Attack on Hamid Saeed Kazmi and the Taliban inside Islamabad

Feeling insecure in Islamabad

The federal religious affairs minister, Mr Hamid Saeed Kazmi, escaped death at the hands of terrorists on Wednesday at Islamabad’s GPO chowk. He was driving out of his office without much security. His driver has been killed and his guard has sustained wounds. Mr Kazmi has received a bullet in his leg. What is shocking is that everyone knew that he was the target of the terrorists; he had told the government that he might be next in line after the assassination of Allama Naeemi of Lahore earlier in the year.

Let’s first look at why he was in the crosshairs, something which the government thought it could ignore. Despite his last name, Mr Kazmi is not a Shia; he is in fact more vulnerable than a Shia: he belongs to the majority Ahle Sunnat school of thought, also called Barelvi, whom the Taliban think culpable because the Barelvis don’t favour the apostatisation of Shias. More relevantly, he was targeted by the Taliban because he had organised a Pakistan-wide clerical consensus against suicide-bombings.

Mr Kazmi had asked for his security to be beefed-up after he received threats from quarters that he clearly identified with elements that work for the Taliban. He may even have known that these elements were located inside Islamabad. (SSP Islamabad has confirmed that the terrorists who attacked him with Kalashnikovs from their 125cc motorbike were from inside Islamabad and had not entered the capital city from outside.) The truth is that anyone located in Islamabad is a sitting duck because the Taliban are better represented here than any other city in Pakistan.

Pakistan first felt how it was besieged in the capital when the Lal Masjid crisis broke in 2007. The army was called out to evacuate the inmates of the madrassa after it was reported that terrorists were lodged inside it. What came as a shock was the support the Lal Masjid clerics received from the lower middle class and poor community living in its vicinity even after it had become clear to them that they would be defying the Pakistan Army. Once the government got bogged down, Lal Masjid clerics called out their mediators: Fazlur Rehman Khaleel of the banned Harkatul Mujahideen headquartered in Islamabad; Shah Abdul Aziz, recently on trial for beheading a Polish engineer; and Javed Ibrahim Paracha, known as the “Al Qaeda lawyer”.

General Musharraf and his regime were defeated on the issue of Lal Masjid by an errant media. Despite the fact that its clerics clearly betrayed their sectarian identity and declared their allegiance to the Taliban, the surviving head of the Masjid was let off by the Supreme Court. In 2008, the popular view manufactured by the media swung in favour of Lal Masjid even as the world identified it as the high-water mark of the dominance of Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan. For instance, in Holland when the Dutch protested against the building of a mosque, their placards read: “No more Lal Masjids!”

A year after the Lal Masjid incident, Islamabad had still not become fully alert to the “extra-territoriality” of the mosques in the city. One popular Karachi daily editorialised in September 2008: “We are forced to refer to the Lal Masjid affair because 70 new illegal mosques have come up in Islamabad, and the local administration and the Capital Development Authority have done nothing about it. Lal Masjid did not turn into a bastion for militants overnight. The Ghazi brothers gradually expanded the mosque under their control and built new structures, including living quarters for their families”.

Islamabad is not a secure city. Foreign diplomats who live here feel endangered. Many Pakistanis who seek honour in isolationism draw comfort from the fact that “foreigners” are uneasy coming to Islamabad. The truth is that the city has become “Talibanised” among the lower classes that outnumber the rest of its population. Anyone who has held a discussion among the lower middle class student community there would bear witness to this fact. Yet, those Pakistani circles that are endangered would rather focus on how the Americans and other foreigners have made Islamabad unsafe by beefing up their own security arrangements!

Sadly, the TV reporter is querulous in tone when he reports on the “hundreds of barriers” erected by Islamabad police to minimise incidents of terrorism in the city. The media message is: Islamabad is suffering because of the security barriers and the Americans. But this message goes in favour of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who would like nothing more than the removal of all obstacles in Islamabad.

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Hamid Saeed Kazmi shot by the Taliban-Sipah-e-Sahaba alliance in Pakistan

وفاقی وزیر کے ڈرائیور یونس کی معذور والدہ نے اپنے مرحوم بیٹے کے جوتے تھام رکھے ہی

The Deobandi-Wahhabi terrorists in Pakistan attack Federal Minister for Religious Affairs. Driver Killed.

Hamid Saeed Kazmi, an eminent Sunni (Barelvi) scholar was deeply despised by the pro-Taliban Deobandi-Wahhabi alliance in Pakistan, enshrined in orgnaizations such as Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangavi, Jamaat-e-Islami, rogue elements of ISI, and Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf.

This is the third high profile targetted attack on eminent Sunni / Barelvi scholars after the Nishtar Park massacre in Karachi and the martyrdom of Maulana Naeemi in Lahore.

It is high time that all pro-Taliban leaders of the Deobandi-Wahhabi alliance, mullahs and their supports in media and politics, including but not limited to Ansar Abbasi, Dr Shahid Masood, Mullah Munawar Hassan, Hameed Gul, Aslam Beg, Irfan Siddiqi, Imran Khan etc be arrested and charged for treason against the Pakistani nation.

Pakistan's religion minister shot

Local television pictures of the wounded minister in the back of a car Pakistan's Minister for Religious Affairs, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, has been injured in a gun attack on his car in the capital, Islamabad, police say. A man believed to be Mr Kazmi's driver was killed in the attack and another passenger injured, said police. No one has claimed to have carried out the attack. Mr Kazmi has been an outspoken critic of the Taliban. He was behind a conference in May which denounced the Taliban's suicide bombing tactics as un-Islamic. "Gunmen sprayed bullets on the minister's car," a police officer who identified himself as Qasim told Reuters news agency. 'State of shock' Television footage showed Mr Kazmi, with a wounded leg, being taken away in an ambulance. There were blood stains on the car's seats and its windows were shattered. Senior medical official Shaukat Hameed Kiani said Mr Kazmi's leg had been fractured by a bullet. "His condition is stable, but he is in a state of shock," he said. Shazia Nazir, a doctor at the hospital treating Mr Kazmi, told the AFP news agency that the minister's driver had been brought in dead, with a bullet wound to the head, and that a security guard had been seriously wounded. Health Minister Aijaz Jhakrani has denied there had been any lapses in security, saying the incident was "a targeted attack", AFP reported. Mr Kazmi has been a key figure in opposing the Taliban in Pakistan, continuing to carry out reforms of religious schools and working with senior clerics to denounce the militants' tactics.

