Lessons From Another Lahore Tragedy

i think the overwhelming public pressure is starting to take its toll......the dg isi has refused to meet twiddle dee and twiddle dum - holbrooke and mullen......as they continue their visit in pakistan to tell pakistanis which part of pakistan they want to bomb next.....

i am sure the dg isi did so on the govts' order....in addition, the govt. has now put together a policy on the rules of engagement for this war.....this will go to the senate etc......

hopefully, this is the first step in getting the usa out of pakistan's dna...after this one foreign nuisance is removed, pakistan can tolerate on the second one - ttp.......

and then these two entities can fight each other in afghanistan, if they want.......

sattar2 #: "What choice does Pakistan have? Does the Pak army have the resources, if not the will, to take on the taliban? Is there a realistic solution for the Pak govt …?"

...finally some valid questions......rather than the self-centered nonsense thrown around by expats like urstruly, hamidm mian, and tahmad......

this is the kind of discussion that needs to occur....i.e. what should pakistan do, first and foremost, for its own interests.....what options does it have, etc......not what pakistan should do to fight for usa's gwot......all of that is secondary if you ask me.......any nationalistic pakistan (be he secular or religious, male or female) has to first worry about pakistan.....

....here are my comments.....

.....no military will ever be able to defeat the taliban.....or any insurgency, if it has any kind of local support......and has a resource pool of suicide bombers available to it......

.......this is a political and social problem.....and it can be easily solved.....for the simple reason that taliban have no historical or social base in pakistan....there whole oxygen in raison d etre is taking on pakistan's support for the usa in afghanistan......

......pakistan, like any half self respecting country needs to tell the usa that it is not going to allow drone attacks, it is not going to attack even a single pakistani, if there are chances of collateral damage, and it can no longer be the usa's logistical supply line (why in the world should every country join every war the usa wants to fight).....

basically do what turkey did......or what spain did.....or what any country would do.....i think the americans themselves must be amazed at how much pakistanis bend over backwards to appease them......

once this happens, i think the suicide attacks will come down drastically......the population will be united.....and most of all, ttp support will be near zero.....at that time, the national assembly has to lay down a policy for tackling the ttp......

pakistanis dislike the ttp.....it has, perhaps, no more than 25000 - 100000 supporters......compared to 170 million pakistanis.......it cannot last if it is seen as an entity attacking pakistan (for no rhyme or reason).....

......it should be given a political option to leave and go fight in afghanistan, now that pakistan is no longer supporting usa......if it doesn't do so, and continues its thuggery, then a combined military action, with full force, and full support of the pakistani population, should be taken against it, on pakistan's terms.......

that war will, actually, be pakistan's war......and i am quite sure, pakistan will win easily.....as ttp is a foreign phenomenon......much of its money, from what i have researched, i believe comes from pakistani labourers who work in saudi arabia and have become salafis......

do keep in mind that taliban etc. are an alien phenomenon that entered pakistan because pakistan became a frontline state for the usa, in the first afghan war, and now in the second afghan war.......they are not organic.....

Romair, HP, masadi etc. … interesting comments …

I agree in that there is validity to the argument … that US has botched up the GWOT and the resulting anti-US sentiment is fueling the recent rise of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda phenomenon in Pakistan … but where do we go from here?

Granted, neither US nor Pak army wants to fight taliban in Pak-Afghan border mountains …and that US is forcing Pakistan to fight its (USA’s) war. What choice does Pakistan have? Does the Pak army have the resources, if not the will, to take on the taliban? Is there a realistic solution for the Pak govt …?

Re: # 344

Yep, it's all gora's fault... pakis have no faults whatsover... LOL

Hasho: So, there was racism in 1944. Welcome to 2009.

wonder how this fits in with prophetboy's "brave paki state taking on the jihadis it had no role in creating" narrative...

will prophetboy try to spin this? or will it be the usual "people who post such news are hateful" shtick?

ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates
By Anwar Iqbal
Tuesday, 07 Apr, 2009 | 12:34 AM PST |

WASHINGTON: The ISI’s contacts with the Hekmatyar, Haqqani and the Nazir groups are a real concern for the United States, says US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates.

In a recent interview to an Afghan television channel, Mr Gates also expressed concern over Pakistan’s agreement with the militants in Swat saying that such deals only allow the militants to reassemble and revive their strength.

‘The ISI's contacts with some of these extremist groups —with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network, Commander Nazir (sp) and others —are a real concern to us,’ said Mr Gates.

‘We have made these concerns known directly to the Pakistanis. And we hope that they will take action to put an end to it.’

‘Are US drones flying from Afghanistan to hit militant hideouts in the Pakistani territory?’ he was asked.

‘I can't talk about our military operations, obviously. But the president (Obama) has made clear that we will go after al Qaeda and their planning cells and their training centres, wherever they are in the world.’

And the roots to the problem the US has the world over come from this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7984436.stm

Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a "whites only" victory.

Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.

Yet the BBC's Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital.

By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Senegalais, lay dead.

Many of them were simply shot where they stood soon after surrendering to German troops who often regarded them as sub-human savages.

Their chance for revenge came in August 1944 as Allied troops prepared to retake Paris. But despite their overwhelming numbers, they were not to get it.

majumdar #: "The only problem is that the Taliban has now acquired some kind of a momentum in Af-Pak region. Even if US quits A'stan, they wont stop and if they are not stopped in time, they will make things worse for Pakistan (wont overwhelm Pakistan though)"

...the taliban has momentum in afghanistan......it's momentum in pakistan is only there because of the point i keep repeating: it has portrayed itself as a group of people who are fighting an american occupation in afghanistan......and it has, to some people, portrayed its violence, in pakistan, as a targeting of a country (pakistan), which is the logistical supply line of the usa......

....one needs to analyze ttp a bit better, to figure out how to handle it......it has miniscule electoral support in pakistan.....not even one seat, i think....it has no social history in the country......it has no religious history in the country.....it is made up primarily of deobandis, which originated from india......and funded by wahabis and salafis, which are the pakistani pathans etc. who go to saudi arabia, as labour (much like pakistani expats become mini neo cons, after living too long in the usa, pakistanis in saudi arabia become mini wahabis).......

while pakistanis are primarily a much more moderate bralevi school of social thought and hanafi school of jurisprudence thought.......deobandis are alien to this land, to some extent....and wahabis and salafis are totally alien....

......ttp came into existence, barely two years ago......what is the oxygen that is keeping it alive and giving it legitimacy.......it is pakistan's participation in supporting gwot and the legitimacy it gets from that.....and the resource pool it gets from all the collateral damage (read brutal killings) by the usa war machine in pakistan......

pakistan cannot handle the ttp if it does not separate out its war against ttp, from gwot....if it does separate it out, then ttp will die a death, rather quickly.......it will be reduced to a group of armed thugs......with no oxygen to breath......they will cause trouble, but will not be able to grow.....

Faisalabad next target of terrorism: Kaira

* Information minister admits government has lost its writ in Swat

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira has said terrorists had planned to make Faisalabad their next target, a private TV channel reported on Monday.

At a dinner hosted in his honour in Lahore, the information minister admitted the state had no writ in Swat, and that the terrorists had better resources than Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

He said the public flogging of a 17-year-old girl by Taliban in Swat occurred three months ago and highlighting the incident now was meant to pressurise the government.

Kaira urged the media to play a positive role against terrorism.

#332 Posted by bulleya
"as long as the ttp can link their cause to opposing american occupation in afghanistan, and as long as their is collateral damage, they will always have a resource pool available in pakistan."

Couldn't agree more! Absolutely correct.The resentment to the US goes far back. 2001 US attack just fueled the fire. The true roots are the British colonial treatment of the area, Bacha Khan's anti British stand and after the partition, the US dominance in Pakistani affairs.

The Taliban and their allies are cashing on the hatred against the colonial rule which was associated with the white race.

#342 Posted by tahmed32 on April 7, 2009 4:37:02 am


Because that young girl who was whipped by the taliban was the daughter of every Pakistani.


Does that include the security establishment that's still supporting the jihadis..

say what you want about capt clueless, he isn't completely dishonest like prophetboy here...

bulleya: So, it took you two days to figure out what you would do if an intruder attacked your wife. But if the intruder attacked your neighbor's house, you would do nothing.

Fair enough. Dont call yourself a Pakistani then. Because that young girl who was whipped by the taliban was the daughter of every Pakistani. That is why people in town all over Pakistan came out to protest. That is one brave Pakistani risked his life to record the beating. That is why Samar Minallah risked her life to distribute the recording. This beating means nothing only to beghairats like you.

hey capt clueless..if you're in pakiland and want to stay safe from the CIA drone attacks, wear a tshirt with a redskins logo...no agency operative is going to whack a redskins fan..under no circumstances should you be wearing a dallas cowboys jersey...


April 7, 2009
More Drone Attacks in Pakistan Planned
By ERIC SCHMITT and CHRISTOPHER DREW

WASHINGTON — Despite threats of retaliation from Pakistani militants, senior administration officials said Monday that the United States intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country.

On Sunday, a senior Taliban leader vowed to unleash two suicide attacks a week like one on Saturday in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, unless the Central Intelligence Agency stopped firing missiles at militants. Pakistani officials have expressed concerns that the missile strikes from remotely piloted aircraft fuel more violence in the country, and some American officials say they are also concerned about some aspects of the drone strikes.

But as Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region, arrived in Islamabad on Monday, the administration officials said the plan to intensify missile strikes underscored President Obama’s goal to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat� Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as to strike at other militant groups allied with Al Qaeda.

Officials are also proposing to broaden the missile strikes to Baluchistan, south of the tribal areas, unless Pakistan manages to reduce the incursion of militants there.

