Category Archives: Pakistan

U.S Strikes in Pakistan “justify jihad”: cleric

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pakistan-school-of-terrorism2 Rueters-Kamran Haider

      

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – An expansion of America’s secret war in Pakistan to Baluchistan province would justify jihad and see many more young men rally to fight foreign forces in Afghanistan, a radical cleric said.

 The New York Times reported last week that the United States is considering expanding its covert war to Baluchistan, a sprawling province of deserts and jagged mountains on the border of violence-plagued southern Afghanistan.

 So far, missile strikes by pilotless Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones, which Pakistan objects to, have been limited to ethnic Pashtun tribal areas to the north of Baluchistan, mostly in the North and South Waziristan regions.

 “America is trying to scare us but it won’t work. Rather it will be a justification,” Noor Muhammad, a well-known radical cleric who runs a madrasa, or religious school, in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, said of possible U.S. strikes.

 “America is foolish because it will only force more people here to stand up against it,” he said.

 Sitting in a room his madrasa complex, the 60-year-old grey-bearded Muhammad denied any policy of sending young men from his school to fight Western forces in Afghanistan.

 But he said it was the duty of every Muslim to do that.

 “If infidels occupy a Muslim land then it’s obligatory for all Muslims to do jihad … Preaching jihad is my duty,” he said.

 President Barack Obama has said the United States is not winning in Afghanistan, more than seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban, and he is due to announce the result of a review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan in coming days.

 U.S. officials say success in Afghanistan is impossible without tackling the problem of militant safe havens in Pakistan.

 In the Pashtunabad area on the outskirts of Quetta, support for militancy appears strong. Walls on a street leading to Muhammad’s madrasa are daubed with slogans such as “Long Live Mullah Omar.”

 Afghan and foreign officials in Kabul have long said they believe Taliban leaders, including supreme leader Mullah Omar, are hiding in Baluchistan. Pakistan denies that. Continue Reading →

Islamic Militants claim Kashmiri attack

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    lashkar-e-taiba1BBC News March 25-2009

The Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba says it was involved in a five-day gun battle with troops in Indian-administered Kashmir.

At least 25 people died in fighting at Kupwara, including eight soldiers.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group which India holds responsible for the armed attacks in Mumbai last November in which more than 170 people died.

The army says the militants were well trained and equipped and had the backing of agencies in Pakistan.

“Militarily prepared”

“The maps and communication equipment [recovered from dead gunmen] indicates that [Pakistani] state and security forces’ assistance was there as such material is not available in the civil domain,” Brig Gurmeet Singh told a press conference in Srinagar on Wednesday.

“The majority of the militants have been killed and those left, if any, will also be eliminated.” Continue Reading →

No more cell phones in tribal area of Pakistan

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Militants warn Pakistan

24/03/2009 14:32 – (SA)

Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan – Militants on Tuesday warned the Pakistan government to stop expanding the cellphone network in a restive tribal area, worried it could be used to spy on their activities.

They circulated a pamphlet in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan on the Afghan border, telling authorities to stop the network expansion and ordering vendors to stop selling SIM cards, residents and officials said.

“A Jewish, Zionist-backed company is setting up the mobile phone network in Waziristan, which would be used to spy on Taliban activities and drone attacks,” said the pamphlet.

“This network is equipped with GPS (global positioning system) and can give the location of a person even if his mobile phone is switched off,” it said.

“In Iraq and Afghanistan such a system has been used to launch attacks against mujahedeen,” the leaflet said, referring to holy warriors.

“The government and those selling SIMs will be treated as criminals by us,” it warned.

A local administration official confirmed that a leaflet had been circulated in Wana.

Pakistan’s rugged tribal regions have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda rebels fled across the border to escape the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

– AFP

Sky News does another piece on Swat and imposition of sharia law

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One thing, the interview with the elderly gentleman at the end should be taken with a grain of salt. No one dares speak against the Taliban. Anyone interviewed with half a brain or who likes living will say they think its a good thing.

