Foreigners leaving Pakistan's North Waziristan region

Foreign fighters have started to leave North Waziristan over fears that tribesmen may launch a new operation to evict them, a purported militant spokesman said Sunday.
Some 75 families of foreigners have headed to their respective countries in a month, the spokesman who introduced himself as Gohar Ayub said from North Waziristan over phone.
Ayub said he is speaking on behalf of local Taliban central spokesmen Abdullah Farhad and Tariq Jamil.
President Pervez Musharraf told army generals from 22 countries on Friday that tribesmen had killed some 300 foreigners in South Waziristan and that he wants similar action in North Waziristan.
They decided to leave North Waziristan after the tribal Lashkar launched operation against Uzbeks in South Waziristan.
The foreigners were saying they do not want problems for their women and children, the Taliban spokesman said.
He said that around 50 families, including Chechens, Turkistani, Tajiks and five Arab families, have left for their countries after the action in South Waziristan.
Ayub, speaking in Pashto, said that most of the families have headed for their countries through Afghanistan.
He said the Arabs were scheduled to proceed to Iraq.
It was difficult to verify the claim independently.
He said it may be possible that they come to Afghanistan for Jihad from their respective countries.
However, he said it depends on them either they come to Afghanistan or live in their countries.
When asked if the foreigners were leaving the area on the advice of tribal elders or voluntarily, he said they have themselves taken the decision because the tribal people had started to fight against foreigners in South Waziristan.
He said the foreigners told their local supporters that they would chalk out future strategy after leaving their women and children in their respective countries.
When asked whether the local Taliban would honor the September 5, 2006 peace agreement with the government, the Taliban spokesman said they are strictly following the agreement and if the government doesn't violate it, the local Taliban would never violate it.
He said no one enters Afghanistan from North Waziristan and fighters may be coming to fighting areas from other parts of Afghanistan.
Courtesy: IRNA

Radical Islam spreads in a riven Pakistan

The intruders covered their faces and broke down the front door. They ransacked the home, then kidnapped the three women and the baby who lived there.
No one was arrested, despite a standoff with police. And neighbors welcomed the dozens of kidnappers, mostly female Islamic students who took the hostages back to their school, because the women, dressed in black from head to toe, and a few male supporters were doing what the police never could: shutting down Aunty Shamim's brothel.
"We were trying to curb anything immoral," said student Hamna Abdullah, 20, from the Jamia Hafsa, the school run by the neighboring Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque. "We did not misbehave. We treated them very gently."
The women from the brothel were released two days later, on March 29, after the owner repented. Later she denied it was a brothel. Yet the kidnapping has raised fears that a new Islamic morality campaign has spread to Islamabad from the remote tribal areas where pro-Taliban militants hold sway. And it is only one example of the vice war being waged by the Red Mosque, which has turned into a serious problem for the Pakistani government, unsure of how to push back against Islamists, especially women wielding sticks or even guns.
The mosque underscores how Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, weakened by his controversial removal of the nation's Supreme Court chief last month, is caught between fundamentalists and the West, trying to control religious extremists as he pushes pro-American policies that have alienated much of Pakistan.
Courtesy: CT

Pakistan harbouring Taliban Mullah Omar: Hamid Karzai

Afghanistan`s President Hamid Karzai has accused Pakistan`s intelligence agencies of sheltering fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Karzai said Omar, who has been on the run since being toppled by a US-led coalition some five years ago, is being harboured in the Pakistani city of Quetta. "We have solid, clear information indicating that," he told The New York Times. "And I`m sorry I cannot be silent about this, as much as our friends in Pakistan may not like my saying that," he said. Omar headed the 1996-2001 Taliban regime that sheltered al-Qaeda. His government was overthrown in a US-led invasion weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks when it failed to hand over al-Qaeda leaders wanted for the strikes. Karzai also blamed Islamabad for a resurgence of violence along their common border. "We have almost daily reports of suicide bombers coming from there," he told the newspaper. "If we have better cooperation from Pakistan, a great many of these cross-border crossings would stop." Pakistan and Afghanistan each have accused the other of allowing Taliban remnants to flourish within its borders since the group was overthrown. The Afghanistan leader also chided the west for having chosen to battle the Taliban in Afghan villages, instead of preventing Pakistan from financing and sheltering the fundamentalist group.
Courtesy: ZN

Pakistan shuts the Islamist radio station

Pakistani authorities have shut down an illegal FM radio station set up by pro-Taleban clerics in Islamabad during growing concern about the spread of Islamist influence.
President Pervez Musharraf, an important ally in the US-led war on terrorism, has long warned against the spread of what he calls extremism although critics say his government has done little to tackle religious hardliners.
Concern about the spread of militancy, or Talebanisation, intensified this week as militants battled police in a previously peaceful northwestern town and hardline students of an Islamabad madrassa launched a Taleban-style drive against vice.
Burqa-clad female students of the madrassa abducted three women on Tuesday after accusing them of running a brothel. The women were later released but one said they had been tortured into confessing.
Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and its religious school, or madrassa, are well known for their pro-Taleban and anti-US and anti-government stand.
Earlier in the week, the students roamed through several Islamabad markets, urging music shop owners to stop selling discs. The Taleban banned music in Afghanistan before they were driven from power by US-led forces in 2001.
The Taleban sprang from Pakistani madrassas, near the Afghan border, in 1990s and their influence quickly spread. The militant movement took control of much of Afghanistan in 1996 and they imposed severe restrictions on women, banned all music, television, movies and virtually eradicated the drugs trade.
As part of their campaign against vice, the students in Islamabad and their hardline clerics set up an FM radio station on Wednesday to propagate their strict version of Islam. Authorities reacted quickly to shut it down.
“We took action as soon as the issue was brought to our notice. We have stopped the transmissions,” a spokesman for the government’s electronic media regulator said.
He declined to say how the transmissions had been stopped but said further action would be taken if warranted.
The madrassa students have been at odds with city authorities for months over government efforts to demolish mosques illegally built on state land.
Women students occupied a library next to their mosque in January as part of their campaign against the authorities, which soon abandoned their efforts against encroachment.
The students are still occupying the library, demanding several demolished mosques be rebuilt.
Their mosque compound has taken on the air of a rebel camp with young men with sticks posted at gates and at look-out points along its banner-strewn walls.
Courtesy: TPQ