A fight to the death on Pakistan’s border
Since July 3, when Pakistani troops laid siege and eventually stormed the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, more than 100 people, mostly from the security forces, have been killed in attacks in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), primarily in the Swat region over the past few days.
The banned pro-Taliban Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM – Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws) has extensive influence in this region, fueled by its leader, Maulana Fazlullah.
What’s in a name? In this case quite a lot: “Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws” indeed. They make it pretty clear what direction they’re going.
Many of the militants at the Red Mosque and associated madrassa students were believed to have been from NWFP, where revenge is now being exacted against security forces. The army has mobilized thousands of troops to the area.
Unusual if not unprecedented vigor on the part of the Paks to actually exercise authority over part of their country!
Meanwhile, the US is setting up to make itself unpleasant to the Islamoterrs from the Afghan side, and it seems to be a serious enough effort to elicit a vigorous verbal response and warning from the enemy.
The Bajaur area has been hit twice by Central Intelligence Agency predator drones, one specifically after Zawahiri. However, at a time when al-Qaeda is reactivated and the Taliban’s main focus is to lay siege of Kabul, via adjacent Nooristan province in Afghanistan, aerial surveillance is considered insufficient.
As a result, a large US base is under construction on a mountaintop at Ghakhi Pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan (Bajaur) border. Militants believe this is in preparation for an operation inside Pakistan to clamp down on them as well as to renew the hunt for bin Laden and his associates. As a result, the militants have attacked the new base in an attempt to delay its construction….
Militants believe this is in preparation for an operation inside Pakistan to clamp down on them as well as to renew the hunt for bin Laden and his associates. As a result, the militants have attacked the new base in an attempt to delay its construction. “This is a matter of life and death for the mujahideen. We will shed our blood, but we will never let this base be completed,” Dr Ismail told Asia Times Online.
Just to give added emphasis to their stated willingness to die for the Religion of Piss Peace:
“My son sacrificed his life against American designs to build this base over our heads. I shall never allow them to complete it, I will fight till my last. Martyrdom for the cause of jihad is actually an open invitation to all Muslims to join forces with the mujahideen. The fresh faces of the mujahideen after martyrdom, the aroma from their flesh and blood, are living miracles and prompt youths of the area to join forces with the mujahideen to defeat the Western coalition in Afghanistan,” Ismail said.
By all means, we should seek to be the means of their being able to experience such miracles! More seriously though, this stated view is an expression of the same type of sociopathy that gave us the Nazis, the Soviet GULAG, and other truly evil expressions of allegedly human activity.
There’s even more in the piece…and one has to hope that the hunt is on from both sides of the border (for a change), and that it will meet with success.