Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership

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ramana
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Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership

Post by ramana »

ramana wrote:Is it time to study the TIP Tehrek-i-Pakistan? We need to know its constituents and its leaders and aims etc.
SSridhar wrote:Ramana, there are two organizations that have sprouted recently, one to the west of Indus and the other to the east. Both are umbrella organizations, a kind of a holding company. They have overlapping membership and loyalties. The ISI reaches fairly well inside these two due to the kind of players involved. The West of Indus outfit is Tehreek-e-Taliban, TTP (not TiP which incidentally is the morphed Shi'a terrorist outfit Sipah-e-Mohammed). The East-of-Indus (well, not exactly east) outfit is Tehreek Islami Lashkar-e-Mohammedi, TILM. This is a brand new organization which has surfaced as a result of the new democratic dispensation. Both of them owe allegiance to Al Qaeda.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)

Sunni (salafi/wahhabi/Deobandi) Taliban organization, normally opposed to Berelvis
Emerged in the FATA areas of NWFP in 2007
About 40 local Taliban leaders announced the formation of TTP on Dec. 14, 2007 to centralize their command.
Amir - Baitullah Mehsud (of South Waziristan), appointed by Mullah Omar
First Naib Amir - Maulana Hafiz Gul Bahadur of North Waziristan.
Second Naib Emir - Faqir Mohammed of Bajaur
Spokesperson - Maulvi Umar
Has a shura (consultative committee) of 40 senior Taliban leaders from the entire NWFP area (including FATA and Settled Areas)
Aim:To establish an Emirate, to enforce Sharia, to unite against the NATO forces in Afghanistan and defeat them just as they did against another superpower USSR, and do defensive jihad against the Pakistan Army if it comes in the way.

Draws support from a number of warlords also in the region who may not be formally part of TTP and yet provide them with foot soldiers and carry out their orders. These are people like Mangal Bagh Afridi of Lashkar-e-Islam in Khyber agency, Haji Namdar (killed on Aug. 13, 2008), chief of Amal Bil Maroof Nahi Anil Munkir (Prevention of Vices and Promotion of Virtues), modelled after the Muttawwas of the wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sadiq Noor of North Waziristan, Maulana Qazi Mehboob-ul-Haq of Ansar-ul-Islam, Maulvi Nazir of South Waziristan (who is incidentally opposed to the Uzbeks operating under Tahir Yuldashev of IMU, though), Maulvi Faqir Mohammed of Bajaur, Umar Khalid of Mohmand Agency (also known as Abdul Wali), Shah Khalid also of Mohmand Agency (actually an LeT commander, later killed by Baitullah Mehsud) and others. TTP also has the support of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) which is practically headed by Maulana Fazlullah, nicknamed Mullah FM Radio, who operates from Swat (which is a settled area)

However, these warlords or even Taliban commanders do not provide a solid, united face due to their clannish affinities. For example, the Waziri commanders of Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, are at loggerheads with Baitullah Mehsud who comes from the Mehsud tribe. The major difference is in sheltering the foreign terrorists, especially the Uzbeks. It is these divisions that the PA/ISI had tried to exploit to keep these commanders/warlords under its control. Such 'divide-and-conquer' policy breaksdown frequently.


Tehreek Islami Lashkar-e-Mohammedi


Formed in Karachi in February, 2008
Appears to be an umbrella organization for SSP (Sipah-e-Sahaba-e-Pakistan, the mother of all terror outfits), LeT, JeM and HM.
Announced promulgation of Shariah throughout Pakistan.
Amir:Wajahat alias Sami alias Gulfam alias Mansoor
(Arrested in Karachi mid-2008)
We need areas of operation or strongholds and pics of the folks mentioned. What we are seeing is a new force in TSP which is Islamist and at odds with the govt. Earlier L-e-T, J-e-M and SSP were all govt pasand Islamist parties what I call the sarkari Islamists.

Another group was the J-e-I etc which participated in the govt and stood for elections like the MMA.

So when one posts info please specify the source of the info and the faction- Pakiban, Sarakari Islamists or the formal islamist parties.

Thanks, ramana
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by vsudhir »

Who controls the Afghan opium crop? The Pakiban? NATO? TSP? Weren't the processing centers in FATA?

Am trying to figure out the source of pakiban funding. Is it the ISI? (But why when ISI buses are targetted and now the POF is blown up). Is it unkil? Is it (heaven forbid) yindia? is it KSA? Iran? Russia, by any chance?

The funds required to sustain an insurgency of the sort the pakiban have, is not small. Even the LTTE needed to launder funds and took in donations aplenty to sustain themselves.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

Please distinguish between Taliban and Pakiban. Taliban are in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. Pakiban are in the FATA are right now and spreading fast in TSP.We are trying to get a better picture and develop our own knowledge and not rely on Western and former GOI sources.

Yes sources of funding are also an important resource to track. The way I see it is the TTP is part of the Pashtun Civil War on either side of the Durand line.

The Mehsuds were among the ones that insulted JLN in 1946.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Bharati »

Who supplies weapons to these groups? They seem to have a continuous supply of sophisticated weaponry. During the Afgan, Soviet war it was US through PA/ISI. And now?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

X-posted...

