After a Tactical Retreat Pakistan Army Starts Operation against the Taliban !

Pakistan came around in accepting the policies of the former Government headed by President Musharraf regarding the Taliban in FATA and NWFP. The carrot and stick policy had worked for 2 years.
Peace deals after peace deals and concessions after concessions led to more violence.

Things have changed rapidly though. Pakistani forces are on a higher ground and have full support of the local population. Nafas-e-Adal was implemented in Swat and Dir after a peace deal was signed by the present government. Even with assurances from the Sufi the Taliban refused to disarm. Now they are pitted against each other.

Another twist to the whole scenario. ANP and the religious parties like the JI are all supporting the operation.

The point of no return could be crossed if the Taliban are not subjected to decisive and telling action by the army. Taliban have moved into Swat to Buner and then into Shangla. They have now agreed to withdraw from Buner, but not without conducting a huge recruitment drive that ensured that the district would remain under the control of ‘local’ Taliban.

Pakistan is ceding territory by the day and anyone who thinks that the Taliban advance can somehow be confined to ‘that’ part of the country is sadly mistaken. These barbarians cannot be confined. We have tried buying time from a position of weakness and been witness to the results. Every single ‘deal’, and there have been many of them, has only allowed the Taliban to regroup and prepare for fresh assaults against the federation. It has to be acknowledged once and for all that the Taliban are the single biggest enemy the country has ever faced since 1947.

The supposedly secular ANP has let Pakistan and the NWFP down with a thud, and the religio-political parties have made it clear, yet again, where their sympathies lie. The security forces did well to take on the Taliban in Lower Dir on Sunday. Let’s not ask at this stage why they didn’t act earlier. It is said that they moved against the militants following requests to do so by local elders and the provincial government. It is also a fact that the operation was launched after security forces came under fire.

Can we argue then that the response was more reactive than proactive? Welcome as it is, the operation in Dir may also strengthen the impression that the military cracks down hard only when its own are attacked. Taliban violence against civilians is largely ignored for some reason. The army chief said the other day that the military would drive back the Taliban if they made any further inroads. Why just ‘drive back’? These people are merciless and have no qualms about indulging in savagery.

It can only be hoped that the operation in Dir is not a one-off move aimed at countering western criticism of Pakistani inaction. To be successful, it has to be part of a wider strategy of taking on the Taliban with all the force the military commands. Tribesmen who opposed the Taliban have been losing heart ever since the Swat deal. They thought the government was on their side, and acted accordingly. They are now running scared. A clear message needs to be sent that the government, the army and the people of Pakistan are all on the same page.

As the Army watches -Mardan, Swabi, Haripur are Infiltrated by the Taliban !

(Click on the map to increase size)

RUMOUR MILLS RUN AMOK :
Grapewine has it that Nawaz Sharif is willing to play ball with the US State Department. Zardari's graph has gone down hill after the Swat Peace deal. Mid-term elections might be held after the situation subsides. Secret meetings were held in Dubai between Hillary's aides and Zardari on the luke warm response on the Taliban take over of 4 districts and Swat peace deal. Army Chief Kiyani had a meeting on USS Abraham in the Arabian Sea with US Army General Patrias. Core Commanders are on board. A sigh of relief for Pakistan - the much awaited anti-Taliban operation is about to begin.


RUN UP TO A CONSENSUS AMONG THE POLITICAL PARTIES FOR AN ANTI-TALIBAN OPERATION :
Army is waiting for a consensus of the political parties before it starts a military operation. This is a first for the Army to wait for the civilian 'go-ahead'. The political parties except the (Secular) MQM took their time to get on board for a consensus on an anti-Taliban operation. It was not till the (Ultra Right)JI started to harp on the tune and called the Sufi's in Swat 'Kafirs'. (Secular) PPP waited for (Center Right) PML-N to say 'yes'. Nawaz Sharif finally showed his concern in an interview with a foreign newspaper.
PPP's delayed move is very calculated as it does not want to run ANP out of the coalition in NWFP. But (Secular-Left) ANP has given a tactical yes to the operation. Casualties will be high and ANP's reluctance to the operation is obvious.

Tarbela Dam and KKH are at an arms length from the Talibans reach ! Tarbela dam touches Shangla and KKH starts at Mansehra. The 8 lane Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway is not too far.

More Districts fall to Taliban !

