By Anwarullah Khan on October 18, 2012
KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — One of the two Taliban militants (click here) suspected of attacking a teenage girl activist was detained by the Pakistani military in 2009 but subsequently released, intelligence officials said Thursday.
Malala Yousufzai, 14, was shot and critically wounded on Oct. 9 as she headed home from school in the northwest Swat Valley. The Taliban said they targeted Malala, a fierce advocate for girls' education, because she promoted "Western thinking" and was critical of the militant group.
The military detained Attaullah during the army's 2009 offensive in Swat because of suspected ties with the Pakistani Taliban, which had established effective control over the valley at the time, said two intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media....
The Taliban are a militia, not an ethnicity. The powerhold they have in Pakistan continually causes sovereignty issues of a nuclear country. A country with illegal nuclear capacity to begin with. Pakistan is not one of the five nuclear countries and it has a past tainted with promoting nuclear technology with rogue countries.
That said, the people of the Swat Valley do not consent to the Taliban so much as survive them. I don't know what is worse in their lives, the floods or the Taliban and a Pakistan government unable to stop this militia within their borders.
February 15, 2009
MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Islamist fighters (click here) called a 10-day cease-fire from February 15 in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley, where peace talks were under way that could restore Islamic Shari'a as the main system of law in the region.
Militants seeking to impose the strict form of Islamic law have also destroyed more than 200 girls schools in the mountainous valley, once a popular tourist destination, just 130 kilometers northwest of Islamabad.
Last year in a bid to pacify the valley the authorities released Maulana Sufi Mohammad, a radical cleric who led a revolt in Swat in the 1990s, but the fighting continued and forced tens of thousands of people to flee....
