That is not what I was told: How Pakistan Defeated the Taliban
"Suicide attack kills dozens in Pakistan; Strike aimed at gathering of tribal elders" by Jane Perlez and Ismail Khan, New York Times | July 10, 2010
I'm already smelling something.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber attacked a group of tribal elders gathered near the headquarters of the civilian government in a tribal area near Afghanistan yesterday, killing at least 62 people and wounding more than 100, a senior Pakistani security official said.
Related: You Have to Get Up Pretty Early in the Morning to Fool a Pakistani
Yeah, too bad most Americans (not this one) arise after sun-up.
The bomber detonated an explosives-laden car in the bazaar at Yakaghund, the administrative center of Mohmand, where elders had gathered over tea before a scheduled meeting with the assistant political agent, the security official said.
The bombing was one of the deadliest in a series of attacks in the country this year.
The blast blew a crater nearly 5 feet deep, and victims were trapped in the rubble of scores of destroyed shops, the official said....
A distribution of humanitarian goods from the United States, including wheelbarrows and tools, had taken place Thursday at Yakaghund, officials said. The distribution was organized by the Office of Transition Initiatives, which works under the US Agency for International Development. Both are seeking to support the civilian government in Pakistan.
The attack was aimed directly at the civilian authorities who are supposed to be helping people resist the Taliban.
The Pakistani Army has been involved in a battle against the militants in Mohmand for nearly two years but has been unable to defeat them.
The assistant political agent, Rasul Khan, the second-ranking civilian official in Mohmand, said that children were among the dead and that rescuers were still searching for bodies in the rubble hours after the blast.
More than 70 shops were destroyed in the blast, further discouraging civilians, who had fled Mohmand because of the two years of fighting, from returning....
Yeah, you rarely read of Pakistan's refugee crisis, seeing as the U.S. helped cause it.
The strike demonstrated the resilience of the Taliban in the tribal region, even in an area like Mohmand that is adjacent to the bustling city of Peshawar.
The strategic location of Mohmand, a mountainous, heavily forested area with easy escape routes to Afghanistan, makes it relatively easy for the Taliban to organize men and weapons....
This week, the Pakistani government announced it would hold a bipartisan national conference to map out a strategy to combat terrorism, a move that was prompted by an outpouring of popular protest after the attack on a Sufi shrine in Lahore on July 1 that killed at least 37 people.
Also see: Pakistan: The Ticking Time Bomb
The attack occurred as two US Democratic senators — Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island — met with Pakistani leaders in the capital, Islamabad, to discuss their countries’ cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Gee, what a coincidence.
Ever notice that whenever U.S politicians show up bombs start going off?
Just happened to Biden in Iraq, and wasn't Hitlery greeted with them a while back?
In a statement issued after his meeting with the American lawmakers, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan said both countries should try harder to increase mutual trust.
It's a coin flip between you and Iran for the next assault.
He said Pakistan was doing its utmost to combat militancy, and “expected friendly countries like [the] US to share with it credible and actionable information rather than indulging in blame game, in order to achieve our shared and common goal of succeeding against militancy.’’
Over the past decade Pakistan and the United States have frequently questioned each other’s motives in the region.
Even as the CIA and ISI worked together?
Pakistan has been suspected of fomenting problems in Afghanistan as part of its regional struggle with India, while Islamabad has suggested that Washington gives favorable treatment to New Delhi in areas such as nuclear armament.
In a reference to its larger archrival, Gilani said the United States should take a “fair and nondiscriminatory approach . . . in its relations with the regional countries.’’
We have to check with Israel first, but....
In recent visits to Pakistan, US officials have stressed that the relationship between the two countries has improved.
Well that's good news then.
Maybe all the war talk can be scaled back as well as the missile murder.
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Sort of got away from the rescue work, didn't they?
Searchers looked through what was left of damaged shops yesterday at the site of Friday’s suicide bombing in Yakaghund. (Mohammad Ibqal/Associated Press)
"Pakistanis comb rubble for victims; Death toll from attacks rises to 102" by Riaz Khan, Associated Press | July 11, 2010
YAKAGHUND, Pakistan — As Adnan Khan sifted through the rubble in this northwest Pakistani village yesterday, his grief mingled with a sense of disbelief. Of the 102 people killed by a pair of suicide bombers here the day before, 10 were his relatives. Aunts, uncles, cousins — all perished in the deadliest attack in Pakistan this year.
“People came here yesterday to receive biscuits and edible oil,’’ the college student said. “I don’t know why terrorists killed them.’’
I have a pretty good idea.
Yakaghund village lies in Mohmand, one of several regions in Pakistan’s tribal belt where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants are believed to be hiding. The Friday strike showed that Islamist extremists remain a deadly force along this area bordering Afghanistan, despite pressure from army offensives or drone-fired US missiles.
None years of failure and no end in sight.
Time to call a truce with the Taliban.
The death toll in the bombings rose to 102 yesterday as the search for victims continued, officials said. It was the third attack this year to kill more than 90 people, and the worst in the country since a car bombing killed 112 people at a crowded market in the main northwest city of Peshawar in October.
Although the Pakistani Taliban said anti-militant tribal elders were the target, it was dozens of ordinary men and women who bore the brunt of the strike. Many had lined up nearby to pick up donated food and goods such as farm equipment when the blasts occurred.
