Pakistani internal security (catch all)

[Sarajevo071]

Seven more FC men kidnapped in Tall

Seven more Frontier Constabulary (FC) personnel were kidnapped by the militants after an attack on their check post in Tall near Mir Ali late on Tuesday night, while a held FC soldier was killed and three others fled to Bannu on Wednesday.

The check post is six kilometres from the FC fort on the Hangu-Waziristan road near the Tall town. The abducted personnel include Havaldar Piao Khan, Sepoy Safeerullah, Aqeel, Raza Khan, Noor Jehan and Noor Khan. The identity of the 7th soldier could not be ascertained.
...

In South Waziristan, a Jirga negotiating the release of around 300 security personnel refused to accept 10 detainees against the 100 agreed upon earlier and returned to Wana empty-handed.

The militants had agreed to release one-third of the captive security personnel in talks with the Jirga earlier after the Army pulled out of two security posts in the Mahsud areas. The Jirga, headed by a pro-MMA MNA, Maulana Merajuddin Qureshi, went to Mulla Khan Serai near Barwand in Tiarza subdivision on Wednesday morning for decisive talks with the militants but was disappointed when they found the militants led by Baitullah Mahsud missing from the meeting.
...

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story...l.asp?Id=10216

[tequila]

Battle, airstrikes kill 250 in Pakistan - Washington Post, 9 Oct.

Fierce fighting between Islamic militants and security forces near the Afghan border has killed as many as 250 people over four days. The battles marked some of the deadliest clashes on Pakistani soil since it threw its support behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism in 2001, the army said Tuesday.

Airstrikes hit a village bazaar in North Waziristan tribal region on Tuesday afternoon, killing more than 50 militants and civilians and wounding scores more, said resident Noor Hassan. "The bombing destroyed many shops and homes," Hassan said by telephone from the village of Epi. "We are leaving."

...

The fighting began Saturday after a roadside bomb hit a truckload of paramilitary troops, sparking bitter clashes. The bodies of dozens of soldiers, many with their throats slit, have been recovered from deserted areas of the region, fleeing residents said.

The violence comes as Gen. Pervez Musharraf tries to secure another term as president, vowing to shore up Pakistan's troubled effort against Islamic extremism.

The army appeared to be resorting to heavy firepower. Pakistani troops have suffered mounting losses as they try to reassert state authority in a swath of mountainous territory where warlords supportive of the Taliban and al-Qaida have seized control.

Before Tuesday's airstrikes, the army had reported that battles have killed 150 fighters and 45 soldiers since Saturday. About 12-15 troops are missing. Another 50 militants and 20 soldiers had been wounded.
Security forces have rejected a cease-fire proposed by the militants and will "continue punitive action till complete peace is restored" in the area, an army statement said ...

[davidbfpo]

The Pakistani "stop & go" policy at work and timed to coincide with the re-election of President Musharraf I'd say. Will the action continue? Watch and wait.

davidbfpo

[SWJED]

Moderator's Note: An old thread 'Waziristan: campaigning in the past and soon?' has been merged into this thread.


Strategic Design Considerations for Operations in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Dust-up along the North-West Frontier by William McCallister at SWJ Blog.

Ideas as to what constitutes good governance various among individuals, groups and cultures. The current definition of good governance as outlined in a recent report on threats from safe havens and ungoverned areas is a case in point. The report defines governance as the “delivery of security, judicial, legal, regulatory, intelligence, economic, administration, social and political goods and public services, and the institutions through which they are delivered”. The definition implies a social service centric function for government emphasizing “delivery” and distribution of social services. It further implies that only democratic institutions are a safeguard against militancy, extremism and terrorism. Not all cultures view the role and function of government in quite the same way. Tribal society, particularly along the North-West frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan judges the role and function of effective government quite differently...

[Ray]

An excellent read.

The SWJ "Strategic Design Considerations for Operations in Pakistan’s Tribal Areasust-up along the North-West Frontier" by William S. McCallister is one of the finest articles that has covered the psyche that governs the lawless badlands of western part of Pakistan.

Indeed, Pakistan is a curious mix of tribalism, feudalism, modernity, military supremacy and an attempt at democracy. It is an interesting pot pourri that does not mix and exude a pleasant aroma.

