Posted on 05/25/2009 1:13:04 PM PDT by forkinsocket
In Pakistan there has been a real change in the past few months - the public has had enough of the Taliban and the army has gone to war. As a result well over one million people have been forced to flee their homes.
I have come to a place about an hour's drive from Peshawar, 50 miles (80km) from where there has been intense fighting.
There are many people on the move here who have run away from that fighting and they have brought with them eyewitness accounts of the brutal things they have seen under the Taliban's control of the Swat valley over the past few months.
"They were beheading people, they were shooting innocent people without any warning, they were terrifying us," one woman tells me.
"They were stopping our kids from going to school, they were kidnapping young boys."
A man standing nearby is also eager to talk.
"With my own hands I have buried 18 people who were beheaded, even children," he tells me grimly.
"They are not friends, they are not our allies, they're our enemies, they are criminals, they are gangsters."
New mood
Such strong public criticism of the Taliban is new - the mood has changed in Pakistan.
Tariq Hyatt Khan is the most senior government official in one of the tribal areas in North West Frontier Province and he tells me that the people of Pakistan have simply had enough of jihadis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Ya think?
"They are not friends, they are not our allies, they're our enemies, they are criminals, they are gangsters."
Well then, pick up a rifle and start killing the bastards...
“Well then, pick up a rifle and start killing the bastards... “
Yea, that part of Pakistan is known to be loaded with guns - even more than here in Texas. If the people there don’t use them to drive out the Talis, then, maybe, they don’t mind the Talis so much.
Dare we call this the Pakistani Awakening?
That would be great if it was...
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