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| India-Pakistan |
| Taliban Threaten to Kill Officials Held Hostage |
| 2008-07-20 |
| The Pakistani Taliban have taken dozens of hostages, including police officers, paramilitary fighters and even state bank officials, and threatened on Friday to begin killing them unless the government released four of their comrades captured last week. The standoff has grown into one of the most serious recent challenges to the government's resolve to curb the militants' rapid expansion. The threat comes just 10 days before Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani is scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House. So far, the government has held firm, sending hundreds of soldiers to the area, Hangu, in North-West Frontier Province, to engage in the first real fighting with the militants since the two sides agreed to a new series of peace deals this year. The fighting has resumed as the government faces mounting pressure from the United States to take stronger action against Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, which the militants use as launching pads for attacks against NATO and American troops in southern Afghanistan. The news media in Pakistan have been abuzz about suggestions in Washington that the United States might act directly in the tribal areas to stop the flow of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis would strongly oppose such a move as a violation of sovereignty. But the militants have increasingly extended their presence into more settled areas of Pakistan, like Hangu, where the provincial police arrested about half a dozen armed Taliban fighters riding in a pickup truck last Saturday. In revenge, other Taliban members kidnapped a variety of officials and are holding them in an undisclosed place. The Taliban said they had 49 hostages; the government said there were 29. The militants' response was so ferocious because one of the Taliban arrested, to the surprise of the police, was a man known as Rafiuddin, a lieutenant of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, according to the inspector general of the provincial police, Naveed Khan. The capture led to unusual and repeated demands from the Taliban for Rafiuddin's release, Mr. Khan said. "That proves he means something to them," he said. Another of the Taliban suspects in custody goes by the name of Anwar. He is one of 18 Taliban in the original core of Mr. Mehsud's organization and is one of his most cherished comrades, said a Pakistani counterterrorism and intelligence official in Peshawar, who could not be identified because his job does not allow his identity to be published. Anwar is perhaps Mr. Mehsud's most important fighter and has been with him since 2004, the intelligence official said. The spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Maulvi Omar, said in a telephone interview on Friday that the Taliban were waiting for the results of mediation before deciding what to do with the hostages. "If there's no result, we will start killing them," he said. Mr. Omar said Rafiuddin was a "religious scholar" at the sprawling Kahi madrasa in Hangu. "He's not a fighter," he said. "That's why we want him back." Mr. Omar also demanded the resignation of the new secular provincial government. It was elected in February, replacing a government dominated by religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban. If the government does not resign within five days, Mr. Omar said, the Taliban will take "organized action" against it. Afrasiab Khattak, the provincial leader of the Awami National Party, which heads the province's government, dismissed the notion of releasing any of the Taliban, a stiffer stance than that taken by previous governments. "The government is not considering the release of anyone," he said. "It's only for the courts of law to deal with the situation." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 I think it's the civilian government and the new head of the Army of the Pure that have to give permission now, Old Patriot. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-07-20 17:59 |
| #2 Perv really, REALLY needs to let the US attack the Tribal areas, no holds barred. Otherwise, he and his government are dead. For our part, we should tell Perv he has 30 days to deal with the talibunnies, or the entire northwest of his nation becomes a kill zone. Wipe Peshawar off the map, turn Quetta into something the Romans would have left behind, and destroy anything that moves in between. Quit trying to fight a "nice" war, and go Mongol. The world will thank us - in a hundred years or so. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-07-20 14:50 |
| #1 you now know who's important to Mehsud. You let him know that if a hostage is killed or harmed, his valued pal is the first to take a bullet in the head, immediately, without trial. Next up is his buddy Anwar, then the next, then the next..... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-07-20 08:50 |