The Battle For Pakistan

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-24-09 | Curt

[Starman417]

This is what happens when you allow a fanatical Islamic organization to fester and grow:

Taliban militants have burnt down more than 200 schools in Pakistan's restive Swat valley in the last two years and made all out efforts to prevent girls from receiving education, a media report here said on Sunday. The militants told the residents in the valley that if they were good Muslims they would stop sending their daughters to schools, 'The Sunday Times' said in a report from Mingora, the capital of Swat.

"Every evening (Taliban commander) Maulana Fazullah, nicknamed 'Radio Mullah', broadcast the names on the radio of girls who had stopped going to school - it would be, 'Congratulations to Miss Kulsoon or Miss Shahnaz, who has quit school.' Then he warned others if they continued with their education they would go to hell," the paper said. The Taliban have torched over 200 of Swat's 1,500 schools in the last two years, it said.

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...The newspaper also gave a graphic account of the havoc created by Taliban in Swat. A 22-year-old medical student from the valley had secretly catalogued the horrors of life in Swat under the Taliban.

The burning-down of schools, bodies hanging upside down, public lashings and decapitated heads with dollars stuffed in their nostrils and notes reading, 'This is what happens to spies,' were all captured on the student's mobile phone at great personal risk, the report said. The paper noted that Fazullah in December announced a deadline of January 15 for all girls to stop attending school. The medical student's account was corroborated by Ziauddin Yusufzai, who ran two schools in Swat and was spokesman for the private school association until he fled the bombing three weeks ago.

Abe Greenwald writes about the coming fall of the Pakistan government:

When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December of 2007, we were appalled but not exactly shocked. In fact, a sort of unspoken consensus about the likelihood of her being taken down had been in the air since she announced her campaign for opposition leadership months earlier. Pakistan tends to deliver in this way.

The buzz now, and it’s palpable, is that the civilian government of Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari will fall to Taliban/al Qaeda forces. Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen predicts the collapse in “one to six months.”...

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There is very little to be “learned reliably” about Pakistan’s security or its nuclear arsenal. An American official who spoke with Zardari on his recent trip to the U.S. accused Pakistan’s president of “outright lies about security now established in every district in the country.” Things are radicalizing in areas outside of the high-profile Swat valley. There is new, unprecedented popular support for jihad throughout the country, no matter what various groups call themselves. This comes from one supporter: “You can’t use the name al-Qaeda anymore . . . If you say even one good thing about al-Qaeda, you will be arrested. So groups now give themselves different names-Jaish-so-and-so, Lashkar-this-and-that. But it’s all the same. They are all working toward what al-Qaeda is working toward: to destroy America.”

Sure, Pakistan is doing its best right now to clear these militants.

[G8 Diplomat]

Pakistan ۋﮧ۱م

FReepmail if you want on or off

[grey_whiskers]

Thanks, G8.

Happy Memorial Day...NEVER forget.

[SunkenCiv]

Taliban militants have burnt down more than 200 schools in Pakistan's restive Swat valley in the last two years and made all out efforts to prevent girls from receiving education, a media report here said on Sunday. The militants told the residents in the valley that if they were good Muslims they would stop sending their daughters to schools