AfPak Notes – Week 7 – 2009

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/pakistan_concedes_mu.php
Pakistan concedes Mumbai attack executed from its soil
By Bill RoggioFebruary 12, 2009 8:34 PM

After weeks of signaling the investigation of the Mumbai terror assault would not be traced back to Pakistan, the Pakistani government admitted for the first time that the operation was plotted in and executed from inside Pakistan. The government released its findings today and three Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders have been implicated.

“Some part of the conspiracy took place in Pakistan,” Rehman Malik, the adviser to Prime Minister Gilani said. “We have lodged an FIR [first information request or criminal case] against eight perpetrators, including mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.” Pakistan has charged eight men with “abetting, directing, conspiring and facilitating a terrorist act.”

“We have gone an extra mile in conducting an investigation on the basis of information provided by India and we have proved that we are with the Indian people on the matter,” Malik said in an attempt to ease the tensions with India. Relations with India deteriorated after Pakistan’s ambassador to Britain claimed the investigation proved Pakistani territory was not used for the strike and said India’s evidence “could be fabricated.”

Malik admitted that 10 members of the assault team left from the Pakistani port city of Karachi via boat to conduct the attack on India’s financial capital of Mumbai. He also said the planning and other support activities occurred outside of the country.

Lakhvi is the military commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist outfit that has close links to al Qaeda and is supported by elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency and the military. Zarar Shah, a communication expert for Lashkar-e-Taiba and another leader named Hamad Amin Sadiq also have been charged with involvement in the Mumbai attack.

Shah provided the communications expertise that allowed the Mumbai attackers to talk to their handlers when the terror attack was in progress. Pakistan also traced the e-mail sent by the so-called Indian or Deccan Mujahideen that claimed credit for the attack back to Shah. The Mujahideen is a front group for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Students Islamic Movement of India, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami operating inside India.

Yusuf Muzammil, Lashkar’s senior operations commander, has not been charged. The Indians have said Muzammil was a key leader in the Mumbai attack.

The government has also charged Mohammad Kaif, Mohammad Ashfaq, and Javed Iqbal with involvement in the conspiracy. All six men are in custody. Javed Iqbal, who has been extradited from Spain, is said to have received money that was transferred through a Pakistani foreign exchange.

The Pakistanis have also charged Abu Hamza and Al Qaima with involvement in the attack, but these men are not in custody. Hamza was indentified as being involved in the plot by Sabauddin Ahmed, a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative currently in Indian custody.

Pakistan also has detained the owners and crews of the Al Farooq and Al Hussani boats, which were used to transport the assault team from Pakistan to Mumbai. Pakistan has additional requests from India to further the investigation. To aid the interrogation of the lone survivor of the Mumbai attackers, India wants the identities of the Mumbai terrorists, and information on the SIM cards and phones used during the assault.

Lashkar-e-Taiba denounces investigation

A spokesman for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba accused the Pakistani government of bowing to Indian and US demands and said his group was not involved in the Mumbai attacks.

“Pakistan has surrendered before India,” Abdullah Gaznavi, a spokesman for the terror group said. “LeT was not behind the Mumbai terror attack at all. LeT strongly condemns the filing of FIR [criminal charge],” Gaznawi continued. “It seems that Pakistan has lodged the FIR to get a pat from India and America.”

The Lashkar spokesman claimed the US conspired with India to pressure Pakistan into filing the charges. “We want to ask the Pakistan’s interior ministry chief Rehman Malik whom does he want to please,” Gaznavi said. “The US had lent open support to India and put pressure on Pakistan,” he said.

Pakistan has claimed to have cracked down on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the front group created after Jamaat was labeled a terrorist outfit by the United Nations Security Council in December 2008.

Last month, Malik claimed that 71 members of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba had been arrested while another 124 others were under observation. Hafiz Saeed, the founder of both Lashkar and Jamaat, is under house arrest.

But Saeed’s house arrest has been described as “a forced vacation.” Police idly stand guard at the home as visitors come and go and deliveries are made. Saeed has been seen leaving his home to preach at a mosque in his neighborhood while police do nothing to stop him.

Pakistan also claimed to have shut down the Markaz-e-Taiba, the headquarters complex run by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Muridke, by assigning an administrator and a team of police to monitor activities. But police assigned to monitor the complex stood by as Saifullah Khalid, a leader in the Lashkar-e-Taiba, preached jihad.

“Muslims under the leadership of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa will conquer all South Asia!” Khalid roared. “Nobody can stop us from fighting India!”

Lashkar-e-Taiba also held a rally in Lahore in January 2008 under the guise of a group called the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal, or the Movement for the Safeguarding of the First Center of Prayer. The Lashkar-e-Taiba flag was flown and senior members of the group addressed the rally.
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/13/top1.htm
Mastermind Lakhvi in custody • Eight named in FIR • 30 questions given to India

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg1_1
Islamabad hands over Mumbai probe report to New Delhi

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/indias_mumbai_eviden.php
India’s Mumbai evidence ‘could be fabricated,’ says Pakistani diplomat

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg1_6
February 13, 2009
Islamabad forex company involved

LAHORE: Interior Adviser Rehman Malik has claimed that a money exchange company in Islamabad was involved in transferring money to a suspect of the Mumbai attacks in Spain, said a private TV channel. The money was transferred through Paracha International Exchange’s Euro 2005 branch in Islamabad to Javed Iqbal in Barcelona. The branch was later found sealed. Representatives of other branches have denied that such a transaction took place. But one of the two owners confirmed the transaction, and blamed his partner for it. daily times monitor

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/lashkaretaiba_operat.php
Lashkar-e-Taiba operative details links to Pakistan
By Bill RoggioDecember 21, 2008 11:45 AM
 
Indian police said that a captured Lashkar-e-Taiba operative has provided additional details on the terror group’s operations inside India and Pakistan.

Sabauddin Ahmed, an Indian national who was captured earlier this year along with Fahim Ansari, have been involved with several attacks inside of India. Police believe Sabauddin and Ansari also were involved in scouting the locations for the November terror assault in Mumbai, which lasted for more than 60 hours and resulted in more than 170 people killed.

Both Sabauddin and Ansari trained at the same Lashkar-e-Taiba terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist captured during the Mumbai attack. Sabauddin admitted to meeting with Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar’s military commander, and Yusuf Muzammil, Lashkar’s senior operations commander.

Lakhvi and Muzammil are two of Indian’s most wanted terrorists. The Indian government demanded Pakistan turn over Lakhvi, Muzammil, and 18 other senior terrorists sheltering in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has refused to do so.

Police detained Sabauddin and Ansari ten months ago for their involvement in an attack on a police camp in Uttar Pradesh. Ansari was captured with maps that highlighted several of the locations in Mumbai that were targeted in the assault. Sabauddin, along with another terrorist known as Abu Hamza, were behind the 2005 attack and murder of a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2005. “He told police that Bangalore had been chosen to carry out the terror strike as several IT majors were located in the city and since it was witnessing an economic boom,” NDTV reported.

Earlier this year, Sabauddin admitted to being “radicalized by SIMI [Students' Islamic Movement of India] and trained in Pakistan by the ISI [Inter-Service Intelligence agency].” Sabauddin Later became the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Nepal, and aided in smuggling Lashkar terrorists across the border between India and Pakistan. He also established a Lashkar-e-Taiba base in Katmandu.

SIMI is a front group for the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami and Lashkar-e-Taiba’s inside India. It receives support from Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence and is an al Qaeda affiliate. SIMI provides logistical support for attacks in India.

These terror groups have been implicated in numerous mass-casualty attacks in New Delhi, Mumbai, Samjhauta, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh over the past several years. Thousands of Indians were killed or wounded in the attacks.

US warns Pakistan to act, not bury problems

The details on Sabauddin’s involvement with Lashkar-e-Taiba emerged as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has been interrogating Kasab in India. Kasab admitted to being recruited by Jamaat-ud-Dawa while he and a friend were “purchasing arms from a market in Rawalpindi.”

The US has believes there is convincing evidence linking Jamaat-ul-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba to the Mumbai attacks, and has issued a stern warning to Pakistan to act against the terror groups operating on Pakistani soil.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Pakistan that it must take decisive action against these terror groups during a speaking engagement at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You need to deal with the terrorism problem,” Rice said when asked what Pakistan must do. “And it’s not enough to say these are non-state actors. If they’re operating from Pakistani territory, then they have to be dealt with.” Rice was referring to a statement made by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari earlier this month when he said great nations cannot be held hostage by non-state actors.

According to Dawn a blunt message was delivered to Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s National Security Adviser, during a private meeting.

“The curt message that Mr., Durrani and the Pakistani team received from the Americans was: this is not 2002 and you cannot do what President Musharraf did after 9/11,” said a senior diplomatic source told Dawn. “In the past, you swept everything under the carpet while the problems were allowed to fester. No more.” Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002, but the group changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and continued to operate unfettered.

“They told the Pakistanis to understand the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of the evidence that exists to Pakistan’s links to this event,” another source told Dawn.

Pakistan has placed Lashkar-e-Taiba / Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed under house arrest, detained Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, and claimed to have captured 55 Lashkar leaders and shut down numerous offices of the terror group. But Saeed’s house arrest is anything but, while Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s main complex in Muridke is still open for business.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lashkar-slams-Pakistans-Mumbai-attack-probe-report-/articleshow/4119862.cms
Lashkar slams Pakistan’s Mumbai attack probe report

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/banned_pakistani_ter.php
Banned Pakistani terror group re-emerges under new name

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/01/pakistans_empty_pledge_to_crac.asp
Pakistan’s Empty Pledge to Crack Down on Radical Clerics
Earlier this week, the Pakistani government claimed it took control of the radical Markaz-e-Taiba, the headquarters and campus for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa in the city of Muridke. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group that was behind the November 2008 terror assault in Mumbai, India. The government appointed a chief administrator and a team of policemen to “supervise and monitor all activities” at the complex.

But in Pakistan nothing is as it first seems. Bloomberg reports this team stood by while a radical imam preached jihad against India:
A dozen Pakistani policemen stood watch last week outside a Lahore mosque known to be a stronghold of the Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla group — while the imam inside preached jihad to thousands of worshippers… As the officers heard Saifullah Khalid’s sermon blaring over loudspeakers, he demanded more attacks on India.

“Muslims under the leadership of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat ud-Dawa will conquer all South Asia!” Khalid roared. “Nobody can stop us from fighting India!”
Bloomberg also reported that only a fraction of the schools and complexes run by the terror group have been shut down. And only a few of the wanted Jamaat leaders have actually been arrested.

While the government is claiming success in clamping down on the terror group, the members continue to conduct business as usual. Hafiz Saeed, the group’s leader, has been seen in public despite being under “house arrest.” Two weeks ago, the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa held a rally under the auspices of a newly named group. But the black-and-white flag of Jamaat-ud-Dawa flew as senior leaders spoke at the podium. The Pakistani government clearly has no intentions of seriously cracking down on these groups.

Posted by Bill Roggio on January 30, 2009 10:48 AM

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/us_predator_strike_i.php
US Predator strike in South Waziristan kills 25
By Bill RoggioFebruary 14, 2009 2:02 AM
The US launched an airstrike inside of Pakistan’s tribal areas early Saturday morning, ending a 24-day lull in attacks against Taliban and al Qaeda networks inside Pakistan.

An unmanned US Predator strike aircraft fired two missiles into a compound of a Taliban commander based in the town of Malik Khel in the Ladha region of the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan. Twenty-five extremists, most of them from Uzbekistan, were killed in the strike, a senior Taliban leader told Reuters.

“Our people have informed us that at least 25 people were killed,” the Taliban official said.”It could be more. Most of them are Uzbek mujahideen.” The al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, commanded by Tahir Yuldashev, operates in South Waziristan.

Ladha is in the eastern half of South Waziristan in a region controlled by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. There were at least two other strikes in Baitullah’s territory in South Waziristan during 2007, and another strike this year.

In mid-June 2008, a strike hit a Taliban safe house in Baitullah’s hometown of Makeen. In mid-October 2008 , a Predator strike took place in the village of Saam, also in the Ladha region. And on Jan. 2, 2009, another strike took place in Madin in the Lahda region.

Today’s strike is the fifth attack this year and the first since Jan. 23, when US Predators conducted attacks in North and South Waziristan. The Jan. 23 attacks took place just two days after President Barack Obama took office.

The airstrike in South Waziristan is also the first since Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed that the CIA was operating a covert air base that is used to conduct the attacks inside of Pakistan. “As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” Feinstein said after brushing off criticism and protests over the attacks.

Senator Feinstein’s spokesman later claimed she was referring to a February 2008 report in the Washington Post. In September 2006, the Asia Times reported the US was operating a secret base in Tarbella, a region 12 miles outside of Islamabad.

Pakistan’s defense minister rejected Feinstein’s claim on Feb. 13. “We do have the facilities from where they can fly, but they are not being flown from Pakistani territory,” Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said. “They are being flown from Afghanistan… I do not know on what she based all this.”

Senior officials in Pakistan’s government and military, including the president, the prime minister, and the Army chief of staff, have repeatedly protested US airstrikes inside the tribal areas as violations of the country’s sovereignty. The disclosure of the base puts the Pakistani officials in a difficult situation with the citizens of Pakistan.

Background on US strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban’s networks in Northwestern Pakistan

US intelligence believes al Qaeda has reconstituted its external operations network in Pakistan’s lawless, Taliban-controlled tribal areas. This network is tasked with hitting targets in the West, India, and elsewhere. The US has struck at these external cells using unmanned Predator aircraft and other means in an effort to disrupt al Qaeda’s external network and decapitate the leadership.

As of last summer, al Qaeda and the Taliban operated 157 known training camps. Al Qaeda has been training terrorists holding Western passports to conduct attacks, US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal. Some of the camps are devoted to training the Taliban’s military arm, some train suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some focus on training the various Kashmiri terror groups, some train al Qaeda operatives for attacks in the West, Some train the Lashkar al Zil, al Qaeda’s Shadow Army, and one serves as a training ground for the Black Guard, the elite bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other senior al Qaeda leaders.

There were 36 recorded cross-border attacks and attempts in Pakistan during 2008, according to numbers compiled by The Long War Journal. Twenty-nine of these attacks took place after Aug. 31. There were only 10 recorded strikes in 2006 and 2007 combined.

During 2008, the US strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal areas killed five senior al Qaeda leaders. All of the leaders were involved in supporting al Qaeda’s external operations directed at the West.

Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander in Afghanistan, was killed in a strike in North Waziristan in January 2008.

Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al Qaeda’s external operations chief, was killed in a strike in Bajaur in March 2008.

Abu Khabab al Masri, al Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction chief, and several senior members of his staff were killed in a strike in South Waziristan in July 2008.

Khalid Habib, the leader of al Qaeda’s paramilitary Shadow Army, was killed in a region controlled by Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan in October 2008.

Abu Jihad al Masri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group and member of al Qaeda’s top council, was also killed in North Waziristan in October 2008.

In 2009, US strikes have killed two senior, long-time al Qaeda leaders. Osama al Kini and his senior aide, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were killed in a New Years Day strike in South Waziristan. Kini was al Qaeda operations chief in Pakistan. Both men were behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.
US attacks inside Pakistan during 2009:

• US Predator strike in South Waziristan kills 25
Feb. 14, 2009
• US strikes al Qaeda in North and South Waziristan
Jan. 23, 2009
• US hits South Waziristan in second strike
Jan. 2, 2009
• US kills four al Qaeda operatives in South Waziristan strike
Jan. 1, 2009
http://www.geo.tv/2-14-2009/35134.htm
US missile strike kills 6 in S Waziristan

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE51D0XH20090214
U.S. missile strike kills 25 militants in Pakistan

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/feb/12/nation/chi-090213-pakistan-us
Predator drones flown from base in Pakistan, U.S. lawmaker says
Sen. Feinstein’s surprise disclosure likely to complicate joint campaign against Taliban militants
By Greg Miller
February 12, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.

The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s northwest border.

“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said of the planes.

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counterterrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.

The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein’s account was accurate.

Phil LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad.

“We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein’s remarks being characterized as anything other than a reference” to a article that appeared last March in the Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not refer to newspaper accounts during the hearing.

Many in counterterrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft were operated from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan, and remotely piloted from locations in the United States. Experts said the disclosure could create political problems for the fledgling government in Islamabad.

“If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. “It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations.”

Feinstein’s disclosure came during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair on the nation’s security threats. Blair did not respond directly to Feinstein’s remark, except to say that Pakistan is “sorting out” its cooperation with the United States.

Pakistani officials have long denied that they ever granted the United States permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani territory, let alone to operate the aircraft from within the country.

The new civilian leadership has gone to significant lengths to distance itself from the Predator strikes, which are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because they are widely reported to kill civilians as well as militants.

The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first visit to the country on Thursday.

Nevertheless, most Pakistanis believe the civilian leadership has continued former President Pervez Musharraf’s policy giving the United States tacit permission to carry out the strikes.

The CIA has been working to step up its presence in Pakistan in recent years. The CIA has deployed as many as 200 people to Pakistan, one of its largest overseas operations outside of Iraq, current and former agency officials have estimated. That contingent works alongside other U.S. operatives who specialize in electronic communications and spy satellites.

The use of Predator planes armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles has emerged as perhaps the important U.S. tool in its ongoing efforts to attack Al Qaeda in its sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Last month, a New Year’s Day strike killed two senior Al Qaeda operatives who were suspected of involvement in the bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott They were among at least eight senior Al Qaeda figures reportedly killed in Predator strikes over the past seven months as part of a stepped-up missile campaign that U.S. intelligence officials have characterized as major success against Al Qaeda.

In his prepared testimony Thursday, Blair said that Al Qaeda has “lost significant parts of its command structure since 2008 in a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.”

Los Angeles Times staff writer Laura King contributed from Istanbul.

 Greg.Miller@tribune.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021802500_pf.html
Unilateral Strike Called a Model For U.S. Operations in Pakistan

By Joby Warrick and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; A01

 

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone’s operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA’s dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan’s national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government’s formal permission beforehand.

It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from yesterday’s election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident.

Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials.

U.S. military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for U.S. interests.

Top Bush administration policy officials — who are increasingly worried about al-Qaeda’s use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to the West — have quietly begun to accept the military’s point of view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the Libi strike.

“In the past, it required getting approval from the highest levels,” said one former intelligence official involved in planning for previous strikes. “You may have information that is valid for only 30 minutes. If you wait, the information is no longer valid.”

But when the autonomous U.S. military operations in Pakistan succeed, support for them grows in Washington in probably the same proportion as Pakistani resentments increase. Even as U.S. officials ramp up the pressure on Musharraf to do more, Pakistan’s embattled president has taken a harder line in public against cooperation in recent months, the sources said. “The posture that was evident two years ago is not evident,” said a senior U.S. official who frequently visits the region.

A U.S. military official familiar with operations in the tribal areas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the operations, said: “We’ll get these one-off flukes once every eight months or so, but that’s still not a strategy — it’s not a plan. Every now and then something will come together. What that serves to do [is] it tamps down discussion about whether there is a better way to do it.”

The Target Is Identified

During seven years of searching for Osama bin Laden and his followers, the U.S. government has deployed billions of dollars’ worth of surveillance hardware to South Asia, from top-secret spy satellites to sophisticated eavesdropping gear for intercepting text messages and cellphone conversations.

Yet some of the initial clues that led to the Libi strike were decidedly low-tech, according to an account supplied by four officials briefed on the operation. The CIA declined to comment about the strike and neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Hours before the attack, multiple sources said, the CIA was alerted to a convoy of vehicles that bore all the signatures of al-Qaeda officers on the move. Local residents — who two sources said were not connected to the Pakistani army or intelligence service — began monitoring the cluster of vehicles as it passed through North Waziristan, a rugged, largely lawless province that borders Afghanistan.

Eventually the local sources determined that the convoy carried up to seven al-Qaeda operatives and one individual who appeared to be of high rank. Asked how the local support had been arranged, a U.S. official familiar with the episode said, “All it takes is bags of cash.”

Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence group, said the informants could have been recruits from the Afghanistan side of the border, where the U.S. military operates freely.

“People in this region don’t recognize the border, which is very porous,” Bokhari said. “It is very likely that our people were in contact with intelligence sources who frequent both sides and could provide some kind of targeting information.”

Precisely what U.S. officials knew about the “high-value target” in the al-Qaeda convoy is unclear. Libi, a 41-year-old al-Qaeda commander who had slowly climbed to the No. 5 spot on the CIA’s most wanted list, was a hulking figure who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall. He spoke Libyan-accented Arabic and learned to be cautious after narrowly escaping a previous CIA strike. U.S. intelligence officials say he directed several deadly attacks, including a bombing at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan last year that killed 23 people.

