The Massacre at Bajaur

Dear Farooq,
there are two sides of this picture, your article is nothing but a one sided drivel.

there is a fact finding mission send to Bajour not by the government but by the union of lawyers from Peshawar - they will leave tommarrow -
what happened , should not have had happened ! my hunch is that it was Americans trying to de-stabalize the peace pact and blackmailing Pakistani Government ....and nothing more!

why is it that anytime a newsworthy event takes place in pakistan bozos behind this website immediately put the worst possible spin on that event? for example when economic indicators began to show that economy was turning around this website published a spate of articles rubbishing govt claims. riots after danish cartoons caused these clowns to predict pak would be turning into iran and after death of akbar bugti this website published dozens of articles predicting that pakistan would turn into iraq oh by the end of this year. funnily enough after bugti`s death violence in baluchistan has gone down by 90%, bugti`s party has disbanded and his grandson is hiding in kabul. this article should be seen in similar vein i.e. article has merits if you reside in cuckooland which certainly is the place of residence of chowk-staff.

as far as this even is concerned, this was also the modus operandi in waziristan i.e. the government first took on the militants who had no intention of honoring any agreement. while these people cannot be completely eliminated their ability to cause trouble can be minimized as has been done in waziristan where despite the agreement incidence of violence still takes place against parties linked with the govt. the other important aspect of this incidence is that jui which is the largest islamic and pakhtun party in pakistan was taken on board. thats why if you scour pakistani papers, you wont see maulana fazal-ur-rehman making any strong statements nor his party engaging in serious protests. jui did make a noise but that noise has about as much impact as u.s. statements on democracy in pak. jamat islami obviously will try to capitalize on this event because this is the only way it can gather any support. also if I am not mistaken, jamat has refused to accept the resignation of siraj-ul-haq, the nwfp finance minister who has resigned. also shows that mush’s policy of compromising with the mullahs was a very farsighted policy.

going back to my original question, who gives a rats ass? if this website is the best mush’s opponent can muster, than good luck to them. i would also advise them to stack up on heartburn medicine cause mush’s supporter will have much stronger presence in parliament after the next election.

while the Pakistani official said that the Americans only provided intelligence.


America provided the intelligence(and the drones and the hellfires and the operators) and Pakistani officials insulted the collective intelligence of the Paki public....

btw is it me or does anyone else think that events in indian occupied kashmir are never bought up on this website even though situation in kashmir as much more horrible than any place else in our part of the world?

liberace: Has the CIA dropped a hellfire from one of it`s drones in Indian Kashmir? No? didn`t think so...

how touching. pagal kutta, taking a page out of his forfather`s book - begging to be treated like human by his abusers.

Air force officers held for attempt to murder Musharraf with rockets

By Massoud Ansari in Karachi and Behroz Khan in Chinagai, Bajaur for The Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:13am GMT 05/11/2006

A cabal of Pakistani military officials with access to President Pervez Musharraf`s innermost security circle has been arrested after trying to assassinate him in a rocket attack.

The strike, aimed at the president`s high-security personal residence-office in Rawalpindi, took place shortly after he returned from Britain and the US in late September.

Although the president was not hurt, the attempt demonstrates the political instability engulfing his nation, which was heightened last week by his government`s bombing of a madrassa in north-west Pakistan killing 80 suspected militants.

With hardline religious parties orchestrating strikes and demonstrations, fears are growing that Gen Musharraf`s opponents may make further attempts to remove him by force, creating a power vacuum in the Islamic world`s only nuclear-armed state.

According to Pakistani intelligence sources, about 50 people are being held on suspicion of involvement in the September attack, which involved a battery of Russian-made 107 mm projectiles launched by a signal from a mobile phone. Alarmingly, many are understood to be young officers serving in the Pakistani Air Force, some of whom have access to high-security zones of the presidential offices, parliament and the intelligence service.

Although interrogations have not revealed any of them to have links with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, they are none the less believed to have acted out of growing anger at Gen Musharraf`s alliance with America in its war on terror.

One official said that while the rocket strike itself had been relatively amateurish, it would have probably been lethal had the plotters been assisted beforehand by an Islamic terrorist group.

