‘We are prepared for a long war’
Nov 4, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
PESHAWAR: A Taliban spokesman denied Tuesday that Pakistan army has won a series of battlefield victories in its offensive in tribal South Waziristan, saying the militants are drawing government soldiers into a trap.
‘We are prepared for a long war,’ Azam Tariq told an Associated Press reporter by telephone.
‘The areas we are withdrawing from, and the ones the army is claiming to have won, are being vacated by us as part of a strategy. The strategy is to let the army get in a trap, and then fight a long war.’
Tariq also denied army claims that hundreds of militants have been killed, saying only 11 have died so far.
In mid-October, the Pakistani government launched an offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, viewed as the main stronghold in the country of both the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The military says it has pressed deep into Taliban territory and captured some Taliban strongholds. The offensive has drawn retaliatory militant attacks across Pakistan.
A few hours after Tariq’s claim, the army announced that 21 militants had been killed in the past 24 hours in South Waziristan and that government forces were continuing to press into Taliban territory. It said in a statement that one government soldier had died in the past day.
Much of the fighting was in Sararogha, a Taliban base where militant leaders have long operated openly, occasionally even using it for news conferences. The army said it killed 16 fighters there as it tried to clear the town of militants.
What is actually happening, though, is impossible to confirm.
Pakistan has effectively sealed off the tribal areas, semiautonomous regions where the central government in Islamabad has long had only minimal authority. —AP
Tags: Al qaida, Azam Tariq, Pak Army, Pakistan, Sararogha, South Waziristan, Swat, taliban, war on terror, Waziristan
Child Suicide Bombers
Oct 13, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Tags: child bomber, Child Suicide Bombers, Pakistan, sucide attack, Suicide Bombers, Swat, war on terror
41 killed in Shangla, Pakistan suicide bombing
Oct 13, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
PESHAWAR Dawn : A suicide bomber flung himself at a military convoy passing through a busy market in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing 41 people, the military said.
The bomber targeted a paramilitary convoy as it passed through a security check post in a bazaar in Alpuri town in Shangla, a district neighbouring Swat valley and the target of a recent anti-Taliban military offensive.
Pakistan’s army claims to have cleared Swat and nearby districts of the Taliban threat in an offensive launched in April, and are now poised to start a similar ground and air assault in the nearby northwest tribal belt.
‘Forty-one people were killed and 45 were injured in the suicide blast,’ said Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the North West Frontier Province.
‘Twelve of the injured are in serious condition.’
Major Mushtaq Khan, a spokesman at the military-run Swat Media Centre, said that six of the dead were soldiers, while the rest were civilians.
‘The attacker was wearing a suicide vest packed with high-quality explosive material,’ he told AFP.
‘Our assessment is that the bomber was on foot. When he blew himself up, some of the trucks carrying ammunition were also hit and the ammunition exploded, causes more human losses.’
Khan said that 12 shops and seven vehicles were destroyed in the blast, while some buses packed with civilians were also caught in the explosions.
‘The target was a security convoy near an army check post. This is a crowded bazaar and a lot of people were present at that time,’ Shangla Member of Parliament Fazlullah Khan said on a local television station.
Swat valley was the target of the punishing military offensive launched in April this year after Taliban militants advanced towards Islamabad.
Fighting also spilled into Shangla, where Taliban militants had infiltrated in a bid to impose a harsh brand of Islamic law across the northwest.
Alpuri was known to be a stronghold of fugitive Swat Taliban commander Mullah Fazlullah, who remains at large, raising concerns that the Swat Taliban are regrouping in the northwest Pakistan’s rugged mountains.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but the Pakistani Taliban have vowed to avenge both the Swat military offensive and the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile strike in August.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of attacks blamed on religious extremists in the past week, with at least 52 civilians killed on Friday when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a market in the northwest capital Peshawar.
Then on Saturday, suspected Taliban-linked gunmen staged an audacious day-time raid on the army headquarters near Islamabad, shooting their way into a building and barricading themselves inside with 42 hostages.
In total, eight militants, 11 soldiers and three hostages were killed in the crisis that unfolded at the heart of the military establishment in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which ended with a commando raid Sunday.