Alerted to the suspicious convoy, the CIA used a variety of surveillance techniques to follow its progression through Mir Ali, North Waziristan’s second-largest town, and to a walled compound in a village on the town’s outskirts.

The stopping place itself was an indication that these were important men: The compound was the home of Abdus Sattar, 45, a local Taliban commander and an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by both the CIA and Pakistan of plotting the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27.

With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require government permission, officials said.

During the early hours of Jan. 29, the slow-moving, 27-foot-long plane circled the village before vectoring in to lock its camera sights on Sattar’s compound. Watching intently were CIA and Air Force operators who controlled the aircraft’s movements from an operations center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

On orders from CIA officials in McLean, the operators in Nevada released the Predator’s two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles — 100-pound, rocket-propelled munitions tipped with a high-explosive warhead. The missiles tore into the compound’s main building and an adjoining guesthouse where the al-Qaeda officers were believed to be staying.

Even when viewed from computer monitors thousands of miles away, the missiles’ impact was stunning. The buildings were destroyed, and as many as 13 inhabitants were killed, U.S. officials said. The pictures captured after the attack were “not pretty,” said one knowledgeable source.

Libi’s death was confirmed by al-Qaeda, which announced his “martyrdom” on Feb. 1 in messages posted on the Web sites of sympathetic groups. One message hailed Libi as “the father of many lions who now own the land and mountains of jihadi Afghanistan” and said al-Qaeda’s struggle “would not be defeated by the death of one person, no matter how important he may be.”

A Temporary Impact

Publicly, reaction to the strike among U.S. and Pakistani leaders has been muted, with neither side appearing eager to call attention to an awkward, albeit successful, unilateral U.S. military operation. Some Pakistani government spokesmen have even questioned whether the terrorist leader was killed.

“It’s not going to overwhelm their network or break anything up definitively,” acknowledged a military official briefed on details of the Libi strike. He added: “We’re now in a sit-and-wait mode until someone else pops up.”

Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser to the Clinton and Bush administrations, said he has been told by those involved that the counterterror effort requires constant pressure on the Pakistani government.

“The United States has gotten into a pattern where it sends a high-level delegation over to beat Musharraf up, and then you find that within a week or two a high-value target has been identified. Then he ignores us for a while until we send over another high-level delegation,” Clarke said.

Some officials also emphasized that such airstrikes have a marginal and temporary impact. And they do not yield the kind of intelligence dividends often associated with the live capture of terrorists — documents, computers, equipment and diaries that could lead to further unraveling the network.

The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaeda’s presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior U.S. official briefed on the strike said: “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we’re in worse shape than we were 18 months ago.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI23Df01.html
Sep 23, 2008 
The gloves are off in Pakistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI – Pakistani authorities have compared Saturday evening’s devastating truck suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in the capital Islamabad to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In terms of its psychological effect, the blast, which killed more than 80 people, injured hundreds and burnt out the hotel, has traumatized the nation, and, like 9/11, marks the beginning of a new battle: this time not the “war on terror”, but the war by terrorists.

Pakistan is now the declared battleground in this struggle by Islamic militants to strike first against American interests before the United States’ war machine completes its preparations to storm the sanctuaries of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The attack on one of the hotels in the chain of the US Marriott group was one of the worst in Pakistan’s history and involved the sophisticated use of over 600 kilograms of TNT explosive blended with RDX and phosphorous, detonated when a truck rammed into a security barricade in front of the hotel

Among the dead were the Czech ambassador to Pakistan, two US Marines, members of the US embassy staff, Saudi nationals and other European diplomats. More than 250 people were injured and dozens of parked cars were destroyed.

There was immediate speculation the attack was prompted by the fact of many marines living in the top floor of the hotel. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani claimed the real target was his residence, where President Asif Ali Zardari, army chiefs of staff and the entire cabinet were gathered for an Iftar (Muslim breaking of the Ramadan fast) dinner. Security was so tight, the theory goes, that the driver instead went to the nearby Marriott.

But on Monday afternoon, Rehman Malik, the Pakistani prime minister’s advisor for the interior, told a group of reporters at the Islamabad airport: “An Iftar Dinner was scheduled at Marriot on September which was hosted by National Assembly Speaker Dr Fahmida Mirza and where all dignitaries including the prime minister, president, cabinet and all services chiefs were invited. However, at the eleventh hour the dinner was shifted to rime minster’s house which saved Pakistan’s entired military and political leadership.”

“Perhaps, the earlier information of the dinner was leaked to the militants and therefore they hit Marriot hotel,”Rehman added.

However, Asia Times Online’s investigations, including talks with highly placed security experts, indicate that the Marriott attack signals the opening of a major battle which is about to start in Pakistan in a new phase of the “war on terror”.

Preparations for a new battle
Saturday’s blast occurred on the day of Zardari’s first presidential address to a joint session of parliament, after which he was due to depart for New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

He was also scheduled to meet leading US officials to discuss contentious issues in the “war on terror”, especially the US’s aggressive military incursions into Pakistan’s tribal areas in recent weeks to attack al-Qaeda figures and militants.

Already, though, events had been set in motion to shape this new battlefield.

Approximately 20 kilometers from Islamabad lies Tarbella, the brigade headquarters of Pakistan’s Special Operation Task Force (SOTF). Recently, 300 American officials landed at this facility, with the official designation as a “training advisory group”, according to documents seen by Asia Times Online.

However, high-level contacts claim this is not as simple as a training program.

In the mid-1990s, during the government of Nawaz Sharif, a special US Central Intelligence Agency unit was based at the same facility, tasked with catching Osama bin Laden. They left after Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999.

Now, the US has bought a huge plot of land at Tarbella, several square kilometers, according to sources directly handling the project. Recently, 20 large containers arrived at the facility. They were handled by the Americans, who did not allow any Pakistani officials to inspect them.

Given the size of the containers, it is believed they contain special arms and ammunition and even tanks and armored vehicles – and certainly have nothing to do with any training program.

There is little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the American activities at Tarbella that preparations are being made for an all-out offensive in North-West Frontier Province against sanctuaries belonging to the Taliban and al-Qaeda led by bin Laden. Pakistani security sources maintain more American troops will arrive in the coming days.

Pakistan recently offered ceasefire agreements to militants in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. These were not only summarily rejected, but followed with attacks in the two Waziristans on security forces, and then the Marriott operation.

For both the militants and the United States, the gloves have come off. Clearly, Washington is concerned at the lack of progress in clipping the wings of the militancy in Pakistan (read al-Qaeda fugitives) and that the Taliban have bases in Pakistan to fuel their insurgency in Afghanistan.

In the crucial few weeks before the US presidential elections there is nothing the George W Bush administration would like more than a real smoking gun to justify the long years of its “war on terror”. The soldiers now based Tarbella are on the trail. But so are the militants.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online’s Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.)
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/al_qaedas_operations.php
Al Qaeda’s operations chief in Pakistan killed in New Year’s strike

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/pakistan_to_end_mili.php
Pakistan to end military operation and implement sharia in Malakand Division
By Bill RoggioFebruary 15, 2009 11:22 AM
The Pakistani government has negotiated an agreement with the Taliban in the war-torn district of Swat to end the fighting in exchange for the implementation of sharia, or Islamic law in a large region of the Northwest Frontier Province.

Negotiations on the five-point agreement have been conducted between the government of the insurgency-infested Northwest Frontier Province and Sufi Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law, and Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Swat Taliban and Sufi’s son-in-law.

The provincial government agreed to allow for the implementation of sharia law the entire Malakand Division, a large region in the Northwest Frontier Province made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral, Geo News reported. The government agreed to end the military operation in Swat and participate in the “rebuilding process,” ARY Television reported. Girls schools, which have been savaged by the Taliban and forced to close, will be reopened.

Sufi Mohammed’s Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law will be at the forefront of establishing a new political administration in Swat, according to the according to the ARY Television report. He “will pave public opinion for a new local administration, to be established in Swat, by holding public gatherings throughout the district.”

Other parties have been advocating for the implementation of sharia. Imran Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, or the Pakistan Movement for Justice, called for the government to allow for sharia law not just in the tribal areas and the northwest, but throughout the country. Khan and his party are considered moderate by some observers of Pakistan.

“The government must devise new policy to safeguard the interest of Pakistan rather than the US in the region,” Khan said, while criticizing the government for allowing Predator strikes to be launched against al Qaeda and the Taliban from its territory. “On one hand the government is carrying out drone attacks on its own people while shedding crocodile tears on the other,” Khan said, referring to the recent disclosure by a US senator that the US is operating Predators strike aircraft from Pakistani soil.

Three large protests were held in Swat and Peshawar, the provincial capital, advocating for sharia. University student protested in Peshawar, while a local non-governmental organization called the “International Human Rights Commission” demanded the immediate implementation of sharia in Swat.

The current agreement to implement sharia in the Malakand Division and end the fighting in Swat mirrors a similar deal that was agreed upon by the same parties just 10 months ago. On April 22, 2008, Sufi was freed from prison in exchange for the implementation of sharia and an end to the fighting in Swat.
 
The deal collapsed over the summer. Sufi’s followers and the Swat Taliban claimed the government failed to allow for the implementation of sharia, while the Swat Taliban continued to attack police and military forces in Swat and throughout the region. Another peace agreement signed between Fazlullah and the government in May 2007 also failed.

Pakistani forces have been fighting Islamist aligned with Fazlullah since November 2007. Fazlullah runs the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law in Swat and merged with Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, in December 2007.

The Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law (Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammad or TNSM) is known as the “Pakistani Taliban.” This group is behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight US forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. Sufi’s forces were decimated in US airstrikes and he was arrested after returning to Pakistan. His group was later banned.

Fazlullah has successfully organized a campaign opposing polio vaccinations and has forced the closure girls’ schools throughout the region. More than 200 schools have been destroy in Swat since fighting began in 2007. He advocates sharia and violence against the government on broadcasts on his illegal FM radio.

The fighting has destroyed Swat’s once thriving tourist industry. Fazlullah’s forces have burned down the popular ski lodge and bombed the lifts.

The TNSM also holds sway in other war zones in Pakistan’s northwest. Faqir Mohammed is the leader of the TNSM in the Bajaur tribal agency. The military has failed to defeat Faqir’s forces despite waging a brutal military operation that began in July 2008. Bajaur is a stronghold for the TNSM and serves as a major hub for al Qaeda and Taliban operations in eastern Afghanistan. The joint al Qaeda and Taliban Shadow Army has conducted operations alongside Faqir and Fazlullah’s forces in Bajaur and Swat.

The peace agreement will ease the pressure on the Taliban in Bajaur, provide a safe haven neighboring areas, and allow the Taliban and allied extremist to concentrate forces in the tribal agency.
For additional information on the situation in Swat, see:

• Taliban capture, release 30 security personnel in Swat
Feb. 4, 2009
• Pakistani forces regain control of region in Swat
Feb. 1, 2009
• Swat Taliban summon government officials to sharia courts’
Jan. 25, 2009
• Taliban rule Pakistan’s ‘valley of death’
Jan. 23, 2009
• Pakistan ‘lost control’ in Swat
Dec. 6, 2008
• Taliban rampage in Pakistan’s Swat district
June 27, 2008
• Pakistani government inks peace deal with Swat Taliban
May 21, 2008
• Swat joins ‘Talibanistan’
July 7, 2007
http://www.geo.tv/2-15-2009/35200.htm
Malakand Nifaz-e-Shariat five-point accord finalized
Updated at: 1549 PST,  Sunday, February 15, 2009
TIMARGRAH: A five-point agreement for the enforcement of Shariat in Malakand Division has been finalized in the successful talks held between the NWFP government and Maulana Sufi Muhammad.

The final talks between Tahrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi’s chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad and the NWFP government on the enforcement of Shariat in Malakand Division successfully concluded here after arriving at a five-point agreement.

NWFP government delegation constituting of NWFP Information Minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, ANP Central Secretary Information, Zahid Khan and provincial Minister, Haji Hidayetullah Khan on the one hand, while Sufi Muhammad and his shoora committee members on the other, held talks closed-door talks at Timargrah, the headquarter of District Dir at the Rest House here.

Following the talks, while addressing his associates and talking exclusively to Geo News, Maulana Sufi Muhammad said that the government delegation held talks on the draft agreement of Nifaz-e-Shariat and for maintenance of peace. He said that a five-member delegation of Nifaz-e-Shariat would be meeting NWFP chief minister tomorrow in Peshawar, when an announcement would be made relating to the success of the talks. He said that after the enforcement of Shariat, he would be visiting Swat for holding peace talks.
 

http://www.thearynews.com/english/newsdetail.asp?nid=22002
NWFP govt, TNSM agree on Swat peace accord
Updated: Saturday  February  14 , 2009  8:43:08 PM

PESHAWAR: The government of NWFP and banned Tehreek-e-Nifaz e Shariat e Mohammadi on Saturday agreed on an agreement for restoring peace in violence-torn Swat district, reported ARY OneWorld.

According to the details of the agreement signed here Saturday by the representatives of two sides, Swat Taliban’s chief Maulvi Fazlullah will declare a cease-fire as the Sharia law will be implemented in the valley, while the military, presently engaged in carrying out operation against militants, is stated to take part in “rebuilding process”.

TNSM chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of Fazlullah, will pave public opinion for a new local administration, to be established in Swat, by holding public gatherings throughout the district.

All the girls schools in Swat will also be opened, the agreement said that was signed in Timergara after the two parties agreed on the points following a long and hectic negotiation process held in the provincial capital.

Afrasyab Khatak and Mian Iftikhar Hussain represented provincial government in the talks with Maulana Muhammad Alam, Amir Izzat and Badshah Sardar representing Maulana Sufi Muhammad.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=162637
Imran Khan to hold talks with Swat militants
Sunday, February 15, 2009
By Mushtaq Paracha
 
NOWSHERA: Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan Saturday said he would himself visit Swat to hold talks with Taliban to bring a lasting peace to the region. He said that he has directed his party leaders to initiate parleys with the Taliban in Swat to settle the issue forever. In his speech to lawyers of Swat in Sheikh Maltoon Town, Mardan, internally displaced persons of Bajaur Agency in Jalozai camp and a press conference at the residence of PF-14, Nowshera PTI president Kifayatullah, Imran urged the government to immediately implement Shariah in Swat and halt military operation there, tribal areas and elsewhere in the country. PTI district president Riasat Sarhadi, provincial chief Asad Qaiser, Aftab Ahmed Advocate, president PTI Swat and others were also present on the occasion. “The government must devise new policy to safeguard the interest of Pakistan rather than the US in the region,” the PTI chief said, adding that demand of Swat people should be fulfilled by enforcing Shariah. He criticised the federal government for its lukewarm attitude to take prompt steps for resolution of crises being faced by the displaced people of Swat and tribal areas. He advised the government to hold talks with Taliban to bring a lasting peace to the region. “On one hand the government is carrying out drone attacks on its own people while shedding crocodile tears on the other,” Imran alleged, making a reference to the disclosure of a US Senator Dianne Feinstin. It may be mentioned that the US lawmaker has claimed that CIA’s unmanned predator aircraft striking militants targets in tribal areas are flown from an airbase inside Pakistan. Later, Imran addressed a big gathering of IDPs from Bajaur Agency in Jalozai camp and assured them of their full support. He said that a campaign for collection of contribution for the IDPs would be launched to help the affected people. 
 
 
http://www.thememriblog.org/urdupashtu/blog_personal/en/13707.htm
Swat District: Thousands March In favor Of Islamic Shari’a

Thousands of people have staged a protest rally in favor of the Taliban’s enforcement of Islamic Shari’a in the Swat district of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), according to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Express.

The protesters, hailing from different parts of the district, gathered in Bari Kot village on Wednesday.

According to the report, the protesters threatened to march on Islamabad if Islamic shari’a was not implemented in the Swat district within three days.

Chanting slogans against the military operations and the deaths of civilians, the protesters demanded that the government lift the curfew on the district.

It is believed that more than 15,000 people took part in the protest.

This is the second such pro-Taliban protest in two days. On Tuesday, protests were held in Peshawar and Swat district opposing the Pakistani security forces’ operation against the Taliban.

In the image below, people protest against the Pakistani security forces in Bari Kot village on Wednesday.

Source: Roznama Express, Pakistan, February 12, 2009

Posted at: 2009-02-12
http://www.thememriblog.org/urdupashtu/blog_personal/en/13671.htm
Swat District: Pro-Taliban Protest Demonstration

A protest demonstration has been held against the Pakistani military operation and in favor of the Taliban’s enforcement of Islamic Shari’a in the Swat district of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, according to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Mashriq.

The pro-Taliban protest was organized by a local non-governmental organization called the International Human Rights Commission. Many local people and the Taliban participated in the protest.

Addressing the protesters, Raja Liaqat Ali, the Chairman of the International Human Rights Commission, asked the Pakistani government to withdraw security forces and enforce Islamic Shari’a in the Swat district immediately.

Ali added that Swat’s civilian population is being targeted in the military operation. He reminded that the Pakistani government had pledged to enforce Islamic Shari’a in a deal with Islamist leader Maulana Sufi Muhammad, whose son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah heads the Taliban in Swat.

The protest was also addressed by Khwaja Muhammad Khan Hoti, who resigned as Pakistan’s federal minister recently.

Protest in Peshawar: Stop the military operation

Meanwhile, hundreds of students of universities and colleges took out protest rallies and demonstrations in Peshawar to press the government to immediately halt the military operation in tribal areas and Swat valley, according to a report in The Post newspaper.

The students from the University of Peshawar, Agricultural University, the Engineering University, and other city colleges took part in the protest rallies.

The protesters were carrying placards and banners inscribed with slogans against the U.S. and the Pakistani government.

Sources: Roznama Mashriq, Pakistan, February 11, 2009; The Post, Pakistan, February 11, 2009

Posted at: 2009-02-11
http://www.thememriblog.org/urdupashtu/blog_personal/en/13735.htm
Pro-Taliban Protests Continue For 3rd Day In Swat District

According to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Jang, the local people in the Swat district have protested for the third consecutive day in favor of the Taliban’s enforcement of Islamic Shari’a and against the army operation in the district.

The residents of Mengora, the headquarters of Swat district, organized the protests on Thursday, demanding the implementation of Islamic Shari’a in the district.

In Swat district, the Taliban have recently set up Islamic Shari’a courts, banned female education and ordered barbers not to shave beards in their drive to enforce Islamic Shari’a across the region.

Following domestic and international pressure, the Pakistan government has launched army operation against the Taliban in the Swat district.

Source: Roznama Jang, Pakistan, February 13, 2009

Posted at: 2009-02-13
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/04/pakistan_pushes_peac.php
Pakistan pushes peace with the Taliban
By Bill RoggioApril 22, 2008 10:37 PM

One day after the Pakistani government signed a peace accord with a violent Pakistani outfit operating in the Malakand Division in the Northwest Frontier Province, the government said future deals are currently in the works.

Yesterday’s peace accord with the outlawed Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariah Mohammadi (the TNSM, or the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law) resulted in freeing Sufi Mohammed, a radical Taliban leader behind attacks on NATO and Afghan forces and civilians in Afghanistan. The peace agreement is being hailed as a model for future agreements with other Taliban factions in the Northwest Frontier Province.

The release of Sufi and the peace agreement with the TNSM “was a step towards bringing peace to Malakand division” and “delivered the government’s message of peace to other militant organizations,” the Daily Times reported, based on statements from Arshad Abdullah, the provincial Minister of Law for the Northwest Frontier Province. “Agreements aimed at bringing peace to the country in general and NWFP in particular were in the pipeline, and the government was negotiating with other militant factions, including [Maulana] Fazlullah’s.”

Fazlullah, the leader of the TNSM in Swat and Sufi’s son-in law, has led an armed uprising against the Pakistani government and military in the settled district. His faction of the TNSM apparently was not represented in Monday’s peace accord.

Pakistan’s central government has again indicated it is willing to negotiate with the Taliban, but said it would not be “blackmailed” by them. “We won’t listen to their demands that are totally unrealistic,” said Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani. “If they want us to hand over [jailed] terrorists as a [precondition] for talks, that will not happen.” But the TNSM demanded the release of Sufi Mohammed as a precondition for talks with the government.

Gilani also said the Taliban must disarm before any talks would be held. He also indicated he would be willing to negotiate with Baitullah Mehsud, who was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and a suicide bombing campaign across Pakistan. “They should [put down] their arms first. Not only [Baitullah] Mehsud but also other [armed] tribes who are not militants,” he said in an interview with Newsweek.

