Day of Suicide Attacks Heightens Fears Across Pakistan

Moharram patrols (Credit: nation.com.pk)
Moharram patrols (Credit: nation.com.pk)
Moharram patrols (Credit: nation.com.pk)

ISLAMABAD, Nov 21 — A series of suicide bomb attacks on Pakistani Shiites as they observed a major religious holiday killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens on Wednesday, heightening fears of further bloodshed in the coming days.

Shiites are observing the Mourning of Muharram, a 10-day period in which lengthy processions wind through major urban centers and that culminates on Sunday.

Despite efforts to step up security, including switching off cellphone networks for hours at a time, the government has been unable to prevent Sunni extremist militants from reaching their targets.

The deadliest attack occurred close to midnight in Rawalpindi, home to the military’s headquarters, when a blast ripped through a religious procession headed toward a mosque in the city center. Witnesses told local television stations that a suicide attacker had flung a grenade into the crowd before detonating explosives strapped to his body. News media reports, citing the police, said at least 23 people had been killed and 47 had been wounded.

Hours earlier, two blasts in the port city of Karachi killed at least three people and wounded at least 17. A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle rammed into a rickshaw, setting off an explosion that killed two people and wounded several others. Moments later a second blast at the same location killed another person and wounded about 10, including journalists who had rushed to the scene of the first blast.

Sectarian violence in Pakistan has acquired a deadly momentum over the past year with attacks on minority Shiites across the country, from passes in the northern mountains to the tribal belt along the Afghan border and major cities including Karachi and Quetta.

The attacks are mostly by sectarian groups, like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, that also have ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist militant organizations.

The violence coincided with Pakistan’s hosting of the Developing Eight summit meeting, an international gathering intended to promote trade and investment that brings together Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

Thousands of extra police and security forces have been drafted into the capital, Islamabad, where the summit meeting is to start on Thursday. Among the leaders expected to attend are President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

Other violence in Pakistan on Wednesday further underscored the precarious security situation. A bomb in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, exploded near a security vehicle escorting children to school, killing three soldiers and two passers-by. People suspected of being Islamist militants shot and killed four policemen near the town of Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt.

 

Washington Develops Matrix to Nab Terror Suspects

Washington, Oct 23: Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.

Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”

That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but never go to zero.

Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will soon exceed 3,000 by certain estimates, surpassing the number of people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Obama administration has touted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection. The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United States’ use of armed drones.

Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.

Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.

White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.

CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.

The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a “national capital region” task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.

The developments were described by current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches, administration officials have cited legal bases, including the congressional authorization to use military force granted after the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation’s right to defend itself.

Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note that the administration still doesn’t confirm the CIA’s involvement or the identities of those who are killed. Certain strikes are now under legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.

Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is self-perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure long-term costs.

“The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. “You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”

An evolving database

The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.

Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those organizations’ separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.

The result is a single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.

Obama’s decision to shutter the CIA’s secret prisons ended a program that had become a source of international scorn, but it also complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to scramble to figure out what to do.

“We had a disposition problem,” said a former U.S. counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix.

The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each agency’s role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot. “If he’s in Saudi Arabia, pick up with the Saudis,” the former official said. “If traveling overseas to al-Shabaab [in Somalia] we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or have the Yemenis pick him up.”

Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen. Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being transferred to the custody of the Justice Department and charged in federal court in New York.

“Warsame was a classic case of ‘What are we going to do with him?’ ” the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the vicinity and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.

“Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix,” as well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if they moved. “How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren’t going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran.”

Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda’s morphing structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East.

A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of al-Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — the three countries where almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.

The Arab spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could establish new roots. The network’s affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.

“Egypt worries me to no end,” a high-ranking administration official said. “Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel. You’re talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are basically nonexistent.”

Streamlining targeted killing

The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic.

Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to target bin Laden in the years before the attacks — before armed drones existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but after extensive deliberation, and the group’s leader escaped harm.

Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing the names being added to U.S. target lists.

Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed revisions are laid on Brennan’s desk, and subsequently presented to the president.

Video-conference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn’t be run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.

“What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the meeting,” said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.

