war-torn Mingora city

Pictures:
 Refuge for Swat's Sikhs
 Lahore bombing

 Diary: Imran Khan
 Riz Khan: Obama's 'AfPak' strategy
 Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
 Interview: Asif Ali Zardari
 Q&A: The struggle for Swat
 Your views: Crisis in Swat

Focus:
 The fight for northwest Pakistan
 Talking to the Taliban
 Pakistan's war
 Witness: Pakistan in crisis

++++++++++++++
 
A man wearing an explosives vest entered the mosque and blew himself up, Atlass Khan, an Upper Dir police official, said.

"People tried to intercept him because he looked like an outsider, someone who does not belong to this area,'' Khan said.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, but it is the latest in a surge of violent episodes thought to be in response to the military's campaign against the Taliban in Swat.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Islamabad, said that the recent incidents suggested Taliban fighters were returning to a tactic of small-scale, disruptive attacks.

"What we're hearing is this is a renewal of an old tactic. What the Taliban are doing is using hit-and-run raids, rather than house-to-house or street-to-street fighting.

"We'll likely see many more of these types of attacks ... which will be devastating for the army as they'll have to deal with them on a daily basis."

Since late April, the military has focused a concerted air and ground assault against Taliban fighters in Swat.

General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistan army chief, said in a statement that the military had succeeded in clearing much of the area.

"The tide in Swat has decisively turned. Major population centres and roads leading to the valley have been largely cleared of organised resistance by the terrorists," he said.

Retaliation

But his words come against a backdrop of attacks on civilian targets in retaliation for the military offensive.

Pakistan has been rocked by more than a dozen bomb blasts that have killed over 100 people since the end of April, with Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, and the cultural capital, Lahore, both hit.

The United States has strongly backed the Pakistani military operation.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was in Islamabad on Friday to consult the country's leaders on what needs to be done after confronting the Taliban in the Swat valley.

He also warned that US plans to increase troop levels in Afghansitan, where it has been fighting since it toppled the Taliban in an invasion in 2001, could prompt an influx of Taliban fighters into Pakistan in response.

"I don't want to be alarmist here, but I'm predicting some massive influx," he said.

Islamabad voiced its concern to Washington in April that the deployment of US reinforcements in the south of Afghanistan could push fighters over the frontier.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[Satyagraha]

Seventeen die in Karachi ‘targeted killings’ during June

Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009 | 01:35 PM PST |

KARACHI: At least 17 people have been killed in the first week of June in Karachi. During the early hours of Sunday, a local leader of the MQM-Haqiqi became the latest victim, DawnNews reported.

According to police sources, gunmen barged into the house of Saleem Knight, head of the MQM-Haqiqi Lawyers’ Wing in Jamshed Town. Indiscriminate firing killed Saleem, while his wife and daughter received bullet injuries.

According to senior police officials, the MQM claims five of their activists, while Haqiqi claims ten of their workers have been targeted. Meanwhile, at least one worker of the PPP and the Shabab-i-Milli have also been killed.

Areas such as Landhi, Malir, Shah Faisal, Korangi, Lyari, and Jamshed Town have remained tense in the wake of this violence.

Police would not disclose who could be behind the murders but attributing political sources they claim varying reasons. MQM Haqiqi claims it is a backlash of an imminent release of Afaq Ahmed and Amir Khan.

The deputy convener of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Dr Farooq Sattar said that the MQM is being targeted for raising its voice against Talibanisation and the government should probe into these killings.


http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/04-17-killed-karachi-targeted-killing-qs-10
 

[Satyagraha]

Pakistani villagers 'avenge attack' 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/20096773352936759.html

Hundreds of villagers in northwestern Pakistan have reportedly attacked Taliban strongholds to avenge the deadly suicide bombing of a local mosque.

The villagers have occupied three settlements and are attempting to push the Taliban out of another two, reports from the Associated Press said on Sunday, quoting a local official.

Nearly 400 residents of the Upper Dir district of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) banded together on Saturday to challenge the Taliban, Atif-ur-Rehman, the official, said.

The armed group then attacked five villages in the nearby Dhok Darra area, where the Taliban is suspected of having bases, he said.

The villagers destroyed 20 houses suspected of housing Taliban fighters, he said.

At least four fighters were killed in the clash.

Deadly bombing

Pakistan's government has in the past encouraged local citizens to help drive out the Taliban.

"It is something very positive that tribesmen are standing against the militants. It will discourage the miscreants," Rehman was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

The fighting came in response to a suicide bombing that killed at least 30 people on Friday in Upper Dir.

The district borders the Swat valley region where government troops are engaged in fierce battles with the Taliban.

About 15,000 soldiers have been battling an estimated 2,000 Taliban fighters in Swat for more than a month.

There have been a number of bombings in cities across Pakistan in apparent retaliation to the army's offensive in the NWFP.

The attacks reached Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, late on Saturday when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a police compound, killing two people.

At least three other people were wounded in the attack.

Police said the building was the base for an emergency response unit.

Waqar Shah, an officer on duty at the emergency call centre at the time of the attack, told the AP that the attacker was spotted as he climbed over a wall.

"He jumped in from the rear wall, then ran toward the offices," he said. "One of our guys opened fire on him and he fell and blew up."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

[Satyagraha]

Analysis: Why attack Lahore?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7972565.stm

By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Islamabad

Lahore - Pakistan's cultural capital - has faced its share of militant attacks, but it has not had to put up with the kind of sustained campaign it now appears to be facing.

Wednesday's suicide bombing of the police emergency response headquarters on a heavily guarded section of Lahore's Mall road underlines the fact that the cultural heart of Pakistan is a city under siege.

It is a clear statement from the militants seen to be under siege in Swat and elsewhere - they are alive and can strike back.


“ Whoever wants to destabilise the country or the government, would go after Lahore ”
Pakistani security official

A raid on the police training centre near the city in March - along with an attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in the same month - brought home the fact that the city is now in the frontline of Pakistan's struggle against militancy.

According to security officials, part of the reason Lahore is now under threat may be because it has previously been seen as stable.

"Lahore is the only city in Pakistan which has remained relatively peaceful since the 9/11 attacks," says a security official.

"It has been Pakistan's saving grace, and whoever wants to destabilise the country or the government, would go after Lahore," the official says.

Suspects

There are a number of reasons why Lahore could be the centre of such attacks.

Many people suspect Taliban militants in Pakistan's north-west. Almost all major attacks inside Pakistan in recent years have been traced back to the tribal areas near the Afghan border.

Taliban militants fighting the Pakistani army have openly admitted planning and carrying out many of the attacks.

They recently issued a propaganda video which took responsibility for carrying out a number of suicide bombings on security forces over the last two years. At least two of them were carried out in Lahore.

Fingers have also been pointed at the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as they were after the attack on the Sri Lanka team.

Some experts say the attacks could be retaliation by elements within the group for the crackdown on it following the attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) last November.

Others, like Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, accuse another militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which the US believes has close ties with al-Qaeda.

"Almost all the recent major terror attacks have either been claimed or traced back to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," he told reporters in Lahore in March.

India, too, is blamed by many Pakistani government and security officials, who suspect retaliation for the Mumbai attacks. This was also a view voiced after the attack on Sri Lanka's cricketers.

Many analysts are quick to point out the change in tactics, and believe that the attacks are the handiwork of a new militant group.

'Assault tactics'

But what many seem to have forgotten is how it all began.

Pakistani militants only started using suicide attacks in a co-ordinated manner in 2004.

The first target was Karachi, where a series of bomb attack in May of that year left more than 100 people dead.


“ We will eventually start using assault tactics again, when we have regained our strength in men ”
Pakistani militant leader

Since then, they have become increasingly popular, and now a suicide bombing is almost a daily occurrence in North West Frontier Province.

While experts have suggested a number of theories for this change of tactics, the militants themselves say there was one clear reason.

"We started using the suicide bomber because we were under siege at the time," a militant leader told me in 2006.

"We were short of trained men as many had been arrested or killed in the crackdown following 9/11.

"The places where we could set-up training camps were also declared out of bounds.

"The easiest way to fight back was to use a bomb and the easiest way to ensure its success was to use someone to manually detonate the device. Little training was needed, and the younger the bomber the easier it was to convince them," the militant said.

But he added that the suicide bomber was not always effective, especially if the target was spread over a large area.

"We will eventually start using assault tactics again, when we have regained our strength in men," he concluded.

That increasingly appears to be the case, as the militants deploy a variety of different tactics in the field.

'Next Taliban state'
More than anything, this means that whatever Pakistan's government says, the power of the militants has increased substantially over the last two years.


MAJOR ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN

27 May 09: At least 23 people are killed and 200 injured in Lahore
27 March 09: Suicide bomber demolishes crowded mosque near the north-western town of Jamrud, killing dozens
3 March 09: Six policemen and a driver killed, and several cricketers injured, in ambush on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore
20 Sept 08: 54 die in an attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad
6 Sept 08: Suicide car bombing kills 35 and wounds 80 at a police checkpoint in Peshawar
Aug 08: Twin suicide bombings at gates of a weapons factory in town of Wah leave 67 dead
March 08: Suicide bombs hit police headquarters and suburban house in Lahore, killing 24
Political instability has given them encouragement, and they have thrived as they once did during the 1990s under state patronage.

Whether Pakistan's current government is up to the task of taking them on remains to be seen.

President Asif Zardari's government certainly has the desire to go after the militants.

But whether it has the required backing from the military is an open question.

Pakistan's military has always seen the country's "strategic interests" through a different lens from the civilian governments.

In the past the military has acted as godfather to the militants.

But never has the country faced as great an internal threat as it does now.

Experts say the situation can still be remedied if both parties agree that eliminating the militants is in Pakistan's best interests.

If that does not happen, there appears little to prevent Pakistan from becoming the next Taliban state.

[bigron]

The unnecessary war


By Roedad Khan
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54933&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

A internally displaced girl, who fled a military offensive in the Swat valley region, holds her pot while awaiting a serving of tea at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) Yar Hussain camp in Swabi district, about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Pakistan's capital Islamabad June 7, 2009.
REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro


June 07, 2009

Somehow, our history has gone astray. We were such good people when we set out on the road to Pakistan. What happened?

Marx once said: "Neither a nation nor a woman is forgiven for an unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who comes along can sweep them off their feet and possess them". October 7, 1958 was our unguarded hour when democracy was expunged from the politics of Pakistan, perhaps forever, with scarcely a protest. The result is the mess we are in today.

"Liberty once lost", Adams famously told his countrymen, "is perhaps lost forever". We Pakistanis lost our liberties and all our democratic institutions in October 1999. Sadly, Pakistan also lost her honour and became a 'rentier state’ on General Musharraf’s watch when he capitulated, said yes to all the seven demands presented to him at gunpoint by Secretary Colin Powell and joined the "Coalition of the coerced". Regrettably, this situation remains unchanged even though the country is now under a democratic dispensation!

A lesson to be drawn from the works of Gibbon is that Rome’s enemies lay not outside her borders but within her bosom, and they paved the way for the empire’s decline and fall – first to relentless barbarian invaders from the north, and then, a thousand years later, to the Turks. Many early symptoms that heralded the Roman decline may be seen in our own nation today: concentration of power in one person without responsibility and accountability, contempt for the constitution and political institutions, absence of the rule of law, high-level corruption and greed and last but not least, periodic military intervention in the affairs of state and prolonged military rule. When the history of Pakistan comes to be written, the verdict of history will almost certainly be that military rule, more than anything else, destroyed Pakistan.

If you want to know what happens to a country when unbridled ambition of its rulers flourishes without proper restraint, when absolute power enables the ruler to run the country arbitrarily and idiosyncratically, when none of the obstacles that restrain and thwart democratic rulers stand in his way, when parliament is cowed, timid, a virtual paralytic, well: visit Pakistan. Today it is like a severely blinkered cart horse painfully pulling a heavy wagon on a preordained track to nowhere.

