Instability In Pakistan- Merged Thread

[54/102 CEF]

Very effective propaganda pic

War on the Cheap

Watch for the Black Clad bastards on the Tarmac at Islamabad

Big Canadian Community about to get bigger

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/asia/24pstan.html

 

[tomahawk6]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani authorities on Thursday deployed paramilitary troops to a district, only 96 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, where Taliban militants appeared to be consolidating control after this week's land-grab.

Militants locked up courthouses and seized court documents in the district of Buner, said police Superintendent Arsala Khan.

However, a highly placed Buner official said the judges left voluntarily after meeting with Taliban leaders.

A van carrying Frontier Corps paramilitary troops through the district came under fire Thursday. One police official was killed and another wounded, authorities said.

The troops were sent to protect civilians and properties, said Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, spokesman for Pakistan's military.

He said the government was monitoring the situation closely, and talks were under way among community elders, the civilian administration and the Taliban.

"Taliban is only in control of 25 percent of Buner district," Abbas said. "The Taliban will either move out or they'll be thrown out, one way or another."

The militant group's leaders met with community elders and the civilian administration Thursday and agreed that its members will not move about openly with guns nor will they disturb police, courts, schools, hospitals or non-governmental organizations.

The takeover of Buner brings the Taliban closer to the capital, Islamabad, than it has been since the insurgency started.

The Taliban commander in Buner, Mowlana Mohammed Khalil, gave a statement before Pakistani television cameras Wednesday, appearing with his face hidden behind a cloth mask.


"We came here only to preach Islam," Khalil said. He added that his fighters were carrying weapons only because they were an important symbol for Muslims.

The militants said they took control of the Buner district to ensure that Islamic law, or sharia, was properly imposed. The Pakistani government called the advance into the district a breach of a recently signed peace agreement.

Residents of Buner said the militants had set up checkpoints and were patrolling streets throughout the district.

Speaking by telephone from Buner on Wednesday night, Sardar Hussain Babik, education minister for the North West Frontier Province regional government, accused the militants of looting the offices of non-government organizations and stealing cars.

"We are collecting from different parts of the province," he said.
A few hours' drive away, in the Pakistani capital, salesmen hawking Urdu newspapers in morning traffic on Thursday called out headlines over the din of car engines.Taliban has entered Islamabad," a newsboy yelled.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Pakistan was in danger of falling into terrorist hands because of failed government policies, and called on Pakistani citizens and expatriates to voice more concern.

"I think that we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state, a nuclear-armed state," Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in her first appearance before Congress since being confirmed.

"I don't hear that kind of outrage and concern coming from enough people that would reverberate back within the highest echelons of the civilian and military leadership of Pakistan."

Mike Mullen, U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was in Islamabad on Wednesday to meet with Pakistani officials.

Taliban militants implemented Islamic law in Pakistan's violence-plagued Swat Valley last week, before taking control of the neighboring Buner district. But Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, told CNN on Wednesday that the situation was not as dire as Clinton described.

"Yes, we have a challenge," Haqqani said. "But, no, we do not have a situation in which the government or the country of Pakistan is about to fall to the Taliban."

Taliban fighters moved into the Swat Valley as part of a peace deal with the government that has come under fire from U.S. observers. But Haqqani compared it to the deals U.S. commanders in Iraq made to peel insurgents away from Islamic jihadists blamed for the worst attacks on civilians there.

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said at a news briefing Thursday: "I want to explain to the West and Hillary Clinton about the agreement. ... The agreement is actually a very good thing. ... It brings two parties to an agreement based on mutual understanding."

"We have to establish control of government in Malakand division," which includes Swat, he said. "If peace is not restored in that area [Malakand], certainly we have to review our policy."

"If there is an effort of Taliban-ization, we have the right to review our policy."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/as...wat/index.html

 

[54/102 CEF]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/04/22/zakaria.pakistan/index.html

see the last para -

 

[Corey Darling]

Aired on the 14th

"Pakistan: Children of the Taliban"  PBS Frontline Documentary  36 mins

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan802/video/video_index.html

 

[Michael OLeary]

Does Pakistan's Taliban Surge Raise a Nuclear Threat?
By Mark Thompson / Washington Friday, Apr. 24, 2009

When asked last year about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen didn't hesitate: "I'm very comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure," he said flatly. Asked the same question earlier this month, his answer had changed. "I'm reasonably comfortable," he said, "that the nuclear weapons are secure."