The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the center has emerged as a targeting hub.

Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA, JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the terrorist network’s franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than two dozen. But the center controls a key function.

“It is the keeper of the criteria,” a former U.S. counterterrorism official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the White House.

The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White House request will direct the NCTC to generate a list of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks against U.S. personnel in Sanaa.

The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC. Officials stress that these sessions don’t equate to approval for additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the White House.

With no objections — and officials said those have been rare — names are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the NCTC.

Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to fire are made by the director of the CIA. But aside from Obama’s presence at “Terror Tuesday” meetings — which generally are devoted to discussing terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets — the president’s involvement is more indirect.

“The president would never come to a deputies meeting,” a senior administration official said, although participants recalled cases in which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama’s direction on questions the group couldn’t resolve.

The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike, officials said. The approach also applies to the development of criteria for “signature strikes,” which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit targets based on patterns of activity — packing a vehicle with explosives, for example — even when the identities of those who would be killed is unclear.

A model approach

For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.

During Monday’s presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. “We can’t kill our way out of this,” he said, but added later that Obama was “right to up the usage” of drone strikes and that he would do the same.

As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to 15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits anytime soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this year.

The number of targets on the lists isn’t fixed, officials said, but fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of operatives placed in the drones’ cross hairs.

“Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years ago? Probably not,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the process until earlier this year. “But it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.

“When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of your strategy — you see the puff of smoke, and he’s gone,” said Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center. “When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing, it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back.”

For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention of a follow-on, large-scale attack on American soil.

Side effects are more difficult to measure — including the extent to which strikes breed more enemies of the United States — but could be more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.

“We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite,” Pillar said. “We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the methods we use.”

Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials said the discussions became dead ends.

In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the United States possibly still be working its way through a “top 20” list?

The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden. Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director, told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign.

A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but didn’t raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting at commitments the United States was not prepared to keep.

“We didn’t want to get into the business of limitless lists,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spent years overseeing the lists. “There is this apparatus created to deal with counterterrorism. It’s still useful. The question is: When will it stop being useful? I don’t know.”

Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Taliban Defend Attempted Murder of Girl Child

TTP Leaders Address Media (Courtesy: mediawatch.pk)

TTP explains and elaborates reasons that motivated them to attempt target-killing of Malala: TTP successfully targeted Malala Yousafzai in Mingora, although she was young and a girl and TTP does not believe in attacking on women, but whom so ever leads campaign against Islam & Shariah is Ordered to be killed by Shariah.

When its a matter of Shariah, and someone tries to bring fitnah with his/her activities, and it involves in leading a campaign against shariah and tries to involve whole community in such campaign, and that personality become a symbol of anti shariah campaign, not just its allowed to kill such person but its Obligatory in Islam.

If anyone Argues about her so young age , then the Story of Hazrat Khizar in Quran that relates that Hazrat Khizar while Traveling with Prophet Musa (AS) killed a child, arguing about the reason of his killing he said that the parents of this child are Pious and in future he will cause bad name for them. If anyone argues that she was female, then we can see the incident of killing of wife by a blind Companion of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.W) because she use to say insultive words for prophet.And prophet praised this act.

Its a clear command of shariah that any female, that by any means play role in war against mujahideen, should be killed.Malala Yousafzai was playing a vital role in bucking up the emotions of Murtad army and Government of Pakistan, and was inviting muslims to hate mujahideen.

Tehrik taliban’s crime wasn’t that they banned education for girls, instead our crime is that we tried to bring Education system for both boys and girls under shariah.We are deadly against co-education and secular education syestem, and shriah orders us to be against it.

If anyone thinks thinks that Malala is targeted because of education, that’s absolutely wrong, and a propaganda of Media, Malala is targeted because of her pioneer role in preaching secularism and so called enlightened moderation. And whom so ever will commit so in future too will be targeted again by TTP.

After this incident Media pour out all of its smelly propaganda against Taliban mujahideen with their poisonous tounges, they are shouting that malala has suffered tyranny like there is no else in the country whom is facing same.Were our sister in lal masjid whom were bombed, gassed and burnt to death, were not humans?? and the sinless women and children of swat , bajour, mohmand, orakzai, & Wazeeristan whom suffered inhumane bombardments by Murtad army don’t qualify to bestow mercy upon them?

