Acts of Terrorism in Pakistan

[muse]

---

---

S2

Further, our politicos must give up double-speak

Agnostic Muslim says,

S2 you offer a interesting juxtaposition -- Our "politicos" have counterparts on this forum, one can only hope that they realize they canot hide anymore and must either be "unequivocal" or they may cause even more harm than they already have.

[S-2]

I've attacked the role of the P.A. in this emerging crisis. Part of the defense offered up against some of my assertions is the constitutional obligations of a subordinate army operating within a democratic framework.

I won't argue to that defense as I believe that there are strong elements of America's congress which wish to see a practicing democracy emerge in Pakistan.

Fair enough.

OTOH, I don't really know how SWAT came about? Others smarter than I don't seem to know either. Was the ANP unprepared to see through what was necessary in SWAT after the Bajaur experience and pulled the rug from under the army? Did the ANP get dumped on by an army that used Mumbai to gather itself from a fight for which it had no taste?

Inquiring minds wish to know.

[Torpedo]

Suicide Bomber Kills 5 in Northwestern Pakistan

By VOA News
05 May 2009

Pakistani police officers examine site of suicide bombing near Peshawar, 05 May 2009
Pakistani police say a suicide bomber rammed his car into a military vehicle in the northwestern part of the country, killing four civilians and one soldier.

Officials said the attack happened Tuesday at a checkpoint near the city of Peshawar in the volatile semi-autonomous tribal area of Khyber. At least 21 people were wounded in the attack, including several children.

A officer in the local bomb disposal unit said the bomber's vehicle was carrying an estimated 85 kilograms of explosives.

No one has claimed responsibility, but Pakistani officials say fighting has intensified between government troops and Taliban militants in the area, further straining a three-month-old peace deal.

Meanwhile, officials ordered residents in the Swat Valley town of Mingora to evacuate and announced a break in a curfew for the displaced to flee.

Officials say increasing violence between the military and Taliban is endangering citizens the area's tenuous peace deal.

Under the deal, Pakistani authorities agreed to impose Islamic law in Swat and other parts of the Malakand region in return for an end to insurgent violence.

Pakistani troops launched an offensive against the Taliban last month after militants in Swat tried to impose their strict brand of Islam on Buner, 100 kilometers from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

The Taliban accuses Pakistan's government of violating the peace deal by attacking militants. The Islamist group also rejects the government's creation of an Islamic court in Malakand on Saturday, saying it was not consulted.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.

[hellfire]

Do you guys think that the taliban is going to India next?

not until and unless they defeat PA .... a situation which is farfetched in the best of hopes (talibani)

PA will kick them long before we have to bother .... have oft repeated you are our final line of defence today .....

[dk33]

What this outside observer can off-hand recall of those 2004-2008 days are two sporadic operations in the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan which led to the emergance of the TTP and the second operation in SWAT aimed at Mullah FM (Faizullah). Both had a peculiar surreal quality about them. Neither quite real but real enough when men died...and they did.

You recall only enough to bolster your biases.

The first phase of the operation in Swat was very successful in terms of reducing the TTP-S to the status of a classic 'hit and go run hide in the mountains' insurgency.

The major strategic losses came in the aftermath of the ANP led government taking power and acting to fulfill its election pledge of 'dialog' with the militants. Your flawed recall omits the fact that 'dialog' was a major plank for all the major political parties in the 2008 election, since 'Military Operations' were associated with Musharraf and the much maligned Army.

The peace deal enacted after the ANP came to power is what allowed the TTP-S to really consolidated its hold in Swat, bolstered by thousands of additional recruits/volunteers from outside Swat. This was also the time during which the TTP-S consolidated its relationship with B Mehsud's TTP, and used the ties to bolster its own military activities.

And as I pointed out in another thread, both the NWFP Governor and DG ISPR have clarified that under that ANP peace deal, they were under orders from the government not to attack the Taliban unless attacked first.

The ANP cannot cry about the Army deserting them when they tied the Army's hands themselves, squandered every advantage the Army had after the first phase of the operation and helped bolster the TTP-S through the 'peace deal'.

Yet there was none of the permanence one associates with India's occupation of Kashmir-both in the cities out and out in the hills

It is a 'civil conflict' against fellow Pakistanis - it should be obvious that the motivation and singularity of purpose one would see against an external existential threat would be diluted by virtue of the complex emotions and dynamics of a civil war. Comparisons with a hypothetical Indian invasion are therefore pointless.

Chicken or egg at the simplest level. I do know that ANP officials die with unusual regularity.

