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Category Archives: Pakistan
Stratfor on the foiled UK plot.
This, as usual is a great peek at the capabilities and operational thinking of Islamic terrorists in the UK. Stratfor always does a fantastic job at this which is no surprise given the staff at Stratfor of such people as Fred Burton who’s book ‘Ghost’ is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in the events on 911 and the timeline leading up to it.
I especially like that they have adopted Melanie Phillips term ‘Londonistan’ for the Islamic parts of the UK even if they do not use it in precicely the same way as she does, its mighty close.
Eeyore
Disruption vs. Prosecution and the Manchester Plot
April 22, 2009
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
On April 8, British authorities mounted a series of raids in Merseyside, Manchester and Lancashire that resulted in the arrest of 12 men suspected of being involved in a plot to conduct attacks over the Easter holiday weekend. In a press conference the following day, Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that the men arrested were allegedly involved in “a very big terrorist plot.” British authorities have alleged that those arrested sought to conduct suicide bombing attacks against a list of soft targets that included shopping centers, a train station and a nightclub.
The searches and arrests targeting the suspects purportedly involved in the plot, which was dubbed Operation Pathway, had to be accelerated after Bob Quick, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in charge of terrorism investigations, inadvertently allowed reporters to see a classified document pertaining to the operation as he was entering 10 Downing Street to brief Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on April 8. An embarrassed Quick resigned April 9 over the gaffe.
In spite of the leak, the British authorities were successful in detaining all of the targeted suspects, though the authorities have reportedly not been able to recover explosive material or other bomb-making evidence they were seeking. British authorities arrested 12 suspects, 11 of whom were Pakistani citizens. Smith told British Parliament on April 20 that all 11 of the Pakistani nationals entered the United Kingdom on student visas. The youngest of the Pakistani suspects, who is reportedly still a teenager, was remanded to the custody of British immigration authorities to face deportation proceedings April 9. The rest of the 11 suspects were released by British authorities April 21, though ten reportedly were placed in the custody of immigration officials.
Swat’s Taleban expand operations
Taleban militants from Pakistan’s troubled district of Swat have expanded operations into nearby regions after a peace deal with the government.
Dozens of militants have been streaming into bordering Buner district to take over mosques and government offices.
Buner is part of the Malakand region which has just seen the implementation of Islamic Sharia law.
This is part of a peace deal with the militants who had been fighting security forces since August 2007.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for North West Frontier Province, said he had received reports of the Taleban expansion.
Recent reports said the Taleban had ransacked the offices of international aid and development agencies working in Buner.
Some employees of the agencies were also briefly taken hostage before being released on Monday.
Patrols
The Taleban have banned the playing of music in cars and are also using mosques to invite local youth to join them.
The Taleban have also started regular patrols in the district.
Buner’s police chief, Rashid Khan, said the police had lodged an official complaint over the matter.
But the Taleban are not mentioned in the reports, which only names “unknown persons” as the culprits.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain maintains that the Taleban must disarm as agreed under the peace deal.
“Even Sufi Mohammad has said that there is no reason for the Taleban not to disarm,” he said.
He was referring to the head of a local religious group who has been acting as the government’s chief negotiator with the Taleban.
“We initially adopted the path of dialogue and reconciliation, but this is as far as we can go,” Mr Hussain said.
“We implemented Sharia law as it was a demand of the people, not just the Taleban.
“If they continue with their activities, they will not have the support of the people.
“The majority of the people are now with the government. The government will not stand by and tolerate [the violation of] the peace deal.”
Meanwhile, the Taleban say they will continue to operate in the valley and will not lay down their arms until Sharia is fully implemented.
“We told [non-governmental organisations] to stay away from Malakand division”, Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Swat Taleban, said.
On Monday, he said there was “no question” of the Taleban laying down their arms.
He said his movement’s aim was the enforcement of Sharia law in all of Pakistan.
Bernard-Henri Levy on Daniel Pearl. Listen to this lecture. Please.
Bernard-Henri Levy is one of France’s leading public intellectuals. In this lecture, he critiques present-day leftist politics for its anti-liberalism, anti-Americanism, and for being soft on radical Islamism. He draws from his latest book “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism”.
Pakistani Cleric: Swat Deal Gives Taliban Immunity
[kaltura-widget wid=”iy0n2ukur4″ width=”410″ height=”364″ addpermission=”3″ editpermission=”3″ /]
Of course the murders and other crimes committed by the Taliban, including selling and profiting from drugs, are all part of jihad so are legal under Islamic law.