The deal with the TNSM

The Pakistani government, led by the representatives of the ruling provincial government of the Awami National Party, held a jirga, or meeting, to hash out a six-point peace agreement with the TNSM representatives in the northern areas of the Northwest Frontier Province. The TNSM chiefs in attendance include Malakand chief Maulana Mohammad Alam, Swat district chief Maulana Abdul Haq, Maulana Badshah Zaib from Upper Dir, Maulana Salar Khan and Saiful Malook from Buner, Dr Ismail from Bajaur, and Multan Mir from Malakand, Daily Times reported.

The deal requires the TNSM to hold the local and national government “in high esteem,” work for the peaceful implementation and enforcement of sharia law, condemn attacks on the government, and cooperate with the government to establish the law and “restore peace.” The agreement also states that all Muslims have “the right to launch a peaceful struggle for the implementation of Shariat-e-Muhammadi.” The government has the right to take action “if they do not refrain from militancy.”

The Pakistani government also dropped charges against Sufi and 30 other members of the TNSM. Sufi was captured in 2002 as he attempted to lead a group of his fighters into Afghanistan to attack US forces. The TNSM was banned in 2002 under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

There is no obligation for TNSM members to root out al Qaeda in their areas. The TNSM merely “distanced itself from ‘elements’ involved in attacks on government officials, installations and law-enforcement agencies and condemned ‘miscreants’ indulging in such activities,” Dawn reported. “Miscreant” is a term the Pakistani government uses to describe al Qaeda.

The Pakistani government, under the leadership of President Pervez Musharraf and the direction of former Northwest Frontier Province governor Jan Orakzai, has signed similar agreements with the Taliban in the tribal agencies of Bajaur, Mohmand, and North and South Waziristan and the settled district of Swat. The Taliban used these peace agreements to expand its control throughout the region and launch attacks along with the Taliban against Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and the West.

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/07/swat_joins_talibanis.php
Swat joins Talibanistan
By Bill RoggioJuly 7, 2007 2:42 PM
Maulana Fazlullah’s TNSM violates the terms of its May “peace agreement”

As the Red Mosque standoff in the heart of Islamabad enters its fifth day, the mosque’s supporters in the Northwest Frontier Province have attacked the government. In Swat, a settled district in the Northwest Frontier Province, Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, a 28-year-old radical cleric, has called for his followers to strike at government agencies for taking action against the Lal Masjid. “In broadcasts on his FM channel on Tuesday and Wednesday, [Fazlullah] asked his supporters to take up arms against the government to avenge the action taken against Lal Masjid and carry out suicide attacks,” Dawn reported on July 4.

Fazlullah’s followers have carried out his call for violence. In the five days since the Red Mosque standoff began, four major attacks were carried out against police forces in the district. Six have been killed and thirteen wounded in shootings, roadside bombings and ambushes throughout the region.

North of Swat in the district of Dir, four soldiers were killed, including two officers, and another was critically wounded in an IED attack. The army convoy was reported to be heading into Swat in preparation for a possible “showdown between supporters of Maulana Fazlullah and law-enforcement agencies.”

Fazlullah is in direct violation of a “peace agreement” he signed with the provincial government. The terms of the nine-point peace deal required Fazlullah to “support the polio vaccination campaign and education for girls, as well as government efforts to establish law and order,” the Daily Times reported on May 23. “He also agreed to wrap up all training facilities for militants and making of weapons, and support the district administration in any operation against anti-state elements.” Fazlullah’s followers were also to stop carrying weapons in the open. In return, Fazlullah was permitted to continue broadcasting his illegal FM radio programs and the government would “look for legal ways to withdraw cases against the cleric.”

Maulana Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the jailed leader of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM – the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law). He is said to have “close links with the administration of the Lal Masjid,” according to Sharif Virk, the chief of police for the Northwest Frontier Province. Fazlullah has successfully organized anti-polio and anti-girls schools campaigns throughout the region. The Swat region is believed to be a haven and training ground for the Pakistani Taliban. “Militants from Waziristan are present in Swat in great numbers,” and being sheltered by the TNSM, The News reported just one day prior to the signing of the “peace treaty.”

The TNSM is known as the “Pakistani Taliban” and is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent over 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. Faqir Mohammed, a senior leader of the TNSM in neighboring Bajaur agency who is wanted by the Pakistani government, kicked off a suicide campaign after the air strike on the Chingai madrassa in October 2006. Forty-five Pakistani soldiers were killed after a suicide bomber sent by Faqir struck at Pakistani Army recruits training outside of the Dargai base in the NWFP. The Pakistani government signed Bajaur over to the TNSM in March 2006.

The Swat administration is wringing its hands over Fazlullah’s call for violence in the wake of the Lal Masjid standoff. “A peace jirga held on Friday condemned the recent attack on District Police Officer Mazharul Haq,” Dawn reported. “The jirga presided over by Maulana Fazal Haq expressed concern over tension in the valley. It decided to hold a meeting with Maulana Fazlullah to defuse the tension.”

But the peace jirga refused to hold Fazlullah accountable for his call for jihad on his radio stations and the subsequent violence. “Members of the jirga said it was not clear which party had breached the peace agreement between the government and the cleric,” Dawn reported. “They said FM stations should not be used for promoting personal interests, but there should be no ban on using them to propagate Islam.”

An anonymous American intelligence source has informed The Long War Journal that the Pakistani government is quietly negotiating a series of “peace deals” with the Taliban throughout the Northwest Frontier Province, much like the deal cut with Fazlullah. The Pakistani government is stinging from the international condemnation over the Waziristan and Bajaur Accords, which surrendered the tribal agencies to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

But the deal in Swat has done nothing to curb the rise of the TNSM, or prevent al Qaeda from training in the region. Fazlullah is still strong, as the recent attacks on the police demonstrates. Like in Tank and Bannu, the police in Swat have been intimidated by Fazlullah’s TNSM.

Swat is clearly Taliban country

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/05/pakistani_government.php
Pakistani government inks peace deal with Swat Taliban
By Bill RoggioMay 21, 2008 6:05 PM

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/06/taliban_rampage_in_p.php
Taliban rampage in Pakistan’s Swat district
By Bill RoggioJune 27, 2008 9:00 AM

The Taliban has launched a series of attacks against political opponents and the infrastructure in the scenic northern district of Swat in Pakistan. The attacks occurred as the government and the Taliban are committing to abiding by the terms of last month’s peace agreement.

The fighting began on Thursday after the Taliban attacked the home of the brother of the vice president of Swat’s Pakistan People Party. The brother, his wife, and son were murdered by the Taliban, and their home was set on fire. The Taliban also killed another brother of the Swat PPP official, and torched the home of a third brother. Seven people in total were killed in the attack.

The Taliban attacked police outposts and checkpoints maintained by the paramilitary Frontier Corps. One member of the Frontier Corps was killed.

The Taliban burned down the nation’s only ski resort in Malam Jabba and damaged a chairlift during the fighting. Eleven girls’ schools were also burned down in Swat. “District police chief Waqif Khan said the administration had lost its writ over Malam Jabba and it had not been able to assess the damage,” Dawn reported.

Swat was once Pakistan’s most popular tourist destination. The mountainous district is known for skiing, hiking, fishing, a golf course, and ancient statues of Buddha. The rise of the Taliban, led by radical cleric Mullah Fazlullah, has brought tourism in the region to a halt.

As the Taliban attack in Swat, the government of the Northwest Frontier Province and the Taliban has vowed to maintain the peace agreement signed last month. The government is modifying the terms of the agreement to appease the Taliban.

“There were some irritants in the peace deal that have been removed,” said Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour. The Taliban are unhappy that some prisoners still remain in custody and believe the government is delaying the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law. The Taliban also wants the military to withdraw and demands compensation from the government.

But the Taliban threatened to continue the attacks that occurred over the past several days. “As long as the government delays implementation of the peace agreement, such incidents will occur,” said Muslim Khan, a Taliban delegate negotiating with the government.

Background on Fazlullah and the Swat Taliban

The Pakistani government signed a peace agreement with Fazlullah in May 2007 with terms similar to the current agreement. The nine-point peace deal signed in 2007 required Fazlullah to support the polio vaccination campaign and education for girls, as well as government efforts to establish law and order. He also agreed to shut down training facilities for terrorists, stop manufacturing weapons, and support the district administration in any operation against anti-state elements. Fazlullah’s followers were also to stop carrying weapons in the open. In return, Fazlullah was permitted to continue broadcasting his illegal FM radio programs and the government dropped criminal cases lodged against him.

The Taliban promptly disobeyed the terms of the deal, and began to overrun police stations and enforce sharia law in the district. The Taliban used the government’s siege and assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, as their reason to violate the peace agreement. But Fazlullah and his fighters began violating the agreement long before the Red Mosque incident.

Fazlullah’s forces overran much of Swat and neighboring Shangla. The government launched an operation to dislodge the Taliban from Swat in November and vowed to oust them by December. But the military has fought a grinding campaign that has failed to defeat the Taliban. The Pakistani security forces operating in the small district lost 195 soldiers, policemen, and Frontier Constabulary paramilitaries during a year of fighting.

Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the leader of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM – the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law). He had close links with the administration of the Lal Masjid. Fazlullah has successfully organized anti-polio and anti-girls schools campaigns throughout the region. The Swat region has been a safe haven and training ground for the Pakistani Taliban.
 
The TNSM is known as the “Pakistani Taliban” and is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight US forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. Faqir Mohammed, a senior leader of the TNSM in neighboring Bajaur agency who is wanted by the Pakistani government, kicked off a suicide campaign after a US air strike on the Chingai madrassa in October 2006. Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command, was thought to be at the madrassa in Chingai.

Despite the TNSM’s involvement with al Qaeda and attacks in Afghanistan, the Pakistani government re-initiated the peace process and signed an agreement with the group on April 21, 2008. The government freed Sufi Mohammed as part of the deal.

The government is also close to signing a peace deal with Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban behind a brutal suicide and conventional military campaign in the tribal areas and in greater Pakistan.

The terms of Swat and TNSM peace deals and the proposed South Waziristan agreement are similar. None of the agreements calls for the Taliban to halt cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan or eject al Qaeda from the region.

This year, the government signed peace deals in North Waziristan, Swat, Bajaur, Malakand, and Mohmand. Negotiations are under way in Kohat and Mardan.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/maps/swat-pakistan-map.php
Swat Map

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/pakistan_lost_contro.php
Pakistan ‘lost control’ in Swat
By Bill RoggioDecember 6, 2008 9:38 PM
The Pakistani government has “lost control” of the settled district of Swat to the Taliban, a senior politician said.

The military is losing the battle that began more than a year ago in the former vacation paradise once known as the Switzerland of Pakistan, according to Haji Adeel, the Senior Vice President of Awami National Party, the ruling party in the Northwest Frontier Province.

The military’s inability to quell the Taliban insurgency in Swat has eroded the confidence in the security forces and the government, Adeel said.

“What will be the credibility of the military operation in Swat when houses of ministers are destroyed and their family members are queued up for shooting,” he said. “What I see is that the situation has gone out of control of both the federal and provincial governments and the people have lost confidence in the government and the army.”

Adeel noted that Swat was outside of the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The Pakistani military launched an operation to retake the settled district of Swat after Mullah Fazlullah forces overran police stations and paramilitary outposts. The neighboring district of Shangla was overrun by the Taliban in November. More than 200 policemen and soldiers were killed during fighting in Swat in 2007.

The military said the operation to retake Swat would be over by Dec. 15, 2007 and the ski resort would be open for business. The Taliban was driven from Shangla in November and fighting tapered off in Swat in February after the military made some gains. But the government never took full control over the district. The government signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in May.

The military admitted that Swat, Shangla, and other unnamed districts outside the tribal areas are under Taliban control during a briefing to the parliament in October.

Pakistani forces have been fighting forces aligned with Mullah Fazlullah, a radical cleric of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM – the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law).

The TNSM is known as the “Pakistani Taliban” and is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight US forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001.

Fazlullah merged with Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban, or the movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, in December 2007.

Fazlullah has successfully organized anti-polio and anti-girls’ schools campaigns throughout the region. The Swat region has been a safe haven and training ground for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The fighting has destroyed Swat’s tourist industry. Fazlullah’s forces have burned down the ski lodge and bombed the lifts.

 
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/us_airstrike_in_paki.php
US airstrike in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal agency kills 30
By Bill RoggioFebruary 16, 2009 8:47 AM
The US appears to be expanding its campaign of cross-border strikes into Pakistan after several unmanned US Predator aircraft conducted multiple attacks in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of Kurram.

More than 30 people have been reported killed after four Predator aircraft launched at least four Hellfire missiles at a training camp in the Sarpal region that is run by Bahram Khan Kochi, a commander of Taliban forces operating inside Afghanistan, Geo News reported. The toll is expected to rise, as more bodies are thought to be under the rubble.

No senior al Qaeda or Taliban commanders have been reported killed at this time.

The Taliban have expanded their control into Kurram by backing the wave of sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shia in the region. The Shia have been forced into small enclaves in Parachinar and other areas as the Pakistani military has refused to come to their aid.

The Taliban have used Kurram as a training ground for their forces and have established several bases in the agency, an intelligence official familiar with the situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas told The Long War Journal on the condition of anonymity.

The Taliban in Kurram are led by Hakeemullah Mehsud, a rising star in the Pakistani Taliban. Hakeemullah is senior lieutenant and cousin of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud; he is also a cousin of Qari Hussain Mehsud, the notorious Taliban commander who trains child suicide bombers in South Waziristan.

Hakeemullah has been leading operations against NATO’s supply lines in Khyber and Peshawar. He also commands the Taliban in the Arakzai and Khyber tribal agencies.

Today’s strike is the second by the US inside Pakistan in three days. A strike on Feb. 14 killed more than 25 Uzbek, al Qaeda, and Taliban fighters in South Waziristan.

The Kurram strike is also the first reported attack inside the Kurram tribal agency. Prior attacks have focused on al Qaeda and Taliban compounds in the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan as well as in Bajaur. One strike took place in Bannu, a region outside of the tribal areas.

The recent airstrikes in South Waziristan and Kurram are also the first since Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed that the CIA was operating a covert air base that is used to conduct the attacks inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government has denied the existence of the base. But unlike previous attacks, no senior leader in the government or the military protested the strikes.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/us_strikes_in_pakist.php
US strikes in Pakistan aimed at stopping the next Sept. 11 attack
By Bill RoggioSeptember 19, 2008 9:32 AM
http://www.geo.tv/2-16-2009/35249.htm
US missile attack kills 30 in Kurram Agency
Updated at: 1407 PST,  Monday, February 16, 2009
PARACHINAR: The death toll of US drone attack in Kurram Agency has raised to 30.

According to reports, four US drones fired four missiles at suspected hideouts of militants in Sarpal area of tehsil Sadda of lower Kurram. Intially, 15 people were killed in the attack.

Many bodies were trapped under the rubble and 30 bodies have been recovered so far. Several people sustained injuries in the attack.

Sources said there was a camp of Afghan Commander Bahram Khan Kochi in Sarpal area. US drones continued patrolling in the area after the attack.

This was the first US drone attack in Kurram Agency, however, drones made regular flights in these areas in the past.
 

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/us_troops_kill_talib.php
US troops kill Taliban’s shadow governor for Badghis province
By Bill RoggioFebruary 16, 2009 10:47 AM

US forces killed the shadow governor of Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badghis and eight other Taliban leaders and fighters during an airstrike on a village near the border with Turkmenistan, according to a report form the US military.

Mullah Dastagir, the shadow governor of Badghis province, was killed in the Sunday night airstrike in the Balamurghab district along with his brother Mullah Nabi Jan, another known Taliban commander named Mawlawi Hayatullah, and five other Taliban fighters. US and Afghan Army forces called in the airstrike after surrounding Dastagir’s compound. Dastagir commanded more than 300 full-time Taliban fighters and another 300 part-time fighters.

Dastagir’s rise to power in Badghis was facilitated by an order issued last year by President Hamid Karzai. Dastagir was released from National Security Directorate custody after the Directorate received an order from Karzai in September 2008. Karzai was responding to the appeals of local tribal leaders in Badghis, who appear to have been coerced by the Taliban.

Dastagir was nominated as the shadow governor for Badghis by a Taliban shura in October 2008. The Taliban appoint a shadow government in the provinces when it is determined the Taliban presence is sufficient. He quickly exacted revenge for his capture with the deadly November ambush on an Afghan Army resupply column north of the Balamurghab district center. The attack, which was purportedly led by Dastagir, led to a three-hour battle that resulted in 13 Afghan Army soldiers killed, 11 soldiers wounded, and 16 others missing. Scores of vehicles were torched and destroyed and others were stolen by the Taliban raiders.

The Balamurghab district serves as the Taliban’s main operations hub for northwestern Afghanistan. Taliban commanders in Badghis claim to have 74 bases scattered throughout the Balamurghab district alone. Both Badghis and the neighboring district of Ghormach are under Taliban control. US, Spanish, and Afghan forces now maintain a presence in the Balamurghab district at the newly-built Forward Operating Base Columbus.

Fighting has escalated in Badghis since last year. In August 2008, Afghan soldiers killed 25 Taliban fighters during a 10-hour battle after being ambushed in the district of Muqur, which borders Iran. In September a Taliban spokesman and Afghan officials said that 50 Afghan soldiers had defected to the Taliban, taking their weapons with them. In October, two Taliban fighters were killed in an airstrike after they attacked a World Food Programme convoy in the Jawand district. In November, a US airstrike killed 15 Taliban fighters and seven civilians after the Taliban conducted an attack in the Ghormach district. In January 2009, 13 Taliban fighters and five civilians were killed after the Taliban attacked a tribal leader’s home in the Muqur district.

Factional and ethnic fighting has left a trail of destruction and bodies across Badghis since early January of this year when Taliban fighters attacked and killed some influential Tajik commanders formerly associated with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami. Tajik residents fought back on several occasions, and even killed Taliban commander Mullah Abdullah, a well- known leader in the district of Muqur. During January, Taliban fighters led by Dastagir stormed the remote district of Jawand and continued to occupy several villages on the outskirts of the district headquarters.

The killing of Dastagir will have immediate short-term implications for the security situation in Badghis. He was considered an able and effective commander and several of his senior leaders were killed alongside him.

There are at least two separate Taliban factions operating in the province. The one faction was formerly led by Mullah Dastagir, the other faction by Mullah Jamaloddin Mansoor, who is associated with former regional Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Rahman Haqqani. Mullah Jamaloddin will likely replace Dastagir as the Taliban’s shadow governor for Badghis. Jamaloddin was appointed as the shadow deputy governor last October. Taliban commander Mullah Amoruddin will continue to run the district of Ghormach but it is unclear who will succeed Dastagir in Balamurghab.

 

http://www.centcom.mil/en/press-releases/militants-killed-in-precision-strike-in-badghis-province.html
Militants killed in precision strike in Badghis province 
U.S. Forces – Afghanistan 
 
Joint Press Release

February 16, 2009

Release Number: 20091602-02

Militants killed in precision strike in Badghis province

KABUL, Afghanistan – Coalition forces used a precision air strike near Darya-ye-Morghab, Badghis province, Feb. 15, targeting the Taliban leader of Badghis province and eight of his associates.

Coalition forces learned through intelligence sources that Mullah Dastighir and a group of associates were co-located in Darya-ye-Morghab, a village near the Turkmenistan border, approximately 550 km west of Kabul.

Once the exact location of the militants was confirmed, forces engaged the target compound with a precision air strike, destroying a building and killing the militants inside.  Surrounding structures remained intact, sustaining minimal external damage from fragmentation.

Dastighir was responsible for an increase in violence in Badghis over recent months, including attacks against Afghan National Security Forces and International Security Assistance Forces. In November, Dastighir was responsible for an attack on an Afghan National Army convoy that killed 13 soldiers.

-30-

Contact information:

- Ministry of Defense, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Press office telephone:  93 (0) 20 210 2742

- US Forces Afghanistan Public Affairs, office telephone:  93 (0) 799 51 2919
 
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/07/afghan_army_kills_25.php
Afghan Army kills 25 Taliban after ambush in the northwestern province of Badghis
By Bill RoggioJuly 3, 2008 1:38 PM
 
The Afghan National Army killed 25 Taliban fighters after being ambushed and fighting a 10-hour battle in the northwestern province of Badghis. The attack in Badghis is the latest in a series of Taliban attempts to rout Afghan forces and overrun district centers and forward operating bases.

“At least 25 Taliban were killed and many were wounded in several hours of fighting after the Taliban attacked our troops,” Mohammad Ayob Niazyar, the Badghis provincial police chief told AFP.

