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Dont attack brains of other people as Allah might punish you for your arrogance. Maidan is the name of one of the valleys within tirah, it is not a "maidani ilaqa", it is mountaineous. Now say sorry that dude whose brain you insulted.

Khan, Dusro ko naseehat khud mian fazeehat

anyways, Ironies of our War.

Mast Gul, a freedom fighter turned terrorist attacks Peshawar


Amir MirFriday, February 07, 2014

From Print Edition

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ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani jehadi chickens are coming home to roost.Mast Gul, an ex commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen who fought against the Indian security forces for liberation of Jammu and Kashmir, has turned out to be the mastermind of last Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Peshawar.

The attack has already been claimed by the Peshawar chapter of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is waging a war against the state of Pakistan.

Mast Gul was earlier considered to be an asset of the Pakistani intelligence establishment. He shot to prominence following his dramatic escape from the historic Charar-e-Sharif dargah in Jammu and Kashmir during the May 1995 fighting between Kashmiri militants and the Indian troops. A resident of the Khwaja Town area on Pajaggi Road in Peshawar, Mast Gul appeared at a news conference on February 5, 2014, sitting next to the Peshawar district chief of the TTP, Mufti Hasaan Swati, who claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s suicide attack that left nine people dead at a Peshawar hotel. Hasaan Swati disclosed that he had tasked Mast Gul, whom he described as a TTP commander for Peshawar, to plan the suicide bombing.

Originally belonging to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Haroon Khan, also known by his nom de guerre Mast Gul, had established a strong base in the Shrine town of Charar-e-Sharif in Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir in the mid-90s. In a bid to flush them out, the Indian Army had launched an operation, which resulted in a standoff that lasted for two months, till Jammu and Kashmir’s most revered 14th century Charar-e-Sharif shrine was gutted on May 11, 1995 in a mysterious fire. While the Indian Army claimed that the militants had triggered blasts that caused fire, the Kashmiri militants had accused the Indian security forces. Twenty jehadis, two army men and five civilians had died in the operation. However, Mast Gul made good his escape, only to reappear in Pakistan.

Thousands of people and clutter of Kalashnikov assault rifle fire had greeted Mast Gul as he drove into Muzaffarabad from Chakothi on August 2, 1995, three months after his escape from Charar-e-Sharif after setting it on fire. Accompanied by over 100 jehadi colleagues belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM), he vowed to avenge the desecration of the Charar-e-Sharif dargah by the Indian security forces.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, then ameer of the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, accompanied Mast Gul in a drive from Chakothi and described him as a symbol of the Kashmir jehad. Gul then addressed a public meeting at Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi on August 4, 1995, which was also attended by Qazi Hussain Ahmed.

According to the American diplomatic cables leaked by the WikiLeaks and reported by the international press on May 9, 2011, Mast Gul was described as a former Major in the Pakistani Army who had fought against the Indian government in Jammu & Kashmir. This information had been disclosed to the US intelligence agencies by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Chaman Gul, who had been fighting against the Indian security forces in Jammu & Kashmir.

On July 28 2012, India’s former defence minister Jaswant Singh had stated in New Delhi that Gul was a Pakistani jehadi commander who was escorted to the Line of Control by his masters after he had escaped from the Charar-e-Sharif dargah. Jaswant Singh’s remarks were significant given the fact that even 17 years after the incident, mystery surrounds it, particularly how Mast Gul had managed to escape first from the shrine and then from the Valley to surface in Pakistan.

As he resurfaced in Rawalpindi, he was introduced as a key commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) and given a hero’s welcome by the Jamaat-e-Islami, which showcased him at its public meetings.

Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) is considered to be the militant wing of the Jamaat whose ameer Munawar Hasan had to face criticism from the Pakistan Army spokesman for giving certificate of martyrdom to Hakeemullah Mehsud and deriding Pakistani soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the war against terrorists. Although the TTP had denied its involvement in the Tuesday’s suicide bombing at Pak Hotel in Koocha Risaldar locality of Peshawar, Hasaan Swati told reporters in the Miranshah area of North Waziristan that the attack had been carried out to avenge an attack on a seminary (Madrassah Taleemul Quran) in Rawalpindi in November 2013. “The attack was carried out to fulfill the wish of the central deputy ameer of TTP Sheikh Khalid Haqqani to avenge the death of innocent madrassah students,” Hasaan Swati said.