WITH districts around Swat seemingly falling like ninepins, the state has been shockingly ambivalent about it plans to restore its writ in northern Pakistan. But yesterday it appeared that the Pakistan Army has finally awoken from its slumber. The message from the chief himself, Gen Kayani: the militants will not be allowed to run amok and order will be restored. So far the army’s wait-and-watch policy in Malakand division has had dangerous consequences. Buner is now in the militants’ hands and IDPs are pouring into neighbouring districts, especially Swabi, Mardan and Haripur. Meanwhile, Shangla has been penetrated by the militants and Swabi and Mardan are the next likely targets. Shrewdly taking advantage of the cessation in hostilities in the valley, militants from Swat fanned out into neighbouring areas, expanding the theatre in which they will have to be taken on and ensuring that an even messier fight lies ahead.

Why has the army waited? It claims the ‘operational pause’ was meant to give a chance to the forces of reconciliation and not as a concession to the militants. Now that the army has sensed the panic among the people and seen the militants’ determination to expand their territorial control, it has pledged to achieve ‘victory’ against terrorism and militancy ‘at all costs.’ We hope this resolve will not melt in the days ahead. But two points regarding the overall war against militancy need to be flagged. One, the army has been particularly agitated by the recent spate of foreign comments that Pakistan is on the verge of collapse and that the army is unwilling or unable to defeat militancy. Gen Kayani’s forceful statement that the army ‘never has and never will hesitate to sacrifice, whatever it may take, to ensure [the] safety and well-being’ of Pakistan’s people and its territorial integrity should be noted in foreign capitals. Whatever the suspicions, the Pakistan Army is an indispensable element in any successful strategy against militancy in Pakistan and the region generally, and riling the army high command to score a few public points cannot be part of a sound strategy.

The second point concerns the political component here in Pakistan. While the Pakistan Army isn’t under the full control of the civilians, it has made it clear that it will only fight when there is a political consensus for it to do so. Thus far the politicians have been woefully divided; whether the dissenters blame America as the root cause of militancy or harp on about fuzzy ideas of dialogue, they have not been able to unite on the need to take on the militants militarily. That discord may finally be changing. The PML-N, the PML-Q and the religious parties have voiced concerns about militants on the march, while the MQM has come out as the foremost critic of the peace deal in Swat. It is not clear yet whether they will support the military option, but the army cannot fail to note that the politicians are at last beginning to agree on the seriousness of the threat of militancy.

Taliban's cake walk to Dir, Swat, Malakand, Buner and Shangla !

Mardan, Swabi and Haripur Districts are under intense pressure from the Taliban and they are slowly infiltrating.

NEW YORK: After the Taliban take over Dir, Swat, Buner,Shangla and roll into Mardan, it will be the end of the game, a senior Pakistani law enforcement official in NWFP told The New York Times On Wednesday.
The report claimed that when the Taliban entered Buner, the Pakistan army did not put up a defence, apparently abiding by the agreement signed by the Zardari government in Swat.

A local politician, Jamsher Khan, told NYT that people were initially determined to resist the Taliban in Buner, but that they were discouraged by the deal the government struck with the Taliban in Swat.

‘We felt stronger as long we thought the government was with us,’ he said by telephone, ‘but when the government showed weakness, we too stopped offering resistance to the Taliban.’

The newspaper said the takeover of Buner was particularly significant because the people there have tried last year to stand up to the Taliban by establishing small private armies to fight the militants. Last year when the militants encroached into Buner, killing policemen, the local people fought back and forced the militants out.

Buner, home to about one million people, is a gateway to Mardan, the second largest in NWFP, after Peshawar.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal reported that ‘militants have been moving into Buner since the Swat peace deal was signed with the government in February. But starting Tuesday night they seized control of the entire district, which has a population of more than one million people. Heavily armed militants streaming in from Swat, occupied government offices and set up their own check posts. Terrified residents fled their homes.’

Dozens of hooded fighters carrying rocket launchers and machine guns ransacked the offices of international aid and development agencies working in the district and took away their vehicles. Some employees of the agencies were also briefly taken hostage. The militants set up their headquarters in the town of Buner after driving out government officials, the WSJ report said.

American officials led by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton sounded ominous alarm bells Wednesday. Mrs Clinton said she was concerned that Pakistan’s government was making too many concessions to the Taliban, emboldening the militants and allowing them to spread by giving in to their demands.