Khitab of Allama Hamid Saeed Kazmi on Seerat-un-Nabi (pbuh)

Also read:
http://blog.dawn.com:91/dblog/2009/09/02/clear-signals/
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Stay away from the Wahhabi-Deobandi alliance in Pakistan, Ms Judith McHale

Ansar Abbasi is a much despised journalist in Pakistani. He is widely disliked by the majority of moderate Pakistanis because of his consistent support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In his distorted and inflammatory news reports, he persistently justifies the Taliban's acts of violence against innocent Pakistanis on one pretext or the other (for example, his reporting of the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad).

Ansar Abbasi is a Wahhabi by his personal faith, and is ideologically aligned with evil forces such as Jamaat-e-Islami, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Taliban and Al Qaeda. Instead of finding friends in the minority Wahhabi-Deobandi alliance in Pakistan, the USA must dedicate its time and resources to build trust with the majority Barelvi (Sufi) population in Pakistan, also bringing on board moderate Deobandis to fight the menace of Wahhabi-Deobandi terrorism in Pakistan and the entire region. Ansar Abbasi and his likes are not a part of the solution; they are a part of the problem.

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U.S. Officials Get a Taste of Pakistanis’ Anger at America

By HELENE COOPER

Published: August 19, 2009

KARACHI, Pakistan — Judith A. McHale was expecting a contentious session with Ansar Abbasi, a Pakistani journalist known for his harsh criticism of American foreign policy, when she sat down for a one-on-one meeting with him in a hotel conference room in Islamabad on Monday. She got that, and a little bit more.

After Ms. McHale, the Obama administration’s new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, gave her initial polite presentation about building bridges between America and the Muslim world, Mr. Abbasi thanked her politely for meeting with him. Then he told her that he hated her.

“ ‘You should know that we hate all Americans,’ ” Ms. McHale said Mr. Abbasi told her. “ ‘From the bottom of our souls, we hate you.’ ”

Beyond the continuation of the battle against militants along the Pakistani-Afghan border, a big part of President Obama’s strategy for the region involves trying to broaden America’s involvement in the country to include nonmilitary areas like infrastructure development, trade, energy, schools and jobs — all aimed at convincing the Pakistani people that the United States is their friend. But as Ms. McHale and other American officials discovered this week, during a visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, making that case was not going to be easy.

“We have made a major turn with our relationship with Pakistan under President Obama,” Mr. Holbrooke told reporters at a news conference in Karachi on Wednesday. Time and again, Mr. Holbrooke tried to delineate the differences between the Obama administration and the Bush era, painting the new administration as one that wants to see a better life and more business opportunities for Pakistanis.

He said his very presence in Karachi — Pakistan’s largest city and its commercial capital — demonstrated that drone attacks and the hunt for Al Qaeda were not the only American foreign policy activities in the country.

To polite applause, Mr. Holbrooke told local officials at the Governor’s House that the United States Consulate in Karachi would start granting business visas —100 a week — instead of making would-be business travelers to the United States go to Islamabad for the visas, as has been the case.

He stopped at a shantytown in the city to chat with schoolboys crowded into three classrooms, and even visited the home of a local resident, to get a feel for how people in Karachi live. On Tuesday, he met with opposition leaders in Islamabad, including Liaqat Baloch, the secretary general of the anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami, and Fazlur Rehman, the leader of another anti-American party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, who is sometimes referred to as the spiritual founder of the Taliban.

In Karachi on Wednesday, Mr. Holbrooke kept bringing up a trade bill that just passed the House, which would set up so-called reconstruction opportunity zones so that textiles and other goods made in Pakistan’s tribal areas could get preferential access to the United States market. And Ms. McHale, whose job is, in part, to try to repair America’s relations with the Muslim world, strayed from his side only when she ventured out on fence-mending missions of her own, meeting with 17 Pakistani journalists, 8 officials of nongovernmental organizations and members of several political parties, all in an effort to deliver one message: America cares about Pakistan.

But Mr. Abbasi’s reaction — a response that, Ms. McHale acknowledged, apparently reflects the feelings of about 25 percent of the population, according to a recent poll — demonstrated just how tough the job is. For all of the administration’s efforts to call attention to the nonmilitary ties that would bind the two countries, America is still being judged by many Pakistanis as an uncaring behemoth whose sole concern is findingOsama bin Laden, no matter the cost in civilian Pakistani lives.

“He told me that we were no longer human beings because our goal was to eliminate other humans,” Ms. McHale said Wednesday, recounting the conversation with Mr. Abbasi. “He spoke English very well, and he said that thousands of innocent people have been killed because we are trying to find Osama bin Laden.”

Following Mr. Holbrooke’s example when he received a similar lashing from Mr. Baloch, Ms. McHale said she argued her points with Mr. Abbasi, points that to many Americans would appear logical, but that often fail to impress over here: Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001; the war in Afghanistan, unlike the war in Iraq, is blessed by the United Nations and is a multinational effort; America will always do whatever it takes to defend itself.

She said that even though she knew that she did not sway Mr. Abbasi, it was good to hear what he thought because she wanted to try to understand the source of much of the anti-Americanism in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, in Karachi, Mr. Holbrooke continued to push an agenda of soft power, telling business leaders that the United States wanted to invest in energy projects in Pakistan. But he acknowledged that some of the projects that Karachi technocrats put before him, with their complex ownership structures, would never get approval in the Congress.

The trade bill, now before the Senate, has labor provisions that are unlikely to get past free-trade Republicans, whose support is needed for it to pass.

And on top of that, in a concession to the United States textile industry, the bill would not include imports of cotton tops and pants, items that are made in abundance in Pakistan.

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Pakistan must confront Wahhabism

As the Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam supplants the tolerant indigenous Sufi Islam, its violent creed is inspiring terrorism

Adrian Pabst (Guardian)

Despite the recent offensive by the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley and by Nato in Helmand province, the "Talibanisation" of both Afghanistanand Pakistan proceeds apace. Vast parts of the Afghan south and a large region in western Pakistan are still under de facto control of Taliban militants who enforce a violent form of sharia law.

Western responses oscillate between calls for a secular alternative to the religious fundamentalism of the Taliban and attempts to engage the moderate elements among them. Neither will solve the underlying religious clash between indigenous Sufi Islam and the Saudi-sponsoredWahhabi extremism. The UK and US must change strategy and adopt a policy that supports the peaceful indigenous Muslim tradition of Sufism while thwarting Saudi Arabia's promotion of the dangerous Wahhabi creed that fuels violence and sectarian tension.

As Afghanistan goes to the polls this week, western political and military leaders now recognise that stability and peace in the country cannot be created by military force alone. Like the "surge" strategy in Iraq which reduced suicide bombings by driving a wedge between indigenous Sunnis and foreign jihadists, the US and its European allies will try to separate the Taliban from al-Qaida fighters who infiltrate Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan. By combining "surgical" strikes against terrorists in the Afghan-Pakistani border region with a political strategy aimed at "moderate" Taliban, President Obama hopes to save the US mission from disaster.

