Free Republic

To many Pakistanis the most shocking aspect of the latest Taliban bombing was not the death toll, or the injuries inflicted on survivors, but the question that it raised: what was a team of American soldiers doing in a tense corner of North West Frontier province? In a way, the attack tugged the veil from a multi-faceted military assistance programme that, while not secret, is rarely publicised – by either side. President Obama's public aid to ­Pakistan is transparent: $1.5bn a year for the next five years, mainly to boost the civilian government. But behind the scenes the US is...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – Numerous missiles fired from US drones on Tuesday killed at least ten militants in a village in Pakistan's northwest tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said. "Up to eight US drones fired some 18 missiles at multiple militant targets in Datta khel village," a senior security official told AFP. "Ten militants were killed in the missile strikes," the official said. Local administration and intelligence officials confirmed the deaths after the volley of strikes reportedly struck militant hideouts and a training centre in three places in the village. Residents in Miranshah, the main town of...

The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been killed in a US drone attack, according to Pakistan state television. The Pakistani Taliban are believed to have played a role in the suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province in December last year. More to follow...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani gunship helicopters on Friday pounded a suspected militant hideout in a northwestern tribal area known for sheltering Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, officials said. The assault in North Waziristan comes a day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates asked Islamabad about their plans to expand an existing anti-Taliban offensive into the district bordering Afghanistan. "Two gunship helicopters attacked a suspected militant centre," a security official in North Waziristan's main town Miranshah said. The attack took place on the outskirts of Miranshah in an old refugee camp now home to both Afghan migrants and Pakistanis. Authorities also...

Unmanned US strike aircraft killed six Islamist extremists in an attack on a compound in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. The strike took place in the Datta Khel region in North Waziristan, a region that hosts a headquarters for al Qaeda's Shadow Army. "Two missiles fired by a US drone hit a compound which was being used by militants," a senior Pakistani security official told Dawn. "One missile hit a compound and the other hit a vehicle outside it. Six militants were killed." No senior al Qaeda or Taliban commanders have been reported killed in the strike at...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles into Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The drone targeted a house in a village, 35 km (22 miles) west of Miranshah...

Pakistan Collapse Could Trigger Global Great Depression and World War III Politics / Pakistan Jan 16, 2010 - 08:47 PM By: Nadeem Walayat During 2009 the 2600 terrorist attacks resulted in the number of deaths soaring to more than 12,000 casualties in Pakistan, compared to the number killed in Iraq falling to 2,800 from the 2008 total of 5,900. The U.S. War in Afghanistan pushed the Taliban and Al-Qeeda over the border into Pakistan that has sparked an escalating insurgency and Pakistan's own U.S. backed un-popular "War on Terror" which is going just as badly as that in Afghanistan, only...

MIR ALI, Pakistan – At least one suspected U.S. drone fired on a house in Pakistan's volatile tribal region Sunday, killing 20 people in the 11th such attack since militants in the area orchestrated a deadly suicide bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said. Four missiles slammed into the house in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, the same region where a drone strike Thursday targeted a meeting of militant commanders in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to kill Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud. The militant leader helped organize the Dec. 30 attack against a remote CIA base in...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- They rumble through the narrow snow-clogged mountain passes in black pickup trucks. In the back, eight to ten men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades huddle together against the cold.These Islamic militants are on their way to Afghanistan to kill Americans and their allies. Their launching point: Pakistan's North Waziristan district- a lawless border area that has become the nerve center of the insurgency in nearby Afghanistan.North Waziristan is a place where al-Qaida and its Afghan and Pakistani allies can train fighters, store explosives and rest from the strain of war. The United States is pressuring...

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban release another audiotape denying that he was killed in Thursday's airstrike along the border between North and South Waziristan. “Today, on the 16th of January, I am saying it again -- I am alive, I am OK, I am not injured... when the drone strike took place, I was not present in the area at that time,” Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan said in a recorded statement that was played for reporters. Hakeemullah provided a specific date to confirm he was alive. “After the audio I released...

SNIPPET: "The premier English-language jihadi forum has members in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad..."

