 Islamic Tolerance Alert: Already left homeless by a Muslim rampage in August that saw eight Christians burned alive, the remaining Christians of Gojra cannot celebrate Christmas without looking over their shoulders.
"Pakistan Christians celebrate Christmas in fear," by Elena Becatoros for the Associated Press, December 24: GOJRA, Pakistan - No Christmas decorations brighten the tent camp sheltering Christians left homeless by the worst violence against minorities in Pakistan this year. Instead, there is a pervasive sense of fear. The Christians have received cell phone text messages warning them to expect a "special Christmas present," they say, and are terrified of their tents being torched or their church services being bombed. "Last year I celebrated Christmas full of joy," said Irfan Masih, cradling his young son among the canvas shelters and open ditches of the camp. But now "the fear that we may again be attacked is in our hearts. "They are threatening us, (saying) 'We will again attack you and will not let you out of homes, we will burn you inside this time,'" he said. It was the fires that most traumatized Gojra's Christian Colony, a neighborhood in the heart of this Punjabi city about 220 miles (354 kilometers) southwest of Islamabad. In early August, hundreds of Muslims rampaged through the dirt streets, looting and torching homes as panicked residents tried to flee and thick black smoke rose into the air. Eight Christians died -- seven of them from one family trapped in a burning home. "We are going to celebrate Christmas in sorrow because the whole family is hurt by this," said Almas Hameed, whose father was shot dead during the riots. His wife, two of his children and members of his brother's family all burned to death. The attack, which officials said was incited by a banned radical Islamist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, followed rumors that Christians had torn pages of a Quran, an act considered sacrilegious by Muslims. The ensuing carnage drew condemnation from the Pope and Pakistan's prime minister, and highlighted how religious extremism has left the country's minority groups increasingly vulnerable. Christians -- Protestants and Catholics among them -- make up less than 5 percent of Muslim-majority Pakistan's 175 million people. Christians say more than 100 homes were burned and looted in Gojra and the nearby village of Korian. While many homes have been rebuilt using state money, dozens of families are still living in tents, waiting for construction on their houses to finish. Both those who have moved back into their homes and the ones still in the camp say they are still regularly threatened -- phone calls telling them to stop pressing for those responsible to be convicted, or else; armed men turning up at their homes; text messages on their cell phones promising a "special Christmas present;" rocks thrown at the tents in the night. "When we sleep at night the fear never leaves our heart," said Safia Riaz, a 30-year-old whose father died of a heart attack during the riots. The violence "has stuck in our minds. Tension remains -- God forbid that it will happen again." Strict security was being put into place during Christmas, said police officer Mohammed Tahir of the Faisalabad regional police headquarters, who rejected claims that authorities were unable to protect the minority. Security has been ramped up across the country anyway, as this year Christmas falls during the Islamic month of Muharram, which is often marred by bombings and fighting between Pakistan's Sunni Muslims and its Shiite minority. But Gojra's Christians have little faith in the police, who were accused of standing by during the worst of August's violence. "The police already didn't save us before," said Ashar Faras, a 33-year-old who works as a chef in an Islamabad guesthouse.... 
 ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani court ordered on Monday that five Americans detained in the country who officials said were seeking to join up with militant groups should not be deported, said a lawyer. The lawyer said the court blocked any attempt to deport the five in response to a request filed by a human rights activist. "They should not be handed over to the FBI or America or any other country until this petition is decided," said lawyer Tariq Asad from the eastern city of Lahore where the court heard the case. "The court has restrained the government from handing the five over," he said. There has been speculation that Washington may ask its regional ally Pakistan to deport the men back to the United States. U.S. FBI agents and their Pakistani colleagues have been interrogating the young American Muslims who wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight U.S.-led forces, Pakistani officials said. The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were detained last week in Sargodha in Punjab province, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. The were taken to Lahore on the weekend. The next hearing is expected on December 17. The five men tried to contact militants and stayed in touch with each other through the Internet, Pakistani security officials said, highlighting the difficulty authorities face in trying to track and disrupt plots organized online. The case has again focused attention on nuclear-armed Pakistan's performance in fighting militants as Washington presses Islamabad to root out Islamist fighters crossing the border to attack U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan. Police have taken the first step toward filing charges with complaints based on laws pertaining to foreigners and the use of computers to organize crime. According to documents issued by the police, the five are named Waqar Hussain Khan, Ahmed Minni, Ramy Zamzam, Aman Yemer and Umar Farooq. Police in the southern port city of Karachi raided a hotel where three of the five men stayed upon arrival in Pakistan two weeks ago. Senior Karachi police official Ghulam Nabi Memon said a mobile telephone and five bags had been recovered in the raid, although nothing significant was found in the bags. Reuters
 At least 36 people have been killed and 140 wounded in twin explosions at a busy marketplace in the northeast Pakistani city of Lahore. The blasts took place on Monday at the Moon Market in Lahore's Iqbal Town locality, a senior police official said. Witnesses said ambulances and rescue teams had reached the blast site, and the injured were being shifted to a nearby hospital. "[They were] bomb attacks, near simultaneous, but it is not clear if it was a planted bomb or detonated in a vehicle. At least seven people were killed," Mohammad Khalid, a senior Lahore police official, said. One of the blasts hit the outside of bank and one was in front of a police area, another police official said. Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said: "This marketplace would have been packed. It's a place where families go to socialise. This underscores, yet again, how fragile and dangerous the situation in Pakistan is. "Reports say there have been two separate blasts, but the pictures that we're seeing on local television here show mass fires breaking out ... it is likely the death toll will rise." Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent also in Islamabad, said: "Immediately after the explosion, the entire area was plunged into darkness and rescue teams went in as fires burned throughout the shops. The attack in Lahore was the third in the country on Monday, with one earlier in Peshawar, and a smaller one in Quetta.
At least seven people were killed in a suicide bomb attack outside a court in the northwestern city of Peshawar earlier during the day.
The bomber blew himself up at the gate to the court building after police stopped him, officials said.
Three of those killed were policemen. Dozens of other people were injured.
Peshawar, near the Afghan border, has been targeted repeatedly since Pakistan sent its troops to fight the Taliban in the tribal region of South Waziristan. Also on Monday, eight people, including a child, were injured in a bomb attack in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, police said. The bomb, hidden in a motorcycle parked outside the gate of a government residential complex, was allegedly detonated by remote control, police said. The Pakistani military said on Monday that its troops had killed four suspected fighters in a search operation in the northwestern Swat valley. The army launched a successful offensive there in April and his since launched an offensive against fighters in the tribal regions along the country's border with Afghanistan. Al Jazeera
 ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Taliban have threatened to contaminate water sources and reservoirs with poisonous materials to pressure the army to stop military operations against them in South Waziristan tribal region. The cantonment boards of Rawalpindi and Chaklala received the threat from the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. A letter, faxed to the Directorate of Military Lands and Cantonments in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, said the Taliban had procured 200 litres of poisonous materials that would be used to contaminate water.
 ISLAMABAD — The Pakistani army entered the last of three militant strongholds targeted by a major offensive in the northwest on Friday, as gunmen wounded a senior army officer and a soldier in the capital. The operation in South Waziristan, the main Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuary in Pakistan, has sparked a wave of retaliatory attacks that have killed about 300 civilians and security forces in the past month.
The shooting in Islamabad was the third such attack in about two weeks. The militants hope the attacks will weaken the army's resolve as it pushes deeper into the isolated, mountainous region near the Afghan border. But the army pressed ahead Friday, entering Makeen, the hometown of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a suspected U.S. missile strike in August. Troops razed Mehsud's house, an act of vengeance for the hundreds of people the Pakistani Taliban has killed in the country. In Islamabad, assailants opened fire on an army brigadier and a soldier as the two drove away from the officer's home, said police official Khan Khurshid Khan. The gunmen sped away after the attack, he said. Hospital official Arshad Khokhar said the brigadier and the soldier were in stable condition. A brigadier is equivalent to a brigadier general in the U.S. Army. It was unclear if the officer was involved in the South Waziristan offensive, which was launched in mid-October. On Oct. 22, gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a brigadier and a soldier riding in an army jeep in what was believed to be the first assassination of an army officer in the capital. Less than a week later, gunmen attacked another brigadier as he was driving to a bank with his mother, but they escaped unharmed. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, which has declared war on the government for alleged being un-Islamic and supporting the U.S. war on terror. Read more here,,,, Source: FoxNews
 At least 30 people have been killed and 45 others wounded after a suicide bomber targeted workers queuing for their salaries outside a bank and hotel in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.