This video found on Frozen North:

NGO’s ordered out of Swat. Taliban finds them ‘vulgar’

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Karachi, Mar.23 (ANI): The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has virtually imposed a ban on all the non-governmental organizations (NGO) working in the Swat Valley, as it has asked them to leave the region immediately.
The TTP has said the way of working of the NGOs was against Islam and it is not acceptable to it.
NGO is another name for vulgarity and obscenity. They hire women who work with men in the field and in offices. This is totally un-Islamic and unacceptable, TTP spokesman, Muslim Khan said.
Khan strongly opposed the presence of foreigners in the region.
They come and tell us how to make lavatories in mosques and houses. Im sure we can do it ourselves. There is no need for foreigners to tell us this, The Daily Times quoted Khan, as saying.
When asked that why the Taliban has been opposing the polio vaccination, Khan said: It (vaccination) causes infertility.
He added that the major reason why the Taliban was against the vaccination is that the vaccines were manufactured in foreign countries, and the vaccination program was run by NGOs. (ANI)

Sharia courts begin work in Swat Valley with restrictions on women

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by Qaiser Felix
Women cannot go out unaccompanied or speak in public but must cover their heads. Girls’ schools could be closed for good. Local Catholics and Protestants fear for their future; some are starting to leave the region. Taliban militia leader threatens new judges; anyone not applying Sharia correctly will be removed from office immediately.

Peshawar (AsiaNews) – Sharia courts have begun to administer justice in the Swat Valley. With Sharia in place in Malakand area, women are no longer allowed to go out unaccompanied or speak in public. They must also cover their heads. Girls’ schools, essentially run by missionaries, could close for good, especially after recent bomb attacks. Although no one was injured in the blasts, about a thousands girls are now unable to go to class, about 95 per cent of whom are Muslim.The future of the region’s Catholics and Protestants, who number around a thousand, is grim. Many of them are labourers and street sweepers, but some work in hospitals and a few teach in missionaries-run schools. All of them fear discrimination and many have begun packing up to move to areas where Sharia is not enforced. .

Since the start of the year the Taliban have carried out hundreds of attacks against schools, video and CD stores and barber shops and all other activities they claim to be un-Islamic.

With the implementation of Nizam-e-Adl Regulations 2009, civilian courts no longer have jurisdiction in this area and have been replaced by Qazi (Islamic) courts and Qazis (Islamic judges).

More specifically seven courts are now in place in the Swat Valley after Tehreek-i-Nafaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) Taliban militias and the government of President Asif Ali Zardari reached an agreement to that effect. The Lower and Upper Dir districts, Buner, Malakand Agency, Shangla, Kohistan and Chitral districts are now under Sharia law.

North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Communication Minister Iftikhar Hussain said that the aforementioned courts will be the models other districts will follow when they will implement Sharia. This way the latter can come into effect without presidential approval.

In announcing the start of the new courts TSNM chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad said that Islamic courts will come under a new supreme court, the Darul Qaza. Two of its three qazis have already been selected; the third one will be designated in the near future.

Sufi Muhammad also said that if qazis do not correctly implement Sharia they will be replaced.

This has led the High Court in Peshawar to express concerns with respect to the TSNM chief’s threats, calling on NWFP authorities to ensure the safety of the judges.

Another singer silenced in Pakistan. NPR

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Pashtun Singer Gulzar Alam in Peshawar, Pakistan, in February 2003.


B.K. Bangash

Popular Pashtun singer Gulzar Alam practices behind closed doors at his home in Peshawar, Pakistan, in February 2003. AP

Click here to hear the audio NPR report and interview with this Pakistani artist

All Things Considered, March 12, 2009 · In Pakistan, Muslim religious extremists have long sought to ban secular music — and in some parts of the country, militants are enforcing their views with violence.

In areas controlled by the Taliban, CD stores have been destroyed or forced to shut down. Musicians have fled or been silenced, and fear is spreading even in areas where the Taliban is not in full control. One popular singer from the city of Peshawar no longer dares perform.

For Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Pakistan’s rugged northwest, the voice of Gulzar Alam could bring tears. Drawing on their favorite poets, he sang of love, pride and nationalist aspirations. He packed local halls and was the musician of choice for weddings. He was handsome, well dressed, with a bit of the matinee idol about him.

