Was Author Of "Next-Gen Taliban" Expelled From Pakistan?

Journalist Nicholas Schmidle has apparently been expelled from Pakistan.

The government has confirmed that he has left the country but has denied the report as to the reason, saying:

“Initially a deportation order was served to him but it was later withdrawn. He left Pakistan on his own.”

No particular reason for the deportation order has been given, as far as I know. But it may have something to do with a long piece called "Next-Gen Taliban" which appeared in the New York Times Magazine of January 6th (or the printable version here, or a mirror -- also printable -- here).

As the New York Times notes,

Mr. Schmidle’s article, published Jan. 6, was based on interviews with some of the officials, clerics and fugitive militant leaders who were on the run or fighting security forces in the Swat Valley and in tribal areas along the Afghan border.

To write it, he “secretly traveled” to militant strongholds, prompting the authorities to expel him, said a security official, who like some others who provided information spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

More from Steve Clemons via Larisa Alexandrovna:

"These are the latest dispatches that Schmidle has published in Slate.

Other journalists I have spoken to today tell me that there is a pattern of intimidation of journalists clearly emerging in Pakistan. While this may be the first deportation of an American journalist that most can recall, there have been other troubling incidents.

New America Foundation fellow and journalist Eliza Griswold was apparently held in custody by Pakistan authorities on one occasion. CNN Terrorism Analyst and New America Foundation senior fellow Peter Bergen was denied a visa on one occasion in 2006 with no explanation given. Nir Rosen -- also a New America Foundation fellow who has reported extensively on Middle East affairs -- was threatened in Quetta, Pakistan by what some believe to be government "goons" and was told that he needed to leave immediately or he would be "the next Danny Pearl." New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall was beaten by thugs who identified themselves as Pakistani police.

Some believe that Schmidle's article antogonized Pakistani government officials because he conducted interviews in Quetta where the Taliban are operating in full public. These sources suggest that Pakistan government authorities want to limit exposure to the fact that they have done nothing to shut down the Taliban in Quetta and/or are turning a blind eye to the Taliban's operations [there]."

Regardless of the reason for his expulsion -- if that's what it was -- Nicholas Schmidle has given us a fascinating glimpse of the political and social evolution of the Taliban.

Excerpts from Next-Gen Taliban:

One day last month, I climbed onto a crowded rooftop in Quetta, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and wedged myself among men wearing thick turbans and rangy beards until I could find a seat. We converged on the rooftop that afternoon to attend the opening ceremony for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s campaign office in this dusty city in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, better known by its abbreviation, J.U.I., is a hard-line Islamist party, widely considered a political front for numerous jihadi organizations, including the Taliban. In the last parliamentary elections here, in 2002, the J.U.I. formed a national coalition with five other Islamist parties and led a campaign that was pro-Taliban, anti-American and spiked with promises to implement Shariah, or Islamic law. The alliance, known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or M.M.A., won more than 10 percent of the popular vote nationwide — the highest share ever for an Islamist bloc in Pakistan. The alliance formed governments in two of the country’s four provinces, including Baluchistan.

A cool breeze blew across the rooftop, and a green kite flew above in the crisp, periwinkle sky. The J.U.I. was gearing up again for national elections, then scheduled for the second week of January, but the message this time was remarkably different from what it was five years ago. One by one, hopefuls for the national and provincial assembly constituencies gave short speeches. Most of them spoke in Pashto, but, knowing Urdu, I could understand enough to realize that they weren’t rehashing the typical J.U.I. rhetoric. No one praised the Taliban. Shariah was mentioned only in passing. Just one person, a first-time candidate in a suede jacket who probably felt obliged to prove his credentials in a party of fundamentalist mullahs, attacked the United States. Afterward, party workers handed out free plates of cookies and cups of tea.

This seemed altogether too gentle. Had the J.U.I. gone soft? Among several firebrands conspicuous by their absence was Maulvi Noor Muhammad, Quetta’s former representative in the National Assembly and an outspoken supporter of the Taliban, so I went to see him at his madrassa. Adolescent students, many wearing the black turbans favored by the Taliban, mingled by the metal entrance gate. Muhammad had told me in the fall of 2006 that the sole reason that the Taliban hadn’t defeated NATO forces in Afghanistan yet was because NATO had B-52’s, and when I reminded him of this, he smiled through a mouthful of missing teeth. “The Taliban have more than made up for that disadvantage now with suicide bombers,” he said.

It's definitely worth a read: "Next-Gen Taliban" by Nicholas Schmidle.

Airstrikes Hit Civilians In Pakistan: Hundreds Dead In Latest Round Of Terror War By Proxy

Hundreds of people have been killed in the past few days in battles between the Pakistani military and suspected insurgents in North Waziristan, the mountainous northwest bordering on Afghaninstan.