original post by SSridhar

FATA is Pakistan's Fallujah - B. Raman
The ease with which they penetrated this high security area would indicate either that they had accomplices in the security staff or that they were workers of one of the factories who had no difficulty in entering the complex. {To be fair here, it doesn't appear that the suicide bombers entered into the complex. They detonated just at the gates as the shift was changing and a large flux of workers was moving. I heard Ayesha Siddiqa say in an interview that one of the previous Heads of the Wah complex recruited thousands of Pashtuns and therefore the Taliban can find accomplices easily. May be the next one will be inside and that will Insha Allah be something to remember for a long time to come.}
If suicide bombers could penetrate such a high-security area with so much ease, it should be equally easy for other terrorists to penetrate Pakistan's nuclear establishments one day. The expression 'high security' has ceased to have any meaning in Pakistan's sensitive establishments because of the penetration by the jihadi elements.
According to him, there cannot be peace in the NWFP without peace in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and there cannot be peace in FATA without peace in Afghanistan. {The saying 'A Pashtun is never at peace except when he is fighting' comes to mind}
Over 100 persons -- more Shias than Sunnis -- have been killed in continuing Shia-Sunni clashes in the Kurram Agency for the last 10 days. {More than a thousand Shi'as have been killed since the beginning of this year in Kurram area alone. Berelvis have also been decimated in Khyber agency.}
It is only a question of time before the anti-Musharraf and anti-Army anger for their co-operation with the US broadens to include anti-Asif Zardari anger for the continuing co-operation with the US. The terrorists view Zardari as no different from Musharraf and as much an apostate as Musharraf. They are convinced that the air strikes and ground operations in the Bajaur Agency have been agreed to by Zardari and Gilani {Zardari, Gilani & Sherry are forced to react to the Wah bombing. They were keeping discreet silence in earlier suicide bombings. They can no longer do that now and that will expose themselves to the people as anti-Taliban. Nawaz Sharif has been mum on the Wah incident so far. That should raise his already high stake on account of his anti-American stance, among the common folks}
The NATO forces will continue to bleed in Afghanistan and the jihadi virus will continue to spread in Pakistan unless and until FATA is similarly pacified through ruthless application of force. The Pakistan Army has not demonstrated either the will or the capability to do so. A more active role by the NATO forces under US leadership is necessary -- either covertly or openly. A strategy for a Fallujah-style pacification of FATA is called for -- with the co-operation of the Pakistan Army if possible and without it, if necessary.

The USSR was defeated by the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s because of the reluctance of the Soviet troops to attack their sanctuaries in FATA and NWFP. India has been unable to prevail over cross-border jihadi terrorism because of the reluctance of its leadership to attack their sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. The US is unlikely to prevail over the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan unless it is prepared to destroy their infrastructure in FATA.

Deniable Predator air strikes by the US intelligence agencies on suspected terrorist hide-outs in the FATA have been increasing and some of them have been effective in neutralising well-known Al Qaeda operatives. But air strikes alone will not be able to turn the tide against the jihadis. Effective hit and withdraw raids into FATA in the form of hot pursuit should be the next step. The longer it is delayed the more will be the bleeding.
I dont know what Ramanji is thinking. FATA is the only way TSP will turn on itself. And US wont do anything to jeopardize the TSPA hold on the country. Maybe he is thinking of giving them contra advice?

The Sunnis may be targetting Shias as they think PPP is in power and hence these are allowed by the hadiths interpreting the book.
Kill Kafirs.
Shias are Kafirs.
Kill Shias.

What tribes do the Shias in Khurram belong to? And the Sunni tribes of Kurram Agency?

BTW, JL Nehru wanted to reduce the Malik system while Caroe wanted to preserve them. That was the cause of the rift.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

X-Posted..
Good map of FATA/NWFP

NWFP and FATA Map

Parachinar is the big town in Kurram Agency.

Kurram Agency
The district has an area of 3,310 km² (1,278 sq. miles); the population according to the 1998 census was 448,310[1]. It lies between the Miranzai Valley and the Afghan border, and is inhabited by the Pashtun Turis, a tribe of Turki and Pathan origin who are supposed to have subjugated the Bangash Pashtun about six hundred years ago. The language of the tribe is Pashto, but unlike majority of the Pashtuns they are Shias.
So is it a inter-Pashtun rivalry or overthrow the Turis by the Bagash Pashtuns a la Hutsi-Tutsi in Rawanda?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

What tribes do the Shias in Khurram belong to? And the Sunni tribes of Kurram Agency?
Turi tribe in Parchinar is Shia....their's is the fate that you see of the Roman camps in Asterix comics.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

Settled areas in NWFP have high proportion of Shias.

If you look at the Pakhtoon component of the Pakistani armed forces, one can find a high proportion of SHias amongst them....Yahya as an example.

My theory is that there is close historical affinity between the Durrani Pushtuns and Nadir SHah's Turkomens (who are most likely Shias) due to Nadir SHah's close relations with Ahmed SHah Durrani. After Ahmed Shah Durrani took over from Nadir Shah some of his followers may have been settled in the present areas by Ahmed SHah. Yahya Khan's ancestors may have been these people.

This has had a cascading effect on present situation in Pak-Afgahnistan...more on this later.

Per pre-independence era historian JN Sarkar Nadir Shah had before dying requested Ahmed Shah to be kind to his descendants.
Last edited by Paul on 23 Aug 2008 02:00, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

The Durrani Pushtuns were the local khassaders of the Sikhs during the Sikhashahi days. It is possible that they used to supply even women to the Sikhs. I think the Brits just built up on the system that the Sikhs had worked out and are given unnecessary credit for the policies crafted by their predeccesors (mughals and sikhs).

This topic is a dark area that needs to be looked into further...some info on this is coming out of Paki writers who are frothing with fury at the Pupulzai branch of the Durranis (Karzai is from this subtribe).
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

ANother nugget that has come out in recent days: in the clash between the Sikhs led by Budh Singh and Syed Ahmed Barlevi in the NWFP areas in 1830s, Barelvi was betrayed by the Durrani Pushtuns who were uncomfortable at the prospect of this hot headed fanatic disrupting their cosy arrangements with the Sikh rulers........so much for the propaganda that Pukhtuns have never been defeated by anyone.

The Brits picked up on this idea and subverted it for their convenience.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

My theory is that there is close historical affinity between the Durrani Pushtuns and Nadir SHah's Turkomens (who are most likely Shias) due to Nadir SHah's close relations with Ahmed SHah Durrani. After Ahmed Shah Durrani took over from Nadir Shah some of his followers may have been settled in the present areas by Ahmed SHah. Yahya Khan's ancestors may have been these people.

This has had a cascading effect on present situation in Pak-Afgahnistan...more on this later.
Ghilzai Pushtuns remember this and their descendants want to return the favor to the persians....
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

Paul, There is some material in the Pashtun Civil war thread.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Airavat »

Longwarjournal

On Friday, a shura, or council, of 40 senior Taliban leaders established the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan -- the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan -- and appointed powerful South Waziristan Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud its leader.