Now, he sits on the floor of a slum, wrapped in a traditional shawl. His shaggy hair and scraggly beard are shot with gray.

He laughs ruefully at what he has become: an old man before his time who cannot afford to shave.

Alam’s problems started seven years ago when a coalition of religious parties won elections in Pakistan’s northwest. The authorities harassed him, and a crowd attacked his house with rocks. He and his family fled south to Baluchistan.

Last year, after the religious coalition in the northwest was defeated, the new secular Pashtun government urged him to return — promising he would now be safe. It was a promise the government could not fulfill.

“Four months ago, performers were attacked as they returned from a function. Four musicians were injured, one was killed. No one is safe from the Taliban here. People have retreated into self-imposed censorship,” Alam says.

Once again, Alam began receiving threatening phone calls. He was shot at on the street.

He returned to Baluchistan, but found that the Taliban is now threatening musicians there, too. He tried to find gigs in the port city of Karachi, but there, he faced a different problem: ethnic violence against Pashtuns.

Back in Peshawar, he is afraid to perform. He has no source of income. After his elder brother turned him away, fearing the singer would put him in danger, Alam, his wife and five children sought refuge with other relatives. Now, three large families are crammed into three dank, dark rooms with no running water.

“It’s like falling from the sky to earth,” says Rukhsana Muqaddas, Alam’s wife. “Before this we had a very modern, wonderful life. We used to send our kids to good schools. Now, we can’t afford to educate them at all.”

Alam’s favorite song, a Pashtun ballad about loss of identity, has taken on a new meaning. Once the voice of the Pashtun downtrodden, Alam is now a member, his dreams of a peaceful Pashtun renaissance hijacked by the Taliban.

In downtown Peshawar, some music stores are still open. Arshat Khan has come from an outlying area, where all of the stores have been closed, to buy CDs of his favorite singers; Alam is among them. Although his old recordings are still on sale, there is no system of royalties. So while it may warm Alam’s heart to know he is loved, this doesn’t fill his children’s stomachs.

Khan says cultural life has come to a standstill.

“Life is colorless. … It’s like living in [a] world that is black and white. You have just to eat and excrete and live under perpetual fear,” Khan says.

And like Gulzar Alam, he expects the situation to get worse.

Women in Swat.

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Feminists, human rights groups, damn it people in general where the hell are you? Where is the apartheid week on campus for woman’s rights?

Fear of death stalks women in Swat. From Dawn.com

Saturday, 07 Mar, 2009 | 11:27 AM PST |

Veiled young women sit attend a class at a vocational training center at Gulkada area in Swat valley. —AFP


Veiled young women sit attend a class at a vocational training center at Gulkada area in Swat valley. —AFP


PESHAWAR: Terrified, locked up at home and courting death if they go out alone, women oppressed by extremists in Swat have nothing to celebrate on International Women’s Day.

Nearly 100 years after the annual day was created to mark the struggle for equal rights for half the world’s population, most women in Swat look blank and go silent when asked about gender rights and discrimination.

They’re too frightened to speak in public. They can only leave the confines of their homes accompanied by a male relative, their bodies hidden in veils.

‘How can I tell you my name, are you crazy? I was told not to give my name to anyone because the Taliban could hurt me,’ one girl in the ninth grade told AFP by telephone from the former ski resort.

The girl’s dreams of becoming a doctor are over. She worries the Taliban will stop her finishing school, regardless of her parents’ support.

‘My mother told me I can do anything, but my inner soul is shattered.’

‘Tell me if you stop women getting an education where will a sick woman go? Do you want her to go to a male doctor? I was told that education is compulsory for every man and woman in Islam but the Taliban destroyed our schools.’

Militants have destroyed 191 schools in the valley, 122 of them for girls, leaving 62,000 pupils with nowhere to study, local officials say.

Huma Batool – not her real name – is a 42-year-old mother of two who dices with death to teach girls at a private school in the region’s main town Mingora.