Will the blind media pay any attention to Hundreds of Respectful sisters whom are in secret detention centers of ISI and MI and suffering by their captives? Will you like to put an eye on more then three thousand young men whom are killed in secret detention centers and their bodies are found in different areas of swat, claimed to be killed in encounters and died by Cardiac Arrest?? Gain Conscious, Otherwise………… Ihsan-ullah-Ihsan Central spokesman TTP

Malala won’t be airbrushed out

Malala Yusufzai (Credit: huffingtonpost.co.uk)

“I AM worried about Malala. The whole of Swat is worried about her. But every girl in Swat is Malala. We’ll educate ourselves. We will win. They can’t defeat us.”

This was a teenaged classmate of Malala Yousufzai being interviewed live on TV from Mingora. Steeped in courage, her words were delivered with indescribable resolve, a beaming face. Such resolve that a pessimist like me felt she was delivering a stinging slap on my cheek.

Then there was Kainaat. She was travelling in the same school van as Malala and was also wounded in the attack. Her determination appeared equally steely. She was certain nothing was going to stop her from returning to school with the eventual aim of becoming a doctor.

Then as one surfed channels many more Malalas were expressing admiration for their iconic schoolmate. Not one appeared unsure of the way forward. What can you do but salute the tenacity of the girls as well as their lion-hearted parents?

And the teachers. Malala’s teacher spoke with great pride, warmth and affection for his student, the child prodigy: “Such children aren’t born every day. She’s such a gifted child. It is our collective responsibility to support her, protect her. The government must do its part.”

Many months ago when this column focused a tad too frequently on the content of Pakistani TV discussion programmes, my editor advised against too much focus on this one area. He was right.

On this particular occasion, however, one was grateful for the idiot box as a diversity of opinion was beamed directly into the comfort of one’s study. This is where the gratitude ended. To say that the entire spectrum was not welcome would be an understatement.

Pakistan has come to represent such a roller-coaster that it seems to strive daily to live up to Dicken’s words: “… it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …”

The TV output was no different. It mirrored society.

There was good news. Despite being shot at point-blank range in the head, Malala was somehow going to defy the assassin with her now legendary single-mindedness. She would survive. There were also the voices of her courageous (the word seems so inadequate) friends and classmates.

But then Jamaat-i-Islami’s former amir Qazi Hussain Ahmad made an appearance. He seemed to condemn the attack on the teenaged Swat student and in the same breath also condemned those who, in his words, “used Malala”. He didn’t elaborate. Neither was he asked to.

This was the first in a series of ‘we condemn the attack but…’ statements. Qazi Hussain Ahmad was not the only one who was not willing to condemn this dastardly attack without qualifying his condemnation. Many others created binaries where none existed.

Imran Khan came in for stick on social media for his perceived support to the Taliban but hasn’t he demonstrated his disdain for extremism? Wasn’t he one of the few politicians in the country to visit the bloodied Shia-Hazaras in Quetta, in rushing to Chilas after the mass murder of Shia travellers?

Referring to the attempt on Malala’s life, he talked about the scourge of extremism which he mostly blamed on the US-led war on terror. When the presenter pressed him to name the attackers, Imran Khan reluctantly said the Taliban.

When asked to condemn the Taliban, he was open in saying his party had a presence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata and that he didn’t want to give statements condemning the Taliban and leave “my party workers undefended” at their mercy.

This statement at least clarified that he has shied away from unequivocally slamming the Taliban for the sake of his party workers’ safety and not on ideological grounds. One suspects the PTI leader understands the sort of threat the ANP and PPP must face at each of their public events.

This must be a major handicap for his rivals. As election approaches, the PTI is able to gather large crowds every few days in relative safety. Mr Khan must be hoping this generates enough momentum to have a snowball effect at the poll, leaving his Taliban-targeted opponents stranded.