Pakistan is a country that has a serious identity crisis. It rejects its Indian past and is struggles to conjure an exclusiveness of being a historical separate indentity called the Indus Valley civilisation. This in fact encourages a further schism wherein the Mohajirs (immigrants from India due to the Partition) are forgotten and slighted! Interestingly, this search for a new identity ignores the fact that a large part of the Moslem population of pre Independent India were low caste convertees (to be free of the horrid caste system) or those who were converted to avoid the subjugation through the jezia (unbearable tax on non Moslem) or because of the Sword!

Thus, Pakistan is actually at war with itself and seized with a national schizophrenia, in a manner of speaking!

Jinnah, the Founder of Pakistan, was initially with the Congress Party and was not really concerned about the Moslem cause. But like all politicians when he realised that he could not wrest power from Gandhi and others, he took up the cause of Moslem's and for a separate homeland for the Moslems. It was merely a power quest that worked itself into a powerful political movement that brought about the birth of Pakistan. It was but a fait accompli without a solid foundation in reality of existence.

It is important to note what Jinnah had said in the inaugural address of the Pakistan Parliament. He had said:

We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community, because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish......

Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.

This indicates that Jinnah's main aim was for power and not for Islam!

The birth of Pakistan though rejoiced by the Moslems of India, actually put into place a power struggle amongst the various segments. The Mohajirs being more educated than those who were from the parts that became Pakistan took all the plum posts in the bureaucracy, judiciary, education etc. The actually population of what became West Pakistan, steeped in feudalism and power as the land owning "aristocracy" and the backbone of the Indian Army felt threatened. This is the genesis of the struggle in Pakistan between the military and democracy.

The Mohajirs , who were rootless but intelligent, realised that there had to be a common cause wherein their legitimacy as inheritors of the promised land was not up for the grabs, used Islam as the catch all for all eventualities. Given that Pakistan was created for Moslems, the military and the landed satraps could not contest this excellent ploy.

Kashmir came handy for the military, who used the Mohajir inspired identity of Islam to the hilt. The military sprang into action as the true defender of Islam and went to war. This ensured that the exchequer became military oriented and beholden to it for defending Islam, as the sword arm, and extracted their pound of flesh.

Islam being partial to an aggressive mindset accepted the military's domination over democratic norms and thus this psyche gave legitimacy to successive military govt and its stranglehold over the economy wherein the army put its finger in every economic pie. It also turned the Nelson's eye to the military's infiltration and thus stranglehold over the bureaucracy by appointing serving and retired military officers in important bureaucratic and economic appointments.

This unholy churn and mismatch of governance is the cause of Pakistan's woe wherein the democratic institutions and norms have been sabotage and totally put out of shape.

While Islam ruled supreme in Pakistan, it had not yet been encased ''in the show window''.

It was Zia, who ensured Pakistan breathed and slept Islam! It was again a Machevillian ploy of an illegitimate dictator to legitimise his regime and the US strategic interest in Afghanistan was his Allah given gift.

Zia's "vision" of Islamic predominance of all matters temporal is what has added to the identity crisis. Fundamentalist Wahhabism and the ummah, an unrealistic dream of all Moslems, has seized the people.

Therefore, all one can say is, Quo Vadis, Pakistan?

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, 22 Sep 08: A Who’s Who of the Insurgency in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province: Part One – North and South Waziristan

Militants operating in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) include both Taliban and non-Taliban forces. However, the Taliban militants are much larger in number and have a lot more influence in the region. The Pakistani Taliban have close links with the Afghan Taliban and operate on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, also known as the Durand Line after the British diplomat who demarcated the boundary in 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand. The non-Taliban militants, on the other hand, are often pro-government and enjoy cordial ties with the Pakistan authorities and security forces......

[Jedburgh]

A pair of briefs from the Pakistan Security Research Unit, 22 Sep 08:

Future Prospects for FATA

The future of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal areas (FATA) has become the focus of intense anxiety and debate both within the country and in the wider international community. The problems, posed by the lawlessness of this strategic region for the ‘War on Terror’, hardly need stating, but there is little consensus regarding the way forward. Allegations of cross-border infiltration by a resurgent Taliban based in FATA have soured relations between Pakistan and the government of Hamid Karzai in neighbouring Afghanistan. Growing US and British casualties in Southern Afghanistan have raised concerns about Pakistan’s military effectiveness and commitment and have led to public debate about the necessity for US unilateral action within Pakistan’s tribal territory. There have also been claims that people in the intelligence services sympathised with the militants.....