The military are now readying for a full-on ground assault into the Taliban strongholds in the northwest tribal belt neighbouring Afghanistan.
Tags: 13 year suicider, Mehsud, mingora, Pakistan, Shangla, Suicide Bombing, Swat, Swat valley, taliban, Tehri, Tehrik-i-Taliban, war on terror
Pakistani Taliban preys on youths to bolster forces
Aug 10, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
By Alex Rodriguez
August 10, 2009 LATimes
These Pakistani boys, covering their faces in front of journalists, say they were kidnapped by the Taliban and trained and indoctrinated at a camp in Swat, in northern Pakistan. The Pakistani army says there are more than a hundred such youths
Pakistani teenagers in the Swat region tell of being abducted and forced to train at militant camps in harsh conditions. They managed to escape, but say some other recruits were there voluntarily.
Reporting from Mingora, Pakistan — The 14-year-old boy with acne dotting his chin yanked down the scarf concealing his face and recounted his 12 days in a Taliban training camp — starting with the day six masked militants kidnapped him as he picked onions on a farm in the Swat Valley.
They blindfolded him and brought him to an abandoned girls school, he said, where he and scores of other Pakistani boys ran hills for 2 1/2 hours every day and listened to Taliban trainers extol the glory of waging holy war against the Pakistani army.
ome boys had volunteered to join the camps. Others, like the 14-year-old, dreamed of escaping.
“They were always preaching jihad and telling us it was our primary duty,” the boy said. “They said we shouldn’t let anyone hinder us. And if our parents stood in the way, we were told we could kill them.”
The youth is just one of more than a hundred boys whom the Pakistani military says the Taliban either recruited or kidnapped and held at numerous training camps. The military arranged for four of the boys to meet with reporters at a former school in Mingora, the Swat Valley’s largest city.
Pakistani military leaders say they are not sure how many boys are still with the Taliban, but that those who managed to escape returned to their parents, who notified authorities. The military said it quickly descended on the camps where the boys had been held, but the Taliban had pulled up stakes long before.
Facts and fiction
Pakistani commanders say they are still trying to sift through the boys’ accounts to see what holds up and what can be chalked up to exaggeration. Some of the boys have claimed that as many as 400 youths were kept at the camps, an assertion the military doubts. Other youths have said that boys as young as 7 or 8 were at the camps, a claim military officials say they cannot verify.
Still, the military believes these boys were part of a wave of recruitment by the Taliban in the early part of the year, when militants held sway over the Swat Valley in the country’s north, using kidnappings and beheadings to keep the region frozen in fear.
The Taliban continued to control Swat until May, when a military offensive began driving it out. The campaign has succeeded in clearing Swat’s urban centers and towns, though local Taliban leaders remain at large and there is sporadic fighting in rural areas.
Army Maj. Nasir Khan said many of the youths were being trained as scouts to report on the movements of Pakistani troops so militants could place roadside bombs to inflict maximum damage. Others, he said, would be trained to one day become hard-core militants.
Khan said the five boys he met with had told him they were abducted by the Taliban and taken to the camps.
Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, however, said nine youths he interviewed, all from poor families in Mingora, told him they were lured by promises of “good food and a good living.”
“They were told that whatever they wanted to do, they’d be able to do it,” he said. “That was the rallying cry — it wasn’t about religion, it was more materialistic.”
Ahmed said the boys he spoke with became disillusioned and escaped after three weeks. He said the military was preparing counseling for the boys who went through the camps. “We’re going to treat them as rehabilitation cases, not criminal cases,” he said.
Although none of the boys interviewed said they were being trained as suicide bombers, Ahmed said the Taliban often relies on young boys to carry out such attacks, and that some among the recent wave of youth recruits could have eventually been trained as suicide bombers.
The suicide bomber who killed revered religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi in Lahore in June was believed to be 16 or 17. A suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim prayer hall in Peshawar that killed nine people was carried out by a bomber believed to be 16, authorities said.
“Suicide attackers aren’t hard-core Taliban terrorists — these are boys who are picked up by the Taliban and brainwashed,” Ahmed said. “These boys are just fodder for the Taliban, expendable commodities.”
