Pakistan Refugees Return to Swat
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Thousands of people began returning to Pakistan's Swat Valley after nearly three months of fighting that drove the Taliban from the region and created the country's worst refugee crisis in six decades.

Pakistan earned praise at home and abroad for its offensive in Swat, which began in April after the collapse of a peace deal that handed the valley just 100 miles north of Islamabad, the capital, to militants.

Under the protection of soldiers and helicopter gunships, refugees started coming back Monday. How Pakistan manages the return of the nearly two million people who fled the fighting will go a long way to determining whether it can solidify the army's gains in the strategic valley as it moves to retake more-formidable Taliban strongholds in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

In a reminder that the threat facing Pakistan has spread beyond northwestern regions such as Swat and tribal areas, an explosion Monday in the country's east killed at least nine people.

The midmorning blast in a farming village near Mian Channu, in Punjab province, appeared to have been caused by explosives stored in the house of a teacher who had set up a small religious school, a police official said.

He couldn't say why explosives were in the house, but two senior Punjab police officials said there was evidence the building was used as a meeting place for Islamist militants, who in recent months have stepped up attacks in previously peaceful parts of eastern Pakistan.

Separately, 13 suspected al Qaeda militants, including four Kuwaiti and two Saudi nationals, were arrested near Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, Reuters reported. Security forces also recovered explosive-fitted jackets used for suicide bombing, an official said.

In Swat, officials have carefully planned the refugees' return, many observers say. Pakistani and international aid officials say they have mapped out how the government would ensure the orderly -- and voluntary -- return of residents to the valley and surrounding areas, where police and local government are nearly nonexistent, schools and clinics are shuttered, and many houses were destroyed or damaged in the fighting. >>> ZAHID HUSSAIN in Sakha Kott, Pakistan, and MATTHEW ROSENBERG in New Delhi | Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Honour Killings in Pakistan: Adherents of the Religion of Peace, Love, Compassion and Mercy Have Been Trying to Prove Islam’s Superiority Again!
THE TELEGRAPH: Dozens of relatives of a Pakistani teenager who eloped against her parents' wishes shot her dead on Monday in a raid on her new home which also left her husband and in-laws dead, police said.

Relatives dressed in police uniforms stormed the bridegroom's house in the district of Charsadda, in North West Frontier Province.

"The assailants took the bridegroom out while some of the attackers climbed the wall and entered the house. They killed the bride, the mother and sister of the bridegroom," said Saleem Jan, a police official for the Charsadda district.

"They beat them first and then shot them dead," he told AFP news agency.

The groom's father was also killed, another police official told AFP.

Police said the bride, who was 18 or 19 years old, came from the deeply conservative Mardan district next to Charsadda. She had run away and married her boyfriend, who was around 30, without telling her parents.

"Both the girl and man married some weeks ago," Misal Khan, the bridegroom's uncle, told reporters at the scene.

Police said the main suspects were two uncles and a cousin.

Human rights groups have strongly condemned the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, which claim the lives of hundreds of women each year. Pakistani family shot dead in 'honour killing' after wedding >>> | Monday, June 29, 2009

Taliban "Shaving Beards" to Flee Swat: Army
REUTERS: KOTA, Pakistan - Taliban fighters are shaving off their beards and trying to flee from a Pakistani army offensive in their Swat bastion, the military said on Friday, as it relaxed a curfew to allow civilians to get out.

The army launched an offensive in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, last week to stop the spread of Taliban influence which had alarmed the United States and other Western allies of nuclear-armed Pakistan.

More than 900,000 civilians have fled and the United Nations has warned of a humanitarian tragedy unless Pakistan gets massive assistance.

Clashes had erupted in various parts of the region, the military said on Friday, adding it was achieving successes.
It also appealed to civilians to identify Taliban fighters trying to flee.

"We have confirmed reports that these Taliban terrorists, after shaving off their beards and cutting their hair, are fleeing from the area," the military said in a statement.