Sectarian Violence in Pakistan's Kurram Agency

Since 2004, there has been intense violence in the FATA. What started in South Waziristan,slowly spread to North Waziristan in 2005 and then later to Bajaur and Mohamand Agency during 2006 and 2007. For the last two years, this violence has spread to the settled districts of the NWFP including Bannu, DI Khan, Peshawar and Swat. Led by the Taliban and its local supporters in the FATA and NWFP, this violence is posing a serious threat to the process of governance, challenging the writ of the State. Referred to by media as Talibanization, these developments have been the subject of intense academic, media and policy interest.

Unfortunately, this excessive focus on the Talibanization phenomenon, has not given adequate space to focus on the ongoing sectarian violence in Kurram Agency. Since 2007, sectarian killings have increased in the agency and have taken many lives. During the last two months (July-August 2008) alone, there have been around 300 casualties.

This briefing examines what is happening in Kurram Agency, and explores three questions: Why is there sectarian violence in this agency? Why has it escalated recently? And are there any connections between this violence and the violence that is happening in the neighbouring Agencies of the FATA?

[ODB]

From the AP:

The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.

Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.

A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.

The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...7LLJgD95COON80

[Rob Thornton]

Bad news indeed. It makes you wonder if someone in the planning loop of the Mumbai attacks might have considered the potential of increasing Pakistani/Indian tensions and the resulting redistribution of Pakistani forces.

Whether deliberate, or lucky on the part of the enemy - the sooner that tension is eased some the better for us, the Afghanistan government, the Pakistanis, and the Indians.

From another perspective, it seems to show the enemy does not have to coordinate (at least in the way we think of it) its actions to have an effect or to take advantage of new conditions as a result of that effect.

Best, Rob

[ODB]

Sorry was on my way out the door this morning when I came across that little nugget of news. I had a few immediate thoughts: The first was the same Rob mentioned; how much of the Mumbai attacks was geared towards getting this reaction out of Pakistan? Was it planned accordingly with the time of year, winter is a slow time in Afghanistan, therefore enabling them to broaden their power base in Pakistan? Or was it simply coincidence? Secondly is now with a larger land base how much can the Taliban recruit, train, equip? Are they again moving to a larger scale military force to be reckoned with inside Pakistan to eventually cross over in strength into Afghanistan? The problems that arrise when an insurgency grows to military might. Thirdly how does this affect our policy on going into Pakistan? NATOs policies in Afghanistan? Pakistans ability to squash it when things with India calm back down? Just a few of the immediate thoughts and I'm sure there are a miliion others out there. Talk about on effect based operations, maybe we should take note if this was planned!

[George L. Singleton]

There is growing anti Taliban and al Qaida sentiment evident over recent months and days on the above blog/website. These writers, some high school and college studens in UK, are helping plan a major demonstration against slaughers going on in Northern Pakistan currently, particularly inside Swat.

Thought this snippet might be of interest to you all.
George Singleton


http://www.khyberwatch.com/forums/sh...9199#post59199
Posted by: aimal khan
On: Today 03:22 PM

I am not against Islam as a religion( faith+worship+morality) and spiritual institution but I am totally against the extremist Islam in any shape like Salafis, Ahle hadith, Wahabis, Taliban, Panjpeeris, Ishate tawheed wa Sunna , and some extremist Deobandis. They are one of the most important causes of terrorism in today´s world. Politics of USA are power politics and they desrve it. Muslims used to do the same when they were in power rather worse than USA today as USA is not directly conquering the lands inspite of the necessary resources they have.Muslims started from MAKKAH and MADINA and conquered almost the whole known world to them at that time. Although that time they were not terrorists. they were fighting against their enemies according to all the established rules of war. Todays extremist muslims dont have power and try to fight against their enemies by the tool of terrorism whis is absurd, cruel, unjust and stupid.


All the best,
Global Hujra: A Pakhtun Cyber Land

[George L. Singleton]

http://www.khyberwatch.com/forums/sh...59769post59769

Note message # 690 regarding Swat.

[SWJED]

http://www.khyberwatch.com/forums/sh...59769post59769

Note message # 690 regarding Swat.

