Posted on 02 February 2012 by Tea Server
Image for representative purpose – Agencies
Pakistani warplanes pounded militant hideouts in the northwestern tribal area before dawn on Wednesday, killing at least 20 Taliban insurgents, security officials said.
The jets targeted hideouts in the tribal Orakzai district and at least four compounds were hit, they said, in the latest surge of fighting between government security forces and
Posted on 10 January 2012 by Tea Server
Military sources said a group of TTP fighters had attacked a security checkpost, called “Maqsood Post”, near Daboori in Orakzai tribal region on December 21 and 10 soldiers had died fighting the militants who reportedly wanted to capture them alive. The security post was manned by the Pakistan Army soldiers.
Pleading anonymity, a senior military official said the troops fought till the last bullet and killed a number of militants. They said 10 soldiers died fighting and the militants took away their bodies and kept them in their hideouts in the mountains of Orakzai Agency. “The militants had killed our soldiers and taken away their bodies along with them. We had killed their people and taken possession of the bodies left behind by the TTP fighters. With the help of tribal elders, we managed to exchange the bodies,” the official said.
He said none among the slain security personnel was of officer rank. He added that the bodies had not been damaged as they were kept in Orakzai Agency where the temperature was quite cold these days.
TTP spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers and said their fighters had taken away these bodies. “We had left behind five bodies of our slain fighters while taking away the 10 bodies of slain soldiers. After a series of talks, we exchanged the bodies on Monday. We gave them bodies of their soldiers and they returned the bodies of our fighters,” the TTP spokesman said.
The bodies of another five militants killed during a raid by the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) in Karamna area of Landikotal Tehsil of Khyber Agency were also returned to the TTP in exchange for bodies of the slain soldiers.
The militants said senior militant commander Qari Kamran, who was affiliated with commander Tariq Afridi, the TTP leader for Darra Adamkhel and Khyber Agency, had also been killed along with other militants. The militants on January 5 killed 15 Frontier Constabulary personnel and called it a revenge for the killing of Qari Kamran. The FC men were kidnapped by the militants during an attack on their fort in the Mullazai area of the Frontier Region Tank on December 23.
Pakistani security officials said Orakzai Agency was the most favoured place for the militants.
They believe that from the Orakzai Agency, the militants used to plan attacks on Pakistani forces and government installations in other tribal regions and also move freely into Peshawar and other major cities to carry out sabotage acts.
Surrounded by mountains, Orakzai is the only one among the seven tribal agencies that does not border Afghanistan. The Taliban often bragged that Orakzai was far away from the Nato forces across the border and from the US drones. It was relatively easy for the militants to move northwest into the Khyber and Kurram agencies and use Bilandkhel, a small village which links Orakzai with North Waziristan tribal region, to the south to sneak into the Afghan border to fight the foreign forces.
In November 2010, the army sealed off these routes to try and prevent the militants escaping the military offensive in South Waziristan from seeking safe havens in Orakzai. Pakistani officials believed that Hakimullah Mahsud was operating in Orakzai before shifting to South Waziristan after becoming the TTP chief following the death of Baitullah Mahsud in a drone attack in Zangara village, South Waziristan.
Security forces launched a fresh military operation in Orakzai when Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masood Kausar went there and came under attack. The troops have cleared some of the areas in Orakzai but are still facing tough resistance from the militants in upper parts of the troubled tribal region where the militants have established their sanctuaries.
Posted on 05 January 2012 by Tea Server
PESHAWAR: The bodies of 15 members of Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) were found Thursday, almost two weeks after they were kidnapped from a northwestern town, officials said.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the killings.
A senior local FC commander confirmed the news and told that the 15 kidnapped FC men were killed in Shawa, a small town in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border. He told that all the corpses had bullet wounds.
Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the killings, saying the troops were killed as a revenge for continued operations of security forces against them in Landi Kotal.
The FC personnel were kidnapped late last month during a night-time attack on a checkpoint in the northwestern town of Tank.
Posted on 04 January 2012 by Tea Server
Source:PKKH
ISLAMABAD: Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants have held a series of meetings aimed at containing what could soon be open warfare between the two most powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, militant sources have said.
Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP), and his deputy, Waliur Rehman, were at each other’s throats, the sources said.
