The $120,000 farmhouse where the TTP chief was killed

By: AFP

MIRANSHAH: With marble floors, lush green lawns and a towering minaret, the $120,000 farm where feared Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died in a US drone strike was no grubby mountain cave.

Mehsud spent his days skipping around Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas to avoid the attentions of US drones.

But his family, including two wives, had the use of an eight-roomed farmhouse set amid lawns and orchards growing apples, oranges, grapes and pomegranates.

As well as the single-storey house, the compound in Dandey Darpakhel village, five kilometres north of Miramshah, was adorned with a tall minaret, purely for decorative purposes.

Militant sources said the property in the North Waziristan tribal area was bought for Mehsud nearly a year ago for $120,000, a huge sum by Pakistani standards, by close aide Latif Mehsud, who was captured by the US in Afghanistan last month.

An AFP journalist visited the property several times when the previous owner, a wealthy landlord, lived there.

With the Pakistan army headquarters for restive North Waziristan just a kilometre away, locals thought of Mehsud’s compound as the “safest” place in a dangerous area.

Its proximity to a major military base recalls the hideout of Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad, on the doorstep of Pakistan’s elite military academy.

“I saw a convoy of vehicles two or three times in this street but I never thought Hakimullah would have been living here. It was the safest place for us before this strike,” local shopkeeper Akhter Khan told AFP.

This illusion of safety was shattered on Friday when a US drone fired at least two missiles at Mehsud’s vehicle as it stood at the compound gate waiting to enter, killing the Pakistani Taliban chief and four cadres.

The area around Dandey Darpakhel is known as a hub for the Haqqani network, a militant faction blamed for some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

Read more » DAWN
http://dawn.com/news/1054033

Al-Qaida, Taliban ask Pakistani militants for help against US-led forces in Afghanistan

Al-Qaida, Taliban ask Pakistani militants for help

By AP

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Pakistani militant commanders say prominent al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters have asked them to set aside differences and step up support for the battle against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban commanders say the request came during two meetings in Pakistan’s tribal region in November and December.

They said Monday that the senior al-Qaida commander Abu Yahya al-Libi attended both meetings, as did Sirajuddin Haqqani, the de-facto head of the most feared militant group in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s most prominent militant leaders, including Pakistani Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud, also attended. The commanders who described the meetings spoke on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity.

Courtesy: DAWN.COM

Seeking ‘dubious’ peace with the Taliban

By Khaled Ahmed

Talking peace with the Taliban is a tough undertaking. The Americans who want to talk to the Afghan Taliban should take a close look at how Pakistan fared when it talked to its own Taliban. One can also make a guess at what will happen in the wake of the September 2011 APC in Islamabad as Pakistan gets ready to talk to the Taliban once again.

In 2003, Musharraf nearly got killed when three attacks on him — by al Qaeda through Abu Faraj alLibi, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Pakistan Air Force personnel — on him were foiled. He wanted a counter-attack in South Waziristan but was thwarted by his corps commander in Peshawar, General Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, who preferred retirement to an operation.

The succeeding corps commander Peshawar, General Safdar Hussain, was from the ISI — its second-most important member, DG Analysis. He made peace with the Taliban commander Nek Muhammad at Shakai in 2004, binding him to not attacking in Afghanistan and getting rid of the ‘foreigners’ in return for amnesty. Nek Muhammad did not abide by the peace accord.

General Safdar Hussain told Zahid Hussain (Scorpion’s Tail page 71) he wanted the Americans trapped in Afghanistan. He was seen on TV dubbing Nek Muhammad a soldier of Islam. After Nek Muhammad was killed by a drone in June 2004, General Safdar Hussain signed another peace accord with Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud at Sararogha after giving him half a million dollars to pay back the bribe he and his commanders had got from al Qaeda before shifting loyalty for money. He, too, did not abide by the terms of the accord.

The ‘peace accord’ allowed Baitullah to kill the tribal elders and fill the vacuum thus created in Fata with his warriors. ….

Read more » The Express Tribune

Those media anchors who consider the Taliban important for lasting peace in Afghanistan, why don’t they consider allowing the Taliban to set up a government in, say, Karachi?

– Let the Taliban rule Karachi

By Asad Munir

Excerpt;

Those who support the Taliban also think that when the Americans leave, the Taliban will give up their arms and return to a normal peaceful life. They should see a recent video uploaded on YouTube. It is titled “Takfiri Molvi” (http://youtu.be/C_uYiQxTTf8) and shows a Pakistani Taliban leader calling the Quaid-i-Azam ‘Kafir-i-Azam’. This man also says that army troops have been declared apostates; he calls the Imam of the Kaaba “gumrah” and justifies kidnapping for ransom by saying that this is allowed under jihad. He refers to a kidnapped person as “aseer-e-ghaneemat”. Lootings of banks is also permitted, by calling the loot as “mal-e-ghaneemat” and the killing of women and children is justified by saying that this happens during a war.

The Taliban leader then goes on to call most Pakistanis “apostates” and hence this justifies their killing as a religious obligation. He says quite clearly that the Taliban will continue their jihad till the enforcement of Shariah in Pakistan and will kill all those who oppose them.