The blast, the second bombing in less than a week, occurred on Monday close to Pakistan's army headquarters in the garrison city.
The attack off Mall Road was close to the Pearl Continental Hotel and near Pakistan's army headquarters, where 10 fighters mounted a nearly 24-hour siege last month that left 23 people dead. Death toll rising
A senior police official said the attack was the work of a suicide bomber. "The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to get salaries. We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker," Aslam Tarin, senior police official, said.
 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged U.S. support for Islamabad's campaign against Islamic militants, after a car bomb struck a busy market in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 100 people, most of whom were women and children. "I strongly condemn the cowardly attack today in Afghanistan," Clinton said. "My thoughts and prayers are with all those who were injured and the families who lost loved ones." More than 200 people were wounded in the blast in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest in a surge of attacks by suspected insurgents this month. The government blamed militants seeking to avenge an army offensive launched this month against Al Qaeda and Taliban in their stronghold close to the Afghan border. The bombing was the deadliest since explosions hit homecoming festivities for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi in October 2007, killing about 150 people. Bhutto was later slain in a separate attack. Wednesday's bomb destroyed much of the Mina Bazaar in Peshawar's old town, a warren of narrow alleys clogged with stalls and shops selling dresses, toys and cheap jewelry that drew many female shoppers and children in the conservative city. The blast collapsed buildings, including a mosque, and set scores of shops ablaze. The wounded sat amid burning debris and parts of bodies as a huge plume of gray smoke rose above the city. Crying for help, men tried to pull survivors from beneath wreckage. One man carried away a baby with a bloody face and a group of men rescued a young boy covered in dust, but others found only bodies of the dead. A two-story building collapsed as firefighters doused it with water, triggering more panic. "There was a deafening sound and I was like a blind man for a few minutes," said Mohammad Usman, who was wounded in the shoulder. "I heard women and children crying and started to help others. There was the smell of human flesh in the air." Read more here,,,, Source: FoxNews
 A earthquake of magnitude 6.2 has shaken buildings across northern Afghanistan and Pakistan.The earthquake was centred in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, according to the US Geological Survey. The quake was felt in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Al Jazeera's correspondents reported. There were no initial reports of damage or casualties from the quake, which struck at about 12.21am Afghan time on Friday (19:51GMT Thursday), although information from rural areas is expected to take some time to filter out. Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "It shook large parts of Islamabad, for at least eight or nine seconds and then there was a very strong aftershock immediately afterwards. "It wasn't just felt here in Islamabad, but also in Kabul and Karachi. "The concern, of course, will be how much damage has it done to the epicentre and the towns there. "At the moment, as the Pakistani army is fighting a major offensive in South Waziristan, they may have to put a great deal of resources into the area where the earthquake may have caused damage," Al Jazeera's correspondent said. "That might affect the operation ... not just in South Waziristan but the security operation that has been mounted all around the country." James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said: "The whole building where I am shook. It's a place where we have a lot of seismic activity, a place prone to earthquakes. "Those people who are there in the area where the quake struck will be on their own for a very long time. It is a highly mountainous area, so initial impressions are that there won't be a huge number of casualties. "On the other hand, if it has hit a village, and there are casualties, it is going to take a very long time to get them assistance." A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northwest Pakistan and Kashmir in October 2005 killed 74,000 people and displaced 3.5 million others. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 At least six people have been killed in twin bomb blasts at a university in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, police and witnesses say. The explosions occurred within minutes of each other at the International Islamic University in the eastern part of the city on Tuesday. "We have sent a team to the site. We are collecting information about casualties," a policeman said. Police said that one of the bombs had been detonated by a suicide bomber in a cafeteria for female students. Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from the scene, said: "We can see bits of clothes, scraps of books and a lot more worrying, very thick, dark red blood. "There's a thick heavy smell of smoke hanging in the air and every step we take have been punctuated by the sound of broken glass. "The windows have been buckled, and the walls have fallen in... looking at the extend of the damage, I can understand why [the toll] may possibly rise. Students from around the world study at the university. The latest bomb attacks come at a time when Pakistani troops are engaged in an offensive against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan province. Pakistan has witnessed a string of attacks this month, resulting in the deaths of more than 170 people. Analysts say armed fighters opposed to the government are likely to step up attacks to avenge the offensive in South Waziristan. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - At least eight people were killed Thursday morning when a suicide car bomber rammed a police station in northwest Pakistan, authorities said. The attack took place about 9 a.m. in the Kohat district, which borders Pakistan's tribal region, police official Zafar Iqbal said. At least two victims were police officers. The offices of several senior police and government officials are next to the police station that was targeted. Several military installations also are nearby, Iqbal said. Source: CNN
 Pakistani forces have stormed an army headquarters in Rawalpindi, freeing 22 hostages held there by suspected Taliban fighters, according to the military. The army operation got under way in the early hours of Sunday morning. Reports said that three hostages and four fighters were killed in the assault. "It appears the operation is over as the rattle of gun fire has calmed down," Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said. "The military is very confident they have been able to save a lot of the military personnel [held captive]. "The situation is still quite fluid and it's not quite clear how many people have been rescued, [but they say] over 20 hostages have been released," he said. Gun fire and explosions were heard near the army headquarters just before dawn and soon afterwards reports from the Pakistani military said they had freed "most" of the hostages. There was no immediate word on the number of people wounded, but a reporter with the Reuters news agency said that he saw three ambulances leaving the area. Armed men, dressed as soldiers, attacked the army compound on Saturday, sparking a gunbattle that killed four fighters and six soldiers. The fighters took hostages, after which the military surrounded the compound and the ensuing siege lasted for more than 18 hours. It was unclear who was behind the attack, but the gunmen had been demanding the release of Taliban prisoners. The fighter's brazen assault on a military compound in the garrison city of Rawalpindi is likely to revive fears for Pakistan's stability. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 By Khurram Shahzad MILITANTS who tried to storm Pakistan's army headquarters have taken 10 to 15 hostages after a firefight that left six soldiers and four attackers dead, officials say. At least six insurgents armed with automatic weapons and grenades drove up to the compound yesterday and shot their way through one checkpost in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, before being stopped by security forces at a second post. Four militants were killed but at least two managed to flee during the fierce firefight, barricading themselves into a security office near the headquarters, as gunship helicopters circled overhead, the military said. "There are more than two terrorists who have taken some security personnel as hostages. Efforts are under way for their safe recovery," the military's spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said on state-run television. "Security forces have surrounded the terrorists. We are trying to recover the hostages safely," he added. "According to our assessment the number of hostages is 10 to 15," Gen Abbas later told private TV channel Geo. "There could be four to five terrorists inside the building," he said. The audacious attack in the city adjoining the capital Islamabad unfolded just before midday, when the militants dressed in army uniforms hurled grenades and opened fire at an entrance to the heavily fortified army command centre. "There were at least six attackers. Four were killed. Two have been traced and surrounded by the troops," said an official with the army's media wing. The attack comes amid a surge in insurgent strikes, as analysts say the Islamist Taliban militia try to deter an army offensive into their tribal stronghold along the mountainous border with Afghanistan. Gen Abbas said in an earlier interview with Geo that the militants were dressed in army uniforms and "were armed with sophisticated weapons and grenades." "They came in a van and tried to enter from gate one to gate two in the sensitive area," he told the TV channel. "Six soldiers were martyred in the attack," he added. A security official requesting anonymity said that a brigadier and a lieutenant-colonel were among the dead.