Pakistani tactics have included airstrikes and have taken a toll on civilians, including children, as Imtiaz Ali and Griff Witte in the Washington Post:

250 Dead in 4 Days of Pakistan Clashes

Up to 250 people, including at least 45 soldiers, have been killed in fierce fighting in northwestern Pakistan over the past four days, with Pakistani military jets bombing suspected insurgent hide-outs amid tough resistance, officials and residents said Tuesday.
...

The most intense clashes have occurred in the town of Mir Ali, where the military has deployed heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter jets to try to oust insurgents who have been waging an aggressive campaign against the Pakistani army. The use of fighter jets is unusual, but government officials said it was necessary given the firepower they were facing from the radical fighters.

In the New York Times, Carlotta Gall had more about the alleged necessity of using airstrikes:

Heavy Fighting Reported in Pakistan

The state of the bodies of 31 soldiers that had been retrieved by local elders — some of the bodies were decapitated, some burned — had led the military to resort to aerial bombardment of the militants’ holdouts, according to a military official who asked not to be named.

Dozens of civilians have been killed and wounded in the bombing, in particular at a village, Hasu Khel, which is a known hub for foreign fighters. As villagers fled the area, some had reached hospitals in the region where they told of bombing in at least six villages and of as many as 55 civilians killed, including women and children.
...

Most of the latest fighting is taking place in villages around the town of Mirali, in North Waziristan, an area known for a strong presence of foreign fighters. Sher Khan, a councilman from North Waziristan who lives near Mirali, said he had lost 12 members of his family when several bombs fell on his house. Eighteen bodies were reported by villagers to have been pulled from the rubble in Hasu Khel.

Seen in this light, the WaPo piece looks like both spin and mega-spin:

"The resistance from local Taliban is tougher than what the government usually expects," conceded a tribal affairs official in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province. "Such tough resistance also gives credence to speculation that al-Qaeda-trained foreign fighters might be backing these local Taliban."

Of course it's all about retaliation, or at least that's the pretext:

The fighting in Pakistan's northwest, which began late Saturday with an insurgent strike on a military convoy, has taken a heavy toll on civilians. There were reports Tuesday of large numbers of casualties among local residents caught in the crossfire. Civilians in some villages used mosque loudspeakers to appeal to both sides not to target homes or shopping areas.

Meanwhile, an exodus was underway for those who were able to leave.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported on the sudden exodus:

Pakistani families flee North Waziristan battle zone

Thousands of families began fleeing Mir Ali, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region, after three days of fierce clashes between militants and security forces killed nearly 200 people, witnesses said Tuesday.
...

Families streamed out of the town of 50,000 people and outlying villages, making their way on foot, in tractor trailers and cars.

“Eighty to ninety percent of families of Mir Ali have gone. Just one or two people are staying behind in each house to guard their belongings,” Sher Khan, a resident, told Reuters.

“The main bazaar of Mir Ali is sealed by the army. All shops are closed. We have nothing to eat. That's why I have sent my family to Bannu,” he said, referring to a town in the North West Frontier Province at the tribal region’s gateway.

The latest clashes erupted after militants ambushed a military convoy near Mir Ali late Saturday.

Casualties mounted as the army struck back and pounded militants with helicopter gunships and fighter jets.

The jets destroyed most houses around Essori, a village near Mir Ali where most of the fighting was concentrated.

Thousands may have been fleeing but others were not so lucky, as the Washington Post reported:

"I have seen people digging graves for the dead bodies," said Malik Mumtaz, a tribal elder from North Waziristan. "Others are busy rushing their injured to the nearby hospitals."

He said many of the wounded had to be taken to hospitals in Bannu or Peshawar because electricity had been cut in North Waziristan and the hospitals were out of medicine.

The military situation looks bad, as Kim Barker reported in the Chicago Tribune.

Pakistani army's stature takes hit

So far, the government's campaign to control the militants has had little success in the remote semiautonomous regions, which follow tribal rather than national laws. Sending in 80,000 soldiers didn't work. Neither did government truces with pro-Taliban elders.

At present, 100,000 soldiers are stationed in the mountainous terrain, but they are hardly welcome visitors in the region. A local religious ruling has even decreed that soldiers who die fighting militants should not receive Islamic funerals.
...

"The army is helpless," said Talat Masood, a retired army general and political analyst. "It's not achieving any military results in the tribal belts."

But the military situation is not the only situation that's going badly. Things are deteriorating rapidly on the political front as well, as Mark Sappenfield reports for the Christian Science Monitor:

New political deal angers Pakistanis

Atif Jehangir sits in the half-light of Rajah Market on a cool late-summer evening and says that the events of the past week here could push him to terrorism.