As America's top military officer, Mullen has traveled regularly to Pakistan — twice in just the past two weeks — for talks with his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kayani, and others. And like all those who have risen to four-star rank, Mullen chooses his words with extreme care. Replacing "very comfortable" with "reasonably comfortable" is a decidedly discomforting signal of Washington's concern that no matter how well-guarded the nukes may be today, the chaos now enveloping Pakistan doesn't bode well for their status tomorrow or the day after. (See pictures of the recent militant attack on a Pakistani police academy)

The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons. Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. has been keeping a watchful eye on Pakistan's nukes since it first detonated a series of devices a decade ago. "Pakistan has taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons, although vulnerabilities still exist," Army General Michael Maples, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. Then, he immediately turned to the threat posed by al-Qaeda, which, along with the Taliban, is sowing unrest in Pakistan. "Al-Qaeda continues efforts to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials," he said, "and would not hesitate to use such weapons if the group develops sufficient capabilities."

The concern in Washington is less that al-Qaeda or the Taliban would manage to actually seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but instead that increasingly-radicalized younger Pakistanis are finding their way into military and research circles where they may begin to play a growing role in the nation's nuclear-weapons program. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say.

Nowhere in the world is the gap between would-be terror-martyrs and the nuclear weapons they crave as small as it is in Pakistan. Nor is their much comfort in the fact that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal who was recently ordered freed from house arrest by the country's supreme court, was the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation, dispatching the atomic genie to Iran, Libya and North Korea. But U.S. and Pakistani officials insist it is important to separate Pakistan's poor proliferation record with what is, by all accounts, a modern and multilayered system designed to protect its nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

For starters, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials, there is no way a complete nuclear weapon can be plucked from Islamabad's stockpile, which is protected by about 10,000 of the Pakistani military's most elite troops. The guts of the nuclear warhead are kept separate from the rest of the device, and a nuclear detonation is impossible without both pieces. Additionally, the delivery vehicle — plane or missile — is also segregated from the warhead components.

More at link.[/utl]

 

[CougarKing]

Reportedly, the Taliban have withdrawn to the Swat valley...for now.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD97OQNM00

Pakistani Taliban pull back to Swat stronghold
By RIAZ KHAN – 3 hours ago

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban militants began pulling out of a recently seized district of northwestern Pakistan on Friday and returning to a stronghold where they have signed a peace deal with the government, a local official and the insurgents said.

The apparent withdrawal from Buner is unlikely to do much to ally Western fears that Islamabad is failing to deal forcefully with militants seen as slowly expanding into the heart of the country from strongholds close to the Afghan order.

Witness said scores of militants had effectively taken control of Buner since the government formally agreed to a peace deal in the adjoining Swat Valley region early this month. Buner is just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital, Islamabad, and the advance raised alarm bells in Pakistan and the West.

TV images showed dozens of militants emerging on Friday from a high-walled villa that served as their headquarters in Buner, a rural area in the foothills of the Karakoram mountains. The men, most of them masked with black scarves and carrying automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, clambered into several pickup trucks and minibuses before driving away.

Syed Mohammed Javed, the top government administrator in the region, said a hard-line cleric who helped mediate the disputed peace deal persuaded the Taliban to return to Swat in a meeting on Friday.

"We told them that we have a deal, we have a peace agreement. We told them not to become a tool in the hands of someone aiming at sabotaging the peace in the region," Javed told The Associated Press by telephone from Buner.

Javed said he and the aging cleric, Sufi Muhammad, were leading the Taliban convoy back to Mingora, Swat's main town, but it was not clear when they would cross the mountains passes leading out of Buner.

The government agreed in February to impose Islamic law in Swat and surrounding areas of the northwest in return for a cease-fire that halted nearly two years of bloody fighting between militants and Pakistani security forces.

But hard-liners have seized on the concession to demand Islamic law across the country, and the Swat Taliban used it to justify their push into Buner, putting them within striking distance of the capital and key roads leading to the main northwestern city of Peshawar.