Afghan troops repelled the Taliban ambush in the district of Muqur, which borders Iran. Afghan police and Spanish soldiers operating in the area provided backup for the Afghan soldiers and routed the company-sized Taliban force. “Twelve bodies of militants were left on the field and many others were wounded during the fight,” according to The Associated Press. No Afghan or Spanish casualties were reported.

The Taliban have opened a new front in the northwestern provinces of Badghis and neighboring Faryab province. “We are trying to open up this route just as we did in the past,” said Mullah Dastagir, an influential Taliban commander in Badghis, during an interview with IWPR last November. “Our policy is different up here. We have openly engaged the government and foreign forces in the south, but in the north we are quietly expanding our area. The government is weaker here than in the south and the mountains have provided good terrain for our operations.”

The Taliban have maintained a presence in northwestern Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. “The Taliban have never been fully evicted from the Bala Murghab, Ghurmach, and Qades districts and analysts believe the Taliban have patiently set up a complex intelligence and support network that reaches deep into neighboring Faryab province,” Matt Dupee said in a report on the security situation in Badghis in December 2007.

The provincial government has worked with Spanish troops operating in Badghis in an attempt to improve the security situation. Afghan forces captured Dastagir in neighboring Herat province.

The Taliban modify tactics

The Taliban are using smaller forces than attacks in the previous years. In 2006 and 2007, the Taliban would mass battalion-sized forces of several hundreds of fighters to attack NATO and Afghan forces. The formations were easy prey for Coalition airpower, and the Taliban often took more than 100 casualties during a single engagement.

This year, the Taliban have sent smaller, company-sized elements of 50 to 100 fighters to conduct attacks. The units are often supported with mortar, rocket, and machinegun teams. But the Taliban forces have still taken frightening casualties – often over 50 percent of the force killed in a single engagement – with little to show in return. Coalition and Afghan forces take few or no casualties during the ambushes and massed attacks.

Seven Taliban killed after ambush in Paktika

The Taliban continue their attacks in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan soldiers killed seven Taliban after their convoy was ambushed in the Sar Hawza district in Paktika province. “Their bodies were left on the battlefield,” a spokesman for the provincial governor told AFP.

The Taliban have launched a series of attacks against district centers and Afghan and Coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan. Paktika, Paktia, and Khost provinces have seen an increase in attacks over the past two weeks. The Taliban are attempting to destabilize the eastern region and overrun Afghan government centers. Many of the attacks have originated from Pakistan.

An estimated 33 Taliban were killed in a battle in the Spera district in Khost province on July 1. Twenty-two Taliban were killed after Afghan police repelled attacks on two district centers in Paktika province and one in Paktia province on the night of June 24. Earlier that same day, a large Taliban force made up of Afghan, Arab, and Chechen fighters attacked a district center in Paktia. Afghan and US forces killed 16 Taliban during the attack.

US and Afghan forces killed 55 Taliban and wounded another 25 during a massed attack on a patrol in neighboring Paktika province on June 20.

Two large-scale rocket and mortar attacks were launched from Pakistani soil during the same timeframe. On June 27, a Taliban rocket team fired at a US outpost in Paktika province. The Taliban also fired rockets at a US base in Paktika on June 21. One Afghan woman and three children were killed in the attack. US forces launched artillery at Taliban positions inside Pakistan after both attacks.

The three provinces border Taliban-controlled tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan in Pakistan. The Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan and the Haqqani family in North Waziristan, use the tribal agencies as bases to attack US and Afghan forces.

US forces have singled out the Haqqanis as a major threat in eastern Afghanistan. Siraj Haqqani is one of the most wanted men in the region because of his close links with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan have increased by 40 percent since last year, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-101, said during a briefing on June 24. While the attacks are “not really effective in lethality” they are “increasingly more complex.”

The strikes are originating in Pakistan, Schloesser said, noting that the “enemy’s taking refuge and operating with what I will call some freedom of movement in the border region, and they’re using this sanctuary to reconstitute, to plan and to launch attacks into Afghanistan.”

http://www.longwarjournal.org/maps/Afghanistan-Badghis-province-map.php
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2471250636
Afghanistan: Soldiers desert army to join Taliban

Kabul, 9 Sept. (AKI) – A senior Afghan army official and 50 soldiers have reportedly abandoned their uniforms and joined the ranks of the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf announced the move in a statement published on jihadi internet forums on Tuesday.

“At 10 a.m yesterday, the deputy general of the border guards, Nur Ahmad Khan Bahlawan joined the ranks of the mujahadeen together with 50 soldiers as a result of a secret relationship established for some time with the men from Nu castle in the region of Badghis.”

According to the Taliban, the deserters reportedly brought two rockets and three sub-machineguns as well as a quantity of money.

The official was working with the soldiers as border guards.

 

http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/pressreleases/2008/10-october/pr081011-523.html
ISAF defends World Food Programme convoy from attack, kills two insurgents
KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents attacked a World Food Programme convoy in Jawand district, Badghis this morning. Escorting ISAF forces defended the convoy.
When insurgents attacked, ISAF forces returned fire and advanced on the insurgent position. Arriving at the scene of the attack, the ISAF soldiers found two insurgents dead, about six motorcycles destroyed and some abandoned rocket-propelled grenades.

These enemies of Afghanistan, by attempting to disrupt the delivery of food to ordinary Afghans in the greatest need and by attempting to confiscate their property on the highway have demonstrated their total distain for the very people they claim to serve.

The World Food Programme is the UN’s organisation to fight hunger and is currently in Afghanistan with the primary goal to provide 1,010,000 metric tonnes of food aid to Afghans from between January 2006 and December 2009. The programme primarily delivers food to Afghans in remote, rural areas.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4A51L120081106
Air strike kills seven Afghan civilians: officials
Thu Nov 6, 2008 3:42pm EST
By Sharafuddin Sharafyar

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Foreign forces have killed seven civilians in an air strike in northwest Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday, a day after the Afghan president said warplanes had killed 40 civilians in the south.

President Hamid Karzai said the issue of civilian casualties was the biggest source of tension with his main backers, the United States, and called on President-elect Barack Obama to make it his top priority to stop the killings of innocents.

The air strike was called in after a Taliban attack in the Ghormach district of Badghis province in the northwest late on Wednesday, provincial officials said.

District chief Abdullah said seven civilians and 15 insurgents were killed in the raid.

“I myself have been to the area and seen the bodies of seven civilians. The house of a member of the provincial council was also bombed, two of his sons and a grandson were also killed,” said Abdullah, who only uses one name.

Troops from the U.S.-led coalition, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan security forces responded to an insurgent ambush while on a route clearance operation, the U.S. military said in a statement.

“The coalition, ISAF and Afghan authorities are investigating reports of non-combatant casualties in the Ghormach district last night,” Colonel Greg Julian said in the statement.

“We do not know the facts at this time but we will investigate this situation to get to the truth. We take our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan very seriously and take extensive measures to avoid circumstances where non-combatant civilians are placed at risk,” he said.

It was not possible to verify the claims of civilian deaths independently due to the area’s remoteness and poor security.

PASHTUN POCKET

There has been a steady rise in violence in Ghormach, an ethnic Pashtun pocket in the mainly Tajik and Uzbek north, in the last two years, holding up work on completion of a road linking the west to the capital, Kabul, and hampering aid deliveries.

Hundreds of Afghans have been killed in U.S. air strikes this year, leading to seething resentment against the presence of foreign troops and a rift between Karzai and his Western backers.

Some 4,000 people, more than a third of them civilians, have been killed this year in fighting with the Taliban, who have expanded the scope and scale of their insurgency to try to oust Karzai’s Western-backed government and eject foreign forces.

NATO and U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan say they do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties, but mistakes do happen. Hundreds of civilians are killed in Taliban attacks, especially by suicide and roadside bombs.

In a latest suicide attack near a government office, five people, three of them civilians, were wounded on Thursday in Maidan Wardak province, an official said.

(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait)
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1455594.php/Five_civilians_15_Taliban_killed_in_clash_blasts_in_Afghanistan_
Five civilians, 15 Taliban killed in clash, blasts in Afghanistan
South Asia News
Jan 25, 2009, 9:38 GMT

Kabul – Four civilians and 13 Taliban were killed in a clash in western Afghanistan, while one Afghan civilian and three militants were killed in suicide and roadside bomb blasts elsewhere, officials said Sunday.

A group of Taliban fighters attacked a tribal chief’s house in Mugur district of western Badghis province on Saturday night, killing the man, his daughter-in-law and two of his supporters, said Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, spokesman for police forces in western region.

‘Hafizullah, his daughter-in-law and two other men who came to protect the tribal chief were killed by the attackers,’ he said, adding that police units arrived at the scene, triggering a new round of clash.

At least 13 militants were killed in the firefight that continued until early Sunday morning, but there were no casualties among Afghan police, he said.

Hafizullah, who served a commander for the Afghan warriors in their fight against the Soviet troops in 1980s, was a supporter for the Western-backed Afghan government and had recently been publicly denouncing the Taliban-led insurgency in the country.

Separately, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-packed vest among local villagers in a market in Samkanai district of southeastern province of Paktia on Saturday, killing one civilian and wounding nine, Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the provincial governor said.

He said no Afghan government officials or foreign military forces were present in the area at the time of blast.

But taking responsibility for the attack, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for Taliban militants said that the bomber targeted an intelligence official and his agents in the area.

In another incident, two Taliban militants were killed when the bomb they were planting on a road in Arghandab district of southern Kandahar province on Saturday, went off prematurely, Afghan interior ministry said in a statement.

Taliban militants, who lost power in late 2001 in a US-led military invasion, continue to attack Afghan and NATO troops in the country, despite the presence of more than 65,000 international forces.

The militants have steadily gained power in the past three years and extended their writ to larger swathes of the country in 2008. The militants have vowed to increase their attacks in 2009.

The US military, which has more than 32,000 soldiers in the country, has announced to deploy up to 30,000 more troops in the coming months to contain the insurgency this year.

 

http://www.nps.edu/Programs/CCS/WebJournal/Article.aspx?ArticleID=23&IssueID=19
THE CULTURE AND CONFLICT REVIEW 

Badghis Province:Examining the Taliban’s Northwestern Campaign
Matthew C. DuPée, 12/17/2008
The persistent fighting and terroristic activity plaguing southern Afghanistan has slowly crept into the western and northwestern provinces, raising fears that the Taliban have expanded their efforts into opening a northern front. The Taliban’s gateway to the north rests in the remote and lightly defended province of Badghis, a sparsely inhabited region of 500,000 ethnically diverse residents and the second most underdeveloped province in Afghanistan.[1]
However, the isolation of Badghis should not underestimate its strategic value. Badghis was the first northern province overrun and held by the Taliban during their rise to power in late 1996.[2]The Taliban later used Badghis as a springboard to launch a series of military offensives across northern Afghanistan, including attacks in Faryab, Jawzjan and the particularly bloody assault on Balkh province. Over the past two years, the Taliban have once again committed themselves to reasserting their influence and control over this area. The level of insurgent violence in Badghis has risen 263 per cent since 2007, a drastic increase that could threaten the future stability and security for most of northern Afghanistan. (Figure 1) Two of the hardest hit areas in Badghis are the heavily-Pashtun inhabited districts of Ghormach and Balamurghab. Both districts, with the exception of their capitals, have largely fallen under the influence and control of the Taliban since 2007.
 
 
 

The central government is desperately trying to expand its vulnerable influence outside the provincial capital of Qala-e-Naw and into the surrounding mountainous districts where a growing Taliban infestation has taken root. Additionally, recent Afghan government initiatives to pacify the region’s security, including the controversial concession to local tribal elders by releasing a top imprisoned Taliban figure, may serve as a case-study to how future “negotiations” with the Taliban might unfold.     The Afghan government is not short of options in preventing a full-scale Taliban footprint in Badghis, however time may not be on their side.  If the Taliban opens a northern front their efforts could be used as a model in the west and prove detrimental to government efforts at reconciliation with moderate insurgents.

 
“A Nest of Taliban”

There were limited International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or government security forces deployed past Qala-e-Naw until October 2008, leaving the remote northern districts vulnerable to the Taliban, criminal syndicates and factional warlords. With only 600 Afghan National Police personnel assigned to the province, 300 of those are based in Qala-e-Naw, leaving roughly 40 to 50 police for each remaining district.[3]

“Ghormach borders Faryab province and it is home to Taliban leader Abdul Rahman Haqani, who has close ties with higher Taliban ranks,” revealed a resident from Qala-e-Naw who spoke about the situation on condition of anonymity.[4] Right now the government has strong control of the district center and a few villages, but the Taliban are based in its remote villages including Jahr-i-syah, Langar and Qala-i-Wali; this is where Abdul Rahman [Haqani] operates.” Haqani originally held the governorship of neighboring Ghor province during the Taliban era. Following the Taliban’s sweep from power in 2001, Mullah Omar tapped Haqani to lead resistance throughout the northwest where he led a series of large-scale assaults against the Balamurghab and Ghormach district centers.
“Ghormach was supposed to be under the control of the Spanish but was given to the Norwegian ISAF contingent because it took far too long for Spanish forces to reach the northern district,” noted David Beriain, a Spanish reporter who spent the most the summer in Badghis shooting a documentary on the insecurity of western Afghanistan. “Even when they finally reached Ghormach, it was usually after being ambushed several times along the way.”
In late November, media reports revealed the Afghan government’s plan to remove Ghormach from the provincial authority of Badghis and officially make it part of neighboring Faryab province.[5] Norway currently runs the Faryab PRT, and along with US forces, has established a FOB in the Qaysar district where a small Afghan National Army (ANA) contingent is stationed as a Quick Reaction Force responsible for security in Qaysar and Ghormach.
Balamurghab has emerged as the Taliban’s overall operations hub for northwestern Afghanistan. Local Taliban commanders claim to have 74 “bases” scattered throughout the Balamurghab district alone.[6]Beginning last year, heavy fighting between security forces and the Taliban forced hundreds of Balamurghab’s residents to flee Badghis altogether. Many of the residents bypassed Qala-e-Naw and fled to Herat since they believed fighting would soon break out within the provincial capital.[7] 
 

 “It takes a full day to travel from Qala-e-Naw to Balamurghab. They know when foreign troops are coming; they have spotters in many of the villages and have all the time in the world to set up an ambush. It’s a paradise for ambushes,” explained David Beriain. “In August, Spanish and Italian forces along with US Special Forces launched an operation to build a FOB in Balamurghab. They come under attack almost every day. It took a full day to go there from Qala e Naw. In the winter it is impossible to travel by road so helicopters must be used. The company that was hired to do the demining there, took out $70,000 to pay the Taliban just so they wouldn’t attack their laborers and personnel.”
Badghis Taliban Groups and Personalities
The current trend in Badghis is troubling. Since early 2007, violence in Badghis has remained constant even though the Taliban lost several commanders due to capture, death and defection. The arrests of several top Badghis Taliban officials, including Mawlawi Dastagir, Mullah Abdul Qayum, Mullah Sarajuddin, top bomb-maker Mullah Muhammad Hanif, the defection of Mullah Ahmad Wardak, and the killing of Mullah Babai and his 20 fighters, has had little impact on the overall security situation in Badghis. In fact, the Taliban have filled these gaps and are once again capable of attacking armed ISAF convoys, destroying police trucks with roadside bombs, and attacking police checkpoints and district headquarters.
The Taliban factions fighting in Badghis have grown from small, lightly armed bands into much larger, better organized units capable of launching large-scale raids and simultaneous attacks. In 2007, Spanish intelligence estimated the Taliban presence in Badghis numbered roughly 200 fighters, by 2008, that estimate soared to well over 2,000.[8] With the Taliban’s influence expanding throughout the province, inner-Taliban rivalries arose over command and control issues by younger commanders vying for the top spot held by Abdul Rahman Haqani.
“Insurgent structure in Badghis is as in most provinces, dominated by the dichotomy between Quetta-appointed commanders and local emerging commanders,” suggested a western official in Kabul.[9] The four main commanders operating in Badghis, Mawlawi Dastagir, Abdul Rahman Haqani, Jamaluddin Mansoor Kakar and Mullah Amoruddin Yektan, have an illustrious history throughout the region and among each other.
Initially, Abdul Rahman Haqani, an old guard Taliban leader who served as the governor of Ghor province prior to 2001, was appointed by Mullah Omar to lead the resistance movement in the northwest. Haqani used his prestige and connection with Mullah Omar to establish Ghormach as a Taliban stronghold in 2006.
By the spring of 2007, ISAF and Coalition forces successfully targeted and killed several top Taliban commanders across southern Afghanistan, including Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s most senior military strategist. Following Dadullah’s death and fearing spies within the ranks; Mullah Omar temporarily prevented senior commanders from entering Afghanistan, which left Haqani as an “absentee commander in chief.” Although Haqani helped orchestrate the large-scale assault against the Balamurghab and Ghormach district headquarters in late June and again in early July, his presence in Badghis became more sporadic throughout the summer.[10] By November, Mawlawi Dastagir, a young and influential commander, viewed himself as the Taliban commander for Badghis province and even spoke about the Taliban’s strategy to local media.[11] The declaration sent a ripple throughout the region and eventually led to a divide between those loyal to Dastagir and those devoted to Haqani.

 

“There was a rivalry between Mawlawi Dastagir and Abdul Rahman Haqani and a sub-commander Jamaluddin [Mansoor] Kakar (Photo), which some allege led to Dastagir being arrested because the Haqani/Jamaluddin faction leaked information about his movement,” noted a western official familiar with the case. In early March 2008, Dastagir was nabbed in a covert Afghan intelligence operation in northern Herat. “Dastagir was arrested and after confessing his links to the Taliban sent to prison. In his case, the NDS prosecutor recommended 16 years imprisonment for Mawlawi Dastagir.” With Dastagir behind bars, Haqani and others resumed their insurgent activity until Haqani suffered serious injuries during a clash with security forces. Haqani retreated from Afghanistan to Pakistan where he was tracked down by Afghan intelligence agents at a hospital in Peshawar, although he was not arrested.[12]
Another young and rising Taliban commander, Jamaluddin Mansoor, a sub-commander of Haqani, took over command of insurgent activity during the summer of 2008, and along with the cooperation of Mullah Amoruddin, turned Badghis into a kill zone. He shifted resources and drew on local connections to help establish Balamurghab as the key Taliban stronghold in Badghis. By summer’s end, a controversial move by the government prematurely released Dastagir from prison in an attempt to pacify the region and exploit the cleavages present between two powerful Taliban factions in the area. In The government’s decision to release Dastagir from prison would ultimately have dire consequences for the security of Badghis, the central government and its security forces.

Badghis ‘Blowback’
 The central government released Mawlawi Dastagir from prison in September, a full 16-years early, as a good will gesture designed to improve the security in Balamurghab. “Dastagir was released in September following a deal struck between the government and elders of Balamurghab. The understanding was that the elders would guarantee the security of both the roadway and government forces, ‘control’ Dastagir and isolate the Rahman Haqani groups in the area,” stated a western official familiar with the situation.[13]
The near completion of an expensive 45-meter bridge project in Balamurghab prompted the government’s decision to release Dastagir from prison prematurely. The government hoped to protect the bridge site, the first large-scale construction effort completed in the district, from local Taliban and insurgent sabotage.
“In mid-October after he was released, Dastagir was reportedly named Taliban commander for Badghis Province, with Jamaluddin as his deputy, by local Taliban commanders in an attempt to overcome their past division. The decision was forwarded around October 20, to Quetta, waiting for their ‘approval’ of his appointment. This ‘approval’ had come through and so the attempt by the Afghan government to play on the rivalry between the two ended up unsuccessful.”[14]

Jamaluddin Mansoor recently confirmed his status as the Taliban’s “deputy governor” for Badghis in a recent interview with local sources in Badghis. Mawlawi Dastagir, he said, has been confirmed as the Taliban’s “Governor” for Badghis.
The security situation in Balamurghab plummeted following Dastagir’s reintegration into the insurgent landscape. On November 25, three Afghan engineers working on the northern leg of the “ring-road” highway were abducted by Taliban fighters loyal to Mullah Amoruddin in the Balamurghab area.[15]  Mullah Amoruddin’s men executed one of the engineers five days later. Two days after the abduction, a swarm of at least 200 Taliban fighters attacked a 47-vehicle aid convoy led by the ANA and Afghan police in Akazo village, just north of Balamurghab’s district capital. The large band of Taliban fighters was allegedly commanded by Mawlawi Dastagir. The three-hour gun battle left 13 ANA soldiers dead, 11 wounded, and 16 others missing.[16]  Scores of vehicles were burnt and destroyed while many others were stolen by the Taliban raiders.
November began with a string of roadside bombs and a Taliban instigated ambush in Ghormach; resulting in an airstrike that killed up to a dozen Taliban fighters and seven civilians. The home of a provincial council member was allegedly destroyed in the attack, killing two of his sons and a grandson, according to Ghormach district governor Abdullah Jan.[17]  The Norwegian Quick Reaction Force that scrambled to the scene of the clash from neighboring Faryab province was also ambushed by Taliban fighters, leaving two Norwegian officers wounded according to media reports.[18]  October marked the most drastic increase in Badghis attacks this year, with seven major incidents occurring during its last three weeks alone.