The shura was made up of Taliban representatives from the seven tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan, Khyber, Orakazi, Bajaur, Mohmand, and Kurram, as well as the settled districts of Swat, Bannu, Tank, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohistan, Buner, and the Malakand division.

"The meeting participants have demanded an immediate end of the military operation being carried out in Swat, and given a 10-day ultimatum to the government to pullout troops from the area," the Nation reported. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan also demanded "the closure of the military checkposts in North and South Waziristan and release of all Taliban activists including former Lal Masjid Khateeb Maulana Abul Aziz."

“Our main aim is to target the US allies in Afghanistan but the government of Pakistan’s ill-strategy has made us to launch a defensive Jihad in Pakistan,” spokesman Maulvi Omar stated. “The government of Pakistan would be paid in the same coin now,” Mehsud said.

Mehsud leaps over some able and influential Taliban leaders in North and South Waziristan, including Sadiq Noor, Mullah Nazir, and Noor Islam. It is unclear if Faqir Mohammed of Bajaur and the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law) were represented at the meeting, but it is likely. A representative of Maulana Fazlullah's Swat branch of the TNSM was in attendance. Abu Kasha, a key link between al Qaeda's Shura Majlis and the Taliban, likely holds a senior position in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by shiv »

Image
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Rahul M »

shiv ji, what does red and yellow mean in this case ??
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by shiv »

Rahul M wrote:shiv ji, what does red and yellow mean in this case ??

IIRC this is a slightly dated map which shows areas already controlled by Pakiban in red and areas almost under control in yellow.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

shiv wrote:
Rahul M wrote:shiv ji, what does red and yellow mean in this case ??

IIRC this is a slightly dated map which shows areas already controlled by Pakiban in red and areas almost under control in yellow.
It should be dated. A more appropriate one would be to show at a minimum, Peshawar, Swat, DI Khan, Khyber, Hangu & Mardan in red.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

X-post
Paul wrote:

BRFite


Joined: 25 Jun 1999 06:01 am
Posts: 584 Another nugget that has come out in recent days: in the clash between the Sikhs led by Budh Singh and Syed Ahmed Barlevi in the NWFP areas in 1830s, Barelvi was betrayed by the Durrani Pushtuns who were uncomfortable at the prospect of this hot headed fanatic disrupting their cosy arrangements with the Sikh rulers........so much for the propaganda that Pukhtuns have never been defeated by anyone.

The Brits picked up on this idea and subverted it for their convenience.


Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan - Ayesha Jalal’s new book
Jump to Comments
This is an important book. We are posting another review by Khaled Ahmed here. This review also cites some revealing passages..

BOOK REVIEW: Jihad and retribalisation in Pakistan

Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia
By Ayesha Jalal
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore 2008
Pp373: Price Rs 695
Available at bookstores in Pakistan

Not far from Balakot, the votaries of the Sayyid are fighting on the side of Al Qaeda against ‘imperialist’ America and its client state, Pakistan, and killing more Muslims in the process than Americans, just as the Sayyid killed more Muslims than he killed Sikhs

Ayesha Jalal studies the jihad of Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed (1786-1831) in India as the most immaculate articulation of the theory of jihad in Islam. Sayyid Ahmad may have conceived his holy war against East India Company while living in Rai Bareilly in the central region of northern India, but he moved his warriors to where Pakistan’s North Western Frontier (NWFP) province is today because he thought that the Pashtun living in the tribal areas under non-Muslim Sikh occupation were better Muslims than the settled Muslims of the plains.

Here was the first indication that Islamic utopia could be constructed more easily in a tribal society. He probably wanted to take on the British after creating a mini-state on the pattern of Madina in the NWFP and probably hoped to reform the contaminated Muslims of the plains as a means of enhancing his challenge to the British. Al Qaeda too discovered the Pashtun straddling the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the tribal matrix where an Islamic utopia would grow into a centre of the global caliphate devoted to reforming and uniting Muslims living unhappily as subjects of today’s nation-states.

Sayyid Ahmad was feared by Muslims in the urban centres of India and was wrongly called a Wahhabi — a negative term pointing to the intimidation and violence associated with Saudi Islam — because they thought he would use ‘retribalisation’ as a method of returning them to the true faith. Pakistan fears Al Qaeda and its Pashtun foot soldiers as it sees the same kind of process in evidence under what is called Talibanisation.

Historian Ayesha Jalal has a fair claim to knowing the various communal narratives of Muslim India, as proved in her 2000 monumental work Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850. One can say that her latest book on Jihad has grown out of this earlier work and that her identification of one of the most ideologically ‘explained’ holy wars in the 19th century India is intended to understand the location of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan’s Tribal Areas in the 21st century. She writes on page 16:

‘The geographic focal point of the jihad of 1826 to 1831 on the northwest frontier of the subcontinent corresponds to the nerve centre of the current confrontation between Islamic radicals and the West. The jihad movement directed primarily against the Sikhs was transmuted in the course of the war into a conflict pitting Muslim against Muslim. This feature of intrafaith conflict in a jihad as armed struggle has not diminished its appeal for contemporary militants, who evidence many of the same failings that undermined Sayyid Ahmad’s high ideals. The martyrdom of those who fell at Balakot continues to weave its spell, making it imperative to investigate the myth in its making’.

The story goes like this. Sayyid Ahmad, convinced of his own semi-divinity and admired by a large number of followers for his exact adherence to Islam, marched from Rai Bareilly in Central India in 1826 in the direction of the north-western city of Peshawar with a an ‘army’ of 600 local Muslims optimistically posing as warriors. The aim was to establish an Islamic state on the land of the Pashtun. As he meandered through the various regions of India and Afghanistan, he was greeted by Muslim rulers not very keen to support him in his jihad. But in Kandahar, 200 Pashtun warriors joined him, clearly in expectation of the loot which jihad in their view brought in its wake. Some Yusufzai tribesmen, irritated by Sikh rule, also joined his lashkar.

If he thought he was walking into a ‘people’ of uniform views, he was mistaken. The Durrani Pashtun of Peshawar were not particularly enthusiastic about his movement. Scared of the internecine Pashtun warfare, they had become allies of the Sikhs and paid tribute to them.