It is an unexpected admission, not only because the young business student could be the face of Pakistani moderation: educated, beardless, and dressed in Western clothes. But also because the power-sharing deal announced last week between President Pervez Musharraf and political leader Benazir Bhutto has been hailed in many corners of the West as the keystone to political calm.

Instead it has set Mr. Jehangir alight: "There is no way this is going to bring stability," he says. "It is going to create more terrorists among people like me."

Rhetoric often teeters toward the extreme in Pakistan, but there is no doubt that Mr. Musharraf's reelection this past weekend – and his pact with Ms. Bhutto – has only increased anger across much of the country.

The pact offered amnesty to a vast array of politicians, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is due to arrive in Pakistan next week to contest parliamentary elections, but not incuding another former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was arrested and deported when he tried to do the same thing last month.

So it's not surprising, in an Orwellian way, that

Pervez Musharraf called a pact with Benazir Bhutto a “package ensuring free and fair elections.”

Mark Sappenfield continues:

Citizens see it not as a step toward democracy, but as a United States-brokered deal to prop up Pakistan's ruling elite, which is almost universally viewed as corrupt. As such, the deal exacerbates two of Pakistanis' most deeply ingrained frustrations: that America meddles too much in its affairs, and that justice is subverted by the rich and withheld from the poor.

Of course, these factors are inter-connected. America meddles in Pakistan's affairs for many reasons and in many ways. In the official doublespeak, the USA provides about a hundred million dollars a month to defray the expenses incurred by Pakistan's military in the war on terrorism. In plainer terms, part of the Pakistani army is being rented out to fight a proxy war for America.

With full employment go good times, and in the capital, Islamabad, congratulations were obviously in order. Here's Dawn again:

CJCSC, VCOAS call on President Musharraf

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majeed and Vice Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani separately paid courtesy call on President General Musharraf here Tuesday.

The President congratulated them on assuming charge of their new responsibilities and expressed the hope that under their able leadership the operational and professional capabilities of the Armed Force of Pakistan will be further enhanced.

There is no doubt that the American government would love to see the Armed Forces of Pakistan much enhanced and much more active. But as the WaPo points out,

Musharraf's cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism efforts has not been popular in Pakistan.

"The military operations are being conducted for the sole purpose of appeasing the United States at the expense of innocent tribesmen who have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and the Taliban," said Mumtaz, the tribal elder.

More than 250 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in fighting over the past three months. Another 250 remain in Taliban custody after they surrendered to a group of insurgents in late August.

Ahhh, the mass surrender. I didn't mention it at the time, but it seemed very strange -- and it still does!

Ismail Kahn and Carlotta Gall reported it this way for the New York Times:

Pakistani Militants Hold Army Troops Hostage

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sept. 3 — Close to 300 Pakistani soldiers and officers have been held captive for four days after they were seized by pro-Taliban militants in a tribal region near the Afghan border without a shot being fired, government officials said Monday.

How do you capture 300 soldiers without a shot being fired? I'm not the only one who has been asking.

The Taliban claimed to have captured 300 men. A government official and a tribal elder, Maulan Esamuddin, who is involved in the negotiations, said 270 soldiers, officers and tribal paramilitary members had been captured. Nine were reported to be officers, including a colonel, and the Taliban had also seized 17 military trucks, officials have said.

The capture took place after an argument between officers and some militants. “Not a single shot was fired,” one official said.

Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune found somebody else who was asking himself the same question:

"That's a very good battalion that put down their arms," said Hamid Gul, who once headed Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.

"They didn't fire a shot. Why is that? They didn't want to fire on their own people. So they have been taken as guests of their own brothers. They are eating very well. Lovely fat-tailed sheep are being slaughtered for them," Gul said.

Gul, in a manner befitting a former intelligence chief, doesn't say much, but he does convey the impression that there is something very wrong with this picture.

In my opinion, the questions are obvious, and hard not to ask; the lying has been so transparent.

Ismail Kahn and Carlotta Gall continued:

The government has been reluctant to comment publicly on the situation. The chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, has said little and could not be reached for comment on Monday. He has told reporters over the last few days that the soldiers had not been captured, but were lodging with tribal villagers after running into poor weather.

But in comments made Monday to the television channel Dawn News, General Arshad admitted that the soldiers were being held hostage.

And of course now that the Pakistani spin-meisters have decided to play this event as a capture rather than a defection, we will see more attempts at rescue than we otherwise would. So it gives a certain focus to the otherwise potentially random bombing and strafing.

And let's not make any mistakes; bombing and strafing there will be.

Why? Because!! That's why!

Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network is still trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction including nuclear and biological arms, a new White House report on homeland security said Tuesday.

“We also must never lose sight of Al-Qaeda's persistent desire for weapons of mass destruction, as the group continues to try to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material,” the report said.