The U.S. is considering rooting out militant sanctuaries in Pakistan critical to success in the Afghan war. It also worries about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that Pakistan's leaders were "abdicating to the Taliban" in Swat, and on Thursday told U.S. lawmakers the Obama administration was trying to convince Islamabad to shift its traditional security focus from archrival India to Islamic extremists.

With the pressure mounting, the army, whose ability and commitment to combating Islamist extremists is under intense international scrutiny, issued an unusually tough statement Friday.

Apparently referring to the Swat deal, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said it was "meant to give the reconciliatory forces a chance (but) must not be taken for a concession to the militants."

Kayani said the army was "determined to root out the menace of terrorism" and would "not allow the militants to dictate terms to the government or impose their way of life."

Government leaders had also warned they would use force if the Swat Taliban — who have beheaded opponents, torched girls schools and denounced democracy as un-Islamic — continue to challenge the state.

"Those who took up arms must lay them down," Iftikhar Hussain, spokesman for the provincial government in the northwest, said earlier Friday, while issuing what he said was a "last" appeal to the Taliban to quit Buner.

But they have also sought to counter a rising tide of extremist violence with dialogue and peace deals that critics worry only grant brutal extremists impunity, legitimacy and the time and space to muster more forces.

The disputed peace accord covers Swat, Buner and other districts in the Malakand Division, an area of about 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) near the Afghan border and the tribal areas where al-Qaida and the Taliban have strongholds.

Supporters have said the deal takes away the militants' main rallying call for Islamic law and will let the government gradually reassert control. But the militants have rejected calls for them to give up their arms.

Taliban commanders insisted their fighters had been preaching peacefully for Islamic law, or Sharia, in Buner and Muslim Khan, their spokesman, said they were leaving "of their own accord, not under any pressure."

Asked on Express News television if they were breaking the peace accord by carrying weapons, Khan said Sharia allowed every Muslim to carry a gun — "especially those busy in jihad."

Associated Press writer Asif Shahzad in Islambad contributed to this report.

 

 

[CougarKing]

Hopefully it won't come to this: with the US/the West intervening by actually putting ground troops in Pakistan, though things seem to be headed that way.

AMERICA made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad.
A senior Pakistani official said the Obama administration intervened after Taliban forces expanded from Swat into the adjacent district of Buner, 60 miles from the capital.

The Pakistani Taliban’s inroads raised international concern, particularly in Washington, where officials feared that the nuclear-armed country, which is pivotal to the US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda, was rapidly succumbing to Islamist extremists.

“The implicit threat - if you don’t do it, we may have to - was always there,” said the Pakistani official. He said that under American pressure, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency told the Taliban to withdraw from Buner on Friday.

(....) 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6168940.ece

 

[gordjenkins]

Flux in Pakistani valley after Taliban retreat
Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:54 pm PDT
Reuters - Taliban fighters remained in a Pakistani valley near the capital on Saturday, but many had pulled out after quitting their main base, officials said
BUNER, Pakistan (Reuters) – Taliban fighters remained in a Pakistani valley near the capital on Saturday, but many had pulled out after quitting their main base, officials said.

"They have gone, but left their germs here," Abdul Rasheed Khan, the district's top police officer, told Reuters. "Now we have about 200 local Taliban who can be seen on roadsides."

The Taliban's entry into the northwest district of Buner, some 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Islamabad, alarmed Washington during the past week, as fears mounted over the nuclear-armed Muslim state's stability.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in an interview with Fox News in Baghdad, said Washington believes Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is now secure "but that's given the current configuration of power."

"One of our concerns, which we've raised with the Pakistani government and military, is that if the worst, the unthinkable were to happen, and this advancing Taliban ... were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back, then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan," Clinton said.

"We can't even contemplate that. We cannot ... let this go on any further. Which is why we're pushing so hard for the Pakistanis to come together around a strategy to take their country back."

Pakistan is a country the West dares not neglect. Its support is critical to defeating al Qaeda and the West's mission to stabilize Afghanistan.

On Friday, guerrilla commander Fazlullah ordered his men to pull back to the neighboring Swat valley, and his spokesman said around 100 fighters were being withdrawn.