‘We have to veil ourselves and wear shuttlecock burqas. We are not safe even at home.
We fear the Taliban all the time. Life is becoming worse and worse for women in Swat,’ she told AFP by telephone.

Educated and financially self-sufficient, she cannot even pop to the shops without a male relative, leaving her frequently couped up at home for hours, waiting for a suitable escort to become available.

‘You cannot imagine how I manage to get to school, practically every day I think about leaving the job and sitting at home.’

‘Life bores us to tears. There is no entertainment. We can’t even think about cable TV, cinema, film and music. Imagine I can’t even go shopping or to the bazaar as women are banned by Taliban.’

Salma Javed, 35, is a nurse at a local hospital, where women – however sick – can only be admitted if accompanied by a male relative.

‘Every woman fears she will be killed if she comes out, so even sick and pregnant women have to visit hospital with their husbands.’

Salma would love to leave, but she cannot scrape together the money to set herself up in Peshawar.

‘Now we are waiting to see what will happen after the peace deal, but let me tell you things will not change for women,’ she said.

The only light in Shahnaz Kousar’s life is that the Taliban – at least for now – are allowing her to go to school in Mingora. But outside her 10th grade classroom, the daily pleasures of shopping and make-up are gone.

‘We are now totally depending on Taliban. There’s not a single shop left where I can go and buy cosmetics, all shops selling women’s things are either closed or empty.’

‘I remember when I used to go to this market with my mother and sisters, but now it seems like a dream.’

More on arts and Islam. Pakistan.

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As part of VTB’s ongoing series on Islam’s war on the arts Here is a piece from Express India.

At VTB we feel its necessary to have this special focus as so many leftist organizations seem to flock to the cause of Islamists who if they at all understood the consequences of a victory for ‘their side’ may have second thoughts. Islam is not a poor tiny persecuted minority but a substantial fraction of the overall population of the earth which controls vast sections of the world and some of its most strategic resources. Islam also has strict precepts against the arts both musical and representative. Sculptors painters and musicians can expect ostracism at best and torture and murder more typically as we see in the Swat valley. This gentleman in the story below, was lucky compared to the numerous dancers and musicians who have been murdered in Swat Afghanistan and elsewhere Islam controls the monopoly on force.

Artists flee Swat valley to escape fanatics’ threats

Posted: Mar 06, 2009 at 1532 hrs IST

Karachi Mohammad Shahid scrapes together a living in a city slum by painting birds, flowers, animals and celebrity portraits onto minibuses – and vows never to return to the horrors of Swat valley.

After pro-Taliban vigilantes beat and threatened him at gunpoint, he swapped the green pastures and sweeping mountains of his birthplace for the concrete jungle of Pakistan’s smoggy metropolis of Karachi on the Gulf.

It was heart-breaking to leave the idyll of his youth, he said, but there was no choice. “I had to come here because there was no other chance for me or my family to survive,” said 45-year-old Shahid.

The memories of the terrifying campaign waged by Islamist hardliners to enforce sharia law are still fresh for Shahid, and no fledgling truce between the government and those who chased him out will persuade him to return.

“I’m a painter, an artist. I can’t do anything else to earn a living. The Taliban won’t allow people like us to do our work, which saw my family suffer.

Shahid said he used to make a good living painting landscapes, birds, Pakistani and Indian film stars, pavement caricatures and portraits, which were popular with tourists who flocked to the once-friendly and tolerant valley.

But then the fanatics came, the tourists left and life changed for those who made a living from the arts.

The cost of surrender. Christians in Swat

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Here is a link from Asianews on an attack on a Christian community in Swat. In case anyone doesn’t know, the government of Pakistan has surrendered to the Taliban/Al Queda coalition by giving them a homeland in the formerly wonderful Swat Valley.

The Pakistanis refer to it as a peace deal however it is indistinguishable from a surrender in as much as the Taliban now enforces the most draconian version of sharia law similar to what was the norm in pre 911 Afghanistan including but not limited to, the killing of musicians, the public hanging of dancers bodies and flogging and murder of anyone who breaks the most arcane Muslim rules. An example might be, having pants that are too long or not properly shrieking “Allah” when slaughtering animals for meat. The bold is mine as there are illustrations here of an ongoing thread at VTB about Islam and the arts.

