Leading Article: Pakistan Finally Takes on the Monster It Created
THE INDEPENDENT: This is a battle that Islamabad should have embarked upon long ago

This week it became brutally clear that Pakistan is effectively at war. A series of brazen assaults by jihadis on police stations, army garrisons and civilian targets across the country in recent days have claimed 160 lives. The military, meanwhile, is preparing for an assault on the militant stronghold of Waziristan.

The death toll is destined to rise further. There will be more casualties, more bombings and more turmoil in this nuclear-armed nation. This battle against a diffused guerrilla force is likely to take years, rather than months. But we need to be absolutely clear about one thing: this is not a struggle that the Pakistani state can avoid. Indeed, it is one that it should have embarked upon a long time ago.

For the best part of two decades, successive Pakistani governments tolerated the growth of Islamist militias (both in the western tribal regions and in the Punjab) in the belief that these groups were useful proxies in the regional strategic struggle with India. The country's intelligence services even funded and armed them. Just as dangerously, the authorities allowed the religious fundamentalists to establish hundreds of schools which churned out indoctrinated recruits to swell the ranks of the militias. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban were trained in such establishments.

The Pakistani authorities believed they could control these fanatics. They were wrong. Earlier this year when the Pakistani Taliban moved into an area only 100km from the capital Islamabad and began to impose their own brutal penal code on its inhabitants, the penny finally dropped among Pakistan's leaders that they had created a monster. >>> | Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Airline Bomb Plot: A Reminder that Britain Is At War with Islamist Militants
THE TELEGRAPH: The conviction of three home-grown al-Qaeda terrorists who conspired to blow up seven transatlantic flights from the UK to the US and Canada underscores the savage and brutal nature of the enemy we are facing. The would-be Muslim suicide bombers planned to carry out the biggest terrorist atrocity since 9/11, which if executed would have claimed the lives of thousands of Britons and Americans. It would have been a mass slaughter of men, women and children by evil and barbaric fundamentalists driven by a belief in militant Islam and an intense hatred of the Judeo-Christian world and the values of liberty and freedom that underpin it.

The attempted airline terror attacks are a stark reminder that the West, and Britain and the United States in particular, is engaged in a global war against an Islamist enemy that seeks its destruction. These al-Qaeda operatives and their terror masters who planned to bring carnage to the skies over the Atlantic, targeted the Anglo-American alliance because it represents the central bulwark in the defence of the free world. It is no coincidence that al-Qaeda did not attempt to bomb flights out of Paris, Brussels or Berlin. They chose targets that symbolized the Special Relationship between their greatest enemies – the US and the UK, the two nations who are bearing the overwhelming burden in both blood and treasure in the battle to defeat Islamist terrorism.

These latest convictions at Woolwich Crown Court followed the successful conviction last year of the Muslim fanatic Mohammed Hamid – dubbed “Osama bin London” - who ran a series of British terror training camps. Unfortunately they represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the scale of the British-based terrorist threat. According to MI5 there are over 2,000 known terrorist suspects in the UK, with up to 200 terror networks in operation. There have been at least 15 major attempted terrorist attacks in Britain since 9/11, with over 1,200 terrorism-related arrests. >>> Nile Gardiner* | Monday, September 07, 2009

*Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.

Pakistani Peace Deal Gives New Clout to Taliban Rebels
Map courtesy of The Wall Street Journal
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: MINGORA, Pakistan -- Thousands of Islamist militants are pouring into Pakistan's Swat Valley and setting up training camps here, quickly making it one of the main bases for Taliban fighters and raising their threat to the government in the wake of a controversial peace deal.

President Asif Ali Zardari effectively ratified the government's deal with the Taliban Monday by signing a bill that imposes Islamic law in Swat, a key plank of the accord, hours after legislators overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging it. Pakistani officials have touted the deal, reached in February, as a way to restore peaceful order in the bloodied region -- which lies just a few hours' drive from the capital -- and halt the Taliban's advance.

Yet a visit to the Taliban-controlled valley here found mounting evidence that the deal already is strengthening the militants as a base for war. U.S. officials contend the pact has given the Taliban and its allies in al Qaeda and other Islamist groups an advantage in their long-running battle against Pakistan's military.

The number of militants in the valley swelled in the months before the deal with the Taliban was struck, and they continue to move in, say Pakistani and U.S. officials. They now estimate there are between 6,000 and 8,000 fighters in Swat, nearly double the number at the end of last year.

Taliban leaders here make no secret of their ultimate aim. "Our objective is to drive out Americans and their lackeys" from Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the group, in an interview here. "They are not Muslims and we have to throw them out."

Militant training camps are springing up across the valley's thickly forested mountainsides. "Young men with no prospect of employment and lack of education facilities are joining the militants," said Abdur Rehman, a schoolteacher in Swat. >>> By Zahid Hussain and Matthew Rosenberg | Tuesday, April 14, 2009