It's ludicrous, but it's also deadly serious, as Imtiaz Ali and Griffe Witte of the WaPo remind us:

On Tuesday, residents of Waziristan reported seeing scores of bodies -- including beheaded Pakistani soldiers -- on the outskirts of Mir Ali as they fled the area.

In America, where the White House manufactures the propaganda and the "maintsream media" deliver it non-stop until it almost starts to make sense, we think we're under threat of terrorism; we think we're fighting a war on terror; some of us even think we're winning. We have no idea.

Imagine what it means to leave your home and your possessions to get away from the bombing; think about gathering up your kids and your parents and forgetting all about your goats and your sheep and just getting lost somewhere a little safer; and don't forget to count the bodies -- including all the beheaded soldiers -- as you flee into the mountains.

Congratulations! You are now allied with the Americans in the Terror War. And nothing will ever be the same.

As the late great journalist, Edward R. Murrow, would say: "Good night, and good luck!"

That second part gets more important -- and more difficult -- with each passing day.

Pakistani Presidential Election Marching Straight Through The Looking Glass

In a surreal turn of events, Pakistan's Supreme Court has denied petitions to postpone today's presidential election until questions surrounding the legality of the incumbent are answered, but without expressing any urgency about the questions. The court ruling means the election will go ahead as scheduled, although the outcome will then be in doubt for more than a week.

According to the Pakistani formula for electing a president, 1070 voters cast 702 votes in a process where some votes are weighted. The voters are members of the national parliament or one of the four provincial assemblies, and the votes at the provincial level are weighted so that each province gets the same number of votes, regardless of the size of its assembly.

And all these parliamentarians and assembly members will be voting today, except those who have already resigned in protest against the apparent illegality of the incumbent, President General Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

It is often reported in the western press that Musharraf's candidacy seems to contravene a restriction against a military man holding a political office; it is less often reported that Musharraf appears ineligible for two other reasons. He has already served the limit of two terms, and the sitting parliaments have already "elected" Musharraf to the term he is currently serving; under the normal order of things, the next presidential election would not occur until after the next parliamentary elections. Then the new representatives would choose a new president.

That's the way it was supposed to work, but the President General has managed to schedule today's election in such a way that he has the lame duck members voting for him again. And the Supreme Court has said they can go ahead and do that.

But the court has also ruled that the results of the election must not be announced until after it has had a chance to review the petitions against the President General's eligibility, and it has scheduled hearings to resume on October 17th. So no matter what happens with the election, the result will be undecided for at least another week and a half.

Meanwhile, Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto have agreed on a so-called "reconciliation ordinance", essentially an amnesty for all politicians who served between 1988 and 1999. The amnesty allows Benazir Bhutto -- who was accused of corruption in 1999 and has been living in exile ever since -- to return to Pakistan and contest the coming parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for November. But it doesn't apply to another former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was deported shortly after his arrival in Pakistan last month.

In the west this arrangement is being described as pro-democracy, because it gives Bhutto and Musharraf a chance to craft a pro-US alliance.

TIME magazine added a special sort of spin:

The U.S., which calls Musharraf its most important ally in the war on terror, has been quietly but forcefully pushing for a power sharing deal between the two politicians. Although Musharraf stands a good chance of winning the presidency without the PPP — his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party has a slim majority in parliament — the support of Bhutto's party lends the elections, and Musharraf's certain presidency, the democratic credentials necessary to garner continued international support for the war on terror currently being waged in Pakistan. The White House has made no statement regarding the reconciliation accord announced on Thursday, other to repeat its call for "free and fair" elections and that the deal is a "matter for the Pakistanis to decide," according to spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

It's ironic that the White House would repeat its calls for "free and fair" elections, since the State Department has sent a few high-level emissaries to Pakistan lately, and they have pointedly avoided saying anything about free or fair. Quite the contrary, in fact.

On the ground in Pakistan, this election is anything but free and fair. And for this among other reasons, the result doesn't seems to be in any doubt.

Neverless, portions of the Pakistani press tend to portray the process as a major step in the transition from military dictatorship to democracy because Musharraf has promised to resign his post as army chief of staff if he wins another term as president.

In other words, the President General will no longer wear his uniform, only his business suits, and Pakistan will then have a civilian president. Bhutto will return to popular acclaim, possibly to serve as Prime Minister again (if she too can manage to circumvent the term limit for prime ministers -- she's already served two terms as well), and the two of them will provide the pro-US bulwark that Washington badly needs in a country which is simultaneously with the following four-fold distinction:

• America's number one Asian ally in the war against terrorism
• the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons
• al-Qaeda's alleged sanctuary, and
• the developing world's top spender in the global arms market
  

And the court's decision is being portrayed as a draw, or a setback for Musharraf, but other observers are emphasizing the court's decision to go ahead with the election, which appears to be a tacit agreement with the notion that lame-duck parliaments should elect the next president.