WANA: Nine back-to-back missiles fired by suspected US drone killed 11 people, including one foreigner in North Waziristan tribal region near Afghanistan border on Friday. According to reports, the missiles first hit a house situated in Mir Ali, in which five people, including a foreign militant, was killed. While one hour after the first attack, unmanned US drones targeted another militants’ compound in Shaktoi area, killing four more people. The unmanned US plane targeted Zarniri area, which is near the spot where U.S. missiles are believed to have narrowly missed the Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud the day before.

ISLAMABAD – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed at least 10 alleged militants Thursday at a compound formerly used as a religious school in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, officials said, the eighth such attack in two weeks. The strike illustrated the Obama administration's unwillingness to abandon its missile campaign against insurgent targets along Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan. Despite Pakistani protest, the missile attacks have surged in number in recent days. Nearly all the attacks in recent months have focused on North Waziristan, a segment of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt where some militant networks focused on battling the U.S....

Leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakeemullah Mehsud, who had accepted responsibility for the deadly suicide attack on a CIA base camp in Afghanistan, appears to have been killed in a drone attack in South Waziristan, a senior security official said. The attack has left at least ten people dead, amongst them are three militant commanders, the official said. “It is immaterial to say how many have been killed in the attack. The important thing for us is whether Hakeemullah is amongst those killed”, the official said, requesting he not be named. He said that the TTP chief was the target...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Two U.S. drone missiles struck a compound on Thursday in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing 10 militants, Pakistani security officials said. North Waziristan is a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Sen. Joe Lieberman says the Pakistani army is on the move and there's a possibility the U.S. will see activity in that volatile northern region.

SNIPPET: "Hakeemullah Mehsud (left), the Leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. and Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi (right), the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. The al Qaeda operative who killed seven US CIA operatives and guards, and a Jordanian intelligence official, was on a martyr's videotape with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi, a Jordanian Islamist who was thought to have been turned against al Qaeda, appeared on a videotape with Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Friday defended American drone aircraft strikes in ally Pakistan, an issue likely to become more volatile if Washington intensifies the attacks to hunt down enemies after the bombing of CIA agents in Afghanistan. Pakistan officially objects to the attacks on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants along its border with Afghanistan, saying they violate its sovereignty. And Islamabad has pushed Washington to provide it with the drones to allow it to carry out its own attacks on Taliban insurgents, a move that could ease widespread anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. "We don't agree on every...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Suspected U.S. missiles killed four people in northwest Pakistan on Friday, the latest in a surge of such attacks since a suicide bomber staged a deadly assault on CIA employees just across the frontier in Afghanistan. The attack was the sixth in just over a week in North Waziristan, an unusually intense bombardment that also follows repeated calls by the United States for Pakistan to do more against militants there blamed for attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The area is the stronghold of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban group with links to al-Qaida....

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – US missiles flattened an extremist hideout in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt Sunday, killing two militants in the latest strike in a recent spike in drone attacks, Pakistani officials said. The attack targeted a house in Mosakki village, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, and was the third suspected US missile attack in the tribal district in less than a week. "There may have been an important figure hiding in the house," one Pakistani security official in Miranshah told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised...

MIR ALI, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile struck a car carrying alleged militants in a northwestern Pakistan tribal region Friday, killing three men in the second such attack in less than a day, intelligence officials said. The strikes are part of the U.S. campaign to rid Pakistan of a creeping militant movement Washington believes is threatening the war effort in neighboring Afghanistan. The rising insecurity inside Pakistan, meanwhile, is prompting the United Nations to relocate about a quarter of its international staff in the country, officials confirmed Thursday. Both missile strikes occurred in North Waziristan, a lawless tribal region...

MIR ALI, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed three people Saturday in a northwest Pakistani tribal region where militants focused on fighting the West in Afghanistan are concentrated, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. The missile strike was apparently the latest in a lengthy campaign of such attacks by the U.S., which rarely discusses the covert program but has in the past said it has taken out several top al-Qaida operatives. Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes but is believed to secretly aid them. Saturday's strike occurred in the Babar Raghzai area of North Waziristan and also wounded two people,...

