They can become visible when it suits them.
Posted on 02/11/2006 10:26:32 AM PST by SevenMinusOne
Movement controls areas out of Pakistani government's reach -
February 9, 2006
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Four years after the United States led the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a new Taliban movement has taken control in a swath of neighboring Pakistan.
Taliban militants control much of Waziristan, a rocky, mountainous area twice the size of Long Island along the Pakistani border. Despite a heavy presence of Pakistani troops, Waziristan has become the largest and most protected sanctuary for Islamic militant guerrillas in the Afghan-Pakistani theater of the "global war on terror."
U.S. military officers and Afghan officials in three neighboring provinces of Afghanistan say the infiltration of guerrillas from Waziristan has continued unabated and is the primary engine of the continued Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Waziristan "is very important to the Taliban" as a base of operations in the Afghan-Pakistani theater, said Mike Scheuer, a former top analyst at the CIA.
And it is likely to stay that way for years, analysts say. "The strength of the militants in Waziristan has built up over a generation,"
While Waziristan's militants use the label "Taliban" and include figures from the former Afghan regime, their exact relationship with the Afghan movement is unclear. Some have voiced fealty to the Afghan Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, but observers such as ex-CIA officer Milt Bearden say it is unclear whether he directs them.
Beginning in late 2003, Pakistan sent an estimated 70,000 troops into its Afghan borderlands, especially Waziristan, in a campaign against Islamic militant fighters. The result, by all accounts except that of Pakistan's government, has been disastrous.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Sounds wonderful like a national geographic special , but theres only one problem...they want to kill us.
Klingon, perhaps. More like Apaches to me.
ping
Excellent links. Your "pizza crust" was unleavened bread, much like the Syrian bread you can get at the deli, but completely without preservatives. Fresh, it is delicious but it goes stale within hours. Dari speakers call it "nan," and it is the staple.
If you are really in with them (or they think they can curry favour with you!) they can put on a heck of a feast. Turkey, which is called "elephant chicken" (there being no word for it in Dari or Pushtu), and guinea hen, are the delicacies. There are usually dried fruits and nuts available year round. They are very artful with spices to make ordinary rice stand out.
As far as the Guides are concerned, I guess you never met the CTPT (which may go by different names and acronyms). They are stone killers and their loyalty is to the Americans that raised the unit, to the point that personnel rotations can be... fraught. In time these irregulars will, the conventional wisdom says, be subsumed into the Afghan regular army.
In my unconventional wisdom, it would be better to simply have the Afghan authorities take over the whole operation. And yes, Afghanistan has some smart, dedicated and aggressive officers that can lead such an approach.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Never heard of the CTPT. I was a Fobbit. Dealt with ANA, saw some warlord troops, saw many unidentified armed indigs. Who are the CTPT?
Counter Terrorist Pursuit Teams?
IIRC, "Afghan" and "Pathan" are synonymous in Pashtu
Interesting Indian perspective.
"If you saw them, they weren't Apaches, Colonel" - Captain Kirby York
They can become visible when it suits them.
Waziristan Man.
He just decided to send his wife home, because the security situation has deteriorated so badly.
According to him, the direction of events has been straight downhill for at least 18 months.
FWIW.
Captain Jotham is Shot Dead in Attempting to Rescue one of his Men.
During operations against the Khostwal tribesmen, Captain Eustace Jotham, of the 51st Sikhs (Frontier Force), and a small party of about twelve of the North Waziristan Militia were attacked in a steep narrow valley at Spina Khaisora (Tochi Valley, Northwest Frontier Province of India) on January 7th 1915. Being almost surrounded by an overwhelming force of some 1,500 tribesmen, he gave the order to retire. But on seeing that one of his men had lost his horse, Captain Jotham turned back to try and rescue him. He was most unfortunately shot, but his gallant deed was posthumously rewarded with the V.C.
From "My Early Life," by Winston S. Churchill:
"EXCEPT at harvest-time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress...with battlements, turrets [and] drawbridges. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud.
“The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid...The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse population.
“Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the breech-loading rifle and the British government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine rifle, was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbour nearly a mile away...
“The action of the British government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory.
“The action of the British government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organising, advancing, absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport.
“No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and then gone away again...But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys...All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and, above all, not to shoot at travellers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source...
“The Political Officers who accompanied the force...were very unpopular with the army officers...They were accused of the grievous crime of 'shilly-shallying', which being interpreted means doing everything you possibly can before you shoot. We had with us a very brilliant political officer...who was much disliked because he always stopped military operations. Just when we were looking forward to having a splendid fight and all the guns were loaded and everyone keyed up, [he] would come along and put a stop to it."
Entertaining, eh? And still accurate a hundred years on.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Lots of good English-language accounts available, much accumulated wisdom to ignore.
Nor are these struggles conducted with the weapons which usually belong to the races of such development. To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer. The world is presented with that grim spectacle, "the strength of civilisation without its mercy." At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle. His assailant, approaching, hacks him to death with the ferocity of a South-Sea Islander. The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age.
Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherit in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour. That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword--the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men--stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism.
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