If it seems to you that there's something shady about outgoing senators and representatives electing the next president, you're not alone.

Nobody ever asks me for my opinion and mostly I try to report the news but humor me just this once: if Musharraf's deal with Bhutto means the parliamentarians loyal to her will now vote for him, this combined with the mass resignations among Musharraf's other opponents will assure a massive victory for him. Where will the Supreme Court find the political will to overturn such an eventuality -- especially in the knowledge that such a decision would lead to absolute political chaos?

The court has not announced what would happen should the President General be declared ineligible to run again today -- would the second-place candidate be given the presidency or would there be another presidential election? This seems like a moot question to me.

According to Husain Haqqani at Salon, the outcome could have grave ramifications for Osama bin Laden as well.

Haqqani quotes a few opinion polls which may or may not add much to the confusion:

An opinion poll conducted in Pakistan by the International Republican Institute in July indicated that 62 percent of Pakistanis want Musharraf to resign as army chief, that 59 percent believe a free and fair poll is not possible while he is in power, and that more people support the prospect of a transition negotiated between Bhutto and Musharraf than are opposed to it.

But another survey in August, from polling organization Terror Free Tomorrow, revealed an even more volatile current across Pakistan's political landscape -- that Osama bin Laden now had a higher approval rating, at 46 percent, than Musharraf, at 38 percent. (President Bush stood at 9 percent.)

Some people are making some sense, as I see it:

Hamid Khan, the lead counsel for presidential hopeful Justice (r) Wajeedhuddin Ahmed, said it was a positive sign that the court had allowed the continuation of the electoral process but had withheld the counting of votes and notification of election until its final decision of the case. “This is our initial success. Now we have to prove to the court that Musharraf is neither qualified for re-election nor can the current assemblies elect him as president for next five years,” he added.

But there's still all this confusion:

Senator Latif Khosa, counsel for Makhdoom Amin Fahim, said it was wrong to assume that the court had set aside their petitions. “It has partially accepted our point of view and ordered withholding of results. The president will not be able to take oath until the court decides the merits of the case. The court can declare the process null and void,” he argued.

Meanwhile, in talks with private TV channels, Justices (r) Sajjad Ali Shah and Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui said the SC decision was balanced in the given situation and expressed the hope that the case would be decided on merit.

And in the midst of all this, the most sensible remark I've read in a while came from Sardar Mumtaz Ali Khan Bhutto, the Chairman of the Sindh National Front, who said on Friday that a

general amnesty to the politicians involved in corruption and other cases would not restore democracy or develop national reconciliation in the country.

“On the contrary, the politicians with criminal record, who had absconded or were till [now] out of government, would now become shareholder[s] in power,” he said in a statement.

“Such a deal can never be called 'democracy' or 'national reconciliation,' he said adding that it would be beneficial only for Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Gen. Musharraf and bring more miseries for the masses already faced with lawlessness, corruption, unemployment, price-hike[s], poverty and mal-administration.

Mumtaz Bhutto said the US has misconceived that uniting moderate forces would make it easier to control the religious extremists.

And this is the key to the situation, I think. Musharraf is caught in the middle of a three-cornered tug-of-war, with radical Islam, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in one corner; a popular pro-democracy movement led by the country's lawyers and journalists in another; and of course the ever-present Americans, who are looking for

• political stability in the only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons,
• an ally in the so-called "global war on terror"
• a customer for the world's most active exporter of arms, and
• did I happen to mention a safe haven for al-Qaeda?
  

I wasn't supposed to mention that, was I?

Well, there's no surprise about any of this.

Chris Floyd laid it all out in black in blood in October of 2002!

Here's the bottom line: every military action taken by the United States puts money directly into the pockets of George W. Bush, his family and their elite business associates around the world. Every act of terrorism against the United States puts money directly into those same pockets -- because such acts lead to more military responses, more military spending, more anti-terror measures in both the public and private spheres.

Thus every single decision that George W. Bush makes about war and terrorism is compromised and corrupted by the indisputable fact that he and his closest associates stand to profit directly from conflict, destruction, fear and death. The more aggressive his response, the more money they will make. Whatever other motives you choose to see behind his decisions, this one fact taints them all.

These men have shown that they put profit above everything else -- and for them there is no profit in peace.

There's no profit in democracy, either. At home or abroad.

Raising The Bar: 'Precision Strike' On 'Taliban Commanders' May Claim Highest Civilian Death Toll Of Afghan War

In Afghanistan, officials are looking into many reports of civilian deaths and injuries after a supposedly precision NATO/US air strike, on a meeting of Taliban leaders. According to Al Jazeera,

The US military said in a statement that the air raid had been conducted against two "notorious Taliban commanders" holding a meeting in a remote area of the Baghran district.