All the philosophers tell the people they are the strongest, and that if they are sent to the slaughterhouse, it is because they have let themselves be led there. Authoritarianism is retreating everywhere except in Pakistan. Why? In other countries there are men and women who love liberty more than they fear persecution. Not in Pakistan. Here the elite who owe everything to this poor country do not think in terms of Pakistan and her honour but of their jobs, their business interests and their seats in a rubber-stamp parliament. Surrender rather than sacrifice is the theme of their thoughts and conversations. To such as these talk of resisting autocracy is as embarrassing as finding yourself in the wrong clothes at the wrong party, as tactless as a challenge to run to a legless man, as out of place as a bugle call in a mortuary.

How can you have authentic democracy in a country where de facto sovereignty – highest power over citizens unrestricted by law – resides neither in parliament, nor the executive, nor the judiciary, nor even the constitution which has superiority over all the institutions it creates? It resides, if it resides anywhere at all, where the coercive power resides. It is the 'puvois occult’ which decides when to abrogate the constitution, when to dismiss the elected government, when to go to war and when to restore sham democracy.

Are people anxious? Dejected? Fearful? Angry? Why wouldn’t they be, considering the daily barrage of rotten news assaulting them from every direction? We live in a country that is terribly wrong and politically off course. What is worse, it is no longer a sovereign or independent country. It is a lackey of the United States. When will this tormented country be whole again? When will this sad country be normal again? The engine is broken. Somebody has got to get under the hood and fix it. President Zardari is so swathed in his inner circle that he has completely lost touch with the people and wanders around among small knots of persons who agree with him. The country is in deep, deep trouble. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait. Eventually, the cup of endurance runs over and the citizen cries out, "I can take it no longer". A day will soon come when words will give way to deeds. History will not always be written with a pen.

In the backdrop of this gloom and doom, President Zardari, under American pressure, unleashed the hounds of war, turning the beautiful valley of Swat into a vale of tears. As a result of army action, millions of innocent people, men, women and children, young and old, were uprooted, rendered homeless and forced to flee. Was army action unavoidable? Was it absolutely necessary? Did the people of Swat have to pay this terrible price? And what for? All these questions remain unanswered.

"One day", Churchill wrote, "President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what World War II should be called. I said at once 'the Unnecessary War’". Today Pakistan is at war with itself. The country is tearing itself apart. Why? One thing is clear. There never was a more unnecessary war, a war more easy to stop, a war more easy to prevent, a war more difficult to justify and harder to win than that which has wrecked Swat.

Let me state clearly that the war in Swat, like the war in FATA, is not our war. It’s a proxy war imposed on us by our corrupt rulers who owe everything to Washington. It is perceived in the Pakhtun belt as genocide, part of a sinister American plan for the mass extermination of Pakhtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.

With temperature rising, living conditions in the camps and elsewhere, fast deteriorating, the army operation has morphed into a war that is hard to win and harder to justify to the people affected by it. One thing is clear. While the Pakistan army wields a large hammer, not every problem is a nail. The lesson of history is: never fight a proxy war, never deploy military means in pursuit of indeterminate ends and never use your army against your own people.

No army, no matter how strong, has ever rescued a country from internal disorder, social upheaval and chaos. Army action can never quash the insurgency in Malakand division or FATA. It can only be managed until a political solution is found. No one can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. The Taliban can be deterred militarily for a time but tanks, gunships and jet aircraft cannot defeat deeply felt belief.

President Zardari is playing with fire and acting like Conrad’s puffing gunboat in Heart of Darkness, shelling indiscriminately at the opaque darkness. The enemy is nebulous and the battlefield is everywhere. He has no address and no flag, wears no uniform, stages no parades, marches to his own martial music. He requires no tanks or submarines or air force. He does not fear death. As the Soviets found in Afghanistan, the enemy doesn’t fight in conventional ways, but from behind big boulders and from concealments. He doesn’t have to win. He just has to keep fighting. Asymmetrical warfare is what they call it now.

The war’s end remains far out of sight but the battle for the hearts and minds of the people seems to have gone awry. If you want to know how the displaced persons feel, go to Mardan and listen to the wretched of the earth. You will hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger.

The writer is a former federal secretary.
Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com




 

[Geolibertarian]

The unnecessary war

By Roedad Khan
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54933&hd=&size=1&l=e


A internally displaced girl, who fled a military offensive in the Swat valley region, holds her pot while awaiting a serving of tea

And, as always, not a peep of protest from so-called "anti-war" liberals, because it's their guy doing it, not Bush. 



I've said it before and I'll say it again: establishment liberals are the biggest hypocrites on the planet, because at least the neocons about whom they waxed indignant during the Bush era (and from whom they laughingly claim to be so "different") are honest about being pro-war, pro-torture and pro-police state.

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

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14319

The Silence of the Liberals
As Obama launches "war on terrorism" II 

by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
February 27, 2009


I see that the Pentagon has reversed its old policy of refusing to allow photographs of those flag-draped coffins as our dead soldiers return from the battlefield. One wonders, however, how much interest there will be in taking and publishing such photos now that President Barack Obama is in office. One also wonders how long it will take the media to acknowledge the new quagmire we're sinking into if and when the numbers of casualties start increasing – as they are sure to do. 

After all, Obama's war is going to be taking place on a much larger, more difficult canvas than that of his predecessor's, which was confined in large part to Iraq. All of Afghanistan will soon be teeming with newly-arrived US soldiers, sent there – direct from Iraq – to fulfill the President's pledge to start fighting the "right war" in the right way, a "smart" way. Oh, these guys (and gals) are the Best and the Brightest, alright, aren't they?

The smarty-pants tone and style of this administration is already beginning to grate on my nerves, as they pander to their base on the symbolic issues – like the coffin question – in hopes no one will notice as they backtrack on more important matters. So far, it doesn't seem to be working out all that well.

Glenn Greenwald isn't cutting them any slack on the torture brouhaha – he's already pointed out that they'll still be torturing people, albeit not with their own hands in some instances, and that if Guantanamo is closed, Bagram – where similar activities are known to take place – is going to be open for "business." 

Most of the Obama-zoids are happy, however, because, after all, Keith Olbermann assures them we've entered the new millennium, the Dear Leader is in the White House, and all's right with the world. But is it? 

Not by a long shot. Has anyone noticed Obama's vaunted 16-month withdrawal-from-Iraq plan has already stretched into 19 months – and the "residual force" he kept talking about during the campaign, as if it were a mere afterthought, turns out to be 50,000 strong? 

Originally, none of those "residuals" were supposed to be combat troops – yet now we are told "some would still be serving in combat as they conducted counterterrorism missions." You have to go all the way to the very end of this New York Times report before you discover that, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, "A limited number of those that remain will conduct combat operations against terrorists, assisting Iraqi security forces."

In short: we aren't leaving.

I don't care what the status of forces agreement says: that document has more loopholes than the bank bailout bill's provisions for paying back the American taxpayers. Those 50,000 "residual" occupiers will simply pull back into their permanent bases, which are even now being constructed throughout Iraq, to be called on when our sock-puppets find themselves unable to tamp down the growing spirit of rebellion. 

What kind of a "withdrawal" is this? It is one so burdened with contingencies, conditional footnotes, and amendatory clauses, that it falls beneath its own weight and collapses into a fair approximation of the status quo. 

Antiwar voters who cast their ballots for Obama have succeeded in rolling the stone all the way up a rather steep hill, only to see it fall down the other side – and we are right back where we started. The next hill is called Afghanistan, and beyond that is yet another: Pakistan.

Not even Bush tried to fight a two-front war: Obama, however, is leaping into Afghanistan with alarming speed. Sending those 17,000 troops was one of the first acts of his administration, announced well before any of the economic measures. The economy may be crumbling, but the empire cannot be allowed to go the same way – that's the lunatic mentality of our rulers, whose priorities reflect a Washington mindset still stuck in the glory days of American hegemony. 

Under Obama, the military budget will rise by 4 percent, and this isn't counting the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. As Cato Institute research fellow Benjamin H. Friedman puts it: "Many Americans believe that Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress will lower defense spending and restrain the militaristic foreign policy it underwrites. The coming years should destroy that myth."

Yes, but myths die hard. It will take a couple of shiploads of flag-draped coffins – and perhaps a couple of alarming incidents in Afghanistan and environs – to wake up Obama's liberal supporters to what they're presently enabling with their silent complicity. In the meantime, the creaking wheels of empire are turning as we gather our forces for another even more perilous mission that will take us straight into the fabled graveyard of would-be world-conquerors otherwise known as Afghanistan. Why? How? To what purpose? A thousand questions raise themselves up, like the first crocuses of spring – but the Obama administration isn't answering, because no one of any importance is asking. Just little old me – and, maybe you. And maybe Rachel Maddow, now and then: and that's pretty much it. Surely the alleged "antiwar movement" isn't interested – they're too busy hailing Obama's election. 

The President's budget requests for Iraq and Afghanistan total $75 billion through the fall, and $130 billion for next year. That means we'll be spending nearly $11 billion per month for at least the next year and a half. 
 
[Continued...]


http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05/21/why-liberals-love-obama/

Why Liberals Love Obama
Even as he betrays them on civil liberties and foreign policy

by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
May 22, 2009


If I were a liberal Democrat -– and, as my regular readers know, this is very far from being the case -– I’d be mad as heck over the way President Barack Obama has reversed himself on key foreign policy and civil liberties issues. I’d be positively furious about his "reconsideration" of preventive detention, the revival of military commissions, rendition, JSOC-style assassinations, denial of habeas corpus, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Not to mention the general direction of his foreign policy, which rationalizes escalating the fighting in Afghanistan -– and its extension into Pakistan -– under the general exculpatory rubric of fighting the "war on terrorism."

As Glenn Greenwald trenchantly makes the point, what appears to have happened is that:

"Obama’s political skills, combined with his status as a Democrat, is strengthening Bush/Cheney terrorism policies and solidifying them further. For the last eight years, roughly half the country – Republicans, Bush followers – was trained to cheer for indefinite detention, presidential secrecy, military commissions, warrantless eavesdropping, denial of due process, a blind acceptance of any presidential assertion that these policies are necessary to Keep Us Safe, and the claim that only fringe Far Leftist Purists – civil liberties extremists – could possibly object to any of that.

"Now, much of the other half of the country, the one that once opposed those policies – Democrats, Obama supporters – are now reciting the same lines, adopting the same mentality, because doing so is necessary to justify what Obama is doing. It’s hard to dispute the Right’s claim that Bush’s terrorism approach is being vindicated by Obama’s embrace of its ‘essential elements.’”

Jack Goldsmith, who headed up the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel, has written a comprehensive overview of how the Obamaites have given us Cheneyism without Cheney, in 11 key instances, and I won’t repeat them here. Instead, I will ask: why has the liberal-progressive community given Obama a pass on all these vitally important issues?

[Continued...]

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

[bigron]

And that was a real lovely contribution for this thread !   Thanks

[bigron]

Pakistanis Rise Against Taliban After Mosque Blast

Monday , June 08, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525320,00.html


PESHAWAR, Pakistan —

More than a thousand armed tribesman seeking revenge for a mosque attack surrounded two Taliban strongholds and destroyed the homes of Taliban fighters — including some commanders — in Pakistan's northwest, an official said Monday.

As many as 1,600 tribesmen have joined a citizens' militia in Upper Dir district — an indication of rising anti-Taliban sentiment in Pakistan as the military pursues its offensive against the militant group in the nearby Swat Valley.

The militias, known as lashkars, were focusing on two villages known as Taliban strongholds, said Khaista Rehman, a local police chief. Officials said Sunday the tribesmen had managed to clear three other villages.

"An intense fight between the lashkar and the Taliban is still going on and the lashkar has destroyed 25 homes of Taliban commanders and their fighters in various villages," Rehman told The Associated Press by phone. "The Taliban had set up their offices in those villages but the local residents and the lashkar have attacked them, and we hope the lashkar will succeed."

The attack on the mosque Friday left 33 worshippers dead and wounded dozens more during prayers, angering residents of the Haya Gai area of Upper Dir district, where minor clashes with local militants have occurred for months.