The problem is that those Taliban who would be prepared to talk have little leverage and those who have influence feel that they have little incentive to compromise, as they have gained the upper hand. Unlike many Sunnis in Iraq, most Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have embraced the puritanical and fundamentalist Islam of the Wahhabi mullahs from Saudi Arabia who wage a ruthless war not just against western "infidels" but also against fellow Muslims they consider to be apostates, in particular the Sufis.

Sufi Islam is not limited to the southern Pakistani province of Sindh on the border with India. It also exists elsewhere in Pakistan and has been present in Afghanistan for centuries, as exemplified by the 18th-century poet and mystic Rahman Baba whose shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass (linking Afghanistan and Pakistan) still attracts many Sufi faithful from both sides of the border.

All this changed in the 1980s when during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion, elements in Saudi Arabia poured in money, arms and extremist ideology. Through a network of madrasas, Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Islam indoctrinated young Muslims with fundamentalist Puritanism, denouncing Sufi music and poetry as decadent and immoral. At Attock, not far from Rahman Baba's shrine on the Khyber Pass, stands the Haqqania madrassa, one of the most radical schools where the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was trained. Across the Pakistani border, the tolerant Sufi-minded Barelvi form of indigenous Islam has also been supplanted by the hardline Wahhabi creed.

This madrassa-inspired and Saudi-financed Wahhabi Islam is destroying indigenous Islam in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crucially, it is imposing a radical creed that represents a distortion and perversion of true Islam. Wahhabi followers beheaded a Polish geologist in February (as revenge for Polish troops in Afghanistan) and blew up a century-old shrine dedicated to Rahman Baba in the Pakistani town of Peshawar in March.

The actions of the west and its Afghan and Pakistani allies are making matters worse. By causing civilian deaths through aerial bombings, the US is driving ordinary Afghans and Pakistani into the arms of the jihadi terrorists. By declaring sharia law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat region to appease the local Taliban and by using Islamism in the ongoing conflict with India over Kashmir, Pakistan's government is emboldening the extremists and undermining Sufi Islam.

What is required, first of all, is to prevent Saudi Arabia from playing a duplicitous game whereby the authorities in Riyadh help the Afghan President Karzai in his attempts to woo moderate Taliban while promoting the violent creed of Wahhabism across this volatile region. The west should call Saudi Arabia's bluff and not surrender to Riyadh's threats of ending security co-operation and information exchange on international terrorism which thrives on Saudi-exported Wahhabi ideology.

The west and Muslim countries such as Jordan should also put pressure on the Pakistani authorities to confront Wahhabism by expelling Saudi hate preachers, closing the Wahhabi madrassas and establishing schools that teach the peaceful Islam of Sufism.

By itself this strategy will of course not be sufficient to eradicate violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But without an alternative policy based on religion, this religious conflict will further escalate.

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The Gojra tragedy, religious extremism, and General Zial-ul-Haq's legacy in Pakistan

Zahida Hina writes on the Gojra tragey in Pakistan, in which 8 Christians were burnt alive by the pro-Taliban Deobandi-Wahhabi alliance, namely Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangavi. She also discusses the role of General Zia-ul-Haq in sowing the seeds of hatred in the Pakistani society.

Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), an outlawed pro-Taliban Sunni Muslim sectarian group, and its al Qaeda-linked offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), were suspected of orchestrating the attack in Gojra town, according to Rana Sanaullah, Punjab's law minister.

Incensed by unsubstantiated allegations that the Koran had been desecrated by a Christian, an angry mob torched dozens of houses in the town Saturday, killing eight people, including four women and a child.

"Absolutely, these banned groups are involved in the rioting," Sanaullah, who is also responsible for the security matters of the province, told Reuters by telephone from Gojra.

Sanaullah said "masked men" had come from the nearby district of Jhang, birthplace of both SSP and LeJ, to incite the anti-Christian rioting in Gojra.

Around 150 people were detained for questioning.

The government received an intelligence report two months ago suggesting that militants were switching from suicide bombings to inciting sectarian strife in the country," Sanaullah said.

Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti held the same fears following the attack in Gojra.

"We suspect and we are getting evidence that members of banned organizations were involved in it," he told Reuters.

SSP was founded in the 1980s and is primarily connected to sectarian violence against minority Shi'ite Muslims. It was officially banned in January 2002.

LeJ, a splinter group of SSP, has forged ties with al Qaeda.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/08/04/pakistan_suspects_al_qaeda_allies_killed_christians/

While the Deobandi-Wahhabi alliance is responsible for executing the Gojra massacre, Barelvis must also think about their criminal negligence on this tragdey, writes Tanvir Qaiser Shahid:

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PMLN President Qadeer Awan involved in the Gojra massacre. Shame on you Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif:

Sectarian violence hits Pakistani town

By Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Gojra, Pakistan

On a street in the small Punjabi town of Gojra, house after house stands gutted and looted.

One home in particular is the focus of attention. The windows and doors are gone, what is left of the furniture lies gnarled inside, and some of the ceilings have collapsed. People are peering into a small bedroom at the back of the building.

It is from here that the charred bodies of six members of the Hameed family, from Pakistan’s minority Christian community, were recovered. The youngest of the dead was four-year-old Mousa.

We found his father, Almass Hameed, 49, in a crowded hospital ward nearby.

‘Shocked and crying’

“He was such a bright boy. His teachers complained that he was cheeky at times, but nobody could doubt how clever he was. But now he’s gone,” Mr Hameed said, breaking down.

“ It was like the most horrific movie. They destroyed our lives ”
Almass Hameed
He described how an angry Muslim mob came through the area, known here as the Christian Colony.

“I think there were thousands,” he said. “My elderly father went out to see what was happening and they shot and killed him. We were all shocked and crying. Before we knew it, they were breaking into the house.”

Mr Hameed explained how he and nine other members of the family hid in the bedroom as the house was over-run.

“We could hear them smashing everything and dividing our belongings amongst themselves,” he said. “Then they started beating on the door saying they would teach us a lesson and burn us alive.”

Soon after, a fire was raging through his house.

“We just couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I grabbed my eldest son and managed to get out of the room through the flames, my brother came out with one of my daughters, but the rest were stuck and we had no way of rescuing them.”

As well as his father and Mousa, Mr Hameed lost his 11 year-old daughter, his wife, a brother, a sister-in-law and her mother.

“It was like the most horrific movie. They destroyed our lives.”

‘Fired shots’

Tensions had risen after allegations that Christians in the nearby village of Korrian had torn up and burnt pages of the Koran at a wedding a few days earlier.

“They started it,” 19-year-old Omar Ali Raza said in Gojra’s marketplace.

