Tag Archives: Taliban

Quote of the Day: Not our war

“This army is not meant for this. There are no goals, there are no aims. We’re fighting against Muslims. Muslims are killing other Muslims.”

Source: Forgotten victims of Pakistan’s Taliban war
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Under US pressure to root out Taliban and al Qaeda-linked networks in its northwest and districts on the Afghan border, more than 2,795 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in fighting since 2004. Another 8,671 have been wounded.

Those official statistics overshadow the more than 2,403 foreign, mostly American, soldiers who have been killed in 10 years in Afghanistan.
…

Related,
Muslims will kill Muslims

Drone Lunacy

We keep hearing almost daily of how many terrorists have been killed in a drone strike, the number of high/mid/low level leaders that have been eliminated. Just pause for a moment. Give this column The mighty Taliban by Rafia Zakaria a read. Just some food for thought. The next time you hear of these successful drone strikes, just think for a while instead of taking the announcements at their face values.

Excerpt from above article,

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The list is exhaustive and given the regularity with which Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are apparently being killed, it would be expected that their leadership cadres would have been more or less decimated. If 605 ‘leaders’ of any organisation are killed, that organisation’s capacity to operate ought to be significantly impacted.
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The losers in the equation are unsurprisingly the Pakistani people, especially those unfortunate enough to be inhabitants of North and South Waziristan. As a recent report produced by CIVIC, an NGO that collects data on civilians in conflict areas, argues, the low civilian casualty figures provided by the United States are likely to be inaccurate. The report cites civilian casualties from drone attacks in 2009-2010 to be somewhere between 788 and 1,344 — far greater than the 20 reported in congressional hearings on drone strikes held this past April.
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Given the information in the CIVIC report, one must wonder about the truth behind every headline that proclaims the death of yet another Al Qaeda or Taliban leader. With a complete absence of on-the-ground investigations following drone attacks, it is virtually impossible to contest the contentions that proudly and mechanically announce the death of this or that leader. And so Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are targeted and killed and then resurrected in an endless cycle before a baffled world tired of counting heads.

Little Girls fighting for future in midst of floods & violence

Little girls battling to get an education in the midst of schools being blown up and floods destroying reconstruction efforts in Swat valley of Pakistan.
See Pakistan: battling floods and the Taliban
Video Run Time: 7 min 39 sec

I had covered the tsunami and the Kashmir quake for Channel 4 News and as a correspondent, both events were apocalyptic tragedies to report. I have a deep dislike of the idea of comparing natural disasters as though to rank one as “worse” than another. When you witness at first hand the human misery unleashed by these Acts of God, such comparisons seem crass and devoid of compassion.

But as I travelled through Pakistan, from the storm-lashed remote northern valleys of Swat to the vast inland sea that the Indus River had become in the south – through the malarial swamps where rural villages had once stood in between – the point of the UN’s comparison became startlingly clear to me.

Jonathan Miller

Karzai “very angry” at Baradar’s arrest

The news doing the rounds currently is that Karzai is infuriated at Mullah Baradar’s arrest at the hands of Pakistan. I have previously commented on the arrest here and here.

The admission by one of Karzai’s aides is in line with the opinions in the previous posts and also points at the possibilty of Baradar falling out with Mullah Omar and being shown the way of Mullah Dadullah (arrested by Pakistan in 2008). Publicly, they have resisted expressing full blown anger at Pakistan because it puts them in an awkward position. How can they publicly express anger at the arrest of a high ranking Taliban? Continue reading →

Mullah Baradar’s Arrest – Part 2

Previously I shared some thoughts about Mullah Baradar’s arrest and how there seem to be a lot more implications than meet the eye. See Thoughts on Mullah Baradar’s Arrest for Part 1.

As Operation Moshtarak continues and civilian casualties mount, US General Petraeus said that this was the first in a series of operations that would last for 12-18 months. This troop surge strategy seems to be taken from the Iraq war. The problem with this strategy is that it doesn’t work. Fallujah and Marjah, Iraq surge and Afghanistan surge, there are parallels between the two. Now, the Americans claim that the troop surge in Iraq has worked and Obama/Biden and Republicans are fighting over who should take credit
Continue reading →

A brave girl’s story: Family Terror – Suicide Bombers

A 13 year old girl Meena’s story of horror and her brave resistance. Her own family – her father and brother tried to force her to blow herself up. She wanted to help the poor by becoming a doctor instead. They wanted her to kill people and be killed herself. Children of her age and younger were forced into attacks. Her own younger sister was drugged, loaded up with a suicide bomb (with remote control) and forcefully sent on an attack. Meena was beaten mercilessly, but she bravely stood fast. By a chance occurence, she was out of the house when the Army launched an airborne attack on the house. She didn’t know what became of her family, whether they lived or died. She set out alone and escaped.

“People say I have a strong heart. I’ve had to be strong. What can I do? God won’t even let me die.

If my brother gets hold of me, I will poison him and myself.

The Taliban slaughter other people’s children. They turn women into widows. They should be made to suffer too.

I want these Taliban to be burned alive.”

Bombs and beatings: Life among the Taliban

See also,
New video shows Taliban flogging men in Pakistan Continue reading →