ISLAMABAD: Many in Pakistan are as surprised and taken aback by General Pervez Musharraf's version of the 1999 Kargil operation in his book In the Line of Fire as people in India, with some saying it undercut the country's Kashmir cause to the point of no return.
The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) accused the President of "lying" to project the operation as a victory for Pakistan and demanded the publication of the minutes of the Cabinet Defence Committee meetings on Kargil.
Nisar Ali Khan, the party's acting parliamentary leader said at a press conference that General Musharraf had admitted that the operation was a failure during a meeting with then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Lahore, before the latter's departure for the U.S. to meet President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Sharif made the allegation some months ago that he had not been informed of the operation and learnt about it only after Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister of India, called him about it.
In the book, Gen. Musharraf has said while the operation was "a landmark" for the Pakistan army, Prime Minister Sharif, who knew about the operation from word go, threw it all away by capitulating to the U.S.
In a "white paper" on Kargil last month, the PML(N) said Pakistan's decision to withdraw from the mountain heights that it had occupied during the operation was done at the behest of Gen. Musharraf, who said it was the only "honourable' option left.
The Dawn, describing the operation as a "misadventure", called for an impartial enquiry.
"Let the government appoint a retired judge of the Supreme Court to hold a thorough investigation and let the nation know the truth about Kargil," it said.
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 20:05 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[20 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Somebody send an emmissary from the Arab League to Pakistan Muslim League that it is mandatory to claim victory when your butt has been kicked by an infidel.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/27/2006 23:11 Comments ||
Top||
"uprising by the people" ? That is the same garbage he tries with India in Kashmir
On the eve of the tripartite meeting between himself, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Bush at a White House Ifthar dinner hosted by Bush, President Pervez Musharraf slammed Karzai, describing him as "an ostrich," who doesn't want to tell the world about the real facts in Afghanistan "for his own personal reasons."
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, only hours after Karzai had described Musharraf as 'his brother President Musharraf,' in a joint press conference with Bush at the White House, Musharraf said, "He is not oblivious, he knows everything, but he is purposely denying -- turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the fact for his own personal reasons. That is what I think."
Musharraf was responding to a question by Blitzer who said that in a March interview, Musharraf had said Karzai "...is totally oblivious to what is happening in his own country. "Blitzer asked him if he believed Karzai was still oblivious or whether he (Musharraf) owed him an apology.
Musharraf went on to say, "In the governance in Afghanistan there is a certain community, which is feeling alienated and it has 50-60 per cent representation in Afghanistan. That is his problem."
"He (Karzai) has to balance out and he has not been able to do that and therefore he is trying to hide that everything is happening from Pakistan," he added.
Musharraf warned, "This is a Pukhtun uprising by the people. If he doesn't understand this, he will keep going on and we are going to lose in Afghanistan."
Going by the tensions and the rhetoric that keeps exacerbating, President Bush will certainly have his work cut out in refereeing this contest on Wednesday over dinner and one wonders whether instead of breaking the Ramadan fast with the traditional dates, which precedes the Ifthar dinner, Musharraf and Karzai may end up flinging them at one another!
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 17:01 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
So, American troops are dying because of an "uprising" by Pashtun people?
Perv, America is not India, the whipping you can expect is beyond your comprehension, or pathetic wargaming...
A head of state saluting the comedy central audience and peddling his book...I've seen it all...
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 17:13 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Comedy Central is the appropriate audience for the Perv, after all.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf bluntly told Canadians on Tuesday to stop complaining about the number of soldiers they were losing in Afghanistan, saying Canadas death toll was far less than Pakistans.
Canada has 2,300 troops based in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. In the last three months, 20 soldiers have been killed in clashes with Taleban militants, prompting calls for the mission to be brought back home.
Musharraf told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that if Canada was worried about soldier fatalities, it should not be in the war-torn country. When you get involved in places like Iraq or Lebanon or Afghanistan, yes indeed you have to suffer casualties, and the nation must be prepared to suffer casualties. So if youre not prepared to suffer casualties as an army, then dont participate in any operation, he said in an interview.