"We request the people of Swat to identify them," it said, while providing a telephone number for informants to call or send text messages.

Taliban members and supporters usually have long beards and many of them also have long hair. There was no immediate comment from the Taliban about the military's statement. >>> By Junaid Khan | Friday, May 15, 2009

Trapped by Taliban Terror
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Innocent families are hemmed in as the army tries to crush the hardline Islamic militants fighting for control of north-west Pakistan

A Taliban militant smiles as he holds his weapon outside the mosque where tribal elders and the Taliban met in Daggar, Buner's main town, Pakistan, Thursday, April 23, 2009. Photo courtesy of The Sunday Times
FIERCE fighting engulfed the once serene mountain resort of Swat yesterday, with thousands of civilians trapped as the Pakistani army launched an all-out offensive against the Taliban.

In Swat’s main town of Mingora, now controlled by the Taliban, residents described a scene of terror. Taliban positions were heavily shelled, food and water were running low and electricity and most telephone lines had been cut.

Some described how they were left cowering inside their homes, praying for survival as fighter jets screeched overhead. An army curfew and Taliban threats prevented them fleeing.

The army said it had killed 55 more Taliban fighters in Swat yesterday, bringing the total to more than 200 since the operation began. Hundreds of civilians were feared dead. The provincial government, claiming that hundreds of thousands more were flooding down from the mountains in search of safety, said it could not cope. >>> Christina Lamb and Daud Pakistan Khattak in Batkhela, Swat Valley | Sunday, May 10, 2009

Taliban Tighten Hold on Pakistan as Army Backs Off
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: TALIBAN forces tightened their grip on Pakistan's Swat region and continued resisting the military's efforts to dislodge them from neighbouring Buner, bringing a fragile peace accord closer to collapse and the volatile north-west region nearer to full-fledged conflict.

Yet even as the Taliban continued their rampage and rejected the Government's latest concession to their demands - the appointment of Islamic-law judges in Swat - Pakistan's military leaders clung to hopes for a non-violent solution, saying that security forces were "still exercising restraint to honour the peace agreement".

Behind this strained hope for a peaceful solution lies an array of factors - competing military priorities, reluctance to fight fellow Muslims, lack of strong executive leadership and some internal sympathy for the insurgents - that analysts say has long prevented the Pakistani army from making a full-fledged assault on violent Islamist groups. >>> Declan Walsh in Islamabad | Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Thousands Flee Pakistan's Swat Valley
Residents prepare to flee from Mingora, the main town in Pakistan's Swat Valley. Photo courtesy of The Wall Street Journal
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: ISLAMABAD -- Thousands of panicked residents on foot and crammed in buses, vans and trucks fled Swat valley north of Pakistan's capital Tuesday following the breakdown of a fragile truce between government forces and the Taliban.

Authorities lifted a curfew for a few hours to allow residents to evacuate as the militants took control of Mingora, the main town of the valley, which lies about 100 miles from Islamabad. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, said he expects as many as 500,000 to flee in the near future.

Khushal Khan, head of the local administration, urged residents to leave their homes before evening as fighting between the army and militants broke out once again. Pakistan's military has been fighting the Taliban in Swat after each side accused the other of failing to honor the terms of a peace accord struck in February to end the conflict in Swat in return for the imposition of Sharia law.

Tuesday's exodus worsened a humanitarian problem stemming from the displacement of more than half a million people from Pakistan's lawless tribal region near the Afghan border and in parts of North West Frontier Province where security forces have been check the militants' efforts to expand their influence. >>> By Zahid Hussain | Tuesday, May 5, 2009

New Dark Age Alert! Taliban Gunmen Shooting Couple Dead for Adultery Caught on Camera
Are these the tribal savages Obama wants to do business with?

By now, it should be becoming increasingly obvious to all that Islam is a ‘religion’ neither of peace nor love. Do not let your cowardly politicians fool you!

