Thirteen killed in raid near troubled Pakistan town

Suspected Islamist militants attacked the house of a senior government official in a village in north-western Pakistan and killed 13 people, police said on Thursday.
The attackers firing rocket-propelled grenades and rifles forced their way into the fortress-like home of Pir Aurangzeb in a village near the troubled town of Tank late on Wednesday.
"We could hear the rattle of guns and explosions in our office," said village police chief Sanaullah Khan Marwat. "It was a big attack and a large number of militants were involved."
Aurangzeb, a senior official with the government-run power utility, was killed in the attack along with five of his relatives and seven guests.
One of Aurangzeb's brothers is an Islamic cleric while another is a political agent, the top government official in a tribal region near the Afghan border.
Police were investigating whether they were the target of the attack. Neither brother was in the house at the time.
Violence has increased in parts of north-western Pakistan over the past year. Some analysts see this as evidence of "Talibanisation", the spread of militant influence from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border to more developed, populous areas.
Militants angered by Pakistan's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism have killed many government officials in recent years in the tribal regions.
Tank, where Islamist militants are active, is the gateway to the South Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, a hotbed of support for al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Militants killed two paramilitary soldiers in a suicide bombing and another in an ambush near Tank on Monday.
Courtesy: scotsman

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’s Minister of Tourism accused of “great sin;” fatwas forthcoming

Nilofar Bakhtiar is Pakistan’s Minister of Tourism. She recently learned to skydive for a celebrity jump in France. Skydiving is not the sin she’s been accused of. What she did is sooo much worse than that. It happened after the skydive.
Her sin is so horrifying, so awful, so distasteful, so…shocking…that I ought not even type it. It’s that bad.
You won’t believe it. You really ought to stop reading this post right now.
I see you didn’t take my advice. Fair enough. You’ve been warned.
Nilofar Bakhtiar may have…hugged…a man. I’m not making this up. I’m also not making up the entirely reasonable reaction that her “great sin” has sparked at the infamous Red Mosque in Pakistan.
The Red Mosque isn’t just any old mosque. It’s next to Pakistan’s ISI HQ, and many agents attend there. It helped train up the Taliban. Lately it has been challenging Musharraf’s rule by mounting an anti-vice campaign (or it has been playing the radical foil to Musharraf’s secular rule, depending on how you view the situation). If Musharraf were Palpatine, the Red Mosque would be the Jedi Temple. They don’t seem to get along, both are major authorities, and everyone there knows it and may have to choose sides at some point.
Courtesy: HR

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