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2013-11-28 India-Pakistan
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The Hangu strike and the Haqqani network -- Dr Mohammad Taqi
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[Pak Daily Times] Another US drone strike last week near Hangu wiped out six associates of the Jalaluddin Haqqani terrorist Network (HQN), namely Kaleemullah, Abdul Rahman, Mufti Hamidullah Haqqani, Maulvi Ahmed Jan, Abdullah and Gul Marjan. Maulvi Ahmad Jan was a confidant of the HQN's de facto boss Sirajuddin Haqqani and a financier and operational point man. The federal government, except its volatile interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, played down the incident and was content with a run-of-the-mill protest with the US ambassador. The ruling party in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
, the Tehrik-e-Insaf
...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem , each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations....
(PTI), and its coalition partner Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society , founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer . The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
(JI), however, went to town over the incident.
After holding a protest rally this past weekend, the PTI has been blocking the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
supply route through Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
on a daily basis and has asked the provincial police chief to name the US and CIA in an FIR it has filed about the drone attack. While the PTI's formula -- stopping drone attacks and disrupting NATO supply lines -- ostensibly to bring peace to the region, is essentially the same as that of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), it does have the right as the provincial government to find out about the drone strike in its territory. The PTI also has the responsibility to explain what exactly the HQN men were doing in the settled areas of Pakistain. The PTI chief, Mr Imran Khan
... aka Taliban Khan , who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree...
, has claimed that many children were killed in the Hangu attack. He may wish to back up his claim with some evidence now. Mr Khan should also tell whether his provincial administration had secured the scene of the crime and if it indeed did, how were the bodies moved to North  Wazoo (NW) Agency instantly?
While the PTI's stance on the drones and terrorism is naïve at best and dishonest at worst, the PML-N has also been mum about the HQN's top moneyman Nasiruddin Haqqani's liquidation. Interestingly, the Islamabad scene of the crime was hosed and Nasiruddin's corpse shipped to and buried in NW within hours. It is well known that Jalaluddin Haqqani's brothers, Ibrahim and Khalil, have been in and out of the Islamabad/Bhara Kahu area for several years now. The HQN men have reportedly travelled from Pakistain to the Gulf Arab countries for fundraising. The practice originally started with Jalaluddin Haqqani himself who used to set up shop in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
at pilgrimage time to raise money and was perfected by his sons and associates.
In tandem with the mystery around Nasiruddin Haqqani's liquidation has been the theory that the Pak security establishment has decided to abandon the HQN. A change in the Pakistain army's, especially the ISI's, mindset about its longest uninterrupted alliance with a jihadist group would certainly be welcome but it just sounds too good to be true.
During the war against the Soviets and the Afghan communists, the ISI crossed over into Khost to help Jalaluddin Haqqani's men recapture their infamous Zawara base, which had fallen to the Afghan army. Several writers, including the ISI's mujahideen handler Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, have chronicled the battle in detail.
If, and that is a huge if, the Pak establishment drops the HQN as a partner, that would imply a paradigm shift in not just its Afghanistan policy but will have ramifications for how other jihadist groups are handled. The Pak security establishment has abandoned its partners before, replacing the Afghan mujahideen with the Taliban, the JI with the Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned , always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
(LeT), and has discarded many Kashmiri bad boy factions too. In each of those instances, the replacement was more radical and ostensibly more manageable. The incentive or inducement for the establishment to cut the HQN loose now and the alternatives it might be looking at, may explain the professed change of heart.
While the HQN was never the only show in town, the security establishment favoured it perhaps more than even Mullah Omar
... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful . The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality...
's Taliban. While the HQN has had a symbiotic, not just patron-client relationship with Pakistain, it has grown too big for its size. The extortions, drug running, killings on Pak soil and, above all, the perpetual protection the HQN has given to the TTP have become increasingly hard to defend. One proposition could be that (facilitating) the decapitating attacks on the HQN will make it more pliable. A more manageable HQN could pull the rug from under the TTP as well as the Afghan Taliban's feet. The TTP is unlikely to negotiate and will have to be tackled militarily. The Afghan Taliban are more amenable to dialogue and perhaps more so if they lose the HQN pivot. Could Pakistain be betting only on the Afghan Taliban in the last lap then?
It is unlikely that the Taliban can or will score a decisive victory post-2014, especially if the bilateral security agreement (BSA) between the US and Afghanistan goes through. President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
's tantrums notwithstanding, the BSA will eventually be signed as the US does not appear ready to leave the field open to al Qaeda and its allies like the HQN. If this scenario pans out, the Taliban might get seated in Kabul but not at the head of the table.
The US has moved from trying to pry away the HQN from the Taliban, to designating it as a terrorist organization, to decimating its top echelons now. The HQN has been known to be resilient but its time may just be up after all. The Pak security establishment may or may not have had a change of heart in the absence of any viable alternatives to its most favoured proxy. But, with the ringleaders of a designated terrorist group being found and killed on Pak soil, making unnecessary noise could have serious consequences. Chances are that the Haqqani terrorist network's fate was presented to Pakistain as a fait accompli.
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Posted by Fred 2013-11-28 00:00||
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File under: Govt of Pakistan
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Posted by Pappy 2013-11-28 10:48||
2013-11-28 10:48||
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Posted by Ulusoth Shereter7931 2013-11-28 11:56||
2013-11-28 11:56||
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