| I'm a wondering sort, and one of the things I wonder about occasionally is where all those rockets come from. Whenever you see pictures of guys with turbans and automatic weapons there are also pictures of guys with RPGs or worse. Are they locally produced? I understand there are actual factories producing locally made AKs -- though I'm not sure where they get the steel. Are there factories in Charsadda or Multan or Mingora turning out poles with rockets on the ends of them by the hundreds, even by the thousands? Is there a quality control program to ensure they'll launch? Do hundreds of bearded factory workers show up every day with their lunch buckets, to labor from 8 to 5 turning out munitions for the use of the devout, to return home when the whistle blows? You also see the Lions of Islam with other tools of devotion, to include BM13 and BM21 multiple rocket launchers, the venerable 107 mm recoilless rifle, and even antitank guns and artillery. They probably don't make those in the shed out back, or in the garage. The primitives routinely battle it out over religion or the fine point of hillbilly honor with these. So where do they come from? Does Mom labor long hours in the kitchen preparing Grannie's secret C4 recipe? Or do they come from someplace as yet undetermined, like the former Yugoslavia or Birobidzhan in Russia or even Upper Volta or Dahomey? If so, that implies somebody's paying for all this arms and ammunition, which even in wholesale lots doesn't come that cheap. So my questions always comes back to: Who's selling? Who's buying? And who's paying? |  (AKI) - At least two policemen and four Taliban militants were killed in a rocket attack and clashes in the town of Bannu in Pakistan's volatile North Western Frontier Province on Friday. Pro-Taliban militants fired rockets at the Peerdil Khel police checkpost in Bannu, killing two and injuring three others. Four Taliban militants were killed after police responded to the attack, said Pakistan's Geo News. The attacks took place after Pakistani forces carried out air strikes on militant hideouts in the Mohmand Agency in northwestern Pakistan. In a separate incident, at least six people were killed in a suicide attack in a busy market area in Pakistan's Orakzai Agency. |