Al-Qaeda has succeeded in indoctrinating young air force officers before. Two were hanged for their role in planting a 500lb bomb in 2003 blowing up a bridge that Gen Musharraf`s convoy was travelling over. He only escaped with his life because electronic jamming equipment on his car delayed the blast.

A rattled Gen Musharraf has called a meeting with his closest confidants this week to review personal security.

While he relies on the armed forces to keep him in power, loyalty among the military`s lower tiers has become increasingly in doubt because of the perception that he has ``sold out`` Pakistan to the US and its western allies.

Publicly, officials close to the president deny that he faces any challenge from within the forces.

But privately they now admit that the personal threat against him is becoming ``heavier and heavier``, and are predicting serious fall-out from Monday`s helicopter strike at the madrassa in the village of Chinagai, 100 miles north of -Peshawar.

The Pakistani army said the madrassa was an al-Qaeda-linked school, used to train insurgents fighting across the border in Afghanistan.

It was allegedly run by Liaquat Hussain, a fugitive cleric who was a purported associate of al-Qaeda`s second in command leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Residents and local religious parties, however, claim the victims were either innocent Islamic students or teachers. They say that the strike was carried out at the direction of the US military, a claim denied by both Pakistan and Washington.

The madrassa was in the Bajaur province, a tribal area where local religious parties openly support the Taliban. Local leaders have already pledged to carry out suicide attacks to ``avenge`` the killing of ``innocent people``.

``The elimination of Musharraf is a must to restore peace,`` declared Maulana Faqir Muhammad, a pro-Taliban militant commander, as a crowd carrying guns and chanting, ``Death to Musharraf, death to Bush`` protested in the Khar area of Bajaur last week. He described Gen Musharraf as an ``American agent`` who, he said, was ``killing innocent people at the US behest``.

At a funeral of people killed in the strike, another cleric, Maulana Inayat-ur-Rehman, told 15,000 armed protesters that he had prepared a ``squad of suicide bombers`` to target Pakistani security forces in the same way that terrorists were attacking Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gen Musharraf has been on a hit list for Pakistan`s Islamic militants ever since he sided with America in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Although he often claims that ``he is not an easy target``, he wrote in his recently published memoirs In the Line of Fire: ``I only pray that I have more than the proverbial nine lives of the cat.``

talk about taking a page out of your forefathers playbook:

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=333311&sid=NAT

Army for pro-active approach to fratricidal killings: Chief

Srinagar, Nov 03: The Army will adopt a ``pro-active approach`` to address the issue of fratricidal killings in the force, its chief General J J Singh said on Friday.

``I think we need to take a pro-active approach to assess, analyse and address them. We hope to overcome such challenges,`` Singh told reporters on the sidelines of a function here in response to a question on the issue.

Seven fratricidal killings in a period of just 30 days prompted Singh to recently instruct his top commanders to probe such incidents and come up with corrective measures.
...Some 100 suicides were reported during the past four to five years in insurgency-hit states. ``This year too, the number was almost same,`` he said adding the Army was trained to cope with this challenges.


...There has been a sharp rise in suicides and fratricidal killings of fellow officers and colleagues by soldiers and some events of this nature in the past 30 days have shaken the top brass, like the death of a Lieutenant Colonel Saxena, who was shot dead by a soldier in the Harwan region on the outskirts of Srinagar, last month.

Re: # 5


killing two birds with one stone

instead of wasting perfectly good tribesmen from bajaur we should have slipped them over the border into occupied kashmir ........... their lust for jihad would have been satisfied and in the end they would have ended up dead, like we want them, but at least we would have a few less horrible hindoos to deal with ........ now that is what i call a win-win !

.....it is a sad day when a country bombs its own people......it is even more sad, when it does so for the benefit of another country.......anytime any country kills, occupies, invades etc. its own citizens, it weakens greatly......

........my guess is that the americans bombed the madrassah from a drone.......american news sites are stating this also.........had the pakistan military done it, they would have provided evidence immediately........