Further, be sure of this: Wherever Islam spreads, and whenever it becomes stronger in numbers, its adherents become ever more emboldened. If you think that this sort of brutality and savagery couldn’t happen in the West, you are GREATLY mistaken. – ©Mark

THE TELEGRAPH: Taliban gunmen have been filmed executing a surprised couple whom they repeatedly shot for the alleged crime of adultery.


Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Their "crime" was an alleged affair in their remote mountain village controlled by militants in an area that was only recently under the government's sway. It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread.

But this time, with black-turbaned gunmen almost at the gates of Islamabad, the rare footage has shown urban Pakistanis what could now await them.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that Islamic extremists could take over the nation. >>> By Saeed Shah in Islamabad | Saturday, April 25, 2009

Alarm Grows Over Pakistan’s Failure to Halt Militant Gains
Taliban militants on Thursday outside a mosque where tribal elders and members of the Taliban met in Daggar, the main town in the Buner district of Pakistan. Photo courtesy of The New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With 400 to 500 Taliban fighters newly in control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from here, Pakistani authorities have deployed only a poorly paid and equipped constabulary force — numbering just several hundred — to the area.

The Taliban appeared to be consolidating control in the district, Buner, on Thursday after moving in and establishing checkpoints on Wednesday. Residents said Taliban militants held a meeting, or jirga, with local elders and the local administration on Thursday. The residents said the meeting yielded a truce similar to the one reached with local leaders in the Swat Valley, which resulted in the agreement by the government of President Asif Ali Zardari to allow the imposition of Islamic law there 10 days ago.

“This concession represents a serious development and reflects both the growing strength of the Pakistani Taliban and the inability of the Pakistani army to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who just returned from his fifth visit to Pakistan.

The fall of Buner has raised new international alarm about the ability of the Pakistani government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance from the Swat Valley, where as part of the truce agreement, the Pakistani Army remains in its barracks. The Taliban have moved to within a few hours’ drive of Islamabad, the capital of this country, and the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi.

The Pakistani military does not have a presence in Buner, Pakistani and Western officials said. From the hills of the district, the Taliban have access to the flatlands of the district of Swabi, which lead directly to the four-lane highway that connects Islamabad and Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, where much of the Pakistani Taliban operate. >>> By Jane Perlez and Zubair Shah | Thursday, April 23, 2009

Pakistan – NWFP: Swat Taliban Consolidate Grip over Buner
Istiqbal Khan, a parliamentarian from Buner, told the AP that the militants had entered the district in ‘large numbers’ and started setting up checkpoints at main roads and strategic positions.—AP. Photo courtesy of Dawn
DAWN.COM: ISLAMABAD: Taliban militants are setting up checkpoints in a district next to Swat Valley, officials and witnesses said Wednesday, spurring fears that a government-backed peace deal imposing Islamic law in the area has emboldened the insurgents to expand their reign.

Reports that the top government official in another adjacent district was kidnapped by militants added to the growing concern.

Pakistan’s president signed off on the peace pact last week in hopes of calming Swat, where some two years worth of clashes between the Taliban and security forces have killed hundreds and displaced up to a third of the one-time tourist haven’s 1.5 million residents.

The agreement covers the Malakand region, which comprises roughly one-third of NWFP, a strategic stretch that runs along the Afghan border and bumps into the tribal areas where al Qaeda and the Taliban reportedly have strongholds.

Supporters say the deal was the best way to bring peace, and that it also addresses long-time local grievances over the inefficient regular judicial system. Critics, including the White House, have slammed the deal as an affront to democracy and human rights, saying it gives militants a state-sanctioned sanctuary.

Some critics go as far as to say that Swat could be the first domino to fall — that Islamabad, which is less than a hundred miles away, could follow along with other segments of the country that neighbours Afghanistan. >>> | Wednesday, April 22, 2009