In the first engagement with the Sikh army near Peshawar Sayyid Ahmad suffered a defeat because his soldiers took to looting after the first attack and thereby allowed the Sikhs to regroup and attack again. The next battle at Hazro met with the same fate: the Pashtun warriors took to looting before the battle was won and failed to gain decisive edge later on. The warriors fought over the spoils of war and the various groups carried off what they thought was their share, no one listening to the Sayyid.

The lure of loot attracted 80,000 more local warriors to his lashkar which now became an army. At the battle of Shaidu, the warriors of Islam outnumbered the army of Budh Singh, the general who represented the suzerain Maharaja of Lahore, Ranjit Singh. This time a part of the Islamic army refused to fight, and the Durranis actually poisoned the Sayyid fearing his growing spiritual power, and let him be defeated as their imam. Weakened by poisoning, he nevertheless sought solace in marrying an Ismaili girl as his third wife.
:roll: A RAPE trait/Paki gens used to have a good time in their bunkers with women in 1971 while their trrops were suffering direct hots from Indian arty

As author Jalal points out, the parallels are shockingly close. Sayyid Ahmad’s main objective was the expulsion of the British from India (p.70). Osama bin Laden’s foray into Pakistan is also a phase in his jihad against America. Sayyid Ahmad was under pressure from the puritans of the faith from India to first wage war against the ‘Muslim infidels’ and for this he had to enforce sharia on the Pashtun population of Hazara which was under his military control:

‘The scope of the laws was broadly defined to include the compulsory enforcement of Islamic injunctions relating to prayers and fasting, as well as a ban on usury, polygamy, consumption of wine, distribution of a deceased man’s wife and children among his brothers, and involvement in family feuds. Anyone transgressing the sharia after swearing allegiance to Sayyid Ahmad was to be treated as a sinner and a rebel. Any breach was punishable by death, and Muslims were prohibited from saying prayers at the funerals of such people. Two weeks later, after another meeting of tribesmen, Sayyid Ahmad began appointing judges in different parts of the frontier…the moves infringed on the temporal powers of the tribal chiefs and seriously undermined the prerogatives of local religious leaders (p.94)’.

The three conditions that Sayyid Ahmad and the Taliban fill are: fighting enemy number one (the British, the Americans) through a secondary enemy (the Sikhs, Pakistan); mixing local Islam with hardline Arab Islam; and using the tribal order as matrix of Islam. The Taliban derive their radical Islam from the Wahhabi severity of the money-distributing Arabs; the mujahideen of Sayyid Ahmad derived their puritanism from Shah Waliullah’s ‘contact’ with the Arabs in Hijaz in 1730.

In the battle of Balakot, Sikh commander Sher Singh finally overwhelmed Sayyid Ahmad after he was informed about his hideout by his Pashtun allies. Ahmad fought bravely but was soon cut down. To prevent a tomb from being erected on his corpse, the Sikhs cut him to pieces but ‘an old woman found the Sayyid’s severed head which was later buried in the place considered to be his tomb’ (p.105).

Author Jalal notes that in the battlefield of Balakot, where Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly was martyred in 1831, another kind of ‘cross-border’ deniable jihad is being carried out by other mujahideen. She writes: ‘To this day Balakot where the Sayyid lies buried is a spot that has been greatly revered, not only by militants in contemporary Pakistan, some of whom have set up training camps near Balakot, but also by anti-colonial nationalists who interpreted the movement as a prelude to a jihad against the British in India’ (p.61).

Not far from Balakot, the votaries of the Sayyid are fighting on the side of Al Qaeda against ‘imperialist’ America and its client state, Pakistan, and killing more Muslims in the process than Americans, just as the Sayyid killed more Muslims than he killed Sikhs. According to Sana Haroon (Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland; Hurst & Company London 2007), Ahmed Shah Abdali had induced descendants of Mujaddid Alf Sani to move to Kabul after his raid of Delhi in 1748. In 1849, Akhund Ghafur set up the throne of Swat and put Syed Akbar Shah on it as Amir of Swat, the Syed being a former secretary of Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly.

It was a Wahhabi war in the eyes of mild Indian Muslims. It was therefore a virulently Sunni war which pointedly did not attract the Shia. It is difficult to believe that Urdu’s greatest poet Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) could have supported the jihad (p.61). Writers have claimed that he wrote in cipher and used complicated metaphor in his poetry to attach himself surreptitiously to jihad; but that is not true if you read his Persian letters recently made accessible in the very competent Urdu translation of Mukhtar Ali Khan ‘Partau Rohila’ in a single volume Kuliyat Maktubat Farsi Ghalib (National Book Foundation Islamabad 2008).

Far from being attracted to the movement of jihad inspired by anti-Shia saints like Shah Waliullah and Shah Abdul Aziz, Ghalib praises an opponent of the Sayyid, Fazle Haq, and is more forthright about his own conversion to Shiism from the Sunni faith. Like Al Qaeda’s war against America, Sayyid Ahmad’s jihad was a Sunni jihad, an aspect that must be made note of. Al Qaeda today kills Shias as its side business.

So the Pakiban have origins in the Sayyid Ahmed's Barelevi Movement.

Also please not Hamid Guls' rants about creating a new Madina. Is Hamid Gul a descenent of these dregs?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Paul »

I think the wheel is turning full circle.....in a few years time when the nascent Emirate is well established and Pakistan is a rump state confined to Punjab and parts of POK, Barelvi's inheritors will will be fighting the Sikhs in the Punjab again.

This is why I said it is not in India's interests to concede any territory west of the Indus to anyone.

By 2030, it will be 1830 all over again.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

That Haqqani group that was supposed to be behind he Emabssy bombing- do they belong to the TeT(aka Pakiban) or the Afghan Taliban?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:That Haqqani group that was supposed to be behind he Emabssy bombing- do they belong to the TeT(aka Pakiban) or the Afghan Taliban?
They are Afghan Taliban, and like many top Afghan Taliban, have taken refuge in Waziristan.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

So when the US was claiming that these were responsible for the kabul Embassy bombing, then they could be directing the Indian attention/anger towards their own interests?