 By Augustine Anthony in Pakistan "They wore army uniforms and tried to enter the headquarters area but when they were stopped they opened fire and hurled a hand grenade," a security official told Reuters. The sprawling headquarters is in the city of Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad. The suspected militants had driven up to the gate in a white Suzuki van that was carrying explosives, the official said. The attack ended with all four attackers killed, a military spokesman told Pakistani television. "All the four terrorists have been killed. The fighting is over now. The situation is under control," Major General Athar Abbas told private TV channel Geo in a live interview. Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants who have launched numerous attacks over the past couple of years, most aimed at the security forces and government and foreign targets. Soldiers sealed off roads leading to the headquarters and a helicopter was hovering over the area. Source: The Australian
Meet the man who is Islamabad and Washington's new Public Enemy No. 1. BY IMTIAZ ALI | JULY 9 In May of last year, a convoy of journalists made its way from Peshawar up into the remote reaches of South Waziristan. They were responding to an invitation from the diminutive, diabetic, and hypertensive commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban. With characteristic grandiosity, the commander laid out a lavish feast for the reporters before sharing his reason for summoning them: an official declaration of jihad against U.S forces across the border in Afghanistan. Meet Baitullah Mehsud -- Pakistan's biggest problem, and the man who has taken his country of 176 million to the center of the West's war on terror. Once described by a Pakistani general as a "soldier of peace," he now carries a 50 million rupee (about $615,300) bounty on his head from Pakistan and a $5 million one from the United States.
Mehsud is earning the ire of the Pakistani military and Western policymakers alike as his movement destabilizes Pakistan, and the United States has destroyed several of his hide-outs with drone strikes in recent months. His now-famous 2008 press conference -- which came almost exactly a decade after Osama bin Laden called for the killing of Americans in a similar announcement just across the border in Khost, Afghanistan -- was an extraordinary piece of stagecraft even for a commander with a certain penchant for public flare. By incautiously exposing his location to a big group of journalists, Mehsud should have facilitated his own capture; that he didn't serves as ongoing testament to the incompetence (and perhaps lack of will) of those who purport to pursue him. Mehsud's growing influence is of particular concern to Western policymakers because Pakistan represents the gravest general security threat to the international community -- the prospect of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. Keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the hands of Islamist extremists is contingent on a stable Pakistani state, and Mehsud is the one man perhaps most capable of destabilizing it. According to journalists from the tribal region, Mehsud's force structure is diverse: It includes approximately 12,000 local fighters, many belonging to his own Mehsud tribe, and close to 4,000 foreign fighters, predominantly Arabs and Central Asians seasoned in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s. Many of them spent time in al Qaeda training camps and can't return to their home countries for fear of prosecution. By giving them a cause and a home -- in parts of South Waziristan where they are accessible to him on short notice -- Mehsud has expanded his corps of fighters. He also has a stable of teenage boys who have been indoctrinated to serve as suicide bombers. For the last five years, Mehsud has used this army to terrorize Pakistan with suicide bombings, hostage takings, and brazen military offensives. In one spectacular show of strength, he took close to 300 Pakistani soldiers, including officers, hostage in South Waziristan in August 2007. Mehsud demanded that his top militant prisoners be freed in exchange. It was a glorious moment for Mehsud when the government agreed after just 2½ months. Read it all here... Source: Foreign Policy
 That Rudd questions the viability of the Pakistani state should alert Australians to the perfect storm of trouble in Pakistan today. It is the worst and most dangerous security situation in the world, albeit with strong competition from Iran and with North Korea putting in a serious effort. Don't think I'm being alarmist. Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that the security situation in Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world". She added: "The Pakistani Government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists ... we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan." Bear in mind that Pakistan is a nation of 170 million people and possesses 75 to 100 nuclear weapons. The Pakistani state is under assault from the Pakistani Taliban, allied with the Afghan Taliban and with al-Qa'ida. It is also under assault from other Islamist and terrorist groups, many of which it originally created or funded (just as it was involved in the founding of the Afghan Taliban) in order to harass India. In the past few days the Pakistani military has hit back at the Taliban who had taken control of the Swat Valley and moved to within 80km of the capital, Islamabad. This is not entirely removed from a situation of civil war. The fighting has been pretty indiscriminate and 30,000 Pakistani civilians have fled their homes, many taking shelter in camps that once housed Afghan refugees. One of the finest analysts of South Asian security, Gopalaswamy Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told me this week: "There is a serious concern about whether the Pakistani army is going to defend the state apparatus of Pakistan." More... Source: The Australian