A senior American official said Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were prompted in part by news of the Taliban takeover in Buner.

The officials said that the further erosion of government authority in an area so close to the capital ought to stir concern not only in Pakistan but also among influential Pakistanis abroad.

The NYT reported that staff members of local nongovernmental organisations have been ordered to leave, and their offices have been looted. Pakistani television news channels showed Taliban fighters triumphantly carrying office equipment out of the offices of the organisations.

The Taliban advance had been building for weeks, with the assistance of sympathisers and even a local government official who was appointed on the recommendation of the Taliban, the report said.

The US media noted that the Taliban incursion comes after the government of President Asif Ali Zardari agreed to the imposition of religious laws in Swat, as part of a deal with the Taliban.

But with a beachhead in neighboring Swat, and a number of training camps for fresh recruits, the Taliban were able to carry out what amounted to an invasion of Buner, the media reported.

The Taliban expansion into Buner has begun to raise alarm among the senior ranks of the Pakistani Army, said a Western official who was familiar with the Pakistani military.

On Wednesday, one of the highest-ranking army officers traveled from Islamabad to Peshawar and met the officers of the 11th Corps, the army division based in Peshawar, to discuss the ‘overall situation in Buner’, the media reported.

One of the major concerns is that from the hills of Buner the Taliban have access to the flatlands of the district of Swabi, which lead directly to the four-lane motorway that runs from Islamabad to Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province.

The Pakistani military does not have a presence in Buner, Pakistani and Western officials told Times. The main government authority in Buner is the police, who have become demoralised by their low pay and lack of equipment in the face of the Taliban, Pakistani police officials say.

The Taliban have set up checkpoints in a number of villages in Buner, intimidating policemen and forcing them into their police stations, residents told reporters.

The militants were patrolling the bazaar in Daggar, residents said. Women, who used to move freely around the bazaars, were scarcely to be seen, they said. Those who did venture out were totally covered.

The militants were helped by the actions of the commissioner of Malakand, Javed Mohammad, who is also the senior official in Swat and who was appointed on the recommendation of the Taliban, the US media reported said.

Buner taken over and now Shangla :

Eight Frontier Constabulary platoons rushed to Buner on Thursday to protect vital state installations in the northwestern town now virtually under Taliban control, while the Taliban entered the adjacent Shangla district in another brazen move.

Local residents and police in Poran tehsil of Shangla said around 30 armed Taliban arrived in the town on Thursday morning. “They entered the tehsil in cars and are still in the area,” a police official said.

Governing Buner: The march on Shangla came after the district administration recognised Taliban’s control over Buner district by holding a jirga with a local commander to lay down procedures to govern the district.

“We will not display weapons in public, and we will stay away from undue interference in the district administration,” Taliban commanders Mufti Bashir and Ustad Yasir told the jirga which local administration officials and jirga elders attended.

Attack on FC convoy: But moments after the Taliban pledged to stay peaceful, a convoy of Frontier Constabulary was attacked in the Totalai area. Two escorting police officers were killed and another was wounded.

No group has claimed responsibility so far, but the Taliban are being suspected.

In a second attack, armedmen robbed a truck carrying supplies for the security forces in Baboo area in Khawazakhela tehsil and abducted three soldiers, local residents said.

However, there was no official confirmation.

At the jirga earlier on Thursday, the Taliban agreed to pardon some of those who had taken up arms against them, but kept others on their hit list.

Army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas insisted the situation in Buner was not as dire as some have portrayed – telling the Associated Press that Taliban were in control of less than 25 percent of the district, mostly its north.

“We are fully aware of the situation,” Abbas said. “The other side has been informed to move these people out of this area.”

The NWFP government convened a meeting of provincial heads of political parties to discuss the situation after the approval of Nizam-e-Adal Regulation and the concerns following reports that the Taliban are running a parallel administration, abductions for ransom continue and the writ of the state is far from returning to the area.

“It was decided to convene a joint meeting of all political parties to brief them on the situation in the region,” a communiqué from the Chief Minister’s Secretariat in Peshawar read.

NWFP Senior Minister Bashir Bilour said the government “reserves the right” to use force if peace accord violations continued. “But first we want to let peace come,” he told reporters in Peshawar.

Wake up call for the 6th Largest Army in the world !