“We Muslims are the victims. We gathered to protest about what they did to the Koran in Korrian and just wanted to walk through their area, but they threw stones at us and fired shots.”

“Of course it is bad that Christians died,” he added. “But they provoked the Muslims here. I don’t understand why everyone is on their side.”

But an elderly Muslim man passing by interrupts. “The responsibility is with the one who actually burns the Koran, not all Christians,” he said. “Here, we live together, and there were no problems before this.”

As it happens, a local police chief, Ahmed Javaid, said he believed the claim that Christians desecrated the Koran was not true in the first place.

“Yes, pieces of paper had been cut up to look like money at a Christian wedding, but they were not pages of the Koran,” he said.

“However, the rumour spread and the issue became politicised.”

Very soon after the allegations from Korrian surfaced, politicians from several parties held large rallies denouncing Christians in the area, calling for action. These were not just politicians from expressly right-wing Islamist parties.

PML-N leaders have visited Gojra in recent days, expressing solidarity with minority communities. But Christians here say they are sceptical.

They accuse the party and others of having previously taken advantage of anti-Christian feelings rather than helping to calm things down.

‘Rare’ violence

Senator Pervaiz Rashid, at the headquarters of the Nawaz party, told me it was very serious in its commitment to minority rights.

“We acknowledge there were problems in Gojra, and it is an embarrassment,” he said. “However, it was an isolated incident and the local president, Qadeer Awan, has now had his party membership suspended.”

“I do not believe that there are any other local politicians in our party involved in such activities.”

Violence of this scale against Pakistan’s estimated three million strong Christian community may be rare (this is the worst such incident in seven years), but complaints of discrimination are certainly commonplace.

The government says it has opened an inquiry into what happened in Gojra, but Asma Jahangir, the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission, is not expecting the type of change she thinks is needed.

“For too long the Pakistani state has protected people with extremist views,” she said.

“It is not just political parties. There are radicalised individuals, and supporters of militant groups within the judiciary, the education system, the bureaucracy and police as well.”

This was not the vision of Pakistan held by its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

“Minorities, to whichever community they may belong, will be safeguarded. Their religion or faith or beliefs will be secure,” he said just weeks before Pakistan’s creation in 1947.

“They will be, in all respects, the citizens of Pakistan without any distinction of caste or creed.”

But as Pakistan prepares to mark its independence day, many of its citizens do not see any cause for celebration.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8196013.stm

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Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi: a revolution against the Deobandi-Wahhabi violence in Pakistan

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The Wahhabi-Deobandi (Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Sipah-e-Sahaba) alliance martyred Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi in Lahore

Who killed Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi? Hear from himself.

Sarfraz Naeemi martyred in Lahore attack
Updated : Friday June 12 , 2009 2:55:09 PM

LAHORE (Nasarullah Malik): Renowned religious scholar and head of Jamia Naeemia Lahore Dr Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi among four others were martyred in a suicide attack at a seminary here Friday, reports ARY NEWS.The blast that apparently was a suicide attack occurred following the Jumma prayer in Jamia Naeemia situated at Garhi Shahu area of the metropolis.According to preliminary reports, the blast was occurred in the office of Dr Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, the head of one of the largest religious seminary of the city. Naeemi was present in his office at the time of the blast, says an eyewitness.An eyewitness told ARY NEWS that a suicide bomber, 18 to 20, blew himself up inside the office of Dr Naeemi when he arrived after leading Jumma prayer in the seminary’s mosque.Dr Naeemi was severely injured in the incident and was brought to Mayo Hospital where he succumbed to the injuries.Principle of Jamia Naeemia, Dr Khalil and two students of the seminary were also among the deceased, it was reported.The blast was as powerful as it completely destroyed the office building and the roof of one portion of the building was also caved in.Rescuers and law enforcement personnel arrived at the scene soon after the blast and cordoned off the madarsah building. Injured and corpses were rushed to Mayo Hospital, Ganga Ram Hospital and other nearby hospitals.Police have also arrested two suspected persons from outside the seminary.

http://www.thearynews.com/english/newsdetail.asp?nid=28247

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Congratulations to Taliban supporters namely Imran Khan, Munawar Hasan, Fazlur-Rehman, General Hamid Gul, Roedad Khan, Hamid Mir, Ansar Abbasi, Javed Chaudhry, Orya Maqbool Jan, Irfan Siddiqui, Dr Shahid Masood, Dr Israr Ahmed, Dr Zakir Naik, Dr Farhat Hashmi and General Aslam Beg.

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Anti-Taliban cleric killed in Pakistan blast
Fri Jun 12, 2009

Mubasher Bukhari

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A prominent anti-Taliban Pakistani Muslim cleric was killed on Friday in a suicide bomb attack in the city of Lahore, police said.

In another blast at around the same time, a suicide car-bomber set off explosives near a mosque in the north-western town of Nowshera, killing at least three people, police said.

The blasts came as Pakistani forces stepped up attacks on militants across the northwest after the U.S. House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.

Security forces have made progress in more than a month of fighting against Taliban militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in recent days have begun operations in several other parts of the region.

The militants have responded with a series of bomb attacks.

Moderate cleric Sarfraz Naeemi was attacked at his mosque complex just after leading Friday prayers.

"Unfortunately, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi has been martyred," Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore told Reuters.

In Nowshera, in North West Frontier Province, three people were killed and more than 20 were wounded, police said.

Rising Islamist violence has raised fears for Pakistan's stability and for the safety of its nuclear arsenal but the offensive in Swat has reassured the United States about its commitment to the global campaign against militancy.

Pakistan is a vital security ally for the United States as it struggles to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan and defeat al Qaeda.

U.S. officials said on Thursday insurgent violence in Afghanistan had accelerated sharply alongside the arrival of new U.S. troops, reaching its highest level since 2001.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said he believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and he hoped joint operations with Pakistani forces would find him.


(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider, Hasan Mehmood, Javed Hussain and Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE55A1JH20090612?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=11559


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A prominent anti-Taliban Pakistani cleric has been killed in one of two blasts which have gone off in Pakistan.

The blast in Lahore killed a moderate anti-Taliban cleric and injured many more

Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Lahore, police have confirmed.
The moderate cleric was attacked at his mosque complex just after leading Friday prayers.
Mr Naeemi was nationally recognised for being critical of the Taliban.

A separate car-bomb blast also killed at least three people near a mosque in the northwestern town of Nowshera. Police chief Abdullah Khan said the second bomb had wounded 32 people "and we fear that some of them are dead."

In Lahore, 10 people were injured outside Jamia Naeemia mosque.