Haqqani even thought he is hiding in Waziristan, is not part of the TTP and other Pakiban?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

X-posted...
Singha wrote:Dawn. Turi are the shia's the taliban are targeting per the TFT article posted earlier.
sounds like a total free for all in the frontier agencies and parts of NWFP - Everyone
is trying to waste everyone.

Kurram clashes claim 31 lives

By Our Correspondent

PARACHINAR, Aug 25: At least 31 people were killed and 44 others injured in clashes between Turi and Bangash tribes in Kurram Agency on Monday.

Reports of fierce fighting were received from Bagzai, Munda, Inzari, Khwar Kalley, Sangina, Balashkhel, Adda, Para Chamkani, Karman and Pawar areas.

The tribesmen attacked each other’s positions with mortar shells, missiles and rockets.


Sources said that the Turi tribesmen had repulsed an attack by the rival tribe. A jirga of six Bangash tribes held in central Kurram to discuss ceasefire proposals failed to make any progress.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

The Bangash tribesmen who are massacring the Shi'a are part of the Karlani group of tribes, one of whose constituents is the Mehsuds as well. The Shi'a stand no chance at all, though they are getting Hazara fighters from Afghanistan. The situation is a throwback to the 80s timeframe, again proving that the more it changes, the more it remains the same.

Very soon, the Shi'a-Sunni of FATA will engulf Pakistan. Recent reports speak of SSP (Sipah Saheba-e-Pakistan, the most militant Sunni organization) becoming very active in Karachi and in return the Shi'a Sipah-e-Muhammed (known by various names such as Tehreek Jaffria Pakistan & Islami Tehreek-e-Pakistan) have become active as well.

At the same time, another war is also going on in FATA between the Berelvis and the Deobandi/Wahhabi groups. The Sunni Tehreek (ST, a member of Al Qaeda's International Islamic Front, IIF) has its hands full against many warlords in FATA. That's the problem for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They have many warring groups within the fold. Again the Arabic saying: Me against my brothers, me and my brothers against our father, me, my brothers and my father against our cousins . . .
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:Haqqani even thought he is hiding in Waziristan, is not part of the TTP and other Pakiban?
The father/son duo of Jalaluddin & Sirajuddin Haqqani are operating in close cooperation with the TTP. The planning, selection of targets and logistics within Afghanistan are handled by the Haqqanis while the TTP provides foot soldiers and suicide bombers. The attack on the Five star hotel in Kabul, the attack on Hamid Karzai, the attack on the US post where nine American soldiers died, the daring attack on the Sarposa prison in Kandahar and the Indian embassy bombing were all planned by the Haqqanis.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

Something doesn't compute. The TSP's ISI and others were charging the Indian Embassy of supporting the Pakiban. Now if Haqqani baap & beta are part of TTP, which is the Pakiban, then the charges are untrue. And bigger thing is TTP is another front of the ISI. So is the ISI fighting itself(TSPA)?

In all this mix, what is the religious inclination of the TSPA? The reason is under Zia the faithfuls in army officer cadre were mostly Deobandi with a few Shias from Sind and Northern Areas. What is the FATA civil war doing to the faith of the TSPA? Is there a moderate and hardline Deobandi faction?

Where do the Ah-le-Hadiths fit in all this?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

X-Posted..
SSridhar wrote:
Nayak wrote:Baki wetting his shalwar foreseeing the impending islamisation of Bakistan

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=132028
. . . puke is blaming the Afghan warlords-Pakiban-CIA combined for the current mess paki-satan finds itself in.
Nayak, Khalid Aziz is well respected for his knowledge of the lawless North Western Frontier Province. To a certain extent, he is right in that the US & NATO made mistakes that let the Taliban off the hook. For example, the Kunduz airlift and the reluctance to engage infantry. The Germans were wiped out only after the bloody hand-to-hand Berlin fight that wiped out the last vestiges of the Wehrmacht. But, Pakistan cannot blame others for its own massive failings. For example, the Kunduz guyswent scotfree in Pakistan for obvious reasons. The same guys then tried to kill Musharraf near the Rawalpindi gas station. JeM & LeT got all their jihadis from Kunduz without a scratch on them.

IMHO, Khalid Aziz is off mark. He pins the blame on the 'warlords' for the violence. He seems to suggest that the pure Taliban (either the Pakiban Afghaniban variety) are less dangerous than these warlords. Mangal Bagh, for example, was controlling Khyber & Peshawar. But, he also owes allegiance to the Taliban and shares their views. He is no less a religious fanatic. He is no way different from that 12-year old Taliban kid who beheaded the soldier on the videotape. The Taliban are using the warlords as their first line of defence just as the PA used the jihadis in the same way. There is overlapping affinity & loyalty among the groups of Pakiban, warlords and jihadi terrorists and sectarian terrorist outfits. They are all coalescing. They may perish later in the internecine quarrel which is sure to erupt. For the time being, they are facing a common enemy.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote: Something doesn't compute. The TSP's ISI and others were charging the Indian Embassy of supporting the Pakiban. Now if Haqqani baap & beta are part of TTP, which is the Pakiban, then the charges are untrue. And bigger thing is TTP is another front of the ISI. So is the ISI fighting itself(TSPA)?
The TSP’s charges are baseless because if it sticks then it means that the Indians are helping the Pakiban attack the US/NATO forces across the Durand line from Pakistan because that’s what the Pakiban want to do, the PA being incidental. Haqqani has very deep ISI connections. He is a strange character in spite of his legendary status as a mujahideen. He was not a Taliban, in a true sense of that word. Yet, he was a minister in the Taliban because of the respect the Pashtuns have for him. At one point, just after the 9/11, he offered to hand over Osama. The Taliban were insisting on the US presenting it with evidence about Osama so that it could be convinced, but Jalaluddin was willing to handover Osama to a third country if the US stopped bombing. But, it fell through because the US wanted much more than just handing over Osama. But, after escaping to Waziristan, Jalaluddin is hitting the US hard and they are also keenly pursuing him.

The Haqqanis aren’t part of TTP. TTP is purely Pakiban and Haqqanis are Afghan Taliban (one may call them as TTA). TTP and TTA may eventually merge when the Islamic Emirate no longer recognizes the Durand Line and obliterates it.