The US killed four Islamist terrorists in the first airstrike in more than a week in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. The strike, carried out by unmanned Predator or Reaper attack aircraft, hit a Taliban safe house in the Saidgai region in North Waziristan. Two Hellfire missiles were reported to have been launched in the airstrike. Four "extremists" were killed in the attack and two more were wounded, according to a report in Geo News. The Saidgai region in North Waziristan is under the control of Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadar. The US has conducted two strikes in...

The Long War Journal: US airstrike kills 3 in North Waziristan Written by Bill Roggio on December 18, 2009 9:40 AM to The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/us_airstrike_kills_t.php The US killed three Islamist terrorists in the third airstrike in two days in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. The strike, carried out by unmanned Predator or Reaper attack aircraft, hit a Taliban safe house in the Datta Khel region in North Waziristan. Several Hellfire missiles were reported to have been launched in the airstrike. "The US drone missiles hit a house in the mountains," a Pakistani...

MIR ALI, Pakistan (AP) – Two suspected U.S. missile strikes, one using multiple drones, killed 17 people in a Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border Thursday, local intelligence officials said. The officials said the second, bloodier attack involved five drones and 10 missiles – an unusually intense bombardment. The missiles rained on North Waziristan, considered a safe haven for many militants including groups determined to push the U.S. and NATO out of Afghanistan. The strikes in North Waziristan are especially sensitive because they risk angering Afghan-focused militant groups who have agreed to be neutral as Islamabad cracks down on...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan's military on Friday killed 20 insurgents in operations against Taliban strongholds, as the prime minister warned that militants were striking back with attacks in big cities. Armed forces this year launched multiple operations across the northwest tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, the stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban and a haven for Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants. In Orakzai district in the centre of the tribal belt, nine militants were killed and two hideouts destroyed in airstrikes on the villages of Ghiljo and Mamoonzai, paramilitary force spokesman major Fazalur Rehman told AFP. The UN said Friday that...

The US has conducted the first unmanned airstrike in the lawless tribal agency of South Waziristan since the Pakistani Army launched an offensive there in mid-October. The strike, carried out by unmanned Predator or Reaper attack aircraft, hit a Taliban "hideout" in Tanga in the Ladha region in South Waziristan. Ladha is one of several Taliban strongholds that were the target of the Pakistani Army's offensive against the Mehsud branch of the Taliban in South Waziristan. Four al Qaeda operatives and two Taliban fighters were killed in the attack, according to reports from the region. "Eyewitnesses said the toll could...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles into an al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in a Pakistani region the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing at least three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The strike in the North Waziristan region was the first since U.S. President Barack Obama's speech last week outlining plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Obama said Pakistan must not allow its territory to be used as a sanctuary for militants. "One of the missiles hit a vehicle and all three militants in it were killed," an intelligence official told Reuters...

"Pakistani Christian on Run from Taliban Death Threat Islamic extremist sermonizing leads to altercation at barbershop in South Waziristan." SNIPPET: "LAHORE, Pakistan, November 27 (CDN) — A young Christian man is in hiding in Pakistan from Taliban militants who seek to kill him for “blasphemy” because he defended his faith. In February Jehanzaib Asher, 22, was working in a barbershop his family jointly owns with his cousin in Wana, South Waziristan – a Taliban stronghold in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan’s northwest – when the Islamic militants showed up to try to convert him to Islam." SNIPPET: "He...

A suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles in North Waziristan on Friday, killing eight people, the second such attack this week. Eight militants were killed in a US missile strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials said. The United States has carried out 45 attacks with its pilotless, missile-firing aircraft in northwest Pakistan this year as its forces in neighbouring Afghanistan have faced an intensifying Taliban insurgency.

The US has killed four Taliban fighters in just the second airstrike in Pakistan's tribal areas this month. Unmanned aircraft, likely remotely piloted Predator or Reaper drones, hit a Taliban compound in the village of Shanakhora, which lies six miles west of Miramshah in North Waziristan, with two Hellfire missiles. “It was a US drone attack which targeted a militant compound killing four militants and wounding five others,” a senior Pakistani security official in the region told AFP. “The compound was being used by Taliban militants, however it is not clear whether there were any foreign militants or high-value targets,”...

