A Pakistani Awakening?

Some inter­est­ing news out of the Swat Val­ley yes­ter­day:
TOTANA BANDAI: When a posse of Tal­iban fight­ers entered a mosque in this vil­lage dur­ing evening prayers last week to demand the alle­giance of the con­gre­ga­tion, long-suffering locals decided they had enough.
The vil­lagers, of whom a major­ity had only just returned to their homes fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of major military […]

OC soldier dies from crash in Afghanistan - San Jose Mercury News

Newzjunky.comOC sol­dier dies from crash in AfghanistanSan Jose Mer­cury NewsA sol­dier from Orange County has died of injuries he received in Afghanistan. The Depart­ment of Defense says 20-year-old Army Spc. Matthew KS Swan­son of …Lake For­est sol­dier d…

Heart of Soldier Killed in Afghanistan Goes to Family Friend - FOXNews

Heart of Sol­dier Killed in Afghanistan Goes to Fam­ily Friend­FOXNewsArmy Ranger Ben­jamin Kopp died last month after being wounded in Afghanistan, but a part of the Min­nesota sol­dier lives on. His fam­ily agreed to donate his …Min­nesota Sol­dier Gives Ne…

Taking the Eyes Off the Ball

Both Nicholas Schmi­dle, author of “To Live or to Per­ish For­ever: Two Tumul­tuous Years in Pak­istan,” and Andrew Exum (Abu Muqawama, yo) are warn­ing that expand­ing the Pak­istan mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, cur­rently push­ing back the Tal­iban from the Swat Val­ley, to Waziris­tan right now is likely a big mis­take.
Schmidle’s con­cerns are logis­ti­cal and prac­ti­cal:
… it is unrealistic […]

From the Dept. of It's About Time...

Finally!
The mil­i­tary sent heli­copter gun­ships to a north­west region Tues­day to sup­port armed vil­lagers who have risen up against Tal­iban to avenge a deadly mosque blast, an offi­cial said.
One of the rea­sons the Tal­iban were able to make such gains in Dir and Swat was that local mili­tias saw no sup­port from the gov­ern­ment and watched Islam­abad make […]

Mingora Survivors Fleeing

As reports of the Pak­istani Army hav­ing taken Min­gora, Swat’s largest town, over the week­end fil­ter out, many media said it could not be con­firmed because they weren’t allowed in the area. Al Jazeera has got­ten into Min­gora and the report is mixed. While the Tal­iban seem to have fled (as evi­denced by graf­fiti left […]

Bounty on Fazlullah increased to 50M Rupees

Well, looks like Maulana Fazlul­lah, com­man­der of the Swat Tal­iban, is still alive and kick­ing, rumors to the con­trary. The Pak­istani gov­ern­ment just upped the bounty on his head to 50 mil­lion rupees, or almost $620,000. Dawn reports that he has been in con­tact with his fight­ers.
This could all be an IO on anyone’s part. […]

Operation Rahi-i-Rast: One Month On

Yes­ter­day marked the one-month mark for the Pak­istani military’s offen­sive against the Tal­iban in the Swat region. How are things going? Let’s assess:
This week­end saw the begin­ning of the bat­tle for Min­gora, the valley’s admin­is­tra­tive seat. The mil­i­tary is reported to be in con­trol of about half of the city, but some Tal­iban fight­ers are […]

Taliban Giving Up? Not Likely.

Hm. This is inter­est­ing:
The Tal­iban on Mon­day urged civil­ians to return to the Swat Valley’s main city, promis­ing they would not attack secu­rity forces bat­tling for con­trol out of con­cern for the safety of trapped res­i­dents.
The order allegedly comes from Maulana Fazlul­lah, the Swat Tal­iban leader, who has ordered his men to stop fight­ing the Pakistani […]

Pakistan Claims 700 Taliban Dead? Yeah, right.

Color me skep­ti­cal, but Pak­istani Inte­rior Min­is­ter Rehman Malik is claim­ing Pakistan’s offen­sive in the NWFP has killed 700 Tal­iban fight­ers.
“More than 700 mil­i­tants have been killed dur­ing the last four days. Fifty-two Tal­iban fight­ers were killed in Swat in the last 24 hours,” he said. He said the oper­a­tion would con­tinue till the last Taliban […]

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