# A might confusing



## QC (Oct 10, 2009)

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/2009109234437425405.html



Pakistan has vowed to launch a new offensive against Taliban strongholds along the Afghan border after a suicide car bomber killed 49 people in a crowded market in the city of Peshawar.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, blamed Friday's attack on the Taliban and said that the fighters had left the government "no other option" but to hit back.

"We will have to proceed," he told a local television station.

Later, Malik told reporters: "They are compelling us to launch the operation in South Waziristan early. We will take a decision on the operation against terrorists over the next few days."

Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, "strongly condemned" the bombing, and expressed his government's resolve to continue action against extremists, a statement from his office said.

*Civilians killed*

The attack in Peshawar's Khyber Bazaar was the bloodiest to hit the country in the last six months.

Zafar Iqbal, the registrar of Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital, said: "We have 49 dead bodies brought to the hospital. Three of them are women and seven are children."

All of the dead were civilians, he added.

Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a senior provincial minister, confirmed the death toll, saying that more than 100 people had been injured in the blast.

At least 12 shops were completely destroyed, while passers-by desperately tried to free survivors from the wreckage of a destroyed bus.

Shafqat Malik, the bomb disposal squad chief, said that police evidence suggested the suicide bomber had rammed a car with explosives and machine-gun ammunition packed into its side panels into the crowded bus.

*Taliban offensive*

Despite interior minister Malik's assertion that the Taliban were behind the attack, there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said: "What is surprising everyone is that immediately after the attack, the provincial information minister came out and said that he knew where the attack came from, and started saying that people should be united against the Taliban, even though the Taliban have not claimed responsibility."

The US has been pushing Pakistan to take strong action against fighters who it says are using Pakistani soil as a base for attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military has launched a number of offensives against the Taliban in the past and its efforts received a boost with the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban leader, in a US missile attack.

But despite what are seen as successful campaigns in the Swat Valley and adjoining Buner district, the army has been beaten back on three previous offensives into the Taliban heartland of South Waziristan.
 Source: 	Al Jazeera and agencies

*
India: Pakistan 'sending Taliban to fight in Kashmir'*

Pakistan is offering captured Taliban militants the option of fighting Indian troops in Kashmir as an alternative to jail, Indian officials have claimed.


By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
Published: 5:39PM BST 07 Oct 2009

They alleged 60 Taliban fighters captured in the Pakistan army's offensive to re-assert government rule in the Swat Valley earlier this year had accepted the deal and were now waiting with an estimated 300 jihadi fighters to cross into Kashmir.

Indian officials are now braced for a series of incursions and border battles in the next two to three weeks as the militants make their move.


Officials said the militants were offered a "jail or jihad" choice by senior officers of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service and that the plot had been discovered in a series of intercepted telephone conversations.

"Although the Taliban is yet to successfully infiltrate into India, the coming days will pose a challenge as their attempts to sneak in are expected before the onset of winter," one senior official said.

Intelligence analysts said the plot emerged during a visit to Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Jammu and Kashmir, by senior defence and home affairs officials.

One former senior Indian intelligence official, B. Raman, said he believed the reports were credible and reflected Pakistan's desire to raise the profile of the Kashmir conflict on the international stage.

Pakistan has recently persuaded the Organisation of Islamic Countries to appoint a special envoy to Kashmir to lobby for a new dialogue. The appointment of the Saudi Arabian official Abdullah bin Abdul Rahman was welcomed by the chairman of Kashmir's separatist All Party Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, but was opposed by India.

"This is going to make it difficult to normalise relations [between India and Pakistan]. Pakistan has set up this special representative and they will step up violence in Kashmir. We shouldn't be surprised, they have done this before. These Taliban would stand out in any other part of India, but we can expect trouble from them in Kashmir," said Mr Raman.

"They will launch targeted attacks, like the commando raids on Mumbai, and other complex, multi-target raids," he claimed.

Many Kashmiri militants are believed to have joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda groups after Islamabad was forced to shut down their ISI-sponsored training camps under American pressure following the September 11 attacks.

One of them, Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of the Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Ismai (Huji) militant group, went on to become a senior al-Qaeda leader in charge of its operations inside Pakistan. He was reported to have been killed in a recent American drone attack. Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused of carrying out the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November, also began as a Kashmir-focused group. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...stan-sending-Taliban-to-fight-in-Kashmir.html


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## AWP (Oct 10, 2009)

Pakistan's Army has generated less offense this year than the Browns. Their PR machine really needs to drink a V8 or something.

And the revelation about the "Taliban" fighting in Kashmir is about as shocking as water being wet, the sky being blue.


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## QC (Oct 10, 2009)

New to me but you've got your finger on the pulse I guess. Is it a case of different groups of jihadis in the Peoples Toilet of Pakistan, having different aims etc, but grouped under the generic term " Taliban?"


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## AWP (Oct 10, 2009)

Queens Cadet said:


> New to me but you've got your finger on the pulse I guess. Is it a case of different groups of jihadis in the Peoples Toilet of Pakistan, having different aims etc, but grouped under the generic term " Taliban?"



Sorry, I was panning the article, not you. The media "discovers" something every week it seems.

There's a Pakistani Taliban (TTP) plus the "old school" guys from Afghanistan. The madrassas on the AfPak border have been a breeding ground for extremists and the Pakistani government, especially the ISI, has allowed them to exist because those militants have been sent to Kashmir or Afghanistan, wherever the ISI wanted them to go. Pakistan is so terrified of India that they've played this dangerous game with Islamic extremists which is now backfiring on the Pakistani government. Almost all of Pakistan's worldview centers around India.....and they've used the Taliban or their sympathizers to wage their own insurgency in Kashmir.


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## x SF med (Oct 10, 2009)

Ah, keeping an eye on the dangerous elephant down the road, while the masses of poisonous snakes and spiders are crawling up your leg... toward your balls.

Not to mention the fact that you have bee nbreeding those same snakes and spiders and allowing them to travel through your yard to your neighbors' homes and infest them.

Then wonder why the hell you are dying form cobra and black widow venom.

:doh::eek:


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## QC (Oct 11, 2009)

Thats OK free, I got it.


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