The army must face up to Taliban ! 3 districts and FATA ! How much will they concede to the Taliban ?
Bravo Bravo MQM ! MQM is the only party that is crying hoarse on the Taliban's advance !
Where are the Civil Rights groups ? Lawyers anyone ? Iftikhar Chaudry - like hello ? 100's of judges and lawyers have been asked to wrap up and leave Swat, Dir and now Buner.
Please DO NOT tell me that the Pakistani Army is waiting for the Taliban to reach the Attock Bridge before they act ?
If the Pakistan Army acts now to evict the Taliban from the 3 districts the expected casualties at this time would be in access to a 100,000.

Pakistan army faces 5000 suicide bombers which will be leashed all over Pakistan to take revenge. LTTE got defeated after 30 years !
Wake up Pakistan. Its time to go for war !

The majority opinion which not so long ago favoured the Nizam-e Adl Regulation (NAR) in Swat is now shifting away from a pro-Taliban stance and conceding that Pakistan might have to fight them as Pakistan’s own war after all. This has happened owing to developments that were predictable to the entire world but not to most Pakistanis because of a media bias. The Swat Taliban have finally said that they are not bound to honour the peace accord between the government and the TNSM cleric Sufi Muhammad. That puts paid to the NAR.

Sufi Muhammad was supposed to declare war against the Taliban if they did not abide by the NAR, but he has instead condemned the Constitution of Pakistan as an infidel institution. A kind of jihadi nepotism has overcome him as he refuses to see what his son-in-law Fazlullah is doing in Dir and Buner in violation of the accord. Indeed, the Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan has denounced those who criticise the Sufi’s “verdict” against democracy and insists that his brand of shariat will be applied throughout Pakistan, with jiziya (protection tax) imposed on non-Muslims. (Jiziya can be retrospective, amounting to crores of rupees, as happened in the case of the Sikh community in Orakzai.)

There’s more disquieting news. Like all Taliban, including some pro-Pakistan warlords like Maulvi Nazir, the Taliban spokesman has welcomed Al Qaeda and its leadership to the areas conquered by the Taliban and vowed to help such formerly state-backed jihadi organisations as Lashkar-e Tayba and Jaish-e Muhammad in addition to the “foreign” outfits such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, to consolidate their hold on Pakistan’s territory. The chief of the Lashkar is in protective custody and the Jaish chief has been made to “disappear” for the same reason — if they are visible, there may be pressure to extradite them.

The message is clear: the Taliban are linked to Al Qaeda and they are counting on such elements in Punjab to help them take their war down to other parts of Pakistan. When the Swat deal was being sewed up, only the MQM objected, but it was soon isolated in parliament when the National Assembly voted in favour of the NAR. The media-mujahideen acted in the same irresponsible manner in which they had acted during the Lal Masjid affair by siding with the Taliban over the videoed whipping of a 17-year-old girl. The Supreme Court added its bit by releasing the Lal Masjid cleric who immediately announced his resolve to spread the Taliban shariat in Pakistan.

Interior Adviser Mr Rehman Malik has growled ineffectually in reply and the advocate general in Peshawar has asserted that the High Court will exercise full authority over the qazi courts in Swat. But everyone knows that the advocate general will never go to Swat to say this and risk getting his head chopped off at a Mingora square. Mr Nawaz Sharif has expressed concern after his party kept saying it was not Pakistan’s war that the army was fighting against the Taliban. His refusal to morally support the PPP government earlier and his party’s rejection of an ISI briefing on the matter in a joint parliamentary session had actually made the army back off.

Finally, it is the army that has to step forward and face the Taliban. It has baulked so far because of adverse public opinion and an equally lethal media tilt. But now that the politicians are waking up to the danger and the media is increasingly disabused, the army must end its India-driven strategy and try to save Pakistan from becoming the caliphate of Al Qaeda. In fact, Islamabad has to reach an understanding with New Delhi over the matter in order to get the army to mobilise in the numbers required. However, if this is not done, the people will have to fight the war on their own. The MQM is asking the right question: what if the Taliban come and the army is not there to protect us?

Swat is the challenge staring us in the face. If we don’t accept it and fight the Taliban, then the world will have to come and fight it the way it thinks fit.

Pakistan on course to become Islamist state, U.S. experts say

WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing the a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before 9/11.

"It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan ; and for the security of India , the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia , the U.S. and its allies.

" Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control," said David Kilcullen , a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.

