Missile kills Pakistan tribal head

ISLAMABAD (CNN) -- A tribal leader accused of harboring Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan's western border region was killed Thursday night in a targeted missile strike, according to Pakistan intelligence sources. The Associated Press quoted an army spokesman Friday as identifying the tribal leader as Nek Mohammed, a former Taliban fighter.

He was killed late Thursday at the home of another tribal chief, the spokesman said.

"We were tracking him down and he was killed last night by our hand," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press.

http://www.observerindia.com/cps/from_pak/news.htm

16 tribesmen held

The Security forces have been continuing their operations in North
Waziristan agency in Wana and have arrested 16 people of the Mamoozai
tribe on August 24, reports said. The security forces also recovered a
truck load of arms, ammunition and explosives in two different raids, 18
kilometer away from Meeranshah. Four foreign terrorists were killed in the
operation and two more injured terrorists have been arrested. Also, 16
persons of the Mamoonzai tribes were arrested.
Further, three missiles, 100 rounds of ammunition have been recovered
from the houses of Atmanzai tribesmen and six men have been held in that
connection. Meanwhile, a delegation of Atmanzai tribesmen deposited
Rupees 2500 000 as surety to secure bail to arrested tribesmen. However,
the security forces did not release them and had transferred the case to the
Governor of NWFP. Reports said a delegation of 90 Atmanzai tribesmen
marched to the NWFP Governor’s house to secure their release assuring
that, if they were found to be involved once again in anti-national activities,
the tribe would pay a fine of at least Rs.7500 000 in cash."

From the quantities of arms siezed, this now swings back towards being a mobile force, as opposed to a fixed base. Once again, the implications of such a conclusion include the possibility that this was an enemy diversion designed to weaken the Shawal perimeter.

“Are these villages with these names or tribal concentrations? How did they pop up in GEONames, listed as what?”

(AdmSmith, I thought this explanation might also be of interest to you.
Dog, go to the bottom paragraph for additional info about your hunch.)

jeffers:
I searched GEONames database using only the following criteria:
Country: Pakistan
Admin. area code: 01 (FATA)
Feature Designation: Area: Tribal Areas (abbreviation = TRB)

The search returned 147 hits which breaks down into:
144 Native names
3 Unverified names

The 144 Native names also included:
41 Generic name (or shortened name) alternatives
26 Variant names (also known as) alternatives

This is the only official definition that NGA provides for that feature designation:

code	designation	definition
TRB	tribal area	a tract of land used by nomadic or other tribes

However, it has been my experience, from untold hours using that database, that despite the definition of the TRB feature designation as an "area", is not a geo-centric designation, i.e., it is not the geographic center of a larger general area (at least this seems to hold true in the FATA area of Pakistan). "TRB" appears to be used to designate a specific and identifiable "populated place" and known to the local inhabitants as a town with the native name and variants listed in the GEONames database.

In fact, this could explain the apparent duplication of certain tribal names, in that list, that are co-located within just a few miles of each other. While two towns with the same name just a mile or two apart might prove confusing to Western minds, I'm sure it makes perfect sense to a 12th century tribal mind (no disrespect intended).

Be aware that something very strange is going on at the Geographic Intelligence Agency. Over the last week, they have experienced periods of extremely slow response times, but today there search engine is completely off-line. It could just be a problem with their database engine, but when this has happened in the past it has preceded a major military operation (the military uses the same database). Stay alert, something may be afoot.

--Boot Hill

The Pakistani Administration takes control over FATA step by step. Will it be a normal part of Pakistan in 5-10 years?

http://www.paknews.com/main.php?id=1&date1=2004-08-26

Tribe Assures Support In Fight Against Terror

Muhammad Khurshid Updated on 2004-08-26 17:12:04

PESHAWAR, Pakistan : Aug 26 (PNS) - Yet another sizeable tribe; Utman Khel Wazir of South Waziristan Agency has signed an agreement with the Political Administration to the effect to self-secure their area of the unwanted alien elements and hand-over the wanted individuals to the administration. The tribe, as a security has also furnished a guarantee of Rs. 10 million; one fourth of which has since been deposited in cash. It merits mentioning here that that one Javed Khan, a wanted facilitator of foreign elements also belongs to this tribe.

A jirga, comprising elders of Karmaz Khel, Karay Khel, Khanday Khel, Desi Khel and Ada Khel clans of the tribe called on the NWFP Governor Lt. Gen. (R) Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah here at Governor's House on Wednesday and assured him to abide by the agreement and purge their area of the anti-state activities and unwanted elements. Secretary to Governor Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad, Secretary FATA Security Brig. (R) Mahmood Shah and Political Agent South Waziristan Agency Mr.