Residents saw Taliban fighters abandoning their main base at Sultan Was village in the Buner valley.

A senior security official said the Taliban should lay down arms, allow the police to carry out their duties and allow new courts, known as qazi courts, to deliver justice according to sharia law.

"If they do not do any of this, the state will decide to go for an operation, and this time the operation will be on a larger scale," he said.

While militants from Swat had returned home, armed fighters who hailed from Buner were seen moving around as usual, despite hundreds of police militia being sent to the district.

"They won't lay down their arms so quickly," said Syed Javed Shah, a senior government official in Buner. "They know they have made enemies of people living here whose relatives were killed."

Fazlullah, the Taliban leader in Swat, had forced the government to submit to demands for the imposition of Islamic sharia law across the Malakand Division of North West Frontier Province, which includes Swat and Buner.

While the order for the introduction of sharia in Swat was promulgated by parliament and a reluctant President Asif Ali Zardari earlier this month, it has still to be implemented.

Pakistani officials say the militants' move into Buner and Shangla, another district adjoining Swat, violated terms of a deal meant to keep the peace.

U.S. UNEASE

Western governments, worried Pakistan is sliding into chaos, want to see coherence and action, and Zardari may want to show some steel before talks in Washington with President Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai on May 6-7.

The International Monetary Fund had to save Pakistan from an economic meltdown last November. Peace talks with India were suspended after Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai that month.

Senior U.S. officials have strongly criticized Pakistan's appeasement of militants in Swat, with Clinton having said the state had abdicated authority.

Grave problems surround the one-year-old civilian government that took over after nearly a decade of military rule.

U.S. commanders have voiced suspicions that some Pakistani intelligence agents secretly help Islamist militants.

Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani issued a strongly worded statement on Friday to dispel doubts about the military's capacity and will to fight the militants.

Overall insecurity has worsened with high profile attacks in Islamabad and Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, and the Taliban has extended its reach across the northwest.

But the army has contained militant activity in the Waziristan tribal region and defeated them last month in Bajaur, the other tribal region regarded as a militant hotspot.

(Reporting by Junaid Khan in Swat, Abdul Rehman in Buner, Faris Ali in Peshawar and Kamran Haider and Sheree Sardar in Islamabad; Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

 

[CougarKing]

An update about the current Pakistani Army offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/03/pakistan.fighting/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Pakistan kills 80 in assault on Taliban
Story Highlights
Pakistani security forces kill at least 80 militants in country's tribal region

Pakistani army has been waging a week-long crackdown on Taliban

Three soldiers killed, eight wounded in crackdown in northwest of country
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani armed forces have killed 80 militants since launching an assault on a region recently held by the Taliban, the military announced Sunday.

Three soldiers have been killed and eight wounded in the crackdown in the Buner district in the northwest of the country, the military statement said.

The Pakistani offensive started in the province last Sunday, after Taliban militants moved into Buner, a move that alarmed U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Pakistani security forces also killed at least 16 militants late Friday and early Saturday in the Mohmand district, in the country's volatile tribal region, the country's military said on Saturday.

The incident appears to be separate from the hostilities in Buner.

However, it reflects the tensions in the region and could signal a spread of fighting resulting from the crackdown.

In the incident, about 100 militants attacked a Frontier Corps post in the Mohmand Agency, or district, an area where militants hold great sway. Troops returned fire and killed the 16 militants, the military said.

Mohmand is in the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas that border a volatile region in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Earlier this year, Pakistan had entered into an agreement with militants, allowing them to enforce Islamic law, or sharia, in parts of Swat Valley in exchange for ceasing violence. The Swat Valley is a broader area that includes several provincial districts, including Chitral, Swat, Shangla, Malakand, Upper Dir, and Lower Dir.

But Pakistani officials say the armed militants' advance into Buner district violated the agreement and briefly halted peace talks between the two sides in North West Frontier Province.

Representatives from Pakistan's government and the Taliban restarted their negotiations on Friday and were planning to have another session soon, a provincial spokesman said.