Since Canada joined the U.S.-led war on terror in late 2001, about 35 of its soldiers have died in Afghanistan. Musharraf, whose country neighbors Pakistan, dismissed this as a mere handful. We have suffered 500 casualties. The Canadians have suffered four or five. What are you talking about? Who are you talking to? Who are you talking to? You are talking to the president of a country that has suffered 500 casualties, he said. You have suffered two dead and there is crying and shouting all around the place that there are coffins. Well, weve had 500 coffins.
Prime Minister Stephen Harpers chief spokeswoman said she was unaware of the comments.
Musharraf also dismissed a suggestion by Canadian Defence Minister Gordon OConnor that Canadian troops might be based in Pakistan to help the fight against militants. I can assure you our troops are more effective and we have more experience of war. This (suggestion) shows a lack of trust in Pakistan, he said.
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 16:59 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
our troops are more effective and we have more experience of war
You more experience of losing war Perv.
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 17:07 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Making Friends and Influencing Allies: Perv's Book and Amity Tour.
#3
So far he has pissed off the Governments in Washington, London, Ottawa, Canberra, Kabul and New Delhi.
Wonder who is next?
Posted by: john ||
09/27/2006 17:40 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Just keep on pissing in the punchbowl, Perv. So long as Pakistan remains the world's premier trainer and exporter of lunatic jihadist killers, your whingeing about domestic troop casualties will just outrage more and more people. Every time you open your damned piehole more ICBMs get retargeted.
#7
Sorry, I am with Pervez on this one. The other day I saw a headline that the American death toll surpassed the lives lost during 9/11. I think the whole body count mentality is stupidity by the West. Individually, each soldier death is a precious and depressing loss, but there is no magic number of deaths we can reach after which this war becomes a mistake. Anyone who doesn't get it should contact the PTA of a town called Beslan and ask them how many Russian soldiers they are willing to lose in fighting terrorists.
Make fun of Pervez, but remember that eventually he will die in this war and we will live. I expect that once the kooks finally get him we will be forced to address the problem in Pakistan directly. Right now he is buying us time because we have plenty more to do. Pakistan certainly has not been a military success, but right now there are Pakistanis sitting at high altitude on a glacier shooting at Indians. They don't quit.
If we are to win this, it would be better to drop the tote board and certainly not complain about our losses to visiting heads of state.
It would be worse if we started complaining to the Iraqis about our casualties. We have decided, rightfully so, that we don't want to fight terrorists in Des Moines and instead are fighting them in the blood washed streets of Baghdad. Unfortunately the blood is currently gushing from the Iraqi civilian populous. We owe one thing to is and to them. We need to win.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/27/2006 23:50 Comments ||
Top||
SPS Perv! self praise stinks Besides which these are LAME stories!
NEW YORK: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf learnt the art of making a time bomb when he was in college and got rapped by his warden when he pulled a prank to scare him.
"It was in Forman Christian College (in Lahore) that I learned how to make a time bomb, which I later used as a commando to good effect," Musharraf writes in his book "In The Line Of Fire".
He candidly admits that in today's age of terror, this is hardly a thing to own up to "but those were relatively innocent times, and the only kind of home-made bomb then known was the Molotov cocktail".
Musharraf says he soon learnt that the fuse of a normal firecracker attached to a filterless cigarette could become a timed fuse, depending on the length of the cigarette.
It was time to experiment. Musharraf and three others left a time cracker in a big steel trash bin outside the house of their warden, Datta. There was a "deafening bang" and everyone started running towards the warden's house, recalls Musharraf in his 335-page book.
Two other "bombs" placed outside the assistant warden's house and inside a mail box also exploded, creating "utter confusion".
Hameed, one of the quartet, was threatened by Datta to spill the beans or face expulsion. When this was conveyed to him, Musharraf told Hameed to speak the truth. Hameed then disclosed that Musharraf was the culprit.
Recounting the incident, Musharraf says Datta called him to his home and asked, "Pervez, you are the block monitor, and you did this?"
The Pakistan President said he then felt very ashamed.
"Never do this again," Datta told him. "That is when I learned the power of truth, a lesson that has never left me."
Musharraf also gave glimpses of other adventures he had during his student days. Hostel gates would shut by eight in the evening and no student was allowed to go out and visitors were not allowed to enter.
