Replies

Taliban Build a Base Inside Quetta (Pakistan)

"Taliban infiltrators are quietly colonising Pakistani border areas and setting up a logistics base which is being boosted by volunteers, medical treatment, cash and food.
US warplanes roar overhead on their way to Afghanistan but they cannot touch the Taliban networkers who are successfully tapping religious, tribal and family ties, making the wild, sun-baked plains of Baluchistan province a sanctuary from the bombing.
Several times a week ambulances deposit wounded fighters at hospitals in Quetta, the province's biggest city, and in the opposite direction new recruits and former veterans, including doctors, make the six-hour car drive to Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
Daily donations collected at mosques, bazaars, homes and offices now exceed £10,000, according to Said Sanan, a Taliban officer who defected to Pakistan two weeks ago. "Baluchistan is important to the Taliban. They are soaking up the support."
In an ominous development for the allies, two US helicopters came under fire in Pakistan earlier this week as they tried to retrieve the wreckage of another helicopter which crashed during a raid.
Some analysts say Baluchistan could become a rallying point from which militants could launch a guerrilla campaign against a post-Taliban government should they be ousted from Afghanistan."
The Taliban's popularity grows as the bombing continues. "My God, it is terrible, the Taliban's support is increasing by the day," said Maudir Bakht, a political scientist at Quetta's university. "Before the bombing they were disliked by a majority of Pakistanis but now there is a level of moral and humanitarian support which may start turning military."

Baluchistan is where Alexander the Great's army almost perished, because there is no food, no water, no population and nothing of value there.

Former Pak PM Bhutto has said repeatedly and recently that if Punjab remains quiet the Pak government is secure. Punjab is the source of the population, the economy, the power elites and the army. I have seen no evidence of any movement of any importance in Punjab to try to overthrow Mussharaf in favor of Bin Laden.

There is widespread sympathy for Bin Laden and dislike for America in the muslim world, but translating those feelings into a revolutionary movement to overthrow their indiginous governments is quite another issue, for which I have seen almost no evidence.