NYT condemns Pakistani action
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/wo..._r=1&th&emc=th
Once in a while even the NEW YORK TIMES gets it's facts straught.
The future of Swat the NYT suggests is a consolidated base for both the Taliban and al Qaida.
I agree with the TIMES in this article where they basically assess "excuses" being made by the Pak government as a pack of lies.
Moved here by davidbfpo and originally by George S.
"Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven"
Reading:
Quote:
Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven
The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents.
The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.
The accord came less than a week before the first official visit to Washington of the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to meet Obama administration officials and discuss how Pakistan could improve its tactics against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency there of Al Qaeda and the Taliban militants.
Jane Perlez, New York Times
I really get nightmares about what this will mean, let's say to the women in this area.
Perhaps I'm taking this too personally, and should all this 'be looked upon in another way'. I really do want to look at this kind of news in a more reasonable way, so here's an open invitation to share your responses ...
Reply to Piranha in the Netherlands
Greetings and will attempt to offer one old trooper's views to answer some of your open ended question(s):
1. Recent successful drone attacks in other Northern Pakistan provinces and areas have been working and the Taliban wanted a safe have that does not have a common border with Afghanistan. SWAT meets their needs now and they have just managed to combine murder, threat of murder, suicide bombings, and having too many friends in high places in the Pakistani ISI (read that as Intelligence Service) and the upper ranks of the Pakistan Army..who have long been pro-Taliban and pro-al Qaida.
2. Your fears are well founded as this largely pits the Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army against both the new President and new Prime Minister of Pakistan.
3. Now both the Taliban and al Qaida, for the moment at least, feel they are in a safer site, area is about the size of the US State of Delaware, have driven killed and/or driven out about 1/3 of the native Pukhtuns...the invading Taliban are of other subtribes and not native to Swat, and are deeply feared and resented by the differing Pukhtun subtrives inside and native to SWAT.
4. This in league with the terrorists action by the Pak government and Army, largely the Army is pulling these strings of surrender, invites more such capitulations and surrenders to the core of all this religious terrorism, Sharia Law, in other Northern parts of Pakistan.
5. Especially upsetting to me, since I served in the Peshawar and Karachi areas many years ago in our military, is that the capital of all of Pakistan, Islamabad, is not that many miles S-SW of SWAT and is full of radical madrassas itself, in fact, the Red Madrassah had a week long fire fight between the Pak Army and the Taliban teachers and students there in Islamabad about a year ago...which then President Musharraf put his career as President on the line to try to root them out...via the weeklong gunfight.
Your fears are well founded.
ASIDE: My wife and I met some very fine Dutch Special Forces while everyone was touring the Amiercan Cemetery at Normandy, France, summer, 2006. These Dutch were your special forces headed from that military leave weekend straight into Afghanistan. I and we over here appreciate our alliance and long term friendship with the government and all the people of Holland. Thank you to you and to all your countrymen. Colonel George L. Singleton, USAF, Ret.
Adding to George's comment...
Perhaps because I listen to Radio Netherlands over WRN, I've long been aware of the heroic efforts of the Dutch in Afghanistan. I'm deeply embarrassed at the disparagement of their efforts (as well as the efforts of Canada and Australia) in certain segments of US society. Very few people in the US are aware that, proportionate to the population, the Dutch have suffered as significant a number of casualties as we have.
George, the position is ....
Quote:
from GLS
JMM, I nominate you openly on the SWJ to be our Geneological Officer in Charge.
totally beyond my kin, my ken and my kith - but thanks for the thought. :D
Having said that, I hope there is someone in our command structure who is able to understand this item from post # 7 of the blog you cite above ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Batoor
Penjperies have very strong association with ISI.
Yes! Major Muhammad Aamir who is the son of Maulana Tahir,the founder of this sect is a well known retired Army officer & he was the head during mid-night Jakal operation ... now his elder brother Maulana Tayyeb is the head of this sect.
and to apply whatever measures are required to meet the challenge of the Penjperies - whoever they are. :o
J-9 is, I think, the area of Genological Oversight!
When now retired four star General Fred Franks was a Brigadier they "created" a JCS-9 slot for him, which was a sort of catch all for goofy things like this tribal lineage stuff, among lesser on paper duties as best I can recall, that was back in 1990.