This may be a fantastic tactical move. One hopes he has strategic options up his sleeve so he doesn’t end up risking a Kargil-type situation. Our army has scored similar own goals including the one manifesting itself in the militant threat that has claimed thousands of our soldiers besides civilians.

It was never a conflict we could afford to lose. Factors such as archaic tribal and feudal practices mean a steady diet of abuse of women’s rights anyway. Whether jirgas sanction wani or honour killings; whether it is gang rape or acid attacks we know the victim is almost always a woman.

Now religious extremism has created a new form of women’s oppression. This may owe its birth to a parallel national narrative contrived in the Zia years but it has also grown, gone from strength to strength unchallenged since. Before we move on it is vital to decide on one, single narrative.

Otherwise, this mix of confusion, polarisation and the paralysis it causes will destroy us. We have to somehow acknowledge we live in the 21st century, and are part of a larger world.

Women are more than half our population. Isn’t it an economic and social imperative that women and men are equal?

The Taliban and other forces of darkness would so wish they could do here in all public spaces what the well-known Swedish store chain Ikea did in Saudi Arabia: airbrush women models off their catalogue.

Thank God they can’t. Malala stands in their way. Their ideology may be toxic; her determination is life-affirming. Just imagine what’ll happen if Malala inspires millions of people, particularly the weak-kneed like me, to stand up for once and be counted.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

 

Teenage School activist survives attack by Taliban

Malalai Yusufzai after attack (Credit: english.alarabiya.net)

KARACHI, Oct 9— A Taliban gunman shot and seriously wounded a 14-year-old schoolgirl and activist in the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, singling out a widely known champion of girls’ education and a potent symbol of resistance to militant ideology.

The attack occurred in Mingora, the valley’s main town, when masked gunmen stopped a bus carrying schoolgirls who had just taken an exam and sought out the 14-year-old, Malala Yousafzai, shooting her twice.

Ms. Yousafzai, who won a national peace prize last year, was shot in the head and the neck, while two other people on the bus suffered lighter injuries, local health officials said. After emergency treatment, Ms. Yousafzai was taken by helicopter to a military hospital in the provincial capital, Peshawar, where doctors said she was in stable but critical condition late Tuesday.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Ms. Yousafzai had been targeted for her criticism of the Taliban and because it considered her human rights campaigning to be an “obscenity.”

“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” a Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said by phone from an undisclosed location. “She considers Obama as her ideal leader.”

The Taliban publicly placed Ms. Yousafzai on its assassination hit list this spring. Mr. Ehsan added that if she survived, the militants would try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson,” he said.

Although militant violence is a daily occurrence in Pakistan, the assault on an eloquent schoolgirl, who sprang to public attention in 2009 by documenting her determination to continue school under the Taliban, sent shock waves across Pakistan.

“She symbolizes the brave girls of Swat,” said Samar Minallah, a documentary filmmaker who has worked extensively in Swat. “She knew her voice was important, so she spoke up for the rights of children. Even adults didn’t have a vision like hers.”

Girls’ education in Pakistan has been a rallying cry against the Taliban for some here. In other districts close to the Afghan border, militants have shut down schools in recent years as a way of demonstrating their defiance of the national government.

Mustafa Qadri, a Pakistan researcher with Amnesty International, said the attack on Ms. Yousafzai “highlights the extremely dangerous climate many human rights activists face in northwestern Pakistan, where female activists in particular live under constant threats from the Taliban and other militant groups.”

Fazal Rabbi, a family friend in Swat, described Ms. Yousafzai as a girl of “extraordinary qualities.” In Parliament, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf urged his countrymen to battle the “mind-set” behind such attacks. “She is our daughter,” he said.

On the Internet, the country’s beleaguered progressives seethed with frustration and anger. “Come on, brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a school girl,” one media commentator, Nadeem F. Paracha, said in an acerbic Twitter post.

Ms. Yousafzai came to public attention in 2009 as the Pakistani Taliban swept through Swat, a picturesque valley once famed for its culture of music and tolerance and as a destination for honeymooning couples.

Her father ran one of the last schools to defy Taliban orders to end female education. As an 11-year-old, his daughter Malala — named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture — wrote an anonymous blog documenting her experiences for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban,” she wrote in one post titled “I Am Afraid.”