The Taliban’s agenda has been clearly spelt out in this video. They want to impose Shariah in this country, through the use of force. And they are armed, trained and capable of accomplishing this mission, if they have support from the people. They will neither lay down arms nor end their terrorist activities, even with the withdrawal of US forces and people who think that they will are naïve or living in a state of denial.

So to consider them as “our own people” and to initiate dialogue with them is not going to stop them from carrying on with their activities. I would wish good luck to all those who want to negotiate peace with the likes of Mullah Fazlullah, Hakeemullah Mehsud, Faqir Muhammad, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, Qari Hussian and others.

And as for those media anchors who consider the Taliban important for lasting peace in Afghanistan, why don’t they consider allowing the Taliban to set up a government in, say, Karachi?

To read complete article » The Express Tribune

Former Military dictator Musharraf declared Absconder (Ishtihari) in Pakistan

– Benazir Bhutto murder case: Musharraf declared absconder

by Omer Farooq Khan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has been declared an absconder after a court in Pakistan’s garrison city of Rawalpindi accepted the interim chargesheet submitted by the investigation agency, which named the ex-president as an accused in the Benazir Bhutto murder case.

Investigators of Pakistan’s leading Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) submitted a chargesheet in Rawalpindi’s anti-terrorism court on Monday, listing Musharraf as one of the accused in the assassination of the former two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The court accepted the challan (chargesheet) after the testimony of police officials detained for alleged dereliction of duty over the assassination of the former PM. Former Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz and superintendent of police Khuramm Shazad were arrested last December after allegations were levelled against them for providing inadequate security to the former premier, hosing down the crime scene and destroying the evidence.

Courtesy: TOI

Pakistan’s feeble denial

Excerpt:

…. And from Abbottabad the Star’s Rick Westhead reports that some locals believed the compound belonged to a relative of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, or a drug dealer. Others reportedly thought Hizbul Mujahedeen, a Kashmiri militant group, was using it.

Given rumours that the site  housed Al Qaeda terrorists, Taliban bigwigs, Kashmiri militants and drug barons, why didn’t the ISI move in on bin Laden? How can he have lived there for years?

The world can debate whether U.S. forces were justified in killing bin Laden, and the extent to which the U.S. should air gruesome evidence of the raid. But one thing is clear: “It’s inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support system in the country,” as U.S. President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism official said. Who ran that support network? Who built the compound? Who brought bin Laden in? Who supplied him all these years? If not people with links to the security services, then who? Or were the security services playing a double game, as they have in the past?

This is a credibility issue for Zardari and his top military and intelligence chiefs. They have some explaining to do, and there’s a lot at stake. Since 9/11 Pakistan has received $20 billion in U.S. assistance, and relies on billions more each year from other countries. It owes the World Bank and other lenders $54 billion, and needs foreign help to service those loans and get new ones. If world opinion sours on Pakistan, the effects could be harsh.

For years, Pakistani officials denied bin Laden was hiding there. The U.S. raid exploded that untruth. Now they say they have no idea where Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and other insurgents may be. How credible is that? And how hard are they looking?

Courtesy: Toronto Star

Darul Ulum Langley Sharif

By: Hakim Hazik

After Abdul Sattar Edhi, the biggest Boy Scout in Pakistan is Hakimullah Mehsud. He has protected Pakistan from enemies of the Ummah such as Col. Imam by shooting them in the head and making improving educational videos for patriotic Pakistanis.

All the chaos, disorder, terrorism, inflation, hailstorms and traffic congestion in Pakistan has been created by the CIA. It is interference on a massive scale from across the border. Karzai is in the hock of RAW which is a slave of CIA which in turn is a handmaiden of MOSSAD. All these leery wolves have turned upon the innocent citizens of Pakistan. They are attacking us with drones. They are attacking us with Glock handguns. They are attacking us with polio drops, so that we lose our manhood and our ghairat and the Ideology of Pakistan is defamed and degraded.

A foreign hand cannot be excluded in the murder of Shehbaz Bhatti. A foreign hand cannot be excluded in the Faisalabad blast. A foreign hand cannot be excluded in the Pacific tsunami. A foreign hand cannot be excluded in propping up Kamran Akmal. A foreign hand is squeezing the vital organs of the Ummah.

It all started when we decided to fight America’s war. Everything was going swimmingly before 9/11. We were living in a democratic and prosperous welfare state and taking great strides in economic development with the help of the IMF tranches. Now we had to kill our own people whose only fault was that they were killing our own people. Such blatant American interference will rarely be seen across the world. There are a thousand Raymond Davis’s running amok in the Land of the Pure looking for half a million trained Mujahideen whose only fault is that they want to explode bombs in city centres.

Who was it who trained these militants anyway? It was the Americans. They recruited them from across the world; trained and indoctrinated them in Darul Ulum Langley Sharif and let them loose in Afghanistan. At all this time, the Premier Sensitive Agency of the world watched with bemusement and filled its pockets with greenbacks and Ojhari Camp with explosives. They were quite distraught when the Americans left in a fit of pique, after 1989 and the Premier Agency had to mop up the mess left behind in Kabul and Jalalabad under the inspired leadership of General Bull who turned Afghanistan into a thriving, modern democracy.

Even now, as soon as the Americans leave, the half a million jihadis will instantaneously become tourist guides and divert their attention from suicide vests to the Chitrali Patti ….

Read more : Justice Denied