At least 11 militants had died as of Sunday afternoon, district police Chief Ejaz Ahmad said. He said about 200 militants were putting up a tough fight but were surrounded by the villagers.

The government has encouraged citizens to set up militias to oust Taliban fighters, especially in the regions that border Afghanistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have hide-outs. But villagers' willingness to do so has often hinged on confidence that authorities will back them up if necessary.

With the army reporting advances against the Taliban in Swat — an operation that also reaches into Lower Dir district and has broad public support — that confidence appears to be growing.

Already, military officials say that as they've proceeded with the operation in Swat, local residents who have remained in the region have grown increasingly cooperative, providing tips on militants' hide-outs and more.

The month-old Swat offensive, the latest round in a valley that has experienced fighting for two years, is seen as a test of Pakistan's resolve to take on Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters on its soil. The U.S. hopes the offensive will eliminate a potential sanctuary for militants implicated in attacks on Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.

The military says more than 1,300 militants and 105 soldiers have died so far in the offensive, which has generally broad public support. The Taliban have threatened to stage suicide attacks in major Pakistani cities in revenge for the Swat operation.

[bigron]

from the June 07, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0607/p06s07-wosc.html


Why the Taliban won't take over Pakistan




For reasons of geography, ethnicity, military inferiority, and ancient rivalries, they represent neither the immediate threat that is often portrayed nor the inevitable victors that the West fears.

By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
 
Islamabad, Pakistan
It has become the statistic heard round the world. The Taliban are within 60 miles of Islamabad. Just 60 miles. Every dispatch about the insurgents' recent advance into the Pakistani district of Buner carried the ominous number.

Washington quivered, too. A top counterinsurgency expert, David Kilcullen, reiterated that Pakistan could collapse within six months. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said flatly if the country were to fall, the Taliban would have the "keys to the nuclear arsenal." On a visit to Islamabad, Sen. John Kerry – the proctor of $7.5 billion in Pakistani aid as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – warned bluntly: "The government has to ratchet up the urgency."

The Pakistani military did launch a major counteroffensive that has sent 2 million people fleeing their homes. For now, both the US and many Pakistanis appear to be relieved that the military has drawn a line at least somewhere, in this case in the fruit orchards of the Swat Valley and the city of Mingora, north of Islamabad.

Yet Pakistani analysts and officials here caution that the casus belli of all the commotion – the infamous 60 miles and the threat of an imminent Taliban takeover – is overblown. The Visigoths are not about to overrun the gates of Rome. Bearded guys with fistfuls of AK-47s are not poised to breeze into Islamabad on the back of white Toyota pickups.

True, the Taliban threat remains serious. By one estimate, the militants maintain a presence in more than 60 percent of northwestern Pakistan and control significant sections along the Afghan border. Moreover, the possibility of the insurgents one day getting their hands on nuclear material remains the ultimate horror – it would probably be more ominous than the Cuban missile crisis.

But experts note that, even if the current operation by the Pakistani military stalls, or the Taliban return to areas they've been ousted from, the insurgents may not significantly expand their footprint in the country anytime soon. For reasons of geography, ethnicity, military inferiority, and ancient rivalries, they represent neither the immediate threat that is often portrayed nor the inevitable victors that the West fears.

"The Americans have become paranoid about Pakistan," says Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani military general. "They are losing their objectivity, and I think they need a reality check."

TAKE OUT YOUR MAPS


A planned city built in the 1960s, Islamabad is a strikingly modern South Asian metropolis. Broad streets lie along a spacious, uncluttered grid filled with trees. Nearby, its sister city, Rawalpindi, is more a reflection of old Pakistan but serves as its protectorate: It is the headquarters of the world's seventh-largest army.

One of the biggest houses in "Pindi" goes to the chief of Army staff. Clustered near the military compound are tony neighborhoods where retired generals live. Colonels, majors, and businessmen mingle in upper-middle-class enclaves, and farther away rise the starter homes of the lieutenants.

The elite area features a commercial center with a movie theater showing, at the moment, "Fast & Furious IV," as well as a big-box store and a McDonald's. Sitting on a bench, a young Pakistani businessman dressed in jeans laughs at the question of a Taliban takeover. "No," says Omar Ali with incredulity. "Do you think the Taliban are going to take over Washington?"

If it sounds as if Mr. Ali lives in a world far removed from the Taliban, it's because he does, literally and figuratively. The drive from McDonald's to the mountain hamlets of Buner, where the Taliban are trying to gain a sandal hold, takes about four hours. It may be 60 miles as the drone flies, but it's double that by pickup truck.

The M1 Motorway heading out of the capital starts like an American Interstate highway – three divided lanes in each direction, manicured on and off ramps. Take an exit toward Buner and soon the pavement grows intermittent, as does the sight of any women in public view.

Eventually, a bridge spans the rock-strewn Indus River. Historically, this has marked a significant divide – and serves as a reminder of how geography and history intrude on the Taliban. "West of the Indus [versus] East of the Indus – the cultures, attitudes, and linkages with Afghanistan are very different," says General Masood.

West was frontier and Pakistan still calls it that: the North West Frontier Province. In this direction, the land rises toward Afghanistan, and the lives get harder as mountains tear apart arable land and communities divide into insulated tribes.

The worldview of the Taliban comes from West of the Indus. For them, the plains represent exposure. "The Taliban have been able to operate in certain [mountainous areas] because of the terrain and the sympathy factor," says Rifaat Hussain, a military expert at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "But the moment they begin to move out of the hideouts, they are exposed. If you have 100 truckloads of Taliban on the Peshawar Highway, all you need is two helicopter gunships" to wipe them out.

Coming down from the hills also would expose the Taliban to a more secular, urban world that views their way of life as something on the cover of National Geographic. Or, as a colleague of Professor Hussain puts it: "They are a bunch of mountain barbarians."

THE ETHNIC FIRE WALL

One area halfway between Islamabad and Taliban country looks like the California Central Valley, with donkey carts. The roads in the area, the Haripur district, are lined with eucalyptus trees, agricultural fields tumble off in the distance, and brickmaking kilns puff smoke from stout stacks.

The Taliban have threatened to come to this area to free comrades held in prison. As a result, officials mobilized extra security forces and intensified intelligence activity. But Haripur's best defenses lie with the people. "There is absolutely no support for Taliban in this district," says Yousaf Ayub Khan, Haripur's nazim, or ruler. The main reason: This is non-Pashto country.

More than 90 percent of residents speak Hindko, as opposed to Pashto, the language of the Pashtun people – and the Taliban. It's a common saying these days in Pakistan that all Taliban are Pashtuns, but not all Pashtuns are Taliban.

Haripur sits along a vast ethnic fire wall against further Taliban conquests. To the north and west are Pashtun lands, to the east and south – toward Islamabad – other groups dominate. "Pashtun areas have always been very conservative and religious, so they become easy prey," says the nazim, who also happens to be Pashtun. "People are docile here [and] their thinking is more toward Islamabad."

The grievances that the Taliban exploit, such as unemployment and tribal feudalism, don't exist as much here. Schools poke out from nearly every alley of Haripur city, and the district – with more than 1,000 private academies – is among the most educated in the country. Lush farmland and an industrial center support relative prosperity.

There are limits to the ethnic fire wall, of course. Ahmed Rashid, author of "Descent into Chaos," suggests the Taliban enjoy support in the Punjab region – Pakistan's heartland – among jihadi groups originally fighting in Kashmir. Moreover, many Pashtun refugees, including those displaced by the latest fighting, exist in places as far away as Karachi, the nation's financial center.

On the edge of Haripur, two camps house refugees who fled the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After three decades, the original tents have transformed into a little Kabul with mud, brick, and wood-pole structures. Residents say even police fear to go here, and some suspect the Afghan camps play host to militants.

"They visit often, they have links there," says Dr. Faiza Rasheed, a member of the provincial assembly and local gynecologist. "I think if [the Taliban] came, Afghans will support them, but not the local community."

Internet cafes in Haripur city have received threatening calls from insurgents, and some, like the Speed Link, have people frisking Afghans before entering.

Yet many Afghans chafe at the suspicions cast on them. "They blame us, saying that all Afghans are the Taliban," says Basti Gul, a barber at the Islamabad Beauty Parlor. He denies there are any Taliban in town and says the local populace – Afghan and Hindko speakers – are united against them. "We will not welcome them," he says. "The people of Swat liked them. But the people of Haripur don't."

LET'S COMPARE ARMS

The notion of a Taliban conquest of Pakistan also bumps up against some simple arithmetic. The Taliban in Swat number 5,000, and the total from all factions in Pakistan is estimated in the tens of thousands, at most. The Pakistani military, meanwhile, numbers more than half a million.

"There would have to be a collapse of will on the part of the Army to defend the country," says Hussain. "Yes, it's a state that's under stress, but it's not a failed state in the sense that people refer to Somalia or Afghanistan."

Until the latest counteroffensive, US and Pakistani analysts questioned the military's resolve in fighting the insurgency. Armies do not like fighting their own people. And Pakistani intelligence agencies have a history of funding militant groups to achieve foreign-policy goals.

But the counteroffensive in Swat has convinced many analysts here that the Army is serious – at least for now. The mass displacement of civilians offers grim confirmation of heavy engagement.

Until recently, it would have been easy in the war rooms in Islamabad to see the Taliban as someone else's problem. Since 2007, however, at least 17 suicide attacks have rocked the twin cities, killing more than 250 people. The Marriott hotel, scene of the most deadly strike, has turned into a five-star fort hidden behind a rock-wall barrier. Neighborhood conveniences are a little less convenient, too: The drive-through at the McDonald's in Rawalpindi has turned into an obstacle course with four concrete barriers and a checkpoint.

The military also senses it has public backing for the operation – as scores of interviews with average Pakistanis confirm. "The government is fair to do operations in Swat and Buner because the government has already given a chance to the Taliban to give up weapons, but they did not," says Muhammad Murtaza, a student at Quaid-i-Azam.

WE WON'T BE PARTNERS IN CRIME


Some of the fiercest opponents of the Taliban are those who lived under their reign, making it more difficult for the movement to spread. Mr. Murtaza's classmate, Muhammad Nisar, worries every time he moves between school and his home.

A year ago, he and three other students were waiting for a van in Swat to head back to Islamabad when a group of Taliban approached. They brandished guns and said, "Go pray in the mosque."

"I was scared, so I went to the mosque," says Mr. Nisar. "But the prayer was just a formality. They are just using Islam."

He says that for years the Taliban in Swat were just students of a local religious leader, Maulana Fazlullah. At first their goals were limited to building a mosque, and locals willingly helped. But he and other residents say the Taliban grew increasingly belligerent as outsiders and criminals joined their ranks. "I think 50 percent of the Taliban are criminals," says Nisar. "They have no jobs, no other opportunities, so they join the Taliban."

The Taliban enforced bans on movies, music, and modern mores, with threats broadcast over FM radio. They ordered CD stores closed, and once a bomb ripped through the music market. Residents who fled from Swat and Buner told of public floggings and rampant kidnappings. One aid worker was hanged in the street.

Certainly, many are upset with the military's tactics. One resident of Buner, Sherin Zaida, says the government gave his town three hours warning – but bullets flew within 15 minutes. He and 11 family members carried his mother, who can't walk, for two days until they reached a camp in Swabi.

Yet much of their wrath is reserved for the Taliban. Not long after the insurgents invaded Buner, two masked men approached Mr. Zaida, a court clerk, and told him: "We know which is your village and your family. Why don't you just shut down the court, put a lock on it, and go back home." The judge told him to comply. This is how law and order left Swat and Buner, one courthouse and police station at a time. "We don't want the military, we don't want the Taliban," says Zaida.

THE JIHADI WITHIN

From her desk at the RAND Corporation, C. Christine Fair watches Pakistan and the prevailing zeitgeist in America about it. What she sees at the moment is fear among more than a few in Washington that the Taliban will sweep into Islamabad in some sort of ragtag swarm and seize the city. She and other scholars consider this notion almost cartoonish.