Please find the text of the article below:

PAKISTAN
Muslims attack Christian community in Punjab
One woman has been killed, and 28 people have been injured at the Presbyterian church in Songo. Violence is on the rise in the Swat Valley and in the northern regions. Thousands of people are fleeing after the introduction of sharia, including many teachers and entire families. In Takhtbhai, in the district of Mardan, there have been bomb attacks on 16 music stores.

Peshawar (AsiaNews/Agencies) – One woman has died and 28 people have been injured in an attack on the Presbyterian Christian community in the village of Songo, in the district of Gujranwala, province of Punjab. The attack took place on the evening of March 2: at 8 p.m., a group of Muslim inhabitants opened fire on the faithful who had gathered in the church for prayer. The woman, named Shakeela, died on the spot, while other members of the faithful suffered injuries of various kinds while they were seeking to flee from the bullets or to protect the pastor. The attackers broke the windows of the church, destroyed the Bibles and the other prayer books, and removed the cross from the roof of the building.

The victims of the attacks say that this was a premeditated action, and recount that in the previous weeks they had received a number of threats from the attackers. The authors of the attack have been identified, and a report against them has been filed at the local police station. The Pakistan Christian Post says that for now, the security forces have turned down the request for investigations on the attackers. For this reason, the burial of the woman’s body has been delayed, to permit an autopsy in evidence of the attack.

The attack in Songo is added to a long list of violent events that are now being seen more or less everywhere in Punjab and in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The attacks are carried out by the Taliban, but also by ordinary people, and they are not coming to an end in the Swat Valley, where a fragile ceasefire has been attained by the government, thanks to the concession of introducing sharia in that district and in the district of Malakand.

During the night of March 5, the Taliban blew up 16 CD and DVD stores in Takhtbhai, in the district of Mardan northeast of Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP. It is one of the many places in the province that in recent months have come under the grip of the Taliban. In February, it was the theater of attacks against girls’ schools, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, and in spite of the fact that the agreement between the Taliban and the government provides for the reopening of schools to girls, many are afraid of fresh violence.

Since the beginning of the year, people have been abandoning the Swat Valley by the thousands. These include many families and a number of teachers, who have formally stated that they are going on vacation. One mother who left the district recounts: “All the best teachers from my children’s schools have left. I do not think they will go back. According to my relatives there, many children have gone back to school, but there are now too few teachers.”

Some links for March 4 2009

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Maybe now I should make this policy change official. When I started VTB one of the issues I wished to address is the dangerous and counter productive irrational leftist movement to combat ‘anthropogenic global warming’. A disingenuous goal if ever there was one, as if you question nine in ten supporters of it long enough ultimately they will come back at you with “Yes the science on it is a little shaky but I still support it as it makes people ‘think’ the right way about the environment.” A truly repugnant and Orwellian agenda. It’s OK for me to lie to you because you making your choices based on lies makes for a better world. And typically, these are the exact same people who virulently oppose religion of all stripes. Except Tibetan Buddhism. Because they know nothing about it.

I no longer concern myself with global warming hysteria because anyone who still believes in it despite the last 8 years of climate data and the discovered falsification of facts in order to propagate this myth is clearly never going to accept the facts. They are anti corporate types who use the language of green to support a Marxist anti western agenda. They do not actually care about the ‘environment’. For an excellent essay on this read the co founder of Greenpeace, Patrick More. He states it very clearly as his reason for leaving Greenpeace altogether.

The threat we have to deal with, the one which will in fact ‘change our environment’ in every conceivable sense of the term is Islam. As Fjordman so eloquently writes extensively on, The Byzantines where an enlightened modern people with solid foundations in Greek thought as well, they were the Greeks. And as the degree of jihadi Muslims infiltrating western bureaucracies increases and the degree of submission of some of my favorite nations also grows, we clearly have decided to focus on the anti jihad. The stakes are higher than I can grasp. The degree to which the threat of the loss of all western values becomes more apparent to me each day. In the most excellent style of Mark Steyn, we at VTB try and understate the real case so that any skeptic who chooses to challenge these articles by doing honest research will discover our case is more serious than even we present it. This by the way, frightens we here at vladtepesblog as well.

