LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With QuoteI have to give them credit, They are doing the job they need to do, no more bargains just irradicate them completely. At worst case force them to the border and then converge from both sides of it with an allie.
Well when you deal the cards and have a spare set in your back pocket you have to win all the time.)
Though I would make it a 50/50 issue re drones and the fact the PA are actually doing something the North Waziristan militants are not happy about. Perhaps they see themselves next on the list. Naturally get in first and you get the physiological edge.
The drone excuse can also be one of attempting to get public support.
Anyway just guesses.
I have to give them credit, They are doing the job they need to do, no more bargains just irradicate them completely. At worst case force them to the border and then converge from both sides of it with an allie.
Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.
well, no, actually the pakistanis were only going after one of the three taliban factions in waziristan. until today, that is, when one of the fence-sitters declared open season on the PA.
oh well, take what you can get, i guess.
The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"
-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Actually two.Originally Posted by astralis
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistani militants abandon deal
The group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan withdrew from the deal as the army stepped up its offensive against the Taliban in the north-west.....
Most of the drone strikes have been targeted at Hafiz Gul Bahadur and another tribal leader, Maulvi Nazir.
Both leaders signed the peace deals with the army in 2007.
But Maulvi Nazir also abandoned his deal when he declared war on the Pakistan army two days ago. ......
Obama may be happy the Talibans are not doing well in winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Pakistanis. But he is also not winning.
Pakistanis turn on Taliban, but resent U.S. -poll
WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) - Public opinion in Pakistan has turned sharply against the Taliban and other Islamist militants but Pakistanis still do not trust the United States and President Barack Obama, a poll showed on Wednesday.
The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, conducted last month as Pakistan's army fought the Taliban in the Swat Valley, found that most Pakistanis see the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda as a critical threat to the nuclear-armed country.
Those Pakistanis who view Islamist militants and local Taliban as a critical threat to their country rose to 81 percent, up from 34 percent in a similar poll in late 2007, the University of Maryland polling project found. ...
The university's Program on International Policy Attitudes conducts polls around the world.
In the poll, seventy percent voiced sympathy for their government over the Pakistani Taliban in the fight for Swat, ... Seventy-two percent said they were confident Pakistan's army could handle the situation.
The shift in Pakistani public opinion on Islamist militants operating within Pakistan represented a "sea change" caused by "widespread revulsion" at brutal tactics and undemocratic policies of the Taliban when they briefly controlled Swat, poll research director Clay Ramsay said in a statement.
He added that the poll indicated "the U.S. is resented just as much as before, despite the U.S. having a new president."
Sixty-two percent of those questioned expressed low or no confidence that Obama would do the right thing in world affairs. ... U.S. drone attacks on militant camps within Pakistan were called unjustified by 82 percent of those in the poll.
Large majorities opposed all aspects of the U.S.-led war in neighboring Afghanistan. On Afghanistan, 61 percent said it would be bad if the Taliban took over that country, while 87 percent said Taliban groups who seek to overthrow the Afghan government should not be permitted to have bases in Pakistan. ...
Seventy-two percent disapproved of the war in Afghanistan and 79 percent wanted it ended now, while 86 percent disapproved of Obama's decision to more than double the number of U.S. troops in that country, to 68,000, by the end of 2009.
Asked about Obama's goals, 93 percent agreed with the view that he sought to impose American culture on the Islamic world, and 90 percent supported the notion that he wanted to weaken and divide the Muslim world, the survey showed.
There are many Talibans groups in Pakistan. The Pakistan Army is fighting only some of them.
Is Pakistan's Taliban war about to get bigger?
1 July ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Militants ambushed a Pakistani military convoy in North Waziristan on the Afghan border this week killing 16 soldiers and threatening to open a new front for the army in its campaign against the Taliban.
The militants were from a faction led by a commander, Gul Bahadur, who agreed to a peace pact with the government last year. A faction spokesman said his men would now go on the offensive against the army.
