Militants kill 3 anti-Taliban elders in Pakistan

[SpArK]

Militants kill 3 anti-Taliban elders in Pakistan

By HABIB KHAN (AP) – 8 minutes ago

KHAR, Pakistan — Suspected militants killed three anti-Taliban tribal elders in northwestern Pakistan, an official said Wednesday, the latest in a string of attacks against tribesmen who dare stand up to the Islamist insurgents.


Two other elders were wounded in the shootout Tuesday night in the Bazai area of the Mohmand tribal region, local government official Javed Khan said. The killings occurred after the assailants ordered the tribesmen to halt at a checkpoint set up along a road, he said.
Mohmand has been the scene of occasional military operations against Taliban and allied insurgent groups.


Pakistan has encouraged local tribes to form anti-Taliban militias in Mohmand and other parts of the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border. Militants have in turn killed scores of tribesmen who side with the government.


Also Wednesday, gunmen killed an ethnic Baluch political activist in Pakistan's southwest as he headed from his suburban home to the city of Kalat.


Nooruddin Mengal, a leading member of the Baluchistan National Party, was on foot when a pair of gunmen rode up on a motorbike and fired at him, said Shukrullah Sasoli, a local police official. Mengal was the third prominent member of the party to be killed this year.
Sasoli declined to say who was suspected in the attack.



Baluchistan province has a number of nationalist movements, as well as a violent nationalist insurgency, calling for greater autonomy from the federal government. Their activities are of major concern to security and intelligence agencies, who often are blamed for targeted killings and disappearances of politicians.


Associated Press Writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta contributed to this report.

 

[zeeshe100]

sad news ..........

 

[Bill Longley]

hmmm
how happy indians get to paste such news items

we know you are enemies and we also know its ur agencies behind such attacks and incidents.

btw Americans why americans are not controlling Nouristan and Kunar. why they are providing sancturies to terrorists ?

 

[Irfan Baloch]

its very sad. Taliban using the similar pattern like in Sawat
targeting people that are known to be affluent, most respected politically or through custom

they pretty much wiped off the Malik system and replaced with a gun totting throat slitting mullah. When it comes to establishing their place and making a mark, Taliban are very cold & calculating and work like terminators

destroy government buildings
kill government officials
kill tribal elders
kill religious or social scholars
kill random habitants in a public place to instil fear & quell dissent

repeat any of the above whenever they think that the place is recovering or their authority is being challenged.

 

[jahangeer yousaf]

whatever ........ but israil,india,usa wont be able to get their goals behind it .....whatever they go for ........... we have been sacrificing our lives and we will keep sacrificing for our religion and for our country ...........

 

[PakiiZeeshan]

R.I.P......

 

[Ahmad]

Here is another report that reveals exactly the same tactics used by Afghani Taliban in Afghanistan:

Fifty-three-year-old Abdul Ahad Helmandwal is
accustomed to being the go-to guy in one of southern Afghanistan's most
violent areas.

From his mud compound in Helmand Province's Nad-e
Ali district, the turbaned ethnic Pashtun has for years looked after an
extended family whose 110 members -- particularly the young -- were
expected to obey him without question.

It had been that way since
the day his father was killed by a Soviet Army mine 25 years ago,
leaving Helmandwal to step into his shoes. Helmandwal's "mashartoob,"
the Pashto word for leadership, in his community was unchallenged.

It is evident that things have changed.

Whereas
Helmandwal's ancestors built legitimacy by regularly holding jirgas, or
local councils, to peacefully resolve local disputes, he is finding
that consensus no longer garners respect even among his own Noorzai
clan.

Elders Losing Control

Instead,
Helmandwal finds himself in a competition for influence against a foe
employing a much harsher method, and it's a competition he and his
fellow Pashtun tribal leaders are not winning.

The Taliban, by
use of a brutal assassination campaign that targets tribal leaders and
other influential locals, has gained the upper hand in Pashtun-populated
areas such as the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

The
strategy has weakened tribal solidarity among Pashtuns, effecting a
societal breakdown that has both reduced their collective ability to
resist extremists and made them wary of cooperating with government and
coalition forces.

The traditional clan hierarchy has eroded,
leaving elders vulnerable to reprisals from young clan members who have
broken family ranks and joined with the Taliban. Whether in remote
Pashtun villages or in bustling cities, Al-Qaeda and Taliban ideologues
lure illiterate Pashtun youth to their side by way of propaganda, cash,
or the promise of revenge for personal tragedies.

As head of the
45-member Nad-e Ali district shura, or council, Helmandwal is the
closest thing to a bridge between his Noorzai clan and the Afghan
government. But getting too close to the government over insurgents is
fraught with hazard, as Helmandwal explains. "Our aim is to extract
ourselves from the calamity we are caught in. We don't have the kind of
government that can protect us," he says.

"If you side with the
Taliban then you will face raining bombs and be prepared to die,"
Helmandwal adds. "When we tell the Taliban not to plant bombs in front
of our houses [to kill Afghan and Western troops], they tell us: 'You
are trying to prevent us from waging jihad. You have become an infidel.'
And then they beat us."

Fashioning A New Order

It
is a Catch-22 that has ravaged the social fabric in Pashtun
communities. Drawing on Al-Qaeda's employment of "takfir," which
justifies the killing of Muslims accused of apostasy, local extremists
in areas straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan have killed hundreds of
Pashtun politicians, tribal leaders, and clerics. Local leaders get
little protection from their governments, whether in Afghanistan or
Pakistan. Few, if any, of the killings are resolved, and communities are
often left deprived of the leaders most likely to resist the Taliban.

Saleem
Afghan, a pseudonym for an Afghan researcher who declined to give his
real name out of security concerns, has looked into 400 such killings
that have taken place in Kandahar Province -- located between Helmand
Province to the west and Pakistan to the east -- over the past nine
years. He found that an overwhelming number of those assassinated were
tribal leaders, with other respected locals, such as clerics, government
officials, and former leaders of the resistance against Soviet
occupation in the 1980s, also among those targeted.

As a local
jirga member, Helmandwal is in a position to arbitrate anything from
marriage disputes to complex clan relations, sometimes involving
generations-old feuds. His authority, based on his lineage, has been
cemented over the years due to his personal charisma and the respect he
has gained from serving his clan.

This places Helmandwal in a
very risky position in the current environment, according to Saleem
Afghan. "The aim of these murders is to finish off everybody in this
society who has the potential to lead the society in the future, and who
can lead them toward peace and stability," he says. "Anybody who is
identified as such has been eliminated."

The Taliban's use of
targeted assassinations to systematically eliminate real or potential
opponents, has clearly left its mark.

The assassinations in
Kandahar for example, have weakened Durrani Pashtun leaders, preventing
them from stabilizing southern Afghanistan -- a region of crucial
strategic importance to the Taliban insurgency.

Across the border
in Pakistan, Taliban assassination campaigns and suicide bombings
dissuade Pashtun tribes from resisting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. On July
9, twin suicide bombings in Pakistan's northwestern Mohmand tribal
district killed more that 100 people as anti-Taliban elders from the
Mohmand tribe were negotiating measures against the insurgents with the
local civilian administration.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
Pashtun tribal leaders have perished in similar attacks across
Pakistan's western border region with Afghanistan during the past five
years.

Radicalized Youth

And sometimes,
the Taliban effort receives a recruitment boost from the very enemy
they are fighting, revealing itself in radicalized youth who join the
fight against the international forces whether their family approves or
not.

Mohammad Qasim, a tall bearded man in his mid-20s, and his
younger brother Kareemullah provide just one example. As the two worked
as day laborers in Kandahar, their parents and a younger brother tended
the family fields and lived in a sprawling mud house in Babaji, a small
farming village in neighboring Helmand Province.

But a NATO
bombing raid that hit the family home two years ago changed everything.
Kareemullah never recovered from losing his parents and younger brother.
"He was deeply shocked and told me that he wanted to go to the Taliban
to fight for them," Mohammad Qasim recalls. "He used to ask" 'Why were
my parents killed? Tomorrow they are going to kill my uncle and others,
too. I must take revenge for my parent's death.'

"I told him: 'Brother, we can't do this. Stay here, we are poor people and need to work to survive.' But he left to fight."

Today
Kareemullah is known as Mullah Kareem and heads a 10-member Taliban
squad in Helmand. Every few months, Mohammad Qasim makes an attempt to
persuade his younger brother to return to Kandahar with him, but to no
avail.

"I don't think he will ever return. He has changed so much that he doesn't even want to see me anymore," Mohammad Qasim says.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61600