The problem is two fold. The extent of jihadi preparations for violent actions against western targets, by far the lesser of the problem, compared to the extent to which Muslims who have a clear well understood and publicized agenda of global manifest destiny have infiltrated organizations typically thought of as protecting liberalism. Agencies such as the U.N. now co opted to an anti Semitic and pro sharia law agenda as we see by both Durban I and Durban II as well as the current binding resolution in front of the general assembly of the UN protecting Islam from criticism and of course, a large host of ‘Human Rights’ organizations which now actively work against any real human rights.

And on that note, some links:

Muslim girls in Norway beaten and abused for not wearing hijab all the time. Women’s groups anywhere on earth I hope are profoundly ashamed for their lack of attention on this and thousands of similar stories around the world today. All of us should of course, this isn’t a feminist issue so much as one of fundamental human rights but feminist groups who often live on Government grants seem more concerned about interpreting comments at the water cooler than they are about women being kept in London basement prisons for refusing to marry a first cousin from Pakistan. Often actually being murdered for it. Read Bruce Bawer’s ‘While Europe Slept’ for statistics on this.

Five Muslims convicted for murdering a British Teen. Of course the ‘funny’ thing about this article is how it sparked a debate on ‘knife control’ and not immigrant or Muslim control. Europe (with the notable exception of Denmark) refuses to admit that a grossly disproportionate amount of violent and politically driven crime is from Muslim immigrants who often state that the crimes they commit is for the spread of and glorification of Islam.

Muslims like to pretend their is no compulsion of religion in Islam. Something they say to ease our minds about our new Muslim overlords. I wonder how they would explain entire Bulgarian villages forced to convert to extremist Islam then?

Canada is right and truly fucked. How can one know a place is fucked? Because something as hideous as this happens in a Canadian high school, an indoctrination session by anti Semites disguised with a veneer of anti Israeli politics and they expressly forbade any adults to attend. No parents, No teachers, no recording whatsoever. The only way it could be more fucked than this, is if it did not get reported at all. Which I would wager is the case in Islamic nations. Like England.

Lastly, What would a links post be without a terrorism reference. India now states that two Pakistani officers where involved with the Mumbai attacks.

As Baron Bodissey puts it so well at GOV…

by Baron Bodissey

Ever since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November, India has asserted that Pakistani nationals inside Pakistan were part of the conspiracy to murder and wreak havoc among the population of Mumbai. Pakistan at first denied any connection, then acknowledged that there might be a few Pakistani “rogue elements” who conspired with the attackers. As the weeks wore on, deeper and deeper connections between Pakistan and the Mumbai terrorists were ferreted out and exposed in the Indian press.

Cricket team focus of slaughter in Pakistan

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Sri Lankan cricket team brutally slaughtered by ‘well trained terrorists’. From The Australian. A truly excellent online newspaper. Thanks to ‘R’ our contact in Oz.

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austraia-cricket-1austraia-cricket-2

Eight dead as cricketers ambushed

UPDATE | 5:33pm MASKED gunmen opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus in Pakistan, killing at least eight people and wounding team members.

MASKED gunmen have opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least eight people and wounding six team members, police say.

The cricket tour was called off following Tuesday’s attack and arrangements made to fly the visiting team straight home.

Six police officers and two civilians died in the attack, police said.

Star Sri Lankan batsman Thilan Samaraweera was injured and hospitalised while Captain Mahela Jayawardene and coach Australian Trevor Bayliss were among those who sustained minor injuries, officials said.

Up to 12 gunmen attacked the team’s convoy near the Gaddafi stadium with rockets, hand grenades and automatic weapons, triggering a 25-minute gunbattle with security forces, said Lahore police chief chief Habib-ur Rehman.

“They appeared to be well-trained terrorists. They came on rickshaws,” said Rehman.

