Pakistan troops 'kill 50' in taking town
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Independent Minds
Pakistani troops took the main town in strategically important Buner Valley today after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing over 50 militants in two days of fighting, the military said.
The Taliban's advance earlier this month into a region just 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital had sent shivers through Pakistan and heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed Muslim state was becoming more unstable.
"We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan had used jet fighters at the start of the operation on Tuesday, as well as helicopter gunships.
"Last night after the airstrike, attack helicopters engaged the miscreants and inflicted more than 50 casualties," Abbas said, adding that one soldier had been killed in the operation.
A pilotless US drone fired a missile into Pakistan's South Waziristan, a major sanctuary for al Qaeda and the Taliban, on Wednesday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, intelligence officials said.
"One missile was fired. People are rushing towards the area but we don't know about casualties," an intelligence official told Reuters by telephone from the region.
The government's demonstration of military resolve will likely reassure US President Barack Obama and Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai when they meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington on 6-7 May to discuss regional strategy.
Nevertheless, Pakistani stocks lost more than 2 per cent due to worries over mounting insecurity.
Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the valley, but they risked being caught between security forces at their front and rear after the successful airdrop.
"The airborne forces have linked up to police and Frontier Constabulary in Daggar," the military spokesman said earlier. "A link up with ground forces is in progress."
Residents saw troops rappel from helicopters outside Daggar, the main town in Buner, while firing and explosions were also heard intermittently.
The military spokesman said the soldiers had freed 18 of some 70 police and militiamen kidnapped by the militants on Tuesday.
Three members of an al Jazeera television crew were wounded when they came under fire while reporting from Buner, the network's website said.
The military estimated some 500 militants were in the Buner valley of the North West Frontier Province, about 140 kms (80 miles) southeast of the Afghan border, and that it might take a week to clear them out.
The military has said a few hundred militants holed up in the mountains never represented a real threat to the capital.
But, Ikram Seghal, a retired army officer turned analyst, said the Taliban could have used Buner to advance on Tarbela, a dam regarded as critical for water and electricity supplies, before reaching Islamabad.
"It is very important psychologically, tactically and strategically to make sure that Buner is cleared of these Taliban," said Seghal.
The Pentagon urged Pakistan to remain on the offensive.
"The key is to sustain these operations at this tempo and to keep the militants on their heels and to, ultimately, defeat them," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
Washington is considering rushing hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid to Pakistan, the US Senate's second-ranking Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, told reporters.
Pakistan is desperate for military and economic aid to fight an insurgency that has washed back across the border from Afghanistan.
But allies had feared Zardari's government was too ready to appease the militants after he signed off on a regulation to introduce Islamic sharia courts in the Malakand division of North West Frontier Province.
The government had hoped that meeting demands for sharia courts would quieten the militants in Swat. But the Taliban instead became emboldened, fanning out of Swat into other parts of Malakand, including Buner, Lower Dir and Shangla districts.
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Comments
If the West could not beat such a rag-tag army, how do they expect to beat North Korea?
1. Hardly any improvements have been made to lives of Afghan people in almost now a decade.
2. Region is becoming more volatile.
3. U.S and other forces have not killed or captured Osama, neither his organization is dead. He and his organization now operates from Pakistan rather than Afghanistan.
4. All the money U.S providing to Pakistan has been indirectly going into hands of Osama and party.
What a shame for U.S and its allies. Why Pakistan has been trusted so much that nobody every bothered to investigate ground situation in Pakistan. Days are not far away when a new war will start for freedom of Pakistan from Al Q.
2) Only the regions near the border with Pakistan are volatile, the rest are relatively peaceful.
3) Osama's organisation no longer controls Afghanistan, nor does it exercise the same degree of control in Pakistan. Though Al Qada has not been defeated it is now much weaker.
4) There is no evidence of this, please provide a source for this absurd claim.
If a new war begins it will be Pakistan and its allies vs the Taliban, just like the Northern Alliance and its allies fought against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The real problem with Afghanistan is that people who know nothing about it feel compled to write nonsense about it.
I beg to differ . The following is excerpts from the Government of Canada paper titled
" Canada's Engagement in AFGHANISTAN " : Canada will invest up to $50 million to make urgent repairs and is in the process right now of rehabilitation of the Dahla Dam and irrigation system . 7.1 million children were vaccinated against polio. Three schools were completed , another 22 under construction , Canada aims to help build, expand, or repair 50 schools in key distructs by 2011 , and aim to to help train 3,000 teachers by 2011. Vocational and literacy courses for adults continued successfully with some 10,949 adults, including 8,984 women, preparing to complete a 10 month literacy course in January 2009. Canada assisted the start-up of a number of business'- including a bakery and a bazaar. Canada helped 26 Kandahari women secure start-up training and supplies to launch their own poultry businesses in Kandahar. Canadians helped Afghan prepare for 2009 presidential and provincial council elections. Canadian soldiers continued training and mentoring five ANA battalions (known in Afghanistan as kandaks). The list goes on and on. And keep in mind Canada is a big country but our total population is less than the state of California so we do not have a large tax base to draw funds from but are "committed to building Aghanistan's capacity to provide basic services to its citizens." Thank you for reading this.
The U.S. is pushing on with a strategy designed to control all of Central Asia.
If successful, the plan will lock Russia inside borders controlled by the U.S., NATO, and eventually the EU. It will threaten China's borders and her internal stability.
Forget about Al-Quaeda, Taliban and the Pakistani government's sordid betrayal of a peace agreement. These are local stories for mass gullibility.
Concentrate on:
A massive Central Asian strategy with Canada, the U.K. and other European countries small but cunning players in the U.S. game-plan.
Unfortunately, citizens of the 45 countries supporting the U.S's flagrant violation of human rights have no power to prevent this mass displacement of tribal hill-peoples in the progress of imperial genocide. Good citizens of mature democracies merely pay for it.