 
Security Forecast
Security and stability for Badghis remains elusive. A reconstituted Taliban force with great support among the population, especially in rugged and remote Pashtun inhabited areas such as Balamurghab, Ghormach, Muqur and Jawand, has effectively established the Taliban’s gateway into the north. The long-cycle of inadequate security forces deployed throughout the province, especially with the lack of indigenous Afghan forces, has helped incubate resentment and stalled development in key rural areas.
The importance of the roadway is critical. As it currently stands, there is no paved portion outside of Qala-e-Naw, a significant obstacle in providing security throughout the province. Torrential rains can wash out the existing dirt track road for days, and heavy military convoys have to be carefully weighed to ensure they can hold up against the soft earth without sinking or bogging down. The lack of paved roads also limits the types of vehicles used during military and humanitarian operations.

The limited incursions by Afghan and ISAF forces into the Taliban controlled areas over the past year, Operation Shareen-Sahara (Desert Eagle), Operation Four Seasons, and Operation Karez, have had little overall impact. Ten-day operations such as these cannot provide the type of long lasting security needed to construct roads, safely transport aid and expand the influence of the central government. The Afghan government’s decision to remove Ghormach district from the provincial authority of Badghis and make it part of Faryab speaks volumes about the security situation and how critical the roadway, or lack of paved roadway, has become.
ISAF and the Afghan government’s slow approach to the restive and neglected districts improved by late summer when Spanish, Italian, Afghan and US-forces pushed deep into Balamurghab to establish a much-needed forward operation base (FOB Columbus) in the center of Taliban occupied territory. There is now mention of a FOB being proposed for Ghormach. Although these bases are a step in the right direction, the incredibly harsh winter weather and poor infrastructure will hamper logistics, especially regarding the safety of resupply convoys. Taliban fighters have recently turned their guns on these lightly defended convoys, including a World Food Program food convoy traveling to Jawand, an ISAF/Afghan ammunition convoy in Balamurghab and the vicious ambush against the massive 47-vehicle convoy in Balamurghab.
Harsh winter weather makes resupply by helicopter a perilous venture. The difficulty in maintaining the forward operating base in Balamurghab will certainly test the will of ISAF in regards to securing and stabilizing northern Afghanistan. The ANA needs a permanent presence in the province if the government ever expects to establish stability as well as facilitate ISAF’s objective in turning security operations over to local forces.
 

Badghis: Future Frontline?
The Taliban continue to gain ground and momentum especially as they begin to establish new sanctuaries outside of Balamurghab and Ghormach. However, this expansion brings consequences for Taliban commanders as local villages are resisting the authority from Quetta-appointed Taliban leaders, and from those outside their own districts. In some instances, turf wars and inner-Taliban rivalries have exploded into violent exchanges, pitting Taliban against Taliban in a rare display of public disunity.
On December 11, 2008, Taliban fighters loyal to Mawlawi Dastagir opened fire on fighters loyal to Mullah Bahauddin in the Balamurghab district. One of Bahauddin’s men died in the clash and four others were injured. Afghan security officials later indicated a disagreement over a stolen police truck operated by one of the Taliban factions instigated the exchange of gunfire.[19]   A similar event took place in April of 2008, when fighters led by top Taliban leader Abdul Rahman Haqani fought a pitched battle with loyalists of Mullah Ahmad Wardak in the Jahr-i-syah village, Ghormach district.  Five Taliban fighters were killed and three others suffered wounds in the clash.[20] Wardak later surrendered to Ghormach government officials along with 15 of his fighters in late August.[21] Friction between Taliban factions in Badghis remains a serious weakness for the northern insurgent groups. This friction represents the Achilles’ heel of the northern Taliban, and despite Dastagir’s reconciliation with rival factions, these recent developments hint the current Taliban alliance is in danger.
At the moment, the Taliban’s grip on power in northern Afghanistan remains feeble compared to the complete stranglehold they enjoy in southern Afghanistan. The current trend in Taliban violence and expanding influence in Badghis is not irreversible, but if left unchallenged, Badghis will surely suffer a Taliban takeover as it did in 1996.  “We are trying to open up this route just as we did in the past,” Dastagir told local reporters in 2007.”[22]   “Our policy is different up here. We have openly engaged the government and foreign forces in the south, but in the north we are quietly expanding our area. The government is weaker here than in the south and the mountains have provided good terrain for our operations. We are trying to work under cover now, and we see that people are welcoming us warmly. Soon we will occupy the whole entrance to the north.”
Resentment is high and sympathy for the Taliban is growing in Badghis, and if past Taliban statements offer a prophetic view of the future, Badghis will remain in the cross-hairs of the Taliban until they emerge victorious or are defeated.
 

 
——————————————————————————–

 
[1]  Rafael Roel Fernández, “The Contribution of the Spanish Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Qala-e-Naw to the Reconstruction and Development of Afghanistan,” Real Instituto Elcano, May 2, 2008.
[2]Neamatollah Nojumi, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan (Palgrave, 2002), page 159.
[3]Rafael Roel Fernández, “The Contribution of the Spanish Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Qala-e-Naw to the Reconstruction and Development of Afghanistan,” Real Instituto Elcano, May 2, 2008.
[4]Resident of Badghis, email message to author on November 11, 2008.
[5] Nach Gebietsreform, “Afghanistan-Einsatz der Bundeswehr wird gefährlicher,” Spiegel Online, November 29, 2008. Translated. Available at,http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,593509,00.html
[6] David Beriain, interview with Author on December 8, 2008.
[7]Carlos Echerverria Jes?s, ‘Risks Facing the Spanish Contingent in Afghanistan,” Real Instituto Elcano, translated to English, January 15, 2008
[8] David Beriain, interview with author on December 8, 2008.
[9] 9 Western official, email message to author on December 6, 2008.
[10] “Dozens killed as Taliban attack dist headquarters,” Pajhwok Afghan News, June 10, 2007. Available at,http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=37599, Syed Saleem Shahzad, “A Taliban surrender and a mass attack,” Asia Times, June 12, 2007. Available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF12Df01.html, “6 ISAF soldiers dead in blast; Taliban claim capturing district,” Pajhwok Afghan News, July 4, 2007. Available at, http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=38911
[11]Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, “The Taliban’s Northern Front,” IWPR, November 20, 2007. Available at,http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=hen&s=o&o=l=EN&p=arr&s=f&o=340751
[12] “’Piles and Piles of Evidence’ that Pakistan Is Responsible for Insurgency,” Spiegel Online International, August 12, 2008. Available at, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,571469,00.html
[13]Western official, email message to author on December 6, 2008.
[14] Ibid.
[15]Ahmad Qurishi, “Three road construction workers abducted,” Pajhwok Afghan News, November 25, 2008. Available at, http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=65900 Note: One of the Afghan engineers was later murdered by his captors on December 2, 2008.
[16]“Taliban kill 13 Afghan soldiers,” Associated Press, November 27, 2008. Available at, http://74.125.93.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=http://www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/noticia/397006.mata-taliban-a-13-soldados-afganos.html&usg=ALkJrhiB1LfmfOviQZdinZx0eduN7uDcog“>
[17]Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi, “U.S. Says Taliban Put Afghans in Line of Fire, “The New York Times, November 6, 2008. Avaliable at, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?_r=1&ref=asia
[18]“13 Taliban, 7 civilians killed in clash in N Afghanistan,” Xinhua, November 6, 2008. Availale at, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/06/content_10318356.htm
[19]Abdul Latif Ayubi, “Taliban infighting leaves one dead, four injured,” Pajhwok Afghan News, available at, http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=66552.
[20]Suliman Hashimi & Zabihullah Ihsas, “Taliban kill eight fellows in infighting,” Pajhwok Afghan News, available at, http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=53256
[21] Zabihullah Ehsas and Quraishi, “Taliban group surrenders in Badghis,” Pajhwok Afghan News, available at, http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=61349
[22]Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, “The Taliban’s Northern Front,” IWPR, November 20, 2007. Available at, http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=hen&s=o&o=l=EN&p=arr&s=f&o=340751
 

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http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=38911
6 ISAF soldiers dead in blast; Taliban claim capturing dist
KABUL, July 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Six NATO soldiers and one Afghan employee of the alliance were killed in a roadside bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

A NATO spokeswoman, without naming the province where the incident occurred, said the soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) struck their vehicle in the troubled south.

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Maria Carl said in a statement: The ISAF community mourns the loss of these brave soldiers. They gave their lives to improve the lives of the Afghan people.

In line with NATO policy, Maria Carl did not release names and nationalities of the casualties prior to the relevant national authority doing so.

Also on Wednesday, Taliban insurgents claimed capturing a district and killing six policemen in the relatively calm Badghis province in western Afghanistan.

But a senior official scorned the claim as baseless, saying the town had not yet changed hands. Militants and security personnel were trading heavy gunfire as a fierce struggle for the district.

Qari Yousaf Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News over the phone Bala Murghab district fell to guerrillas late in the afternoon after heavy fighting that left six policemen dead.

Interior Ministry spokesman Zalmay Bashary, who confirmed the fighting was still on, said government forces remained in control of the district. He added 10 rebels had been killed in the clash so far.

A dweller of the area, who did not want to be named, endorsed the Taliban claim and said the fighters had overrun Bala Murghab. Security forces were firing at the assailants in the district headquarters building from nearby mounds, the resident continued.

According to him, the districts fall triggered a house-to-house search. The security personnel warned civilians against sheltering the militants, he alleged.

Elsewhere in the south, three civilians were killed and as many wounded in a bomb explosion. And in the northern Samangan province, security officials claimed seizing a huge cache of arms and ammunition including thousands of bombs from a secret dump in Hazrat Sultan district.

Ghazni police chief Brig. Gen. Alishah Ahmad said the blast took place in Mokhak area of Rashidan district in the morning. Apart from causing the casualties, he added, the explosion destroyed a vehicle.

The arms cache recovered from Khwaja Baghlanak area included heavy machine-guns, an artillery launcher, an 82-mm artillery gun, a rocket launcher, five pieces of light arms and a huge quantity of ammunitions.

Baghlan police head Sharafuddin Sharaf said: I cant say for sure whether the arms were shifted to the dump recently or had been lying buried for years. No one has been arrested so far in this connection.

mud/pr/aq/sah/mb
http://www.nps.edu/Programs/CCS/WebJournal/Default.aspx

 
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/coalition_strike_kil.php
Senior insurgent commander in Herat thought killed in strike
By Bill RoggioFebruary 17, 2009 7:20 PM
 
Coalition forces may have killed a senior insurgent commander during an airstrike in the western province of Herat.

Ghulam Yahya Akbari, the leader of an independent insurgent group aligned with the Taliban, and upwards of 15 of his leaders and fighters were targeted in a “precision strike” that targeted his headquarters in Herat’s Gozara district.

Akbari is “a key insurgent commander” with “affiliations with Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and the Taliban,” the US military said in a press release. He is behind a surge in violence in Herat province over the past several months.

Akbari, who is also known as the “Tajik Taliban,” served as the mayor of the city of Herat before the Taliban took control in 1995. After the fall of the Taliban, he was appointed the province’s minister of public works. He was relieved of his position in 2008 and took up arms against the government shortly afterward.

Akbari maintains his base of operations in the Gozara district, which has been considered an area outside of the government’s control. In an interview with Al Jazeera he claimed to have run more than 20 bases in the region and boasted of having more than 600 fighters under his command.

He claimed he is not Taliban and called his group the Mujahideen of Herat. But Akbari also said he shares the same goals as the Taliban and frequently allows Arab fighters to pass from Iran through the areas under his control. He also runs the areas under his control using the same harsh version of sharia, or Islamic Law that is used by the Taliban.

Akbari was profiled by The National on the same day he was reported killed. In 2008 his forces fired rockets at the UNAMA compound as well as at the Herat airport. Akbari was also behind the abduction of one Indian and six Afghan nationals who worked for a communication company in Herat. The Indian national died in custody in the beginning of February 2009 while the six Afghans have been released.

The report of Akbari’s killing comes one day after a US airstrike killed the shadow governor of Badghis province in northern Afghanistan.

The US will send an additional 17,000 troops to help stem the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. More than 8,000 Marines and 9,000 soldiers will be deployed to Afghanistan by this summer. The troops will likely be deployed to the provinces around Kabul, where the Taliban have gained strength, as well as the east and south where the Taliban controls wide swaths of territory. It is unclear if southwestern and western Afghanistan will receive additional troops to help stem the rising violence in these once-quiet provinces.
http://www.centcom.mil/en/press-releases/coalition-forces-kill-key-militant-commander-in-herat.html
 
Press Release

United States Forces-Afghanistan

February 17, 2009

Release Number 20091702-02
Coalition Forces kill key militant commander in Herat

KABUL, Afghanistan – A Coalition Forces precision strike killed a militant commander affiliated with the Hezb-e-Islam Gulbuddin and other Taliban commanders near Gozara district, Herat province, Feb. 17.

Coalition forces learned through sources that a key militant commander and a group of militants were co-located in the vicinity of Gozara district, approximately 20 km east of Herat.

Once the exact location of the militants was confirmed, Coalition forces engaged the hideout with a precision strike, destroying two vehicles and killing the militants inside their compound.

The militant commander was responsible for an increase in violence in Herat over recent months, including attacks against a United Nations Assistance Mission compound in Afghanistan compound in May and June,

2008.  He is also responsible for attacks against the Herat City Airport in May 2008.

“Eliminating this leader and militants will help bring peace to Heart province and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” said Lt. Col. Rick Helmer, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesperson.

-30-

United States Forces Afghanistan’s mission, in coordination with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, is to conduct operations to defeat terrorist networks and insurgents by developing effective governance and building the Afghan National Security Force.  Effective security throughout the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan facilitates continued regional stability and increases economic development for the people of Afghanistan.
 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/10/200810173815406492.html
Afghan mayor turns Taliban leader 

The former mayor of Afghanistan’s Herat province is now the most powerful local Taliban commander.

Ghullam Yahya Akbari told Al Jazeera that he will not negotiate with the Afghan government as long as foreign troops are on Afghan soil.
 
Given exclusive access to one of his 20 mountain bases hidden deep inside rugged terrain that Akbari says were also used to fight the Russians, Al Jazeera’s Qais Azimy found a group of at least 60 well-armed Taliban fighters.

Akbari’s steely resolve to fight foreign forces comes amid reports of many soldiers defecting to the Taliban. Many are unhappy with the “un-Islamic” ways of the foreign troops.

Young and old

Some in Akbari’s camps were just teenagers, others old enough to be enjoying retirement, but all had left families behind and were committed to the fight to push international troops out of Afghanistan.
 
“I will continue jihad against the Americans who have invaded our soil until the last drop of blood remains in my body,” Askar, one of the fighters, said.

The food they eat is mostly dry bread, but the fighters do have satellite television and complaints appear rare.

“We are not doing jihad for our stomachs, we are doing jihad for Allah,” another fighter said.

Akbari said the 20 mountain bases under his charge were also used by some of the same fighters to drive out the Russians in the 1980s.

“People may wonder why we live up in the mountains. That’s because we want to avoid civilian casualties and fight with guerrilla tactics,” he said.

No talks

The former mayor is not interested in peace talks and said he would even turn his guns against Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, if he negotiated with the Afghan government.

“I do not believe that Mullah Omar would do that but if they sit with the Afghan government and negotiate then for us they will be like all the other members of the government and we’ll continue our jihad,” Akbari said.

A spokesperson for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) dismissed suggestions of an increase in Taliban support.

“While they were in power this was the worst administration in the history of the country so why would the people of Afghanistan want the Taliban back?” Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette said.

But Al Jazeera’s Azimy said the group had grown in its reach since he last met the fighters more than a month before.

It now held three young policemen hostage and appeared to be a real threat, he said.

‘MPs strike’

Twenty Afghan members of parliament have meanwhile gone on strike in protest at the worsening security situation in Herat, and over what they say is the government’s inability to fix it.

The move is another sign of the difficulties facing Nato-led forces in bringing peace to the country.

Al Jazeera’s Dan Nolan, reporting from Kabul, said that the strikes reflect further discontent on the part of Afghan officials.

“The security situation, and the increased attacks by Taliban fighters has many fearing that they can no longer protect themselves or depend on the government to come to their aid,” he said.

Khalid Pashtun, a member of parliament, told Al Jazeera: “The MPs from Herat are telling us that, for the past few months, they have been expressing their concern, wanting to replace the governor and some of the higher authority people in Herat, but so far there is no response back from the central government.

“I would agree with Nato that Akbari is not really a big threat to Herat security. But for the past few years he has tried destabilising the area. Lately, in Herat kidnapping is increasing, and most of these actions were blamed on him.”

Pashtun explained that Akbari was a prominent commander and that after the Russians left Afghanistan he was mayor of Herat between 1992 and 1996.

“He was a very successful mayor. When the Taliban was in power, he was exiled to Iran, and we heard he was selling vegetables there, so he was extremely poor.

“Since this government took over, he has been the head of the public works department. But one of his conditions for coming back was that he would be in the mountains until they replace the governor, but this condition has not been met yet.”
 
http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/tajik-taliban/

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090217/FOREIGN/232492838/1002
Brutal insurgent rules the mountains
Chris Sands, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: February 17. 2009 8:30AM UAE / February 17. 2009 4:30AM GMT
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN // A former member of the US-backed Afghan government is now an insurgent commander in the western province of Herat.

Ghulam Yahya seems to rule a vast mountainous area here, with his men launching regular attacks on the police and imposing fundamentalist Islamic law by amputating the limbs of criminals.

While visibly concerned that talking to a foreign journalist would put their lives at risk, local residents said they supported his stance.

“Actually, he is not a bad man for the people. There are schools for girls and when a lot of boys were trying to disturb the students, he found out about it and shot them. He also has strict laws and does not like stealing or thieves. If anyone is a robber he will cut off their legs or hands and carry out the Shariah,” said Abdul Wasir, 35.

Mr Yahya was mayor of Herat before the Taliban captured the city in their rise to power during the 1990s. In the early stages of Hamid Karzai’s government, he served as the head of public works, but he took up arms after being removed from the post.

Having been warned that it was too dangerous to travel to his stronghold of Siwoshan, in Gozarah district, The National met residents from there in Herat’s provincial capital instead. Although it is impossible to independently verify their claims, they all gave similar accounts of the situation in separate interviews.

Mr Yahya was described in almost mythical tones as a vigilante fighting for justice.

Mr Wasir said the government had no control outside the confines of its offices. “Sometimes if there are no police or soldiers around he comes right into the centre of the area,” he said. “We even heard that during Eid he came to Siwoshan’s main mosque and prayed there.”

Mr Yahya fought Soviet occupation as a member of Jamiat-e-Islami, which went on to resist Taliban rule. Unlike the majority of insurgents now, he is an ethnic Tajik and not a Pashtun. However, his tactics seem to bear some similarities to those of the main rebel groups. According to residents, he has established his own justice system. Along with amputating the limbs of thieves, he also reportedly blackens the faces of captured criminals and parades them on donkeys through villages.

Meanwhile, people who work for the government are often kidnapped or killed in their houses and rockets are regularly fired towards Herat airport.

Mr Wasir was clearly scared about discussing Mr Yahya even in the relative safety of the provincial capital. “The people who work in the government are afraid and the people who talk are also afraid. But if the government gives him a job again he will never fight against them. He is a good man,” he said.

Locals put the number of men under Mr Yahya’s command at about 500. Armed predominantly with Kalashnikovs, they often move around in Toyota pickup trucks.

A man who gave his name only as Ismatullah said: “When the government removed him from his position he got upset and went to the mountains. Then lots of people from his village and his friends joined him. Others came from different villages and provinces and they also joined him.”

Many claim he is acting independently, but some believe he does now have direct ties with the Taliban. Whatever the truth, it is obvious he inspires both fear and respect among the population.

“There have even been cases where criminals have shot themselves because they know Ghulam Yahya is coming to arrest them,” Ismatullah said. “It has never happened that someone has gone to him and asked for money. But he knows who is rich and who is poor and he will collect money – whether it’s [$20] or [$200] – and he will help the people who need it.”

Another local rebel commander and former government official goes by the name of Malim Majid. He was the head of Herat airport before the Taliban came to power and, with between 50 and 100 of his own fighters, is now an ally of Mr Yahya, though the two militias do occasionally clash.