“You will soon hear that one of them has eliminated the other, though hectic efforts are going on by other commanders and common friends to resolve differences between the two,” one TTP commander said.
Any division within the TTP could hinder the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda’s struggle in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies, making it more difficult to recruit young fighters and disrupting safe havens in Pakistan used by the Afghan militants.
Despite multiple reports of the Rehman-Mehsud split, Rehman told Reuters on Tuesday there was no problem between the two.
“There are no differences between us,” Rehman said.
The TTP, formed in 2007, is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in Pakistan’s unruly northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan.
It has long struggled with its choice of targets. Some factions are at war with the Pakistani state while others concentrate on the fight against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.
There has been a noticeable decrease in militant attacks in Pakistan, but there continue to be random acts of violence across the country.
Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban commanders are asking the TTP to provide more men for the fight in Afghanistan and are looking to smooth over the dispute between Mehsud and Rehman.
Long-standing feuds
Taliban sources said Rehman had ordered his fighters to kill Mehsud because of his increasing closeness with al Qaeda and its Arab contingent.
Mehsud’s former deputy has also confirmed that the TTP chief received money from Pakistan’s arch-rival, India, to kill former ISI official Colonel Imam, who was acting as a mediator between the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan insurgents and the Pakistani government.
The reported enmity between Mehsud and Rehman is not the only conflict within the TTP ranks.
Mehsud has a long-standing feud with militant commanders Maulvi Nazeer in South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan, both of whom have non-aggression agreements with the Pakistani military.
Mehsud’s men have also fought with the militia under the control of Fazal Saeed Haqqani, the former TTP head in the Kurram tribal region. He has accused Mehsud of killing his commanders and innocent people and kidnapping for ransom.
Haqqani, who is close to the militant Afghan Haqqani network, broke away from the TTP last year.
A pamphlet distributed by militants in North Waziristan this week announced the formation of a council to try to resolve the conflicts.
“All jihadi forces have jointly, on the recommendation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, formed a five-member commission which will be known as the Shura Muraqba,” the pamphlet said, using the term by which the Afghan Taliban describe themselves.
“The Shura Muraqba will be working to resolve differences and problems between mujahideen.”
It said that any “mujahideen” found to have committed an “unlawful” killing or kidnapping would be punished under Islamic law. It is likely any attack on a fellow “mujahideen” commander would be considered “unlawful”.
“All mujahideen should respect the decisions of the council that has been set up,” a senior commander of the Haqqani faction in Kurram said.
“If people continue to do as they like, the situation will not improve. Things will instead get much worse.”
Posted on 21 December 2011 by Tea Server
The group responsible for most violence in the country is in disarray with its ‘chain of command’ crumbling, funds dwindling and infighting intensifying, admit Taliban foot soldiers. “It appears the TTP’s days are numbered … what was a well-coordinated militia just a year ago has fragmented now and dozens of splinters groups have emerged,” a disgruntled member of the network told.
At least two associates of the group in South Waziristan, the strongest bastion of TTP where its chief Hakimullah Mehsud is hiding, also confirmed this. They said Mehsud has further isolated himself due to threats to his life from the dreaded American drones and Pakistani spy agencies.
“He is virtually a lonely man running for his life … he is always on the move and doesn’t meet even his once most-trusted lieutenants,” said Muhammad, a nom de guerre because the militants seldom use their real names.
Muhammad, who lives in the North Waziristan tribal region, was in Islamabad for the treatment of some kidney ailment at a private clinic. Mehsud has stopped meeting members of his notorious network from Punjab, better known as Punjabi Taliban, suspecting that some of them might be spying on him for Pakistani agencies.“This is one of the reasons for relative peace in the country … there is no coordination among various groups of the Taliban,” said an intelligence official. There has been a visible decline in the Taliban violence in the country over the past few months.
The TTP associates said that their group was crumbling due to differences on the question of pursuing peace talks with the government — an option Mehsud had rejected outright when he was first approached with the offer.
One the other hand, several key TTP leaders have responded positively to peace overtures from the Pakistani agencies. TTP’s deputy chief in South Waziristan Mufti Waliur Rehman and the group’s No 2, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad from Bajaur Agency, are reportedly in talks with the government, indirectly though. Officially, both the government and the TTP deny peace talks.