Pakistani cleric claims deal imposing Islamic law in troubled valley grants Taliban immunity
Asked Tuesday in a television interview if the new courts would hear complaints from Swat residents about Fazlullah or his followers, Muhammad said they could not.
“We intend to bury the past,” Muhammad told the ARY channel, sitting off-screen because he considers photographic or TV images to be against Islam. “Past things will be left behind and we will go for a new life in peace.” I’m amazed there is room what with all the heads buried both figuratively and non
Asked if the Taliban would enjoy such immunity, a provincial government minister only pleaded for calm so that peace could take hold.
“Everyone should understand what we have gone through and what kind of hardship people in Swat have suffered,” Wajid Ali Khan said. “We can look into any disputes and controversy at some later stage.”
After weeks of foot-dragging, Zardari approved the Sharia regulation late Monday only after Parliament voted unanimously to adopt a resolution urging him to sign it.
His apparent reluctance has fueled doubts about whether the pact will hold. Few of the estimated 500,000 people displaced by the fighting have felt confident enough to return.
The resolution also diluted Zardari’s personal responsibility for a pact that has drawn fierce criticism from rights groups as well as Pakistan’s foreign backers, who are pumping billions of dollars into the country in hopes of stabilizing its pro-Western democracy.
Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said Tuesday that the pact was little more than a tactical maneuver in the country’s “long war” with extremists.
“Those people who want to hijack Pakistan and destabilize Pakistan, they used (the demand for speedy justice) as a propaganda tool,” Kaira said. “We have taken that idea out of the hand of the exploiters.”
He insisted the Sharia legislation would not introduce a version of Islamic law like that introduced by the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
“It is a misconception that we are going to enforce Mullahism,” he said.
A spokesman for the Taliban said the militants would cooperate. If the law is quickly implemented, “the world will see how much peace and prosperity comes to this region,” Muslim Khan said.
Australian news: Pakistan in danger of collapse
Warning that Pakistan is in danger of collapse within months (Thanks to GOV for the tip)
Paul McGeough
April 13, 2009
David Kilcullen… Pakistan keeps him awake at night. Photo: Supplied
PAKISTAN could collapse within months, one of the more influential counter-insurgency voices in Washington says.
The warning comes as the US scrambles to redeploy its military forces and diplomats in an attempt to stem rising violence and anarchy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we’re calling the war on terror now,” said David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House.
“You just can’t say that you’re not going to worry about al-Qaeda taking control of Pakistan and its nukes,” he said.
As the US implements a new strategy in Central Asia so comprehensive that some analysts now dub the cross-border conflict “Obama’s war”, Dr Kilcullen said time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink.
When he unveiled his new “Afpak” policy in Washington last month, the US President, Barack Obama, warned that while al-Qaeda would fill the vacuum if Afghanistan collapsed, the terrorist group was already rooted in Pakistan, plotting more attacks on the US.
“The safety of people round the world is at stake,” he said.
Laying out the scale of the challenges facing the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dr Kilcullen put the two countries invaded by US-led forces after the September 11 attacks on the US on a par – each had a population of more than 30 million.
Islamist terrorists pushing Pakistan towards collapse
Peter Goodspeed, National Post Published: Friday, April 10, 2009
After U.S. lawmakers warned Pakistan was on the verge of becoming a failed state, Islamist terrorists are doing their best to make their prediction come true, operating with seeming impunity in the country’s heartland.
“Pakistan is on a rapid trajectory toward becoming a failing or failed state,” says the report of the Atlantic Council task force, led by Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator, and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
“We cannot stress the magnitude of the dangers enough nor the need for greater action now. Pakistan faces dire economic and security threats that threaten both the existence of Pakistan as a democratic and stable state and the region as a whole.”
“We’re now reaching the point where, within one to six months, we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state,” adds David Kilcullen, an Australian guerrilla warfare specialist who advised U.S. General David Petraeus in Iraq.
“Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two thirds of the country that the government doesn’t control,” he recently told The Washington Post.
Brown clashes with Pakistan over terror suspects handed student visas by Home Office
From The Daily Mail UK:
By David Williams and James Slack
Last updated at 3:15 PM on 10th April 2009
The scandalous exploitation of Britain’s lax student visas rules by a suspected Al Qaeda cell erupted into a huge diplomatic row today between Gordon Brown and Pakistan.
The Prime Minister declared that Pakistan ‘has to do more to root out terrorist elements in its country’ in the wake of the revelation that 11 of the 12 suspects had travelled to Britain from the country.
But at least 10 of the 12 were allowed to enter by the Home Office after successfully applying for student visas.