The Pakistani government has been criticized for not cracking down on militants along its border with Afghanistan. As a result, the U.S. military has carried out airstrikes against militant targets in Pakistan, which have rankled relations between the two countries.

 

[CougarKing]

He is calling for a coup? Is he crazy? That's not gonna help stabilize this country. 

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/05/01/john-bolton-we-may-have-to-acquiesce-in-a-pakistani-military-takeover/

John Bolton: We may have to acquiesce in a ‘Pakistani military takeover’
By Muriel Kane

Published: May 1, 2009
Updated 2 days ago

Perennial Neoconservative gadfly John Bolton, who has often been accused of making exaggerated claims about Middle Eastern threats, is now suggesting that a military coup in Pakistan may be the only viable response to the growing power of the Taliban.

In an op-ed for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Bolton writes, “To prevent catastrophe will require considerable American effort and unquestionably provoke resistance from many Pakistanis, often for widely differing reasons. We must strengthen pro-American elements in Pakistan’s military so they can purge dangerous Islamicists from their ranks; roll back Taliban advances; and, together with our increased efforts in Afghanistan, decisively defeat the militants on either side of the border. This may mean stifling some of our democratic squeamishness and acquiescing in a Pakistani military takeover, if the civilian government melts before radical pressures. So be it.”

Bolton’s stance on Pakistan appear to go hand-in-hand with his recent attempts to describe the Obama administration’s international outreach efforts as amounting to a “tangible projection of weakness” and “revealing a Jimmy Carter-style unwillingness to do what’s necessary in a hard world to protect America’s interest.”

Both Bolton’s temper and his attempts to force intelligence analysis to match his own preconceptions are legendary. When he was nominated by former President Bush to be United Nations ambassador in 2005, the former head of the State Department’s intelligence bureau, Carl Ford, testified that Bolton was “a serial abuser” who had tried to have an analyst fired because he disagreed with Bolton’s belief that Cuba has a biological weapons program.

In his current op-ed, Bolton somewhat surprisingly blames the Bush administration for creating the current crisis by “pushing former President Pervez Musharraf into unwise elections and effectively removing him from power,” a policy which Bolton compares to the 1963 CIA-sponsored overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Bolton also paradoxically argues that the current danger of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban is actually the result of earlier US efforts to discourage Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation.

“We are reaping the consequences of failed nonproliferation policies that in the past penalized Pakistan for its nuclear program by cutting off military assistance and scaling back the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program that brought hundreds of Pakistani officers to the U.S.” Bolton insists. “Perhaps inevitably, the Pakistani officers who haven’t participated in IMET are increasingly subject to radical influences.”

 

[gordjenkins]

The Taliban Tightens Hold In Pakistan's Swat Region
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/AR2009050400189.html
By Pamela ConstableWashington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 4 -- Taliban forces tightened their grip on Pakistan's Swat region Monday and continued resisting the military's efforts to dislodge them from neighboring Buner, bringing a fragile peace accord closer to collapse and the volatile northwest region nearer to full-fledged conflict.
Yet even as the Taliban continued its rampage and rejected the government's latest concession to its demands -- the appointment of Islamic-law judges in Swat -- Pakistan's military leaders clung to hopes for a nonviolent solution, saying that security forces were "still exercising restraint to honor the peace agreement."
Behind this strained hope for a peaceful solution lie an array of factors -- competing military priorities, reluctance to fight fellow Muslims, lack of strong executive leadership and some internal sympathy for the insurgents -- that analysts say have long prevented the Pakistani army from making a full-fledged assault on violent Islamist groups.
Over the past two days, extremists in the northwest have attacked a military convoy, beheaded two soldiers, imposed a curfew and blown up a boys' high school and a police station. Troop reinforcements were sent into Buner on Monday after heavy fighting, and there were reports that the army would imminently launch an attack on Swat, an action that could coincide with a crucial aid-seeking visit to Washington this week by President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government has been criticized by U.S. officials for capitulating to the insurgents.

