(CNN) — Talking to the Taliban leader in Afghanistan may help bring peace to the country, according to a former Pakistan spy chief once referred to as the “father of the Taliban.”
Retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI spy agency, worked with the CIA through the 1980s to fund and train the Afghan Jihad against the Soviets.
Many of the Mujahedeen went on to govern Afghanistan as the Taliban, who are led by Mullah Omar.
“The best situation would be to talk to Mullah Omar,” Gul said. “But then, put up your own conditions where I would say it is legitimate … I think they will accept. I know their psychology.”
Face-to-face talks would work best, Gul added.
“You have to engage him. You have to talk to him,” Gul said. “There is no one else, for heaven sake, why beat around the bush?”
Last year, Gul said Omar was the only person who can improve U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
Baradar’s capture signifies a split within the Afghan Taliban, as he headed the minority faction more open to negotiations with the Afghan government and the US. His secret negotiations in Dubai may have angered hardliners including Mullah Omar, who have rejected the offers of negotiations and reconciliation with the Karzai government, and representatives of the US and NATO.
Physical abuse of prisoners during interrogation is extremely common in not only Pakistan’s police stations but worldwide, and this video, even if its true, proves how mild the ‘punishment’ given out to these TTP-sympathisers was considering what these barbarians did to our captured, unarmed soldiers and innocent civilians. What has been termed as abuse is much benign if compared with the interrogation techniques employed by other armed forces of the world, not to mention Indian forces who keenly pluck nails out after severe torture just on the slightest suspicion, not charges against such criminals.
Lets rewind back to earlier this year when videos of TTP terrorists slitting throats of innocent civilians and Army soldiers were doing the rounds and had kept the nation completely terrified. Grilling terror suspects back then using whips and belts did indeed appear to be quite soft, as a form of punishment, compared to knives and AK-47s, which were the terrorists’ preferred tools.
BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — U.S. troops in Afghanistan donned shorts and laced up sneakers Friday to run in memory of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, as they fight a war that was born on that day but which has seen waning public support.
More than 1,000 service members ran 9.11 kilometers (about 5 1/2 miles) at the main U.S. base to commemorate the anniversary and remember troops who have died in nearly eight-years of fighting.
Pakistani Terrorist chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a US missile strike, a TTP commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.
‘I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan,’ Kafayatullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details. [Source]
In February this year, PKKH had reported on how Baitullah Mehsud had outlived his shelf-life, and was of no further use to his American masters. With the TTP defeated in Malakand, he had been cornered in his hometown in South Waziristan and it would only have been a matter of days before he was captured.
It now increasingly looks like Baitullah Mehsud is living on borrowed time. It would be interesting to see who gets to him first, the Pakistanis or the Americans. Pakistan Army would be well advised to attempt to capture him alive, something that the Americans and Indians would try and ensure does not happen.
The British government today stepped up pressure for talks with more moderate elements of the Taliban as Afghanistan announced its first provincial ceasefire agreement with the militants.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the insurgency was “divided”, with many of those fighting against international forces doing so for “pragmatic” rather than ideological reasons.
‘Colonel Imam’, the ex-Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemies.
It is unlikely that anybody alive today knows the Afghans as well as Imam. All the key figures were trained in his camps, from the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panj-shir, to warlords such as Gul-buddin Hekmatyar, his “naughtiest” student. “It was a matter of pride for me that my students later became big commanders,” he said.
The Americans do not want Pakistanis to capture Baitullah Mehsud alive, and attempting to eliminate him using air-strikes will not be easy since Pakistan Army is advancing towards him already. They will either take him out before he is captured, or he will mysteriously disappear only to re-emerge later at a different location. The U.S. military has moved troops near Mehsud’s area under the pretext of finding Osama or Mullah Omar. This is a deception. They have been saying Osama is in Pakistan for years. Why haven’t they acted earlier? This American move has something to do with Pakistani military’s march to destroy Mehsud and his proxy militia. We already know that terrorists are using American weapons to kill us while pretending to be Taliban. The Pakistani military better watch out what our ally is up to this time.
Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.
But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won’t fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.
Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan’s 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There’s no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi’ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis – faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari’s centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People’s Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces – amounting to 85% of Pakistan’s population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class – are an infinitesimal minority.
The Pakistan-based Taliban – subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles – are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab.
To believe this rag-tag band could rout the well-equipped, very professional 550,000-strong Pakistani army, the sixth-largest military in the world, which has already met the Indian colossus in battle, is a ludicrous proposition.