" Pakistan isn't Afghanistan , a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century," agreed the U.S. intelligence official. "It's a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had."

"The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.," he added. "The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they'll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan , especially now that it's getting bigger."

The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren't a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants' gains and the failure of Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to respond.

"The place is beyond redemption," said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. "I don't see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence.

"I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers," he continued. "If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants."

That pessimistic view of Pakistan's future has been bolstered by Islamabad's surrender this week for the first time of areas outside the frontier tribal region to Pakistan's Taliban movement and by a growing militant infiltration of Karachi , the nation's financial center, and the industrial and political heartland province of Punjab, in part to evade U.S. drone strikes in the tribal belt.

Civilian deaths in the drone attacks, the eight-year-old U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and U.S. support for Pakistan's former military dictatorship also have sown widespread ambivalence about the threat the insurgency poses and revulsion at fighting fellow Muslims.

"The government has to ratchet up the urgency and ratchet up the commitment of resources. This is a serious moment for Pakistan ," said Sen. John Kerry , D- Mass. , the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, on April 14 in Islamabad . "The federal government has got to . . . define this problem as Pakistan's ."

Many Pakistanis, however, dismiss such warnings as inflated. They think that the militants are open to dialogue and political accommodation to end the unrest, which many trace to the former military regime's cooperation with the U.S. after 9/11.

Ahsan Iqbal , a top aide to opposition leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif , said the insurgency can be quelled if the government rebuilds the judicial system, improves law enforcement, compensates guerrillas driven to fight by relatives' deaths in security force operations and implements democratic reforms.

"It will require time," Iqbal told McClatchy reporters and editors this week. "We need a very strong resolve and internal unity."

Many U.S. officials, though, regard the civilian government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as unpopular, dysfunctional and mired in infighting. It's been unable to agree on an effective counterinsurgency strategy or to address the ills that are feeding the unrest. These include ethnic and sectarian hatreds, ineffective police, broken courts, widespread corruption, endemic poverty and a deepening financial crisis, they said.

Pakistan's army, meanwhile, is hobbled by a lack of direction from the country's civilian leaders, disparaged for its repeated coups and shaken by repeated defeats by the militants. It remains fixated on India to ensure high budgets and cohesion among troops of divergent ethnic and sectarian allegiances, U.S. officials and experts said.

Many officers and politicians also oppose fighting the Islamist groups that Pakistan nurtured to fight proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir , and because they think the U.S. is secretly conspiring with India to destabilize their country.

Alarm rose in Washington this week after the parliament and Zardari agreed to impose Islamic law in the Swat district, where extremists have repelled several army offensives; closed girls' schools; and beheaded, hanged and lashed opponents and alleged criminals.

The government's capitulation handed the militants their first refuge outside the remote tribal area bordering Afghanistan , and less than 100 miles north of Islamabad . Taliban fighters also advanced virtually unopposed from Swat into the Buner district, 60 miles north of Islamabad .

Buner is close to a key hydroelectric dam and to the highways that link Pakistan to China , and Islamabad to Peshawar , the capital of the North West Frontier Province , much of which is already under Taliban sway.

Many U.S. officials and other experts expect the militants to continue advancing.

The Taliban "have now become a self-sustaining force," author Ahmed Rashid , an expert on the insurgency, told a conference in Washington on Wednesday. "They have an agenda for Pakistan , and that agenda is no less than to topple the government of Pakistan and 'Talibanizing' the entire country."

Iqbal, the adviser to Sharif, disagreed. While militants will overrun small pockets, most Pakistanis embrace democracy and will resist living under the Taliban's harsh interpretation of Islam, he said.

"The psychology, the temperament, the mood of the Pakistani nation does not subscribe to these extremist views," Iqbal said.

The U.S. intelligence official, however, said that Pakistan's elite, dominated since the country's independence in 1947 by politicians, bureaucrats and military officers from Punjab, have failed to recognize the seriousness of the situation.

"The Punjabi elite has already lost control of Pakistan , but neither they nor the Obama administration realize that," the official said. " Pakistan will be an Islamist state — or maybe a collection of four Islamic states, probably within a few years. There's no civilian leadership in Islamabad that can stop this, and so far, there hasn't been any that's been willing to try."

Several U.S. officials said that the Afghanistan - Pakistan strategy that President Barack Obama unveiled last month is being called into question by the accelerating rate at which the insurgency in Pakistan is expanding.

