Instability In Pakistan- Merged Thread

[CougarKing]

A hard choice taken by POTUS that needed to be done?

Reuters

U.S. strike inadvertently killed U.S., Italian hostages; Obama apologizes

By Will Dunham and Julia Edwards

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike in January targeting an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan near the Afghan border inadvertently killed an American and an Italian who had been held hostage for years by the group, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

President Barack Obama apologized and took "full responsibility" for all counterterrorism operations, including this one.

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[CougarKing]

The first step in correcting a mistake made by US/West in working with this nominal ally in the first place?

Diplomat

US Set to Suspend Military Aid to Pakistan

The U.S. government will withhold certification of Pakistan’s counter-terrorism operations against the Haqqani network.

By Ankit Panda
August 21, 2015

The United States government will not certify Pakistan’s counter-terrorism operations in North Waziristan over recent months as adequately damaging to the Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terror group. The U.S. Department of Defense has reportedly notified the Pakistani embassy in Washington of the development, according to a report by Dawn. The non-certification of the Pakistani counter-terror campaign, known as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, will block the release of a new tranche of U.S. financial assistance for the Pakistani military from the Coalition Support Fund (CSF). CSF support had been extended for a year with a specific stipulation that the U.S. Department of Defense would certify the effectiveness of Pakistani military operations in North Waziristan against the Haqqani network.

The development would drive a major wedge between the United States and Pakistan, two allies who have grown apart over their divergent interests and priorities in stabilizing the broader Afghan-Pakistan border. Beyond the financial implications of the blocked CSF tranche, the development will deal Islamabad a politically damaging blow. As the Dawn report notes, given the recent deterioration in ties with Kabul amid allegations from the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that Pakistani has inadequately reigned in cross-border terrorists, including militants affiliated with the Haqqani network, the U.S. government’s decision to withhold certification vindicate Afghan perceptions.

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[CougarKing]

The nightmare scenario of nuclear-armed terrorists revisited:

Reuters

Obama to discuss nuclear security concerns with Pakistan
Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:39pm EDT

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will discuss concerns about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal during a visit to Washington next week by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the White House said on Thursday.

The News York Times reported on Thursday that the Obama administration was concerned that Pakistan might be on the verge of deploying a small tactical nuclear weapon that would be harder to protect from falling into hands of militants.

The paper said the administration was also seeking to prevent Pakistan deploying missiles that could reach beyond its main foe India, and was thus exploring a possible deal to limit the Pakistani arsenal that could involve relaxing restrictions on access to nuclear technology.

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[CougarKing]

Militant Chinese Uighurs in Pakistan:

Diplomat

Pakistan Announces That It Has Defeated ETIM. So What?

In a bid to please China, Pakistan says it has defeated a major Uyghur militant group within its borders.
20150704_200326
By Benjamin David Baker
October 22, 2015

Pakistan is known for being a refuge for transnational terrorism. The Taliban has long used the country’s inaccessible border regions as staging points for cross-border strikes into Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden was killed in a compound just outside of Abbottabad.

Pakistani society has been fairly ambivalent about its relationship with Islamic extremist groups. As The Diplomat’s cover issue this month shows, various factions within Pakistan have different feelings about organizations such as the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-i-Taliban.

Two political parties, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan, have a history of being sympathetic towards violent Islamic groups. Other Pakistani organizations, notably the military under the command of General Raheel Sharif, have tried to stamp out armed Islamic extremist groups in the country.

One such organization is the East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM). This group, which is an umbrella organization for numerous extremist groups fighting for the independence of China’s western Xinjiang province, is aligned with al-Qaeda and is responsible for several terror attacks throughout China in the last decade. These include a car bomb attack in Beijing, a police station raid in Lukqun (both in 2013), and. more recently, a deadly attack on a train station in Kunming last year.

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[CougarKing]

A young Winston Churchill's own experiences of the savagery of war in Pakistan decades ago:

Diplomat

How Churchill Fought The Pashtuns in Pakistan

Before the Soviets and before the Americans, the British were in Afghanistan.

By Franz-Stefan Gady
October 24, 2015

“Horrible and revolting” – that’s how 22-year-old British cavalry officer turned war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and Pioneer newspapers, Winston Churchill, described in a dispatch what he saw when entering the ruins of the village of Desemdullah in the Mohmand Valley in British India’s Northwest Frontier (today’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province  in northwestern Pakistan) on the morning of September 22, 1897.