The attack happened as the team was heading for the third day’s play in the second Test against Pakistan.

Television footage showed several gunmen creeping through trees, crouching to aim their weapons and then running onto the next target.

Broken glass littered the road next to a gun cartridge and an empty rocket-propelled grenade launcher. A police motorbike was shown crashed sideways into the road at the Liberty Chowk roundabout.

Bullet holes ripped through the windscreen of another vehicle and a white car was shown smashed headlong into the roundabout as nervous security officers guarded the site.

Pakistani civil defence experts defused two car bombs and recovered a stash of weapons after the attack, an official said.

Officials gave no details about the fate of the gunmen.

Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse condemned the action as a “cowardly terrorist attack”.
Officials said six team members were wounded and the team was immediately ending its tour of Pakistan.

Assistant coach, Englishman Paul Farbrace, and star batsman Thilan Samaraweera were kept in hospital although their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening, said Sri Lanka’s Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge.

Captain Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Tharanga Paranavithana and Ajantha Mendis suffered only minor injuries, he said.

Coach Trevor Bayliss sustained minor injuries, a team official said.

Pakistani authorities were providing helicopters to evacuate the Sri Lankan team.

“This test match has been officially called off,” Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ijaz Butt told reporters in Lahore.

“We are providing helicopters to evacuate the team from the ground to an air base from where they will leave,” Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province of which Lahore is the capital, told reporters.

“We are going to catch these terrorists one way or the other,” he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but fears of attacks by Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda have caused many teams to postpone or cancel cricket tours to Pakistan in recent years.

The shooting also came as the Sri Lankan army pushed its final offensive against ethnic Tamil rebels in the north of the country in a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The brazen attack sent shockwaves through the world of cricket and immediately raised doubts about the 2011 World Cup which is due to take place in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

“What has happened is very shocking indeed,” said N Srinivasan, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

“We have been saying that there was a lack of security and safety in Pakistan. But this is not the time to give statements on that. At the moment our concerns are only for the Sri Lankan players,” he told AFP.

Former Sri Lankan cricket coach, Australian Tom Moody, said he was stunned.

“My thoughts and prayers are not only with my friends in the Sri Lankan cricket team, but with the families of everyone that has been killed or injured in today’s attack,” he said.

The attack cast another cloud over Pakistan cricket which has been reeling from a string of cancelled tours and tournaments.

Australia earlier this month forced Pakistan to change the venue of a one-day series to the neutral venues of Dubai and Abu Dhabi when the two sides meet in April-May this year over security fears.

Links for Feb 27 2009

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In this article, Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate speaks out on Hollywood hypocrisy focusing on Sean Penn. This is a good and well written piece although Im sure none of the content will be unfamiliar to readers of VTB. I feel its worth posting as part of an ongoing thread here about the left, the arts, and Islam. He does miss one movie though, the recent comedy, ‘An American Carol’ which is a fairly typical Hollywood comedy in formula but rather cathartic for those of us looking to Hollywood to present some truth to those of us who have at least one eye open to the world. I have seen it three times now.

I say cathartic because at last someone had the raw balls to point at Hollywood hypocrisy, show the dangers of Islam to the west and to woman’s rights and so on, and mock Islam the way Hollywood should mock anyone friend or foe. I might add that Gary Bauer does neglect one point. That artists themselves are the first targets of Islam once they have the power to do so. We see this today in the Swat valley, recently a favorite tourist spot with much local dance and music now the new homeland to the Taliban where artists and dancers have their mutilated corpses left out on display in prominent areas of villages to get the message out faster of what will not be tolerated. The Taliban recently also made a public threat that they would send suicide bombers on to any bus within Pakistan which played music or showed movies. (I doubt they would make an exception for Sean Penn’s recent film ‘Milk’ where he played a gay rights activist somehow.) The bus drivers immediately complied. Who wouldn’t. Pakistan cannot protect their own largest safest hotels. How can they protect every single peasant wagon.