Asmat Ullah Gandapur were also present on the occasion.

Addressing the jirga, the governor said, we have no grudge with the tribesmen. What we want, he added is that the tribesmen should ensure self-security of their respective areas and avoid giving shelter to unwanted foreign elements who are creating troublesfor Pakistan. The governor expressed satisfaction over the resolve expressed by the tribesmen in the form of written agreement and said, "the agreement could prove purpose if it is implemented in the letter and spirit". He in this connection referred to the Shakai Agreement and said that it failed because the other side did not fulfilled its pledges. Now the tribesmen should practically prove that they are implementing the agreement by producing tangible results. The Governor said that the services, sacrifices and love for Pakistan by the tribesmen are above board and we too do not consider the tribesmen alien but an integral part of our body. He expects that the tribesmen will also cooperate with the government to punish those who are out to defame and destabilize Pakistan.

Referring to the presence of foreign elements in FATA, the governor recalled that since December last we had been persistently offering these elements a sort of amnesty with commitment to allow them a honourable and respectable stay subject to the fulfillment of the immigration equirements. The Governor said that simultaneously we have also been advising the tribesmen not to give shelter to unwanted people because we cannot allow our territory to be used against our neighbours. "Afghanistan is our close neighbour and we have to uphold the principles of peaceful co-existence in dealing with all the times close neighbour", he remarked The governor said that in fact despite our persuasion the tribes of South Waziristan Agency had failed to come to the expectations according to the law of the land and consequently the government was compelled to invoke economic sanctions against the respective tribes.

However, he said we did not want to harm the patriotic tribesmen, but there was no way out. The governor said that we admit that 90% of the tribesmen are with the government but we cannot ignore the other10%. We are to face them and the tribesmen have to cooperate with the administration in this regard, he added. "The tribesmen should facilitate the government and in return the government would facilitate the tribesmen", he remarked and expressed the confidence that the Utman Khel Wazir tribe would stand by its commitment and secure their area to the maximum extent. The governor said that the government was interested to develop the area but the process was subject to the maintenance of peace and tranquility. He said, the government has planed three small dams for South Waziristan Agency and asked the tribesmen that how these projects could be materialized when there is no peace and security. "The tribesmen should guarantee peaceful atmosphere, the government would ensure development", he remarked.

Earlier, talking on behalf of the jirga the tribal elders including Malik Iqbal Karmaz Khel, Malik Gul Munair Khanday Khel, Malik Noor Ali Karmaz Khel, Malik Iqbal Ada Khel, Malik Allah Khan Karay Khel and Malik Pir Khan Karay Khel in their brief speeches said that they have in fact accepted the responsibility to fully protect their area and do not allow the soil to be used for anti-state and terrorists activities. They said that the tribesmen affiliated to their respective clans would fight against all those elements who are against Islam and Pakistan and also damaging the soil of the tribes.

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-08/26/article02.shtml

Musharraf Corners Pakistani Islamic Alliance: Report

By Asif Farooqi, IOL Correspondent

ISLAMABAD, August 26 (IslamOnline.net) The latest spate of raids by Pakistani police on religious schools and institutions, coupled with the arrest campaign that resulted in the detention of some Al-Qaeda-linked persons the government calls "terror suspects", should have led to a strong backlash by the Islamic opposition, but just the opposite happened, according to analysts.

"The MMA failed to cash in on this opportunity to take on the government for what it had initially called as breach of sanctity of religious places and people" Khalid Azim, a journalist and commentator told IslamOnline.net.

The MMA is the strong Islamic opposition alliance in Pakistan that has since last parliamentarian elections been engaged in a political wrangling with General Pervez Musharraf over the sweeping powers the General enjoys.

During the last fortnight, the Pakistani police have conducted several raids on various religious seminaries in the federal capital Islamabad and have picked up many of its students.

The raiding forces went even further by carrying out thorough searches through the women sections of the seminaries, inciting anger among the religious class of the country.

However, this anger and hatred failed to translate into a political backlash against the government of Musharraf.

Even the killing of a religious scholar and member of the alliance of religious parties known as MMA, while in police custody, failed to spark off an agitation campaign which has been the cornerstone of the politics of the religious might in the country.

Qari Noor Muhammad died in police custody last week in the Punjab town of Faisalabad where he was picked up for alleged connections with suspected terrorists.

MMA leader explicitly blamed the government for the killing.

