More stories along those lines are being pumped out:
Pakistan rushes troops to Buner
Azhar Masood | Arab News —
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan yesterday sent troops to Buner to halt the advance of the Taleban from the area to Kaladhaka, 70 km from the federal capital of Islamabad. But paramilitary forces rushing to the area were met with gunfire that killed one soldier.
With the help of Tajik militants, the Taleban have virtually taken control of Buner, barely 100 km north of Islamabad and known for poppy cultivation.Zar Gull Khan, a former provincial legislator of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, told Arab News that the Taleban have extended their influence to Gadoon Amazai, Shangla and other regions around Buner.
He said if the Taleban were to take Batagram, which adjoins Kaladhaka, then Islamabad itself will be within their reach.
According to official sources,
the Tajik militants have taken over the administrative control of Buner. The Taleban have closed existing courts and vowed to set up Shariah courts. Private TV channels have reported that the gun-toting Taleban have been on a looting spree in Buner’s Gokand Valley for the last five days. They have robbed government and NGO offices of vehicles, computers, printers, generators, edible oil and food.
Government officials said that local politicians, businessmen, NGO officials and tribal chiefs, who had played a role in raising a lashkar, or militia, to counter the Taleban, have been forced to move out. The Taleban have extended their control to almost all areas of the district and police have been confined to police stations and camps.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday urged Pakistani leaders to act against the spread of Taleban, saying failure to confront the threat could affect US-Pakistani relations.
In a visit to Camp Lejeune, a military installation in North Carolina, Gates said some Pakistani leaders recognize the “existential threat” facing the country’s democratic government from the Taleban.
— With input from agencies
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From the Christian Science Monitor:
from the April 23, 2009 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0424/p09s01-coop.htmlA rescue plan for PakistanWithout bold, urgent action, the country – and its nuclear weapons – could fall to the Taliban.
By Mansoor Ijaz
London
The Margalla Hills offer breathtaking vistas of Pakistan's federal capital, Islamabad. On a clear day, picnic-goers can see from historic Faisal Mosque to Rawalpindi, home of Pakistan's military nerve center. One day soon, however, this national park's densely forested hills could also provide perfect cover for Taliban fighters to rain down rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles on Islamabad itself.
The Taliban's bid to seize control of Pakistan is now clearly mapped out after its forces this week overtook Buner district, home to about a million Pakistanis just 70 miles from the capital. Top US military official Mike Mullen is in Islamabad for emergency meetings, and Pakistan has sent in troops to restore order. But the damage from earlier appeasement is done.
As one politician from Buner told The New York Times, "We felt stronger as long as we thought the government was with us, but when the government showed weakness, we stopped offering resistance to the Taliban."
Many Tajik followers of Al Qaeda occupying Buner will now surely join forces with the Taliban to beef up their next wave of attacks. Altogether, the Taliban may soon control nearly 1,000 square miles of safe territory within Pakistani borders.The failure of Pakistani political leadership to stem the Taliban's tide now brings Washington's 3 a.m. wake-up call – nuclear weapons in the hands of extremists – closer than ever to becoming reality. The United States has given its allies in Islamabad political and financial assistance in every way possible for far too long with too few meaningful constraints, only to watch Pakistan destroy itself.
In eight short months since coming to office, President Asif Ali Zardari has managed to cede large parcels of Pakistan's land to the Taliban; to release Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the most dangerous nuclear proliferator in history; to permit the flogging of a 17-year-old girl whose wails are now etched in the world's memory as the image of modern-day Pakistani jurisprudence; and to allow publicly funded gatherings of Pakistan's equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan in Punjab government buildings.
Surely this was not the Pakistan his slain wife, Benazir Bhutto, would have ever tolerated presiding over as a democratically elected leader. Pakistan's politicians have lost all sense of duty to their constituents. Unchecked power appears to be their only objective, not providing vital services or protecting inalienable citizen and human rights. Decisions appear to be about self-preservation, not preservation of the state. Every move seems to be tactical, designed to keep a seat at the table, not to strategically ensure that the table still stands.
Where is the blueprint for a stable, prosperous Pakistan that reflects its founder's vision for a secular, moderate Muslim nation?
Ironically, Mr. Zardari's failed leadership is rooted in the admirable commitment by Pakistan's current Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, to keep the military out of politics. General Kayani's importance to Pakistani stability was underscored recently when he settled the tempest over the reinstatement of Pakistan's former chief justice without a bullet being fired. But today, Kayani's deference to the undisciplined and self-serving political elites in Islamabad is bringing his country to the brink of failure. His time, and that of his country, is running out.