Speaking of Afghanistan, we pushed the Taliban out of there did we not? and saw a new more liberal government put in its place we are still fighting and dieing for over there. Yet strangely we have the death sentence for one Afghan merely for suggesting misogyny was an extremist misinterpretation of Islam and that the ‘true Islam’ saw men and women as equal. He also questioned why Muslim women could not have four husbands. His sentence because of large public pressure from the west was commuted to life in prison. The above link is an article about how his brother is in Italy asking for help to free this man from prison. Again, why are we spending billions and some of our finest young men to protect a regime which seem to be ‘Taliban lite’.

Meanwhile in Egypt, a trial awaits another man who converted to Coptic Christianity from Islam, a faith which predates Islam in Egypt by centuries, who will likely get the death sentence. This is a good article about his ordeal. I do like the analogy about how North Korea, the Soviet Union and Islam all insist they are the best possible systems of thought and way of life and yet kill anyone who leaves. Makes ya wonder just a little bit.

Lastly, this video from an Israeli Arab. Whoever the hell you are buddy, thank you very much for doing this. This video I’m sure, will mean a great deal to many of us. It certainly does to me. Found on Occidental Soapbox

More on Pakistan from Stratfor.com

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This from Stratfor.com

Anyone who is interested in non partizan geopolitics really should get a membership. These guys get a lot right and just the raw news without the analysis is worth the price of admission. This is the best source of information on geopolitics and military activities as well as political there is out there. Below is the two paragraphs I may post on this issue without violating terms of use. But its worth trying them out and reading the whole thing.

February 25, 2009 | 1731 GMT

Summary
Pakistan’s federal government imposed governor’s rule in Punjab, the country’s largest province, Feb. 25 after the Supreme Court ruled Punjab’s chief minister as ineligible for office. This is a preemptive move by the central government to try and contain large-scale protests by the country’s legal community, which is demanding the restoration of the judiciary. The tussle comes at a time when the country is already politically and economically weak and the military is likely far too distracted with the jihadist insurgency to step in and quell such political brawls, boding ill for the security of the country and the wider region.

Analysis

Pakistan’s federal government, led by the Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP), on Feb. 25 suspended the provincial legislature and government and imposed governor’s rule for two months in Punjab, the country’s largest and most powerful province. Punjab is controlled by the country’s other major political force, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), led by two-term former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Earlier, Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared Sharif and his younger brother, Punjab’s chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, as ineligible for public office. The elder Sharif had previously been barred from holding public office; his younger brother’s disqualification represents the central government’s intention to go for the PML-N’s jugular, thereby destabilizing Punjab’s provincial government. Supporters of the PML-N are protesting the central government’s decision, holding demonstrations across the country. Protesters reportedly burned tires and damaged public property.

This from Spiegel.de on Swat and Pakistan:

Bowing Down to the Taliban

By Susanne Koelbl

Pakistan is capitulating to the Taliban in the picturesque Swat Valley, where the Islamists have introduced Sharia law. Now the militants’ triumph threatens to encourage radicals throughout the region.

The defeat was celebrated as if it had been a victory. The chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province greeted a delegation from the local Taliban. The Taliban officials, with their long beards and turbans, had come to the chief minister’s house to sign a treaty. After arriving in pickups and large limousines, the men were seated on velvet armchairs and served food on silver trays.

Then the pious foes of the government in Islamabad were given a coveted piece of Pakistan as a gift.

Under the agreement, which the men and the governor signed with much ceremony, the Taliban will be permitted to implement their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the Swat Valley and other adjacent districts at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range. “Today is a historic day,” said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the chief minister of the provincial government, clearly straining to put a positive spin on the Taliban’s assumption of power. “An old demand of the people has been met. The new regulation will provide a more efficient legal system.”

It was a blatant lie. Most Pakistanis are shocked by the prospect that, in the Swat Valley, thieves could have their hands cut off and adulterers could face stoning in the future. Such punishments were in fact already possible under Pakistani law, but have never been carried out in the past.

Visit the link above to read the rest of the article and view the photo gallery. But the best thing is the film from Australia’s Four Corners a few posts down from here. This situation must not be under estimated for its severity and implications to the rest of the world.