 

[gordjenkins]

Face-Off Between Taliban, Pakistani Army Appears Imminent
Thousands Flee Swat Ahead of Expected Fighting
Face-Off Between Taliban, Pakistani Army Appears Immine

By Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 6, 2009


Residents of Mingaora, the capital of Swat, pack onto buses leaving the region. Army officials ordered residents of Mingaora to leave the area and lifted a nighttime curfew to enable their departure. (Associated Press)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 5 -- Thousands of panicked civilians began fleeing the conflict-ridden Swat Valley region Tuesday, fearing a full-fledged confrontation between government forces and Taliban fighters after the insurgents declared an end to their peace accord with the government.

Officials in the North-West Frontier Province said half a million people would join the exodus from Swat, where Taliban fighters are occupying hundreds of houses and other buildings as they prepare to resist an anticipated assault by Pakistani troops.
The rapidly growing crisis came as Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari began two days of intensive talks in Washington with senior U.S. officials and leaders of neighboring Afghanistan about how to combat the threat of Islamist militancy and terrorism in both countries.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, told journalists in this northwestern capital that six camps would be set up to accommodate refugees from Swat as they flee what was once a tourist destination. Pakistani journalists reported seeing hundreds of frightened families clambering onto buses and trucks Tuesday in Mingaora, capital of the scenic Swat.

Army officials ordered residents of Mingaora to leave the area and lifted a nighttime curfew to enable their departure. Heavy gunfire was heard throughout the day, and security forces were barricaded inside their bases, while heavily armed Taliban forces patrolled the streets and laid mines.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Muslim Khan, said the extremist forces controlled 90 percent of the Swat region. He told Pakistani journalists that the Swat peace deal, in which officials agreed to implement strict Islamic law in the region if the insurgents agreed to disarm, was now dead.


For the past week, Pakistani military forces have been trying to push back Taliban fighters from the Buner district just south of Swat, but they have encountered strong resistance. Khan said the military offensive had betrayed the peace accord.

Refugees and officials from Buner, however, said the insurgents had occupied their district for almost one month despite widespread popular opposition and several efforts by local armed groups to force them to leave.

"Nobody supports them. They just came in and occupied our houses and took everything, even the matchboxes," said Afsar Khan, the mayor of a town in Buner who fled to Peshawar several weeks ago. "Everyone has heard about the barbaric atrocities that took place in Swat, with Muslims slaughtering Muslims in the name of God."

Pakistani military officials did not confirm reports that they plan to stage a massive operation

 

[gordjenkins]

Looks like our war has moved south

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line

Pakistan moves against Swat militants, civilians flee
Reuters

By Junaid Khan Junaid Khan – Fri May 8, 11:22 am ET
MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces attacked Taliban militants in the Swat valley on Friday as concern grew about the fate of nearly a million people displaced by an upsurge in violence.

The military said 143 militants had been killed in the Islamist bastion of Swat over the past 24 hours. There was no independent confirmation. Seven soldiers had been killed, an army spokesman said.

The struggle in the scenic northwestern valley 130 km (80 miles) from Islamabad and a former center for tourism has become a test of Pakistan's resolve to fight a growing Taliban insurgency that has alarmed the United States.

Civilians have poured out of the valley since fighting intensified on Wednesday and aid groups have warned of an intensifying humanitarian crisis. The U.N. refugee agency said a "massive displacement" was underway. Citing provincial government estimates, it said up to 200,000 people had left their homes over recent days with another 300,000 on the move or about to move.

They are joining another 555,000 people displaced in other areas because of fighting since August, it said.

The government has ordered the army to strike at "militants and terrorists" it said were trying to hold the country hostage at gunpoint.

"On the directive of the government, the army is now engaged in a full-scale operation to eliminate the militants," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news briefing at army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

"They are on the run and trying to block exodus of civilians from the area," Abbas said, while warning that the operation was difficult and declining to give a time for clearing the valley.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Back in January CSIS held a two-day conference in Ottawa to look at the situation in Pakistan. At the end of the conference they produced a report, Pakistan's Security: Today and Tomorrow which can be found here:

http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/pblctns/cdmctrch/Pakistans%20security_web.pdf

From the reports Backgrounder:

"In light of the volatile security situation which has developed in Pakistan in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), joined by Canada's departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, National Defence and Public Safety, hosted a two-day conference in Ottawa on the topic of Pakistan's Security Today and Tomorrow. Held at the CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, the conference featured presentations by leading Canadian, Pakistani, American and European experts drawn from academia, the media, think-tanks, as well as government. The objective of the conference, attended by upwards of ninety people, was to expose participants to a variety of expert views on Pakistan's security, enabling them to identify key drivers influencing the country's security, and to discuss alternative futures for Pakistan. It also supported the development of an informal community of interest on Pakistan's security within the government of Canada."