There was a mango tree next to a hedge at the hostel's periphery. "Thanks to my gymnastics, I could climb the tree and jump over and across the high hedge. So would some of my friends."
They would go for a movie that ran from nine pm to midnight, usually at the Regal cinema, and return to college on foot because tonga-drivers refused to go that far at night.
Just outside the college gate, Musharraf says, there was a mosque and no one could stop them from sleeping there.
"Early in the morning, when the college gates opened, we would sneak in."
Rated a top gymnast, Musharraf says he also won the college body-building competition and took part in cross-country running.
His first brush with death, Musharraf says, happened at FC College, thanks to a mango tree. Prompted by friends, he climbed the tree. Hanging upside down from a branch, he plucked mangoes with his feet.
The branch snapped, he came crashing down and passed out. "My friends thought I was dead," Musharraf says, adding he was young and strong and soon recovered.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf lashed out at Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in an interview with Canada AM, accusing him of misleading the public on the war on terror. "I think he is purposely, purposely not speaking the truth. That is what I think," Musharraf told host Beverly Thomson in an interview in New York on Tuesday. "He knows the truth. He's finding it more convenient for himself to hide the truth and cast all expression on Pakistan."
Musharraf accused Karzai of casting blame on Pakistan to distract from the ethnic imbalance in the Afghan government. "Taliban have ruled Afghanistan for six years. Where did they come from? They come from Pakistan? They took over the whole of Afghanistan -- they were the locals, they were right there," said Musharraf, whose Muslim nation is a key ally of U.S. President George Bush in the war on terrorism.
The general said he was forced to consider how Afghan-trained insurgents might attack North American targets when he decided whether to play a role in the war on terror. "The route is through Pakistan and therefore we would be sucked in. We have to play a role, otherwise we will be forced to play a role, maybe, especially with our security problems in the east," he said. "We had an enemy in India who would be prepared any time to support and play a role in rolling over Pakistan and reaching out to Afghanistan, so all these things have to be considered."
"Otherwise we will be forced to play a role, maybe, as a target"
Karzai and Musharraf, who are squabbling over whether Pakistan is doing enough to prevent militants there from supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan, are to meet with Bush on Wednesday. Bush said Tuesday he wanted "to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are." Karzai replied: "I'll be good."
Karzai hasn't named Pakistan, but has been clearly inferring for months that his neighbor to the south and east has been soft on the ethnically Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, which has roots in both countries. On Tuesday, Afghanistan's elected leader said: "We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is, in extremism, in madrassas preaching hatred, places by the name of madrassas preaching hatred."
"Places beginning with the letter "P".
Karzai also appeared critical of a deal Musharraf's government reached early this month with the tribal chiefs in North Waziristan, an area along the Afghanistan border that's only nominally under government control. The tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghanistan border are seen as a sanctuary for al Qaeda fighters -- and possibly even hiding leaders like Osama bin Laden -- and of fighters for the Taliban. The deal will see Pakistan's troops retreat to their barracks and not attack the tribal leaders. In return, the tribal leaders agree not to go fight in Afghanistan. Foreign fighters, meaning those with al Qaeda, would have to leave or respect the deal.
"We will have to wait and see if that is going to be implemented exactly the way it is signed," Karzai said.
"It's not like I believe it, but one must observe formalities"
"But, generally, we will back any move, any deal that will deny terrorism a sanctuary in North Waziristan or in the tribal territories of Pakistan."
Musharraf, who was interviewed by Canada AM to talk about his new autobiography "In the Line of Fire," said he felt it important that he write his memoirs. "As far as I'm concerned, I took the reality into account that I am in focus today, and that Pakistan is in focus today," he said. "There are so many misperceptions and misunderstandings of the area and fight against al Qaeda or Taliban or the environment of Pakistan," he said.
You mean like the misperception that you're an trusted ally
On Monday, Musharraf said it was Karzai who wasn't doing enough to battle extremism in Afghanistan. "As soon as President Karzai understands his own country, the easier it'll be for him," he told the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
Bush played down the sniping, saying it wasn't affecting efforts to fight terror. "Quite the contrary. We're working as hard as ever in doing that," Bush told reporters."It's in President Karzai's interest to see Bin Laden brought to justice. It is in President Musharraf's interests to see Bin Laden brought to justice. Our interests coincide," Bush said.