Later in 2009, the army launched a sweeping operation against the Taliban in the area, displacing many militants into neighboring districts or across the border into Afghanistan.

Ms. Yousafzai continued to grow in prominence, becoming a powerful voice for the rights of children in the conflict-affected area. In 2011, she was nominated for an International Children’s Peace Prize; later, Yousaf Raza Gilani, the prime minister at the time, awarded her Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize.

In recent months, she led a delegation of children’s rights activists, sponsored by Unicef, that made representations to provincial politicians in Peshawar.

“We found her to be very bold, and it inspired every one of us,” said another student in the group, Fatima Aziz, 15.

“She had this vision, big dreams, that she was going to come into politics and bring about change,” said Ms. Minallah, the documentary maker.

Pakistan’s military has long held the 2009 Swat operation as an example of its ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency drives on its own soil. The shooting on Tuesday, however, was a stark reminder that the Taliban remain a deadly force.

“This is not a good sign. It’s very worrisome,” Kamran Khan, the most senior government official in Swat, said by phone. A search operation was under way to capture the attackers, he added.

In recent months, Taliban fighters have been gradually slipping back into Swat, attacking senior community leaders. On Aug. 3, a Taliban gunman shot and wounded Zahid Khan, the president of the local hoteliers association and a senior community leader, in Mingora.

A senior local official said it was one of three attempted targeted killings by the Taliban in recent months.

The Swat Taliban are a subgroup of the wider Pakistani Taliban movement based in South Waziristan. The leader of the Swat Taliban, Maulvi Fazlullah, rose to prominence in 2007 through an FM radio station that espoused Islamist ideology. He is believed to be sheltering across the border in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.

The Pakistani Army virtually runs Swat, either directly through a large military presence in the valleys, or indirectly through armed militias that keep the Taliban at bay. But the military has also been accused of gross human rights abuses, particularly after a leaked videotape in 2010 showed uniformed men apparently massacring Taliban prisoners.

In response to sharp criticism, the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, announced an inquiry into the shootings. An army spokesman said on Tuesday it had not yet completed its work.

Shah Rasool, the police chief in Swat, said that all roads leading out of Mingora had been barricaded and that more than 30 militant suspects had been taken into custody.

Reporting was contributed by Sana ul Haq from Mingora, Pakistan; Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan; Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi.

Taliban remove minister offering bounty for film maker from hit list

ANP MInister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

PESHAWAR, Sept 26: The Pakistani Taliban say they are granting an “amnesty” to a Cabinet minister who is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who kills the American maker of an anti-Islam film sparking deadly riots in the Muslim world.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told reporters on Wednesday that the minister’s views represent the true spirit of Islam. Consequently, the militants have removed him from their hit list.

“We have totally forgiven him and removed his name from our hit list,” the Taliban spokesman said in a phone call from an unknown location.

Ehsan said that Taliban shoora, a top consultative body, had met on Tuesday and “praised Bilour for his sacrifice for the cause of Islam”.

“The shoora paid rich tributes to Bilour and endorsed his bounty announcement,” he said.

But Ehsan clarified that others in Bilour’s secular party – The Awami National Party (ANP), which opposes the Taliban – won’t enjoy the reprieve.

Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour had announced a $100,000 bounty for the killing of the maker of “Innocence of Muslims” – a film which has sparked deadly protests throughout the Muslim world. Bilour had also sought the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s help in the “noble cause” of killing the filmmaker.

Pakistan’s government says Bilour’s bounty doesn’t represent official policy, and his party, the ANP, has also distanced itself from the minister’s comments.

Bilour, however, insisted public opinion was behind him in Pakistan, which has seen widespread protests against the film including nationwide rallies on Friday that ended in bloodshed and looting, with at least 23 people killed.

“I expressed my personal view and faith. I stand by my declaration,” the 72-year-old Bilour had said on Tuesday. “My faith is non-violent, but I cannot forgive and tolerate (this insult),” he said.

Bilour had added that a businessman from Lahore had offered to put up a further $400,000 for the reward and said that freedom of speech should not be used as an excuse to insult Islam.