Would-be suicide bombers captured by police or Pakistani troops have talked of extensive indoctrination in which Taliban militants drilled into the boys the notion that they were fulfilling a supreme religious duty, and that they should feel fortunate to have the opportunity, Ahmed said.
“They would give them all these stories about going to heaven, that this world is useless and that heaven is the real world,” Ahmed said. “And they would tell these boys, ‘You are doing a service to innocent people who die, because they will also go to heaven.’ ”
Inside a darkened, stuffy school building in Mingora commandeered by the Pakistani military, the four boys — one 14 and the others 16 — told of their abduction by Taliban militants in February and their eventual escape from camps deep inside dense woodlands outside the town of Matta, six miles to the north.
Fearing recognition
None of the boys would give their names. All wore baseball caps and scarves to mask their faces, but midway into the interview they found the scarves irritating and tugged them down.
One boy, a 16-year-old with a wisp of facial hair, said he was playing cricket with two friends in the village of Chuprial when two masked militants accosted them, accusing them of trespassing on Taliban land.
The boys were blindfolded and taken to a camp where about 150 other boys were being trained, the 16-year-old said. At his camp, he said, conditions were harsh. Food was scarce, and at times dinner amounted to a piece of flatbread shared among four boys. The recruits had to wake up before sunrise for morning prayers, then run up and down the hillsides.
Calisthenics and at times firearms demonstrations followed. In the afternoons, there were indoctrination sessions to convince the youths of the ideal of waging holy war against the military.
“We were miserable there,” the 16-year-old said. “That’s why we escaped.”
Transgressions were dealt with harshly. One boy who didn’t attend morning prayers had his face painted black. Another boy who used a splinter of tree bark to clean his teeth had his head shoved underwater and held there. He was told he was being punished because he didn’t get permission from the tree’s owner.
The 14-year-old’s first escape attempt failed. He and two other boys darted away during morning prayers, but about two hours later, militants caught up with them as they ran across a hanging bridge. Two of the boys got away, but the 14-year-old was captured and brought back.
There he was flogged with a cane. The boy said he couldn’t keep count of the lashes. “Many, many times,” he said. “It was too painful.”
Nine days later, he fled down a nearby stream to a road from which he caught a bus back to Mingora.
Not every boy at the camp, however, spent the days conjuring ways of escaping, he said.
“There were boys who were forcibly taken, but there were others who voluntarily came to the camp, and there were a lot of them,” he said. “Many of the kids were happy there. They thought it was good to be with the Taliban, and to fight jihad.”
Tags: afghanistan, Jihad, Pakistan, Swat, Swat valley, taliban, war, war on terror
Movement of U.S., NATO Troops Concerns Waziristan Tribes
Jul 28, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
The International News
July 27, 2009
The movement of Afghanistan-based US and Nato troops over the past few days close to North and South Waziristan Agencies has frightened tribesmen, who are already under stress due to the increasing number of drone attacks and a possible military operation by the Pakistan Army.
Official and tribal sources informed The News from the border villages of North Waziristan about the unusual movement of what they termed huge number of the US and Nato forces along the Pak-Afghan border.
They said the Nato troops were armed with helicopter gunships, tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and had started establishing camps and checkpoints along the border.
The residents of border villages, including Dwatoi, Kazha Madakhel and Gorweek, said warplanes and helicopter gunships were seen flying over the border areas between the two neighbouring countries throughout the day. In some of the areas, the tribesmen claimed the planes violated Pakistanís airspace and flew over their villages.
Villagers claimed that the US and Nato forces were brought to the border area in 80 vehicles amid tight security.
A military official based in Miramshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan, said they had also received reports about the troop movement but could not confirm it. Wishing not to be named, he said Pakistanís armed forces were fully alert on their posts along the border with Afghanistan. ìThey often come to the border villages inside Afghanistan and return to their bases after some time. There is no need to be worried,î the official said.
Tribal sources close to the Taliban in Afghanistan said there had been an unprecedented rise in attacks on the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and their movement in the border areas could be an act of desperation.