"During a sizeable meeting of senior Taliban commanders, coalition forces employed precision guided munitions on their location after ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area," a statement said.

And did these precision guided munitions take care of the notorious Taliban commanders?

[The statement] added that the fate of the pair was unknown.

Only later did the Pentagon claim that three Taliban leaders had been killed.

But do you want to talk about fate? How's this for fate?

Considering that there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area, an astonishing number of innocent civilians appear to have been injured and/or killed.

Some sources are reporting 20 civilians injured; the BBC says 50 civilians are injured and many feared dead, the Muslim News says 200 are dead and the CBC says the total of dead and injured may be about 300. If the worst of these reports are even partially accurate, the extent of the "collateral damage" would exceed any atrocity committed in Afghanistan since the war there began.

According to the AP's Noor Kahn in the Guardian,

The attacks in Helmand province's Baghran district struck militants who had gathered to watch the hanging of two men accused by the Taliban of spying for the government, said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman.

The ministry said its intelligence reports indicated three militant leaders, including Taliban commander for Helmand province Mullah Rahim, were among those killed Thursday. The Taliban commander for all of southern Afghanistan, Dadullah Mansoor, was at the scene but his fate was not immediately known, Azimi said.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, denied Rahim was killed.

Abdul Qodous of Reuters tells a different story:

Afghan authorities were checking on Friday reported heavy civilian casualties after air strikes by Western forces in the southern province of Helmand.

At least 20 wounded civilians were brought to a main hospital in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, Helmand's police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.

"I can confirm there were heavy bombardments," Andiwal told Reuters by phone. "We have heard of heavy casualties too and have sent a team to investigate this."

A provincial lawmaker in Kabul, Mohammad Anwar, also received reports of high civilian casualties.

In the Lashkar Gah hospital, Shokhi Khan, a relative of one of the wounded, said several hundred civilians were killed or wounded in the strikes.

He said people had gathered for picnics and to go to a shrine in Baghran district north of Lashkar Gah on Thursday when the raids started.

A group of wounded civilians were also brought to a hospital in neighboring Kandahar. Journalists were barred from filming or talking to them inside the wards.

But several family members of victims talked to journalists and gave accounts similar to Khan's.

One, Haji Hakim Jan, a 27-year-old barefooted man, said he lost four of his brothers.

"I had another brother of mine and an eight-year-old sister wounded in the bombing," Jan said, adding that the deaths would alienate civilians from Western troops and make people join the Taliban insurgents.

Nahhh! Do you think?

How angry would you get if death fell from the sky and landed on members of your family?

Pakistan On Red Alert After Mosque Seizure

Masked Taliban gunmen have forcibly occupied the tomb of Haji Sahib Turangzai, who "led a successful Jihad against the British". They have also seized and a nearby mosque, which they have renamed Lal Masjid.

Pakistan's Daily Times quoted Taliban leader Umar Khalid as saying, “We want to take forward the missions of Haji Turangzai and Lal Masjid’s slain khateeb Ghazi Abdul Rashid.”

According to reports from India, Pakistani security forces are on red alert, with orders not to wear their uniforms or congregate in large groups. The change in status came after government officials claimed the former cleric of Lal Masjid, Abdul Aziz, had revealed during interrogation that five or six hundred students had been "trained, equipped and brainwashed to carry out suicide attacks", had left the mosque before it was attacked, and are still in Islamabad.

NDTV of New Delhi quoted an unnamed official as saying:

"During the debriefing of students from Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, the security agencies learnt that they believed that President Pervez Musharraf and his team were kaafirs (non-believers) and agents of the US and had to be killed."

and

"The bombers are targeting army and law enforcement personnel to avenge the killings of their colleagues and Abdul Rashid Ghazi."

Are these reports true? Or are they just lies being told for propaganda purposes? Time will probably tell, but I don't imagine anyone would want to find out the hard way.

Red Mosque Closed Indefinitely Amid Tight Security

Lal Masjid, the Red Mosque in Islamabad, has been sealed indefinitely following yesterday's violence, and the Hindustan Times has the story:

The Pakistani government on Saturday sealed the troubled Lal Masjid in Islamabad, a day after a suicide attack killed 15 people during clashes between Islamic extremists and security forces following its reopening.

Hundreds of policemen set up new checkpoints and cordoned off the area around the compound with barbed wire. "The mosque will now remain closed for an indefinite period," Interior Ministry spokesman Javid Cheema said.

Security in Islamabad was also strengthened to thwart possible attacks by Islamist radicals.

Police were deployed at all entry and exit points of the capital and the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where security forces were put on high alert.

The authorities had carried out reconstructive surgery of the head of the suspected suicide attacker to make his face recognisable, while other parts of his body were sent to the laboratory for DNA testing.