Yet there is another danger she sees lurking on the leafy streets of Islamabad, and this is the main caveat to the argument that the Taliban won't prevail in Pakistan. Call it the jihadi within. "What does it mean that they are 60 miles outside of Islamabad when there are actual cells within Islamabad?" she asks.

She's referring to infiltrators who have the capacity to conduct suicide bombings, which they could carry out frequently enough to make residents of the twin cities more wary about public spaces and private intimidation. English-language schools in Islamabad have already had to close temporarily after receiving bomb threats.

Even worse – though unlikely – Taliban cells might be able to operate with enough inside help to succeed in nabbing nuclear material as it's transported. Or they could blow up a key installation such as the Tarbela dam or sever the road between Islamabad and Peshawar.

In other words, the real threat isn't the Taliban occupying urban territory. It's their ability to attract followers and sow chaos. One reason given for the conversions: US meddling. "The mujahideen are not the products of the madrasas," says Syed Yousef Shah, who heads one of the largest religious schools. "They are the product of American actions." He argues that the militants attack Pakistan because of its cooperation with America and its intervention in the region. "A person whose house is destroyed by a drone attack and sees his parents and his brothers dead, what will he do? A suicide attack demands no lecture."

As enemies go, Talibanization may prove trickier to fight than the Taliban. Just ask Fahad Marwat. At an upscale coffee shop in Islamabad, the 20-something reaches for his cellphone and pulls up a photo of a young man with a Taliban beard. That's my cousin, he says. Over the course of a year, his cousin went from being an unemployed college graduate to Taliban sympathizer. "I was like, 'Who is this guy?' " says Mr. Marwat.

It's taken his family six months – and the counsel of "peaceful" clerics – to reverse the process. "We do make fun of him," says Marwat. "[But] he's very thankful to us for forcing him to come back."


• Rehmat Mehsud contributed to this report.

[bigron]

Tuesday, June 09, 2009
20:49 Mecca time, 17:49 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200969165542486720.html

 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 

 
Deaths in Peshawar hotel blast 


Dozens of people have been hurt in the massive explosion at the luxury hotel in Peshawar


 
At least five people are reported to have been killed and 25 wounded after a massive bomb exploded outside a five-star hotel in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The blast rocked the Pearl Continental hotel in the northwestern city on Tuesday, Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent, reported.

"The hotel is famous with VIPs and journalists. The attacker is said to have brought his vehicle into the compound ... explosives had been planted inside," he said.

"It is still not clear whether this was a suicide attack as, at the entrance to the hotel, there is very strong security and barriers that are lowered so vehicles can be checked."

Medical and rescue efforts at the blast site have been complicated by power outages resulting from the explosion.

'Popular' hotel

Peshawar is the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Pakistani government forces have battled fighters loyal to the Taliban in recent weeks.

Taliban fighters had threatened to stage a series of attacks against civilian and government targets in retaliation for the military offensive in the province.

Iqbal Khattaq, bureau chief of the Daily Times, told Al Jazeera that Pakistani intelligence agencies and police had been "tipped off" about a possible attack by militants from the South Waziristan and the Swat region of the NWFP.

"This hotel was [thought to be] quite secure - a number of private security arrangements had been made, including using sniffer dogs," he said.

"This building is also quite far away from the main road, so it was [thought to be] hard for bombers to carry out an attack similar to a bombing at a Marriott hotel [in  Islamabad] last year.

"American officials and diplomats were often seen at this hotel; we do not know whether any [US personnel] are among the dead and wounded."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[Optimus]

Seven dead, 34 injured in NW Pakistan hotel blast: official
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hp9PwzsG_q6DTSfbg0Ubsptguygw
1 hour ago

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Seven people were killed and 34 others wounded Tuesday when a bomb hidden in a vehicle ripped through a five-star hotel in Pakistan's northwest Peshawar city, officials said.

The blast hit the five-star Pearl Continental hotel in the high-security Khyber Road area of Peshawar, and fire swept through the building.

"Seven people are dead and 34 injured," senior district administration official Sahibzada Anees told AFP.

Senior police official Abdul Ghafoor Afridi told AFP: "It was a bomb brought in a vehicle in the garb of hotel supplies."

"There was a huge blast inside PC (Pearl Continental) hotel and a fire has erupted," he had said earlier.

An AFP reporter at the scene said a deep crater was visible outside the hotel and there was damage to the four-storey building. Rescue workers carried the wounded, including foreigners, to safety.

Witnesses and a security official said that the attackers were travelling in a delivery pick-up truck and there was shooting before the blast.

It is the seventh deadly bombing to hit the troubled city in a month, as fears grow that Taliban militants are extracting revenge for a punishing six-week military offensive against them in three northwest districts.

[Satyagraha]

Also on the hotel bombing in NW Pakistan....


Strong Bomb Hits Hotel in Northwest Pakistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/asia/10peshawar.html?_r=1&hp
By IRFAN ASHRAF and SALMAN MASOOD
Published: June 9, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a large bomb in the parking lot and killing at least 11 people and wounding 55, Pakistani officials.

A police officer and volunteers helped injured people after a bombing on Tuesday outside a five-star hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The blast, which left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide, was powerful enough to be heard for miles, witnesses said. Television images showed parts of the hotel badly damaged by the blast and wounded people, with blood soaked clothes, being helped out of the smoke filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors.

Guests at the time of the attack included United Nations officials and an airline crew, and five women and three foreigners were among the dead, officials said. Two United Nations World Food Program officials were wounded, one critically, a United Nations official in Pakistan said.

The attack was the most spectacular against a Western target in Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad, last September, which left more than 50 dead.

The bombing at the Pearl Continental, which is well set back from a major roadway, employed tactics similar to the assault on May 28 by militants who attempted to bomb the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service in Lahore, killing 26 people.

It followed threats last week by Taliban leaders, who warned Pakistanis that they were preparing “major attacks” in large cities in retaliation for the military’s ongoing campaign against insurgents in parts of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Peshawar, capital of the province and gateway to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made a base, has been the scene of frequent incursions by the insurgents and of bombings in the past.

On the day of the Taliban warning, three bombs detonated in and around Peshawar, including at an electronics market and a police check point, as well as in Dera Ismail Khan, in the country’s troubled west, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens.

But the attack at the Pearl Continental was far larger and more complex in its execution. Police officials estimated that militants used 500 kilograms of explosives in the attack.

“The floor under my feet shook,” the Associated Press quoted one wounded man, Jawad Chaudhry, as saying. He was in his room at the time of the bombing. “I thought the roof was falling on me. I ran out. I saw everybody running in panic. There was blood and pieces of glass everywhere.”

[Satyagraha]

Unknown armed-men kill two in Kurram Agency
 Updated at: 1705 PST,  Wednesday, June 10, 2009
 
PESHAWAR: Unknown assailants have gunned down two persons in Kurram Agency, sources said on Wednesday.

According to details, two persons identified as Badshah and Sarwar residents of Manatau tribes were killed when unknown armed-men opened opened fire at them here in Makhi Zai area of Lower Kurram. Their bodies have been shifted to Central Kurram.

The political administration is investigating into the incident.

Armed-men also killed a man named Ismail hailing from Toori tribe on Tuesday.

[bigron]

Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan

Posted By Kathy Kelly On June 9, 2009 @ 9:00 pm


In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Lark and Termite, the skies over Korea in 1950 are described in this way: "The planes always come … like planets on rotation. A timed bloodletting, with different excuses."

The most recent plane to attack the Pakistani village of Khaisor (according to a Waziristan resident who asked me to withhold his name) came 20 days ago, on May 20, 2009. A U.S. drone airplane fired a missile at the village at 4:30 a.m., killing 14 women and children and two elders, wounding 11.

The previous day, some travelers had come to Khaisor, and the villagers had served them a meal. "This is our custom," my friend relates. "It is our traditional way." But these travelers were members of the Taliban, and their visit was noted by U.S. forces. It is possible they were identified through pictures taken by unmanned U.S. drones. Although the visitors had left right after their meal, the U.S. responded to this act of hospitality by bombing the homes of the hosts early the following morning.

I asked my friend how families cope when a bomb suddenly blasts their home in the middle of the night. Do they have any kind of first aid available to help the wounded? "You see this," he said, pointing to the long shawl that I happened to be wearing, a customary part of every village woman’s dress, "they try to use this [as a bandage], because it is all they have." I imagined the shawl rapidly soaking up the blood of a dying Pakistani man, woman, or child.

On the morning of the 20th, the other villagers had rushed to the section where the missile had hit, hoisting injured survivors onto their shoulders and carrying them across rough, hilly terrain to the nearest road (about three miles away from the village) where, lacking vehicles of their own and with no hope of receiving an ambulance visit, they waited for a car to stop, their only means of reaching a hospital.

The first car they saw did stop, but its driver refused to take any of the wounded for fear that his action would be noted by an unmanned U.S. drone, and that he himself would face the same reward for his hospitality that the village had received.

The villagers walked along the road until another car stopped and did agree to take some of the wounded to a nearby center run by the International Commission of the Red Cross.

For three days following the attack, people collected in the village, coming in from all over the region for the funerals. My visitor told me that whether people know the villagers or not, they will come to pray. "On the cell phone you get the word," he said. "Look, this bloody thing again happened. People share the sorrow, but the anger increases. Everyone says we should get rid of the Americans."

At the funeral, the villagers showed casings from the missile to demonstrate that it was a U.S. missile that killed their neighbors.

About 40-50 families live in the area of the village. My friend said that the people are hospitable and sturdy, tough enough to live in harsh conditions.

Villagers have become accustomed to the drone attacks. At first, some were paralyzed with fear, but since 2001, they’ve endured about 70 such attacks, and drone surveillance has become a routine fact of life. Even the children can identify the drones flying overhead. "When there is a drone up above, the children don’t play in a group, because they don’t want the drone to hit them," said our visitor. The pilots of the drones, looking through monitors at their consoles in Nevada and elsewhere in the U.S., are more likely to mistake groups of people for their designated targets than people standing alone. Groups of children have been attacked. "The children scatter and run away, and they stop playing for some hours."

Asked if he saw any alternatives to the fighting, my friend immediately said that the attackers – the people from the United States – should come and sit with them. "If they come and discuss and throw away the arms, I hope it will be far better than if they are hitting us and trying to bring the peace through arms. Even if the peace comes, through arms, we will never forget after 100 years, and we will take revenge."

"Our area was the most peaceful," he continued, "but when the army came to Afghanistan it also affected us and our area became more violent. They should come and sit with us, assess our need, they should help us get drinking water, they should give us education, they should give us loans, they should help us in agriculture."

My friend has already organized a jirga, or discussion, between local people and Taliban to consider how peace might come to the area. He asked the jirga members if they wanted peace and they responded, "Yes, why not? Who is such a person that they would not want peace? If the Americans stop the drones and go out from Afghanistan and if the Pakistan army stops the mess they are making in our agency, yes, we want peace."

The U.S., and some segments of Pakistani society, want other things from these villagers. It’s difficult to know what fuels the ongoing attacks, particularly when media are banned from the areas under attack.

But the duty these villagers were bombed for carrying out, this time, was hospitality. Strangers come to your home and you feed them. During my visit here in Pakistan, soon to end, I’ve been shown profound respect and hospitality, although I’ve come here from the land of an enemy, from a country that brings terrifying robotic planes here, constantly surveilling and routinely killing from the skies in a manner reminiscent of science fiction. The drones are a daily fact of life here, brought by visitors. U.S. bombs are now part of their sky: new planets on rotation.

Here, the enlightened West now stands for mechanized death from the skies, "a timed bloodletting with different excuses."

Yesterday, the "excuse" our visitor described, the rationale for incinerating women, children, and elders, was a mere act of hospitality – the extreme, obligatory hospitality shown to friends and enemies alike in this part of the world.

I’m soon to leave Pakistan and its targeted regions. Last week, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and a small delegation left after a short visit. It’s likely that U.S. generals and advisers will continue to shuttle back and forth between the U.S. and Pakistan.

All who come from the U.S. are guests here.

How do we hope to be treated?



Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/kelly/2009/06/09/visitors-and-hosts-in-pakistan/

[Satyagraha]

Attack on Pakistan hotel fuels anger with Taliban
Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:55am
By Kamran Haider
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE55940020090610

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A plaque on the wall of the guard booth at the gate of the Pearl Continental Hotel in the Pakistani city of Peshawar reads: "This hotel is protected by latest security system."

That system failed late on Tuesday night when militants forced their way through the gate and a suicide truck-bomber drove up to the hotel and set off his explosives bringing down a corner of the five-storey hotel.

Nine people were killed including two foreign U.N. workers. Rescuers were picking through the rubble looking for more victims on Wednesday while heavy lifters were pulling mangled cars from the wreckage.

Peshawar has for thousands of years been a hub and resting point for a succession of invaders, traders and pilgrims who have tramped through the Khyber Pass, the gateway to Afghanistan to the west of the city.

It lies in a fertile valley bordered by peaks and has also long been a center for ethnic Pashtun culture.

But these days the mood is grim and anger with the Taliban is seething.

"Our business has been ruined. If the situation continues like this I may move," said Mumtaz Askari, who owns a small book shop in the Storyteller's Bazaar in Peshawar's old city.

"Our lives are so insecure. You leave home in the morning and don't know if you'll return in the evening. Women can't go shopping and when children go to school you pray they'll come back safely," Askari said.

"Eliminate them once and for all, they're enemies of humanity," he said of the Taliban.

Kalimullah, an Afghan working as a waiter in a nearby roadside cafe serving roasted goat and flat bread, said very few people were going out to eat.

"I came here to work because there was peace but now it's the same as Afghanistan," he said. "They're not Muslims. A Muslim wouldn't slaughter people like this. They're worse than the Afghan Taliban."

SAD, ANGRY, WORRIED

The Pearl Continental, or PC as it's known, has for years been a favorite haunt of foreign aid workers, journalists and the odd tourist, plus well-heeled and powerful Pakistanis.

In the 1980s, leaders of Afghanistan's holy warrior factions battling Soviet occupiers in their homeland over the nearby border regularly held meetings and news conferences in the hotel.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States journalists again flocked to the PC to cover the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan over subsequent weeks.

There has been no claim of responsibility but there is little doubt it was Pakistani Taliban or their allies who struck one of the city's landmarks.

"People are sad, they are angry, they are worried," veteran Peshawar journalist Abdullah Jan told Reuters at his home, which is not far from the PC.

The militants have stepped up attacks in cities since the army launched an offensive in April to clear the Taliban from their bastion in the Swat valley, to the northeast of Peshawar.

Tuesday's blast was the latest in a series of deadly attacks in the city. The Taliban occasionally prowl its outskirts, attacking convoys taking equipment and supplies to the U.S. military in Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.

"These incidents are not doing the Taliban any good but definitely, it will get worse before it gets better, if it gets better," Jan said.

"It will get worse when the army goes into Waziristan," he said, referring to a militant stronghold on the Afghan border, to the southwest of Peshawar, which authorities have said might be attacked after Swat.

(Additional reporting and writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

[Satyagraha]

Militants show sophisticated tactics in Pakistan
Thursday, 11 Jun, 2009 | 03:22 PM PST

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-militants-show-sophisticated-tactics-in-pakistan-qs-08

ISLAMABAD: Two commando-style assaults in Pakistan in the past two weeks show militants can now pierce the iron-fortified gates, concrete barricades and cordons of armed guards that are meant to secure hotels, housing compounds and even police stations across the country.

The level of organisation and sophistication of the attacks has been rarely seen in Pakistan. They are designed to send a message that if the military launches an offensive against the Taliban's stronghold near the Afghan border it will face a highly determined and well-prepared enemy, analysts say.

A team of suicide assailants in two vehicles opened fire on security guards, then were able to drive through the main gate of the luxury Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar late Tuesday and detonate a huge bomb close enough to the building to collapse part of the reinforced concrete structure.

The tactics mirrored closely an assault exactly two weeks earlier on a police building and a regional headquarters of Pakistan's top intelligence agency in Lahore.

In that attack, gunmen leaped from a van that stopped at a guard post blocking the street leading to the security buildings. They opened fire and lobbed grenades at guards, then lifted a heavy boom gate to allow the van through. About 30 died in the blast that erupted moments later.

Mahmood Shah, a former chief of security in the tribal region where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have become entrenched, said the Peshawar and Lahore attacks mark a shift in strategy for the militants, whose attacks previously have often involved lone assailants with suicide vests, small improvised bombs or gun ambushes.

‘It is an improvement in their tactics; they are trying to enter the target through use of force,’ Shah told The Associated Press. ‘It appears that they are in a hurry and they are becoming more aggressive.’

The rush may be due to a widespread expectation that the military is planning to launch a major operation against the Taliban in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan.

No plans have been announced, but the military success of the month-old offensive to oust the Taliban from the Swat region has emboldened the government and the armed forces, officials say.

The purpose of the Taliban's carefully planned attacks was ‘to send a message to the government to stay away from Waziristan, which is their base,’ said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defence and political analyst.

‘It seems that they are now going for a head-on collision’ with the government, he said.

A day after the May 27 Lahore attack, a senior spokesman claimed responsibility for the Taliban and warned of a wider campaign of violence in major Pakistani cities in retaliation Swat offensive.

The offensive is seen as a test of Pakistan's resolve in fighting militancy.

In September, before the Swat offensive began, a dump truck loaded with explosives blew up outside the Marriott hotel in the capital, Islamabad, killing more than 50 people. In that attack, the truck was driven up to barriers blocking the entrance of the hotel but did not drive through.

Tuesday's attack prompted fresh concerns about security at embassies and other places where foreigners gather.

At western-styled stores and restaurants in Islamabad, gates and guards with shotguns are already the norm, while the US Embassy and most other foreign missions are clustered within a compound surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and several other layers of security.

Security camera footage released Wednesday showed two vehicles approach the main gate to the Pearl Continental Hotel, a regular stop for international aid workers, journalists and other foreigners that is set well back from the street in a large compound surrounded by a high fence.

A white sedan pulls up at the gate's guard post, and a puff of smoke suggests shots fired from the front seat. A guard outside the car window collapses to the ground. Another, who seconds before had swung an already-open gate wider to let the car pull up, starts fleeing toward the hotel.

Unchallenged, the car and the truck drive into the compound, over a metal barrier that recesses into the driveway and through a chicane of concrete barriers positioned to slow vehicles down.

A flash of light a few moments later illuminates the compound and the street outside, and the lens is filled with a cloud of dust. Police said initial signs were that the truck was loaded with half a ton of military-grade explosives.

At least 11 people died, including several aid workers, two of whom were foreigners working for the UN, officials said Wednesday.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said such tactics have been used before by Pakistani militant groups fighting against Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, but they have been limited in scope because of the level of military precision required.

‘It is very difficult to defend against as it is a forced-entry attack by determined, even suicidal adversaries,’ Hoffman said in an e-mailed response to questions. ‘Like the Mumbai attacks last November, this attack shows a high level of training, discipline, command and control and pre-attack intelligence.’

Other terrorist group may be studying such attacks ‘and may aspire to emulate them, but the level of training, discipline and command and control are not easily replicated,’ he said.

Shah, the former tribal zone official, said the best protection from such attacks was to post sharpshooters and machine guns on the roof of high-target buildings, who could spot assailants as they launched their assault and open fire before they could get close to their target.

‘If you have enough imagination you can repel such attacks,’ he said. — AP

[Satyagraha]

Tuesday, June 09, 2009
20:49 Mecca time, 17:49 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200969165542486720.html

 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 

 
Deaths in Peshawar hotel blast 


Dozens of people have been hurt in the massive explosion at the luxury hotel in Peshawar


 
At least five people are reported to have been killed and 25 wounded after a massive bomb exploded outside a five-star hotel in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The blast rocked the Pearl Continental hotel in the northwestern city on Tuesday, Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent, reported.

"The hotel is famous with VIPs and journalists. The attacker is said to have brought his vehicle into the compound ... explosives had been planted inside," he said.

"It is still not clear whether this was a suicide attack as, at the entrance to the hotel, there is very strong security and barriers that are lowered so vehicles can be checked."

Medical and rescue efforts at the blast site have been complicated by power outages resulting from the explosion....

No bodies of bombers found: SP Cantt
 Updated at: 1158 PST,  Thursday, June 11, 2009
 PESHAWAR: SP Cantt said Thursday that the investigation into the Peshawar blast at a five-star hotel that killed at least 19 people, are still in progress.

He said no bodies of the suicide bombers were found from the blast site.

The SP Cantt said a security guard of the hotel has been included in the investigation.

[Satyagraha]

66 extremists killed in last 24 hours: ISPR
 Updated at: 1607 PST,  Thursday, June 11, 2009

http://www.geo.tv/6-11-2009/43951.htm

 RAWALPINDI: During last twenty four hours, at least 66 terrorists were killed and nine others were apprehended; while, one civilian was killed and 2 were injured in various areas of Malakand, Bunnu and South Waziristan.

According to ISPR press release, at the same time, four soldiers embraced Shahadat and 12 were injured including an officer.

Security forces secured Kotka Saifullah and Sara Bangal. Terrorists fired 2 rockets at Bannu city, resultantly 1 civilian was killed and 2 were injured.

During search operation at Sara Bangal, 34 terrorists were killed, while 3 terrorists were apprehended. The operation to secure Zindi Khan by security forces is under way.

In South Waziristan area, late last night about 400 terrorists attacked Siplatoi and Jandola Fort, resultantly 3 soldiers embraced Shahadat and 5 were injured, while 22 terrorists were killed and large number injured.

In SWAT area, the security forces are consolidating their positions at secured areas of Kabbal, while operation in remaining area is in progress. During exchange of fire with terrorists, 3 soldiers were injured.

Security forces commenced search and destroy operation at Ashro Kandao, Arkot Qilla, Shakardarra, Matta triangle, Sakhra, Matta - Khararai and Sarai on the west of Martung.

Security forces secured Sijban on Runial-Chuprial route. During exchange of fire with terrorists 3 soldiers were injured. During exchange of fire between security forces and terrorists in Peochar area, 1 soldier was injured, while 10 terrorists were killed and 6 were apprehended.

In Dir areas also, the siege of villages Shatkas and Ghazigae by Lashkar is continuing. During exchange of fire at Shatkas, lashkar destroyed terrorists bunkers and 3 hide outs including one ammunition dump.

Terrorists fire raided at Zohaib Post near Lal Qilla, resultantly 1 soldier embraced Shahadat.

An IED planted by terrorists was exploded on Ambela - Daggar road, resultantly 3 vehicles were partially damaged. A terrorist house was destroyed at Gatkala. Security forces secured Gat Khela and Jowar areas of Buner

Major repair work of main electricity line up to Mingora has been completed with the support of the Army. As many as three trucks of rations and non food items were distributed among the stranded people of Swat valley.

[Satyagraha]

Late-night gunbattle rocks Peshawar
By Zulfiqar Ali
Friday, 12 Jun, 2009 | 04:23 AM PST

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/09-late-night-gunbattle-rocks-peshawar---05

PESHAWAR: A heavy exchange of fire took place between law-enforcement agencies and unidentified attackers in front of the Corps Commander House on the Khyber Road on Thursday night, police said.

An official of the Eastern Police Station told Dawn that two unidentified attackers were killed after troops guarding residence of the Corps Commander opened fire.

‘We are not sure why they (troops) started firing. Only soldiers can offer comments on the incident,’ the official said.

Big flames were seen on the main road in front of the Corps Commander’s residence and the fire brigade was called in to extinguish the fire. Officials said that identity of the dead had not been ascertained.

‘It is premature to say that the dead were attackers or passersby,’ an official source said.

Soon after the incident, army and police sealed the Khyber Road and started a search operation in an area that houses Governor House, Chief Minister House, Judicial Complex and Civil Secretariat and sensitive installations.

The firing lasted more than 20 minutes. Witnesses also confirmed that two bodies were lying on the road. The residence of the Corps Commander is located near the Pearl Continental Hotel, which was bombed on Tuesday night.