George, God love ya, please -and in concise and relevant terms - provide the "why" Council members should blindly follow the links you provide, here and on other threads. Council members deserve at least that much - right? - Dave

[George L. Singleton]

SWJED:

I have introed these websites/blogs in some detail in recent days/weeks, and have received several in the open as well as indiviudal e-mails exploring them further.

As the war on terrorism, my view, has since 9/11 been centered in the Pukhtun belt, ie, both Northern Pakistan and most all of Afghanistan, I thought this as well as the past history of Muslim press articles I have posted on SWJ from both the Peshawar FRONTIER POST and Karach DAWN helped explain this.

Of course, if you have another view and different interests, that is good, but some on here, beside me, are also interested in knowing about the core hot fighting areas which impact our future success, or failure, in relation to our alliance with Pakistan and the new government of Afghanistan, both of which are spinning like a top in relation to Pukhtun terrorist actions these articles address.

Hope this explanation helps, and again, others have shown both on line and individual e-mail interest in same.

I have tried to post these blog and related entries in areas of general as well as Afghanistan interest, and am always subject to having these posts moved to correct topical section, which does happen, which is great by me.

Yes, I, too, am a red headed Irishman myself.

Cheers.

[George L. Singleton]

Hell, the AP is reading and plagerizing my quotes the bunch of cowards, most of whom write from over here about over there to begin with. They use native stringers in country who themsleves have often moved to Australian and write from there after "telephone" chats with the old boys back in the NWFP.

Here is a clip of Peshawar circa 1968 for those interested in same. I was in and out of Peshawar from 1963-1965, so this later date, 1968 clip is from a friend's cousin who served at my U-2 Base in Badabar after I had rotated stateside.

The US lost the lease (Operation Sandbag) for our intel and U-2 base at Peshawar/Badabar as of the start of 1969, when Pakistan swung into the Communist China economic and military alliance column.

http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=...5DC&sc=1363196

http://www.pakdef.info/forum/archive...hp/t-3560.html

http://www.coldwar.org/text_files/Co...mesNov2008.pdf

http://www.6937th.50megs.com/

Enough already, right?

[George L. Singleton]

US special envoy says Swat a real threat for all of us

NEW DELHI (Reuters): An Islamist militancy in Pakistan's Swat region is a common threat to the United States, India and Pakistan, a special US envoy said on Monday, after meeting with India's foreign minister and top security officials. Seeking a greater role for India in stabilizing the region, Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said he discussed details of his visit last week to the two countries and shared his concerns about security. "For the first time in 60 years since independence your country and Pakistan, the US, all face an enemy that poses a direct threat to our leadership, our capitals and our people," Holbrooke told reporters in New Delhi.

As found now at: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News....at=ts&nid=4073

The above lead front page story in the Peshawar Monday, Feb. 16, 2009 FRONTIER POST is worth the 30 seconds or less to read it. I have not been exaggerating how bad the Swat surrender by Pakistan is...it will be used now as a safe have (not on a common border with Afghanistan) to martial, train, and send terrorists into both Afghanistan and Kashmir/India side.

Grim continuing story of pro-Taliban flag ranks who run the Pak military and I repeat are undermining the President of Pakistan in the process, which means killing democracy and paving the way yet again for another military coup before the end of 2009 in Pakistan.

[Piranha]

Reading:

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 ...

[George L. Singleton]

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.

[MikeF]

Mark Kukis, a Texan reporter for Time Magazine, is one of my favorite journalist. He's started his own blog here. Currently, he writes for Time Magazine. He has spent time in the White House, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In Iraq, he lived day in and day out with my boys. Here is his latest on Pakistan.

v/r

Mike

Beyond the valley in Pakistan

The Pakistani military appears poised to deliver a blow to Taliban fighters holed up in Swat Valley, which has seen a massive refugee exodus. The picture of how the battle is unfolding day to day is murky at best. There are few, if any, journalists in the area, and neither the Pakistani army nor the Taliban can be expected to provide honest accounts.

The eventual outcome is already clear nonetheless. In the days ahead, Pakistani troops will overrun the Taliban positions in Mingora, the valley’s main town. Taliban survivors of the assault will scatter and begin to regroup for a counterpunch. Pakistan now has an insurgency on its hands, and so it will go like this for as long as one side or the other is willing to keep up the fight.