The bombing targeted a group of policemen deployed near the Red Mosque to quell an irate mob of some 2,000 Islamic theology students who occupied the compound for several hours after it reopened for Friday prayers.

The police used tear gas to disperse the crowd and arrested around 100 rioters as it regained the control of the mosque compound.

The Mosque was central to the CIA / NSA effort to radicalize an Islamic insurgency against the Soviets in Afghanistan. This effort began in 1979 under President Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinsky, and grew much larger during Ronald Reagan's presidency. The mosque itself has been a source of pride and the recipient of much official support. By some accounts it served as a launching pad for the Taliban, who with the help of Pakistan's army and its intelligence service (the ISI), wound up evicting the Red Army and controlling Afghanistan.

But the relationship between the Pakistani government and the Taliban changed drastically shortly after September 11, 2001, when Pakistan -- which many intelligence analysts see as one of the world's primary sources of terrorism -- reputedly became America's top Asian ally in the so-called Global War On Terror.

So -- if we believe the official tale on this point -- Pakistan has been, in effect, charged by the Americans with the responsibility of fighting a movement that it -- and the USA -- once supported. And Uncle Sam has been giving Pakistan at least $100 million a month for its "expenses" in fighting the GWOT, but the Pakistani Army has become increasingly reluctant to attack its former friends, and a "peace settlement" between the two was arranged last summer. But lately the Americans have begun to get a bit picky about this, and threatening to tie future aid to anti-terrorism "performance".

All this background to the siege and eventual storming of the mosque complex is quite often overlooked in the rush to tell the story of the day.

And in recent days -- while we've been talking about other things -- Pakistani forces have been skirmishing with "militant extremists" in the mountainous northwest of the country, apparently carrying out attacks but also being ambushed from time to time, and nobody knows whether or not this has anything to do with the Americans talking of making the aid conditional, or whether it has anything to do with thinly veiled threats of military intervention coming from the State Department. But this is certainly a moot point to the families and friends of the people who have been killed.

In the opinions of many, including your frozen scribbler, what we're seeing here is intimately connected, not only with the largely secret history of American-sponsored Islamic terrorism, but also with the future of global terror, as well as the future of the GWOT -- and these, unfortunately, are two very different things.

I have argued many times here that the GWOT is "bogus", and many aspects of it certainly are that, but on the other hand there really are people who are willing to blow themselves to smithereens in order to kill 15 or 20 others.

In Pakistan last year there were more than 650 terrorist attacks, in which more than 900 people were killed, and this year so far it's been worse. Much of the most serious damage has been caused by suicide bombers. So this wave of suicide bombings -- horrific as it is -- is nothing new for Pakistan, and as you can see there's no trace of surprise or emotion in the reports of "reconstructive surgery of the head" of the suspected attacker, "to make his face recognisable" ... after he killed 15 people and injured another 70 in the heart of the national capital!

Can you imagine what would happen if a suicide bomber had killed 15 people in Washington, after the government had attacked a church-school complex, which until relatively recently had been politically "connected" ... and Americans think we know what it's like to live under the constant threat of terrorism!

What we know is what it's like to live under a constant barrage of propaganda. And an investigation into yesterday's bombing has begun. And the Red Mosque is closed indefinitely. But the Taliban will not be shut down so easily.

Suicide Warfare In Pakistan: 'The Peace Agreement Has Ended'

Suicide warfare rages again in Pakistan.

Riaz Khan of the Associated Press is in Peshawar and comes to us via The Guardian:

Suicide bombers struck yesterday in two areas of north-western Pakistan, killing up to 38 people, while Taliban militants broke a 10-month-old peace deal with the government along the Afghan frontier.
...

"The peace agreement has ended," Abdullah Farad, a militant spokesman, told journalists in Peshawar. He said the Taliban chief in North Waziristan, Maulvi Gul Badahar, made the decision at a council meeting after the government had failed to abide by its demand to withdraw troops from checkpoints by 4pm yesterday.

The government has deployed thousands of troops to the region to thwart calls by extremists for a holy war to avenge the bloody storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque last week.

In case you missed it, the Pakistani government's attack on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) complex, in which more than 100 people died, occasioned a series of detailed and disturbing articles on this very page.

The announcement came as three blasts struck a military convoy in Swat, a mountainous area of North West Frontier province, killing 18 people and wounding 47, a government official said. He said two explosive-laden vans had rammed the convoy and that the dead included seven civilians.

In Pakistan's Daily Times, Zakir Hassnain and Manzoor Ali Shah reported:

Sunday’s first attack occurred between 7:00am and 7:40am, when two cars packed with explosives rammed into a convoy of several vehicles passing through Matta bazaar in Mingora, Swat. In addition, a landmine also hit the convoy, Swat District Coordination Officer (DCO) Syed Muhammad Javed told Daily Times.