Soldiers and law enforcement officials die with even more regularity.

[dk33]

S-2

Was the ANP unprepared to see through what was necessary in SWAT after the Bajaur experience and pulled the rug from under the army?

The Bajaur operation from a military POV has been successful - the Taliban in Bajaur can no longer claim it as they do in Waziristan or Swat even. The Taliban remnants are reduced to 'hit and run' tactics.

There was failure in Bajaur, but that was a failure of the GoP - a failure in stepping in once the military had cleared the agency and restarting development, engaging with the Tribes to get 'local law enforcement' working, rehabilitating the IDP's etc.

So if there was any disenchantment from Bajaur, the Military is not to blame.

As to what happened in Swat, see my previous post.

[dk33]

S2

S2 you offer a interesting juxtaposition -- Our "politicos" have counterparts on this forum, one can only hope that they realize they canot hide anymore and must either be "unequivocal" or they may cause even more harm than they already have.

My opinions are characterized by these comments from an article by Pamela Constable in the WaPO;

The military leadership, headed by Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the army chief, has another list of concerns: how to rebuild its reputation after a period of unpopularity under Gen. Pervez Musharraf; how to contain extremist fighters without leaving the Indian border underprotected; and how to handle the fallout from civilian casualties and massive human flight from conflict zones.

There is no doubt that the army, though lacking expertise in counterinsurgency tactics, is equipped to crush the insurgents. But now that Pakistan is under democratic rule, analysts said, the army has no desire to be seen as making policy and is determined to seek civilian cover for its actions.

"The government is trying its best to give time and space to the other side to allow the reconciliation process to reach its logical conclusion," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military's spokesman, told a Pakistani news channel. He said that the army's orders were limited to clearing the Taliban from Buner and that if reconciliation fails, "it will be the decision of the government whether to extend operations to Swat."

washingtonpost.com

"The government is trying its best to give time and space to the other side to allow the reconciliation process to reach its logical conclusion,"

I would also argue that the Army is trying its best to give the Government the space to develop policies and the determination to take on the Taliban threat, as it should - and this goes back to my last two responses to you.

I think this is validated by the recent criticism from US officials, that has singled out the GoP, and not the Military. Some analysts in fact saw in those statements an expression of confidence in the Military by virtue of its control over the nukes - it rankled a lot of people.

[Rabzon]

My thoughts exactly.


Talibanisation & Musharraf

By Shehryar Mazari
Wednesday, 06 May, 2009

WHILE most people rightly blame Ziaul Haq for the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, Musharraf’s role in bringing about Talibanisation in the country has been greatly overlooked.

Three decades ago Zia Haq chose the Hezb-i-Islami leader, Gulbadin Hikmatyar, as his favoured successor to Soviet rule in Afghanistan. After Zia’s death, the security establishment disenchanted with Hikmatyar’s lack of success replaced him in 1994 with the recently discovered Taliban. The Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in 1996 provided a boost for Pakistan’s security establishment. It provided Pakistan a foothold in Afghanistan and much-desired strategic regional depth to counter India.

Following the 9/11 attack in the US by Al Qaeda which was being sheltered by the Taliban Musharraf was forced to disown the Taliban regime. However, within days he announced on TV “I have done everything for the … Taliban when the whole world was against them….We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban.”

Shortly afterwards, when the Taliban were ousted by the US-led invasion, Musharraf allowed tens of thousands of Taliban to enter Pakistan’s tribal belt, believing that opposing them would sideline Pakistan from the regional power game in Afghanistan. What was not revealed then was that a large number of Al Qaeda militants had used this opportunity to stealthily move into Pakistan as well. However, fearing direct US intervention, Musharraf vocally denied their existence within Pakistan.

Perhaps he imagined that the extremists would remain quiescent in Pakistan’s mountainous borderlands, but this was not to be. The military dictator’s personal agenda soon came in the way: Having flouted the constitution by coup d’état, Musharraf, like previous military dictators, became desperate for legal protection. This legal cover could only be provided by a compliant parliament.

Misusing his powers as army chief, Musharraf used his agencies to ensure that the 2002 election was rigged in Sindh and Punjab against the PPP and PML-N. This led to a rise of a motley bunch of politicians under the façade of the PML-Q. However, real damage was done in the NWFP and Balochistan, where the security agencies ensured the success of the religio-political alliance of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. As part of an understanding, Fazlur Rehman ensured that the MMA’s newly elected members of parliament united with the PML-Q to pass the 17th Amendment, legitimising all Musharraf’s unconstitutional acts.