Of course, TTP is a creation of the ISI. IMHO, there are two groups within the ISI, one supporting the Caliphate and the other supporting nationalist and Islamic Pakistani causes. The former supports the Mehsuds and the latter Maulvi Nazeer, Gul Bahadur etc. who are opposed to foreign terrorists. The former have a worldwide ambition while the latter want to preserve the original Taliban for use purely against India. Lt. Gen Mahmoud Ahmed and Lt. Gen. Javid Naser, both former chiefs of ISI, belong to the former category. The hardcore Taliban who escaped from Sarposa prison in Kandahar last month have joined the TTP. These are mainly Afghan Taliban and foreign terrorists. The Bajaur attack against the PA was mainly by the foreign terrorists which angered the PA to launch a counter attack. It appears therefore that the ISI is fighting its own creation whereas the PA is trying to fight the Uzbeks, Chechens and the Arabs.

Added later: In May, as the 'peace deal' was being negotiated, the Colonel-Commandant of the Mehsud Scouts said that 'no Pashtun can be a terrorist'. This was significant because the PA was trying to drive a wedge between the foreigners and the locals. Baitullah did not fall for this bait. It was announced in the NWFP assembly last week that they estimated 18000 foreign terrorists with TTP, though others have estimated higher numbers. In any case, it was a far cry for a Pakistani Government which maintained all along that no foreign terrorists were operating from its soil.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

50 Militants Killed in Bajaur Violence
Troops killed up to 50 militants including foreign fighters in the Bajaur tribal agency on Wednesday, amid an upsurge in Taliban-inspired bloodshed, security officials said.
This confirms my earlier post.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

Ghosts of the past
Nobody knows which ones have been spawned by the spymasters themselves and which ones sprung up in resistance to US and Pakistani siege of the areas. Similarly, one hears whispers of the Balochistan National Army being active in the province with the backing of some powerful actors.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by Johann »

Ramana,

- The LeT is Ahle Hadith. For the 3-4 years its been active along with the Pakiban and Taliban in fighting coalition forces across the Durand line. However, they have not thrown in their lot with the Pakiban's jihad against Musharraf and those in the PA willing to compromise with the Americans.

- The Pakiban does not have the same strong hierarchy at the top as the Taliban. The Pakiban is really an umbrella group for a number of local movements, and will remain such until a figure like Mullah Omar emerges, someone with enough of an aura of special religious authority that translates in to an ability to inspire personal loyalty across clan and tribal lines. The Taliban was far more centralised around Mullah Omar's spiritual and political authority.

- Waziristan has become the pimary front of the global jihad - that means that Gulf and other funds that had flowed to Al Qaeda in Iraq now flow to FATA instead. In particular Baitullah Mehsud receives a big chunk of those funds to provide the global jihad with local security in Waziristan. Those funds in turn are distributed to other TTP members, giving Mehsud a measure of authority over other Pakiban leaders.

- The Taliban and Pakiban 'tax' opium cultivation, processing and trafficking in Pashtun areas on both sides of the border, producing very significant funds for both. The pathways for that money again help hold the Pakiban together.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by ramana »

How does the money flow from the Gulf to Baitullah Mehsud?
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

Johann wrote: - The Taliban and Pakiban 'tax' opium cultivation, processing and trafficking in Pashtun areas on both sides of the border, producing very significant funds for both. The pathways for that money again help hold the Pakiban together.
Ramana, in addition to what Johann has stated, I will say: The Taliban are well funded by drug trafficking, smuggling of foodgrains and diesel, illegal timber trade, illegal collection of tax (ushr) , donations from wealthy Arabs in the Middle East, robbing of banks in other parts of Pakistan (especially in Karachi's neighbourhoods), extortion, theft of American supplies on the Peshawar-Kabul highway, weapons trade etc. The UN estimates that the Taliban collect USD 100 million annually.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:How does the money flow from the Gulf to Baitullah Mehsud?
Charities & madrasseh.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, composition and leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

Winning Hearts & Minds

The article gives the tactics used by Pakiban. As usual, Khalid Aziz displays his knowledge of the issue.
The militants in Waziristan, Kohat, Mohmand, Swat and Bajaur have tried to retain control over their strongholds by launching a reign of terror based on assassinations and defeating the morale of the security forces, as well as to provide a system of justice and security. {It is a two-front strategy. Defeat the PA psychologically & militarily and win the confidence of the people. Whenever the PA withdraws, the vacuum is being immediately filled with the Taliban openly assuming control. They dispense Shariah-based justice quickly through Mohtassib Shuras. The Tanzeem-e-Karwan, a wing of TTP, has been establishing sharia courts in captured territories. Summary and open executions of criminals are carried out. Inconvenient jirga elders and maliks, the implementors of Pakhtunwali, are eliminated under the guise of US spies. Since the US is universally accepted as the enemy in these areas, nobody can find fault with the Taliban for these assassinations. Protracted disputes are settled rather quickly for a fee. They have also distributed compensation for those affected by US & PA bombing. Thus, Taliban wins the confidence of the people. This is a typical Taliban style which first implements quick justice for people to gain their confidence and then introduces their brand of vicious Islam. Any show of dissent is immediatelt dealt with severely so that there is total obedience.}

The approach adopted by them has been to whittle away at the security services by capturing or killing them and by adroit propaganda amongst the population that the militants were the soldiers of Islam while government forces were fighting in support of a non-Muslim power. This propaganda has been effective in obtaining the goodwill of Pakistanis for the militants overall objectives. However, a majority also decry the militants' recourse to violence. For the last few years the militants adopted the clever strategy of exploiting the weakness within the Pakistani system. If you examine the circumstances preceding the many "agreements" between the militants and the government forces, four things become apparent.

One, such agreements normally occur when the military, after initial difficulties, begins to regain supremacy but has not yet attained it. The "agreement" thus interrupts a trend which is heading towards success. Two, in return for releasing government captives, the militants obtain the release of many of their own rank and file who were arrested in the area of operation or on charges of sabotage in other parts of Pakistan. The militants also force the security forces to withdraw from dominant positions which had been won after much bloodshed and sacrifice. Three, many of the agreements are reached after a good deal of money is transferred to militants as facilitating fees or as compensation for loss of lives and property. Four, for "convincing" the government to attain peace and then to weigh decisions in favour of militants, great reliance is placed on the tribal MNAs and senators, who act as a pressure group within the assemblies and later as members of peace jirga negotiating between the government and the militants.