Influential American lawmakers have voiced support for the administration’s position.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged last week that “the price is very heavy� when missile strikes mistakenly kill civilians, but he said the strikes were “an extremely effective tool.�

The plans have met strong resistance from Pakistani officials and have also worried some former American officials and some analysts, who say that strikes create greater risks of civilian casualties and could further destabilize the nuclear-armed nation.

“You will be complicating and compounding anti-Americanism here,� said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and military analyst in Islamabad. “How can you be an ally and at the same time be targeted?�

Some American experts say a crucial change in aerial warfare, in which American forces are now often stalking individuals rather than tanks and other large armaments as in past wars, has raised new legal issues.

A. John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004, argued in a recent scholarly article he wrote with Richard W. Murphy, a fellow law professor, that the United States should follow the lead of the Israeli Supreme Court and require an investigation of “targeted killings� by the C.I.A. to control the practice.

While the notion of remote-control killing may seem chilling, military experts say the drones, which can transmit live video for nearly a day at a time, typically supply the weapons targeting officers with enough information to avoid civilian casualties.

Marc Garlasco, a former military targeting official who now works for Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy group, said the drones had helped limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Air Force uses them to attack people laying roadside bombs and to attack other insurgents.

But in trying to take advantage of what can be fleeting chances to kill top Taliban and Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, the C.I.A. faces a much more difficult task, especially if it follows the targets into more populated areas.

“When you’re operating under very short time frames, like the C.I.A. is in Pakistan, you are exponentially increasing the risk of killing noncombatants,� Mr. Garlasco said.

In Pakistan, the extensive missile strikes have been limited to the tribal areas, and authorities say they have killed 9 of the top 20 Qaeda leaders. American officials say the missile strikes have forced some Taliban and Qaeda leaders to flee south toward Quetta, a city in the province of Baluchistan, which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest.

One of the prized attributes of the drones — the Cessna-size Predators and their larger and more heavily armed cousins called the Reapers — is that they can linger over an area day after day, sending back video that can be used to build a “pattern of life� analysis.

Some experts have compared them to mini-satellites that can monitor a suspected terrorist compound for weeks, watching where the people go and with whom they interact, to help confirm that the right people are being singled out for attack.

Experts say the drones also carry laser-guided weapons with small warheads that are precise enough to kill a group of people in a street without damaging nearby buildings.

Like the military services, the C.I.A. uses computer software to assess possible collateral damage, and the fusing on the bombs can be adjusted to limit their impact.

But in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it can also be hard to evaluate tips about the locations of Taliban or Qaeda leaders if there are no troops nearby to help check them out.

While the Air Force operates its drones from military bases in the United States, the C.I.A. controls its fleet of Predators and Reapers from its headquarters in Langley, Va.

The final preparations for strikes in Pakistan take place in a crowded room lined with video screens, where C.I.A. officers work at phone banks and National Security Agency personnel monitor electronic chatter, according to former C.I.A. officials.

The intelligence officers watch scratchy video captured by the drones, which always fly in pairs above potential targets.

According to the former officials, it is generally the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service or his deputy who gives the final approval for a strike. The decision about what type of weapon to use depends on the target, according to one former senior intelligence official.

Top national security leaders have approved lists of people who can be attacked, officials say, and the lawyers determine whether each attack can be justified under international law.

Mark Mazzetti and Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting.

#333 by bulleya

.......usa is going after the taliban (let's equate them to your missus and usa to harish_hyd's........let them go at each other......why should pakistan get involved........unless it does so on its own terms......

Wrong analogy Captain Clueless. Pakistan is your country (for a moment assume it is your missus), and between the desi dacoit (Taliban) and the American dacoit (US), it is your missus (Pakistan) that is getting screwed. But you seem to think pimping your missus (Pakistan) to the desi dacoit is far better than pimping it to the American dacoit. Got it?

#333 by bulleya

.......usa is going after the taliban (let's equate them to your missus and usa to harish_hyd's........let them go at each other......why should pakistan get involved........unless it does so on its own terms......

Wrong analogy Captain Clueless. Pakistan is your country (for a moment assume it is your missus), and between the desi dacoit (Taliban) and the American dacoit (US), it is your missus (Pakistan) that is getting screwed. But you seem to think pimping your missus (Pakistan) to the desi dacoit is far better than pimping it to the American dacoit. Got it?

#333 by bulleya

.......usa is going after the taliban (let's equate them to your missus and usa to harish_hyd's........let them go at each other......why should pakistan get involved........unless it does so on its own terms......

Wrong analogy Captain Clueless. Pakistan is your country (for a moment assume it is your missus), and between the desi dacoit (Taliban) and the American dacoit (US), it is your missus (Pakistan) that is getting screwed. But you seem to think pimping your missus (Pakistan) to the desi dacoit is far better than pimping it to the American dacoit. Got it?