Perceiving the two popular political parties — the PPP and PML-N — as a threat to his power, Musharraf became an inadvertent hostage to the MMA’s blackmailing. His backtracking in 2006 on repealing the Hudood Ordinances was just one example. The seats MMA ‘won’ in the National Assembly gave it serious clout in national affairs. Worse was that it also dominated the NWFP and Balochistan governments. The MMA government of NWFP moved quickly to impose a Taliban-like agenda. In a short space of time, the MMA produced a fertile environment for the spread of religious militancy throughout the NWFP and parts of Balochistan.

While the Taliban were perceived as essential to future Afghan policy, similar leniency was also applied to militant groups habitually infiltrating the Kashmir ceasefire line. The post-9/11 international crackdown on terrorism had given Musharraf much cause for worry. Initially he went on the offensive, proclaiming these militants valiant freedom fighters — in other words ‘good jihadists’ vs Al Qaeda, the ‘bad jihadists’.

However, the international pressure became too much to bear. Consequently, many of these groups were officially banned by Islamabad, and thus were forced to go underground and operate under different names. It became a game of smoke and mirrors. Every now and then a militant leader would be placed under house arrest and then released a few days later. Militant groups would be officially condemned on television while their workers continued to collect donations under different guises.

While the Musharraf regime kept up appearances with the West, it felt impelled to maintain a working relationship with the MMA for its political survival. It also continued its linkages with the numerous politico-religious militant groupings in pursuit of its strategy for Afghanistan and India.

The MMA’s policy of providing succour to religious militancy, combined with Musharraf’s strategy of benign indifference, at best, towards the Taliban and Kashmiri militants, led to a perfect ****** storm. Provided freedom, the militant groups gained momentum and developed linkages with each other and in some cases with Al Qaeda itself.

Soon the Taliban, with its new allies, spread its tentacles from Waziristan to the rest of Fata and later to Swat and beyond. Moreover, some of the militant groupings active in Kashmir had by now joined up with these transnational jihadist forces. Talibanisation had begun in earnest.

The Taliban crisis is a direct result of Musharraf’s legacy. For self-preservation he deliberately weakened the secular political structure, replacing it with a political environment which proved extremely conducive for religio-political militant groups that now threaten the existence of Jinnah’s Pakistan — ironically created as a refuge for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

It is time for a rethink. In this post-Musharraf scenario one can appreciate our security establishment’s preoccupation with external threats; that is their job after all. Nonetheless, why relentlessly pursue a policy to defend Pakistan externally which may, in itself, ultimately lead to the country’s destruction from within? Yes, hostility from neighbouring countries is a disturbing reality. But need we continue with a bungled policy which has led to destruction from within and failure without; Afghanistan remains a troubled dream and Kashmir a hopeless mirage.

It is time for an open discourse between parliamentary leaders and the security establishment to find a better solution to our problems. The protection of Pakistan’s river resources from encroachment is of vital importance; the survival of millions depends upon these rivers. However, this begs the question: if Pakistan disappears under the onslaught of religiosity, what use will all this water be? So, no matter how serious the water issue may be, it should, along with Kashmir, yield to a more pressing concern.

Obviously today’s most burning issue is the Talibanisation of large swathes of our country from where it appears to be spreading day by day, night by night. There is little point in berating the culprit. Recently in a foreign interview Musharraf offered his presidential services to save Pakistan from ‘self-destruction’. He is obviously delusional.

And the solution? All civil society can do is raise its voice as loudly as possible; the best the parliamentarians can do is pass sensible legislation; and the best the government can do is issue prudent instructions (which may or may not be obeyed). In the end, the answer can only lie with the army. Let us hope it now fulfills its primary responsibility to the people of Pakistan.

[muse]

Musharraf only did what his Intel Service advised and what his corp commanders agreed to do.

But I suppose his feet can be held to the fire - "UNEQUIVOCAL" is what was required and his intel service advised something could still be worked out.

Everyone will agree that the deal with the MMA was a disaster, but lets also recall that the ANP, and PPP in particular, did not want to think of Pakistan first but of their chance to raid the Pakistani treasury. Lets not let Musharraf take this one by himself, he has already done a lot of heavy lifting for us.

In the end, the answer can only lie with the army. Let us hope it now fulfills its primary responsibility to the people of Pakistan

I can hear it now, "look to the civilian govt"

[muse]

Dedicated to osterich -- Army seems to be disconnected from the duty the people of Pakistan want it to perform


Pakistan and US still disagree over Taliban?