Ghulam Rahman Frotan made the journey north from Siwoshan to meet The National. His son is an interpreter for US forces elsewhere in the province – a fact that is not widely shared among his neighbours.

“Some of his friends know he is working for the Americans, but the other people don’t. If they did they would kill him,” he said.

“The Americans have not been there. They can’t go because the people don’t want them. If they did go, the people would fight them.”

Col Delawar Shah Delawar, the deputy police commander of Herat province, dismissed the significance of Mr Yahya’s following, saying he had only 30 or 50 men in his ranks.

He said “all the people who do suicide attacks” come from Siwoshan, and he insisted the rebels do have connections with the Taliban.

“We went there and talked to the elders and sent them to Ghulam Yahya to ask him to join the government and give his weapons over. If he does not accept that, then we will remove him and kill him,” he said.

“I don’t think he will accept because he is a criminal and the people working for him are all criminals.”

csands@thenational.ae
http://pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=57194
Rocket attacks on UNAMA, NATO offices

Ahmad Quraishi & Sabor Mangal – Jun 21, 2008 – 16:19

KHOST CITY/HEART CITY: The regional office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in western Herat province and base of the NATO-led foreign forces in southeastern Khost province came under separate rocket attacks by militants on Friday night, officials said Saturday.

Zabihullah Mujahid spokesman of the Taliban movement told Pajhwok Afghan News they triggered about 20 rockets on NATO base in Khost city and inflicted huge casualties on the foreign forces.

Confirming the attack NATO officials said the attack caused no casualties because it hit an area three kilometers from the base.

The attack destroyed residential houses killing an old person and leaving four more including two three women and children wounded.

Col Abdul Rauf Ahmadi press officer in western police zone told Pajhwok Afghan News 12 rockets fired by loyalists of Ghulam Yahya Akbari government dissident hit premises of UANAMA office in Guzra district here.

The attack had inflicted no casualties, he added.

There is no immediate comment from the UNAMA officials on the incident.

Mam/ajr

 

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/analysis_pakistan_pe.php
Analysis: Pakistan peace agreement cedes ground to the Taliban
By Bill RoggioFebruary 18, 2009 12:08 PM
Pakistan’s political and military leaders have endorsed a peace agreement that allows for the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law in a large portion of the Northwest Frontier Province and ends the government’s military operation in Swat. The agreement will lead to a further deterioration of the situation in Pakistan and is a direct threat to the security of the Pakistani state.

The agreement, known as the Malakand Accord, was reached between the provincial government and Sufi Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the outlawed Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law, on Feb. 15. The next day the peace agreement was made official, and the Taliban forces under the command of Mullah Fazlullah, Sufi’s son-in-law, agreed to a 10-day cease fire.

Sufi Mohammed claims to have eschewed violence after being released from prison last year as a condition of a similar failed peace agreement in Swat. Sufi led more than 10,000 Pakistanis into Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001. Sufi recently said he hates democracy, sought to impose Islamic rule throughout the world, and said the Afghan Taliban were “an ideal example” for other countries to follow.

“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” Sufi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur just days before the Malakand Accord was signed. “I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries.”

Fazlullah is the deputy of Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban and has waged a two-year campaign of suicide attacks as well as bombings of schools and much of Swat’s infrastructure. Fazlullah broadcasts radical sermons on his illegal FM radio station, where he lauds Osama bin Laden and preaches against polio vaccination, which he claims is a Western plot to infect the Pashtun people with the AIDS virus.

Government endorses Malakand Accord

Pakistani government officials are denying that the agreement cedes a large swath of territory to the Taliban or is a sign that the government has lost its writ in the Northwest Frontier Province. Several leaders rose to the defense of the Malakand Accord, saying the agreement was part of Pakistan’s enhanced counterinsurgency program that has been designed to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the peace agreement “will be beneficial for the country.” He claimed the Malakand Accord is part of the “three Ds” strategy of dialogue, development and deterrence, and the agreement is intended to defeat the rise of Islamist extremism in the insurgency-infested northwest.

President Zardari said the Malakand Accord was part of Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy and the government is “coming up with the special package” to help defeat extremism and restore peace. Zardari also said the final agreement will not be signed until peace is restored in the northwest. Zardari’s statements are 180 degrees from last week, when he said the Taliban must be defeated through military means.

Sherry Rehman, the Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, was on the defensive, clearly concerned the agreement will reflect poorly on the government.

“It is in no way a sign of the state’s weakness,” Rehman said.

“The public will of the population of the Swat region is at the centre of all efforts and it should be taken into account while debating the merits of this agreement,” Rehman insisted. The decision to implement sharia “will bring speedy justice at the doorstep of the common man.” In a later interview, Rehman said the Malakand Accord was part of the government’s policy of development and deterrence.

Afrasiyab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which administers the Northwest Frontier Province, denied that the imposition of sharia law would herald a Taliban-like regime, but instead he insisted the agreement will improve the legal standings of the citizens of Malakand.

The Pakistani Army has also signed off on the agreement and said it would honor the 10-day ceasefire. The military was also consulted prior to the peace agreement, Inter-Service Public Relations spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said. But it is unclear if the military was involved in negotiations, as it has in the past peace agreements.

Malakand Accord similar to past peace deals

While the Pakistani government has rushed to defend the Malakand Accord, the agreement mirrors past peace deals that collapsed shortly after they were signed. Like the past agreements, the current one is likely to fail. But the government’s willingness to negotiate with the Taliban is eroding the viability of the Pakistani state.

Since winning the election last spring, the Zardari-Gilani government has entered a series of peace agreements with the Taliban throughout the tribal areas and the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. Between March and July of 2008, the government negotiated seven agreements with the Taliban in North Waziristan, Swat, Dir, Bajaur, Malakand, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, and Hangu. Negotiations were also underway in South Waziristan, Kohat, and Mardan before fighting in Swat and Bajaur broke out, effectively ending the talks.

The past peace agreements, which were started under former President Pervez Musharraf’s regime in 2004, have served only to grant the Taliban the time it needed to regroup from fighting with the Pakistani military. While the military has been unable or unwilling to dislodge the Taliban from its safe havens, the Taliban had little time to recoup losses and coordinate efforts. The peace agreements gave the Taliban the respite needed to reorganize.

During the “peace periods” the Taliban would use the time granted to add new recruits, rest and re-arm its forces, and consolidate control over the new-found territory. The peace agreements also served to embolden and restore the morale of the Taliban while demoralizing those who fought against the Taliban and live in the regions. The Taliban would conduct ruthless purges of anyone expected of supporting the government. Hundreds of tribal leaders and others have been murdered and often were mutilated. Almost all would have notes labeling them as “US spies” pinned to their chests.

Despite the government’s objections to criticism of the current agreement, the current Malakand Accord has granted the Taliban control over a region that encompasses more than 1/3 of the Northwest Front Province, effectively cementing the Taliban’s control over most of the province and the tribal areas.

The Taliban’s recruiting base has almost doubled, as has its taxation base. The Malakand Division, which is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral, has a population of more that 4.3 million, according to the 1998 census. The Taliban effectively control the tribal areas (population estimated at 6.5 million in 1998) and many of the bordering districts with millions more. The Taliban also have a strong presence or influence in nearly all of the other districts in the province.

A senior US military intelligence official who has tracked the situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas described the Malakand Accord as “a major win for the bad guys.”

The Taliban have been in effective control of Swat and most of the surrounding regions, the official told The Long War Journal, noting that the Pakistanis living in the region have lived under Fazlullah’s brand of sharia since 2007. “The government has simply declined to stop contesting the matter,” the official said.

“What is happening there is a microcosm for what Tehrik-e-Taliban plans to do to the whole of Pakistan,” the official said, referring to Baituallah Mehsud’s Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.

There is evidence the Taliban is beginning to branch out beyond the Northwest Frontier Province as well as from areas in Baluchistan that have remained quietly under Taliban control. The Taliban have stepped up attacks in the Punjab districts of Dera Ghazi Khan and Mianwali over the past several weeks. The attacks have prompted the Punjab provincial government to consider closing down its borders with the two provinces.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\18\story_18-2-2009_pg1_8
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sufi wants Islamic rule worldwide

* TNSM chief says Islam forbids elections, democracy

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Muhammad, who signed a controversial peace deal with the NWFP government on Monday, said he hated democracy and wanted supremacy of Islam over the entire world.

“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview held a few days before the government accepted his demand of enforcing sharia in the region. “Had the government accepted our demands in 1994, we would have not seen the violence we are seeing today,” he added. Sufi Muhammad’s son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, has fostered the violence in the name of Islam.

Sufi Muhammad said he was against shedding the blood of Muslims, however, added the government should have talked to the Taliban instead of taking military action. He pledged to work for complete peace in Swat if the government enforces Islamic laws, a demand which has now been met.

“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries. Had this government remained intact, it could have led to the establishment of similar Islamic governments in many other countries,” he said.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_3
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Army to obey deal between NWFP govt, TNSM: ISPR

LAHORE: The Pakistan army will abide by the deal between the NWFP government and the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM), Inter-Service Public Relations spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said on Monday. Talking to a private TV channel, Athar said the military had been asked to back off, but it would only respond if attacked. He said Swat situation was not satisfactory, but the government had adopted another strategy. To a question whether the army was consulted before the deal, Abbas said, “Consultation is always there.” daily times monitor
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\18\story_18-2-2009_pg1_6
2/18/09
‘Nizam-e-Adl won’t bring Taliban-styled regime’

LAHORE: Extension of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation to the entire Malakand division does not mean the imposition of a Taliban-style regime, Awami National Party leader Afrasiyab Khattak has said. Khattak told a private TV channel on Tuesday that the regulation was a judicial system aimed at the provision of speedy justice to the people. He said the regulation had been operational in Malakand since 1994. “It was revised in 1999 and now we will revise it again in 2009,” he added. He said the judiciary in Malakand was part of the regular judiciary of the country. daily times monitor
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68286&Itemid=1
Swat deal to ensure peace, speedy justice: Sherry       
ISLAMABAD, Feb 17 (APP): Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sherry Rehman Tuesday said Swat deal would ensure peace and help provide speedy justice to the people at their doorsteps. The government has always preferred dialogue as it believed that use of force was not the solution to problems, she said this while giving her comments on Swat deal.
While talking to reporters after visiting an exhibition of contemporary art of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan at Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), she said the peace deal in Swat will be beneficial for the country and was part of government’s policy of development and deterrence.

Answering a question, the Minister maintained the army would remain present in Swat with the objective of ensuring security to the people.

She said the agreement regarding enforcement of Shariah-based justice system in Malakand division will also help meet the demand of the people for the establishment of an appellate forum of Peshawar High Court.

Replying to another question, the Minister said it has been clearly stated that the Swat peace deal would not be signed until peace is restored in the area.

When asked about former President Pervez Musharraf’s remarks that efforts were being made to weaken Pakistan Army and ISI, she said his statement was based on assumption and it had no reality and ground.

She said Pakistan Army and ISI are important and strong institutions and they have always extended their cooperation to the government. 

Giving her comments on Democracy Day being observed on Wednesday (Feb 18), she said it would be the day to further strenghten democratic forces.

The Minister said Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) is committed to maintaining democracy in the country and had rendered sacrifices to establish a democratic order in the country with the support of the masses.

Earlier, visiting the exhibition, she commended efforts of PNCA for holding the exhibition to help promote art in the country.

She said this exhibition being organised in collaboration with Turquoise Mountain and Canadian Embassy, is a unique attraction for the people of twin cities, as the artists of three Asian countries have responded on one topic.  

On the occasion, Director General PNCA, Naeem Tahir said with a blend of the culture from three countries, the prominent artists of these countries have given their art pieces for the event and added the same exhibition was held in Afghan and after display in Pakistan, it will travel to Iran for introducing the art of the participating countries to mark the rich cultural diversity of historical linkages and dynamism of this region.
 

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_2
2/17/09
President will not endorse Malakand pact until peace restored: Sherry

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari refuses to sign documents of Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009 until peace is restored in Swat, Malakand, and other troubled areas, Information Minister Sherry Rehman said on Monday. “The government will monitor the situation, as security and well-being of Swat is top priority,” Sherry said in a statement following an agreement between the NWFP government and the TNSM. However, she said, “The will of the population of the Swat… should be taken into account while debating the merits of this agreement.” staff report/daily times monitor
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68272&Itemid=1
President to approve Nizam-e-Adal Regulation after restoration of peace: Sherry       
ISLAMABAD, Feb 16 (APP): Responding to media queries on the Malakand Accord, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ms Sherry Rehman has said that the President will approve the Nizam-e-Adal Regulation after the restoration of reace in the Region. The proposed Nizam-e-Adal Regulation will bring speedy justice at the doorstep of the common man, said a press release issued here Monday.

This regulation will also meet the demand of the people for the establishment of an appellate forum in their own area, it added.

Ms Sherry Rehman stressed that the deal should not be seen as a “concession” to the militants. “It is in no way a sign of the state’s weakness”.

The public will of the population of the Swat region is at the centre of all efforts and it should be taken into account while debating the merits of this agreement.
 

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68305&Itemid=1
Pakistan pursuing three-pronged strategy to counter terrorism: President Zardari       
BEIJING, Feb. 17 (APP):  President Asif Ali Zardari has said in an interview with Chinese journalists that the Pakistan government was pursuing a three-pronged strategy to counter terrorism. Reports based on the interview given on Monday at the President’s House in Islamabad have been published here.

President Zardari said that the fight against terrorism could not be won with guns and bombs only and it must be multi-faceted.

The government is pursuing a three-pronged strategy to counter terrorism and Pakistan is taking political, economic and military measures to find short term as well as long term solution of the problem, he said.

The President said the war against terrorism was becoming difficult because of Pakistan’s limited resources.

He said terrorism was a challenge to the society, the way of life and the state of Pakistan and it was a situation Pakistan had to face.

Referring to the situation in the northwestern and tribal regions President Zardari said, “the life of the people is not normal. So the first responsibility for the government is peace.”

He said that the first challenge was to give the people security and Pakistan was “coming up with the special package” to enhance its capability.

“In the past, the capability has not been properly enhanced on the civil side to take on this challenge,” he said, adding that Pakistan needed the civilian forces and police forces to be strong enough.

He said Pakistan was upgrading its resources and forces in the fight against terrorism.”We intend to make sure that the all such challenges are minimized at the earliest,” he said.
 
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68188&Itemid=1
Swat deal beneficial for country: Gilani       
ISLAMABAD, Feb 16 (APP): Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani Monday said the peace deal in Swat will be beneficial for the country and was part of government’s policy of dialogue, development and deterrence.Talking to reporters after inaugurating the tripartite labour conference, Prime Minister said the government has opted to hold dialogue as it believed that use of force was not the only solution.
“The provincial government is talking to the jirgas, and if successful, it will be beneficial for the country,” he said and added the peace deal was part of government’s three-pronged policy.

Gilani when asked about the US opposition to such peace deals in the past said, he had apprised President Bush, the Congressmen and others, when they visit Pakistan that military option was not the only solution to tackle with the issue of militancy.

Such actions are taken only when the federal or the provincial governments seek the services of the army.

“The army is called in for assistance and they do not go on their own and than there is also a need for having an exit policy,” Gilani said.

He said there was also a need for building the capacity of the law enforcing agencies and to focus on their needs so that when peace returns, they can perform their functions.

The Prime Minister said it was with this objective that a policy of dialogue has been pursued and the local jirgas were holding dialogue with the militants.

He said in the recent meeting on Swat it was decided to pursue this option and if successful, it would be beneficial for the country.

About the recent drone attack, the prime minister said “I have already stated that these are counterproductive and not in the interest of the country.”

Gilani said Pakistan has always condemned such attacks and will continue to do so.

He said the American people have also voted for change and the US policies around the world are witnessing a shift from the past.

To a question about launching of US predator aircraft from within the country, the prime minister said the comments were based on some news report and have already been contradicted.

Regarding the 17th amendment, the prime minister recalled a joint communique issued by him and the President wherein they reaffirmed the commitment of the Pakistan Peoples Party for its repeal.

About the restoration of the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, he said it was for the parliament to decide about his future.

When asked about his meeting with the Chief Minister of Punjab, Gilani said it was a routine meeting and there was no discussion about the lawyers long march. He said it was a decision of their party and he did not interfere in their affairs.
 
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/sufi_mohammed_hates_democracy_and_calls_for_global_islamic_rule.php
Sufi Mohammed ‘hates democracy’ and calls for global Islamic rule
By Bill RoggioFebruary 18, 2009 9:14 PM
 
Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the pro-Taliban group behind the peace agreement between the government and the Taliban, has advocated Islamic rule throughout the world and said his followers would work with the government to eliminate Indian intelligence agents operating in the region.

The statements were made while Sufi was addressing a rally supporting his peace agreement in Swat, according to a report in an Urdu-language Pakistani newspaper. Sufi arrived in Swat yesterday after conducting a “peace march” from neighboring Dir.

‘‘We hate democracy,” Sufi told the crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora. “We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election.’’

Sufi originally made his anti-democracy comments to a foreign news outlet prior to the signing of the Malakand Accord. During the interview, he lauded the brutal Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” Sufi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur just days before the Malakand Accord was signed. “I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries.”

Sufi also agreed to work with the government of the Northwest Frontier Province to “immediately take steps to clear the [NWFP’s] Malakand Division of RAW elements and criminals because the government has enough evidence of India’s involvement in the current lawlessness in Swat,’’ according to a Pakistani news report. RAW is the Research and Analysis Wing, the intelligence agency that operates outside of India.

Pakistani government officials and military officers occasionally blame India’s intelligence service for the Taliban insurgency in the Northwest Frontier Province. But Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency has backed various Taliban groups, including the Haqqani family in North Waziristan and Mullah Nazir in South Waziristan.
 
Sufi Mohammed is the spiritual leader of the outlawed Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law. He claimed to have eschewed violence after being released from prison in November 2007 as a condition of a similar failed peace agreement in Swat. Sufi led more than 10,000 Pakistanis into Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001. Mullah Fazlullah, the radical anti-government cleric behind the insurgency and terror attacks in Swat, is his son-in-law.

Sufi and the Swat Taliban maintained very close links to the radical administration of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, the pro-Taliban mosque in the heart of Islamabad whose followers enforced sharia and kidnapped policemen just one mile from the seat of government. The Pakistani military stormed the Lal Masjid in July 2007 after a several-month standoff. More than a hundred followers and more than a dozen soldiers were killed in the battle.

The Pakistani government agreed to its third peace agreement with the Swat Taliban after nearly two years of fighting. The agreement allows for the implementation of the sharia, or Islamic law, throughout the Malakand division, a region that encompasses nearly 1/3 of the Northwest Frontier Province and is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral. The agreement also calls for the end of military operations. The Taliban
have instituted a 10-day cease fire, while the military has ended offensive operations.

The agreement is viewed as a defeat for the Paksitani government as it has failed to dislodge the Taliban and ceded the writ of the government in the region. Past pacts with the Taliban have allowed the Taliban to consolidate control in the northwest and expand into neighboring regions.

 

http://www.thememriblog.org/urdupashtu/blog_personal/en/13833.htm
Shari’a Deal: Taliban And Govt. To Fight Against Indian Agents

After their Shari’a-for-peace deal, the government of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Taliban have decided to fight against the Indian intelligence agents in the tribal region of Pakistan, according to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Jang.

According to the report, ‘‘The provincial administration and Maulana Sufi Muhammad will immediately take steps to clear the [NWFP’s] Malakand Division of RAW elements and criminals because the government has enough evidence of India’s involvement in the current lawlessness in Swat.’’

RAW, or Research and Analysis Wing, is India’s external intelligence agency. In the image above, a delegation of the Taliban militants of Maulana Sufi Muhammad attend a meeting in Peshawar on Monday where a Shari’a-for-peace deal was finalized and announced.

According to the report, Maulana Sufi Muhammad has agreed to re-open all schools in the Swat district, where the Taliban fighters led by his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah had begun enforcing Islamic Shari’a recently by imposing a total ban on female education.

Maulana Sufi Muhammad will personally provide assistance in re-deployment of policemen in the Swat district, the report added. The Taliban fighters have recently taken over police stations and established Shari’a courts.