Police said the search operation was in progress and surrounding areas had been cordoned off.

[Satyagraha]

Suicide attack kills two, injures 13 in Peshawar
Friday, 12 Jun, 2009 | 01:00 AM PST

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/12-suicide-+attack-+kills-+two-injures-1-in-peshawar--bi-02

PESHAWAR: Two people were killed and 13 others including police were injured Thursday in a grenade and suicide bomb attack targeting security forces in Peshawar, police said.
The attack happened after dark in a northern suburb of Peshawar, a northwestern city still reeling from a commando-style suicide bombing blamed on Taliban militants on a luxury hotel Tuesday, which killed at least nine people.

Senior Peshawar police officer Mohammad Ejaz said that an attacker threw a hand grenade at a police van near a checkpoint.

‘When police gathered a suicide bomber blew himself up. One civilian was killed. Fourteen people were injured, eight of them policemen,’ he said.

Doctor Mohammad Shahid of Peshawar's main Lady Reading hospital said later that one of the injured had also died.

‘One person died in the hospital —he was a civilian —and three are still in a critical condition, including two policemen,’ he told AFP.

Another local police officer, Mohammad Nisar, said body parts of the suicide attacker had been recovered and sent to a hospital.

[Satyagraha]

Attack on Nowshera mosque kills six, injures 90
Friday, 12 Jun, 2009 | 03:19 PM PST | 

NOWSHERA: An explosives laden vehicle has hit a mosque in Nowshera district, killing six people and injuring 90, according to DawnNews reports.
 
The mosque was near an army supply depot in the Nowshera, roughly 100 kilometres from Islamabad, and according to AP, the explosion occurred soon after Friday prayers. Police chief Abdullah Khan says that casualties are feared and says some of the victims may have died on their way to hospital.

The roof of the mosque, as well as the walls were badly damaged in the attack, as resuce workers scramble to free people trapped in the rubble. The injured have been shifted to the nearby Cantonment Hospital as well as the GHQ Hospital Peshawar. Security was reported to be very tight in the are, following earlier attacks in the province, with vehicles in the area being strictly screened, according to reports.

According to reports, police had arrested a top Taliban commander, Qari Khursheed, and his accomplices from Nowshera on Thursday. Reports also say that Qari Khursheed has confessed to his involvement in various terrorist activities. Details to follow.
 
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/19-attack-on-nowshera-mosque-kills-six-injures-90-01

 

[Satyagraha]

MQM chief warns of ‘conspiracies against govt’
By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque
Friday, 12 Jun, 2009 | 01:02 PM PST

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has said that some forces that are not in parliament ‘are hatching conspiracies against the present democratic government and want to pit the Pakistan People’s Party and the MQM against each other’.

In his telephonic address on the 31st foundation day of the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation (APMSO) here on Thursday, he warned all such forces, which he said had missed a chance to enter the parliament by boycotting the Feb 18, 2008 general election, ‘not to conspire against the democratic government’ because it ‘would lead to derailment of democracy in the country’.

A large number of workers of the APMSO attended the programme. Similar congregations were also held in other cities of Sindh and in Lahore, where Mr Hussain’s telephonic address was relayed simultaneously.

Without naming any particular party, Mr Hussain said that such forces had ‘opposed the creation of Pakistan’ and they were still against its ideology. They were working in the name of Islam, but wanted to destabilise the country, he said.

He said that these forces were also conspiring against the coalition of the MQM and the PPP, but ‘their conspiracies would only harm democracy’.

He also appealed to those who joined extremist forces ‘due to some misunderstanding’ to quit such forces and to return to ‘their routine lives’.

Mr Hussain strongly condemned the recent incidents in which 12 MQM workers fell victim to targeted killings, and expressed his condolences to their families.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/13+mqm+chief+warns+of+conspiracies+against+govt-za-14

[Satyagraha]

Dr Sarfraz among 5 martyred in Lahore blast
Updated at: 1626 PST,  Friday, June 12, 2009
http://www.geo.tv/6-12-2009/44032.htm

LAHORE: At least five people including Jamia Naeemia principal Dr Sarfraz Naeemi were martyred and eight others injured in a suicide blast at Jamia Naeemia situated in Garhi Shahu area of Lahore, Geo News reported Friday.

The blast occurred after the Friday prayers when the people were making their way out of the mosque after offering the Friday prayers. A lot of people were present in the mosque at the time of blast.

Jamia Naeemia principal Dr Sarfraz Naeemi was present at his office at the Jamia Naeemia at the time of blast, the eyewitnesses said adding he was meeting with the people and students at his office; in the meantime, the suicide bomber blew himself up.

The blast was so powerful that the outer walls of the Jamia Naeemia Masjid collapsed and he nearby buildings were harmed in the blast.

The injured Maulana Naeemi was rushed to the hospital; however, he succumbed to the injuries on the way to the hospital.

The deceased include his close associate Dr Khalilur Rehman.

The personnel of the security forces cordoned off the area and started the relief operation.

The injured were rushed to the Meo Hospital. Emergency has been declared in the hospitals of the Lahore.

The security forces are searching the building on the apprehension of another bomb.

DCO Lahore Sajjad Bhutta said the Maulana was provided with the proper security.

=======================================

Scuffle between mourners, police after Lahore blast
 Update2 at: 1604 PST,  Friday, June 12, 2009
 LAHORE: Scuffle has been erupted between students of Jamia Naeemia and police after the killing of renowned religious scholar Maulana Sarfaraz Naeemi. The students chanted slogans and expelled the police from the premises of Jamia. Rangers have been called to control the situation.
http://www.geo.tv/6-12-2009/44031.htm

[bigron]

Friday, June 12, 2009
13:39 Mecca time, 10:39 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200961291943440839.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Bombers strike two Pakistan mosques 

 
A Pakistani bomb disposal officer uses a metal detector in the Jamia Naeemia religious school [AFP]
 

 
At least two people have been killed in near-simultaneous blasts in Pakistan, officials say.

One blast took place inside the offices of the Jamia Naeemia religious school and mosque in the eastern city of Lahore soon after Friday prayers, police said.

The second, a few minutes later, was a car bomb in the northwest of the country.

One of those killed in Lahore when a lone suicide bomber entered the school was a prominent religious leader known to oppose the Taliban, police said.

"Unfortunately, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi has been martyred," Pervez Rathore, a Lahore police chief, told the Reuters news agency.

Another person was killed and at least six others hurt in the attack.

Nowshera blast

The second blast took place at a mosque in Nowshera, a city in North West Frontier Province, about 100km from the capital, Islamabad.


Naeemi had received death threats for some time [AFP]

Thirty-two people were wounded in the car-bomb attack, Abdullah Khan, the local police chief, said.

Some of the victims may have died on the way to hospital, he added.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said the mosque in Nowshera was in a military area.

"The military pray side-by-side with the locals there, and many more casualties are expected.

"With the Pakistani military about to embark on another offensive against the Taliban, strategic and military thinkers are saying there will be more large-scale attacks across the country," he said.

In recent weeks, Naeemi headed several meetings of religious leaders to denounce Taliban fighters for carrying out suicide blasts, and voiced support for the military operation taking place in Swat.

Naeemi recently passed a religious ruling (fatwa) saying suicide bombings were forbidden. He had been receiving death threats for some time, Al Jazeera's correspondent reported.

Waqar Naeemi, his son, said he was critically wounded in the Lahore blast and later died in hospital.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

[Satyagraha]

For Pakistanis, a Fight Against Their Own
Confronting Taliban Tests Bonds of Faith And National Heritage
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104264.html?hpid=artslot

After the Taliban broke a peace deal with Pakistan's government, the country's army has been fighting to dispel the militants from its Swat Valley region since April. Armed forces have been able to reclaim a number of key towns in the region, but the human toll of the action is being felt by the family members of those in battle.
 
Friday, June 12, 2009

PATALIAN, Pakistan -- The body of Mohammed Sajad lies buried in the sandy soil of the village cemetery, beneath a lonely Pakistani flag that flies crisply in the sweltering air.

He died, his father explains, a soldier's death, shot in the back after his Pakistani army unit marched into a trap in the Swat Valley. Recovering the body took four days because of the ferocity of Taliban sniper fire. It will take Sajad's father far longer to understand why Pakistan is waging war with its own people.

"We used to know who the enemy was, and where he is coming from," said Zulfikar Sajad, his eyes vacant and sad as he sat in a mud-brick hut on a desolate plain. "Now, we don't know from which direction the bullets will come."

Unlike in past wars against its archenemy, India, Pakistan is engulfed in a conflict that pits Pakistanis against Pakistanis, Muslims against Muslims. It is a confrontation the army long resisted, and it features an enemy that many Pakistanis would prefer to believe does not exist. For the soldiers who fight, and for the growing number of families forced to bury their sons, the struggle seems to go against their very DNA.

Yet overcoming that deep unease will be critical to Pakistani efforts to win what U.S. officials identify as the central front in the war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other violent Islamist groups.

The conflict in Pakistan is as much about public perception as it is about events on the battlefield, and in recent weeks there have been signs that opinions are shifting. Buoyed by apparent army victories in Swat, and repulsed by extreme Taliban tactics such as beheadings and suicide bombings that target civilians, Pakistanis have rallied around the military as it wages a battle that many here view as a struggle for the nation's soul. What was once seen as a U.S. fight is now being claimed as Pakistan's.

"There has been a palpable change in the public perception of the Taliban," said Rifaat Hussain, professor of defense and strategic studies at Qaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "When the savagery of their rule was exposed, people began to think, 'This is not the kind of Islam that we want in Pakistan.' "

At the same time, Hussain said, the military has navigated its own shift. As recently as six months ago, he said, the Taliban was still seen as "Pakistan's second line of defense against India. Now they're being seen as a very serious threat."

That is welcome news for the Obama administration, which was gravely concerned this spring that the Pakistani government was unwilling or unable to combat a surging Taliban force that was then knocking on the door of the capital. U.S. anxiety has eased somewhat as the momentum has swung back toward the army and the government.

But it remains to be seen whether Pakistan's new attitude will endure through what is sure to be a years-long fight against an enemy its military once nurtured, with U.S. assistance.

"These people were certified as God's holy warriors by the White House itself. Now they've been transformed into the world's darkest villains. That's complicated," said Ayaz Amir, a member of Parliament and a newspaper columnist and army veteran. "But the opinion that Pakistan has no choice other than to fight these people is becoming stronger."

No one believes the fight will be easy. Although the army has made progress in its offensive in Swat, vast swaths of Pakistan's northwest remain locked in the Taliban's grip.

Government critics, Amir among them, only weeks ago had been calling for negotiations to quell the insurgency but now support military action. Private television channels, too, have changed their normally feisty, anti-establishment tone. They broadcast reports from the front lines titled "Pakistan Fights Back" and air funeral services in which parents speak proudly of their "martyred" soldier sons.

The Pakistani military has always been the most influential institution in Pakistan. With 650,000 active-duty troops, it is the seventh-largest army in the world, and it was built to protect this homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims from its larger and more powerful neighbor, Hindu-majority India. Three wars later, Pakistani firepower is still concentrated along the Indian border.

But now the army faces the prospect of a prolonged counterinsurgency against groups it has funded and trained for decades to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

The army has little choice. The groups, led by the Pakistani Taliban, have turned their guns against the state. Last year, about 2,000 Pakistanis died in terrorist attacks, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. The Pakistani military says that since 2001, it has lost more than 1,600 men, more than double the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed battling Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Here in Pakistan's "martial belt," a crescent of northern Punjab province that has consistently been the military's most fertile recruiting ground, army families are grappling with the idea that Pakistan's gravest threat lies within, not beyond the eastern border.

Zulfikar Sajad, the father whose eldest son was killed in Swat in January, said he remembers telling his son years ago about the Pakistani army's heroic efforts against India in the 1965 war. "When I am old enough, I will join the army," Sajad said his son replied.

Here, there's often little choice. The area is rural -- rolling, yellowish-green plains stretch as far as the eye can see, broken only occasionally by a squat cluster of homes. The land is unirrigated, and the harvests are unpredictable. To guarantee a steady source of income, most families want at least one son in the military -- even though the basic salary is less than $80 a month.

"It remains a peasant army," said Amir, who grew up in the nearby city of Chakwal and represents this area in Parliament. "Americans should congratulate yourselves on the cheapest cannon fodder you can buy."

After Mohammed Sajad's death, the army gave his family a bag of rice, a bag of sugar, four pounds of black tea and about $1,000 as compensation.

Zulfikar Sajad said that he is proud of his son but that he knows little about why he was fighting, and that his son himself did not understand.

"We are common village people. We know nothing of the policies of the government," he said, shrugging, a red kaffiyeh wrapped between fingers worn from a lifetime of hard labor. "We don't have television. We only hear in the newspapers that this is being done because of the United States. God knows what is true."

The Swat Valley, where his son died, is about 130 miles from here, but it might as well be a world away. "I have never visited, but I hear they are poor people, just like me," he said.

Farzana Zonain, who lives in the city nearest to Sajad's village, thinks often of those impoverished Taliban fighters in Swat because one of them nearly killed her brother. Atif Mehmood was shot in the abdomen by a Taliban sniper, lost a kidney and has had two lifesaving surgeries.

Zonain can't help but think this struggle could be worked out, if only the government and the Taliban would talk more.

"It's a fight between Muslims. One Muslim is killing the other," said Zonain, a 29-year-old housewife who favors bright-pink shoes and shawls. "I would be happy if my brother had gone to fight some enemy country and got injured there. But not like this."

And yet, within her family, there's hardly agreement. In the bare, concrete confines of their living room, they play out the debate that is unfolding across the country.

Another brother, Mohammed Asif, scoffs at the notion that talking to the Taliban would do any good. He relates a story that his brother told him before he was wounded: A soldier friend went back to his village for home leave and was kidnapped by the Taliban. Days later, his unit received the man's head, wrapped in a shopping bag.

"This is not Islam. Terrorism is not a religion," said Asif, a restaurant cashier who shares his wounded brother's lanky frame. "Just like with India, we are again facing an enemy that is out to destroy this country and its people."

"But the government could handle it in other ways. Dialogue, negotiations," Zonain interjected, cutting her brother off. "This war benefits no one."

She shook her head, thinking of her injured brother and the games he played as a child. He would gather the neighborhood kids, and they would use the city's sewage-filled streets as their battlefield for a war with toy guns. It seemed very simple then.

"He would tell the others, 'You are America. You are Russia. You are India. I am Pakistan,' " she recalls, smiling. "Pakistan always won."

[bigron]

Anti-Taliban cleric killed in Pakistan blast

Fri Jun 12, 2009 7:42am EDT
By Mubasher Bukhari
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5542HC20090612?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest




LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A prominent anti-Taliban Pakistani Muslim cleric was killed on Friday in a suicide bomb attack in the city of Lahore, police said.

In another blast at around the same time, a suicide car-bomber set off explosives in an attack on a mosque in the northwestern town of Nowshera, killing at least three people, police said.

The blasts came as Pakistani forces stepped up attacks on militants across the northwest after the U.S. House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.

Security forces have made progress in more than a month of fighting against Taliban militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in recent days have begun operations in several other parts of the region.

The militants have responded with a series of bomb attacks.

Moderate cleric Sarfraz Naeemi was attacked at his office at his mosque complex after leading Friday prayers.

"Unfortunately, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi has been martyred," Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore told Reuters.

The cleric's brother, Tajwar Naeemi, said seven people were wounded in the attack that killed his brother.

"When I came out of the office a few people went in and the suicide bomber was probably among them," the brother said.

In Nowshera, in North West Frontier Province, three people were killed and more than 20 were wounded, police said.

Rising Islamist violence has raised fears for Pakistan's stability and for the safety of its nuclear arsenal but the offensive in Swat has reassured the United States about its commitment to the global campaign against militancy.

Pakistan is a vital ally of the United States as it struggles to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan and defeat al Qaeda.

U.S. officials said on Thursday insurgent violence in Afghanistan had accelerated sharply alongside the arrival of new U.S. troops, reaching its highest level since 2001.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said he believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and he hoped joint operations with Pakistani forces would find him.

HELICOPTERS ATTACK

The offensive in Swat has broad public support and the bombs in response appear to be hardening opinion against the militants.

Naeemi was an outspoken critic of suicide attacks which he said were un-Islamic.

"The military must eliminate the Taliban once and for all,"

Naeemi told Reuters last month. "Otherwise they will capture the entire country which would be a big catastrophe."

Police in Bannu, a town in North West Frontier Province adjacent to the North Waziristan militant stronghold on the Afghan border, said the military had fired artillery through the night at militant positions in the Jani Kheil area.

"Since sunrise, helicopter gunships have also being used in the attack. There have been reports of casualties on the militant side," police official Sami Ullah told Reuters.

More than 130 militants have been killed in the fighting near Bannu this week up to Thursday, according to military officers and a senior civilian official in the area.

Independent casualty estimates for the fighting in Bannu and other parts of the northwest are not available.

Gunship helicopters also attacked militants in the Bajaur and Mohmand regions on the Afghan border, both to the north of the city of Peshawar, military officials and residents said.

There has also been fighting this week in the South Waziristan and Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal regions.

The military's chief spokesman was not available for comment but an analyst said the various air strikes appeared aimed at keeping militants bottled up.

"The operation in Swat has entered its final stages and troops are engaging militants elsewhere to stop them going to Swat and to disrupt their network," said Mahmood Shah, a former chief of security in the Pashtun tribal areas.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years in a key part of a strategy to combat extremism with economic and social development.

The fighting in Swat and other parts of the northwest has displaced about 2.5 million people and aid officials have appealed to donors to step up their help.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider, Hasan Mehmood, Javed Hussain and Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

[bigron]

West blamed as aid agencies threaten to desert Pakistan's Swat valley

by Mark Tran, Guardian

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55031&hd=&size=1&l=e

• Rich nations urged to dig deep to avoid disaster

• Flight of refugees biggest crisis since Rwanda – UN

June 11, 2009

Cash shortages and bottlenecks in delivering supplies to people uprooted by fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley have triggered the biggest humanitarian funding crisis in a decade, relief organisations warn today.

A group of nine international aid groups including ActionAid, Islamic Relief and Oxfam said efforts to help more than 1 million victims of the fighting were in jeopardy. The agencies face a cash shortfall of more than £26m.

"This is the worst funding crisis we've faced in over a decade for a major ­humanitarian emergency. Some 2.5 million people have fled their homes," said Jane Cocking, Oxfam's humanitarian director. "One month into this emergency, Oxfam is £4m short and will have to turn our backs on some of the world's most ­vulnerable people."

Oxfam said it would have to close its programmes to the 360,000 people it had planned to help if money did not arrive by July. Concern Worldwide, another group, said it would also have to close its programme at the same time, just as health risks such as malaria and diarrhoea will rise because of the monsoon rains.

The agencies blame western governments for not coming up with enough money. A UN appeal for $543m (£330m) has produced only $138m so far. Out of the 52 organisations requesting UN appeal funds, 30 have received no funds at all. Worse, most of the funds the UN appeal has received came before the exodus from the Swat valley that swelled the number of displaced people from 500,000 to 2.5 million in early May, the largest displacement in Pakistan's history.

Since then, rich countries have contributed only $50m to the UN appeal.

"The only reason we haven't faced a massive humanitarian meltdown is the generosity of families and communities of modest means who've looked after the vast majority of those who've fled the fighting. With so many mouths to feed, these communities will soon be running on empty. The world's richest nations need to dig much deeper into their pockets to help," said Carolyn Miller, chief executive of the health charity Merlin.

Delays in getting aid through pose another grave problem: previously governments would have given part of their aid money directly to frontline agencies; in the last four years, however, governments have been encouraged to funnel aid through the UN.

But relief organisations say bureaucracy and a lack of UN staff on the ground have hampered the delivery of aid. "While we support the principle of more co-­ordinated aid, we don't want to cut one lifeline until the new one can hold the weight," said David Taylor of Oxfam.

In an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the UN system, Britain's Department for International Development says it will now give cash directly to those relief organisations working within the UN appeal. "Welcome as this change is, it will require other donors to be equally flexible to cover the agencies' £26m shortfall," the relief groups said.

The UK international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, said: "The aid agencies on the ground are doing heroic work under extremely difficult conditions and we are determined to support their efforts. The international community has an obligation to help the Pakistani government meet the urgent humanitarian needs of those most directly affected by the ongoing insecurity."

The UN has described the flight of people caused by the government offensive in Swat as the most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Until now, unlike many emergencies, most people displaced in Pakistan have found shelter not in camps but with host families or in communal buildings such as schools.

Growing numbers of the displaced "feel that they cannot stay for ever as guests of people who themselves are often quite poor," said Shankar Chauhan, an official from the UN high commissioner for refugees. The result, he said, is that "more and more … are starting to move to camps".



 

[bigron]

Militants show sophisticated tactics in Pakistan

Commando-style attacks in Pakistan demonstrate militants' sophisticated tactics

ROHAN SULLIVAN
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/06/11/militants-show-sophisticated-tactics-in-pakistan-2/

Jun 11, 2009 02:37 EST

Two commando-style assaults in Pakistan in the past two weeks show militants can now pierce the iron-fortified gates, concrete barricades and cordons of armed guards that are meant to secure hotels, housing compounds and even police stations across the country.

The level of organization and sophistication of the attacks has been rarely seen in Pakistan. They are designed to send a message that if the military launches an offensive against the Taliban's stronghold near the Afghan border it will face a highly determined and well-prepared enemy, analysts say.

A team of suicide assailants in two vehicles opened fire on security guards, then were able to drive through the main gate of the luxury Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar late Tuesday and detonate a huge bomb close enough to the building to collapse part of the reinforced concrete structure.

The tactics mirrored closely an assault exactly two weeks earlier on a police building and a regional headquarters of Pakistan's top intelligence agency in the eastern city of Lahore.

In that attack, gunmen leaped from a van that stopped at a guard post blocking the street leading to the security buildings. They opened fire and lobbed grenades at guards, then lifted a heavy boom gate to allow the van through. About 30 died in the blast that erupted moments later.

Mahmood Shah, a former chief of security in the tribal region where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have become entrenched, said the Peshawar and Lahore attacks mark a shift in strategy for the militants, whose attacks previously have often involved lone assailants with suicide vests, small improvised bombs or gun ambushes.

"It is an improvement in their tactics; they are trying to enter the target through use of force," Shah told The Associated Press. "It appears that they are in a hurry and they are becoming more aggressive."

The rush may be due to a widespread expectation that the military is planning to launch a major operation against the Taliban in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan. No plans have been announced, but the military success of the month-old offensive to oust the Taliban from the Swat region has emboldened the government and the armed forces, officials say.

The purpose of the Taliban's carefully planned attacks was "to send a message to the government to stay away from Waziristan, which is their base," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani defense and political analyst.

"It seems that they are now going for a head-on collision" with the government, he said.

A day after the May 27 Lahore attack, a senior spokesman claimed responsibility for the Taliban and warned of a wider campaign of violence in major Pakistani cities in retaliation Swat offensive.

The offensive is seen as a test of Pakistan's resolve in fighting militancy and is strongly supported by Washington, where officials have said privately they would welcome a broader operation in the tribal belt.

In September, before the Swat offensive began, a dump truck loaded with explosives blew up outside the Marriott hotel in the capital, Islamabad, killing more than 50 people. In that attack, the truck was driven up to barriers blocking the entrance of the hotel but did not drive through.

Tuesday's attack prompted fresh concerns about security at embassies and other places where foreigners gather. At Western-styled stores and restaurants in Islamabad, gates and guards with shotguns are already the norm, while the U.S. Embassy and most other foreign missions are clustered within a compound surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and several other layers of security.