"There were 82 marks of physical torture over the body of deceased prayer leader," leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said.

He added there was no doubt that Muhammad died because of torture and the government was responsible for this heinous crime.

Following the killing of the religious scholar and the subsequent raids on seminaries, many parts of the country saw angry protests and demonstrations against the government.

These protests, however, failed to gain momentum as was predicted by many analysts that these events could turn into an agitation campaign against the government. Interestingly, many of the frontline leaders of the MMA were absent from these protests.

The MMA also failed to make its mark at the national parliament. Although they conducted walkouts in protest from the National Assembly, they failed to convince the government to apologize for the killing or raids on the women sections of the seminaries.

On the Defensive

Muhammad was said to have been tortured to death by police

Analysts believe this unexpected behavior of the MMA leadership was probably the result of suspected links between the arrested terror suspects and members of the MMA parties.

Azim said he was expecting some sort of a campaign by the MMA because the government had perused a policy contradictory to the policies of the rightwing allies.

He, however, added the MMA leaders confined themselves only to issuing statements and protest marches after Friday prayers for just one day.

Reason for this behavior, he said, could be possible links with the terror suspects who were caught by the government agencies from within the premises of the MMA related people.

Pakistani Interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayat has accused the MMA for having links with Al-Qaeda suspects.

He said several of the terror suspects have been given refuge by some of the members and workers of MMA throughout the country.

"We have arrested many terrors suspects from the premises owned by MMA workers and leaders" Hayat told IOL.

He said the MMA leadership should explain as to whether or not their workers have links with Al-Qaeda-related people.

Quoting example, he said, the latest arrests made from Islamabad on August 12 which unearthed a plan to target major national installations in the city, was linked to one MMA leader.

Usman, alleged leader of the group which had, according to the government, planned to blow up the parliament, army headquarters and many other buildings on the eve of independence day celebrations of August 14, was arrested while driving a vehicle of an MMA senior figure Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

"Agencies are looking for Ghazi who is head of the largest seminary of Islamabad and also an MMA leader," Hayat said.

The MMA failed to turn the anti-government anger into a sweeping popular uprising

He added that Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, a known Al-Qaeda leader was arrested from the house of an MMA leader last year.

Hayat said he can quote many more Al-Qaeda operatives who were arrested using the facilities provided by the MMA leaders.

"This is a big threat to the MMA leaders," Farooq Adil, deputy editor of a Karachi based weekly magazine "Takbeer" said.

He added that the MMA cannot afford to be labeled as siding with Al-Qaeda. "This would ruin the politics of the alliance which has been given the heaviest mandate in electoral history of the country," he added.

Farooq added one should not ignore the fact that the MMA is an ally of the government and has voted in favor of Musharraf in the parliament.

More from the sky:
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/08/fce42757-f2ce-4ffb-bad9-9c8ef2e6a822.html

Interview: Top Analyst Barnett Rubin Says Pakistan Is Letting Taliban Survive
By Ron Synovitz

Islamabad's recent efforts in the war on terrorism have focused on Al-Qaeda fighters. But now there are growing calls from Western diplomats, the Afghan government and the United Nations for Pakistan to rein in Taliban militants who have fled from Afghanistan into Pakistan since late 2001.

Prague, 26 August 2004 -- Barnett Rubin -- the director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University -- is among many South Asia analysts who think Pakistan's security forces are intentionally overlooking the presence of Taliban militants on their territory.

Most experts agree that Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency helped create the Taliban and gave it the military and financial support it needed to take control over most of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Islamabad has repeatedly denied those allegations and insists that it cut all ties with the Taliban when it joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the attacks 11 September 2001.

But like many independent analysts, Rubin insists that Pakistan's security services have fostered religious fundamentalism for years in order to promote Islamabad's foreign-policy goals. He said the key motivations include strategic concerns about India, as well as the dormant "Pashtunistan" question -- that is, the fear in Islamabad that ethnic Pashtun nationalists might take power in Kabul and make territorial claims on Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun border regions.

"Supporting some antigovernment forces in Afghanistan is something that Pakistan has done for decades in order to have some leverage over the government of Afghanistan," Rubin said. "They did have a long-term commitment toward supporting ethnic Pashtun religious extremists in Afghanistan in order to assure that an Afghan government would side with Pakistan against India and would not raise the issue of the Pashtun territories. [That's because] the Pashtun Islamists -- unlike the Pashtun nationalists -- do not support that kind of ethnic issue against a fellow Muslim country."