Musharraf would be delighted if Binny was captured any place but Pakistan.
Musharraf became the first head of state to appear on the hit U.S. political satire show "The Daily Show" this week. He had barely thanked host Jon Stewart for the jasmine green tea and Twinkies when Stewart cut to the chase.
"Where's Osama bin Laden?"
"I don't know," replied Musharraf in the pre-recorded interview. "You know where he is? You lead on, we'll follow you."
So you won't mind if we start overturning stones in Pakistan?
But Musharraf was frank when Stewart asked if he had not mentioned the U.S. war in Iraq in his memoir because it has "gone so well." "It has led certainly to more extremism and terrorism around the world," Musharraf said.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/27/2006 09:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Locals? In times of Massood, the Northern alliance captured a number of Taliban "locals" who didn't speak a word of Pahsto only in Urdu. Funny locals isn't it?
#4
Why is it Pakistan so strongly denies Al-Qaida exists on it's soil?
Admitting it means they'd get more pressure to do something about it.
They wouldn't do anything about it, which would likely result in some sort of punishment. They might lose access to parts for fighters, or access to the US market, or even their nukes.
It would also mean the US would tend closer to India, which would put Pakistan in a worse position.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/27/2006 12:03 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Karzai versus Peverse, the later is the greater BS star any day.
SRINAGAR: An army officer and two suspected Islamic rebels were killed on Tuesday in a fierce gunbattle in Indian held Kashmir, said an army spokesman. Indian soldiers came under heavy gunfire as they cordoned off Sumlar village after receiving information that some suspected militants were hiding there, said Col Hemant Juneja, adding that an army officer was killed in the ensuing gunbattle.
He said that gunbattle continued for five hours before troops managed to kill the gunmen. Two houses in Sumlar, 80 kilometres north of Srinagar, were destroyed in the fight and the army recovered two rifles and several grenades and launchers, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Accusing Pakistan of being a nursery of global terrorism, India has asked Pakistan once again to stop all cross-border terrorism as promised and dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism still intact on its soil. While the fragile political fabric of states in Indias neighbourhood is a source of continuing anxiety to New Delhi, Pakistan remains a nursery of global terrorism, said visiting Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee in a talk at Harvard University in Boston on Monday. Post 9/11, Pakistan has reportedly helped the US to fight terrorism along its western border with Afghanistan. But it has done precious little to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on its eastern border with India, he said in his talk on Indias Strategic Perspective.
India has repeatedly stated that, in order to proceed with the ongoing peace-process between the two countries, Pakistan must implement the solemn assurances it has given to stop all cross-border terrorism, and the Indian defence minister said that this has not yet happened. If Pakistan claims to be a frontline state in the global war against terrorism, then it must do much more to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism still intact on its soil, Mukherjee said welcoming the recent Havana accord between the two countries to set up an institutional mechanism to tackle cross-border terrorism.
The rise of religious fundamentalism and terrorism is today one of the gravest security challenges to states, economies, peoples and democratic polities, he said adding, It has been starkly etched in our memory by the recent Mumbai blasts, the London, Madrid and Bali bombings, and of course, the traumatic terrorist attack on the US five years ago. Putting terrorism at the top of Indias six principal security challenges, Mukherjee said India had suffered the most gruesome and repeated acts of terror since the late 1970s first in Punjab, then in Jammu and Kashmir, and in recent years in many other parts of the country.
Mukherjee said that the Mumbai blasts of 1993 were the original act of mass terrorism. Indias places of worship, symbols of rapid economic growth, prestigious centres of learning, popular shopping complexes and symbols of vibrant democracy had all been systematically targeted, he added.
While in most parts of the world, terrorism is perpetrated by non-state actors, in India it is sponsored and supported by state agencies from a hostile neighbourhood, Mukherjee said obviously referring to Pakistan. The second challenge in his view was that India, which has had to fight three wars on its western borders and one in the north since independence, continues to face a proxy war from across its western border, he said in another obvious reference to Pakistan. Its unresolved territorial and boundary issues with neighbours persist he noted.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
What is it about the LINE-OF-CONTROL regions between INDIA, PAK, + CHINA that makes people turn towards Radicalism, want OWG + Totalitarianism, and ultim to attack and destroy America??? To want and desire SUPPRESSION + REPRESSION + REGRESSION + ANARCHIES, etal. in the name of freedom and independence.