* Washington wonders why Pakistan Army doesn’t ‘get out there and deal with’ Taliban

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The Pakistan Army last week launched an offensive against the Taliban. But are the goals of the offensive limited to containing the Taliban’s most recent advances, rather than reversing their gains over the past year?

As US President Barack Obama prepares to welcome President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington, it is plain, according to Time magazine, that the two sides do not share the same view of the Taliban threat.

US leaders began sounding the alarm when the Taliban extended their reach beyond Swat by taking control of Buner. Pentagon leaders warned that the Taliban had become an “existential threat” to Pakistan.

“We’re wondering why they don’t just get out there and deal with these people,” Clinton said of the Pakistan Army. “If you lose soldiers trying to retake part of your own country, that’s the army’s mission.”

The Pakistani generals do not share the US view of the Taliban as some sort of external force invading territory, the report says. On the contrary, the movement appears to be rooted in the country’s social fabric, it adds.

[Rabzon]

No aid without benchmarks

By Kamran Shafi
Tuesday, 05 May, 2009

ON Jan 13, I had written in this same space about Swat: 'Visitors to Swat tell of Pakistan Army and Taliban check posts a few hundred metres apart, army vehicles passing through Taliban check posts too. Why?

'Are they cooperating to strike the fear of God into our hearts? And for telling their paymaster, Amreeka Bahadur, that the problem is far bigger than it really is, so go on coughing up those luscious dollars?

'Let me caution the powers that be in this tortured and unfortunate country: Barack Obama will soon be in the White House. Beware, sirs, for he is a highly intelligent man who will very quickly see through all of the charade and the subterfuge that seemingly is on shameful display in the citadel of Islam. He is not a duffer like your ‘tight buddy’ Dubya! So beware, if not for your own sakes, then for this poor country’s and its hapless people’s. I beg you.'

So then, told you so, didn’t I, O’ great and all-powerful Pakistani Establishment? But did you listen; did the federal government of Asif Ali Zardari (may God bless us), listen? No sirs, you did not. You thought that no matter what your acts of omission and commission, the slick-willy Husain Haqqani, the bestest diplomat in this universe and in the world’s beyond, would work his magic on the Americans and everything would be as hunky-dory for you as it was for the Commando when he committed his acts of omission and commission. You forgot, did you not, that he was also the COAS of the great Pakistan Army; and that an idiot sat in the White House.

Well, the verbal hellfire missiles fired at the above-mentioned Asif Zardari during the last week should have brought y’all crashing down to earth if you have even an iota of sense. But no, above-mentioned Husain Haqqani reportedly went on bended knee before Ambassador Holbrooke and beseeched him to try and ‘limit the damage’, please sir. Of course, whilst you and your paid hacks think that was a great coup, Mr Holbrooke’s attempts at so doing leave one flabbergasted: President Obama had 'very deep personal feelings for Pakistan … as a young man he visited Pakistan … his mother worked there, she loved Pakistan'. I ask you!

How does the fact that Barack Obama visited and had very deep personal feelings for Pakistan as a young man, or the fact that his mother loved this country, have any effect at all on how President Barack Obama will view this country when every report that goes to him speaks of the ambivalent, almost careless attitude of the powers that be towards matters of huge and critical importance to the United States?

Which doesn’t mean, however, that the American administration should kick the civilian, elected government in the teeth, and at the same time praise the army leadership to the skies. I take strong exception to President Obama saying that it was 'very difficult (for the government) to gain the support and the loyalty of their people' because it didn’t 'seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, healthcare, rule of law, a judicial system….' I wish someone would remind Mr Obama that army dictators have ruled this country for longer than civilians, and that it was an army dictator who was in office immediately before this government was elected to office. Why weren’t 'basic services' delivered then?

I wish someone would remind Mr Obama that it was the Commando who kicked out 62 members of the superior judiciary including the chief justice of the country: so much for 'rule of law'; and that it was the Commando who is primarily responsible for what is happening in the Frontier because of his foolish act of replacing the political administration with the army. Witness the saga of Lt. Gen. Safdar whose 'eyes saw everything” and whose 'ears heard everything' and Nek Mohammad!

It was completely unfair of Mr Obama too, to place the entire responsibility for what is going on in the country today on the civilian, elected government, when there is every evidence that the army simply did not do its job seriously, and well enough, in Swat. Ask the ANP.