The bombs’ target appeared to be the office of Rasool Khan, a deputy Mohmand administrator, that tribal elders were visiting. Local journalists said Pakistani Taliban spokesman Akramullah Mohmand had called them late Friday and claimed responsibility....
Yeah, except:
"Now stop and think here for a moment. All revolutions depend on public support. Revolutionaries try to first win the people before they take on the government. So, no revolutionary goes out and murders civilians in cold blood. Did Washington and his men just mow down a marketplace of their fellow colonials for the heck of it? No, they did not. Washington and the Founding Fathers knew that their revolution to build a new country needed the support of those who would live in that country. This is true for every revolution in history. Therefore, these acts of terror being blamed on the insurgency must all be fakes, committed by intelligence agencies working for the governments to be blamed on the insurgents in order to destroy public support for the revolution." -- Wake the Flock Up
Either that or they are directed dupes and agents to do this things.
The Friday attack also wounded 168 people in Yakaghund, a village of 4,000 that lies on the edge of Mohmand and the Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa Province. About 70 to 80 shops were damaged or destroyed, while damage to a prison building allowed 28 inmates — ordinary criminals, not militants — to flee, Rasool Khan said....
The United States has pushed Islamabad to clamp down on militants who threaten Western troops across the border in Afghanistan and to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan itself.
They better after this attack, huh, cui bono?
The Pakistani Army has carried out operations in Mohmand, but it has been unable to extirpate Islamist militants hiding there. Its efforts to rely on citizen militias to take on the militants have had limited success in Mohmand.
That is a hideous term implying complete annihilation.
Yesterday, many in Yakaghund were too scared to even mention the word “Taliban,’’ but several said it was the US presence in Afghanistan that was the real cause of the violence in Pakistan. They also blamed the Pakistani government for not caring about the effects of the US war across the border on Pakistani citizens.
You see, the PEOPLE of Pakistan KNOW!
“Mohmand was a peaceful area, but we have lost this peace since the American attacks in Afghanistan,’’ said Haji Mohammad Amin, 65, a farmer.
Yeah, EVERYWHERE WE GO the VIOLENCE FOLLOWS!
What a COINCIDENCE, huh, readers?
“The government policies are responsible for this. They don’t provide security for the common people,’’ said Adnan Khan.
All to serve a foreign agenda.
I'd say I know how he feels; however, I haven't lost ten of my family members, sob!!!!
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Of course, everything is just great to some people:
"Petraeus, in Pakistan, praises efforts" by Associated Press | July 13, 2010
ISLAMABAD — US General David Petraeus lauded Pakistan’s efforts at battling Islamist militants yesterday during his first visit here since taking over as top NATO commander in neighboring Afghanistan this month.
But he avoided public mention of the complicated tug of war between the two countries over the presence in Pakistan’s border regions of militants launching attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is embroiled in military operations against Pakistani Taliban fighters in its volatile northwest....
Yeah, how odd we receive very little reporting on those.
Pakistan has been wracked by a series of deadly attacks in the past two weeks that have killed nearly 150 people. Violence is also rising in Afghanistan. June was the deadliest month for international forces there since the start of the war nearly nine years ago.
“Recent events demonstrate both the common threat posed to Pakistan and Afghanistan by insurgents and the efforts that the Pakistan military are making to counter this threat,’’ Petraeus said in a statement after meeting with Pakistani Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
“I look forward to continuing to work with General Kayani to identify areas of mutual interest and to cooperate in efforts that can help improve regional security,’’ he said.
Does that mean he is going to call of the CIA/RAW dogs of war?
Related: Petraeus' Private Eyes
Has his own team of assassins, 'eh?
I'm sure they will improve security.
Petraeus was previously head of the US military’s Central Command, which oversees the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and visited Pakistan several times in that capacity. He took over in Afghanistan after General Stanley McChrystal was forced to resign over comments he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine critical of the Obama administration.
Pakistan has so far resisted US pressure to act against Afghan Taliban. Analysts say Pakistan’s military believes the Taliban could be useful allies in Afghanistan once international forces withdraw. Pakistan helped the militant group seize power in Afghanistan in the 1990s.Related:
"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."
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I think they got their orders:
"Pakistan bombing kills 5, wounds 58" by Associated Press | July 16, 2010
MINGORA, Pakistan — An apparent suicide bombing near a bus terminal in Pakistan’s Swat Valley killed five people and wounded at least 58 yesterday, officials said, a sign that Islamist militants remain active in the region despite a massive army operation.
Yeah, they never seem to go away and just keep getting stronger.
Related: U.S. Paying Taliban For Protection
Probably not a good idea -- unless you want to keep a war going.
The explosion went off around noon in Mingora, the main town in the onetime tourist haven that was largely overrun by Taliban militants in 2007.
Pakistani TV footage showed vehicles bent and twisted from the force of the blast. Some men were desperately trying to open the doors of a car to reach a woman and man sitting in the front who were bloodied and appeared unconscious.
The area hit was crowded, so the death toll could rise significantly. Senior police official Qazi Ghulam Farooq said five people died, including two women, and that officials believed a suicide bomber was involved....
The Pakistan military launched its biggest operation against the Taliban in Swat in 2009 after a failed attempt at a peace deal that included pledges to impose Islamic law in the area.
In recent weeks, several major suicide attacks have shaken Pakistan. Last week, a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Mohmand tribal region, killing at least 102 people in the deadliest attack in the US-allied nation this year.
The attacks come as Washington is pushing Pakistan to do even more to root out militant groups.This should give them a little shove, cui bono?
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