Arrests: Police arresting a man at the library of Liverpool John Moores University following a series of terror raids in the north-west. At least ten of the 12 arrested were on student visas
As security forces in Britain carried out a desperate search for the terrorist bomb factory, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom said it was the UK that was guilty of not doing enough to carry out security checks on foreign students.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan said Pakistani authorities could help carry out background checks on student visa applicants but were not allowed to.
He said: ‘It is at your end you have to do something more. Every day we are raiding people, we are arresting people, we are arresting suspects wherever we find them.’
The row will leave Mr Brown red-faced amid increasing concerns the Government has ignored repeated warnings about the dangers of both the student visa rules and bogus colleges.
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Threat: Another man is arrested by armed police during the series of raids
Government figures showed 42,292 student visas were issued to Pakistani students between April 2004 and April 2008.
At the same time, it appears a supposed 2007 crackdown on bogus colleges – which charge foreign students thousands of pounds for fake academic courses – failed to detect the suspects seized this week in the North-West of England.
Only one is understood to have been studying at a reputable institution. Officials also believe they lied about their financial resources to evade a Home Office test of their ability to pay for their studies.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas insisted today that foreign national students were checked against watchlists of criminals and suspects from other countries.
‘It’s naive to think that we don’t check, we do work very closely with the Pakistan authorities, indeed we’ve been criticised for doing so,’ he said – only a week after he said student visas were ‘the major loophole in Britain’s border controls’.
He told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme today that there were 285 million people coming in and out of the country every year, including nearly 400,000 issued with student visas.
‘We do have these systems of checking these people to the best of our ability and we are acknowledged in international police circles as being one of the best in the world,’ he went on.
Mr Woolas said he had no detail of the arrests from this week but ‘the fact of the matter’ was that the individuals had been identified.
‘But the serious point that the opposition parties and other commentators must address is that if they continue to oppose our electronic borders system, then not only will there be loopholes, there will be a gaping chasm and we would not be able to protect the public.’
More…
- Quick’s terror blunder: In steps Met’s troubleshooter John Yates
- ‘Terror gang’ may have been ‘plotting to blow up shopping centre and nightclub’
- COMMENTARY: Gullible dons and terror cells on campus
- ANALYSIS: The student visa system is a mess – but what will the true damage to Britain prove to be?
- Continue Reading →
Major UK terrorist plot foiled
Dramatic daylight terror raids on a university may have been linked to a plot to blow up a shopping centre or nightclub, police fear.
Students at Liverpool John Moores University watched in shock yesterday as two men were hauled outside and forced to the ground by armed police.
Witnesses said the duo – students at the university’s Business School – were wearing combat trousers and hiking jackets, and claimed there were rumours of ‘a bomb’ on the premises.
Armed police stalk the streets of Manchester in terror raids today
Armed officers take no chances as they immobilise a terror suspect in Liverpool
Last night it was claimed that officers used a Taser stun gun to subdue at least one of the suspects.
The raid was brought forward after Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was photographed walking into Downing Street yesterday with top-secret files on the anti-terror operation under his arm.
The catastrophic security breach sparked immediate emergency action and led to Quick’s resignation this morning.
The raid was one of a series carried out simultaneously across the North-West in which 12 suspects believed to be plotting a major terrorist bomb attack in Britain were seized. Most of the men are Pakistani nationals living in Britain on student visas.
Police believe possible targets were the Trafford Centre shopping centre in Manchester and a nightclub frequented by footballers.
More…
- Anti-terror chief quits after dossier blunder forced police to rush forward raids on Al-Qaeda suspects
- Revealed: The blunders that halted the rise of Bob Quick
The other areas targeted included Cheetham Hill in north Manchester, where officers raided two houses looking for explosive material and seeking four men. An internet cafe was also searched.
In addition, a Homebase DIY store in Clitheroe, Lancashire, was raided by 100 officers, with shoppers looking on as two security guards were led away.
A property thought to be a guest house was also searched in Clitheroe.
Just before 5pm police detained a man in a flat above a shop in the Wavertree area of Liverpool.
A suspect is bundled away in Cheetham Hill
Center for security policy analysis of Obama’s speech in Turkey.
Taliban threaten 2 attacks per week in Pakistan
President Obama looks to pardon non-violent Taliban.
Pakistan surrenders the Swat Valley and it’s inhabitants to the Taliban.
One has to ask if America or Pakistan will ever realise they are in a war.
All these concessions are seen as victories by the Taliban, and rightly so.
They are now stronger, more bold and are riding a wave of momentem.