But the battles in the counter-insurgency campaign Pakistan is now undertaking distract from the real mission the government must launch, i.e. bringing the tribal territories where the Taliban were born under government control. The military will have a role in that to be sure, but the real work to be done is in development of this desperately poor region.

For decades the central government of Pakistan has allowed tribal rule of its territories bordering Afghanistan. Islamabad has granted the tribal territories government support such as roads and basic services but without demanding that the societies who benefit from this state support adhere to systematic rule of law like the rest of the country. That’s why you see the occasional news of a public stoning in the tribal territories, where the central government usually leaves law and order to tribesman rather than police and courts. Nuclear Pakistan allows, even encourages, a huge swath of the country’s population to languish in underdevelopment and backwardness. This must end if Pakistan is to escape the fate of failed states.

There are many voices in Pakistan and even the West who may balk at the idea of judging an entire society’s way of life as “backwards” and consider it an imperial insult. To that I would say: Bull####. There are societal norms we can all agree are good. Things like low infant mortality, literacy and longevity. These development indicators all point in the wrong direction in tribal societies and have throughout time. There is an enormous body of scholarship documenting this truth. Read Nonzero by Robert Wright and Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond for a start if you need convincing that romantic notions of tribalism serve only to perpetuate human suffering.

The reasons why Pakistan has preserved its tribalism are part cultural, part economic and part strategic. Regardless, the result of brooking tribalism for decades amounts to a social and political disaster for all involved. The people in the tribal territories of Pakistan live in some of the deepest poverty found in Asia or the Islamic world. And the militancy bred there now threatens to undo much of the rest of the country’s progress, hence the fleeing of more than a million Pakistanis from Swat, a formerly bucolic tourist destination.

The Pakistani military can and must defeat Taliban forces on various battlefields in the months and years ahead. But no number of military victories can solve the root problem. To civilize the tribal territories will require a massive act of well-intentioned statecraft along with a completely altered political view from Pakistan’s leadership on what the country will be in a future time, when perhaps the residents of Swat have returned home.

[George L. Singleton]

I have removed identifying info on this 5/29/09 e-mail received by me today from a location outside of Swat. This writer has some family members still in Swat [whom they visited with earlier this year].

Tough reading if all is in fact as alleged in this note. Past experience has been that this writer is sound and truthful, but here they use some "heresay" info which is up for "interpretation."

Dear Mr Singleton,

Thank you for the articles (copies of some recent days 3 letters to editor of the FRONTIER POST back and forth between me and a fellow in Lahore who seems pro-Taliban/al Qaida.)

My family from the Swat valley that did not leave are giving horrifying accounts of the conditions there.

The Taliban fed captured soldiers through a thresher and video taped it. From what I hear the CD is easily available in Peshawar as Swat 4. Swat1-3 are of beheadings and other executions before this operation.

By some accounts the dead soldiers in this operation number in the 500's as oposed to the statement of 90 from the government.

It looks like the Pak Gov is really trying to quash the Taliban, but many of them are also getting away. Two weeks ago Fazalullah was said to have broadcast over his illegal FM radio that he did not understand why the army says they couldn't find him when it was they who had just dropped him off at his current safe house, I hope this is only propoganda and not some deal the goverment has worked out. During the curfews the Taliban were openly going to villages and dragging out and beheading any one who opposed them, that seems to have stopped for the time being.

There are other stories circulating of fleeing families gunned down both by the Taliban and the stench of rotting bodies getting unbearable in the summer heat. Food supplies ran out about 10 days ago and the army has selectively airdropped food at certain location, but with the curfew in place and no power people have run out of drinking water too. Medicine had run out 3 weeks ago. This current curfew that was imposed for 25 days still has about 10 more days to go and a big exodus is expected.

There were many pregnant women who were near their due dates and those that could not leave were left behind have probably delivered their babies in empty homes with no one to help them. 15 days ago when the curfew was lifted there were many reports of women giving birth on the road sides and of elderly people who dropped dead from exhaustion and heat.

It is a grim situation there and hopefully Pakistan has decided to get rid of the Taliban once and for all. I hope that the current hardship of the IDP's will be rewarded with a safe Swat to return to. END of e-mail of 5/29/09 to Singleton.