“Killing is not a good way, but right now it is the only way, because no action has been taken from Western countries (against the filmmaker),” he said.

Washington condemned Bilour’s reward offer as “inflammatory and inappropriate”, while the EU said it deplored it.

Bilour could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

 

US Drones Hit Key Militants along Pak Afghan Border

Drones Ferret Militants (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

Washington/Islamabad, August 25 – Badruddin Haqqani, the key operational commander of the al Qaeda linked Haqqani network, and top Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are believed to have been killed in US drone and air strikes in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Badruddin, the son of Afghan warlord.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, is ranked as a deputy to his elder brother and the network’s chief Sirajuddin and was believed to be killed in one of the five volleys of drone strikes in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan since August 18.

Four of the missiles hit took place in Shawal Valley, considered to be traditional area of operations of Haqqani network in North Waziristan, and US reports said he may have been killed in the August 21 strike near Miranshah.

The wave of attacks drew strongest protest from Islamabad in recent years when a senior US diplomat was summoned by the Foreign Ministry to lodge their opposition to the attacks.

Badruddin, thought to be in his mid-30s, was a member of the Miranshah Shura Council, one of the Afghan Taliban’s four regional commands, which controls all activities of the militant group in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Senior US officials were quoted by the New York Times as saying that they had strong indications that Badruddin, the key commander of the Haqqani network which is responsible for most of the spectacular assaults on American bases and Afghan cities in recent years, was killed in a drone strike

Meanwhile, a statement by coalition forces in Afghanistan said that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Mullah Dadullah was among 20 militants killed in a “precision airstrike in Shigal wa Sheltan district (of) Kunar province yesterday.” Dadullah, whose real name is Maulana Mohammad Jamaluddin, was made the commander of Taliban in Pakistan’s Bajaur Agency in 2010. He fled to Afghanistan to escape an operation launched by the Pakistan Army. His deputy Shakir too was killed in the airstrike, the statement said.

Badruddin is one of the nine Haqqani family members who have been designated by the US as global terrorists. His brother Sirajuddin is the overall leader of the Miramshah Shura.

Siraj was designated by the State Department as a terrorist in March 2008 and in March 2009, the State Department put out a bounty of USD 5 million for information leading to his capture.

Giving details about the operation, American intelligence officials indicated to the Long War journal yesterday that the remotely piloted Predators and Reapers were targeting an “important Jihadi leader” in the region but his name was not disclosed.

“There are indications that Haqqani has met his demise,” a senior US official said in Washington yesterday.

He said officials were waiting to sift through evidence, including information on jihadist websites, before they could be certain that Haqqani had been killed.

The report said their caution stemmed from previous erroneous claims by American and Pakistani officials about militant deaths in Waziristan, a difficult place to get reliable information. But if confirmed, Haqqani’s death would be a “major benefit to the military coalition in Afghanistan.”

“Badruddin has been at the centre of coalition attacks in Afghanistan as well as mischief in Pakistan,” said the official. The Haqqani network has been blamed for some of the most spectacular assaults on US bases and Afghan cities in recent years.

By Friday evening, reports of Badruddin Haqqani’s death were circulating in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

In Washington, the White House and the CIA, which carries out drone strikes in Pakistan, declined to comment.

The latest string of drone attacks, most of them carried out in Shawal area of North Waziristan Agency, has renewed tensions between Pakistan and the US.

Nearly 40 suspected militants have been killed in these attacks, including a Kashmiri jihadi named “Engineer” Ahsan Aziz. Former Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed recently led funeral prayers in Mirpur for Aziz, who was killed in a drone strike on August 18.

Badruddin Haqqani runs the Haqqani network’s day-to-day militant operations, handles high-profile kidnappings and manages its lucrative smuggling operations, according to a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

In August last year, Afghan intelligence released intercepts of Badruddin Haqqani directing a daring assault on Kabul?s Intercontinental Hotel. Three years before that, he held a reporter for The New York Times, David Rohde, hostage.

The last major successful drone strike in Pakistan was the killing of al-Qaeda deputy leader Abu Yahya al-Libi in June.