The blasts came as Pakistani forces stepped up attacks on militants across the northwest after the US House of Representatives decided to triple their aid to Pakistan.

http://news.sky.com/


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"Go Taliban Go" Rally in Lahore

After Jamat e Islami demonstrated a good support for Taliban on the weekend, another section of Ulema have announced to start a drive AGAINST Taliban. The ‘Go Taliban Go’ drive was announced in “Save Pakistan conference” led by Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi of Jamia Naeemia. The Ulema decided to take out a rally in the city on June 2 in support of Swat military operation against the Taliban miscreants.

The itenrary was announced by rally being taken out from Data Darbar and would end up to the Regal Chowk on The Mall. All of the Ulema present in the conference were of the strong opinion that Swat operation should be completed with its logical end. Putting weight behind the Swat operation, they also accused entities supporting Taliban and termed it against country’s solidarity. They also accused and challenged Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad who stated Pakistan as Un-Islamic and maligned two nation theory. Other Ulema present at the conference were Syed Mahfooz Mashhadi, Maulana Hanfi Saifi, Maulana Moinuddin, Shahid Husain Gardezi and others.

[Via: Dawn.com]

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Pakistan Clerics Speak Out Against Taliban `The military must eliminate the Taliban once and for all`, said Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, a senior cleric said.

Pakistan's moderate clerics, for years mute in the face of growing Islamist influence, are mobilising support for the government as it battles the Taliban, warning that militants could take over the country.

Most of predominantly Islamic Pakistan's 160 million people are moderate Muslims, but for years they have been reluctant to speak out against the spread of the hardline Taliban.

Not any more.

"The military must eliminate the Taliban once and for all," Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, a senior cleric of the moderate Barelvi branch of Sunni Muslims, told Reuters.

"Otherwise they will capture the entire country which would be a big catastrophe."

The military launched a major offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, last week after the Taliban tried to capitalise on a February peace pact by pushing out of the valley to conquer new districts.

Pakistanis overwhelmingly supported the pact aimed at ending violence in Swat but were shocked to see the Taliban, emboldened by the deal, vowing to impose their rule across the country.

That raised alarm, not only in the United States which needs Pakistan to tackle the militants for success in Afghanistan, but also among ordinary Pakistanis, for the first time confronting the possibility the Taliban might appear in their towns.

Naeemi said the Barelvis had wanted to avoid confrontation with the Taliban so had not spoken out against aggression. But they could not stand by and let the Taliban impose their rule.

"They want people to fight one another, that's why we have kept silent and endured their oppression," Naeemi said.

"We don't want civil war ... But God forbid, if the government fails to stop them, then we will confront them ourselves."

"BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL"

Most Pakistanis are Barelvis, adherents of Islamic Sufi mysticism, who venerate saints and their shrines dotted across the country.

The austere Taliban, adherents of the Deobandi school of Islam, reject mystical Islam and recently blew up a famous shrine in the northwest, to many Pakistanis' shock.

For the first time in Pakistan, protesters have been taking to the streets to denounce the Taliban.

Barelvis have been holding anti-Taliban rallies across the country and are organising a gathering of 5,000 clerics in Islamabad on Sunday to drum up support for the military in Swat.

"We support the army operation in Swat because it is a battle for the survival and defence of Pakistan," Sahibzada Fazal Karim, leader of Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Pakistan, a moderate Islamic party, and an organiser of the weekend conference, told Reuters.

"What these militants were doing was un-Islamic. Beheading innocent people and kidnapping are in no way condoned in Islam."

A political analyst said there was a degree of self-interest in the newfound outspokenness.

"Politicians are realising there is no future for the country if the militants continue to expand their influence," said retired general and analyst Talat Masood.

"The moderate clergy is also feeling threatened because their role will be over. So everyone is trying to look at his own turf ... It's in their self-interest as well as the national interest."

Most Pakistanis, including political parties and the media, have backed the offensive in Swat, 130 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, which comes after the United States accused the government of "abdicating" to the militants.

Deobandi strength grew in the 1980s thanks to an Islamisation drive by then military ruler, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.

At the time, Pakistan was channelling support from the United States and Saudi Arabia to Deobandi and other radical groups battling Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan.

http://www.javno.com/en-world/pakistan-clerics-speak-out-against-taliban_257669

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Ulema vow to fight Taliban if army fails
Thursday, 14 May, 2009

ISLAMABAD, May 13: Prominent religious leaders, for years mute in the face of growing hardline religious influence, are mobilising support for the government as it battles the Taliban, warning that militants could take over the country. “The military must eliminate the Taliban once and for all,” Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, a senior scholar of the Barelvi school of thought, told Reuters. “Otherwise they will capture the entire country which would be a big catastrophe.” Mufti Naeemi said that ulema had wanted to avoid confrontation with the Taliban so had not spoken out against ‘aggression’. But they could not stand by and let the Taliban impose their rule. “They want people to fight one another; that’s why we have kept silent and endured their oppression,” he said. “We don’t want civil war ... But God forbid, if the government fails to stop them, then we will confront them ourselves.” For the first time in the country, protesters have been taking to the streets to denounce the Taliban. They have been holding anti-Taliban rallies across the country and are organising a gathering of 5,000 ulema in Islamabad on Sunday to drum up support for the military in Swat. “We support the army operation in Swat because it is a battle for the survival and defence of Pakistan,” Sahibzada Fazal Karim, leader of Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan, a moderate party, and an organiser of the weekend conference, told Reuters. “What these militants were doing was un-Islamic. Beheading innocent people and kidnapping are in no way condoned in Islam.”—Reuters

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/ulema-vow-to-fight-taliban-if-army-fails-459

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Clerics Back Pakistani Offensive Against Taliban
By ZAHID HUSSAIN in Islamabad and MATTHEW ROSENBERG in New Delhi

MAY 12, 2009

Pakistani soldiers battling Taliban fighters in the country's northwestern mountains are getting support from more moderate Muslim clerics who say they, too, fear a militant takeover.

The clerics hail from the more tolerant Barelvi Muslim tradition whose followers in Pakistan far outnumber the extremist strain preached by the Taliban and their allies in al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups in the country. But the Barelvis have usually offered only passive resistance to extremists, reflecting their more inclusive version of Islam.

Now, some prominent Barelvi clerics are publicly supporting the broad military offensive launched last week against the Taliban in the Swat Valley and, in one case, offering to send volunteers to fight. The moves are being greeted as a sign that a growing number of Pakistanis are beginning to realize just how fragile the situation has become after years of ignoring or denying the militant threat.

The offensive in Swat continued Monday with Pakistani fighter jets strafing Taliban positions as soldiers pounded them with artillery. Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, said 700 insurgents had been killed in the past four days, a significantly higher number than previous figures given by the military.

The United Nations said some 360,000 refugees have already fled Swat and two neighboring districts, adding to the half a million Pakistanis who were uprooted in past offensives against the Taliban in the northwest and remain homeless.