Pashtun tribesmen had unearthed the 36 bodies of fallen British and Indian soldiers, hastily buried a few days earlier in unmarked graves, and mutilated them beyond recognition. “The tribesmen are among the most miserable and brutal creatures on earth. Their intelligence only enables them to be more cruel, more dangerous, more destructible than the wild beasts. (…) I find it impossible to come to any other conclusion than that, in proportion that these valleys are purged form the pernicious vermin that infest them, so will the happiness of humanity be increased, and the progress of mankind accelerated,” a shaken and sulfurous Churchill jotted down in his notebook that day.

The Pashtun tribesmen, the forebears to today’s Pashtun insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had risen against the British in 1897 due to the division of their tribal territory by the Durand line in 1893, as well as the gradual British occupation of Pashtun lands. They rallied under the leadership of the Pashtun fakir Saidullah, nicknamed “Mad Mullah,” by the British, who declared a “jihad” against British India and rallied more than 10,000 warriors to his cause.

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[CougarKing]

An ISIS foothold in Pakistan?

Diplomat

Can ISIS Gain a Foothold in Balochistan?

There is growing evidence that it is trying to do just that.

By Muhammad Akbar Notezai
January 07, 2016

On August 28, 2014, Abdul-Rauf Rigi, alleged to be leading a Sunni sectarian organization called Jaish-al-Nasr, was assassinated in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The motive for his killing could not be ascertained, but Jaish-al-Nasr had been accused by Iranian officials of carrying out attacks on Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Soon after Rigi’s assassination in Quetta, Iranian Press TV was claiming that he had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

A reliable source told The Diplomat that the Jaish-al-Adl is a splinter group of Jundullah, which was spearheaded by Rigi’s brother Abdul-Malik. While on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan in 2010, Abdul-Malik Rigi was arrested by Iranian authorities and subsequently hanged. The source added that soon after his execution in Iran, Jundullah, which Abdul-Malik Rigi had founded in 2003, split into three groups: the Jaish-al-Adl, the Jaish-al-Nasr, and the Lashker-e-Khorasan.


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[CougarKing]

Pakistan ending the Taliban's grip on Waziristan?

Defense News

Pakistan Launches Final Drive on Taliban Bastion
By Usman Ansari, Defense News 7:41 p.m. EST February 24, 2016

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Wednesday launched a push on the remaining pockets of Pakistani Taliban (TTP) fighters holed up in the remote Shawal Valley bordering Afghanistan. Though the advance had long been expected, the timing was surprising.

News of the assault came from the military’s Inter Services Public Relations media branch as the head of the army, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen. Raheel Sharif, flew to the Shawal Valley to meet troops stationed in forward areas before ordering the operation to commence.

Addressing the troops, Sharif said: “The sacrifices of the soldiers will not go to waste and we will achieve our ultimate objective of a terror free Pakistan.”

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[Kat Stevens]

Mostly women and children killed or injured.  Cowardly pricks.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/suicide-bomber-kills-dozens-mostly-women-kids-celebrating-easter-pakistan-n546231

 

[CougarKing]

A further reminder of why the US should not sell more arms to Pakistan such as that new batch of F16s mentioned in another thread:

Canadian Press

Hundreds of Islamic extremists protest in Pakistan's capital

Munir Ahmed, The Associated Press
The Canadian Press
March 29, 2016

ISLAMABAD - Hundreds of Islamic extremists resumed protests in Pakistan's capital on Tuesday over the execution of a man who killed a secular governor, in a show of defiance amid a government crackdown following a suicide attack two days earlier.

The rally by Pakistan's Sunni Tehreek group brought more than 10,000 protesters into the streets of Islamabad on Sunday, where they clashed with police. On Tuesday, local police official Mohammad Kashif said some 700 remained, bringing parts of the capital to a standstill.

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[CougarKing]

Al Qaeda in the news again:

Associated Press

Pakistan arrests prominent al-Qaida financier
Zarar Khan, The Associated Press
The Canadian Press
April 25, 2016

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani authorities have arrested an al-Qaida financier who has been on a U.N. sanctions list since 2012, police said Monday.

Abdur Rehman Sindhi was detained during a raid by intelligence agencies in the southern port city of Karachi last week, said police officer Muqaddas Haider. He said a joint team of police and intelligence agents was questioning the suspect on what role he might have played in militant attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

Sindhi appeared before a court which allowed the police to interrogate him for two weeks, the police official said. He said he didn't have any evidence so far that the suspect was linked to the U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl's 2002 killing.

Much of al-Qaida's senior leadership fled to Pakistan following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan.

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