The chief of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, has told the BBC his group was behind Monday’s deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore. [BBC]
It has emerged that atleast one of the terrorists arrested yesterday is an Afghan national [The News]. Meanwhile, the authorities continue to question the arrested terrorists captured during a police academy siege on the outskirts of Lahore. [Dawn]
Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba rejected media reports in India that it was involved in an attack on Sri Lanka’s cricket squad in Lahore.
“These media reports are false, incorrect and baseless,” Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi said. He was speaking by telephone from Srinagar from an undisclosed location.
“The attack on Sri Lanka’s team was an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty and Kashmiri militants could never even think of that (such an attack),” Ghaznavi said.
LeT, which has been fighting for freedom from New Delhi’s rule in Indian-occupied Kashmir, blamed Indian security agencies for the Lahore attack.
“The attack is the handiwork of Indian agencies to defame Pakistan and bring instability to the country,” Ghaznavi said.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has often been blamed by India for terrorist acts within India. Most of these acts have subsequently been proved to have been carried out by Indian based Hindu extremist groups with support from serving Indian army officers.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has never been implicated in any terrorist activities on Pakistani soil and has a strict policy in this regard. They have in fact recently come under fire and recieved threats from CIA backed terrorist Baitullah Mehsud.
Mehsud’s ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ (TTP) threatened attacking members of Lashkar-e-Taiba by pointing out that they only fight against Indian rule in Kashmir and do not support TTP’s version of ‘Jihad’ against Pakistani citizens.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said Friday he could not rule out foreign involvement in the Sri Lankan cricket attack.
“I cannot rule out (the involvement of a) foreign hand in the incident,” Malik told reporters in Lahore.
Is this the beginning of the end of Asif Zardari? What impact will the fall of Punjab’s Government have? What is General Asfhaq Pervez Kiyani’s visit to the US all about and what can we expect in the coming days?
Zaid Hamid speaks in detail on various issues facing the nation today. The topics covered are:
1) What will we get out of Swat deal: A blessing or an evil?
2) Letter of Mullah Umar to Pakistani Talibans: A friend or a foe?
3) The fall of Punjab Government! What lies Ahead?
4) Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kyani in America: Why the Honor?
5) The Lawyers Movement: Does Zaid Hamid supports the restoration of Justice Iftikhar Muahmmad Chaudhry?
6) What about the Missing People: Who sold them to America or did they vanish on there own? and much more…
[Brasstacks] Finally, when the traitor terrorist Baitullah Mehsud is exposed, he is now trying to find space within Afghan Taliban who always rejected war against Pakistan. Here Mullah Umar again admonishes Baitullah for his crimes. If Baitullah does not behave, he will be eliminated by Afghan Taliban themselves.
“Mulla Omar first sent an envoy to the local Taliban and then wrote a letter to the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) admonishing these leaders and told the TTP that fighting Muslims could not be described as Jihad so they should immediately cease attacks on the Pakistani security forces…” [Link]
It seems Baitullah Mehsud has outlived his shelf-life and is of no further use to his American and Indian masters.
After receiving a kicking in Bajaur and the implementation of Sharia in Swat, he has now been cornered into South Waziristan with his area of influence having been greatly reduced in recent days. In what seemed like a sign of desperation, he hit out at Kashmiri jihadi groups last week, threatening to eliminate their leaders if they did not join him in fighting the Pakistan army.
Accusing them of ‘only fighting external enemies such as the US and India’, Baitullah Mehsud’s ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ (TTP) justified attacking members of these Jihadi outfits by pointing out that these outfits ‘do not fight the Pakistan Army’ and commit mass murder of innocent Pakistani citizens like the TTP has been doing for a some time now.
It is also interesting to note that the Afghan Taleban’s Supreme Commander Mullah Mohammad Omar had issued a statement over a year ago distancing himself and the Afghan Taleban from the TTP and its chief Baitullah Mehsud. He had also condemned Baitullah Mehsud in strong words for fighting against the Pakistan Army instead of with the NATO forces.
It is unclear why the Obama administration decided to carry out the attacks, which American and Pakistani officials said occurred last Saturday and again on Monday, hitting camps run by Mr. Mehsud’s network. The Saturday strike was aimed specifically at Mr. Mehsud, but he was not killed, according to Pakistani and American officials.
For months, Pakistani military and intelligence officials have complained about Washington’s refusal to strike at Baitullah Mehsud, even while C.I.A. drones struck at Qaeda figures and leaders of the network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a militant leader believed responsible for a campaign of violence against American troops in Afghanistan.
According to one senior Pakistani official, Pakistan’s intelligence service on two occasions in recent months gave the United States detailed intelligence about Mr. Mehsud’s whereabouts, but said the United States had not acted on the information. Bush administration officials had charged that it was the Pakistanis who were reluctant to take on Mr. Mehsud and his network.