SARAROGHA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces have captured most main Taliban bases in their offensive in South Waziristan and will soon fan out into the rugged countryside to hunt for militants there, commanders said on Tuesday. Soldiers have advanced faster than expected in their month-long offensive, seizing main roads and Taliban bases but militant leaders have apparently melted away while their bombers have unleashed carnage in towns. The United States, weighing options for how to turn an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has welcomed the offensive but is keen to see Pakistan tackle Afghan Taliban factions based in lawless enclaves along...

The CIA has paid millions of dollars to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 9/11, "accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget", says a media report. The ISI also collected "tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA programme", which pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a newspaper reported on Monday citing current and former US officials. An intense debate has been triggered within the US government due to "long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine US efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda...

ISLAMABAD – The Pakistani army entered the last of three militant strongholds targeted by a major offensive in the northwest on Friday, as gunmen wounded a senior army officer and a soldier in the capital. The operation in South Waziristan, the main Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuary in Pakistan, has sparked a wave of retaliatory attacks that have killed about 300 civilians and security forces in the past month. The shooting in Islamabad was the third such attack in about two weeks. The militants hope the attacks will weaken the army's resolve as it pushes deeper into the isolated, mountainous region...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles on Thursday into North Waziristan, a major al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in northwest Pakistan, killing two people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Here is an interesting tidbit of information from the charge sheet against David Coleman Headley, the US jihadi indicted for plotting attacks in Denmark. Headley traveled to North Waziristan and afterward offered his view on the number of al Qaeda and other foreign jihadis in the tribal agencies' largest towns (in response to a think tank survey that said a significant number of people in the northwest approved of the Predator attacks against al Qaeda):

As Pakistani troops advance through South Waziristan, they are coming across quickly abandoned facilities apparently long used by Islamic terror organizations. South Waziristan, and its pro-Taliban Mehsud tribe, has long been a place where government officials only went with permission of the locals. And the locals apparently believed their own propaganda that government troops would not get far if they tried to invade the area. Army artillery and helicopter gunships, aided by air force fighter-bombers, proved more than a match for the tribal warriors, who soon fled to the safer hills. The Islamic terrorists fled with them, often failing to...

Pakistani forces say they have seized control of the town of Kaniguram in South Waziristan, one of the Taliban's key regional strongholds. The army said it had full control of the town, the latest capture in an offensive against militants that began in South Waziristan on 17 October. The offensive has sparked a string of suicide bomb attacks. About 35 people were killed in an attack in Rawalpindi and seven were injured on the outskirts of Lahore. Rewards offered Military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas, in the capital Islamabad, said that the Kaniguram area had been "completely cleared of terrorists"....

The Pakistani military has launched a large offensive involving 30,000 soldiers into South Waziristan, one of the tribal agencies most hospitable to the Taliban and like-minded terrorists. Following frightening Taliban attacks on the Army headquarters and an air base suspected of storing nuclear weapons, the Pakistani government began a belated but aggressive campaign. In order for the Pakistanis to succeed however, the U.S. must demonstrate a similar determination to rout the Taliban in Afghanistan by launching a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign. The U.S. has been secretly helping the Pakistanis carry out their offensive, providing them with intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles...

SHERWANGI, Pakistan (AFP) – Hundreds of foreign fighters were on the run in this battle-scarred region near Afghanistan Sunday, the military said, pressing a major offensive into a third week. Between 600 and 800 foreign militants had been in around Kanigurram town but their resistance was broken by heavy bombing from jet fighters, helicopters and artillery, Brigadier Mohammad Ihsan told reporters on a visit to the normally closed conflict area. Commanders have described Kanigurram as a major Tehreek-e-Taliban "operational centre" and base for Uzbek fighters. "They are on the run," Ihsan said. The foreigners were mostly Uzbeks but also Chechens...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani forces are zeroing in on two major Taliban bases in South Waziristan region as their offensive pushes deeper into militant bastion on the Afghan border, the military said on Sunday. The army launched a major assault in South Waziristan on September 17 to seize control of the lawless land after a string of attacks by militants, including a stunning assault on the army headquarters that killed more than 150 people. The offensive is a major test for the Pakistani government and the military to stem the rising tide of Islamist militancy and is being closely followed...