US drones yesterday fired six missiles at three locations in Shawal Valley, destroying mud-walled compounds and two vehicles, Pakistani security officials and a Taliban commander said.

Among the 18 people killed was Emeti Yakuf, a senior leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group from western China whose members are Chinese Uighur Muslim militants.

 

Pakistan Suspends Phone Network to Thwart Attacks

Security Search over Eid in Pakistan (Credit: telegraph.co.uk)

The draconian security measure was imposed on Sunday at 8:00 pm, at a time when millions ordinarily telephone friends and relatives with greetings for Eid al-Fitr. Networks were working again on Monday mid-morning.

Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan’s two largest cities, and the troubled city of Quetta, in the insurgency-torn province of Baluchistan, were among the places where networks were suspended.

“We regret that it had to be suspended in some cities due to the risk of terrorist attacks,” Rehman Malik, the country’s interior minister, was quoted as saying by state TV.

“We regret inconvenience caused to youths and children.”

Terrorists were plotting to target “a few areas of Punjab province”, of which Lahore is the capital, the minister said. Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital, and Baluchistan were also targets, he added.

Authorities feared that mobile telephones could be used to coordinate attacks or trigger a remote-controlled bomb.

The Eid festival marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan and, in Pakistan, is accompanied by a three-day public holiday, until Thursday.

The country has been on alert for Eid and security forces stepped up their presence in major cities as celebrations got under way.

On Thursday, heavily armed militants stormed an air force base, the worst attack on a military facility for more than a year, sparking clashes that left 10 people dead.

On the same day, gunmen in military uniforms pulled 20 Shi’ite Muslim travellers from vehicles and shot them dead in the northwestern district of Mansehra.

Pakistan says 35,000 people, including more than 3,000 soldiers, have been killed as a result of terrorism since the 9/11.

 

Pakistani Taliban Kill 22 Shiites in Bus Attack

ISLAMABAD, Aug 16 — Pakistani Taliban militants pulled 22 Shiites off buses and gunned them down in a remote northern mountain pass on Thursday, in the latest iteration of a pattern of attacks targeting religious minorities.

In the remote district of Mansehra, at least a dozen militants dressed in military fatigues stopped three buses carrying passengers on a rugged road from Rawalpindi to Astore. The militants checked the identification papers of passengers, singled out the Shiites and then shot them dead at point-blank range, police officials said.

The victims were mostly young men returning to their villages for Id al-Fitr, the Islamic festival that marks the end of Ramadan.

“The area is very remote and desolate,” said Rina Saeed Khan, an environmental journalist who traveled through the same route back to Islamabad on Wednesday. “The road is an alternate to the Karakoram Highway,” she said, referring to a famed road built by Chinese engineers.

The Babusar Top, where the killings took place, lies two hours from Astore. “There is no cellphone coverage, and you see no villages during the four-hour drive on a dirt road,” Ms. Khan said.

The episode on Thursday was similar to an attack in February in which 18 Shiites were killed after a bus was ambushed on the Karakoram Highway in the mountainous Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Ms. Khan said that after the February attack, travelers began using this alternate route in Kaghan Valley, which was still considered safe despite its harsh terrain. “Obviously, militants kept track of it, and they knew that people were returning to their homes for Id al-Fitr,” she said.

The Darra Adam Khel faction of the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Shiites, Reuters reported. “We have targeted them because they are enemies of Sunnis and conspire against us,” Mohammed Afridi, a spokesman for the faction, was reported as saying in a telephone interview. “We will continue such attacks in the future.”

In recent months, attacks on Pakistani Shiites have increased, particularly in northern regions. Analysts have increasingly criticized the government, saying it has allowed itself to be distracted from protecting the country’s religious minorities. The government is embroiled in political turmoil, with an increasingly assertive Supreme Court that has singled out senior officials.

Ms. Khan, the journalist, said that she found a lot of anger and resentment among the locals during her visit to several northern towns.

“People are very upset,” she said. “They are asking, ‘Where is the government? Where is the military?’ ”

“Locals say Sunnis and Shiites used to live in harmony 10 years ago,” she said. “Life is too tough there, and Shiites and Sunnis used to cooperate. Locals say it’s the outsiders who are doing the killings.”