The report summarizes the various problems (political, military and economic) facing Pakistan, including the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. It also includes three "what-if" scenarios on possible future outcomes for Pakistan.

A good primary for those not familiar with the situation in Pakistan and are looking for an "one-stop-shopping" backgrounder.

Enjoy.

 

[gordjenkins]

With respect
a lot can happen quickly in this type of engagement
between January and now

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090505.EPAKISTAN05ART1956//TPStory/Editorials

and
Canadian Defence Associations
http://www.cdaforumcad.ca/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1241719739

PAKISTAN

Focus on a new enemy
May 5, 2009
Globe and Mail

Pakistan's military and intelligence establishments need to wake up to the fact that their own interests are not compatible with those of the Taliban. There is some evidence that this is at last happening, fighting between the armed forces and the Islamist militants having intensified in the past two days, in the Buner valley of the North-West Frontier Province.

Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan, weakly and unwisely agreed to the application of Islamic law, as interpreted and administered by the Taliban, to the Swat valley of NWFP. That encouraged the Taliban to expand into other districts of NWFP, only 100 kilometres away from the country's capital, Islamabad.

Mr. Zardari is meeting tomorrow in Washington with President Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, but this event is unlikely to be a turning point; Mr. Zardari's hold on power is not strong enough.

Pakistan will not wholeheartedly embrace any regime in Afghanistan that is not under its own influence, but the Taliban, which it helped create, are now demonstrating that they are to the Pakistani establishment as the monster of Mary Shelley's novel was to Dr. Frankenstein, rather than a manipulable puppet.

The armed forces of Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence are nationalistic, not a set of radical Islamists, and they cannot welcome the anarchy that now threatens their country, let alone the possibility of the seizure of their nuclear weapons. But their long-term orientation has been to oppose the power of India; they remember all too well how India's conventional military strength was decisive in the breaking off of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1971. They have little skill in counterinsurgency, but they need to acquire some quickly.

Islamabad was created as the new capital, instead of Pakistan's original metropolis, Karachi, which is close to the Indian Ocean and was felt to be too exposed to external threats. Islamabad seemed more secure, close to the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi and to the mountains. Proximity to the NWFP has turned into a liability. Though the Taliban are not so well-organized an army as to be able to seize power in Islamabad, they are eminently capable of spreading chaos.

Maulana Fazlullah, the Taliban's leader in Swat, has invited Osama bin Laden to come to live there, as if to bait the United States.

The U.S. should not be tempted into heavy-handed action, however, and should not invest much hope in Wednesday's Washington meeting. It has some influence on Pakistan, but cannot change the country's direction by money or by pressure.
It will be much more persuasive for the U.S. and other Western powers to point out that Pakistan's real interests lie in reasserting its national unity.

 

[Yrys]

Pakistan urging residents to flee, Sunday, 10 May 2009 01:50 UK

Pakistan's government is lifting a curfew in the Swat valley to allow residents to escape
an intense battle between the army and Taleban militants. The curfew has trapped tens
of thousands of people attempting to flee the violence.

The army is trying to reverse militant advances in the area, in what the prime minister
has called a "fight for the survival of the country". The army said dozens of militants
had been killed in fighting on Saturday.

The government said the curfew would be lifted for seven hours on Sunday, beginning
at 0600 local time. It asked civilians to take the chance to flee the area. BBC regional
analyst Anbarasan Ethirajan says the lifting of the curfew is a sign that the army offensive
is likely to intensify over the coming days.

Pakistan's government signed a peace agreement with the Swat Taleban in February,
allowing Sharia law there, which was sharply criticised by Washington. The militants
then moved towards the capital, Islamabad, causing further alarm.

Up to 15,000 troops have been deployed in the Swat valley and neighbouring areas to take
on 4,000-5,000 militants. The military has said it intends to "eliminate" the Taleban fighters.
The fighting has already displaced some 200,000 people, while a further 300,000 are
estimated to be on the move or about to flee, the UN says.