A day earlier, TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid had claimed that his group had nothing to do with the Peshawar bombing and that it was an attempt to sabotage the peace talks. While Shahidullah has not yet retracted Hasaan Swati’s responsibility claim, the reason for Gul’s joining hands with the Taliban to kill innocent civilians in suicide bombings is unknown. But what is known about him is that the 47-year-old jehadi commander had narrowly survived an ambush near Peshawar on August 31, 2003 and subsequently abandoned his hometown.

Mast Gul sustained facial injuries by the spray of shards of his car’s window.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US and the subsequent U-turn taken by the Pakistani establishment with regard to Kashmir jehad, Mast Gul fell out of favour with his intelligence handlers. He subsequently joined another jehadi group striving for the liberation of Jammu & Kashmir - Al Umar Mujahideen (AuM) - led by Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, an Indian national hailing from Srinagar. Zargar was freed by the Indian government in 2000 along with Maulana Masood Azhar (of Jasih-e-Mohammad) and Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed (US journalist Daniel Pearl’s convicted killer) following a plane hijacking.

The stated mission of Al Umar Mujahideen was to reinvigorate armed struggle in J&K. Mast Gul declared in ensuing statements that his goal was to liberate Jammu and Kashmir through armed struggle. “My own resolve is to liberate Kashmir and seek its accession to Pakistan as a prelude to make it a part of Islamic caliphate,” he said in an interview. But little was known about his whereabouts since then, amid conflicting reports that he had joined hands with the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan. But it has now transpired that the former freedom fighter has already joined hands with the enemies of the state, like some other assets of intelligence establishment, like Commander Ilyas Kashmiri.

@Icarus @Irfan Baloch
 
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Op-Ed Contributor
Pakistan Mustn't Surrender
By HAIDER ALI HUSSEIN MULLICKFEB. 23, 2014
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Women near the site of a Peshawar attack. Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Last week, a Pakistani Taliban commander reported the execution of 23 Pakistani frontier troops held hostage; two weeks ago, a suicide bomber killed nine Shiite Muslims in Peshawar. In response, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has conducted retaliatory airstrikes but has only suspended, not abandoned, its foolhardy strategy for peace: keep trying to talk the Pakistani Taliban into disarming, in exchange for halting military operations against them.

These peace talks will fail. They are an effort to surrender, and they ignore what most Pakistanis want: to regain control of their country from this deadly insurgency.

So Mr. Sharif should end the talks definitively and have the army mount a strong land offensive to drive the Pakistani Taliban out of their mountainous stronghold south of Peshawar once the snows melt this spring. It is there that the group poses the greatest risk to Pakistan’s people, and to America’s supply line to Afghanistan. The United States should help the army prepare.

In the last decade, the Pakistani Taliban and associated groups, operating from the northwest, have terrified much of Pakistan. They have killed more than 18,000 civilians, including more than 2,000 Shiites and 5,500 police officers and soldiers. A sense of siege prevails west of the Indus River, even though that area is garrisoned by Pakistan’s military.

Much of the problem can be laid at the feet of Pakistan’s leaders. For decades, with government acquiescence, Pakistan’s military and its intelligence agency have used radical Islamist groups to foment insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The groups recruit and train ideologues and fighters; raise funds; run seminaries and businesses; broadcast hatred of their political and religious enemies; and get hospital treatment when they are wounded. The military’s original goal was to counter Indian regional influence, but the cost to Pakistanis has been the failure of their state. Now the extremists increasingly target the very military that armed and encouraged them.

In other words, Pakistan’s luck has run out. You can sway an insurgent to fight “injustice” in a neighboring country like India, but once his leaders feel they have impunity, you can’t stop them from acting independently or exploiting local grievances. These days, as much as the Pakistani Taliban hate Indians and Americans, they hate other Pakistanis more. Acting in tandem with Al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other lethal groups, the Pakistani Taliban has slaughtered Shiites, Christians, Indians, Americans, Afghans and polio prevention workers, often with the state looking the other way.