For details see: http://www.jfcom.mil/about/abt_j9.htm
Instant "non-freedom of the press" in SWAT 2/19/09
Slain Pak TV reporter had 32 bullet wounds
Thursday, 19 February , 2009, 12:19
Quote:
Islamabad: Thirty two bullets were pumped into TV reporter Musa Khan Khel in Pakistan's Swat Valley two days after Islamabad allowed the Taliban to impose Shariat (Islamic law) in the area, said Geo News executive editor Hamid Mir, adding a lot of radicals were unhappy with his coverage but "truth has to be reported".
Complete story ate below Internet site of murder of Pakistani local news reporter at site of so-called "Peace March" in Swat yesterday. Some way the Taliban observe "peace" there.
http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/
Dawn newspaper: "US ‘troubled and confused’ about sharia deal: Holbrooke"
Quote:
US ‘troubled and confused’ about sharia deal: Holbrooke
Anwar Iqbal
Friday, 20 Feb, 2009 | 12:22 AM PST |
WASHINGTON: The United States was not sure if the Pakistani military and ISI backed President Asif Ali Zardari’s commitment to eradicate terrorist sanctuaries from the NWFP, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Thursday.
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, in his first media interview since he returned from a fact-finding mission to South Asia earlier this week, said this issue ‘will be pursued at very high levels’ in US-Pakistan talks scheduled in Washington next week.
Ambassador Holbrooke also linked this week’s peace agreement in Swat to the military’s reluctance to support President Zardari’s anti-terrorism policies and said the US was ‘troubled and confused’ about this deal.
Unlike her special envoy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared more willing to give Pakistan a chance to explain how and why it concluded a deal with the militants in Swat.....
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn...-holbrooke--bi
Copyright © 2009 - Dawn Media Group
Thoughts about Swat and related "stuff"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
davidbfpo
David et al:
This article epitomizes in part the desperate interpersonal e-mails I have been getting for over two years out of Swat now. The anti-Taliban/anti-al Qaida good people get my e-mail address from often printed letters to the editor from and by me in the Peshawar FRONTIER POST and I am of course careful/they ask me to be so, not to disclose their e-mail addresses as they say for sure it would lead to their murder by the Taliban/al Qaida.
Driving wedges among and between the Taliban and al Qaida, who are all Sunnis, should not be so hard, as the Taliban who write and have "their" letters published in the FRONTIER POST or who allow the FP to do telephone interviews with them...and those Taliban who write, in English and in Pushto, on Global Hujra Online...in general do not, repeat don't like "Arabs" who many Pukhtuns, both Taliban and non-Taliban alike, view as much as "invaders" as we are allegedly so viewed.
Up until now al Qaida has relied on and used the fact of in common Muslim Sunni belief and customs to seek and claim shelter and safe harbor. This is a topic that needs hard work to crack that "fellow Muslim" hospiality nut. It won't be easy as he damned Taliban tolerated al Qaida to the point to being tossed out of power by force by us!
Pukhtuns comments Feb. 21 GLOBAL HUJRA ONLINE series of P
There is more than a little intereting reading here...Darmand is an Afghan Pukhtun, but most of the other comments come from Pakistani Pukhtuns inside Swat, in the Peshwar area, and from Pukhtuns living in Europe.
SIDE NOTE BY GEORGE: Many of the Pukhtuns in Afdghanistan and in Pakistan are of the same families and tribes, as most of you already know.
There are some interestisng topical cross links, too.
http://www.khyberwatch.com/forums/sh...60874post60874
On balance, IF one used these postings you have to conclude that the majority of Pukhtuns from and in Swat hate the Taliban and are desperate as in they don't know what to do?
FYI.
crack that "fellow Muslim" hospiality nut
Thank you once again Mr. Singleton.
To you and everyone reading along,
About 15 years ago I was in contact with a Sufi group in my own country, which was and is very much involved in interfaith dialogue. Whenever I wanted to share in their dhikr-meetings, I could count on the hospitality of one of their members afterwards.
One time their leader told me something that imho is worth sharing with you all: "Bad people have no problems finding each other doing bad things, that's a real problem, but perhaps an even bigger problem is that we good people are sometimes so critical of one another that it prevents us from doing that many good things that this might be a counter-weight."
We need every ally we can get.
Swat Valley - another angle
Another report on the valley, citing an expatriate resident who runs a local radio station: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...at-valley.html
Adds in other commentary.
davidbfpo