Source: Roznama Jang, Pakistan, February 17, 2009; Roznama Mashriq, Pakistan, February 17, 2009

Posted at: 2009-02-17

 

United States Action – Jeffrey Imm

February 12, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com

Afghanistan: Pro-Taliban militant behind Kabul attacks, say sources
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3010279142

(Afghanistan) Thousands of US weapons at risk of loss in Afghanistan — report
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/12/missing.afghan.weapons/index.html?section=cnn_latest
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25048189-23109,00.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090212/wl_afp/usafghanistanmilitarypoliticscongress_20090212195004
– GAO report on Afghanistan weapons security
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/12_02_09_GAOreport.pdf

(Afghanistan) Obama weighs adding troops in Afghanistan
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/12/asia/12prexy.php

(Afghanistan) Elderly bomber kills policeman — suicide bombing in Paktika
– “An elderly man, who appeared to have difficulty walking, blew himself
up and killed a policeman who was helping him in Afghanistan overnight, a local official said”
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25048200-23109,00.html

(Afghanistan) In Ruins, Bin Laden’s Former Home Still Haunts
– “Terrorist’s Presence is Still Felt on Trip to Remains of His Afghan Compound”
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/International/story?id=6863981&page=1

(Pakistan) NWFP: Militants claim killing three soldiers in Swat — Barikot protesters give deadline for Shariah enforcement
– “thousands of protesters set a three-day deadline to the
government to implement the Shariah or they would march towards Islamabad”
– “thousands of residents staged a rally in favour of the Shariah
implementation in Barikot. The protesters, who had come from surrounding
villages and gathered in the Barikot Square, warned that if the Shariah law
was not enforced within three days, they would march towards Islamabad on foot”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=20265
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=2/12/2009#4

(Pakistan) Tension in Swat so far claims 3000 lives, 200,000 displaced
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?211329
— Pakistan: Government must protect people from Swat valley’s 3,000 Taleban
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18073
— Comment: sadly AI doesn’t grasp that the Taliban come from “the people”

(Pakistan) NWFP: Militants torch school in Swat
– also rocket fired at Matta police station
– remote control bomb used in attack on security forces convoy in Kanju
http://www.geo.tv/2-12-2009/35022.htm

(Pakistan) NWFP: Checkpost blown up in Mianwali
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg7_30

(Pakistan) NWFP’s Tank District: Taliban infighting led to beheading of Polish engineer
– Zakir Mehsud: “If God wishes, people would see more and more beheadings of nonbelievers in the future.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162048

(Pakistan) FATA: Five militants, soldier killed in Bajaur
— Taliban “sets three-day deadline for army to vacate schools”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg7_12
Pakistan Dawn on FATA: “there isn’t even talk of regaining that territory any time soon”
— calls “Americans’ anti-terror strategies” as “questionable”
http://www.dawn.com/2009/text/ed.htm#1

(Pakistan) Security on high alert in Islamabad
— “security arrangements have been heightened in the federal capital amid threats of terrorism”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68413
 
Pakistan wants more from US
– “Pakistan warned US special envoy Richard Holbrooke on Tuesday
it expected more from the United States in return for its cooperation against Al Qaeda and the Taliban”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg1_9

(Pakistan) US will assist Pakistan in curbing militancy, says Holbrooke
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg1_2

(Pakistan) Obama speaks to Zardari over telephone: US, Pakistan agree on ‘active engagement’ — on “extremism and terrorism”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg1_1

(Pakistan) Baluchistan: Six ‘Taliban’ arrested near Quetta
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/12/top12.htm

(Pakistan) Punjab: Militant ring active in Punjab, NA told
http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/23/top6.htm
(Pakistan) U.S. Ex-CIA Riedel to review Pak-Afghan policy
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg7_11
2/12/09
Ex-CIA Riedel to review Pak-Afghan policy

 WASHINGTON: South Asian security expert Bruce Reidel, whose latest book on Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan hit the shelves recently, was named by United States President Barack Obama to carry out an inter-agency review of US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. Reidel would look at both political and military matters and present his findings to Obama directly.According to his colleagues, the ex-Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official’s book – The Search for Al Qaeda – provides a deep insight into the terror network’s operations in the region and is a must read for regional policy makers and experts. The book is easily available at local bookstores. agencies
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Mumbai terrorists launched plot from Pakistan
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-mumbai13-2009feb13,0,1284339.story
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,491364,00.html
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/international/2009/February/international_February927.xml&section=international

(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Pak admits part of 26/11 plotted on its soil
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pakistan-admits-part-of-2611-plotted-on-its-soil/articleshow/4117071.cms
– Pakistan’s partial admission on Mumbai attacks ‘positive’: India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Paks-admission-on-Mumbai-positive-India/articleshow/4119608.cms
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Lashkar slams Pakistan’s Mumbai attack probe report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lashkar-slams-Pakistans-Mumbai-attack-probe-report-/articleshow/4119862.cms

(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Global link in Mumbai attack, Pak
gives details – mentions money in Italy, web domain in Russia and U.S., satellite phone in a “Middle Eastern country”
– “money for the attackers was paid in Italy and the amount came from Islamabad”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Global_link_in_Mumbai_attack_Pak_gives_details/articleshow/4119711.cms

(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Pakistan arrests ‘main operator’ in Mumbai attacks’ — Interior Adviser Rehman Malik
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090212/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_india
— challenge with credibility of Rehman Malik
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unitedstatesaction/message/19218

(India) Mumbai police admit local support for Mumbai attack
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Local-support-for-Mumbai-attack-Police/articleshow/4120290.cms
– After admitting local support for 26/11, Gafoor now retracts
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/After-admitting-local-support-for-2611-Gafoor-now-retracts/articleshow/4120545.cms
(India) Terror strikes an assault on values of India: President
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Terror-strikes-an-assault-on-values-of-India-President/articleshow/4116404.cms
India to spare no efforts to fight cross-border terror: Pranab
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/India-to-spare-no-efforts-to-fight-cross-border-terror-Pranab/articleshow/4116259.cms
(India J&K) Hizbul Mujahideen militant gets 19 years in prison killing ex-MLA
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Top-Headlines/Hizbul-militant-gets-19-year-RI-for-killing-ex-MLA/articleshow/4119553.cms

(U.S.) Now that the global jihad is over, FBI mulling shifting agents out of counterterrorism
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024807.php
— FBI may shift counterterror agents to anti-fraud
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_go_ot/bailout_fraud

(Pakistan) Federal Shariat Court seeks amendment in Qanun-e-Shahadat: Rapist can’t be exonerated by accusing victim of immorality
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg7_1

Propaganda
(Pakistan) Drones killing innocent people, says ex-US AG Ramsey Clark
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\12\story_12-2-2009_pg7_9
— reports on gadfly founder of International Action Center (IAC) interlinked with Communist Workers World Party (WWP)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7889368F-AF90-4A24-8889-CF26E08A752F
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/themany.html
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6155
Background on Pakistan’s Interior Adviser Rehman Malik’s past statements and positions:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unitedstatesaction/message/19218
— January 30, 2009: Pakistan’s “Interior Adviser Rehman Malik assured the Upper House that the government was making serious efforts for [Al-Qaeda suspect] Dr Aafia’s repatriation”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20091\30\story_30-1-2009_pg7_16
—– on Aafia Siddiqui
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,593195,00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6275546
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5710043&page=1
— January 27, 2009: Pakistan National Assembly members dispute Rehman Malik’s optimistic picture on Swat – “It is all lies that are being told”
http://www.dawn.com/2009/01/27/top2.htm
— January 22, 2009: Rehman Malik blames NW problems on ‘Foreign hands patronizing terrorists in Swat, FATA’ — http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20091\22\story_22-1-2009_pg1_6
— December 2, 2008: Rehman Malik calls for proof of Pakistan involvement in Mumbai attacks
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\122\story_2-12-2008_pg1_2
— September 23, 2008: Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik tells Dawn on Islamabad Marriott Bombing: “It is unfair to target thousands of people in a hotel to kill two Americans”
http://www.dawn.com/2008/09/22/top2.htm
— June 28, 2008: No more suicide attacks in Pakistan: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20086\28\story_28-6-2008_pg7_17
— June 22, 2008: ‘Pakistan to fight anti-terror war but not on its own soil’ — Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20086\22\story_22-6-2008_pg7_17
— June 21, 2008: Osama is not in Pakistan, says Malik
http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/21/top16.htm
— June 11, 2008: “On the imposition of Shariah law in Swat Valley, Malik said it was decided in 1962, at the time of accession of state of Swat to Pakistan, that Shariah would be enforced there”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20086\11\story_11-6-2008_pg1_3
February 13, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/4610631/Female-suicide-bomber-kills-dozens-in-Iraq.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090213/wl_nm/us_iraq_violence
(Afghanistan) US soldier killed in Afghanistan clash — Uruzgan province
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1975598&Language=en
(Afghanistan) Security on high alert in Kabul as Taliban vows more attacks
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1975600&Language=en
(Afghanistan) Smaller British Afghan role expected
– in Musa Qala, US commanders “blamed the British for withdrawing and allowing the city to become a haven for insurgents”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/13/Smaller_British_Afghan_role_expected/UPI-75321234529455/
(Pakistan) NWFP: Five rockets fired at police station in Bannu
http://www.geo.tv/2-13-2009/35052.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP’s Kohat: Suspected Taliban kill two women in Pakistan: officials
— “Police official Riaz Khan said the slain women had a ‘bad reputation’
and about a year ago were warned by people to abandon their ‘immoral ways’”
— “The bullet-riddled bodies of the women, about 25 and 40 years old, were dumped on a roadside”
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090213/world/pakistan_unrest_northwest_crime_women_1
(Pakistan) NWFP: Taliban threaten to attack more ANP leaders
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/13/top12.htm
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg7_1
(Pakistan) NWFP: Lawyer seeks release of Swat, Dir jailbirds — petition to Peshawar High Court – as secular courts not functioning
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162312
(Pakistan) NWFP: Swat operation must stop, say civil society organizations
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/13/nat8.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: Use of force not only option in Swat: PM Gilani
http://www.geo.tv/2-13-2009/35086.htm
(Pakistan) Punjab: Taliban spreads into Pakistan’s heart
– Taliban “warned women to wear the burqa and threatened them with acid attack”
http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/feb/13guest-taliban-spreads-into-pakistans-heart.htm
(Pakistan) East Pakistan like situation in Swat: Imran
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68494
(Pakistan) FATA: Taliban rockets kill policeman in N Waziristan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg7_4
(Pakistan) FATA: 2 would-be bombers held
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162316
Pakistan has to earn India’s trust, says US intel chief
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pakistan-has-to-earn-Indias-trust-says-US-intel-chief/articleshow/4125173.cms
– Pakistan wish list exposes Holbrooke challenge
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg7_15
(Pakistan) Mumbai attacks: After 79 days, Pakistan admits 26/11 plotted from its soil
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/After-79-days-Pak-admits-2611-plotted-from-its-soil/articleshow/4117071.cms
— Islamabad hands over Mumbai probe report to New Delhi
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\13\story_13-2-2009_pg1_1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4604250/Pakistan-admits-Mumbai-terrorists-operated-on-its-soil.html
(Pakistan) Mumbai attacks: 6 suspects of Mumbai attacks arrested, US term as ‘good step’
— arrested include: “Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) commander”
— also Javed Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Zarar Shah, Mohammad Ashfaq and Abu Hamza
http://www.geo.tv/2-13-2009/35064.htm
— Suspects to be tried in camera — aka closed courts
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/13/top2.htm
(Pakistan) Mumbai attacks: Confusion over reports about Pak filing case against Kasab
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Confusion-over-reports-about-Pak-filing-case-against-Kasab/articleshow/4114366.cms
Pakistan presses India over Mumbai investigation
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_india_9;_ylt=Anlt5ZY8UKRyjiyYH7ZmVlkBS5Z4
– Pakistan asks India to ‘come clean’ on Mumbai
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Come-clean-on-Mumbai-Pakistan-tells-India/articleshow/4126029.cms
(Pakistan) United Jihad Council slams Pakistan over FIR against Lakhvi
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2009/feb/13mumterror-ujc-slams-pak-over-lakhvi-fir.htm
(India) Mumbai attacks: Mumbai police send Pakistan evidence about attacks
http://www.geo.tv/2-12-2009/35033.htm
(India) Mumbai attacks: Indian court sends Pak-based 26/11 terrorist Kasab to 14-day police remand
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1975621&Language=en
(India) Mumbai attacks: ‘Indian hand’ in 26/11 causes furore
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indian-hand-in-2611-causes-furore/articleshow/4120545.cms
(India) Mumbai attacks: India welcomes Pakistan probe, wants terror camps shut
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090213/india_nm/india379965
(India) Pakistan terror a direct threat: Indian FM
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68461
India Governor: “Capitalism created international terrorism”
– Gujarat Governor Nawal Kishore Sharma
http://www.newkerala.com/topstory-fullnews-92234.html
February 13, 2009 PM Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com
(Pakistan) NWFP: Thousands rally for peace, Shariah in Swat
– “The protestors were holding placards and banners inscribed with
slogans of Shariah. They chanted slogans in support of Shariah law.”
http://www.geo.tv/2-13-2009/35110.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: Militants attack at police checkpost in Bannu
http://www.geo.tv/2-14-2009/35117.htm
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68513
(Pakistan) NWFP: Five Taliban killed, six other injured in Swat
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_17
(Pakistan) NWFP/FATA: Military operation in Fata, Swat must be stopped: Shabbir
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162452
— FATA, Swat operations: Jamaat-e-Islami to mark black day on 18th
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_22
(Pakistan) Taliban is in “huge” amounts of Pakistan: Zardari
– “Zardari said Pakistan had been in denial about the Taliban in the past.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090213/ts_nm/us_pakistan_zardari_1
– Taliban ‘threatens Pakistan’s survival’
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25053181-23109,00.html
— In May 29, 2008 – Zardari tells Washington Times: “In this young
century, dictatorship has been sustained under the guise of a so-called
war on terror. All that has been accomplished is to strengthen the
extremists and turn the people of our nation away from the United States.”
— in same interview Zardari’s approach to those in tribal areas
supporting Taliban? “It is now time to engage them… [calling for] political engagement, economic and social reform”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/29/it-is-time-for-reconciliation-zardari-says/
—- Comment: rather Pakistan has been and remains in denial about Islamic supremacism in Pakistan
(Pakistan) President Zardari: “US should adopt holistic approach to terrorism”
– “President says US should expedite work for passage of Kerry-Lugar bill”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_15
(Pakistan) US strategy on drone attacks soon: FM Qureshi
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg1_3
– same Qureshi who wants U.S. to negotiate with Taliban
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSISL24406020090210?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?— Pakistan bases not being used for drone attacks, says Defense Minister Mukhtar
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg1_2
(Pakistan) NWFP: Officials questioning New Zealander arrested from Peshawar — Mark Taylor
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_31
(Pakistan) Five ’suicide bombers’ held in Quetta
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_13
(Pakistan) Baluchistan: Kidnappers threaten American abducted in Pakistan
– “letter accompanying the video delivered to a Pakistani news agency said the hostage, John Solecki, would be killed within 72 hours”
– “Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Quetta”
– held by Baluchistan separtists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_kidnapped_american
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Abducted-UN-official-in-Pakistan-appears-in-video/articleshow/4127211.cms
(Pakistan) US resolution condemns release of Pak scientist A Q Khan — Congressman Ed Royce
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Top-Headlines/US-resolution-condemns-release-of-Pak-scientist-A-Q-Khan/articleshow/4126943.cms
– Royce Introduces Resolution Condemning Pakistan’s Release of A.Q. Khan 
http://www.royce.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=111200
– U.S. House of Resolution Submitted
http://www.royce.house.gov/UploadedFiles/AQ_Khan_Resolution.pdf
– February 6, 2009: Pakistan Frees Black Market Nuke AQ Khan-”Father of Islamic Bomb”
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unitedstatesaction/message/19203
(Pakistan) Rumor Alert: 17-year old boy tell Pakistani media: “Mehsud has severed contacts with Fazlullah”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\14\story_14-2-2009_pg7_4
February 14 and 15, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com
(Pakistan) Government and TNSM agree on sharia enforcement in Swat
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg1_12
– NWFP Sharia Enforcement: “A five-point agreement for the enforcement of Shariat
in Malakand Division has been finalized in the successful talks held between the NWFP government and Maulana Sufi Muhammad”
http://www.geo.tv/2-15-2009/35200.htm
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68640
– NWFP: ANP – “federal government’s go-ahead to the enforcement of sharia in Swat
and other districts of Malakand could help quell militancy by 30-45 percent”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg7_17
– Govt claims breakthrough in Shariah regulation in Swat
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68593
– NWFP govt serious in forging consensus to resolve Swat problem: Iftikhar
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162650
— February 13, 2009: NWFP: Thousands rally for Shariah in Swat
http://www.geo.tv/2-13-2009/35110.htm
— February 12, 2009: NWFP: “thousands of protesters set a three-day
deadline to the government to implement the Shariah or they would march towards Islamabad”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=20265
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=2/12/2009#4
— June 11, 2008: “On the imposition of Shariah law in Swat Valley,
[Prime Minister] Malik said it was decided in 1962, at the time of accession
of state of Swat to Pakistan, that Shariah would be enforced there”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20086\11\story_11-6-2008_pg1_3
(Pakistan) NWFP: Imran Khan to hold talks with Swat Taliban
— Khan “urged the government to immediately implement Shariah in Swat”
— Khan: “‘The government must devise new policy to safeguard the interest
of Pakistan rather than the US in the region,’ the PTI chief said, adding that
demand of Swat people should be fulfilled by enforcing Shariah.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162637
(Pakistan) NWFP’s Peshawar: All Party Conference (APC) on Swat to study Sharia initiative
– “President Zardari was weary of the initiative that might harm his secular credentials in western capital”
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/15/local11.htm
 
(Pakistan) NWFP: Taliban announce cease-fire in Pakistan’s Swat
– “A Taliban spokesman says the militants will adhere to a 10-day cease-fire
in Pakistan’s Swat Valley during peace talks with the government”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090215/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_28
http://www.geo.tv/2-15-2009/35206.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,493227,00.html
(Pakistan) NWFP: Taliban free captive Chinese engineer in Pakistan — held captive for nearly 6 months
– “the militants freed the Chinese captive after the government agreed to impose Islamic law in their region”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090215/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_27
– September 24, 2008: “Pakistan will seek nuclear fuel assistance from China in a bid to build 10 new nuclear power plants”
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/24/Pakistan_China_in_nuclear_fuel_deal/UPI-24751222260236/
(Pakistan) NWFP: Taliban kill two policemen in Peshawar
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg7_23
(Pakistan) NWFP: Fear of Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) reaction prevails in Peshawar
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162638
(Pakistan) Taliban, Qaeda support increasing in Pakistan, says Musharraf
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg1_9

(Pakistan) FATA: 28 killed in suspected US missile strike
– “in Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s stronghold in South Waziristan”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg1_1
(Pakistan) Karachi: Six Baitullah accomplices arrested
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162729
(Pakistan) Three suicide jackets recovered from Islamabad
http://www.geo.tv/2-14-2009/35158.htm
(Pakistan) Let Pakistan operate the drones: Shuja
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg7_6
— DiFi: U.S. Drones ‘Flown Out Of A Pakistani Base’
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/02/difi-us-drones-flown-out-of-a.html
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/14/top2.htm
(Pakistan) Federal Investigation Agency foils attempts to hack its website
http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/15/top2.htm
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Mumbai attackers house traced: Report
– in Pakistan’s Sindh province
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/House-where-Mumbai-attacks-planned-traced/articleshow/4132240.cms
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Pak to question 26/11 ‘mastermind’ Lakhvi
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-to-grill-2611-mastermind-Lakhvi/articleshow/4131348.cms
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: We may seek Kasab’s custody if investigation demands: Pak
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-says-it-may-seek-Kasabs-custody-India-refuses/articleshow/4128679.cms
Saudis linked to Mumbai jihad massacres
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024854.php
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=2854&TTL=The_Saudi_Connection_to_the_Mumbai_Massacres:_Strategic_Implications_for_Israel
(Pakistan/Afghanistan) US working to regain Pakistan’s trust: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mullen
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\15\story_15-2-2009_pg1_2
— Mullen’s propaganda on Washington Post: “Building Our Best Weapon” — again says U.S. merely against “extremists”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302580.html?sub=AR
(Afghanistan) Iran Is Helping Taliban in Afghanistan, Petraeus Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=anoeJZOUXV88&refer=home
— same Petraeus who supports talks with the enemy himself
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-articles/109.html#Petraeus
(Afghanistan) Two ISAF soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1975945&Language=en
Afghanistan joins US ‘war on terror’ review
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090215/ts_afp/afghanistanusdiplomacy_20090215145921
(Afghanistan) Washington Post writer visits Afghanistan’s “Jihad Museum in Herat” – Edward P. Joseph
- still thinks Afghanistan’s problems about government corruption, education, development
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021301649.html