Residents said terrified people, mostly women and children, were continuing to flee the area with their belongings after Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched Operation Black Thunder to drive out the Taliban. One local charity said yesterday it had registered 2241 displaced families. "Up to 30,000 people have left Maidan in Lower Dir district over the past few days. "We are making arrangements for them in Peshawar, Nowshera and Timargarah districts," minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said. Mr Hussain said the Government remained "determined to fully implement the (operation) but some outsiders who do not want peace have infiltrated in Buner and Dir districts to sabotage the accord". Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched the offensive in Lower Dir, near the Taliban-held Swat valley, on Sunday, killing about 50 insurgents, officials said. The military said eight paramilitary soldiers had been killed. Heavy artillery shelling by the paramilitary Frontier Corps troops continued yesterday, a senior military officer said. "We destroyed several militants' hideouts in heavy artillery shelling of suspected bases in the area," the officer said. Following the military push into Dir, a district on the Afghanistan border, militants described their peace pact with the Government as "worthless". Pakistan agreed in February to impose Islamic law in the Taliban-held Swat valley and surrounding districts of the Malakand Division if militants ended a rebellion that included beheading opponents and burning schools for girls. However, the concession appeared to embolden the Taliban, which staged a foray last week into neighbouring Buner district, just 100km from the capital, Islamabad, reportedly patrolling other areas in the region as well. Losing Lower or Upper Dir would be a blow not only for Pakistan but for US efforts to shore up the faltering war effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan. US officials worry the pact could turn Swat into another haven for militants and encourage extremists to call for Islamic law in other areas of the country. Western allies have expressed frustration that Pakistan is focusing on arch-rival India, distracting the Government from dealing with extremist sanctuaries on the Afghan border. Afghan police clashed with Taliban fighters outside the capital, Kabul, leaving a dozen militants and an officer dead, while bomb blasts killed five more policemen, the Government said yesterday. The fresh violence was linked to the insurgency led by the Taliban, who are battling to wrest back power after being ousted from government by the 2001 US-led invasion. The militants were killed on Monday in a sweep to clear Taliban from Musayi district about 15km south of Kabul, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary. "The head of the district criminal investigation department was wounded and later died in hospital. "Twelve enemies were also killed," he said. Separately, a rocket landed inside an international military base on the outskirts of Kabul early yesterday, wounding three French soldiers, a French military spokesman said. Meanwhile, US officials yesterday denied claims from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that Osama bin Laden was dead. The officials said yesterday that the planner of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington was most likely hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "We continue to believe that bin Laden is alive," one US official said. Source: The Australian
 ISLAMIC militants are within striking distance of Tarbela Dam, one of Pakistan's main sources of water and power, an MP warned yesterday as Hillary Clinton accused the Government of "abdicating to the Taliban". The Taliban are within 100km of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, after seizing control of more towns in the North Western Frontier Province this week, including the provincial administrative headquarters of Buner. Pakistani paramilitary forces have been deployed to protect government buildings and bridges in Buner, a senior official said. The leader of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam Islamic party, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, told parliament the Taliban forces could soon be "knocking at the doors of Islamabad". "After occupying Buner, they have reached Kala Dhaka and may also be taking over the water reservoir of the Tarbela Dam," Mr Rehman said. The southern tip of Tarbela - the world's largest earth- and rock-filled dam - is just 50km from Islamabad. The dam provides 30 per cent of the country's hydroelectricity and much of the north's irrigation water. The US has reacted with alarm to the security crisis in its subcontinental ally. US President Barack Obama has dispatched his joint chiefs of staff chairman Mike Mullen to Islamabad for the second time in a fortnight, and has summoned the Pakistan and Afghan presidents to Washington. The march of the Taliban prompted harsh criticism yesterday from the US Secretary of State, Ms Clinton, who told a congressional panel the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world". "The Pakistani Government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," she said. "We cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan." Ms Clinton called on Pakistanis to speak out "forcefully" against the policies of their Government, which was ceding "more and more territory to the insurgents, to the Taliban, to al-Qa'ida, to the allies that are in this terrorist syndicate". Pakistan's Government agreed in February to impose sharia law in the country's northwestern Swat Valley and the surrounding Malakand region in exchange for a ceasefire with Taliban forces. President Asif Ali Zardari ratified the agreement last week following unanimous parliamentary support. But on Tuesday, hundreds of armed Taliban entered Buner, a district of more than a million people 100km from Islamabad, setting up checkpoints, occupying mosques and ransacking offices of non-government organisations. Regular courts stopped functioning in Buner yesterday after the Peshawar High Court deemed it too dangerous for officials to function. The move coincided with a deadline set by the militants for the Government to abolish the regular courts. A Taliban commander said they would set up sharia courts in Buner - as they have done in Swat - to end a "sense of deprivation", but would not interfere with police work. The Pakistani Government yesterday refused to rule out using force against the Taliban. Source: The Australian