They said the foreign forces had particularly suffered losses in Helmand, Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces, which were close to Pakistanís restive South and North Waziristan tribal regions.
Besides suffering casualties, the sources said, the Taliban militants had made some US and British soldiers hostage in Afghanistan.
The movement of foreign forces close to Pakistanís border and establishment of the checkpoints, along the porous Durand Line, could be part of their strategy to stop the Taliban militants from shifting the kidnapped US and British soldiers to the adjoining tribal areas, said the sources.
On September 3, 2008, the US-led foreign forces carried out their first-ever ground operation in the Pakistani territory, killing 15 Pakistanis, including women and children, in South Waziristanís Musa Nika village near Angoor Adda, close to Afghanistanís Paktika province. The tribesmen fear recurrence of such an attack.
Tags: Afghan border, afghanistan, NATO Troops, Pakistan, Swat, US-nato, war on terror, wazieristan
Pakistan Objects to U.S. Expansion in Afghan War
Jul 23, 2009 News & Events, war on terror
ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ
Herald Tribune
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region.
Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Pakistan does not have enough troops to deploy to Baluchistan to take on the Taliban without denuding its border with its archenemy, India, the officials said. Dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest, they said.
The Pakistani account made clear that even as the United States recommits troops and other resources to take on a growing Taliban threat, Pakistani officials still consider India their top priority and the Taliban militants a problem that can be negotiated. In the long term, the Taliban in Afghanistan may even remain potential allies for Pakistan, as they were in the past, once the United States leaves.
The Pakistani officials gave views starkly different from those of American officials regarding the threat presented by top Taliban commanders, some of whom the Americans say have long taken refuge on the Pakistani side of the border.
Recent Pakistani military operations against Taliban in the Swat Valley and parts of the tribal areas have done little to close the gap in perceptions.
Even as Obama administration officials praise the operations, they express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base.
Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.
Such tensions have mounted despite a steady rotation of American officials through the region. They were on display last weekend when, during a visit to India, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said those who had planned the Sept. 11 attacks were now sheltering in Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry issued an immediate rebuttal.
Pakistan’s critical assessment was provided as the Obama administration’s special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday night.
The country’s perspective was given in a nearly two-hour briefing on Friday for The New York Times by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan’s main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. They spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with the agency’s policy. The main themes of the briefing were echoed in conversations with several military officers over the past few days.
One of the first briefing slides read, in part: “The surge in Afghanistan will further reinforce the perception of a foreign occupation of Afghanistan. It will result in more civilian casualties; further alienate local population. Thus more local resistance to foreign troops.”
A major concern is that the American offensive may push Taliban militants over the border into Baluchistan, a province that borders Waziristan in the tribal areas. The Pakistani Army is already fighting a longstanding insurgency of Baluch separatists in the province.
A Taliban spillover would require Pakistan to put more troops there, a Pakistani intelligence official said, troops the country does not have now. Diverting troops from the border with India is out of the question, the official said.
A spokesman for the American and NATO commands in Afghanistan, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, said in an e-mail message on Monday that there was no significant movement of insurgents out of Afghanistan, and no indication of foreign fighters moving into Afghanistan through Baluchistan or Iran, another concern of the Pakistanis.
Pakistani and American officials also cited some positive signs for the alliance. Increased sharing of information has sharpened the accuracy of strikes against militant hide-outs by Pakistani F-16 warplanes and drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. And Pakistani and American intelligence operatives are fighting together in dangerous missions to hunt down fighters from the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas and in the North-West Frontier Province.
But the intelligence briefing clearly illuminated the differences between the two countries over how, in the American view, Pakistan was still picking proxies and choosing enemies among various Islamic militant groups in Pakistan.
The United States maintains that the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, leads an inner circle of commanders who guide the war in southern Afghanistan from their base in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.
American officials say this Taliban council, known as the Quetta shura, is sheltered by Pakistani authorities, who may yet want to employ the Taliban as future allies in Afghanistan.
In an interview last week, the new leader of American and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, paused when asked whether he was getting the cooperation he wanted from Pakistani forces in combating the Quetta shura. “What I would love is for the government of Pakistan to have the ability to completely eliminate the safe havens that the Afghan Taliban enjoy,” he said.
The Pakistani intelligence officials denied that Mullah Omar was even in Pakistan, insisting that he was in Afghanistan.
The United States asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta, the Pakistani officials said. Of those 10, 6 were killed by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan, and the remaining 2 presented no threat to the Marines in Afghanistan, the officials said.
They also said no threat was posed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taliban leader who American military commanders say operates with Pakistani protection out of North Waziristan and equips and trains Taliban fighters for Afghanistan.
Last year, Washington presented evidence to Pakistani leaders that Mr. Haqqani, working with Inter-Services Intelligence, was responsible for the bombing last summer of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed 54 people.
Pakistani officials insisted that Mr. Haqqani spent most of his time in Afghanistan, suggesting that the American complaints about him being provided sanctuary were invalid.
Another militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is also a source of deep disagreement.
India and the United States have criticized Pakistan for allowing Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, to be freed from jail last month.
The Pakistani officials said Mr. Saeed deserved to be freed because the government had failed to convince the courts that he should be kept in custody. There would be no effort to imprison Mr. Saeed again, in part because he was just an ideologue who did not have an anti-Pakistan agenda, the officials said.
Tags: afghan war, afghanistan, Afghanistan operation, Pakistan, Swat, Swat Operation, US, war on terror
Journey back home begins
Jul 14, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
By Zulfiqar Ali Dawn
Tuesday, 14 Jul, 2009
PESHAWAR: People displaced by fighting in Swat began returning to their homes on Monday under a government repatriation programme.
About 195 families left the Jalozai camp by buses escorted by police. NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti went to Charsadda where he saw off 26 displaced families.
The Emergency Response Unit (ERU) had made arrangements for over 2,000 families to leave the camp on Monday, but a large number of them did not leave.
hey cited security concerns and complained about non-payment of Rs25,000 grant promised by the government for each family. About 10,000 displaced families from Swat have been living in the Jalozai camp for about two months.
ERU spokesman Adnan Khan said that the government would not force
The conflict in Swat, Lower Dir and Buner districts forced more than two million people to flee their homes and move to relief camps.
The government has announced that the IDPs would be going back in phases. ‘It is definitely a joyful day for us. But we are worried about reports of continued presence and movement of the Taliban in our area,’ said Hassan Khan of Barikot.
Several other people also said that security continued to be their main concern and it was difficult to believe that militancy had been eliminated from their areas.
Omar Zareen, who belongs to Tahna, said the number of returning IDPs would have been much higher had their representatives and influential people of their areas accompanied them.
The absence of elders gives an impression that the situation is still not under control,’ he said.
Razia Bibi said: ‘My family waited for this day when we would be able to leave this dusty camp. I need nothing, I just want to go back to Swat.
Each returning family was given a food package – 80kgs of flour, 8kgs of pulses, 5 litres of cooking oil, 1kg of salt, 1kg of high-energy biscuits, 4kgs of sugar and 300 grams of tea – by the World Food Programme.
Agencies add: ‘Everybody is so happy. They are crying tears of joy,’ Sakhawat Shah, a 25-year-old English student, told a reporter by telephone after reaching Landakai.
‘My room was destroyed in the shelling. My computer and books were also damaged but I’m not worried because if I’m alive I can buy more books.’
The government says it has worked hard to restore electricity and running water in main towns since the fighting but analysts warn that much needs to be done to sustain the returnees.
‘They will start living a normal life if the environment is secure and their fundamental needs are addressed. Secure environment means army, police and civil administration,’ said independent analyst Imtiaz Gul.
Shamsher Ali, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, said he was worried because previous military operations had failed to crush the Taliban.
‘The army promised us twice before that they cleared the area but then Taliban came again and again to Swat. Perhaps this time the Taliban will come again to Swat,’ he said.
‘Thank God we’re going back,’ said farmer Qaiser Khan
Tags: Idp's, Pakistan, Swat, Swat Operation, war on terror
India plans to attack Pakistani nuclear installations using Baitullah Mehsud’s gang
Jul 13, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Islamabad, July, (Asiantribune.com): It is learnt through reliable sources that Indian and Israeli special services units in collaboration with TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ) -–a terrorist organisation– are preparing an attack on one of Pakistan ’s strategic installation in order to achieve multiple goals. Well trained TTP members, around 750, will take part in this attack. Participation of Indian and Israeli units will be confined to supervision of attack and handling post attack scenario.
India has reportedly released funds to TTP for this sole attack which will create a delicate situation for Pakistani military establishment in the world. There is also information that Indians have already planned provision of some “dirty bomb” (radioactive material) to terrorists of TTP fighting against Pakistani military for this attack.
Pakistan army already has been stretched in FATA as a result of carefully devised strategy of drone attacks by CIA which creates hatred for the army and sympathy of locals for TTP chieftain Baitullah Mehsud. It has become evident from the last three drone attacks in South Waziristan that one of them was carried out on a funeral of a TTP leader who was killed in an earlier attack on the same day.
The question here is; does CIA really want to eliminate Baitullah Mehsud and his terrorist outfit TTP?
Circumstantial evidences and confession of Baitullah’s ex-aides (Haji Turkistan and slain Qari Zainuddin) had confirmed that TTP is much more than what appears in the world media (i.e an anti-USA force in reality is a pro-US and anti-Pakistan entity).
Now this latest intelligence about a possible attack on one of Pakistan ’s strategic military sites in which TTP will play a role of foot soldiers has proved beyond any doubt that TTP is foreign funded proxy force operating inside Pakistan to fulfill agenda of Pakistan ’s enemies (read India and Israel led by US).
CIA and its agents in international media are building a case against Pakistani nuclear weapons advocating the notion that these might fall into wrong hands. According to media reports Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has already said that Pakistani installations are partially under attack from militants.
How this ominous plan will be executed is still not clear but according to reliable sources malicious activities around some of these installations have been noticed. On further investigation by Pakistani intelligence it was revealed that plan of much worse repercussions is under way.
Planning phase of this attack is carried out in Afghanistan where Indians and Israelis are training Afghan forces and intelligence.
During recent operation in Malakand and FATA bodies of dead Afghan nationalists (Most probably trained by same Indian and Israeli instructors) were recovered. It will therefore be no surprise if same Afghan elements also take part in this attack on Pakistan ’s nuclear facilities.
The contemplated attack also puts a big question mark on CIA’s sincerity and credibility since without its active involvement the said plan cannot take off. It may be recalled that the ISI provided information about Baitullah’s whereabouts, at least twice in May 2008, but CIA never attacked his hideouts. Now when Pakistan army has decided to take him out at its own, CIA has suddenly discovered that he is the biggest enemy of US.
Untimely drone strikes have raised many questions about CIA’s intentions in WoT.
1- Is CIA really trying to kill Baitullah for good?
2- If the answer is in affirmative then why now when Pakistan army is there on ground and PAF is carrying out aerial assault much more accurately than CIA’s drones?
3- Why CIA didn’t act earlier when information was passed to it by Pakistan ?
4- Why CIA/US never provided necessary gear to Pakistani forces to trace Baitullah or at least jam his communication system?
5- Why CIA attacked North Waziristan when Pakistan army’s operation in South Waziristan is underway and thereby opened a second front?
Answers to these questions lead only to one conclusion. CIA is protecting TTP to enable India and Israel to accomplish their task.
The high intensity of Pakistani operation backed by PAF in FATA has sent a clear signal to the masterminds who have conceptualised the attack on nuclear instalation that they are running short of time. The CIA instead of helping Pakistan to focus its major attention towards the chief foe Baitullah seemed to be helping RAW and Mossad to buy more time. While Pak army is trying to keep North Waziristan peaceful for the time being in spite of the deadly attack on one of the military convoy, CIA has provoked Hafiz Gul Bahadur, chief of Uthmanzai Wazir tribe by carrying out a drone attack. Gul Bahadur is already very annoyed over repeated drone attacks and suspects that Pak governent and army have a role in it.
It is suspected that CIA is playing a double game by carrying out token drone attacks against strongholds of Baitullah and at the same time is not sparing Gul Bahadur. The idea is to activate all the fronts simultaneously and make the position of army precarious.
