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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam seethes against Waziristan operation |
| 2004-03-19 |
| Hardline Islamic clerics in Pakistan denounced on Friday a military operation against al Qaeda militants and said it could breed more terror strikes. "This operation in Wana will ultimately increase terrorism in reaction to the government's oppression on innocent civilians," said Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, head of the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party. "The army can make a government tremble by using the power of the gun, but they cannot control resistance." Rehman accused the government of succumbing to U.S. pressure and "irrational use of force against civilians". "It will lose support for its war against terrorism by killing its own countrymen and those blamed for terrorism will only gain," he said Rehman said the foreigners the Pakistani army was hunting were mostly central Asian origin and had lived in the tribal belt since the mid-1980s when they fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. "They fought against the Russians and they have lived in Pakistan's tribal belt since then. They have married here and they are now mixed with our people," he said. "They were considered heroes during Cold War by our army, but now they are labelled as terrorists by the same army -- it's U.S. pressure and nothing else." Mufti Nzaimuddin Shamzai, a senior cleric at Karachi's radical Binori Town religious school, also accused the government of caving in to U.S. pressure. "The operation will only create more hatred and reaction in the country, it will not resolve the problem of terrorism," said Shamzai, who called for a holy war in 2001 in response to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that overthrew the Taliban. "They are resisting because they have no option other then to resist," he said of the militants under attack. "I fear the operation could threaten the very fibre of the state." Shamzai was once a close associate of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban movement that has re-emerged as a guerrilla force being hunted by U.S. forces. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 This war will be significantly shortened if we just start whacking a few of these "imams", "mullahs", and their mouthpieces. You're just as guilty if you incite a riot that kills people as the ones actually doing the killing. Hang their heads from the minarets, and bury their bodies in mass graves, alternating with layers of porkers. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-3-19 7:36:27 PM |