Pakistan’s decade-long response has been based on a fallacy: that the military could target “bad” insurgents (those fighting Pakistan’s army and citizenry), while it worked with “good” ones (those fighting India). In reality, the two types are increasingly indistinguishable and have killed a great many times more Pakistanis than Indians. For example, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, also has supported anti-Shiite death squads. And the Haqqani network, which has fought Indian influence in Afghanistan, has also helped Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban kill Pakistanis.

Last year, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project found that 93 percent of Pakistanis said terrorism was a big problem, while only 45 percent worried that much about Indian influence in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, peace efforts have kept chasing the dream of compromise. In 2004, 2006 and 2008, Pakistan’s army signed deals that gave insurgents territory, amnesty, reparations, exemption from constitutional rules — along with time to rearm, regroup and resume their attacks. The record of mayhem, which has included attacks on major military headquarters, has left one mediator defending the current talks with this logic: “If America, with all its might, couldn’t win in Afghanistan, how can we win against the Pakistani Taliban? They have scores of suicide bombers. We must negotiate.”

But that is nonsense. Of course Pakistan’s army can’t expect to win the war by simply killing enough of the enemy. It must also focus on winning over the local populace by assuring their safety. But the army showed in 2009 that it could do this: After the Taliban seized the peaceful Swat Valley and proceeded to behead policemen, flog women and keep girls like Malala Yousafzai from attending school, the army swept in. Aided by new training and tactics, and with an infusion of American dollars and equipment, the troops took back the area and then kept control of it — a first for them since 9/11. And most of the two million displaced residents returned home.

Today, most Pakistanis want to apply the “Swat Valley model” to North Waziristan, the nerve center of the Pakistani Taliban. Prime Minister Sharif, in a Jan. 29 speech defending negotiations, admitted as much. “I know if the state today decides to use force to eliminate the terrorists, the entire nation will support it,” he said.
What he should have added was that peace talks would make the most sense after Pakistan’s troops took the area from the insurgents. Today, the Taliban demand nothing less than blanket immunity, a return of prisoners, the exit of all Pakistani troops, an end to American drone strikes, the abandonment of secular education and the severance of ties between the United States and Pakistan. Defeating them in battle might allow Pakistan to demand, instead, that the Taliban accept the rule of law.

That outcome would benefit the United States. We need Pakistan as a strategic ally, and we need both its stability and a good working relationship with its leaders to help keep its 100 or so nuclear warheads from falling into terrorist hands. Nevertheless, our relationship has been strained for decades by mutual distrust — largely traceable, on the American side, to Pakistan’s reluctance to directly confront the dangerous partners it has coddled for so long.

So in preparation for a spring offensive, America should now offer Pakistan intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, as well as humanitarian assistance for those citizens whom fighting would inevitably displace. It is an opportunity to start building trust between our two countries by helping Pakistan take on its worst internal threat, one that menaces the democracy that Pakistanis crave.

Haider Ali Hussein Mullick, an adjunct professor at the Naval War College, is editor in chief of The Fletcher Security Review.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 24, 2014, in The International New York Times.
 
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Civilians must be evacuated from military operation areas: Imran Khan

Speaking with the media Monday afternoon, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan said that civilians should first be evacuated from the areas were military operations are being conducted, Express News reported.

He cautioned that people who lose their family members, friends and relatives could eventually retaliate if they are not allowed to evacuate. He advised that the operation in North Waziristan could be conducted in manner it was done in Swat.

PTI chief also urged that the Taliban should announce unconditional ceasefire so that the peace talks could be salvaged. He asserted that the government should negotiate with those factions of the Taliban who are not attacking the armed forces, security forces or the civilians.

He expressed support for military operation against the Mohmand agency Taliban who killed 23 Frontier Corps personnel.

Civilians must be evacuated from military operation areas: Imran Khan – The Express Tribune
 
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PAF jets launched air strikes in North Waziristan on early Tuesday, killing at least 30 militants.

MIRANSHAH (Dunya News) - Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jets bombed suspected Taliban hideouts in Miranshah area of North Waziristan early Tuesday, killing at least 30 alleged militants.

The attacks focused on the towns of Miranshah and Darpa Khel and surrounding areas.