The Pakistani military said Thursday that it had opened an investigation into a predawn attack by Taliban militants on the Kamra air force base in Punjab. There has been speculation that the military is planning an offensive in North Waziristan, a haven for the Taliban and operatives of Al Qaeda, and some analysts said that the attack could have been meant as a warning against military action.

“The Taliban are telling Pakistan’s leadership, ‘If you hit us here, we’ll hit you,’ ” said Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

 

Taliban attack Pakistani air base ahead of reported military operation

Minhas air base in Kamra (Credit: onlinenews.com.pk)

Islamabad, Aug 16: Militants targeted a major military air base some 30 miles northwest of Islamabad early Thursday morning, giving momentum within Pakistan to the prospect of a long-controversial military mission against elements in restive North Waziristan.

The battle between the military and the militants lasted for more than five hours and left nine militants and one soldier dead. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the North Waziristan-based group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Minhas air base at Kamra includes an aeronautical complex that produces and develops air and ground weapons. But the attack has drawn particular concern because the base has been widely reported to be equipped with nuclear weapons, though the military denies that.

Analysts in Pakistan are calling today’s attack the first of many to come in response to the reports of an operation by the Pakistani military in North Waziristan.

“The Kamra attack is an eye-opener that [the Taliban] can hit us anywhere, anytime, and the speech by the Army chief earlier had the same strategic message in it – that we need to unite against such elements and drive them out,” says a senior military official, referencing a televised speech by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on the operation.

The TTP has strengthened itself in North Waziristan in the past five years. The area is also reported to be home to the Haqqani network, which the US government blames for orchestrating attacks inside Afghanistan.

“Thursday’s attack epitomizes the blowback of a military operation in North Waziristan. And the worrying sign is the capacity of these terrorists to attack. If still nothing is done against them, they will only grow stronger. So it reinforces what we have been hearing about, a need of an operation in North Waziristan, where these elements operate freely,” says Cyril Almeida, a columnist who writes for the largest English daily paper in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that General Kayani told US military officials that Pakistan planed to launch operations against Taliban militants in North Waziristan. Secretary Panetta acknowledged that the combat operation might not include offensives directly attacking the Haqqani network.

“We realize that the most difficult task for any Army is to fight against its own people. But this happens as a last resort. Our real objective is to restore peace in these areas so that people can lead normal lives,” the Pakistani Army chief emphasized in a speech on August 14. He then added that “no state can afford a parallel system or a militant force.”

Kayani attempted to address the popular sentiment among Pakistanis that the military was bending to America’s will. “The fight against extremism and terrorism is our own war, and we are right in fighting it,” he said in a televised speech.

However, many are skeptical about whether the operation will be effective if it does not attack the Haqqani network. “Our military is interested in acting against Pakistani-centric militants only, to stop attacks inside Pakistan like the one today,” adds Mr. Almeida.

Locals from North Waziristan also point out flaws in an operation in North Waziristan. “They have been talking about a possibility of an operation for the past three years. Do you think that the Haqqani network is going to sit around and wait?” says Safdar Dawar, president of the Tribal Union of Journalists.

According to intelligence officials who have operated in the tribal belt, the Haqqani network has more than a dozen places in Afghanistan to operate from.

“Other elements operating in North Waziristan have no place to go and can be targeted as they have been cornered into this area,” says Brig. Asad Munir, who belongs to the tribal belt and retired from military a few years ago.

Munir, who has served in key intelligence positions in the tribal belt, says the military operation will improve relations between Pakistan and America, but not for that long. And given the terrain between Pakistan and Afghanistan, security experts say it is almost impossible to seal this border.

“North Waziristan has been the most strenuous issue between the two countries, and the US believes if Pakistan acts in this area, the insurgency in Afghanistan will be controlled. But without border control from both sides, the operation may not be so successful,” the brigadier adds.

This is not the first time a military base in Pakistan has been attacked.

In 2009, the headquarters of the military came under a siege that lasted for 20 hours. And last year, an attack at a naval base in the port city of Karachi lasted for almost 15 hours.