There are numerous militant factions in Pakistan's northwest with differing objectives, some intent on forcing foreign troops out of Afghanistan, others fighting Pakistan.
WHICH GROUPS IS PAKISTAN FIGHTING?
The military launched a drive two months ago in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad but not on the Afghan border, against a Taliban faction led by a commander known as Fazlullah.
The government has also ordered an offensive against Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, on the Afghan border. Both factions have been fighting Pakistani security forces and carrying out bomb attacks. Last year, the army went on the attack against close Mehsud ally, Faqir Mohammad, in the Bajaur region at the northeastern end of the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the Afghan border.
The area had become an al Qaeda hub and Mohammad's men had also attacked Pakistani security forces. Some al Qaeda-linked factions of groups nurtured in the 1990s to battle Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region have also "gone rogue" and are attacking the Pakistani state.
WHO ARE THE OTHER GROUPS?
Other groups have traditionally focused on fighting Western forces in Afghanistan. Another main faction in South Waziristan is led by a commander known as Maulvi Nazir. In North Waziristan, there is Bahadur's group and a network led by veteran Afghan guerrilla commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose men fight Western forces in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban also operate out of enclaves on the Pakistani side of the border, with many leaders believed to be based in Baluchistan province. Like the Haqqani network, the Afghan Taliban do not launch attacks in Pakistan. ...
PAKISTAN'S POSITION
Some analysts say Pakistan is fighting the groups that pose the greatest danger to it, the ones attacking security forces and setting off bombs in cities, while largely ignoring the groups that fight in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a tradition of using Islamist fighters to achieve foreign policy aims and analysts say it is nervous about the growing influence of old rival India in Afghanistan, and about the prospect of U.S. forces pulling out and leaving the country in chaos. For these reasons, analysts say, Pakistan is reluctant to open hostilities with groups, such as the Haqqani network and Afghan Taliban, which pose no danger to it and which could provide leverage in Afghanistan. ....
I spoke to the senior analyst of PAKMIL at NSA last week. And he said they are on a serious roll right now. Swat Valley ops went WAY better than the last time the troops went out-of-garrison for a long operation. Performance is up, fighting spirit is up, and the PAKMIL seem to be getting a clue re: doing good COIN work. If they take ineffective sniper fire from a village, don't go with the old method of flattening it with airstrikes and artillery; get the elders to turn over the Bad Guy in exchange for a pay-off that makes sense to the locals.
The PA General Staff seem to know that they've got momentum now, and they don't want to take their boys back into barracks while they've still got an edge of their sword. So, they're staying out, and widening their areas of operations. The troops responded well, and feel like they're tough enough to take back a measure of their pride from the guys they're fighting, who don't hold as much terror for the lads anymore.
I do NOT claim that the PAKMIL has turned the tide, but this summer is a whole helluva lot different than last year, with a pack of rolling-eyed crazy wogs chasing the PAKMIL back into their hidey-holes. THAT was simply DISGRACEFUL. THIS is shaping up to be a completely different story.
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
I think the Taliban seriously overstepped themselves here.
I'm thinking they figured they'd take over Pakistan in the same way they took over Afghanistan...except that Pakistan, while having a -very- large amount of popular support for what the Taliban stood for, was most definitely not what Afghanistan was.
And committing their signature barbaric atrocities against the Pakistanis only served to sour their image in the hearts and minds of the local citizenry and soldiery.
Nothing like the law of unintended consequences at work. Iran's "Supreme Leader" is figuring this out as well.
The PA is in for a long haul as recent events have suggested with more Triabl leaders scrapping deals with the GOP.
However it is important that the Govt. share the news with the people of Pakistan otherwise it will give rise to plenty of conspiracy theories ( never in short supply).