Peace talks between the Taliban and the government, announced on January 29, stalled last week due to a recent surge in insurgent attacks and a claim by a Taliban faction that it had killed 23 kidnapped soldiers.

30 militants killed in North Waziristan airstrikes | Pakistan | Dunya News

Allahu Akbar! Pak Fauj Zindabaad! PAF Zindabaad! Pakistan Zindabaad!
 
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PAF jets launched air strikes in North Waziristan on early Tuesday, killing at least 30 militants.

MIRANSHAH (Dunya News) - Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jets bombed suspected Taliban hideouts in Miranshah area of North Waziristan early Tuesday, killing at least 30 alleged militants.

The attacks focused on the towns of Miranshah and Darpa Khel and surrounding areas.

Peace talks between the Taliban and the government, announced on January 29, stalled last week due to a recent surge in insurgent attacks and a claim by a Taliban faction that it had killed 23 kidnapped soldiers.

30 militants killed in North Waziristan airstrikes | Pakistan | Dunya News

Allahu Akbar! Pak Fauj Zindabaad! PAF Zindabaad! Pakistan Zindabaad!
Awesome news! Looks like they are showing them hell everyday!
 
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Awesome news! Looks like they are showing them hell everyday!
its non stopable, i can promise terrorists will forget, every other hell?
up to govt, whatever they want to say?
but PA doesnt hve any breaks, into its machine?lolzzzz
 
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It seems PA have lost its patience with this gutless Government . and now have decided to take matters of national security in their own hands . hence you see consecutive Air strikes every day sending TTP to Hell .
 
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BOOYA!!!

This is more like it.

Bomb them to hell!

They are getting their sorry asses kicked every other night!
 
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Taliban Claims Government Airstrikes Mean War

Feb. 24, 2014 - 01:19PM | By USMAN ANSARI | Comments

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A Pakistani Army soldier patrols as Shiite Muslim mourners take part in a religious procession in Rawalpindi in December. (Agence France-Presse)

ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani Taliban (TTP) spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, has said the government is opting for war by carrying out recent airstrikes in North Waziristan, the Khyber Agency yesterday.
However, analysts do not expect the government will order a full-scale military ground operation despite preparations that are being made for such an undertaking.

Brian Cloughley, former Australian defense attache to Islamabad, said: “The airstrikes are an attempt by [Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif] to show that he is decisive, but in fact they don’t prove anything, because their effects are minimal.”

Indeed, government statements and some media reports have claimed the airstrikes show the prime minister has lost patience with the Taliban, but Cloughley argues that to be effective, far more concerted action is required.

“There is only one way to go about achieving defeat of the [North Waziristan] Taliban, and that is a full-scale ground operation backed by massive airstrikes. It will be horrible, but it’s got to be done. And it can only be ordered by the [prime minister],” he said.

Like many analysts, he said he doubts the prime minister would order such an operation, but added: “The army is keeping very quiet about any plans for major operations in [North Waziristan], but there is no doubt that plans have been made.”

The airstrikes were launched after the TTP claimed to have executed 23 captive paramilitary soldiers. They belonged to the Frontier Corps and were apparently held captive since June 2010, when they were captured during a TTP raid on a checkpost near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The Mohmand chapter of the TTP claimed it killed the men on Feb. 16 in response to the extrajudicial killings of 23 of their own men held by the government. The police and government have strenuously denied any such killings have taken place.

The government also called off further negotiations with a three-man committee appointed by the TTP to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire and wider peace talks. The process was widely derided by analysts, and considered only a TTP ploy to avert a government military response in North Waziristan.

Analyst Haris Khan of the Pakistan Military Consortium think tank says the picture is complicated because the TTP has in effect splintered.

The Mohmand Agency chapter of the TTP was known to be more extreme and opposed to any talks. However, he attributes the killing of the 23 paramilitaries to the Ahrar-ul-Hind (AUH), which split from the main TTP when peace talks between it and the government commenced after attacks in January.

Khan says the AUH has been active in training suicide bombers and preparing IEDs, as well as receiving recruits from Western Europe.

As a result, he claims its training camps have been a major target for the airstrikes and many of those TTP claimed killed by the government are actually AUH members.

“It should be noted with the recent bombing campaign both by the Pakistan Army and [Pakistan Air Force], the intelligence of the area was very accurate. The success in this raid is a testimony of the ISR apparatus which is shared between Pakistan’s military, the [Defense Intelligence Agency] and CIA,” Cloughley said.

There may also be legitimate questions about a possible continuing lack of equipment for the military.
According to Cloughley, “The [Pakistan Army] has enough equipment to conduct the operation.”

However, “It will really have to be a blitzkrieg, and I’m sure the army has told [Sharif] that there will be vast human cost,” he said.

Khan agrees that the military has enough firepower to deal with the TTP.

“The Pakistan Army, having been fighting against these groups since 2002, has lacked much needed MRAP-type vehicles, along with IED neutralizers. Presently, the army utilizes Toyota 4x4 pick-up trucks with some very limited armor to transport troops entering these areas. This is where the highest level of casualties the Pak Army has sustained,” he said.

Whether a ground operation is launched, analysts are predicting an upswing in TTP attacks as a result of the developments.

Email: uansari@defensenews.com.
 
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Jet planes bomb hideouts in North, South Waziristan killing 30 militants
By Web Desk / Reuters / AFP
Published: February 25, 2014
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File photo of a Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder. PHOTO: APP

PESHAWAR: Jet planes bombed militant hideouts on Tuesday in South and North Waziristan killing at least 30 militants, according to military officials, Express News reported.

Fighter jets have been pounding targets in the region since the government’s efforts to engage Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in peace negotiations broke down this month.

North Waziristan residents have been trickling out of the troubled region in recent days anticipating a full-scale military offensive, leaving their homes and villages behind and settling in more peaceful areas such as Bannu, Kohat and Peshawar.

“The death toll from the airstrikes has risen to 30,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP.

“The militants had captured a stretch between South Waziristan and North Waziristan and had established training centres where they were also preparing suicide bombers,” one official told Reuters.

“Fifteen were killed in South Waziristan side of the border, while 12 killed in North Waziristan,” the official said earlier today.

Express News reported that the airstirkes mainly took place in Datta Khel and Shawal areas of North Waziristan where militant training facilities and compounds are said to be located.

It was impossible to verify how many civilians might have been killed or wounded in the attacks.

The early morning attack on hideouts in the North and South Waziristan tribal districts were the fourth in a series of airstrikes.

Previous bombings

On February 23, air strikes were carried out in the remote Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency in which security forces claimed to have killed at least 38 militants, including key commanders. Six hideouts were also destroyed, they had added.

Just a day before that, on February 22, security forces had carried out shelling on militant hideouts in Thall sub-district of Hangu, killing at least nine insurgents.

While on February 19, at least 30 suspected insurgents were killed and several others injured as military jets and gunships had bombed their hideouts in the North Waziristan and Khyber agencies.
 
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Pakistan Bombs Militant Area as Officials Weigh a Wider Offensive


The Pakistani military pressed its campaign of airstrikes against militants in the remote tribal regions on Tuesday, reportedly killing at least 30 people, as the national cabinet met to consider a broader military offensive, officials said.
A security official said fighter jets bombed the mountainous Shawal region, on the border between North and South Waziristan, early Tuesday. “A number of terrorist hide-outs have been completely destroyed,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

North Waziristan, in particular, has become a nexus of allied militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The airstrike campaign began after militants executed 23 captured Frontier Corps militiamen on Feb. 16, derailing an effort to start talks between the government and the Pakistani Taliban. Militant attacks have stepped up as well, including three deadly ones this month in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Last week, Pakistani officials said that at least 460 people had been killed in militant violence over the past five months as the government has tried to engage the Taliban in talks.

The continued airstrikes over the past week have sent thousands of people fleeing in North Waziristan, and have fueled speculation that a tougher military offensive against militants may be on the way. On Tuesday, the national cabinet was to discuss just such an action. The officials are also said to be weighing whether to establish Pakistan’s first National Internal Security Policy to provide a unified platform for intelligence gathering.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/asia/pakistan-bombs-militant-area.html?_r=0
 
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funny how Western news saying "killed 30 people" instead of "militants"
 
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