“Among the dead, 11 are army jawans, six civilians, including a child, and two suicide bombers,” said the DCO, adding that among the injured, 41 were from the army, two from the Frontier Corps (FC), two from the police, and two were civilians. The blast destroyed some nearby houses and damaged a market.
...

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. “Some people have been taken into custody and the police are investigating,” Javed said. He said the injured were shifted to hospitals in Peshawar, Mardan and Rawalpindi in helicopters. Asked if the government would now conduct an operation against militants in Swat, Major General Waheed Arshad, director general of ISPR, said: “We’ll see what we can do. There is no such move at the moment.”

Riaz Khan again:

In the day's second attack, a suicide bomber targeted people taking exams for recruitment to the police force in Dera Ismail Khan. The blast killed 20 people and wounded 35, said police officer Mohammed Aslam.

The Daily Times provides additional details:

At about 4:15pm, a suicide bomber blew himself up at DI Khan Police Lines as candidates took police entrance exams. Police official Safiullah told Daily Times that a total of 26 people were killed, including 12 policemen and the suicide bomber, and 61 others were wounded.

Dera Ismail Khan District Nazim Haji Abdul Rauf said it was not clear how the bomber entered the police lines, whose entrance was guarded by policemen. Police officer Mohammed Aslam told AP that more than 150 people were on the premises when the bomber struck. He said the suicide bomber’s head and suicide vest had been found.

There you go. 26 dead, 61 wounded, another 65 or more lucky not to be bleeding, and they found the head and the vest.

So the much-criticized truce is over.

Under the 2006 truce, soldiers manning security posts throughout the region returned to their barracks and militants agreed to no longer take part in attacks in Pakistan or Afghanistan. While the agreement ended much of the violence, critics said the truce gave the militants a haven from which to plan and launch attacks on forces in Afghanistan.

But never fear. Here come the Americans to the rescue, in their usual subtle yet effective way:

US to pour 750 million into Pakistan's tribal areas: NY Times

WASHINGTON, July 16 (AFP) The administration of President George W. Bush plans to pour 750 million dollars worth of aid into Pakistan's tribal areas in a bid to wrest it away from Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, The New York Times reported on its website late Sunday.

But citing unnamed officials involved in the planning, the newspaper said some people were warning of the dangers of distributing so much money in an area where oversight is impossible.

Who will be given the aid has quickly become one of the most contentious questions between local officials and American planners concerned that millions might fall into the wrong hands, the report said.

Many of the local people have already decided not to hang around and find out.

Thousands flee from Pakistani tribal areas after militants scrap peace deal

ISLAMABAD, July 16 (AFP) Thousands fled a tribal area Monday after pro-Taliban militants scrapped a peace deal with the government there, following three weekend suicide bombings that left more than 70 dead.

In the tribal area of North Waziristan, thousands of people fled the main city of Miranshah after local militants tore up a peace agreement they had struck last year with President Musharraf's government.

Bazaars were deserted as hundreds of families fled the town for safer areas, and Radio Pakistan went off the air when broadcasters joined other government officials in leaving the tense area, local residents said.

It may not be politically correct to speak of murderous tension as chickens coming home to roost, but Sir Cyril Townsend's just-published opinion piece in the Brunei Times summarizes the history fairly well:

The recent history of the Red Mosque, the second largest mosque in the capital -- it can accommodate 4,000 for prayers -- highlights the problems of Pakistan. A previous military ruler of the country, General Zia ul-Haq, agreed to the expansion of the Red Mosque in return for the enlistment of young recruits for the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

This led on to the mosque and its religious schools becoming a centre for jihadi elements, especially al-Qaeda. In the 1990s the state's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), gave the mosque its full backing and used it for meetings.

Following the attacks on America in September 2001, President Musharraf aligned his country with Western and certain Arab governments in their campaign against terrorism. This brought the militants into direct conflict with the president. The government's launching of military operations in the North West Frontier Province against the Taliban led to calls for the assassination of President Musharraf.

The president is caught between the two forces of extremism, with calls for [shariah] law throughout the country, and moderate Pakistanis and Western governments, with their calls for vigorous action against the militants.

So the President-General has been playing a complicated game, trying to stay upright -- and intact -- with the Americans pushing him forward while his countrymen pull him in two different directions.

Given this context, some commentators may see (or portray) the Taliban's denunciation of the 10-month-old truce as a stride forward in the War on Terror. But most if not all of them will likely ignore the many serious questions and very grave dangers that remain.

In my opinion, the BBC's Barbara Plett raised one of the key questions on Saturday, in her discussion of the media tour of the battleground mosque:

As I wandered through the blackened, battle-scarred remains of the madrassa, it was evident to me there could be no military solution to Pakistan's problems.

Yet more and more Pakistanis are asking whether there can be anything else while a general sits in the president's chair.

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twelfth in a series