Diplomats, analysts and some Pakistani officials say they fear images of refugees in squalid camps could turn public opinion against the offensive and prompt the army to pull back.

That's happened in the past, and support for the Swat offensive is far from universal, especially among influential religious leaders in this overwhelmingly Muslim nation of 175 million people.

Pakistan's largest religious political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which straddles the country's competing religious traditions, has demanded the government resume peace talks with the Taliban. Many of the more extreme leaders from the Deobandi and Wahhabi schools that inspire the Taliban and al Qaeda, respectively, support the militants.

But the Barelvis, perhaps trying to ride a wave of public anger over the Taliban's brutal rule of Swat, are pushing the government to sustain its assault on the Taliban in the valley and eventually widen it to other regions under the sway of the militants.

"We can't allow the Taliban to take over the country," said Mufti Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, a leading Sunni cleric who heads the Darul Uloom Naimia, a major Islamic seminary. Mr. Naeemi is among a group of Barelvi clerics and political parties that on Friday announced the formation of a council whose goal, they said, would be to fight spreading "Talibanization" in Pakistan.

"Taliban are destroying our sacred religious places and killing religious leaders. They are working on an anti-Islam agenda," Mr. Naeemi said in a telephone interview.

The U.S. pushed hard for Pakistan to move against the Taliban in Swat. But the Barelvi leaders cautioned that their support for the offensive shouldn't be read as backing for the U.S., which remains deeply unpopular among the vast majority of Pakistanis, many of whom see the fight against the Taliban as America's war.

The Barelvis, whose tradition is drawn from Islamic Sufi mysticism, believe humans can connect to the divine through holy men or saints, many of whose tombs are now important shrines.

The Taliban and al Qaeda, in contrast, view such practices as heresy and have repeatedly destroyed or taken over Sufi shrines. Such actions have angered many in Pakistan. But the clerics, like most Pakistanis, had until now remained largely silent. But with hundreds of thousands refugees now fleeing Swat, many of them telling tales of the Taliban's harsh justice -- floggings, beheadings and general intimidation -- there's a growing public backlash, and top civilian and military officials say they believe they now have the public support needed for a sustained offensive in Swat.

"It is against Islamic tenants to enforce Shariah through violence," said Maulana Sarwat Qadri, chief of Sunni Tehrik, a group that in the late 1990s and early 2000s tried to retake mosques it said had been taken over by Deobandi and Wahhabi adherents. Sunni Tehrik had since fallen dormant, but it formed a new political wing over the weekend, and, said Mr. Qadri in a telephone interview, "We are ready to send volunteers to fight along the military against Taliban."

Barelvis, like the Taliban, are from Pakistan's Sunni Muslim majority. The Taliban has also targeted the country's Shiite Muslim minority -- who account for about 20% of the population -- repeatedly attacking their mosques.

Non-Muslims have come under assault, too. About 50 Sikhs were expelled from a tribal area by the Taliban last month for refusing to pay special taxes imposed on non-Muslims under the Taliban's Shariah. And in Swat, about 800 Hindus and Sikhs have fled the valley.

Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com

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Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC): Peaceful Barelvis rise against the Taliban criminals

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Will the silent Sunni Barelvi majority rise against the brutal Wahhabi-Neo Deobandi allinace known as the Taliban?

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Eid Miladun Nabi versus Talibanisation

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Eid Milad-un-Nabi Mubarak. Mawlid celebrations...

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Taliban / Sipah-e-Sahaba kills a Barelvi scholar in Quetta

Leaders of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), a religion-political organization representing Barelvis/Sufi Muslims in Pakistan has protested against the brutal killing of Allama Habibi by sectarian terrorists.

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Sunni leader gunned down in Quetta

QUETTA: Unidentified men killed Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat-Noorani provincial leader Maulana Iftikhar Ahmed Habibi in Quetta on Wednesday, sparking a wave of protests. Police said Habibi, who was also a regular Islamic commentator on the Pakistan Television (PTV), was killed by unidentified men when he was on his way to work. Habibi was driving to the PTV Quetta station when the men opened fire, killing him instantly. His relatives took the body to the Governor’s House to protest. The protesters chanted slogans against the police and demanded the arrest of the culprits. The police resorted to aerial firing in order to disperse them and took around 14 protesters into custody. No group has claimed responsibility for the murder. “This is an act of sectarianism carried out by those who had previously threatened to kill Habibi,” Mir Abdul Qudoos Sasooli, the provincial president of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), said. “The murder was carried out by the activists of banned organisations which are operating now under new names,” he said, giving the Balochistan government a 72-hour ultimatum to arrest the murderers. The JUP will observe a Balochistan-wide strike on Thursday (today) to protest against the murder. Sasooli appealed to traders and the people to observe a shutter-down strike as a protest against Habibi’s assassination and express their solidarity with the JUP in Balochistan. He said the JUP would contact the Anjuman-e-Tajiran Balochistan to ensure the strike was a success, APP reported. Habibi was a regular commentator of Balochi and Brahvi languages on PTV. His friends said the slain leader had been threatened in the past but the police had not provided him any security. malik siraj akbar (Daily Times)

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Religious figure gunned down

QUETTA Feb 18 (PPI): A well known religious personality was gunned down at Mano Jan road here Wednesday. According to details, a well known religious figure Maulana Iftikhar Ahmad Habibi was going to home from his Madrissa here this afternoon. Unknown motorcyclists opened fire on him at Mano Jan road. He died on the spot. His relatives said that they knew the killers and take revenge of his murder. Meanwhile an angry mob forces shopkeepers to close their shops. They also blocked Chaman Phatak by burning tyres. No untoward incident was reported. (Frontier Post)

کوئٹہ، عالم دین ہلاک، توڑ پھوڑ

عزیزاللہ خان بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، کوئٹہ

	مولانا افتخار حبیبی پاکستان ٹیلی وژن بولان میں مذہبی پراگرام کے میزبان تھے ( فائل فوٹو)

کوئٹہ میں نامعلوم افراد نے فائرنگ کر کے عالم دین مولانا افتخار حبیبی کو ہلاک کر دیا جس کے بعد شہر میں توڑ پھوڑ کی گئی۔

مولانا افتخار حبیبی پاکستان ٹیلی وژن بولان میں مذہبی پراگرام کے میزبان تھے۔

ڈپٹی انسپکٹر جنرل پولیس کوئٹہ وزیر خان ناصر نے بتایا ہے کہ مولانا افتخار حبیبی اپنے مدرسے سےگھر کی طرف جا رہے تھے کہ راستے میں منو جان روڈ پر موٹر سائیکل پر سوار نامعلوم افراد نے فائرنگ کر کے ہلاک کردیا۔

مولانا افتخار حبیبی روزانہ شام کے وقت پی ٹی وی بولان پر مذہبی پروگرام کی میزبانی کرتے تھے اور ان کا تعلق اہلسنت والجماعت سے بتایا گیا ہے۔ پی ٹی وی بولان بلوچستان کا مقامی چینل ہے جس میں مقامی زبانوں میں پروگرام نشر کیے جاتے ہیں۔

اس واقعہ کے بعد بعض علاقوں میں لوگوں نے مظاہرہ کیا اور توڑ پھوڑ کی۔ مظاہرین لاش کو لے کر گورنر ہاؤس اور وزیر اعلٰی ہاؤس کے سامنے احتجاج کیا ہے اور سخت نعرے بازی کی۔

جمعیت علماء پاکستان نورانی گروپ کے صوبائی سربراہ عبدالقدوس سالولی نے ایک اخباری کانفرنس میں کہا ہے کہ ملک میں فرقہ واریت پھیلانے کے لیے پر امن لوگوں کو نشانہ بنایا جا رہا ہے جس میں بیرونی قوتیں ملوث ہیں اور پاکستان کی خفیہ ایجنسیاں اس پر قابو پانے میں ناکام ہو چکی ہیں۔ ان کا کہنا ہے کہ بڑی تعداد میں ان کے کارکنوں کو گرفتار کیا گیا ہے۔

صوبائی وزیر خان ناصر نے بتایا ہے کہ اب تک اس قتل کی وجہ معلوم نہیں ہو سکی ہے۔ انھوں نے کہا ہو سکتا ہے کہ یہ واقعہ ذاتی دشمنی کی بنیاد پر کیا گیا ہو لیکن اس بارے میں تحقیقات کی جا رہی ہیں۔

BBC Urdu dot com

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What happened to Pir Samiullah's body is a dangerous symbolism, because to many people in Swat it was wilfully permitted by the Army.

Hanging a dead pir
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Farhat Taj

Pir Samiullah of Swat was reportedly encouraged by the army stationed in Swat to raise a lashkar against the Taliban. This invoked the rage of the Taliban who besieged him for days in his village. The army never showed up to help and finally he was killed. The Taliban exhumed his body and hung it in a public place for several hours.

What the Taliban did to the pir's body is tantamount to a kick to the face of civilisation. The Taliban, who had done the same with the body of Dr Najibullah, the former president of Afghanistan, will most probably do it again if given the opportunity.

As far as I know Pakhtun history has never seen such kicks to the face of civilisation, although a greater part of it has been a history of armed conflicts. This changed with the arrival of the holy warriors--the Mujahideen and Taliban.

The Pakhtun Taliban, it seems to me, have appropriated such means of disgrace from the history of their Arabs and Central Asians colleagues. The Umayad caliphs dug up graves of their opponents, exhumed bodies, put them on trial and hanged them.

What happened to Pir Samiullah's body is a dangerous symbolism, because to many people in Swat the disrespect to it was wilfully permitted by the Army. One person said: "The Army did not fire a single bullet while 300-400 of Taliban were firing at the Pir's supporters in Matta tehsil. When the Army knew that Taliban fighters had gathered in their hundreds, why didn't they take action?'

I have been in contact with a number of people from Swat, who complain that the Taliban terrorise and slaughter people and exhume dead bodies, but the Army is nowhere to protect them. They argued that the army is backing the Taliban. One person even said that the commander of the military operation in Swat sends Rs10 million every month to the Swat Taliban leader, Maulana Fazalullah, so he would not harm the army, and do whatever they want with the people and culture of Swat.

Many people who know the geography of the area believe that the military is capable of beating the Taliban by simply besieging their headquarters from three different directions--from the Matta and Madyan tehsil and from lower Dir. This will disrupt the Taliban's logistics and ultimately force them to surrender. The people of Matta had distributed sweets when the military arrived there.

Local residents complain that while the military has killed hundreds of civilians, it has killed only a few hardcore Taliban. The brother of a serving minister of the NWFP, who was in the police and was well-known for standing up to the Taliban, was killed in broad daylight in Mingora, and the perpetrators succeeded in escaping. How then can the people believe that the military is serious in its operation against the Taliban? The result is that an increasingly people in Swat see the Taliban and the Army as two sides of the same coin.

To crosscheck the views of the local people I had a long discussions with two Army offers, a colonel and a major. (Neither was stationed in Swat but the said they were aware of the situation of their colleagues in Swat.) They denied any notion of the army supporting the Taliban. They emphasised that the militants hid among the civilian population and the Army had to move very carefully to avoid civilian damage. They said the Army is constrained by its sensitivity to media reaction: there is media uproar when civilians are killed in military operations and almost complete silence when militants kill civilians. They also pointed out that the civil administration has abandoned the people of Swat. There is almost no one in areas cleared by the army--the police or the administration--to resume routine work. They also said that Army commanders in Swat had requested key federal and provincial political leaders to come to areas cleared by it, under full military protection, to restore the confidence of the people of Swat in the government and the Army, but to no avail.

Following my meeting with the two army officers I also met an NWFP journalist who had had had long discussions with the military commanders in Swat. The journalist more or less confirmed the views expressed by the two army officers.

There seem to be a lack of confidence between the Army in Swat and the politicians and this is to the disadvantage of the people of Swat. The two sides have to remove the lack of confidence in each other if they wish to retain respect among the people of Swat, who now feel abandoned by both the army and the political leaders.

The media should be robust in its response to the violence used by the Taliban. Many people in Swat also believe they have been abandoned by the media as well. One person told me he had been contacting famous media persons like, Hamid Mir, Kamran Khan and Dr Shahid Masood to as them to highlight in their TV shows the daily violence committed by the Taliban, but none of them ever replied.

Any civilised society would have come to a complete standstill upon an incident like the disrespect to the dead body of Pir Samiullah. But in Pakistan it has been business as usual. When the holy warriors insulted the dead body of Dr Najibullah the society in Pakistan remained indifferent. Now this act of disrespect has been committed well inside Pakistan--Swat has no border with Afghanistan. I am afraid that in future such acts could be repeating themselves in Lahore and Islamabad. People across Pakistan must send--for their self-interest, if not for moral reasons--a strong message to the Taliban that their brutal means of violence are not acceptable. Otherwise, we must be ready to see more such kicks to the face of civilisation in our country.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com (The News, 27 Dec 2008)
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Why did the Taliban in Swat exhume Pir Samiullah’s body... Because Pir was from Barelvi sect, and was opposed to the Taliban's militant activities...

Why did Swat militants exhume Pir Samiullah’s body
Friday, December 19, 2008
by Delawar Jan

PESHAWAR: The exhumation and hanging of Pir Samiullah’s body at a square after his killing petrified the already terrified people of the militancy-plagued Swat valley, but the militants instead of repenting the act threatened to hit every person supporting the existing system in Malakand division.