This political group can thus be classified as those with leanings towards the militants. It cannot be otherwise, since they live in areas under the militants' domination.
In support of this contention is the figure of more than 600 tribal Maliks executed by the militants since 2002. However, not a single MNA or Senator has been so victimised. {Recently, we have started seeing the MNA's families being murdered. While the Taliban will not murder them on a large scale now, they will do so after they establish sufficient sway because they would not like the political parties and politicians to be present in a Caliphate. Tactically, it is better not to eliminate them now in order to pressurize the provincial and federal administration.} Another attribute of such "agreements" is the preeminent role which the JUI-F plays on the floor of the Assembly or during subsequent negotiations.

A few weeks ago the security forces in Bajaur Agency came under a severe attack from a well organised group of Arabs and Central Asian fighters. {Ramana, in my earlier post on your question as to why ISI was fighting its own creation, I had said that the PA was fighting in Bajaur because foreigners attacked them and took 250 soldiers as captive} When matters reached a critical level with the possible imminent capture of Khar, the agency headquarters, the military and the air force retaliated strongly. It resulted in heavy casualties to the militants and lead to their dispersal. An unintended consequence of the fighting was the departure of more than 250,000 residents of Bajaur, who are now refugees.

Tribesmen are holding jirgas in Salarzai and other places against the militants. They have forced the militants to evacuate their areas since they are accused of bringing pain to the residents of Bajaur. Furthermore, the military action has resulted in the death of more than 8,000 militants. :eek: {Frankly, I am surprised by this number} Regrettably there have also been a number of innocent deaths. Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, the leader of the militants in Bajaur, is either dead or injured, because he is not traceable. In Swat the community protected the veteran political stalwart Afzal Khan against the militants. In Koza Banda in Swat when Sikander Khan and Qayyum, two locals, were injured by the militants, the community retaliated and killed those responsible for the attack. Similarly, in Buner, Dir, Peshawar, Mardan and other places, the communities have organised themselves to defend against the militants. Thus a situation has arisen where the ascendency of the radicals has seen challenges for the first time by the communities with only marginal government assistance.

However, when the government is near success the old game of using Parliament as a prop to defeat the will of the state is brought into play. Any revision of policy at this stage will be a great blow to the government. At the same time, Pakistan is in the midst of a severe political crisis. This has occurred due to a breakdown of the coalition at the time of a presidential election. The tribal areas have 20 electoral votes in this contest. The tribal MNAs and Senators have said that they would like the military activity stopped in Bajaur as a precondition for casting their votes for the PPP candidate. In short, the presidential contest has become a negotiable item in the path of security operations. The JUI-F, which has more than 30 Electoral College votes, has categorically asked for a halt to all military operations.

What will be the consequences if the military action is stopped? It will not only let down the military but also all those who have accepted the challenge to fight the militants at the community level. We have seen that while the government adheres to ceasefires the militants do not. The militants use ceasefires to retaliate against those who risked attacking the militants. The government's ascendancy that now prevails will be lost.

One is not for war and would wish an end to the killings, but if there has to be a ceasefire the militants must surrender their core leaders and weapons and promise to end all violence. Secondly, this narrative clearly suggests that implementation of Pakistan's security policy after the guidelines have been fixed should not become a part of the political calculus.

At the start I had mentioned that the final determinant of an insurgency is winning the hearts and minds of the people. If you examine the militants' narrative it relates to the story of a rich person, bin Laden, who gave up his wealth, family and privileges to come and defend the poor, in a world where they believe their religion is under challenge. The "valiant" bin Laden is seen pitched in a battle against those who have greater personal and private interest in retaining power for themselves rather than for the public good. Clearly under these circumstances the battle for the hearts and minds will be in favour of bin Laden than the leadership in Pakistan, which is portrayed as self-centred. This is indeed a huge challenge, but one which is overlooked by the ruling elite. In this battle for the hearts and minds the side which is moral, fair and bases its policies on principles, rather than on expediency, will win the battle for hearts and minds.

If Pakistan is to have a fighting chance of coming on top of the insurgency it must improve governance and help the poor. Secondly, it must protect its security policies from the vagaries of selfish political actors. A contrary course will spell disaster.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

One tactic used successfully by the Pakiban was to kidnap important people, high value persons or members of the armed forces and use them to secure advantages for the Taliban/Pakiban.

One example was the abduction of the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, who was later bargained for Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, ex Defence Minister and a top Commanderof the Taliban. We have seen many cases of armed forces personnel being tarded for Taliban terrorists in ratios that were hugely favourable to the Pakiban. Even in Lal Masjid, the Pakiban abducted several police officers to get their own cadres released.

Now, Pakiban has accpted that it has abducted the two missing Chinese engineers.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Muslim Khan told reporters on phone that their armed cadres were holding the two Chinese men, along with their guard and driver.

"The Taliban's 'Shura' or council will decide the fate of the Chinese engineers," Khan said but did not specify any demands for their release.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

Pakiban, Taliban and Al Qaeda are all the same - Najam Sethi's Edit in DT
The adviser to the interior ministry, Rehman Malik, has made a statement that should mark a major departure from policies overtly and covertly followed by the government in the past. He said on Monday that “Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is an extension of Al Qaeda”. He explained that Al Qaeda couldn’t move in the tribal Areas without the facilitation of the TTP, and that “the TTP is a host to Al Qaeda and is their mouthpiece”. He went on to also describe the movement of Al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman Al Zawahiri, from the TTP-protected Tribal Areas and Kunar and Paktia provinces of Afghanistan. He said Pakistan narrowly missed capturing Al Zawahiri in recent days, most probably during the operation in Bajaur.

Pakistan’s official position in the past has been at pains to describe “three distinct entities” in Pakistan in the shape of the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda. It was said in the past that no Afghan Taliban had ever been kept under official protection in Pakistan and that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, was spreading disinformation when he accused Pakistan of sheltering them in Balochistan. On the other hand, Pakistan admitted responsibility for the Pakistani Taliban and said it was doing everything possible to prevent their infiltrations into Afghanistan. About Al Qaeda, the accepted wisdom was that its leaders Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri were located somewhere on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a “notional” rather than a factual point of view.