SHAWANGAI, Pakistan -- An alleged member of the Hamburg, Germany, terror cell linked to the Sept. 11 attacks is believed to be among al Qaeda leaders helping the Taliban fight Pakistani forces in South Waziristan, Pakistani authorities said Thursday. A German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, a close associate of Sept. 11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the 2001 attacks, was among documents recovered this week by Pakistani troops from an abandoned militant compound in Shawangai. The mountain village in South Waziristan was used as an al Qaeda and Taliban command base until as recently as this week, a military...

SNIPPET: "Search at Grundy County plant called part of ongoing probe" SNIPPET: "But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago. Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said."

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army pushed deeper into a Taliban sanctuary close to the Afghan border Tuesday, claiming to have killed 42 militants in the latest stage of an offensive against extremists blamed for relentless attacks in recent weeks . In the capital, gunmen attacked a high-ranking Pakistani army officer in the second targeted shooting against top military brass in less than a week, part of a wave of violence sweeping the country in apparent retaliation for the 11-day long offensive in South Waziristan. The army officer, and his mother who was traveling with him, escaped unhurt from the assault in...

ISLAMABAD – Soldiers captured the strategically located hometown of Pakistan's Taliban chief Saturday after fierce fighting, officials said, the army's first major prize as it pushes deeper into a militant stronghold along the Afghan border. A suspected U.S. missile killed 22 people elsewhere in the northwest, but apparently missed a top Taliban figure, authorities said. Pakistan's eight-day-old offensive in the Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold of South Waziristan is considered its most critical test yet in the campaign to stop the spread of violent Islamist extremism in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied country. The army operation has prompted a wave of retaliatory attacks...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A mine killed 16 wedding guests in Pakistan's tribal belt on Friday while a suicide bomber targeted an air force base, inflicting another reverse on the military in its war on the Taliban. A car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar, wounding 15 and underlining the threat to civilians in a nation where more than 190 people have died during Taliban-linked attacks in 19 days. The explosion ripped through the wedding party minibus in the Sorandara area of Mohmand, where security forces have been pressing an offensive against Islamist rebels for...

Axis Of Evil: So who mourns when a terrorist dies by his own bomb? Apparently the U.S. and the U.N. do, given their condolences to Iran after Sunday's attack on its Revolutionary Guard. Iran is the father of this terrorism. Over the weekend, Iran was shocked by a massive suicide bomb that killed 49 people, including five top commanders of its Revolutionary Guard and several tribal leaders in Iran's eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province. The attack was a first for Iran and a big blow to the mullahs, whose Revolutionary Guard acts as their military arm. A Pakistan-based terror group called Jundallah...

PESHAWAR: In the first drone strikes since the Pakistan military began its operation in South Waziristan a top al-Qaeda operative Abu Al-Masri is reported to have been killed in a strike from a US unmanned aircraft. However, conflicting reports earlier suggested that Al-Masri may have been killed preparing suicide jackets in the village of Spalga. Known as Mustafa Al-Yazid, he was urported to have links with Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi, whom US authorities arrested in an alleged plot to use homemade backpack bombs, he served three years in an Egyptian prison, in the 1980s, for supposed links to the group...

The Pakistani army's push against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in the Mehsud tribal stronghold of South Waziristan has one paramount objective - to destroy the source of militant attacks in the country. The ground offensive that it launched in the region on Saturday is viewed by analysts as its most serious attempt so far to liquidate the militant network there. This conclusion is based on the tactics the army has adopted so far. Unlike previous operations which were invariably half-hearted, haphazard and abortive, it took its time to plan a thorough operation this time. StrongholdThe ground offensive comes after a...

On July 25, Najibullah Zazi, a lanky man in his mid-twenties, walked into the Beauty Supply Warehouse in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. The visit was captured on a store video camera. Wearing a baseball cap and pushing a shopping cart, Zazi appeared to be just another suburban guy.Of course, not many suburban guys buy six bottles of Clairoxide hair bleach, as Zazi did on this shopping trip--or return a month later to buy a dozen bottles of "Ms. K Liquid," a peroxide-based product. Aware that these were hardly the typical purchases of a heavily bearded, dark-haired young...