There are several aspects to this whole rigmarole, however, and whilst I say the above, I also agree absolutely with Fatima Bhutto when she writes ‘Stop funding my failing state’ in the Daily Beast (May 4). I have myself been turning this matter over in my head for days now, have discussed it with friends, and have come to the conclusion that untied aid only spoils our ruling elites even more.

America, old sugar-daddy America, should have seen by now that no amount of mollycoddling has ever helped chivvy the government of Pakistan, heavily influenced by the establishment as it is, towards doing the right thing. It will have seen too that a huge proportion of aid goes towards non-developmental expenditure on a scale that is unimaginable in other, far richer, aid-giving countries.

Surely America’s diplomatic posts have reported on the outlandish luxury and circumstance in which the government leaders of the country live; the most expensive (and very kitsch) furniture, all damask and chiffon and silk and velvet upon which they recline and eat; the seven-course meals served in official banquets in our government houses across all the provinces and in Islamabad the Beautiful.

It should know too, that government leaders are not the only ones who wallow in luxury, and that even lieutenant generals of the Pakistan Army now ride about in BMW 5-series motor-cars; that senior officers of the military live in utter splendour compared to their counterparts even in aid-giving America!

Even next door the Indians live far more simply than our brass hats. I have visited the homes of three retired Indian armed forces officers: a lieutenant general, a major general and an air marshal. The houses/flats of all three would fit into just one of the houses we see in General’s Colony, Lahore, with space to spare.

So let me say this to our donors (shame on us!): it is high time that our elites got some shock treatment. Set the benchmarks; don’t give a red cent that is not tied to performance on the ground; and route any and all aid through the elected government. And remember, we most certainly have the wherewithal to comprehensively defeat a militia that even now does not number more than 4,000, on our very own. If we want to defeat it, that is.

[muse]

Just so the more patriotic than us will not be confused:


Honourable men!
Ejaz Haider


I am not easily moved to tears or affected, especially not by anything that I find mushy, platitudinous and lugubrious. Which is why, generally speaking, love poems, religious sermons and political demagoguery, not necessarily in this order, leave me cold.

But on Monday, as I sat down to edit Ayeda Naqvi’s article (“Where is our yellow ribbon?”), I was moved to tears. The true beauty of sentiment lies in its being matter of fact; and Ayeda’s article was deeply moving not only because it fulfilled for me that condition but because it made an important point — plain and simple.

Citizens have the right to criticise governmental policies; they have the right to criticise the conduct of a war; they have the right to force policymakers to think and rethink, to review policies, to review the policy review and so on. Legitimate it is to do all this, vital even. But, and that is where Ayeda hit the nail on the head, NEVER belittle those men who fight and lay down their lives so we can be safe and sleep easy.

I cannot improve on what Ayeda has written but I sit down to pen these lines for two reasons: to show my solidarity with her; and to say a few words about why we, as a nation, especially our intelligentsia, have failed to make the crucial distinction that Ayeda has pointed out.

The army is not a holy cow. There is much that is wrong with the institution at all levels. The army has often upset the constitutional configuration of this country. There is much that needs to be corrected. We must be the watchdogs.

But too often we cross the line between informed criticism, which is selective, and ill-informed sweeping statements that run down the institution in toto and the soldier himself.

This is where we go wrong. Given the present situation, this can be lethal.

What are we left with then? If the army deserves being scoffed at, and if it indeed deserves the bons mots of intellectuals who know about as much military strategy as Huckleberry Finn did, would the libs pick up the gun themselves and challenge the forces of obscurantism? I doubt that very much.

I doubt most libs in Pakistan, barring exceptions, can face anything more than a water gun. Anyone who wants to know the meaning of hostile fire should face the wrong end of a machine gun. I have written this before and I will say it again: when a man braves incoming fire to charge, to pull a wounded comrade-in-arms to safety or to recover the body of one of his own, placing himself in mortal danger, he displays what is best in a man, what most of us, in a lifetime, will never be able to achieve.

It is easy to say and write this. Will I do it? I don’t know. No one can be certain of his reaction until the moment arrives. As I wrote in this space some weeks ago: “Military commanders know that men under their command, even trained men, are likely to behave differently when faced with mortal danger. Militaries keep training in simulated and controlled conditions for the day soldiers and officers will go into actual combat. But no amount of training can prepare anyone for “actual combat”. The real test comes when one is in combat. At that moment, those who can control their fear are the ones who can brave it.”

Courage, as someone rightly said, is being the only one who knows you are afraid. True; but how many of such can be found. I don’t think too many.