Muhammad claimed that several members of the TTP shura, or decision-making council, have also showed willingness for talks. He added that the shura, which once had around three dozen senior leaders, has now shrunk to less than 10.
“People are now deserting Mehsud and joining the group led by Waliur Rehman,” he said, adding that the latter’s group is becoming more powerful.
No more money
Apart from differences within, supply of foot soldiers to the TTP is also drying up fast, said Muhammad who himself has given up violence to start a small business in his village.
“They (foot soldiers) are deserting because it no longer earns them money,” said Raqeebullah Mehsud, a former TTP field commander.
Intelligence officials are claiming the credit for the TTP’s imminent collapse, saying it was their squeeze that had played a key role in blocking funds supply to the Taliban. But experts like Brigadier (Retd) Muhammad Saad believe that TTP’s inability to generate money might be the result of what has been happening behind closed doors in Afghanistan in the recent past.
“There have been reports that the Afghan Taliban are actively engaged in peace talks,” he added.
Saad said that the war in Afghanistan was the main source of funds for the TTP “but it may not be the case anymore”.
But Brigadier (Retd) Mehmood Shah, another security analyst based in Peshawar, said it won’t be fair to deny the Pakistani agencies credit for the isolation and subsequent rupture in the ranks of the TTP.
“Much of this happened due to their (Pakistani agencies) maneuvers,” he said.
Posted on 02 December 2011 by Tea Server
NATO regretted the raid and called it an accident. Pakistan rejected the statement and said the attack went on for about two hours. Pakistani commanders asked NATO and ISAF to stop, “but no one listened,” said a source in Pakistan Air Force.
Three Pakistani troops were killed in a NATO helicopter attack in Kurram on September 30, 2010. A joint US-Pakistan investigation found that Pakistani soldiers had fired at the two US helicopters prior to the attack. That was likely meant to notify the aircraft they had passed into Pakistani airspace several times |
Despite accepting that it was a grave mistake, Afghan officials and US commanders, both in Pentagon and Afghanistan, say hundreds of rockets are fired from the Pakistani side of the border in that region, and there is continuous cross border movement.
“Thousands have been killed in Afghanistan, most of them innocent civilians, and there’s a clear indication that the war in Afghanistan is being fought not from Afghanistan but from Pakistan,” a top US commander said.
Former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh accuses Pakistan of creating the problem that led to the recent attack. “Who supports Abdul Wali Khan? Who is supporting unrest in Kunar?”
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Pakistani soldiers carry coffins of the victims of the November 26 NATO attack
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There were talks between Pakistan, ISAF and Afghanistan to agree on a framework for hot pursuit. “We work under a strict guideline regarding hot pursuit,” a NATO commander in Afghanistan told TFT. “When the attackers come from the Pakistani side to kills us and try to run back, in these situations we go after them, and the Pakistanis are normally cooperative.”
“The said mandate terminates at the Afghanistan border,” a Foreign Office official said however. “There are no agreed hot pursuit rules. Any impression to the contrary is not factually correct. Such violations are unacceptable.”
“It looks like a mistake that cannot be explained away by any amount of incoming fire that NATO might have received” |
“Something like that might have happened this time too, but it’s being blown out of proportion in Pakistan,” a top US diplomat said.
“It looks like a mistake that cannot be explained away by any amount of incoming fire that NATO might have received,” said Michael Semple, a fellow at Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
Analysts opposed to the military’s handling of Afghanistan warn that whipping up public anger to use it as leverage in negotiations with the US will bring more harm than good.
“We have a joint interest in the fight against cross-border terrorism,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen said in a statement from Brussels, “and in ensuring that Afghanistan does not once again become a safe haven for terrorists.”
Ali Chishti is a TFT reporter based in Karachi. He can be reached at akchishti@hotmail.com
Posted on 21 October 2011 by Tea Server
The current showboating between Pakistan and the US will not bring any solution to the table.
Posted on 27 July 2011 by Tea Server
It looks like the Tehrik-i-Taliban has a highlighted a new societal ill: un-Islamic kapra.
Posted on 06 July 2011 by Tea Server
A book about partition-era trains filled with corpses has more relevance today than ever before and has one reader drawing parallels to the fate of children suicide bombers.