Afghan court upholds sentences in Quran trial
– “An appeals court in Afghanistan upheld 20-year prison sentences
Sunday for two men who published a translation of the Quran that drove religious leaders to call for their execution”
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/15/asia/AS-Afghan-Translation-Trial.php

(Afghanistan) Censorship blurry for Afghan TV
– Tolo TV: “A young Afghan woman in a headscarf spends all day
staring at other women’s bodies and Hindu idols on her computer screen, then covering them up”
– more about “democracy” in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.afghantv15feb15,0,5266015.story?track=rss
— December 31, 2008: USAID – Afghan Journalists Tell a Story of Better Business
—- U.S. AID focuses on Tolo TV’s business stories
http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/Article.505.aspx
— April 1, 2008: Afghanistan Parliament bans dancing on TV as “un-Islamic”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/020520.php
— Januar 11, 2008: Afghan clerics campaigning against “un-Islamic” TV shows
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/019519.php
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3167881.ece
— August 18, 2007: Afghan govt raids TV station over news clip: broadcaster
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSISL6784520070418
Propaganda:
(India) ‘Jihad and terrorism poles apart’ — Deobandis
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Jihad-and-terrorism-poles-apart/rssarticleshow/4129933.cms
— September 8, 2007: “One of the world’s most respected Deobandi
scholars believes that aggressive military jihad should be waged by Muslims ‘to establish the supremacy of Islam’ worldwide.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2409833.ece
February 16, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com

(Iraq) Al-Qaida leader arrested — Saadi Naef Ali Rikhait
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/15/Al-Qaida_leader_arrested/UPI-60381234740586/
(Iraq) Suspected al-Qaeda rapist held
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2470365,00.html
(Afghanistan) US troops kill Taliban’s shadow governor for Badghis province
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/us_troops_kill_talib.php
– Commander among nine Taliban killed in Afghanistan
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1976271&Language=en
– Taliban seethe over a leader’s death
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/16/asia/afghan.php
(Afghanistan) Newest US troops in dangerous region near Kabul
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090216/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_surge_begins
— Santorum warns against withdrawal
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2009/02/16/news/local/doc4999e4f49c045075958567.txt
(Afghanistan) Danish soldiers negotiating with Afghan Taliban: report
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Danish_soldiers_negotiating_with_Afghan_Taliban_report_999.html
(Pakistan) NWFP chief minister says President Zardari approved Shari Nizam-e-Adl Regulations
— which will implement Sharia law in NWFP
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_1
(Pakistan) Taliban welcomes Malakand pact – to implement Sharia law
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_4
– Taliban leaders welcome Sharia regulation 2009
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68270&Itemid=38
– Why Taliban is happy with the Pakistan government
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2009/feb/17pak-taliban-happy-with-pakistan-government.htm
– Taliban Rules Swat
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/16/opinion/smith/main4804722.shtml

(Pakistan) Malakand people welcome decision
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg7_37
– Religio-political parties back Nizam-e-Adl
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163051
– TNSM endorses accord on Nizam-e-Adl Regulation
http://www.geo.tv/2-17-2009/35287.htm
– Govt had no choice but to enforce Nizam-e-Adl in Malakand: Bilour
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg7_32
– “Peace pact signed in consultation with president”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg7_38
– President will not endorse Malakand pact until peace restored: Sherry
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_2
– Army to obey deal between NWFP govt, TNSM: ISPR
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_3
– Some sections of law ultra constitution: experts
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163052
– Deal beneficial for country: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_5
 
(Pakistan) NWFP: Pakistan signs pact with Taliban, enforces Sharia law – Sharia to be law 80km from Islamabad
—- “United States has said the deals merely give insurgents time to regroup”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US-frowns-as-Pak-signs-pact-with-Taliban/articleshow/4136694.cms
– Pakistan agrees to Islamic law in violent region
— “‘The government is ceding a great deal of space’ to Pakistani militants,
said Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords,” a book on the Pakistani
military. ‘If you are doing that in the settled areas,’ he said, ‘you have lost the tribal areas.’”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/17/asia/17pstan.php
– Sharia imposed on northwest Pakistan in deal with Taleban
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5745194.ece
– Islamic Law to Be Imposed in Parts of Pakistan
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,493564,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29207954/
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/16/asia/AS-Pakistan.php
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/international/2009/February/international_February1224.xml&section=international
– Related video: Losing ground to the Taliban
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29226980#29226980
– Sharia law endorsed in deal with tribal leaders
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3020547082
(Pakistan) India concerned over Sharia law in Malakand
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-concerned-over-Sharia-law-in-Paks-Malakand/articleshow/4139080.cms
– Sharia law deal in Pakistan worries West
http://www.euronews.net/en/article/16/02/2009/sharia-law-deal-in-pakistan/
– “Sharia law is the price of peace in Pakistan”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sharia-law-is-the-price-of-peace-in-pakistan-1623810.html
– Shariah Zone: One Solution for Pakistan?
—- “The odds are heavily stacked against Pakistan’s survival as a democracy”
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/Shariah-Zone-One-Solution-for-Pakistan–il
– Pakistan to end military operation and implement sharia in Malakand Division
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/pakistan_to_end_mili.php
(Pakistan) Australia welcomes Swat deal, urges political dialogue – Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_7
– Pakistan accepts Australian offer to train its forces
http://www.geo.tv/2-17-2009/35298.htm
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/australia-sees-sharia-deal-as-positive-development-rs
(Pakistan) NWFP: Taliban threats chill NWFP entertainers
— fled, kidnapped, killed, or threatened
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg7_39
(Pakistan) FATA: Jets kill five militants in Bajaur
http://www.geo.tv/2-17-2009/35289.htm
Pakistan accused of secretly supporting Taleban — Perves Musharraf was playing ‘double game’ with US
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5747696.ece
– Former President Musharraf: Army, ISI being maligned to weaken Pakistan
— “He denied allegations regarding his ‘double game’ of supporting the Taliban while receiving US funding”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg1_12
— Comment: what was so “secret” about it?
— see also:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/30/asia/30pstan.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/09/asia/AS-GEN-Afghan-Pakistan.php
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-articles/095.html
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-articles/040.html
Pak links Mumbai to Samjhauta blasts: Report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-links-Mumbai-to-Samjhauta-blasts-Report/articleshow/4138778.cms
– more from FM Qureshi who seeks negotiations with Taliban
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Pak yet to confirm arrest of Lakhvi, Zarar Shah
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Pak-yet-to-confirm-LeT-mens-arrest/articleshow/4138826.cms
— No Mumbai suspect, except one, remanded so far
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163104
(Pakistan) Mumbai Attacks: Report – “CIA Helped India, Pakistan Share Secrets in Probe of Mumbai Siege”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021501957.html
– Officials Acknowledge CIA Aid to India, Pakistan in Wake of Mumbai Attacks
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/16/officials-acknowledge-cia-aid-india-pakistan-wake-mumbai-attacks/
(India) Report: “Taliban a common threat, says Holbrooke”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Taliban-a-common-threat-says-Holbrooke/articleshow/4138165.cms
– Holbrooke tells India what it wants to hear…
– last week Holbrooke listened to Pakistan call for negotiations with “reconcilable elements” of Pakistan without protest
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/international/2009/February/international_February770.xml&section=international
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/10/pakistan-hails-holbrookes_n_165700.html
(U.S.) Gitmo detainee: ‘I do pose a threat’ — Yemeni Abdul al Rahman al Zahri
– al Zahri: “I do pose a threat to the United States and its allies. I admit
to you it’s my honor to be an enemy of the United States. I am a Muslim jihadist, and I’m defending my family and my honor.”
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090216/NEWS11/90216041
– 4 Cases Illustrate Guantanamo Quandaries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021501955.html
February 17, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com
Afghan reprisal feared in killing of refugee from Taliban
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25065305-5001561,00.html
– Slain Taliban leader had embarrassed Karzai
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/17/asia/afghan.php
(Afghanistan) Talks with Taliban through Afghan govt only: Kabul
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=68865
(Afghanistan) Karzai spokesman: Holbrooke visit reduced tensions: Kabul
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090217/pl_afp/afghanistanunrestusdiplomacy
— February 8, 2009: Afghanistan President Karzai urges non-Qaeda Taliban to return — as part of “reconciliation”
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=NLetter&id=c834b86f-644d-4dae-b997-41a937d5eabb&&Headline=Karzai+urges+non-Qaeda+Taliban+to+return
(Pakistan) NWFP: Pakistan’s sharia deal to embolden Taliban
– People in the scenic valley witnessed public beheadings and summary
executions by Taliban fighters administering their brand of justice.”
http://www.dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/pakistan-sharia-deal-embolden-taliban–qs
– Rally held in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in support of pro-Taliban cleric
http://www.3news.co.nz/News/Rally-held-in-Pakistans-Swat-Valley-in-support-of-pro-Taliban-cleric/tabid/209/articleID/91591/Default.aspx?ArticleID=91591
(Pakistan) NWFP: Sufi Muhammad: “We will soon open dialogue with the Taliban”
— “Residents lined the route as his caravan of 300 people drove through, waving and shouting ‘Long live peace! Long live Islam!’”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/NATO-cautions-Pakistan-over-talks-with-Taliban/articleshow/4145135.cms
— Talibanizing Pakistan – Militias look to create ’shariah state,’ author says
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=1296515
—- June 10, 2008 – Pakistan and the Growing Threat of a Sharia Mini-State — by Jeffrey Imm
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-articles/087.html
Pakistan Blasted for Creating Taliban Safe Haven With Islamic Law Deal
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494446,00.html
– U.S., allies dismayed by Pakistan deal in Swat
—- Pro-Taliban cleric heads to region to convince militants to stop fighting
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29235292/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29235707/displaymode/1176/rstry/29235292/
(Pakistan) NWFP: Swat valley locals happy to buy Sharia peace
– Swatis are happy but the West isn’t
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=20374
(Pakistan) NWFP: Govt-TNSM deal a high-risk affair
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=20373
(Pakistan) NWFP: Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (Sami) (JUI-S) Maulana Samiul Haq hails Swat peace deal
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=162977
(Pakistan) NWFP: Pakistani woman watches Taliban take over town she loves
– Gul Bibi: “Probably your next 9/11 is going to be from Swat”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/17/pakistan.taliban/index.html
— Canada’s Miss Pakistan World Natasha Paracha: Stop Sharia laws, kick out Taliban nomads
http://www.deccanherald.com/DeccanHerald.com/Content/Feb172009/foreign20090217119091.asp?section=updatenews
(Pakistan) From Pakistan, Taliban Threats Reach New York
– Bakht Bilind Khan kidnapped when he visited Swat, but released for ransom and in U.S.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/17/america/17swat.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/nyregion/17swat.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
(Pakistan) NWFP: Bomb blast targets politician in northwest — near Peshawar
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3026271637
— “bomb exploded outside the home of a town councilor critical of militants”
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/nwfp/car-blast-kills-three-near-peshawar–qs
– Four killed, 16 injured in Peshawar blast
—- car bomb “could be a suicide attack”
http://www.geo.tv/2-17-2009/35338.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: Pakistan denies ‘concession’ for militants in sharia deal
— Information Minister Sherry Rehman: “It is in no way a sign of the state’s weakness”
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/pakistan-denies-concession-militants-sharia-deal–qs
– Pakistan accepts legal system compatible with Shariah
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/16/asia/pakistan.php
(Pakistan) NATO cautions Pakistan over talks with Taliban
– “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Pakistani move still needed to be ‘thoroughly understood.’”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090217/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_62
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/NATO-cautions-Pakistan-over-talks-with-Taliban/articleshow/4145135.cms
– “Clinton Says Extremists Pose ‘Direct Threat’ to Pakistan, U.S.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=axPU0g.zKGlw&refer=india
– International criticism mounts over Sharia deal
http://www.dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/international+criticism+mounts+over+sharia+deal-rs
– Australian foreign minister interviewed on Sharia law deal
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2493179.htm
(Pakistan) Guns alone cannot defeat terrorism: President Zardari
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Headlines/Feb09/17/06.htm
– Pakistan pursuing three-pronged strategy to counter terrorism: President Zardari
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68305&Itemid=39
(Pakistan) Dawn editorialist calls for Swat to be center of Pakistan’s government – “Is Sharia the answer?”
– Shaheen Sardar Ali: “can we please move all government operations to Swat?”
– Shaheen Sardar Ali: “If we are all God-fearing Muslims and if Sharia
as defined by Sufi Mohammad et al, is the only way forward for peace and prosperity, then ought we not, as a country, embrace it?”
– British author Shaheen Sardar Ali is “a professor of law at the University of Warwick, UK”
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/the-paper/editorial/is+sharia+the+answer
– biography for British university professor Shaheen Sardar Ali — consults for NORAD, UNICEF
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/staff/academic/ali/
(Pakistan) U.S. left-wing website on Sharia law in Swat: “why not, the religious nuts have been running that place for a while anyway”
http://wonkette.com/406313/wal-mart-now-under-sharia-law
(Pakistan) Poland: Warsaw presses Pakistan over Pole’s murder
— “slammed Islamabad’s ‘apathy’ over tackling terrorism…. body has still not been recovered”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20092\17\story_17-2-2009_pg7_10
(Pakistan) UN seeks direct contact with Solecki kidnappers
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/un-seeks-direct-contact-with-solecki-kidnappers-ha
(Pakistan) FATA: Osama bin Laden may well be in Parachinar: Report
– FATA’s Parachinar “12 miles from the Pakistan border”
http://www.geo.tv/2-17-2009/35326.htm
— Osama most likely hiding in Pakistan, says scientific study
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2009/feb/17osama-may-be-hiding-in-pak-study.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/Osama-bin-Laden-may-be-hiding-in-Pakistan-Report/rssarticleshow/4145512.cms
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-02-17-osama-geography_N.htm?csp=34
(India) “All 21 alleged Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists have been
chargesheeted for hatching the conspiracy to set off blasts in various cities
including Delhi, Bangalore and Surat”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Chargesheet-against-IM-terrorists/articleshow/4140381.cms

Yemen: Saudis arrested for ‘link’ to Al-Qaeda link
– “part of the Al-Qaeda cell recently formed by Yemeni Naser al-Wahshi,
who is said to have recruited several former detainees released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay”
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3025759396

(Russia) Al-Qaeda gains strength, active in North Caucasus – envoy
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090217/120183833.html
Kyrgyzstan moves to evict US troops
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163038

(Sri Lanka) LTTE taking child soldiers: UNICEF
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/LTTE-taking-child-soldiers-UNICEF/articleshow/4144714.cms
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1976639&Language=en

 

February 18, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com
February 18, 2009 Anti-Terrorism News – UnitedStatesAction.com
(Iraq) Sunni Party Member Shot Dead In Baghdad – Iraqi Lawmaker – in Baghdad
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20090218\ACQDJON200902180358DOWJONESDJONLINE000391.htm&&mypage=newsheadlines&title=Sunni%20Party%20Member%20Shot%20Dead%20In%20Baghdad%20-%20Iraqi%20Lawmaker
(Afghanistan) Karzai to discuss war review in Pakistan Thursday
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/karzai-to-visit-pakistan-on-thursday-islamabad–il
(Afghanistan) Hamid Karzai isolated as Miliband says no more troops
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4690914/Hamid-Karzai-isolated-as–Miliband-says-no-more-troops.html
– “British Foreign Secretary reiterates support for Afghanistan”
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1977009&Language=en
— Comment: David Miliband who seeks Islamic supremacists to “channel” their efforts into gaining political power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/15/david-miliband-war-terror
(Pakistan) NWFP’s Swat surrender: TNSM’s Maulana Sufi Mohammad “leads Swat ‘peace march’ of thousands”
– “Police and witnesses estimated that 15,000 people marched
in the crowd, waving black and white flags as they paraded through town
with the cleric, who advised them to recite only verses from the Holy Quran”
– “‘I have come here to establish peace and I will not leave until this mission is achieved,’ Sufi Mohammad said”
http://dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/pakistan/nwfp/sufi-mohammad-leads-peace-march-swat–qs
– GeoTV: “Mingora heaves sigh of relief by Maulana Sufi-led Peace March”
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35403.htm
– Times of India report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Hundreds-stage-peace-march-in-Swat-valley/articleshow/4149061.cms
– Swat peace rally reporter killed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7896974.stm
– background on Islamic flags
http://islamicweb.com/resources/flags.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: TNSM delegation leaves for Matta — to meet with Taliban’s Maulana Fazlullah
— TNSM’s Maulana Sufi Mohammad “said that the struggle for Shariat
has taken a big leap forward and hoped that peace in the entire country would be restored with the enforcement of Sharia laws.”
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35406.htm
— Islamists group to meet Taliban’s Pakistan chief
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/468279/cs/1/
— Video: Taliban influence spreads
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/02/18/grant.pak.swat.family.affair.cnn?iref=mpvideosview
(Pakistan) NWFP: ‘Democracy is a system of Kufr’: Sufi Mohammad
– additional report by GeoTV
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35430.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: Reporter shot after peace rally in NW Pakistan 
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/18/asia/AS-Pakistan.php
– Geo News Swat reporter Musa Khan Khel shot dead in Matta
—- had gone to area to cover talks between TNSM’s Maulana Sufi Mohammad and Taliban
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Geo-TV-reporter-shot-dead-in-Swat-/articleshow/4151332.cms
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35434.htm
(Pakistan) NWFP: MPs visit Swat after peace accord with militants
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3029866750
(Pakistan) NWFP: US in contact with Pakistan over Swat agreement: State Dept
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35416.htm
— AP: “Allies alarmed by Pakistan deal with Taliban”
—– “A U.S. defense official characterized the deal as a ‘negative development,’ but officials were more cautious in public statements”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan_analysis
(Pakistan) NWFP: Washington Post correspondent Thomas E. Ricks on
“Sharia law in Swat”: “I know it looks like a setback but I suspect this might be a smart move.”
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/02/17/sharia_law_in_swat
– Thomas Ricks wrote for Washington Post on U.S. military from 2000-2008,
continues coverage as a “special military correspondent” for The Washington Post”
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/About_Ricks
– Senior fellow, Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
http://www.cnas.org/node/271
(Pakistan) NWFP: France Worried By Pakistan Sharia Deal Reaction
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20090218\ACQDJON200902180907DOWJONESDJONLINE000637.htm&selected=9999&selecteddisplaysymbol=9999&StoryTargetFrame=_top&mkt=WORLD&chk=unchecked&lang=&link=&headlinereturnpage=http://www.international.na
— Belgium: NATO Objects to Pakistan Truce With Taliban
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/world/europe/18briefs-NATOOBJECTST_BRF.html?_r=1&ref=world
(Pakistan) FATA:  8 militants killed in Khar jet bombing
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35408.htm
(Pakistan) Mumbai attacks: Pakistan may send probe team to India: Gilani
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Pakistan-may-send-probe-team-to-India-Gilani/articleshow/4151386.cms
(Pakistan) Mumbai attacks: Pak says no formal request made to India for Kasab’s custody
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Pak-says-no-formal-request-made-to-India-for-Kasabs-custody-/articleshow/4150644.cms
(India) Mumbai attacks: India rubbishes Pak claim on Kasab’s custody
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/India-rubbishes-Pak-claim-on-Kasabs-custody-/articleshow/4151302.cms
India warns of danger from resurgent Taliban
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35398.htm
(India) Attacking Pakistan not a solution: Pranab
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Attacking-Pakistan-not-a-solution-Pranab/articleshow/4150201.cms
(India) Terrorists may smuggle in nukes via lax ports: Navy
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Terrorists-may-smuggle-in-nukes-Navy/articleshow/4152295.cms
– Indian naval chief warns of nuke attack from sea
http://www.geo.tv/2-18-2009/35404.htm
(U.S.) Court reverses ruling bringing 17 detainees to US
– regarding releasing 17 Uighurs Muslims from Guantanamo Bay
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_go_ot/guantanamo_detainees
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/18/appeals-court-rules-transferring-gitmo-detainees/

Yemen extradites al-Qaida suspect
– Mohammed al-Awfi aka Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/18/Yemen_extradites_al-Qaida_suspect/UPI-84661234979213/

Sri Lanka rules out truce with LTTE, 53 rebels killed in clashes
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lanka_rules_out_truce_with_LTTE_53_rebels_killed_in_clashes/articleshow/4151612.cms?TOI_latestnews

(Pakistan) Christian milkman murdered by Muslim employers — Ashraf Masih
– “The police have begun an investigation but have not yet found the killers.”
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christian.milkman.murdered.by.muslim.employers/22566.htm
(Pakistan) Daughter Fights Muslim Teant and Police for Family Farm
http://www.persecution.org/suffering/ICCnews/newsdetail.php?newscode=9541&title=daughter-fights-muslim-tenant-and-police-for-family-farm