#5
If India keeps this up, they will gain well-earned and appropriate credibility as one of the few truly functional sub-continental or Asian democracies.
PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court (PHC) Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan on Tuesday released an Uzbek couple from the city's central prison. Intelligence agencies had arrested the couple a few years ago for suspected links with Al Qaeda.
Javed Ibrahim Paracha, chairman of the World Prisoner's Relief Commission of Pakistan, said in a press statement that NWFP acting Home Secretary Manzoor Ahmad had written a letter to Peshawar Additional Sessions Judge Syed Ihtisham Ali, objecting to the "terrorist couple's easy release". Paracha said that the additional sessions judge sent the letter to the PHC chief justice. The chief justice visited the prison along with Judicial Magistrate Malik Amjad Rahim. The magistrate imposed a Rs 1,000 fine on the accused - Sheikhul Hadith Maulana Abdur Rahim and his wife Hafiza Bibi - under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act and handed them to police for deportation.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
Senator Khurshid Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal has complained to the Senate Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and Privileges that security agencies did not let him meet nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in Aga Khan Hospital, Karachi.
The senator said Senate Chairman Muhammadmian Soomro, who is currently acting president while Gen Pervez Musharraf is in the United States, had arranged the meeting but still security agencies disallowed it. The standing committee is scheduled to meet on September 28. Mr Ahmed said he wanted to convey "prayers and the felicitations" to Dr Khan.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
PESHAWAR: The management of a cinema owned by the Pakistan Air Force on Tuesday refused to close the cinema during Ramazan on the directives of the provincial government. The NWFP government on Monday circulated a notification among all the cinemas in the province asking them to close in Ramazan. Naeem Khan, manager of the PAF cinema, told Daily Times that he received the government notification on Monday evening. I did not sign the letter issued by the Department of Religious Affairs and refused to close the cinema, Khan said. I told the police to take up the case with PAF officials as we accept orders from the PAF and not the provincial government.
Khan said the police visited the cinema three times to close it but we refused. Wilayat Khan, manager of Tasweer Mahal Cinema, Ejaz Khan, manager of Novelty Cinema, and Mumtaz Khan, manager of Picture House Cinema, said they closed their cinemas after they were served government notices through police station house officers. In the notification, Minister for Religious Affairs Imanullah Haqani told cinema owners that they must close their cinema houses in respect of the holy month of Ramazan, the managers said. The SHOs had us sign the letter and warned us to close the cinema otherwise the police will not be responsible for any attacks on the cinemas, they said.
The police forced us to close the cinema, Rohullah, an employee of Sabrina Cinema, told Daily Times. He said the owners had closed their cinemas for fear of attacks by religious activists and clerics.
The Amar Bil Maroof Wanahi Anil-Munkar organisation created by Dr Zakir Shah and local clerics has banned music and video shops and cable operators in four colonies in the city: Yousaf, Anis, Ittihad and Muslim colonies. There is a complete ban on music and video centres, video games arcades and cable operators for the past 15 years, said Maulana Saddique, an imam and an active member of the organisation. These are the main sources of obscenity and vulgarity and should be banned from society, Saddique said. The whole of Peshawar would soon be free of cable, music and video centres and cinema houses as the organisation is expanding its operations to cover the entire city, he said. It is not Talibanisation. It is done solely to live according to the Shariah and provide a peaceful and Islamic society to our youth, Saddique said.
The youths of these colonies said they were not in favour of these restrictions but were forced to comply with the organisations orders. We wish we had cable connections, music and video centres but it is impossible since for the past 15 years no one including the government has been able to oppose the organisation, Arif, a young resident of Peshawar, said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[15 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Maulana Saddique, an imam and an active member of the organisation.
Saddique, that is an adequate name for a Mullah. Specially in French, where it is pronnounced identical as "Sadique" (with a single d) who means sadic.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2006 20:22 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Must be nice to be a business over there with ready accessibility to close air support when dealing with these assholes.