Kayani retires in 15 months. The mutual distrust between him and Zardari over the military's role in Pakistan's affairs has compelled the insecure president to start looking at wholesale replacements in the senior ranks in order to insure the Army watches his back. If he serves a full term, until 2013, Zardari will have had to, by law, replace all 33 of the lieutenant generals serving in the 10 Corps Commands of the Pakistan Army. Unfortunately, by the time Zardari has taken full control of the Army by populating it with loyalists, the Taliban's Tajik, Uzbek, and Chechen rebels could be sipping tea at the president's house.
Pakistan needs a radical plan to turn back the Taliban.
Zardari, Kayani, and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should convene a meeting outside Pakistan before Zardari and his Afghan counterpart, President Hamid Karzai, go to the United States in May, preferably in a Muslim country so as to not give the overt appearance of American interference. They should develop a plan to combat what US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday termed an "existential threat." An American observer (Secretary Clinton or US national security adviser Gen. James Jones, for example) should be secretly invited to attend. No one leaves the room until they all agree on a plan.
At the outset, the American observer should frame an important component of the three-way discussion: the terms and conditions of continued US aid to Pakistan. It would be made clear that US taxpayers won't pay for Zardari to cede more Pakistani territory to the Taliban, nor will Mr. Sharif be allowed to offer political cover for Saudi Arabia's clerics to launder petro-dollars through Pakistan's hate-preaching madrasas.
The plan should have the following attributes:
•The Taliban are redefined as the foreign fighters (Tajik, Uzbek, Chechen, Afghan, etc.) they are rather than as Pakistani madrasa students waging jihad against American infidels and other assorted imaginary villains.•Zardari (from the far left) and Sharif (from the far right) jointly declare all-out war on Taliban mercenaries, giving Kayani the political cover he needs to act within Pakistan's borders. The joint political declaration allows Kayani to appear to be taking direction from the country's political leaders without interjecting the Army into its politics. The objective of the declaration would be to retake Buner, Swat Valley, and any other areas that have fallen under Taliban control, and to reverse implementation of sharia law anywhere in Pakistan it has been applied.
•Kayani would prepare a comprehensive eradication plan for targeting Taliban strongholds, but now with American agreement to add a distinct advantage: US military equipment – lots of US military equipment. This could include night vision goggles, signals intelligence technology, and predator drones – in short, everything Pakistan's military would need to fight the ground war as if America and her allies were there conducting the campaign.
•To reassure Pakistan's neighbors, Washington would grant access to this technology only on condition that nothing be given to Islamabad that could be used against India or Afghanistan. In the first instance where that was determined to be the case, all military assistance would cease.
•The dollar value of assistance would soar to cold war levels. If America is prepared to spend $100 billion to bail out bankrupt auto companies, spending $5 to 10 billion is a small price to pay for ensuring that Pakistan's nuclear materials don't fall into Taliban hands.
•US civil aid would also be increased dramatically and targeted much more specifically. Such aid could help promote secular schools in place of Saudi-sponsored extremist academies. It could also provide social services to disenfranchised Pakistani citizens. These steps would improve baseline conditions and thus renew trust between Pakistan's government and its people.
This plan, once set, would then be ratified by Pakistan's National Security Council and Army corps commanders, and implemented.
If no plan is agreed upon, America walks out and previews its contingency plan for securing Pakistan's nuclear weapons on the front page of The New York Times.
Pakistan stands on the brink of systemic failure. Urgent action is needed, and a few good men and women still have the capacity to pull this nuclear-armed, increasingly intolerant nation away from inevitable failure if they act now.
Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistani descent, is a venture capitalist and financier.
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This story is by a sincere person whom is calling for urgent action on all the different disastrous events occurring in Pakistan.
Time to form a national governmentFriday, April 24, 2009
By Shafqat Mahmood
When the Americans used to say that Pakistan faces an existential threat, it seemed unnecessarily alarmist. Yes, we had a problem in the tribal areas and, yes, there were some bad elements in Swat, but this was far from being a threat to the existence of Pakistan. Now, it is difficult to be so positive.
FATA, more or less, is gone, and so is Swat. The peace deal there is unravelling, as some of us had predicted. Buner is also virtually gone. The most disturbing part of this takeover is that Tajik Afghans are reported to be operating there. The pessimists are also saying that most of NWFP is gone. This may be an exaggeration, but there is little doubt that the entire province is under threat.
