August 23, 2008:
Pakistan believes their combat operations in
Bajaur have inflicted some serious losses on Taliban forces along the Afghan
border. Over 200,000 civilians have fled the fighting. The Taliban are
attempting to make a stand against the army, and that isn't working out too
well. Although the army would rather be training to fight India, they can no
longer ignore the Taliban and al Qaeda attempts to set up their own Islamic
Republic along the border. The government tried to work out a deal, where the
terrorists would have a sanctuary along the border, as long as the rest of
Pakistan was left alone, but that was not acceptable to many of the Islamic
radicals. That's the problem with religious radicals. They are on a Mission
From God, and no compromise is really possible. So the issue is being settled
with weapons along the border, especially in the Bajaur region.
In the last month, nearly a thousand
people have died in the battles with Islamic terrorists along the Afghan
border. The Taliban and al Qaeda forces constantly get beaten when they try to
fight the Pakistani forces head on, so the terrorists have responded with
suicide and roadside bomb attacks. This has not compensated for their lack of
conventional military capability, and the army keeps advancing into villages
and valleys the Taliban have been using as bases. This becomes a matter of life
and death once Winter arrives. Camping out during the Winter is bad for your
health, and leaves you vulnerable to air attacks, since your camp fires can
easily be spotted by airborne infrared sensors. The new government wants to
restart negotiations with the Islamic militants, but for the moment the army is
doing things the army way.
All along the border, the Taliban are
searching for American spies. The U.S. has quietly established an informant
network there over the years, and this is getting lots of key Taliban and al
Qaeda leaders killed. Several times a month, GPS guided missiles arrive from Afghanistan,
or from UAVs over head, and kill people who appear to have been identified by
locals. The Americans pay large rewards for information that leads to a successful
attack. The Taliban are killing anyone they suspect of being an informer. Most
of the dead appear to be innocents who simply looked guilty to increasingly
paranoid Taliban.
One of the bloodiest battles in
Pakistan has been going on between Sunni and Shia extremists along the Afghan
border. Several hundred people have been killed there so far this month, and at
least ten percent of the population made homeless by attacks on villages. The Shia Bangash and Turi tribes are at the center
of the conflict, which got started three decades ago. This was when the Shia
revolution in Iran created a religious dictatorship in Iran, and a call for
Shia everywhere to join a worldwide revolution to make the Shia sect of Islam supreme.
In Pakistan, the Shia in the Kurram Agency (2,300 square kilometers and about
400,000 people, on the Afghan border) got the message and agitated for an
autonomous Shia area on the border. The Sunni dominated Pakistan government
responded by refusing, and encouraging Sunni tribesmen to move to Kurram, where
they were given government owned land. Some of that land was claimed by the
Shia Turi tribe (and other Shias in Kurram). The Turi are a Pushtun tribe (as
are most of the others along the border) who claim that they originally came from
Iran. The Bangnash claim to originally be from Afghanistan. To further
complicate matters, the Turis and Bangnash have been feuding for over three
hundred years. Both tribes are now fighting the Sunni migrants, as well as
hundreds of Taliban gunmen who have come to fight the Shia (which Sunni
radicals consider to be heretics). Some clans of the Bangash are Sunni, as are
some of the smaller tribes in Kurram. The Shia tribes are dismayed that the
government does not send in more police and troops to help them fight the
hundreds of Taliban who have entered the area to try and drive the Shia tribes
into Afghanistan. The government believes that some of the Shia tribal militias
have been receiving financial support from Iran.
A little to the south, in the Swat
valley, the fighting goes on between the Taliban and government forces. This is
a fight to the death, as the Taliban are determined to turn the Swat valley
into an Islamic radical stronghold. The government won't allow it, and the
fighting will go on until all the local Taliban (several thousand militants)
are killed or driven out.
In Kashmir, India, two months of
violence over a land dispute (many Hindu holy places are in the area, which has
a majority Moslem population) have left over three dozen dead. The Moslems have
been expelling the Hindus for centuries, and this has accelerated in the last
two decades, since Pakistan decided to back Islamic terrorism efforts to take
Kashmir from India. This effort has
largely been defeated, but the Moslem hostility to other religions, especially
Hinduism, remains. There have been massive crowds of Moslems coming out in
Kashmir, to block the expansion of a Hindu shrine. Equally large demonstrations
are taking place in the Indian capital, as Hindus pressure their government to
resist the Moslems.
In Baluchistan (southwest Pakistan),
tribal separatists killed five government officials they kidnapped two weeks
ago. The government refused to exchange the captives for imprisoned tribal
rebels.
A small bomb went off in the Pakistani
port city of Karachi, killing two people.
August 22, 2008: Sixty people were killed by a Taliban suicide
bomber, who attacked the entrance to Pakistan's main weapons factory, just as
the shifts were changing. This sort of thing doesn't terrorize Pakistanis, but
infuriates them, mobilizing more armed resistance to Islamic radicalism.
August 18, 2008: Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf resigned
under pressure. Musharraf took control of the government in 1999 via a military
coup. At the time, he was the head of the military, and feuding with the
elected head of the government, who tried to replace Musharraf because of
insubordination. Throughout Pakistan's 60 year history, elected and military
governments have alternated. That's because the elected governments tend to be
disorganized and corrupt, while the military governments are dictatorships, and nearly as corrupt. When
the generals become too unpopular, they allow themselves to be replaced by
elected leaders. But eventually, the generals return. The military is a major,
and powerful, institution in Pakistan. It maintains this power by playing on
fears that India wants to take over Pakistan and incorporate it into India. Few
Indians want to do this, but the idea is more accepted, and feared, in
Pakistan. This has kept the Pakistani military free from civilian interference.
And free to take over when they feel the politicians have gone too far.
In Pakistan's northwest border area, a
suicide bomber killed 27 people when his explosives were set off at the
emergency entrance to a hospital. The attacker appeared to be a Sunni terrorist
attacking Shia who had gathered at the hospital entrance to pay respect to a
Shia leader who had been shot dead the day before.