And what do soldiers fight for? Definitely not money. No amount of money could make me, and I assume most, face a 7.62mm round coming at me at the speed of 800 metres per second. And imagine a barrage of them at 500-600 rounds per minute. Of course, we are just talking about one damned assault rifle! Add a few more to the one assault rifle, just small arms and light weapons, and I can assure you that it requires cojones to face that.

As a boy, reading The Charge of the Light Brigade, I couldn’t really understand what would have made those 600 cavalrymen go into the mouth of hell as cannons to their left and right and in front volleyed and thundered. Instinct, however, told me that those men were brave; they rode into the valley knowing full well what they were getting into. Which is why Lord Tennyson wrote and dedicated the poem to them, asked, demanded in fact, that the noble six hundred be honoured. The poem was his yellow ribbon and if the sun never set at the time on the British Empire, it was not without reason.

The rest I understood as I travelled with my father, an infantry officer, to the field and forward locations, absorbing the surroundings, the spirit, the sense of honour, the requirement of leading from the front, the camaraderie, and much else.

That charge is a good reference to make the point. It should not have been made. Whoever planned it screwed it up. That must be debated and criticised. But equally, the men who went in and carried it out must be honoured.

John Keegan, a great military historian, is right about armies being tribal. Civilians cannot understand that spirit; neither are they supposed to know, necessarily, what it takes to fight — to kill and get killed. But should it also deprive civilians of the ability to honour the soldier who goes down fighting to save them? It shouldn’t.

Let us then honour our soldiers even as we must retain the freedom to criticise the institution.

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at [email protected]

[muse]

We had asked for a UNEQUIVOCAL statement wiith regard to those who express support to the enemies of people and state of Pakistan - we were INFORMED that "Islamists" were peaceful and democractic -

Earlier in the thread, it was brought to the attention that the time to imagine they could hide is OVER -- that doublke speak was unacceptable - we were informed that they were expressing not their own thinking but rather reflected the the thinking of others --

We asked that it be acknowledged that we are faced with making a "VALUE JUDGEMENT", we must decide that which we agree is right and wrong and good and bad.


Are we being fair to our ourselves, our families, when we refuse to call a spade a spade?

judge for yourself:

JUI-F neutral on Swat issue

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

By Dilshad Azeem

ISLAMABAD: The Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI-F) has adopted a neutral stance on the situation in Swat and Buner. “We cannot say which party is hundred per cent wrong and which hundred per cent right, so our approach towards the government, Sufi Muhammad and the local Taliban is the same,” said a JUI-F leader.

JUI-F Senator Haji Ghulam Ali, later joined by another party member Senator Ismael Buledi, justified his party’s polices in an exclusive chat with The News at the Parliament House. Though the party chief, Fazlur Rahman, has warned the government of Taliban’s advancement, he has not made it clear which party he supports ñ the government or the militants.

“We support all the parties in Swat but only on certain issues and, at the same time, we disagree with them on several other matters,” the JUI-F senator said. When repeatedly asked about his party’s stand on the issue, he said the JUI-F did not openly accept or reject any party's line.

The senator elaborated that the JUI-F was supporting the government on certain issues and, at the same time, backing the local fighters on other points. “Maulana (Fazl) has great influence in these areas but all the political forces, the people of Swat and even the militants should be gathered together to find out a viable solution,” he proposed.

When asked about Fazl's role in the present situation, he said the JUI-F chief was not repeating what the ANP had done with the MMA government. “We are giving them (ANP) an open field to make efforts for peace.”

“If the MMA government was in place right now, the ANP would have stood with the Taliban, giving an impression that Pakhtoons were being killed,î the senator said. ìWe appreciate the ANP’s positive steps and criticise the wrong ones.”

[dk33]

We had asked for a UNEQUIVOCAL statement wiith regard to those who express support to the enemies of people and state of Pakistan - we were INFORMED that "Islamists" were peaceful and democractic -

The two in bold are two different categories. The former may be a subset of the latter, but the latter is not automatically either anti-democracy or 'violent'.

In the end, the answer can only lie with the army. Let us hope it now fulfills its primary responsibility to the people of Pakistan

I can hear it now, "look to the civilian govt"

The Army's responsibility is to follow the orders of the civilian government, and that is also its duty to the people - unless you have a customized copy of the Pakistani Constitution.

[hellfire]

---

---

The Army's responsibility is to follow the orders of the civilian government, and that is also its duty to the people - unless you have a customized copy of the Pakistani Constitution.

That customized copy is presently held by the COAS under strict security. When has it been that PA has been subservient to civillian elected government? It is notorious for being one on its own.