TALIBAN militants have begun their march towards Pakistan's capital after seizing further territory in the country's northwest and setting up street patrols and checkpoints less than 100km from Islamabad. Residents and journalists have reported heavily armed Taliban patrols in Mingora, the main city in the former tourist haven of the Swat Valley, and in nearby towns where the militants are said to be digging trenches and setting up bunkers. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said yesterday that police and security forces had been confined to their stations and camps after the Taliban seized all administrative offices in Buner, which was the headquarters of the provincial Awami National Party government. The militants had begun recruiting unemployed youth from the streets of Buner and surrounding towns to help enforce their brand of Islamism, the newspaper said. The move comes a week after Pakistan's parliament signed into law the imposition of Sharia law over roughly one-third of the country's North West Frontier Province in exchange for peace in the region, effectively breaking up the country into those areas ruled by the state and those ruled by Islamic law. News of the Taliban's extended reach appears to bear out warnings that the deal would only embolden the Islamic extremists. The Taliban agreed in February to lay down arms after the Government yielded to their bloody 18-month campaign for Islamic law in the Swat Valley - a former tourist haven. But Taliban troops began moving south from Swat into Buner in the neighbouring Gokand Valley a fortnight ago. Initial negotiations by local elders to peacefully remove the militants failed. Since then, the Taliban has reportedly taken over a police station, looted international aid offices, forced out elected leaders and business people and engaged in a deadly shoot-out with local militia formed to clear them from the area. A local politician, Istiqbal Khan, confirmed yesterday that the militants had entered the district in "large numbers" and had started setting up checkpoints at main roads and other strategic positions. "They are patrolling in Buner, and local elders and clerics are negotiating with them to resolve this issue through talks," he said. The militants are reportedly advancing towards border areas of Swabi, Malakand and Mardan - the hometown of North West Frontier Province chief minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti. A top government official in Upper Dir, a district adjacent to Swat, was reported missing yesterday and is believed to have been kidnapped by militants, another official said. Pakistani and US officials estimate that up to 8000 militants are based in the Swat region - nearly double the number at the end of last year. Many politicians backed the deal, in the interests of peace in a region that has been racked by violence. In a recent interview, Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden and other militants aiming to oust the US from Afghanistan would be welcome and protected in Swat.
Anna Mahjar-Barducci | April 15 The apparent capitulation of the Pakistani authorities to the demands of the Taliban is actually a part of a long-standing alliance between them. The Pakistani military - that actually created and trained the Taliban in the 1990s - has long been using this movement to control Afghanistan and as a tool in its confrontation with the West. The Taliban, for its part, uses the support and protection of Pakistan to consolidate its strength and gain control over increasingly large areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has long been alleged that some within ISI, the Pakistani intelligence, have retained links to the Taliban. Last year, the head of the CIA flew to Islamabad to present evidence that showed that ISI elements were involved in a deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Officials in Washington now say that, according to human intelligence and electronic intercepts, the ISI, through its "S Wing," which officials say directs intelligence operations outside Pakistan, is involved in operations in Afghanistan by supporting more militant networks than was previously thought, including ... More »Source: Hudson New York
PAKISTANI police put the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif under house arrest to foil an attempt to lead a protest march on Islamabad, a senior police official told AFP.
"Sharif has been ordered not to leave his house in Lahore for three days,'' police officer Ijaz Ahmed told AFP.
Similar restrictions have been imposed on several other opposition leaders including former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan and the main Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, he added.
Former prime minister Sharif said on Saturday that he would join a protest by lawyers pushing for the restoration of deposed judges and that he intended to lead the march from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad on Sunday. Source: The Australian
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Islamic Tolerance Alert: Already left homeless by a Muslim rampage in August that saw eight Christians burned alive, the remaining Christians of Gojra cannot celebrate Christmas without looking over their shoulders.
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