Knowing the reality
The link to the editorial is atWhatever the plans prepared in advance, the war determines its own pace and direction - a truism that of late we see unfolding before us. As the Swat operation was thought to have been nearly accomplished NWFP Governor Owais Ghani ordered the forces to move into South Waziristan and capture Baitullah Mehsud who had claimed responsibility for the assassination of Lahore-based anti-Taliban cleric Allama Sarfraz Naeemi.
The said Taliban chief, safely ensconced in the rugged Mehsud heartland, had escaped CIA-operated drone attacks for the American determination that he is not involved in Afghanistan. But he was almost friendless in that area, because the other important regional Taliban commanders, Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, had cut peace deals with the Pakistan government. Consequently, the conflicting loyalties of the two sets of Taliban commanders tended to be undermining the Pak-US anti-Taliban co-operation in the tribal region.
Now that the Pakistan government had made up its mind to storm the Baitullah's stronghold there came about the deadly drone attack on a funeral of the target of an earlier drone strike forcing the change of heart among the Taliban of North Waziristan.
The ferocity with which they struck a military convoy killing some 17 regular troops including three officers, clearly suggests that the war against Taliban in the tribal belt is going to be a long-haul hard-fought business. No wonder, in the emerging scenario, as the latest media reports indicate, the long-withheld US reluctance to share drone attacks information with Pakistani forces has given way to shared operational intelligence.
What we have on our hands today is not a conventional war against a known enemy across the international border. It is a kind of civil war (though one may call it low-grade insurgency or militancy to make it look less dangerous). Indeed, it is being fought on hard ground but, quintessentially, its main battlefield is in the hearts and minds of the people. You win or lose this war there.
So, it is essential that you keep them fully informed of the gains and losses in that war. A case in point: we very well know how barbaric is this lot called Taliban but had our government presented pictorial evidence of the recent slaughtering incident in Biha valley in Swat, its impact would have been far more serious.
Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily]
For those complaining that why the PA is not taking all of the Taliban factions at once, the big part of the reason is capability and resources. Both in terms of men, equipment and especially air assets. Our old Cobras are already overworked and 6 or so refurbished Cobras the US has provided since 2001 had a host of problems. It's just an old machine. The upgraded F-16's are still no where to be seen. Without proper air power, attacking the Taliban in some of the best guerrilla fighting areas in the world against some of the best guerrilla fighters is close to suicide for any force.
PA desperately needs more NVDs, gunships, transport helos, Wheeled APCs to be able to effectively fight. None of this has been forthcoming so far as the US is reluctant to help, and Pakistan does not have money to purchase and sustain the operations at the same time.
You might want to rethink your participation here. Guerrilla fighters by definition can't stand up in a real fight and would rather run than fight.
Chimo
Here's a video (sorry in Urdu) of Capt Junaid Khan shaheed who was from the Special Service Group (Army commandos) who along with3 other undercover operatives was captured and killed by the Taliban. Countless other Pakistani soldiers have given their lives in this fight, all with limited equipment and resources available to them. But than it is their duty to do anything for the country.
YouTube - captain junaid khan shaheed - operation Rahe Rast
How does this contradict what I said? Do the US or Canadian forces not rely on air power when in a firefight?
Last edited by Slides; 06 Jul 09, at 03:29.
Some more video from Peochar valley, Swat (home base of Swat Taliban) - This time in English or sub-titled.
YouTube - SSG commandos - Safeguarding the Motherland
YouTube - Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
Securing Swat - Pakistan army
Slides, you correctly stated that the duty of the soldier is to fight for his country and the duty of the Govt. is to equip him with the correct eqipment.
Pakistan should look at it's own resources and priorities to arm it's soldiers in this battle against the Taliban. You cannot expect the US to finance for the COIN operation while the GOP is making multimillion dollar deals for fighter aircraft, submarines, Awacs etc, when the main enemy is on the Western frontier not the eastern frontier, and different types of infrastructure is required.
PA has more than Cobra's and F-16s in it's arsenal to fight these animals.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Share this thread with friends: