Filed under: Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, North America | Tags: Afghanistan, AfPak, Al-Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud, CIA, Imperialism, Israeli, Mossad, Pakistan, Qari Zainuddin, Racism, Taliban, Terrorism, US Invasion, War, Zionism
Qari Zainuddin (centre), surrounded by his armed guard in northwestern Pakistan
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23 June 2009
Source: Press TV
A tribal leader who earlier defected from Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and revealed the militants group’s ties with the US and Israel has been shot dead.
The assassination of Qari Zainuddin comes days after he revealed that their comrade was pursuing a US-Israeli agenda across the violence-wracked country.
Zainuddin, a 26-year-old rising tribesman who had called Mehsud “an American agent” was killed by a gunman in northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday.
Zainuddin, who broke away from Mehsud, was also increasingly critical of Mehsud’s use of suicide bombings targeting civilians.
In an interview with local media the defector said that Mehsud had (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Afghan Taliban, AfPak, Benazir Bhutto, Buner, Chand Bibi, Colonialism, Fata, Feminism, Flogging, Honour Killing, Imperialism, Iran, ISI, Madrassa, Malakand, Maulana Fazlullah, Militarism, Mujahideen, Mullah Omar, Nizam-e-Adl, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Paternalism, President Asif Ali Zardari, Protests, Punjab, Racism, Saba Mahmood, Sharia, Shirin Ebadi, Sindh, Sufi Mohammed, Swat, Swat Flogging, Swat Taliban, Taliban, Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi, US bombing, US Drone Attacks, US Invasion, War, Women's Rights, Yusuf Raza Gilani
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( Dated Piece | 30 April 2009 )
Source: Open Democracy
The distorting glare of the mainstream media obscures a more complex reality in restive Pakistan
Who are the ” Taliban” in Pakistan? Islamist militants in the country have won significant international attention after wrestling control over the Swat Valley, the restive region in northern Pakistan where elements of sharia law are now in place. Yet these militants do not self-identify as “Taliban”, unlike the Afghan Taliban who chose the name for themselves, and preferred it to the then generic term “mujahideen”. The term “Taliban” means students; the original Taliban were educated in madrassas, religious schools. Groups and individuals that are being labelled the “Taliban in Pakistan” (TIP) are very different from their Afghan counterparts in important respects. It is pertinent not just to think through the implications of these differences but also to raise questions about why distinguishing details are being lost in the media frenzy of recent months.
In Swat, the group that has gained the most notoriety in recent months calls itself Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi (TNSM). This can be roughly translated as the “Movement for the (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Afghanistan, Colonialism, Colonoization, Illict Drugs, Imperialism, Racism, Taliban, United States, White Supremacy
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28 January 2009
Source: RAWA
Illicit drugs production, an issue of global concern in Afghanistan, has set a new record of peak escalation in the war on terror period as compared to previous Taliban-led rule over the land-locked country.
“Almost a twenty times additional land has been (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Al-Qaeda, Barak Obama, Bush Administration, CIA, Civilian Casualties, Colonialism, Drones, Fata, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hussain Haqqani, Imperialism, Islamabad, Obama bombs Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Predator Attacks, President Obama, Racism, Racist, Robert Gibs, Secretary of State, State Terror, Taliban, Terrorism, Terrorist training Camps, US Administration, US military Aid, War Crimes, War on Terror, White Supremacy, White Terror
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Source: DAWN
WASHINGTON, Jan 24: Hours after US missiles killed 22 people in Fata, President Barack Obama convened a meeting of his top national security advisers and endorsed the decision to continue drone strikes into Pakistan.
The US media, quoting unidentified official sources, reported that the first meeting of Mr Obama’s National Security Council focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the decision to attack alleged terrorist targets in Fata on Friday “dispelled for the moment any notion that Mr Obama would rein in the Predator attacks.”
