Pakistani protesters seen at a demonstration against the Taliban, in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, June 19, 2009. Dozens of protesters gathered at a rally against Taliban militants who are fighting against Pakistan's security forces in Pakistan. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary) (K.m.chaudary - AP)
Officials: 50 militants dead in Pakistan fighting (click title to entry - thank you)
Pakistani protesters seen at a demonstration against the Taliban, in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, June 19, 2009. Dozens of protesters gathered at a rally against Taliban militants who are fighting against Pakistan's security forces in Pakistan.
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
The Associated Press Saturday, June 20, 2009; 6:12 AM
CHUPRIAL, Pakistan -- Pakistani troops backed by jet fighters and artillery have killed about 50 militants in a volatile northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan where the country's top Taliban leader is believed to be entrenched with thousands of his fighters, officials said Saturday.
They were the first known militant casualties in South Waziristan - where Pakistan Taliban head Baitullah Mehsud and al-Qaida figures are believed to be hiding - since the military started pounding the area with artillery about a week ago. Mehsud is blamed for a series of suicide attacks that have killed more than 100 people since late May....
Pakistan: Swat fighting almost over (click here)
Published: June 20, 2009 at 1:49 AM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 20 (UPI) -- Pakistani officials announced the military campaign against the Taliban in the Swat Valley is almost finished and said residents may begin coming home Saturday.
The fighting is believed to have displaced about 2 million people, The Daily Telegraph reported. The Guardian said about 10 percent of the population remained in Swat throughout the fighting and is now short of vital supplies, especially food.
The top Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley have not been found and may have escaped to Afghanistan, the report said.
Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said the military focus is shifting from Swat to South Waziristan, the base of Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban leader in the country. The Pakistani military bombed the area Friday, preparing for a military offensive there.
Emerging Threats
Al-Qaida leaders hit by Pakistani forces (click here)
Published: June 17, 2009 at 12:13 PM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 17 (UPI) -- A senior al-Qaida military commander was allegedly killed in Pakistani operations along the volatile border with Afghanistan, intelligence reports say.
Qari Zia Rahman was reportedly killed by Pakistani forces in anti-Taliban operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, various Asian news services report.
Rahman was allegedly a commander of a brigade of the so-called Shadow Army of al-Qaida operating in the Bajour district of FATA, the online Long War Journal reports, citing U.S. intelligence officials.
The Shadow Army contains members from several regional terrorist outfits operating in coordination with al-Qaida to take on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Tahir Yuldashev, the commander of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qaida-backed group, was reported wounded during clashes with Pakistani troops in the tribal regions.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan operates in the Fergana Valley, which includes portions of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Following an Uzbek government crackdown in the 1990s, its members and sympathizers scattered across the region, including parts of Afghanistan.
These insurgents inevitably formed relationships with Taliban and al-Qaida militants prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, surfacing today in the volatile Swat Valley in Pakistan.
The Pakistani military has ramped up its efforts to tackle a growing Taliban insurgency in the volatile tribal areas following the collapse of a cease-fire agreement reached in March.
The region contains the issue of harboring al Qaeda. If Russia will kindly recall, the attacks on the school in Beslan were primarily Uzbeks (post mortem revealed that reality). They were reasonably well funded and one cannot conclude they were independantly funded so much achieving monies from al Qaeda.
Subject: Terrorists Attack Russian School - Hold 400 Hostage Including 200 Children (click here)
Roman
9/1/2004 4:00:57 AM
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Armed attackers have seized a school in a town in southern Russia, and Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency says about 400 people, including 200 children, are being held. The Interfax news agency, citing Ismel Shaov, a regional spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said there were 17 attackers, both male and female, and the gang included some who were wearing explosive belts. Wednesday's seizure took place on the first day of the Russian school year, in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said....
The Pakistan People are bravely taking on the issues of occupation by networks of global criminals, with their own agenda for human life on Earth. Those people are the key to the conclusion of instability in the region. If unrest in Pakistan can be displaced forever and a quality of life returned to the people there it would set an example of possiblity for the entire region.
They have backed their government during a very difficult time. Quite unexpectedly. In their hearts of hearts they wanted to rid their country of this menace.
I believe the people of Islam (in the many forms that takes) want to be progressive while advancing their societies.
We are seeing the same unrest manifest in different ways in Iran as well.
That level of discontent is proving difficult for their authorities to contain.
An oppressed people definitively reach a point of no return.
Perhaps.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent rise of oppressive government has brought about the need for the people of these countries to replace hatred of The West with peace within their own desires for it. At no point in time, excluding some of the Hamas leadership, have I ever heard people of Islam justify the acts against the USA on that day.