The official policy, therefore, has been to “talk” to the local Taliban and arrange “peace deals” with them, while having nothing to do with the Afghan Taliban whose leader Mullah Umar may or may not be in Pakistan, just like the Al Qaeda leaders. The war Pakistan was waging therefore was against Al Qaeda and the foreign Taliban and not the local Taliban who could apparently be made to mend their ways. The civil society slogan aimed against former President Pervez Musharraf was that Pakistan was fighting “its own people” in the Tribal Areas and that this was really America’s war that Pakistan was fighting on its behalf. State institutions also participated in this debate through retired intelligence officers who mostly spoke against the policy of fighting America’s war against the Pashtun people.

Mr Rehman Malik has thankfully rejected all that self-serving nonsense. The clubbing together of the two kinds of Taliban and their patron Al Qaeda, as we have long advocated in these columns, is a correct final conclusion although it is likely to be opposed by the usual suspects in the media and many angry ex-servicemen and civil society types. That fact is that a dozen authoritative books on the subject have confirmed the presence of the “troika” of terrorism that is working in lockstep in Pakistan. This rephrasing of the problem that Pakistan is facing puts forward a realistic diagnosis of the problem of terrorism while putting the government and army on notice to formulate an effective strategy to confront the three-in-one challenge.
The policy of “trifurcating” the problem of terrorism has not worked. In fact it has put the diagnosis of the problem back to front; and the nation at large has swallowed the line that action against Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007 was an “act of savagery against innocent people”. The truth is that Lal Masjid has always figured in the official statements of the Al Qaeda leadership and the Taliban followed the order of battle that these represented to them as obedient soldiers. The “trifurcation” also forced Pakistan to involve India more in the internal disorder of Pakistan than warranted, and thus gave Al Qaeda a free run. The local Taliban leaders, all “alumni” of Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan :) under the Taliban, unleashed a reign of terror in the Tribal Areas to convert the local population into servitude of Al Qaeda. Economic blandishments were not long in coming: Al Qaeda pays more to its Taliban recruits than the government does to its paramilitary recruits!

Mr Rehman Malik’s statement bestows clarity of mind to those in charge of facing up to Al Qaeda. His statement should signal a change of approach in the army without which Pakistan’s final victory over the agents of disorder will not be possible. If this marks a new phase, then Pakistan is well on its way to falling in line with how the world thinks about the global threat posed by the presence of Al Qaeda and its foreign warriors on Pakistan’s soil. It will rid Pakistan of the ambivalence that made President Pervez Musharraf look as if he was double-dealing with the world and with Pakistanis too. The operation in Bajaur gives all the signs of a correct diagnosis of the problem.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership-1

Post by ramana »

If Najam Sethis is right that "Pakiban, Taliban and AlQ are the same" then it means its the jihadi faction of PA behind all that!
I didnt know that truth will come out so soon! Not even one page of the thread.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership-1

Post by SSridhar »

X-Post from Pakistan thread.
Paki Taliban join with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Karachi

No surprise here for those who follow this development. Here is a chronology of events.

Maulvi Umar, the spokesperson of TTP and a product of Karachi’s famous Jamia Binoria, spoke about the need for shariah in Karachi to arrest spreading vulgarity, in a BBC interview on Aug. 4, 2008. The jihadists in Karachi have been robbing banks lately in order to have funds for their activities and have links with the TTP. Meanwhile, the Karachi-based Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) has warned about the dangers of spreading Talibanism in that city even as wall graffitti and posters have appeared there in support of the Taliban The truck drivers, moving material for NATO-ISAF forces from the Karachi port have been warned by the Taliban not to operate their trucks. By early August 2008, Maulvi Umar, spokesperson of TTP, warned that they could take-over Karachi any time as they had “ ‘massive’ support of Karachi’s residents”. The Sind wing of PPP, while accepting the MQM charge of an influx of Pashtuns into Karachi recently, termed it as ‘benign’ due to Army operations in NWFP. Now, Pakistan's intelligence agencies are accepting the fact that there is a linkup between TTP and other sectarian and jihadist outfits.

Just yesterday, Najam Sethi had said that there was no difference between Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and Paki Taliban. We knew all along that there was indeed no difference between Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and Paki Taliban and Paki Sunni sectarian/Jihadi outfits. That has been proved now.
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Re: Pakiban- Origins, Composition, Tactics and Leadership-1

Post by ramana »

The Pakiban and Taliban phenomenon is really an Islamized Pashtun nationalism at its core. If one maps the areas in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan it is very obvious that it’s all in the Pashtun areas. As Paul pointed out first that, the Pahstun has grabbed Islamization as a substitute for thwarted and suppressed nationalism.
This phenomenon is not an isolated one in history. Islam provides politico-religious milieu for suppressed nationalism throughout its history. The first occurrence was the Arab tribes that burst out into the Middle East the first hundred years after advent of Islam. The next one is the Vandals of North Africa who were left out of the Roman Christian mission who became Islamized and swept Spain or Al-Andalus. Then we have the Turks of Central Asia who created the Ottoman Empire and the Sultanates all over Middle East to India in the medieval period.
An Islamized Pashtun state will at a minimum straddle the Durand line and could have a zone of influence till the west bank of Indus. The Tajiks in Afghanistan will seek to merge with their brethern. and so will the Uzbeks. The Shite Afghans around Herat will have to join Iran for safety.
However everytime a new Islamic state is established it leads to spillover in its immediate neighborhood and farther if it gets too powerful. Looking at the past it is possible to predict the course of spread of such Islamized nationalism- the neighboring states and regions will get the first impact of the successful wave and it will spend itself in distance and time. So India is in for the long haul. It is possible to deflect the wave Westwards than to absorb it Eastwards for historically the Persians were able to subdue the Afghans as the book "History of the Pathans" by Olaf Caroe shows.

Karzai and other sarkari Pashtuns will be overwhelmed unless the TSP is taken down massively. I don’t think the West understands this or hopes to use the wave towards India.
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