Pir was already a ‘persona non grata’ for the militants for being the member of Barelvi school of thought, but he invited the militants’ wrath after challenging them.Pir was killed during a fierce gunfight between his followers and the militants on December 13. The militants, who had also taken his 200 followers hostage, did not know about the killing of Samiullah as they thought he might have escaped.

“When found involved in an attack on our fellow’s house, our fighters besieged and finally entered his Darbar (house) after a clash. We searched the premises for Pir but did not find him and concluded that he had escaped, burning 15 houses owned by him and his followers. However, we exhumed his body when, a day later, we came to known about his killing and secret burial. Actually, he was not properly buried but was stuffed in a hole while still dressed in Shalwar,” a source among militants told The News.

The militants cannot tolerate opposition to them and any person who dares to do so would meet the same fate, was the real message the militants wanted to convey to the people by humiliating the body of Pir.

A senior commander of the Swati militants while explaining why they were so angry with Pir said that he was a Mushrik (the one who ascribes partners to Allah) besides fighting with Taliban militants and being loyal to the government.

“Fighting against Taliban is fighting against Qura’an, an act that we will not be tolerated. He was fighting against us at the behest of the government. Not certain personalities, but all those who support this (the existing) system will be hit irrespective of being a politician, a cleric or my own father,” he said, adding they hanged the body of Pir to make him an example for others - the practice, according to them, is being done in certain countries.

To a question regarding people’s criticism of the incident, he said it was not the first incident in the country as bodies had also been exhumed officially.The commander claimed that they had recovered Indian currency and 50 Kalashnikovs from the premises of Pir’s house, which showed that he was taking assistance from India. “We have a recording of it,” he insisted.

However, another militant source said Pir drew the militants’ ire when he attacked Bin Yameen, a top Taliban commander. “He was going to Mandal Dag to get a treatment from a Hakeem but Pir thought Yameen and our fellows were going to attack him, prompting him to attack them. We killed four followers of Pir while suffered the destruction of a vehicle.

However, we settled the issue through a jirga but Pir was not sincere and joined hands with the government against us,” he said. He said their investigation of a hand grenade attack on the house of a Taliban militant in the Mandal Dag area, a few days before Eidul Azha, found Pir’s involved in the incident. “Then we decided to handle him and stormed his house, resulting in his killing,” he added.

On October 26, the militants killed 12 jirga members in Gwalerai for holding a jirga against Taliban, and hanged the bodies to ‘teach a lesson to others.’ The security forces encouraged Pir to raise a force against the militants but did not come to his help, as usual, when he was under attack from the militants, further denting public trust in them.

Belonging to Barelvi school of thought, Pir Samiullah, 30, had generated a controversy a few years ago which resulted in the killing of a person, forcing his followers to build a separate mosque and a house for him in the area.

Followers from various parts of the country, including Dir, Chitral, Bajaur, Punjab and Sindh provinces, visited him. Pir had passed his secondary school certificate examination from the Labat Government High School. He had three wives.

He challenged the powerful militants a few months ago and raised an armed lashkar against them on October 10. He lost his brother in the first encounter with Taliban combatants and was killed himself in the second. The militants buried him at an unidentified place ostensibly to stop his followers from building a shrine onto his grave.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=152703

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Taliban desecrate body of slain opposing tribal leader

By Bill RoggioDecember 17, 2008

The Taliban have defeated the primary tribal opposition organized against it in the insurgency-wracked district of Swat in Pakistan's northwest. The leader of the tribal resistance was killed and two of his aides were beheaded last weekend after the Taliban overran the region controlled by the opposition.

Pir Samiullah, a rival tribal and religious leader opposing Mullah Fazlullah's forces in the Matta region of Swat, and eight of his followers were killed in a Taliban assault on Dec. 16. Two of his aides were subsequently beheaded in public, while an estimated 40 of his followers have been captured. "The Taliban also torched the houses of Samiullah and 15 elders of his group," Daily Times reported.

After Samiullah was buried, the Taliban returned, dug up his body and hanged it in public. The Taliban made an example of Samiullah and those who oppose Fazlullah's rule.

Samiullah was the first tribal leader in Swat to raise a lashkar, or tribal army, to oppose the Taliban. He claimed to have organized more than 10,000 tribesmen to oppose the Taliban and protect 20 villages. Samiullah and his followers are members of the Gujjar community, which is a group distinct from the dominant Pashtun tribal confederations that support the Taliban.

The Taliban targeted Samiullah and his tribal lashkar in late October. Fazlullah's forces killed seven members of Samiullah's tribal council and took more than 60 hostage after an assault on a tribal meeting.

The Pakistani government has been courting the tribes to support the efforts to take on the Taliban in the tribal areas and in the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. Tribal lashkars have been formed in Peshawar, Swat, Dir, Buner, Bajaur, Khyber, and Arakzai. The Taliban have ruthlessly attacked tribal groups organizing resistance.

The Taliban hold an advantage over the disparate tribal groups in organization and fighters. The Taliban are organized throughout the tribal areas and the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province, while tribal resistance groups operate independently. The Taliban "out-number and out-gun [resisting tribal groups] by more than 20 to 1," a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal in October. And the tribes receive little support from the government and military. In many cases, they do not want government assistance.

Background on the fighting in Swat

Pakistani forces have been fighting forces aligned with Mullah Fazlullah, a radical cleric of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law). Fazlullah wields considerable power in Swat.

The TNSM is known as the "Pakistani Taliban" and is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight US forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001.

Fazlullah merged with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, in December 2007.

Fazlullah has successfully organized anti-polio vaccination and anti-girls' schools campaigns throughout the region. The Swat region has been a safe haven and training ground for the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda.

The military began operations to clear the Taliban in Swat and neighboring Shangla in November 2007 after Fazlullah's forces overran the district. The military claimed it would clear the Taliban from Swat by mid-December 2007, little more than one year ago.

After a half of a year of brutal fighting, the government negotiated a peace accord with Fazlullah in May 2008. Fighting restarted in July 2008. The government said the operation would be completed by September. In a recent briefing to Parliament, a senior Pakistani general admitted Swat and Shangla are under Taliban control.

Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers and policemen have been killed in fighting in Swat since January 2007. The military has not provided numbers of soldiers killed or captured this year. The Taliban have destroyed more 125 schools in Swat over the past year.

Swat was once Pakistan's vacation paradise, rich with golf courses, hiking trails, a ski resort, and archeological sites. The fighting has destroyed Swat's tourist industry. Fazlullah's forces have burned down the ski lodge and bombed the lifts.

(From the Long War Journal)
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