Senior Western diplomats in Kabul told "The New York Times" this week that Pakistan's security services are allowing Taliban fighters to operate training camps in Pakistan and cross back into Afghanistan to conduct terrorist attacks aimed at undermining presidential elections there in October.
Pakistan's army calls that allegation "ridiculous." Pakistan's UN Ambassador Munir Akram told the UN Security Council yesterday that his country has taken extraordinary efforts to safeguard its border with Afghanistan, including the deployment of 75,000 troops.

Rubin agrees with authorities in Islamabad who argue that Pakistan's military does not control many parts of the tribal regions near the border. But Rubin said there are other reasons Taliban militants are not being arrested in Pakistan.

"The Pakistani military is moving against Al-Qaeda, [but] they're not doing anything against the Taliban. Most of the Taliban activities are not in the tribal territories," Rubin said. "They are in the city of Quetta. They are in Balochistan. They are in areas that are firmly under the control of the Pakistan government. Therefore, Pakistan has no credibility. They've been supplied with information about the exact location of various major Taliban leaders. And they have done nothing. Instead, whenever there is pressure on [Pakistan] about the Taliban, they arrest more Al-Qaeda people -- meaning people from Arab countries or from small extremist groups. But they do not move against the Taliban."

Rubin said that Pakistan is not trying to undermine Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai's government or create a new Taliban regime. But he believes that elements within the government or security services want to use Taliban militants for future leverage against pro-Indian officials in Kabul.

"They do not believe that the United States and the rest of the Western countries are going to stay in Afghanistan. They believe that it is quite possible -- maybe a year after the U.S. presidential election [in November] -- these countries will start drawing down their forces and abandon Afghanistan again," Rubin said. "And therefore, they believe it is inevitable that there will be another power struggle in Afghanistan in which various regional powers will try to position their allies within the government and within the society. They don't want to cut their ties to those who may be ready to defend their interest in Afghanistan when that struggle resumes again."

Rubin said the economic issues discussed during Karzai's two-day visit to Islamabad this week could eventually act as an important counterbalance to the policies of Pakistan's security services.

"In the past, the Pakistani military saw Afghanistan only as a potential security threat or a potential security asset. Now, Pakistan's business community -- which is becoming more assertive -- is seeing Afghanistan as a major opportunity," Rubin said. "They are starting to put forward the idea that a stable, reconstructed Afghanistan is strongly in Pakistan's interests because of the economic implications, regardless of the political coloration or ethnic composition of the government of the day in Kabul."

But Rubin concluded that Pakistan's security forces will continue to have the final word for now because there is no real public input into Pakistan's security policies and the military is not subject to any kind of civilian control or oversight.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_29-8-2004_pg7_7

Militants fire nine missiles in Razmak and Wana Military convoy heads towards Shakai

By Mujeebur Rehman

WANA: Militants attacked Frontier Corps base and a scouts camp in the North and South Waziristan agencies, officials told Daily Times on Saturday. No one was reported injured.

Six missiles were fired at the Frontier Corps troops base in Razmak town in North Waziristan Agency while three in Wana in South Waziristan Agency late on Friday night. Residents in Razmak said five missiles missed their target but one hit a shop, destroying it completely.

The second attack took place in Wana where three rockets were fired at the Wana Scouts Camp near Dhog village. Witnesses said one missile hit a nearby mountain, while a second landed inside the camp which houses top administration officials and military commanders. Security forces retaliated with mortar, hitting three houses in Dhog village. But no loss of life was reported.

Residents of Dhog village were angered at the security forces’ firing saying the missiles were not fired from their area and the security forces’ firing was unprovoked.

They called a meeting to warn the administration that the firing on their village would not be tolerated, adding that they would disband the night patrol committees if their area were targeted.

AP reported on Saturday that residents in Wana spotted a convoy of dozens of military jeeps and trucks — some towing artillery — heading toward Shakai, a rugged region north of Wana where the security forces have battled militant holdouts. In another incident, unidentified attackers kidnapped a tribesman after killing his driver near Sarnarai in Ludha in Southern Waziristan Agency early on Saturday, Online reported.

The attackers asked driver Yasin Khan to stop the vehicle on the Sarnarai main road, but he did not. The attackers fired at the vehicle killing the driver immediately. They later kidnapped Pao Jan, the vehicle owner and escaped. Police registered a case.

Sur Sarai can be located west of Ramzak on the SE Quadrant map."

How many trucks does it take to move a battery of towed artillery, with personnel and support?

How long does it take to unlimber the tubes, dig in the bunkers and perimeter ditches and get the guns registered? From arrival in column to accepting fire missions?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.