Mahmoud the sweetmeat vendor must be green with envy. And also closed...
President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday night said he was confident that he would win elections "hands down" because he was popular in Pakistan. Replying to a question during an interview with Fox TV whether US President George Bush was pressuring him to restore full democracy in Pakistan, Musharraf said that while Bush encouraged him to do so, he was under no pressure at all. At the same time, he said he has brought about democracy in Pakistan from the grassroots to the top tier the parliament.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[17 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday night said he was confident that he would win elections "hands down" because he was popular in Pakistan. the only one allowed to run.
There. Fixed it.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
09/27/2006 0:36 Comments ||
Top||
#2
LOL! Well, if you have to have a dictator, it's better to have one with a sense of humor! Heck, I'll bet he can even tell you how many votes he'll get!
#4
I don't know if anyone caught the General on The Daily Show last night but I made a point to tune in. I was glad to see a sense of humor in the General.
For those who missed the interview, here's all you really need to know. Stewart presented, in all seriousness, a hypothetical to the General. Given how "divided" Pakistan is between extremists and moderates (personally, I'm not so sure it really is that divided), if both George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden were running for President in Pakistan, who would win?
#7
It's both important that Perv win and win big, and that his opponents, the Islamists, lose and lose big. He has just handed them a humiliating defeat with his women's rights act, so hopefully they will get the snot kicked out of them in the elections.
This matters, because they have stood in past between him and cracking down on the madrassas. In fact, they've done everything they could to give aid and comfort to the bad guyz.
With them mostly out of the way, I expect that he will start doing some major hurt on a lot of people we don't like.
President General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday rejected NATO security assessments that Talibans headquarters was in Quetta. Anyone who says this is wrong. This is the most ridiculous statement, he said, adding that Pakistan did not have financial resources to support the Taliban who, he said, were being financed by poppy growers.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations after the formal launch of his book In The Line of Fire, Musharraf said Afghan President Hamid Karzai didnt understand the environment in his country and said that the Taliban could not be defeated only by force. He criticised Karzai for claiming that militants hiding in Pakistans tribal areas were behind the rise in violence in Afghanistan. The sooner President Karzai understands his own country, the better, Musharraf said, adding that the Afghan president was to be blamed for disenfranchising the Pushtoons, who make up a majority of the Afghan population.
However, Musharraf praised his Afghan counterpart as the best choice to lead Afghanistan as it rebuilds after decades of war. To a question, he said Pakistan was being made a scapegoat for the resurgence of the Taliban and the increase in their attacks in Afghanistan. It is unfair that Karzai thinks all this is happening from Pakistan, he said, claiming that Mulla Omar has not been in Pakistan since 1995, AFP reported. Its unfortunate that everything is blamed on Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If not Quetta, where?
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/27/2006 3:37 Comments ||
Top||
NEW DELHI - An Indian court fixed October 20 as the date for executing a Muslim man convicted for his role in the 2001 militant attack on Indias parliament. Mohammed Afzal, an Indian national, had been sentenced to death by a lower court for his role in the conspiracy and the conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court last year.
On Tuesday, a city court fixed 6 a.m. on Oct. 20 as the day and time for his execution in a Delhi jail. Executions are carried out in India by hanging.
Five gunmen stormed the heavily-guarded Indian parliament complex on Dec. 13, 2001 but were killed by the security forces before they could enter the building where lawmakers sit. The attack, blamed by India on Pakistan but denied by Islamabad, brought the nuclear-armed rivals dangerously close to their fourth war.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
Short of cadre due to elimination of its men, including some top leaders, by security forces, the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist outfit is forcibly taking students away for recruitment, official sources said in Jammu on Tuesday. "The LeT is short of cadre as a large number of its men and top leaders were eliminated. Now they are forcibly enrolling students and taking them away to remote areas for arms training," a source said.
They said a class IX student Nayaz Ahmed was kidnapped by an LeT area commander, Abu Arif, from Gool area of Udhampur district when he had gone to school a fortnight ago. An FIR has been registered in this regard by his parents and relatives, who have urged police and security forces to rescue the student from the clutches of terrorists.