It now increasingly looks like Baitullah Mehsud is living on borrowed time. It would be interesting to see who gets to him first, the Pakistanis or the Americans. Pakistani Army would be well advised to attempt to capture him alive, something that the Americans and Indians would try and ensure does not happen.
A man working at the football stadium reminisced fondly about the old days when executions happened on the pitch. If capital punishment was still common, he said, the new government wouldn’t be so crooked. This was something I would hear repeatedly, until eventually it was said by Afghans across the country. The police were the worst offenders, looking for bribes at every opportunity to supplement their low wages. Another Kandahari had joined the Taliban as a teenager in the 1990s. “At that time we were very happy,” he said. “It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money.” Talibs are good people and they can never be beaten, he continued. Now they have no choice but to fight because otherwise the Americans will send them to Guantanamo Bay. Most importantly for the future, he revealed that a number of local religious clerics had just declared a jihad.
A correspondent looks back at the deterioration across the country over the past four years: the resurgence of both the Taliban and the old corrupt elites, the failure of the occupation forces, and the worsening conditions of life for everybody else.
Time for Pakistan to quickly mend fences with the Taliban
Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, and only one brigade now.
Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser — and we must cut our losses and cede the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of “victory.”
The war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan will be lost by the end of the summer without dramatic changes in counter-insurgency strategy, according to a leading US military expert.
The assessment of Col John Nagl, who is consulting the US government as it conducts four separate policy reviews on Afghanistan, comes amid fears that unless the insurgents’ advance is halted, Afghanistan will become the new president’s Vietnam.
Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan: Showing Their True Colours
The (Afghan) Taleban’s Supreme Commander Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a statement over a year ago distancing himself and the Afghan Taleban from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its chief Baitullah Mehsud. He also condemned Baitullah Mehsud in strong words for fighting against the Pakistan Army instead of with the NATO forces.
And now we have Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) announcing that it will be sending its terrorists to Islamabad in response to Pakistan Army’s operations in Darra Adamkhel and the Swat Valley. Interestingly, they have on their hitlists the names of prominent religious and Jihadi leaders, some that have been fighting the Indian army occupation in Kashmir.
Accusing them of ‘only fighting external enemies such as the US and India’, the TTP justifies attacking members of these Jihadi outfits by pointing out that these outfits ‘do not fight the Pakistan Army’ and commit mass murder of innocent Pakistani citizens like the TTP has been doing for a some time now.
The leaders of Harkatul Mujahideen, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jama’at-ud-Dawa have strongly opposed and rejected TTP’s version of ‘Jihad’ inside Pakistan in which it has been murdering Pakistani citizens indiscriminately.
“The TTP has accused some militant leaders of the tribal areas and leaders of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkatul Mujahideen and Hizbul Mujahideen of trying to stop youngsters from fighting the Pakistani forces. TTP has declared all these “pro-Pakistan” Jihadis as their enemies.”
“The names of Maulvi Nazir from South Wazirastan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur from North Waziristan, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed of Jama’at ud Dawa, Maulana Farooq Kashmiri and Syed Salahudin have been included in the hit lists of the Taliban, who have threatened some Hizbul Mujahideen leaders in Swat and Dir to leave the areas as soon as possible.”
“Another Taliban leader in the Mohmand Agency Maulvi Omar Khalid has threatened boys belonging to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba to leave the tribal agency or face death. Omar Khalid has claimed that these boys are only interested in fighting against the foreign troops in Afghanistan or against India, which means that they don’t want an Islamic government in Pakistan.”
Obama and his handlers are setting the stage to continue the “Bush doctrine” and to escalate the violence, especially the war on Pakistan. The lure of this appeal is that the reasoning of the Bush doctrine does accurately describe our enemies in this war, the terrorist aggressors who are bombing and murdering their way towards a corrupt world government, but it lies about who that enemy really is. The gang of international killers whom we refer to as “al Qaida” is the biggest threat to security and dreams of world peace, but the address of that adversary is not some cave in the Hindu Kush. It is at Langley (CIA HQ) and Tel Aviv.
It’s been a long time since a voice from Pakistan spoke with this authority. Here in this video clip, former President Musharraf, in Michigan for a speech, gives a solid response to those who say that Pakistan is the headquarters of bin Laden & Co. A clip from a local TV network, aired on 14 Jan. 2009. For all his mistakes, the man has charisma. If only had he not made the mistake of becoming a democrat, just like the rest of them in Pakistan.
(CNN) — Talking to the Taliban leader in Afghanistan may help bring peace to the country, according to a former Pakistan spy chief once referred to as the “father of the Taliban.”