All this proves that role of CIA is no different than that of RAW and Mossad.The trio have common objectives against Pakistan’s nuclear program which is seen as an obstacle in the way of accomplishment of US grand designs in the region. The purpose of intended attack on any Pakistani nuclear site, even partially successful or botched, will give legtimacy to their propaganda campaign that:
-Pakistan ’s nuclear weapons are unsafe and can fall into “wrong hands”. hence the need to roll it back or to be taken over by IAEA teams to ensure its “security”.
-Pakistani military is too inept to protect its own buildings and installations.
-National confidence and local support for Pakistani military that had shot up after its highly successfulopeations in Malakand Division will be considerably reduced.
-The situation will be further complicated if Pakistan , after such an attack, try to defend its nuclear program through taking a rigid stand.
-This will provide an opportunity to international media and anti-Pakistan establishments to approach UN and get Pakistan declared as a vulnerable state incapable of protecting its strategic assets physically.
-It will provide an opportunity to further defame and isolate Pakistan on the plea that it is not ready to work with “international community” to “secure” its vulnerable nuclear program.
-It would allow USA to obtain UN sanction for imposing measures on Pakistan to safeguard its nuclear instalations through nuclear inspectors of IAEA as was the case of Iraqi military sites in 1990s.
-This will also give a license to international inspectors (CIA operators always in their ranks) to access every building inside Pakistan on pretext of a possible vulnerable nuclear site.
- Pakistan could be subjected to harsh sanctions in case it resists any UN declaration against its nukes. Pakistan had already gone through similar sanctions in 1990s when there was a virtual ban in international market on selling weapons to Pakistan .
-Currently Pakistan is in process of getting its entire military upgraded under a comprehensive program to be complete by 2019. If sanctions hit Pakistan now, then most of this upgrading will face a halt as a result of ban put on sale of sophisticated weapon systems to Pakistan. India on the other hand would be free from any such restriction and thus would be in an ideal situation to tilt strategic balance heavily in its favour.
-Another dimension to this possible attack is its impact on Pak-China relations in future. Currently Chinese are working on a number of projects along with Pakistani engineers.
If Pakistan fails to protect Chinese technicians on its own soil and in case of any harm or deaths of Chinese in this kind of an attack, it will force China to think seriously about its cooperation with Pakistan .
Indo-Isreali collaboration to destroy Pak nuclear program dates back to early 1980’s. However, each time the duo conspired to execute the surgical strike, Pakistan reacted promptly. The response was so severe that the aggressors had to abandon thir plans. This time Indian plan is much more disturbing as foot-soldiers and logistical support will be provided from within Pakistan so this plan has much more probability of success than what Indians tried in 1980’s.
Stage is set and time is running short for both sides. Some “so-called” local commander of Al-Qaeda in “ Afghanistan ” have already threatened that Pakistani nuclear weapon will be used against US. They are convincing the world that any attack by Al-Qaeda against US can take place either in Afghanistan or in US or even worse inside Pakistan. The idea is to prove that Pakistani nuclear weapons are the most dangerous thing on the planet. (Like Iraqi WMDs were once).
Apart from raising security measure on all nuclear installations, Pakistan must also convey a very strong message through all possible channels that any such attempt against Pakistan ’s nuclear program will have an opposite and much more intense reaction against India and Afghanistan and situation can easily turn out of control and a full blown war can erupt in the region.
Pakistan’s foreign office must become much more clearer and vocal about what Pakistan will do if its nuclear program comes under any attack. Pakistan has already stated its policy in clear terms that in case of any attack on its nuclear instalations, whether external or internal, the onus will be on India alone and Pakistan would respond accordingly. Pakistan has earmarked targets inside India to cater for such a eventuality.
It is time Pakistan must prepare a dossier to present to international media and establishments about Indian involvement in Pakistan ’s North West creating unrest and supporting insurgencies. For the sake of its future generations Pakistan will have to play very carefully but with a vigor and honor and if Pak-US relations are hindering this in future we must have a second thought about these so-called strategic relations.
