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Map of the northern regions of the NWFP, including Swat. |
President Pervez Musharraf’s state of emergency five days ago has done little to curb the Taliban’s march in the Northwest Frontier Province. As the security forces continue to arrest opposition leader and work to curb protests in the major cities, The Taliban have taken control of two more major towns in the settled district of Swat, while attacks continue elsewhere in the Northwest Frontier Province.
On November 6, the Taliban overran police stations in and around the town of Matta in Swat. “About two dozen police officers and several troops offered no resistance to militants who seized three police stations and a military post,” the Associated Press reported.
The police and soldiers abandoned their posts and handed over their weapons to the Taliban. The Taliban fighter in Matta raised the white Taliban standard over the police stations and military outpost.
“We didn’t harm the police and soldiers and allowed them to go to their homes as they didn’t fight our mujahideen,” said Sirajuddin, a spokesman for Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, a radical Taliban cleric leading the fight against government forces. Fazlullah has called for government forces to withdraw, the imposition of sharia law, and charges dismissed against his followers.
The Taliban also overran the town of Maydan on Tuesday. “Announcements about the advance were made on a pirate FM radio station run by cleric Mullah Fazlullah, as militants hoisted their party flag on police stations and government buildings and distributed sweets,” Aaj TV reported. The town of Khawazakhela fell to the Taliban late last week.
The Taliban continue to consolidate their hold over Swat as the government seeks to negotiate a truce.
Elsewhere in the Northwest Frontier Province, the Taliban continue to attack government forces. In Kurram Agency, four paramilitary troops of the Frontier Levies were captured after 50 Taliban attacked a checkpoint.
In North Waziristan, the one solder was killed and two wounded during two IED attacks near Miramshah. One of those wounded was a major in the Special Services Group, Pakistan’s elite counterterrorism force.
The Pakistani military has done little to combat the Taliban since the imposition of the state of emergency. Security forces arrested Hamid Gul, the former chief of the Inter Service Intelligence agency and the architect of the Taliban movement. Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the president of the pro-Taliban Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Islamist political party, was put under house arrest.
Security forces are also said to be seeking to recapture the 61 Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists released by order of the Supreme Court earlier this year. “It has been told that all of the 61 are said to be high-profile terrorists,” the Pak Tribune noted.
12 Comments
I noticed in a newspaper article from India where the Taliban were busy today taking down Pakistani flags in the settled areas of Swat, along with setting up Sharia Law Courts. I hope we get all these rats channeled into the Eastern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan area and eliminate them. For the sake of all humanity.
What’s happening with AQ and the Taliban in Afghanistan? Are they moving into Pakistan or are they growing to fill the space that’s been created? If they’re moving this could help Afghanistan.
Hmmmm. Does anyone know how reliable The Asian Age is?
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On Tuesday, President General Pervez Musharraf gave a go-ahead for a massive military action against the pro-Taliban militants in the lawless tribal areas.
The Asian Age: No Pak pullback from LoC
Marlin,
Pakistan Army will not fight the Taliban of whatever variety. Pakistan Army is the Taliban, is so far as members of the PA serve in the Taliban ‘out of uniform’. Pakistan Army is a extremely ‘islamic’ army made that was by the previous dictator Zia al Haq.
So right now if I was a planner in the pentagon I would be warming up the engines of the B2’s and getting the teams ready to secure the WMD’s that Pakistan has. If not then please expect a WMD in the lower 48 states within the next 2 years.
I’ve often thought–well wondered, what would the US do right after a nuke was set off in our country? Sure, it would kill and destroy many, but not the whole country, so we would have a great deal of “muscle” to respond.
I kinda think those perps would get vaporized so fast once we determined where they came from, and those “innocent” civilians who would vaporize with them too!
This is not asking for our country to be nuked, rather it looks at such a reality from just one perspective.
Blind hatred would deliver a nuke to the US and not really care about our response. Narcissism at its worst, or best depending on how one looks at it.
I just don’t want someone I love within the blast zone…matter of fact I don’t want any American within such a blast zone…
Maybe all those Pepsi/Coke salesmen should have told our CIA more about these countries as they went about setting up vending machines in adobe buildings and tacking metal signs overhead advertising their products.
Jihad Central 11-08-2007
All the Jihad news for Today, 11-08-07.