Security camera footage released Wednesday showed two vehicles approach the main gate to the Pearl Continental Hotel, a regular stop for international aid workers, journalists and other foreigners that is set well back from the street in a large compound surrounded by a high fence.

A white sedan pulls up at the gate's guard post, and a puff of smoke suggests shots fired from the front seat. A guard outside the car window collapses to the ground. Another, who seconds before had swung an already-open gate wider to let the car pull up, starts fleeing toward the hotel.

Unchallenged, the car and the truck drive into the compound, over a metal barrier that recesses into the driveway and through a chicane of concrete barriers positioned to slow vehicles down.

A flash of light a few moments later illuminates the compound and the street outside, and the lens is filled with a cloud of dust. Police said initial signs were that the truck was loaded with half a ton of military-grade explosives.

At least 11 people died, including several aid workers, two of whom were foreigners working for the U.N., officials said Wednesday.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said such tactics have been used before by Pakistani militant groups fighting against Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, but they have been limited in scope because of the level of military precision required.

"It is very difficult to defend against as it is a forced-entry attack by determined, even suicidal adversaries," Hoffman said in an e-mailed response to questions. "Like the Mumbai attacks last November, this attack shows a high level of training, discipline, command and control and pre-attack intelligence."

Other terrorist group may be studying such attacks "and may aspire to emulate them, but the level of training, discipline and command and control are not easily replicated," he said.

Shah, the former tribal zone official, said the best protection from such attacks was to post sharpshooters and machine guns on the roof of high-target buildings, who could spot assailants as they launched their assault and open fire before they could get close to their target.

"If you have enough imagination you can repel such attacks," he said.

Source: AP News

[bigron]

Serial blasts rock insurgency-hit Pakistan
 
12/06/2009 12:33:00 PM GMT
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Serial_blasts_rock_insurgencyhit_Pakistan.html 


A series of bomb blasts in the northwestern Pakistani garrison town of Nowshera and the eastern city of Lahore kill several people and injure dozens more.

A blast occurred inside offices of a religious seminary in the eastern city of Lahore soon after Friday prayers, killing at least two people including a leading anti-Taliban cleric.

Ten other people were injured after a bomb blasted outside Lahore mosque.

The other blast was reported in the north-western town of Nowshera at a mosque near an army base soon after Friday prayers, killing at least three people and wounding 32 others.

Noshehra is located in the volatile northwestern region about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital of Islamabad.

The death toll is expected t rise as some of the injured from the both blasts are said to be in critical condition.

The insurgents have targeted major cities across Pakistan since Islamabad's troops launched military offensives against the militants in the troubled northwestern Swat valley in early May.

Violence in Pakistan has claimed the lives of thousands of people, including civilians and soldiers, since the country joined US-led 'war on terror'.

Pakistan's government says that the country is fighting against the Taliban for its own survival and not as part of a proxy war on behalf of Washington.




-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

Confronting the enemy within 


12/06/2009 06:30:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Confronting_the_enemy_within.html
 
 The Pakistanis, Afghans and Muslims everywhere will have to do more to prove that what a tiny, lunatic fringe is doing in the name of Islam is nothing but a grave injustice to the great faith.


By Aijaz Zaka Syed


(Reuters) Rescue workers stand near the rubble of a mosque after it was hit by a car-bomb attack in Nowshera


A strange thing happened this week. Hundreds of villagers in Pakistan’s Northwest turned on Taleban fighters after an attack on a mosque killed more than 40 worshippers during the Friday prayers.

As Pakistani Army cracks down on the militants in an offensive that has also killed hundreds of innocent people and displaced nearly two million, ordinary people have launched their own war on the forces that have brought so much misery and destruction to their beautiful land.

After the mosque attack in Upper Dir district, tribesmen attacked the battle-hardened Taleban in their own strongholds, forcing them to run for their lives. The villagers have also formed a militia to deal with the menace that has destroyed the region often compared to Switzerland.

The tribesmen are helping the military and civilian authorities take control of the area, as they rally around the slogan, Pakistan jaag gaya hai! (Pakistan has woken up!). What’s going on? Clearly, Taleban chickens have come home to roost. Tide is finally turning against the militants in their own backyard.

Ordinary people are not willing to suffer and die in silence anymore, as the Taleban and security forces fight for Pakistan’s soul. This is perhaps the most critical turning point in this most unfortunate war. Too much blood has been shed. Far too many innocent people have been killed with impunity on both sides.

While we in the Muslim world have often and justifiably taken the U.S. and its allies to task for their crimes against innocent civilians, we haven’t been as brutally honest when it comes to the fanatics who claim to speak on our behalf.

Maybe because we saw them as the creation of the decades of injustice and exploitation by big powers. Our failure to condemn the terrorists in stronger terms has sent a wrong message to both the extremists as well as the rest of the world.

Of course, we have from time to time insisted that extremist forces like Al-Qaeda do not represent Muslims and their actions have nothing to do with Islam. I did some rather strong pieces after the 2005 terror attacks on London and the despicable strikes on Mumbai’s landmarks in November last year. Of late many others have been trying their best to drive home the message that violence targeting innocents violates the spirit of tolerance and fundamental teachings of Islam.

From Sheikh Syed Mohammad Al-Tantawi, the venerated grand mufti and rector of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University to Sheikh Sudais, imam of Grand Mosque in Makkah, some of the top religious authorities have condemned extremist violence, especially suicide bombing, as un-Islamic and inhuman. This year’s Haj sermon repeatedly underscored this message, with three million pilgrims praying for world peace and reconciliation. Unfortunately, these voices of sanity seldom reach the world at large.

Dr. Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna and one of the most respected Islamic scholars of our time, has repeatedly written and spoken on the issue in the Western media. But the massive challenges we face on this front can hardly be confronted by individual voices and solitary efforts here and there.

What we need is a global movement to present the true face of Islam before the world. This would be possible only when Muslims, wherever they are and whoever they be, speak out against this nihilistic celebration of death and violence and despicable targeting of innocent people in their name. We have to tell the world in strongest possible terms that this is not what Islam is all about. We have to demonstrate through our actions that this is not us. This is not what our faith teaches us. We are taught to respect and cherish life, not reject and annihilate it.

What Pakistani tribesmen did to take on the Taleban menace is perhaps the most cheerful news to come out of that country in many years. The South Asian nation was supposed to have been a model Muslim society and state. And, look, what a total, mind-boggling mess they have made of Quaid-e-Azam’s dream!

It has emerged as a symbol of all that is wrong with the Muslim societies today: Corruption, abuse of power, violence and extremist chaos of all sorts. Of course, much of this could be blamed on the mess next door and constant interference and manipulation by big powers. But who gives them an opportunity to fish in troubled waters? In the end, every one of us is responsible for what happens in our part of the world. Besides, how long will Muslims continue to blame the rest of the world for their woes?

True, Bush’s war visited a catastrophe on the Muslim world, adding to its myriad problems. More than a million innocents have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and more are dying as you read this. But what the so-called champions of the believers have unleashed on the Muslim world is not in any way less damaging. In fact, the extremists in their midst are greater enemies of Muslims, because they have sought to hit at the very soul of a faith that came as a blessing for all mankind. With friends like these, do we need any more enemies?

By targeting innocent bystanders, unsuspecting women and children and people quietly praying in mosques or going about their business and by blowing up schools and hospitals and banning girls’ education, the extremists are distorting the liberating teachings of an infinitely compassionate and humane faith.

As U.S. President Barack Obama quoted in his Cairo speech, the Qur’an warns that taking one innocent life is like killing all mankind and saving one life is akin to saving all humankind. There cannot be a greater calumny against such a faith than killing innocents in its name.

The extremist actions are as lethal to Islam and Muslims as the Western coalition’s bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The sooner this reality dawns on the believers, the better for everyone. Before 9/11, Islam was the fastest growing religion in the world including the U.S. Today, if we are perhaps the most hated and reviled community on earth, you know whom to blame!

All of us should be happy that those poor, semi-literate tribesmen in Pakistan have stood up to fight back the terrorists. They have shown that ordinary Muslims are sick and tired of this endless bloodshed by the Western forces as well as by their own. This is what we badly need. We need more and more people across the Islamic world to follow in the footsteps of the Northwest tribesmen.

In the end, if the Muslims want to clear this mess, they will have to help themselves. No angels will descend from the heavens to rescue and set things right for them. No amount of verbal entreaties and sanctimonious lectures insisting this is not what Islam is all about will do. We need action now. The Pakistanis, Afghans and Muslims everywhere will have to do more to prove that what a tiny, lunatic fringe is doing in the name of Islam is nothing but a grave injustice to the great faith. It’s time to confront the enemy within.



-- Arab News

 

[bigron]

Saturday, June 13, 2009
10:11 Mecca time, 07:11 GMT 
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200961343241916726.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan 'expands war on Taliban' 

 
Recent operations have taken the military into Buner and Upper Dir districts, and the Swat Valley [EPA]
 
 
Pakistan's military is beginning a significant move into South Waziristan, where the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - or the Pakistani Taliban - are based, US officials have said.

The operation is said to be targeting Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and will be carried out with greater support from the US.

Witnesses and intelligence officials said Pakistani aircraft had bombed a stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud on Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban leader, in the South Waziristan.

"Four fighter jets bombed parts of Makeen early on Saturday but we don't know about the extent of damage or any casualties," Mohammad Khan, a shopkeeper in the area said.

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said official sources had confirmed to him that heavy artillery was being used in Makeen.

Pakistan's Geo TV also reported that large numbers of people were migrating from South Waziristan to North Waziristan.

"Operations that appear to be under way now would be the largest operations that have been undertaken in Waziristan," a US defence official said on Friday.

"We think that the initial phases of that operation have already begun."

Pakistan says it has almost completed an offensive to drive Taliban fighters out of the Swat Valley, an area to the north of Waziristan in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Fight 'to the end'

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, said on Saturday he would fight the Pakistani Taliban "to the end".

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In depth

Visit site for following links:

Videos:
 Taliban conducts revenge attacks
 Conflict reaches Islamabad
 Police battle Pakistani Taliban

Pictures:
 Refuge for Swat's Sikhs
 Lahore bombing

 Diary: Imran Khan
 Riz Khan: Obama's 'AfPak' strategy
 Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
 Interview: Asif Ali Zardari
 Q&A: The struggle for Swat
 Your views: Crisis in Swat

Focus:
 The fight for northwest Pakistan
 Talking to the Taliban
 Pakistan's war
 Witness: Pakistan in crisis
 Profile: Baitullah Mehsud

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"This war has the support of parliament, the support of the political parties as well as the people of Pakistan," he said in a televised address to the nation broadcast after 1am (1900 GMT on Friday).

"We are fighting a war for our sovereignty. We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at any cost," he said.

"These people want to capture the institutions of Pakistan by spreading terrorism and by intimidating the people.

"They have killed thousands of innocent people."

Zardari's comments came after two suicide bomb attacks on Friday, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, in Lahore and Nowshera, in NWFP, killed at least eight people, including a pro-government religious leader.

Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi, known to oppose the Taliban, had condemned the use of suicide bombings.

The US defence official said on Friday that the Pentagon expected Pakistan to conduct "fairly significant combat operations in South Waziristan".

Another US official said Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders were "under very significant pressure", while a third US official said the US would be providing increased intelligence and surveillance support to Pakistan.

Taliban 'resistance'

Pakistan's recent operations have been under way for six weeks, taking the military first into Buner and Upper Dir districts, then into the Swat Valley.

The first US official warned that "isolated pockets of resistance still remain" in parts of the Swat valley as the Pakistani army worked to finish the two-month campaign, and that Islamabad needed to brace for more attacks.

"[Mehsud] has turned suicide bombing into a production output not unlike Toyota outputs cars," the official, who described the Mehsud as leading an extensive network of religious schools that sold or bartered child suicide bombers in NWFP, said.

The key element of the US Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, the defence official said, is to have troops put pressure on al-Qaea and Taliban fighters believed to be operating out of safe havens in Waziristan.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[wezthebikie]

Pakistan is breaking apart. I think it will be the next sad story, in a very long series of sad stories.