The government also said on Saturday that refugee camps would be set up in Peshawar,
the capital of North West Frontier Province, and to the north-east in Naushara. Footage on
local television showed people at one camp desperately looting UN supplies including blankets
and cooking oil.

'Road jammed'

Earlier, fighting was reported to have reached the biggest town in the region, Mingora, which
the army has been trying to recapture. The army said it had killed 55 more militants on
Saturday, having said that more than 140 militants had died in earlier clashes.

Due to the intensity of the fighting and the cutting of phone networks, it is difficult to get
independent information on the fighting or verify the army's claims, correspondents say.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters on Saturday called the conflict "a guerrilla war".
"This is our own war. This is war for the survival of the country," Reuters news agency quoted
him as saying. Our correspondent says Sunday's curfew is especially aimed at the residents of
the towns of Kambar and Raheemabad. They have been blaming both sides for the violence,
he says, as the military continues to bombard the area while the Taleban reportedly prevents
people from fleeing.

One Mingora resident was quoted by Reuters saying he had not been able to escape during an
earlier curfew. "We are feeling so helpless, we want to go but can't," said Sallahudin Khan. "We
tried to leave yesterday after authorities relaxed the curfew for a few hours, but we couldn't as
the main road leading out of Mingora was literally jammed with the flood of fleeing people."

 

[CougarKing]

From the Long War Journal...

Excerpt 1
The US launched a covert airstrike against a Taliban safe house in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan.

The US targeted a Taliban compound with an airstrike in the lawless tribal agency of South Waziristan, killing between five to ten terrorists.

A swarm of unmanned Predator attack aircraft fired four missiles at a compound run by Taliban forces loyal to Baituallah Mehsud in the town of Sararogha, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal. The official would not disclose the name of the Taliban or al Qaeda operatives targeted in the operation.

The number killed is unclear, according to initial reports from Pakistan. "Officials claimed 10 Taliban had been killed, a deputy Taliban commander said five were killed, the political administration claimed nine Taliban were killed, while tribesmen claimed they had counted 25 bodies," Daily Times reported.

 

Excerpt 2

Baitullah Mehsud leads alliance against the Pakistani government and the West

Today's strike is the eighth recorded attack against camps and compounds in Baitullah's tribal areas. Baitullah is the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, a group established in December of 2007 to unite disparate Taliban groups in Pakistan's northwest. The Tehrik-e-Taliban has led the insurgency and conducted many of the terror attacks against the Pakistani government.

In February, Baitullah put aside tribal rivalries and joined forces with senior Taliban leaders Hafiz Gul Bahadar and Mullah Nazir in February of this year to form the Council of United Mujahideen. The three leaders said they "united according to the wishes of Mujahideen leaders like Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden."

 

 

[Xiang]

The current conflict in Pakistan is certainly an interesting lesson learned by the people and the government (at least I hope)

The population initially thought they were fighting a government that bowed to American pressure when they supported the Taliban.

The Government thought the Taliban could be trusted with this "peace deal".

The government learned their lesson and are now engaged in yet another bloody conflict, and the people are now caught in the middle, after learning how brutal the Taliban are and how distorted their views on Islam are, and have now taken up arms along side the soldiers.

The Taliban really shot themselves in the foot here.  Their hard liner policies they implemented in Swat have backfired.  A population that was once too scared to attempt to fight back now have the backing and support of the advancing military and government.

The Taliban will never have the strong influence they once did again in that region.

 

[GAP]

The Taliban will never have the strong influence they once did again in that region

Remember that the Taliban are a creature of the ISI....we do not hear anything being done about them do we?....

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The problem is that the ISI has always played both ends against the middle, thinking they can deal with this by backroom deals, if the army has to fight to clear Swat, then the ISI is weakened, the ISI likley see's the army as the bigger threat to their survival. The ISI has a long history of trying to influeance Taliban behaviour since the inception of the Taliban, ISI did not so much start the Taliban, as it did to nurture, protect and feed it. The Taliban are like an attack dog that has rabies and sleeping in your living room.