The Washington Post noted that the strikes (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent, North America | Tags: Afghan Refugees, Afghan Warlords, Afghanistan, Anastasio Somoza, Benazir Bhutto, Charlie Wilson, CIA, Condi Rice, Dictatorship, Extra-Judicial Killings, Fatima Bhutto, Fundamentalist, Fundamnetalism, India, ISI< Mujahideen, Karachi, Mumbai Attacks, Naserullah Babar, Nepotism, Nicaraguan Dictator, Northern City of Swat, Nuclear-Armed State, Pakistan, Pakistan Military, Pakistan Studies, Pakistani Diplomatic Mission, Patriarchy, Pentagon, Peshawar Model School, Right-Wing, saudi Arabia, Senator John McCain, Soviet Invasion, Taliban, Taliban-Style Justice, Texan Socialites, Third World, U.S. Congressman, United Arab Emirates, University of Texas, US Congress, Women's Struggle
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8 January 2009
Source: The Daily Beast
Why is the University of Texas naming a chair of Pakistan Studies after the notorious U.S. congressman who helped destabilize that country? Fatima Bhutto—niece of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto—demands an answer.
Pakistan’s new government, the only in the world headed by two former convicts—who have their fingers on the button of a nuclear-armed state, no less—is nothing if not a keen purveyor of irony.
There’s currently an effort underway by the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Texas to raise funds for a chair of Pakistan Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The chair, a dream of the Pakistani diplomatic community, is to be named after Charlie Wilson. For those who missed the movie, it’s worth noting that of all the people to name a chair of Pakistani Studies after, Charlie Wilson is possibly the stupidest.
Why Pakistan would chose to honor Wilson is beyond everyone, even the Texans.
“Good-Time Charlie,” as Wilson was affectionately known by Afghan warlords and Texan socialites alike, has the dubious reputation of being the godfather of what would later be known as the Taliban in Afghanistan. (He was also buddies with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.) In the 1980s, Wilson led Congress into supporting the CIA covert (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Air Strikes, Al-Qaeda, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto, Bhutto Mazaar, Bhuttos, Chair of Pakistna Studies, Charlie Wilson, Fatima Bhutto, Garhi Khuda Bux, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Inter-Services Intelligence, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Karachi, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Mohammad Azam Khan, Mujahedin, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistani President, Pakistani Sovereignty, Pakistani Taliban, Pakistanis, Peshawar Model School, President Pervez Musharraf, President Zardari, Salman Rushdie, Sind, South Waziristan, Sufi Shrine, Taj Mahal, Taliban, Terorism, Terroist, United States, US Drones, Yousuf Raza Gilani
Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bux, Sindh Province, Pakistan
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08 January 2009
Source: New Statesman
The old Bhutto mazaar, or graveyard, is in a small town called Garhi Khuda Bux. It is not fair to call it a town; it’s a hamlet really, nestled between swaths of fertile agricultural land and small town centres that cater to travelling traders and produce distributors. When I was younger, I used to know we were close to the mazaar as we drove by the old paan wallah. He was a geriatric who sold betel-leaf paans, conical beedi cigarettes and a pack or two of Gold Leaf extra-strong smokes from the table he sat on. The mazaar itself was hundreds of years old and is where the Bhuttos have been buried since they settled in Sind. Wooden pillars, carved with lattice designs, marked the absence of the four walls that would have enclosed the open-air burial site. It was a sombre resting place: four corners of Sind lay open around you, and the dusty smell of the air in Garhi Khuda Bux’s desert climate surrounded mourners who came to mark death anniversaries and birthdays.
It’s all gone now.
It was torn down by the last member of the family to be buried there, Benazir Bhutto, and rebuilt as a mausoleum. In a country where politics has always orbited around personalities, she was determined that (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Afghanistan, Colonialism, Imperialism, Militant, Occupation, Resistance, Taliban, War
- Streets of Jalalabad: Captial of the Eastern Nangarhar province, Afghanistan.
7 December 2008