The Associated Press google news
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A suicide bombing at a crowded Shiite mosque south of Pakistan’s capital killed 22 people Sunday, the latest evidence of how security in the U.S.-allied nation is crumbling well beyond the Afghan border region where al-Qaida and Taliban fighters thrive.
The violence came as a senior Pakistani Taliban commander said his group was behind a deadly suicide bombing Saturday night in Islamabad and promised two more attacks per week in the country if the U.S. does not stop missile strikes on Pakistani territory.
Sunday’s suicide bomber set off his explosives at the entrance to a mosque in Chakwal city in Punjab province, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Islamabad, said Nadeem Hasan Asif, a top security official in the province. The blast killed 22 and wounded dozens, he said. Continue Reading →
TALIBAN WILL CAPTURE PAKISTAN VERY SOON Taliban leader says
Suddenly the peace deal doesn’t look like such a grreat idea.
Taliban Chief Claims Responsibility for N.Y. Shooting Massacre
While this is almost certainly pure bullshit, Ill post it here because it’s sufficiently disgusting that any organization would want to claim ‘credit’ for this sick sad massacre.
From Fox News:
A Pakistani Taliban militant leader has claimed responsibility for the attack on a U.S. immigration center in New York state in which 13 people were killed, Reuters reported.
“I accept responsibility. They were my men. I gave them orders in reaction to U.S. drone attacks,” Baituallah Mehsud told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location on Saturday.
Click here for taped video from the scene from the Binghamton Press Sun & Bulletin.
U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment about Mehsud’s claim, Reuters reported, and one Pakistani security analyst dismissed the claim as a publicity stunt.
Representative Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton, told the New York Times that indications are the gunman was an immigrant from Vietnam.
Pakistan outcry over flogging of girl by Taliban
[kaltura-widget wid=”npug3s3vp4″ width=”410″ height=”364″ addpermission=”0″ editpermission=”3″ /]In the hopes that people will get to witness Sharia law with their own eyes I have uploaded this video on my you tube account. Eight hours after posting I recieved an email from you tube informing me the video was pulled and the account ‘taffyincanada’ has been suspended. The mass flagging campaign by ‘Muslims against the facts’ is very active on youtube.
Diplomats and human rights campaigners have condemned a peace deal between the Pakistan government and Taliban militants after harrowing video footage revealed a teenage woman begging for mercy during a public flogging.
The footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being flogged by Islamic militants in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat.
The whipping took place after the peace deal was struck with militants in February following a protracted and unsuccessful military operation.
But a Taliban spokesman said that the punishment beating took place before the peace deal was signed when militants carried out executions and public beatings.
A local Taliban commander in the militant stronghold of Matta, outside of the regional capital, Mingora, ordered a girl called Chand to be flogged after she was accused of adultery.
“Please! Enough! Enough!” the girl is heard crying in Pashto, the language of the tribes who dominate northwestern Pakistan.
The two-minute video, shot using a mobile phone, shows a burka-clad woman face down on the ground. Two men, one of whom is her brother, hold her arms and feet while a third whips her 34 times.
“Please stop it,” she implores. “Either kill me or stop it now.” Continue Reading →
48 murdered by mad Muslim
Appeasing the Taliban by handing over the Swat valley has not stopped the violence against government forces and average citizens of Pakistan. I can only imagine the speech Taliban leaders gave their minions as they explained to them the peace deal they had agreed to with Pakistan. I suspect it was something like, ” We have told the Pakistan government [spit] we will stop jihad on them. So when you are killing them don’t say you are Taliban.” Followed by rubbing of palms and evil laughter.
At least 48 dead in Pakistan mosque bombing
Reuters Fri Mar 27, 2009
LANDI KOTAL, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded Pakistani mosque during prayers on Friday, killing at least 48 people, a government official said.
“So far we have counted 48 bodies,” Tariq Hayat Khan, the top administrator in the Khyber region in the northwest of the country, told reporters.The death toll could rise, perhaps to 70, he said. About 70 wounded had been taken to hospitals, he said.”It was a suicide attack. The bomber was standing in the mosque. It’s a two-storey building and it has collapsed,” he said.
Police initially said a bomb blew up at a police post next to the mosque near Jamrud town.
There was no claim of responsibility but Islamist militants opposed to the government’s support for the United States have mounted a violent campaign against the security forces and others.
Militants had earlier threatened to blow up the police post next to the mosque, residents of the area said.
“It’s surprising, those who claim that they are doing jihad and then carry out suicide attacks inside mosques during Friday prayers,” Khan told Geo TV.