"Pakistan to arm tribal forces in fight against extremists" by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post | October 23, 2008
WASHINGTON - Pakistan plans to arm tens of thousands of anti-Taliban tribal forces in its western border region in hopes - shared by the US military - that the nascent militias can replicate the tribal "Awakening" movement that proved decisive in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The militias, called lashkars, will receive Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, a purchase arranged during a visit to Beijing this month by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistani officials said.
Since early August, the Pakistani Army has launched several offensives in Bajaur, one of seven regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and in the nearby Swat Valley. According to Pakistani military assessments, more than 800 insurgents were killed in Bajaur operations during August and September, along with nearly 195 government soldiers and 344 civilians.
Please see: Pakistan
Last week, after months of Pakistani delays, about 30 US military trainers were permitted to set up operations north of the region, a US official said.
Slowly but surely, the PLAN is being ADVANCED!!!!
Much distrust also remains on the US side, particularly within intelligence agencies that have long been suspicious of ties between the Pakistani intelligence service and the Taliban. --more--"
Judging by that last paragraph, the WP sure is the CIA's paper!!
"The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997."
So why did we kill so many of them, readers?
I would just like to remind you, readers, and the world that LAYING BOMBS on their HOMES and FAMILIES, the littering of DU munitions, the secret prisons, the torture, the families displaced, the lives shattered, the chemicals dumped on them, all based on a BUNCH of LIES!!!
Whatever you think of the "Taliban," they NEVER DID ANYTHING TO US!!!!