Musharraf Arrests Four Officials For Treason, Face Death Sentence — Pat Dollard
Clear and present danger
Because Bono Said So?? — NY Daily News
German al-Qaeda suspect arrested in Turkey — Jihad…
Y’know, I’ve spent the past 30+ years working with our nation’s special weapons and the only “WMD” that scares me is a real nuke. Dirty bombs? No big deal unless you are killed by the explosion – otherwise it’s just another Broken Arrow that can be cleaned up. Sarin? Heck, the panic that ensues will be akin to a Who concert or South American soccer game and that’s where most of your casualties will occur. Bio? Heck again, I’ve gotten so many shots that I leak like a sieve when I imbibe, but other than perhaps smallpox, most of these diseases are containable and treatable, as well as being difficult to disseminate in the first place. But, 5 megatons can ruin your day and that of millions within the blast radius – that’s the scenario that keeps me awake at night. God save us all.
Don’t kid yourself, RP.
Maybe one of the saddest realities of our politically-correct, wishy-washy-Western-culture is that we are increasingly unable to act in our own defense unless the evidence is incontravertible, the guilt of the offender is clear-cut and iron-clad and the response is guaranteed, 100% to not even possibly hurt one “innocent” civilian. Oh, and it can’t offend the sensibilities of anyone in the E.U., China, Russia, the U.N. or Jimmy Carter.
George W. had the nerve to actually go after the Taliban and then Saddam (the latter being something that was a stated and agreed goal of the U.S. since the Clinton administration) and look what outrage still burns, even when it appears that Iraq is on the right track and victory at hand.
Would a nuke on a U.S. city lead, inevitably, to any (let alone massive) retaliation?
Don’t bet it on it. First, the most likely scenario is that the nuke will be smuggled across our wide open Mexican border and then detonated by some shadowy, jihadi group. So we will not know with anything like absolute certainty where and from whom the bomb came from. Does anyone think that the next President is going to nuke Iran or North Korea on the suspicion that they provided the bomb? Especially when both will be proclaiming their innocence and everyone in the MSM, the northeast Elite, Hollywood, UN, EU etc… will be screaming for restraint while Russia and China and every other country bordering on the possible targets of our retaliation will be threatening consequences if we go ahead.
If you doubt this, just look at our flimsy response to Iran’s provocations in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. We have as much proof as any rational person could ever need that Iran is directing a proxy war against us and our allies, but we do next to nothing beyond trying to capture Iranian agents in the country.
We simply have no credibility left with the mad mullahs when we threaten anything because they have attacked and attacked us since 1979 and we have done, essentially, nothing. (Well, Bill Clinton did apologize to the Iranians for how awfully we treated them with that Shah fellow, tsk, tsk.) No one can seriously believe that they fear any, real retaliation from us to a good nuking so long as they have even a sliver of deniability.
Sadly, about 30% of this country is irretrievably given over to the delusion that *we* are the problem in the world and the sooner that America gets down on its knees and begs for forgiveness the sooner World Peace can rule the world. Evil does not exist for these people; they simply cannot bring themselves to believe that evil exists and it must be fought, sometimes with brutal force, if any light and goodness can be preserved.
Sorry for the rather massive tangent. God, bless our troops everywhere.
TS Alfabet, I hear you – when the jihadi Fat Man goes off in NYC, the sad thing is that 100% of America will want to know who is responsible: 70% to know who to go after and your 30% to know who to surrender to, sigh.
TS Alfabet
I was tempted to go off on a similar tangent but hit the erase button.
I think once a nuke goes off the rules change though. The response would be large but more of a methodical war against countries that actively work against us. Of course the scholarly types like to believe our government would go off on some semi-random genocidal kill everything spree. How many people (without an agenda) really think it would happen that way.
Most likely the appeasement for peace brigade would get it’s media megaphone taken away for a few years. I’m not talking government censorship either. Even much of the media would probably get behind action against our enemies for a couple years at least.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 11/08/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
It would seem there been at least a partial change of heart by the Pakistanis.
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As American gun crews adjusted their 105mm howitzers to the co-ordinates of an insurgent group crossing the border from Pakistan, the night’s mission seemed like scores before it.
A brief pause, a sudden command and the surrounding mountains were illuminated by a stab of light as the guns launched their shells.
But this time something was different. Of the numerous Taleban infiltrations that the US airborne troops have engaged since arriving at their remote frontier base in eastern Afghanistan five months ago, this was the first time that they had been alerted to the enemy’s movement by Pakistani forces over the border.
Times: Crisis brings hope to one frontier of the War on Terror