........no civilized country ever bombs its own people........musharraf needs to figure out whether his aim is to satisfy the population of pakistan or that of the usa.......after all he is the president of pakistan, not of usa........

.......on the other hand, it is incidences like this, which increase the hatred of the usa amongst pakistanis..........would the usa bomb an apartment building in idaho if timothy mcveigh was their..........in fact, would the usa bomb an apartment builidng in idaho, if it knew mullah umar was there..........i doubt it.......ironically the usa will bomb a building in pakistan, killing innocents, if it thinks mullah umar is there.........and the pakistan govt. will then defend the attack, by claiming it to be its own.......

..........pakistan is once again getting itself caught as a, ``frontline state,`` in the us gwot.........it did so in the original afghan war and is still paying the price........i see the same disaster scenario developing again.........the afghan (taliban etc.) are eventually going to kick out the usa from afghanistan......this is getting more and more obvious..........they will not be strong enough to strike usa however............they will be strong enough to strike pakistan.........

........musharraf needs to start doing what the people of pakistan want him to do.......which, at the moment, is to stop bombing the tribal areas.........as stated earlier, he carried out the coup to become the president of pakistan.......if he wants to do what the american populace wants him to do, then he should have carried out a coup in the usa..........

........bombing of tribal areas is going to be musharraf`s waterloo.........there is huge amounts of opposition to it, down to the soldier level, in the military.........and the religious parties are going to gain a lot of popularity on this issue.........not to mention the fact that God knows how many innocent civilians are getting killed there.........

#11 by bulleya on November 5, 2006 4:10pm PT

Capt Clueless: As much as I thought you were clueless(or self-deluded) for making certains remarks over the years, that was a very well reasoned argument.

What you`re now seeing is the jihadi tiger you were hoping to ride on to srinagar and kabul is how heading to islamabad and you can`t get the hell off..

hamidm,

i agree this is very sad event. tribesmen are very patriotic people and such events will upset even those who want arabs and other foreigners out of fata. however govt just cant stand there and allow pak army jawan to become sitting ducks. around 800 officers have been killed and these killings have not stopped even after the signing of waziristan agreement.

there are a small number of tribesmen who are providing shelters to foreigners who are enemies of pakistan. i am glad that govt is taking these people on rather than burrying its head in the sand. going forward however i hope use of airpower will not be necessary. among other reasons use of airpower provides propaganda victory to opponents.

actually pretty much most countries in our neighbourhood bomb their own people. sri lankans bomb tamils, iranians and turks bomb the kurds. this does not mean that use of force is appropriate for every occasion but force when used strategically can provide a solution such as in karachi in the mid-90`s when death toll was at least 5x the number of killed in fata.

i think it will be useful to remind people how the situation has reached where it is. here are the sequence of events:

i. since the start of 1960`s, uncle sam has been interfering in the m.e. much to the detriment of the region.

ii. uncle sam`s actions have justifiably pissed off a lot of arabs and muslims in general.

iii. until 9/11 actions against americans were limited outside the u.s.

iv. on 9/11 arab war against the u.s. was bought home by arabs/muslims based in afghanistan.

v. in response, u.n. has given americans carte blanche. this means pakistan or any other country will have to do what americans demand.

vi. failure to cooperate with americans will result in certain actions. under this scenario u.s. and intl community will impose sanctions or worse bomb pakistan

vii. imposition of sanction will pretty much mean the end of pakistan as we know it. pak`s foreign currency reserves will be frozen and restrictions placed on intl trade which means no oil for pakistan.

viii. without oil pak`s economy will collapse. there will be no electricity, no transportation, no health care, no army etc. pakistan`s situation will be much worse than that iran or iraq because both countries have oil.

xi. once the economy collapses all bets are off. sindh and baluchistan certainly will go their own way because unlike the pathans, sindhis and mohajirs are not anti-american will not suffer without reason.

i can expand on this scary assed scenario but this should be frightening enough.

Mushrraf recieved 3.7 billion dollars from CIA for selling Pak citizen to GITMO -- I am not asking where all that money go -- I wonder HOW MUCH he got this time for Bajaur!