As if we did not have enough troubles in the Frontier, the situation in Balochistan is verging on anarchy after the death of the three Baloch leaders. The area between Turbat and Mand is witnessing a near-revolt with anti-Pakistan slogans everywhere. Nine thousand non-Baloch, mostly Punjabis, according to Geo TV, have been forced to migrate from there. Reports of random killings are also widespread, with some saying that it has become impossible for Punjabis to live in that province.
The situation in southern Punjab is also far from satisfactory. While the local press does not report much, the American media has carried stories of a growing Taliban threat in, among other places, Dera Ghazi Khan. The small towns of the district are apparently infested with the Taliban and they are now beginning to flex their muscles. Posters, which are a typical Taliban opening gambit, have appeared threatening video shops and playing of music, etc. The people are so far not cowed down, but for how long.
The sad part is that while the country is in such dire straits, the ruling classes are carrying on as if not much is wrong. There is no sense of urgency, and other than a statement or two, no real effort is visible to arrest the slide. This is a time when there should have been a flurry of activity with everyone deeply engaged in finding solutions. But we see nothing of the sort.
On the political front, the government should have immediately called an all parties conference to brief the political leaders about the seriousness of the situation. Through this mechanism, an attempt should have been made to evolve a consensus on how to fight the Taliban menace and address the unrest in Balochistan. Even if this attempt had failed, the duplicity of certain parties would have been exposed.
On the administrative front, the defence committee of the cabinet (DCC) should have been meeting on a weekly basis. This not only would have ensured a more coordinated decision-making on terrorism and Balochistan but a better follow-up. Lack of follow up is a huge flaw in the administrative response to the difficulties we face.
Reports are that even announcements of compensation to the victims of terror, made with such fanfare, are seldom carried through. More serious matters–such as rehabilitation of displaced persons, reintroduction of civil structures of administration after space has been created by military action, and quick improvement of destroyed infrastructure in troubled areas–are almost completely ignored.
This is a sure recipe for disaster and it is not something that will happen in the future. It is taking place here and now. Time has run out for us, and the dominoes, in the shape of district after district in the NWFP and vast areas of Balochistan, are falling. There may be some space still left to begin the difficult task of reversing this tide, but not much.
How can this be done? What will it take to retrieve this situation? If an argument is made that nothing we do will change it as long as the Americans are in Afghanistan, then we are doomed. Americans have no intention of leaving in a hurry. Obama has made Afghanistan his war, and as long as he is president, it is not going to happen. Also, there is a consensus in the US that Pakistan is potentially a more serious threat than Afghanistan. They have no intention of disengaging.
So, let us stop this daydream. We do not have the luxury or the time to wait, as things are deteriorating by the day. We have to fashion our own national response, and the sooner we begin the better. The first thing we have to do is to get our political act together. Major political forces have to come together to save the nation. If we remain politically fragmented, we can never win this battle.
To have a chance of retrieving this catastrophic situation, political parties will have to put aside normal jostling for power and agree on a minimum agenda to fight terror. The political arrangement that makes this possible is important, because not only decision-making has to be shared but also the responsibility. This will not happen just through an agreement on policy. They have to come together in a national government.
In the history of nations, national governments come into place when a grave emergency threatens the very existence of the country. We face one now. If we do not come together as of this moment, it may be too late in the future. The PPP, the ANP, the MQM, the JUI-F and some others are already in a coalition. It is important for the PML-N, and the PML-Q and other smaller parties, to join in.
This may have been possible if so much bad blood had not been created by President Zardari's broken promises on restoration of the judiciary. His presence, and powers, have become the stumbling block to a grand national reconciliation. The PML-N has said that it will join the cabinet if the president is divested of the extraordinary powers that Musharraf had arrogated to himself under the 17th Amendment. Such a change would also be in the spirit of the Charter of Democracy. He should move with speed to undo them and take a back seat from politics in the national interest.
Once this hurdle is crossed, the national government must sit together with the army and other law enforcing agencies to fashion a comprehensive national strategy to combat extremism and tackle problems in Balochistan. Armies can never fight if they do not have popular support. If the main political parties and the military are together, there is no challenge that we cannot face.
To the sceptics this may seem like a fond dream. The political parties will never come together, they may argue, and even if they do, there is little chance that all the stakeholders would agree on a joint strategy. They may be right, but only up to a point. A good strategy is not static. If in the beginning an approach is adopted that does not work, they will learn from experience and remodel it.
The critical need is unity and a common national approach. If we are together, we can overcome.
Email:
shafqatmd@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------------
Zardari was put into power by the west to destroy Pakistan....this is clear... but what is their obsession with Tajiks and their constant badmouthing of them ?
Is it desperate attempts to paint the Taliban as non Pashtuns ? Why ? What do you guys think ?