Tags: Baithullah Massod, India, Pakistan, Swat, Talibans, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP, war on terror
A Swati Doctor Interviewed about the War in Swat
Jul 4, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Tags: Swat
The Peshawar Problem
Jun 21, 2009 Pakistan, pakistan politics
By Samina Ahmed FP
Working on the International Crisis Group’s recent report on Pakistan’s internally displaced persons, our team met with Western officials at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar. Had it not been for my trip to Washington to speak with U.S. officials about their Af-Pak strategy, there is a good chance that I would have been there last Tuesday, June 9, when terrorists blasted a hole through the building, killing more than a dozen people.
The attackers had a sophisticated, carefully orchestrated strategy. They gunned down the civilian police guarding the hotel’s perimeter, which enabled them to drive past the cement barriers and overtake the private guards within the hotel. Once inside, they blew themselves up and much of the hotel with them. It looked just like the attack on the Marriott in Islamabad last September, just like the Taj Mahal Palace and the Oberoi Trident hotels in Mumbai last November, and just like the attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in January 2008, which I witnessed from my hotel room there.
The similarities are no coincidence. All the targets have been luxury hotels frequented by foreigners. Every attack has taken advantage of weaknesses in the local infrastructure. Nor was the timing of the attack on the Pearl Continental an accident. Employees from the United Nations, the World Food Program, and numerous aid organizations were staying there. Many of them were charged with helping the 3 million people who have been displaced in the last month alone. These now internally displaced people (IDPs) fled on just a few hours notice — before a military offensive meant to “flush out” the terrorists in the North-west Frontier Province’s Malakand district unleashed heavy artillery, helicopter gunships, and jetfighters against their homes and crops. They left without possessions, and these usually mountain dwellers arrived unprepared for the scorching plains climate. The attack on the Pearl Continental forced international agencies to withdraw their international staff from Peshawar, disrupting assistance to the hundreds of thousands now living in government-run camps.
The IDP situation matters for more than its very real status as a humanitarian crisis. Between 80 and 90 percent of the IDPs are not in the camps; they are bunking with overstretched relatives and friends who receive no outside aid whatsoever. If the international community responds to their needs, these IDPs could present a potentially powerful constituency of civil opposition to extremism. They fled their homes because they reject the militants’ worldview. If and when peace returns, they, as a resident living in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas told Crisis Group, will be the robust civil society that is so badly needed in the conflict zones.
If Pakistan and its international partners don’t meet the needs of those taking refuge, the jihadists will. For a taste of what could happen, just take the October 2008 earthquake in Quetta. To this day, jihadi organizations are winning support by posing as relief groups, offering food, shelter, education, and salvation in one fell swoop. For many IDPs, these services will be their only option. It is not surprising that the terrorists have been so effective in Pakistan.
There are other vulnerabilities that militants exploit here, too. Aid and assistance is one; policing is even more important. Local police forces in the area of the attacks were and remain completely ill-equipped to contend with insurgents. They lack training, barriers, vehicles, modern weapons, and even guns. The underfunded police could do far more with all of these missing resources in hand. As proof, police forces have more frequently intervened and prevented more deadly attacks than their well-funded Army colleagues. If they were trained in counterinsurgency tactics and evidence collection, police could rightly treat and try militants as criminals. Today, the country’s criminal prosecution rate stands at only 10 percent.
If the Peshawar attacks teach us anything, it is that, while the foot soldiers may be local militants, the brains behind the terrorist attacks are not. In 2009, there have been more terrorist attacks and more suicide bombings in Pakistan than in Iraq. For the masterminds behind the brutal violence, Pakistan is just the latest frontier in a global campaign.
Their broader goal is clear: terrorize and demoralize the public and the security agencies, and prevent vital services from reaching those who need it most. Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s foothold on the tribal belt enables them to do just that. When the state fails to provide the services that civilians desperately need, the jihadists fill the void. The way that Pakistan, the United States, and other partners approach relief for the latest victims will determine what will emerge from the rubble: a strong civil society that stands in opposition to extremism, or a population beaten into compliance with the very forces tearing their country apart.
Tags: Idp's, Pakistan, Peshawar, Peshawar Problem, Swat, Swat Operation, war on terror