Kashmir shuts down over deaths (click here)
A shutdown in protest against the alleged rape and murder of two young women has once again disrupted life in parts of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Separatists have called for a march to the northern town of Baramullah. Security forces have sealed off the town and suspended traffic.
Businesses in most towns across the valley are closed.
Protests over the deaths have raged in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley since the bodies were found on 30 May.
The town of Shopian, where the bodies of the two women were found, remained shut for the twelfth consecutive day.
The bodies of the two young women were found in a canal in the town of Shopian on 30 May. They had gone missing the previous evening.
The police is treating the deaths as rape and murder. The state government has announced a judicial inquiry into the incident.
At least two people protesting against the deaths have died in clashes with the security forces.
The BBC's Altaf Husain in Srinagar says the incident has put a big question mark on the credibility and ability of the state chief minister, Omar Abdullah.
Mr Abdullah told reporters days after the incident that initial investigations indicated there were no rape and murder.
US military deaths in Afghanistan region at 634 (click here)
The Associated Press Saturday, June 20, 2009
Of those, the military reports 468 were killed by hostile action.
Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 67 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, three were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.
There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.
The latest deaths reported by the military:
— No new deaths reported.
The latest identifications reported by the military:
— No new identifications reported.
On the Net:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/
2 US troops killed in southern Afghanistan (click here)
By NOOR KHAN – 17 hours ago
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan killed two U.S. troops Friday, the U.S. military said.
The explosion occurred in Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. No other information, including the victims' names or which branch of the military they served in, was released.
U.S. military officials have said they expect a 50 percent rise in the number of roadside or suicide bomb attacks this year. At least 76 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan so far in 2009, a record pace.
Elsewhere in the Afghan south, international and Afghan forces killed 16 Taliban militants in a gunbattle, police said Friday. One police officer also died in the fighting, they said.
NATO forces confirmed there was a clash in Uruzgan province on Thursday, but spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Hall said they only had reports of five dead, all of them militants.
Uruzgan Deputy Police Chief Mohammad Nabi said the NATO and Afghan forces also arrested one armed insurgent in the battle waged through most of Thursday, and captured a handful of guns and four motorbikes.
Asked about the lower death toll given by NATO, Nabi said he had confirmed reports from the ground of the 17 dead.
Meanwhile, a university student in the capital of neighboring Kandahar province was found dead with his throat cut Friday morning in a side room of a mosque where he had gone to study.
Sadullah Khan, a police official in Kandahar City, said they were investigating the death of the third-year medical student, but did not yet have any information on who might have been responsible for the killing.
US says Afghan strikes broke rules, orders retraining (click here)
Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:18am EDT
...The bombings took place while Defense Secretary Robert Gates was on his way to Afghanistan to inform the commander of U.S. forces that he would be replaced. The new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has said he will take new steps to reduce civilian casualties, which threaten Afghan support for the war.The report faulted the public response, saying U.S. forces "must develop a more effective method" of communications....
Next 18 Months Critical in Afghanistan, McChrystal Says (click here)
Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs
Story by Jim Garamone
Date: 06.19.2009
Posted: 06.19.2009 02:28
..."I think that the next 18 months are probably a period in which this effort will be decided," Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told Tom Bowman in a National Public Radio interview. "I don't think it will be over. But I think that not only the American people, I think the Afghan people are looking and deciding which way this will go." McChrystal took command of coalition and U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, June 15. His job is to carry out the new strategy for the region. The general said the conflict should not be viewed solely as a military struggle. It is not a question of whether the United States is winning, he said, but whether the Afghan people are winning. The Afghan government is the ultimate deciding factor, and while the government is not winning the war on extremists, "I don't say they're losing," McChrystal said. "That's an old axiom in counterinsurgency: If you're not winning, you're losing," he said. "And the danger there is that that is true. So we see it as very, very important, probably over about the next 12 to 24 months, that we absolutely get a trend where we are clearly winning." McChrystal has spent much of his career in special operations, hunting down and killing or capturing terrorists. "What I learned is that much of the terrorism we fought years ago was very small groups that were finite. They were fanatical, and they could be attacked that way," he said. "Nowadays, we have to fight the cause of terrorism, because terror is a tactic. You win by taking away from the enemy the one thing the insurgent absolutely has to have, and that's access to the population."...
Troops in Afghanistan would get new uniforms (click here)
By Rick Maze - Staff writerPosted : Thursday Jun 18, 2009 12:49:51 EDT
Congress is about to order new combat uniforms for troops in Afghanistan after hearing complaints that camouflage that was fine in Iraq doesn’t work so well in a mountainous and often muddy environment.
“Soldiers deployed to Afghanistan have serious concerns about the current combat uniform which they indicated provides ineffective camouflage given the environment in Afghanistan,” lawmakers say in the report accompanying HR 2346, the 2009 supplemental appropriations act.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 226-202. It heads to the Senate for approval.