More than 20 students have been taken away in a similar manner by the LeT terrorists in far-flung areas in Gool, Darhal, Basantgarh, Madwa and Mendhar belt of Jammu region, they said adding, some of their parents have been given money ranging from Rs 30,000 to 50,000. Security agencies are trying to rescue the students and crack down on the overground workers of the outfit instrumental in recruitment of youth and students in remote areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This could be a good thing; well bad for those shanghied, but big picture good: if they are to be splodeydopes, they might just have a 'work accident' and take out those who kidnapped them. Or if given a weapon could suffer premature firing in a wrong ( read: towards the leaders) direction.
Frag by any other name is still dead terrs.
#3
The LeT is short of cadre as a large number of its men and top leaders were eliminated.
The mark of a severely, quite possibly fatally, damaged organization. They no longer have their best-trained people, and likely have lost quite a lot of well-trained people as well. So the newbies and the unpromotables are trying to train the uninterested, as well as to organize future actions to make use of skills they haven't much got. I imagine there'll be lots of work accidents as they try to teach one another using directions downloaded from the internet... once they figure out how to use the internet.
forcibly taking students away for recruitment Let's not forget that Taliban translates as students also. Are these public school lads that have been torn from their chemistry and their Chaucer? Or more likely madrassah boys, reared on the Koran, who've not quite gotten to the point of volunteering yet?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
SRINAGAR: An army officer and two suspected Islamic rebels were killed on Tuesday in a fierce gunbattle in Indian held Kashmir, said an army spokesman. Indian soldiers came under heavy gunfire as they cordoned off Sumlar village after receiving information that some suspected militants were hiding there, said Col Hemant Juneja, adding that an army officer was killed in the ensuing gunbattle. 
Accusing Pakistan of being a nursery of global terrorism, India has asked Pakistan once again to stop all cross-border terrorism as promised and dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism still intact on its soil. While the fragile political fabric of states in Indias neighbourhood is a source of continuing anxiety to New Delhi, Pakistan remains a nursery of global terrorism, said visiting Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee in a talk at Harvard University in Boston on Monday. Post 9/11, Pakistan has reportedly helped the US to fight terrorism along its western border with Afghanistan. But it has done precious little to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on its eastern border with India, he said in his talk on Indias Strategic Perspective. 
PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court (PHC) Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan on Tuesday released an Uzbek couple from the city's central prison. Intelligence agencies had arrested the couple a few years ago for suspected links with Al Qaeda. 
Senator Khurshid Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal has complained to the Senate Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and Privileges that security agencies did not let him meet nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in Aga Khan Hospital, Karachi. 
PESHAWAR: The management of a cinema owned by the Pakistan Air Force on Tuesday refused to close the cinema during Ramazan on the directives of the provincial government. The NWFP government on Monday circulated a notification among all the cinemas in the province asking them to close in Ramazan. Naeem Khan, manager of the PAF cinema, told Daily Times that he received the government notification on Monday evening. I did not sign the letter issued by the Department of Religious Affairs and refused to close the cinema, Khan said. I told the police to take up the case with PAF officials as we accept orders from the PAF and not the provincial government. 
President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday night said he was confident that he would win elections "hands down" because he was popular in Pakistan. Replying to a question during an interview with Fox TV whether US President George Bush was pressuring him to restore full democracy in Pakistan, Musharraf said that while Bush encouraged him to do so, he was under no pressure at all. At the same time, he said he has brought about democracy in Pakistan from the grassroots to the top tier the parliament.
President General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday rejected NATO security assessments that Talibans headquarters was in Quetta. Anyone who says this is wrong. This is the most ridiculous statement, he said, adding that Pakistan did not have financial resources to support the Taliban who, he said, were being financed by poppy growers. 
NEW DELHI - An Indian court fixed October 20 as the date for executing a Muslim man convicted for his role in the 2001 militant attack on Indias parliament. Mohammed Afzal, an Indian national, had been sentenced to death by a lower court for his role in the conspiracy and the conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court last year.
Short of cadre due to elimination of its men, including some top leaders, by security forces, the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist outfit is forcibly taking students away for recruitment, official sources said in Jammu on Tuesday. "The LeT is short of cadre as a large number of its men and top leaders were eliminated. Now they are forcibly enrolling students and taking them away to remote areas for arms training," a source said.