The plan hinges on the Pakistani army's willingness to put aside its obsession with Hindu-dominated India and focus on fighting the Islamist insurgency. It also presupposes, despite doubts held by some U.S. officials, that sympathetic Pakistani military and intelligence officers will sever their links with militant groups.

Taliban : Quick Summary of the Taliban Reign in NW Pakistan !

Pakistani Army withdraws from 3 key Districts :
Pakistani Army are sitting Ducks and watch three districts taken away ! What are they waiting for ? It will be a very sorry state if General Kiani acts against the Taliban after they reach the Attock Bridge. Are the people of Swat and Dir chicken feed ?

Talibaan carry out daily Killings of the "accused" ! The more Drones bomb the border towns the Taliban quietly moves inwards into Pakistan ! They have now have control of these areas in Pakistan and FATA !
FATA,
Swat,
Dir
and Buner.
Quetta and DI Khan are next ?



Watch Hamid Mir on Fora.tv on the Taliban :
http://fora.tv/2009/04/01/Resurgence_of_the_Taliban_in_Pakistan_Hamid_Mir#chapter_06

Time line of Taliban Rule in Pakistan :

February 7, 2009 :
1100 ANP works were killed in a span of 3 months.

March 1, 2009 :
A Hijra (Eunuch) was hung from a pole in Swat because of his 'ways'

March 14, 2009 :
Threatened by the so called Islamic Taliban 100 Pushtoon Hindu and Sikh families migrate to India from Swat. Swat had been their home for centuries.

April 4, 2009:
Taliban flog a 17 year old Minor girl for taking a walk with her Father in Law !

April 10, 2009 :
Taliban Kill a couple who were accused of falling in love. They had eloped.

April 14, 2009
KOHAT: Local Taliban killed three men who were accused of assaulting an eight-year-old boy and threw their bodies in Arakhel square in the Kohat Frontier Region on Monday. A Taliban spokesman said the ‘accused’ had admitted before their shura and tribal elders to have assaulted the boy. The shura sentenced them to death before a firing squad. The Taliban had announced last month that they would enforce religious laws in the region.

April 14, 2009
Militants in Punjab allying with Taliban: NYT

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/militant-group-coalescing-with-taliban-in-punjab-nyt--bi

NEW YORK: The militant groups in Punjab are coalescing with Taliban reinvigorating an alliance which is a serious ‘risk to the stability of the country.’ The New York Times reported Tuesday quoting American and Pakistani officials.

In a dispatch from Dera Ghazi Khan, the newspaper pointed out that manifestation of such an alliance was witnessed in the deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

At least 20 militants killed in American strikes in the tribal areas since last summer were Punjabi, according to people from the tribal areas and Pakistani officials. One Pakistani security official estimated that 5 per cent to 10 per cent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.

April 15, 2009 :
Armed militants occupy Sikhs' homes in Pak
Armed militants have occupied four homes of members of the minority Sikh community in Pakistan's restive Aurakzai tribal region near the northwestern city of Peshawar, a media report said on Wednesday. About 200 armed militants arrived at Qasimkhel village in Aurakzai Agency yesterday and demanded Rs 40 million from the Sikhs, said Galyan Singh, an elder of the minority community. "We failed to pay the amount and they forced the 38-member Sikh community to vacate houses," Singh told The News daily. The families that were evicted from their homes have taken refuge in Manikhel area, Singh said. Local residents of Qasimkhel condemned the incident and said injustice had been done to the Sikhs. There is a sizeable number of Sikhs living in Peshawar and adjoining semi-autonomous tribal regions.

Aprils 17, 2009 :
Taliban execute man, woman in Hangu
Footage shows Taliban militants shooting a man and woman charged with adultery in front of their relatives.

April 18, 2009:
Tehsildar dies in Taliban custody

GHALANAI: The Taliban in Mohmand Agency said on Saturday that the Yakaghund tehsildar they had abducted last month was dead. Taliban spokesman Ikramullah told Daily Times that Arshad Ali had died due to kidney failure. The government official was kidnapped on March 8, after a fierce gunfight between troops and the Taliban. Fourteen soldiers had been killed in the clash.Taliban had demanded the release of their arrested accomplices in return for the tehsildar’s release. They have declined to return the body until their demand was met. mukaram khan

April 19, 2009
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