Monday, June 25, 2012

The Plundered Are Restless

The U.S. is openly accusing the Pakistani military of collaborating with Islamic terrorists, particularly the Haqqani Network, which has long enjoyed sanctuary in North Waziristan. The U.S. publicly agrees with many Pakistanis that the Pakistani military is out-of-control and a threat to Pakistani democracy. Pakistanis who express these beliefs openly in Pakistan can get arrested or killed. The Pakistani military and the ISI (the intelligence agency it controls) see these U.S. accusations as a direct attack on the power and privileges of the military. The Pakistani generals also see the successful American use of missile armed UAVs to kill Islamic terrorists cooperating with the military, as an attack on a powerful Pakistani military capability. The Pakistani military cannot admit this openly, although the Pakistani use of Islamic terrorists to attack India is an open secret in Pakistan. Many Pakistani generals also consider it shameful for their troops to be fighting Islamic terrorists inside Pakistan. This is, however, necessary in some cases when dealing with Islamic radical groups that have declared war on the Pakistani government and military. These groups stage attacks against the military and politicians. These subsidized terror groups also stage attacks in Afghanistan, which has caused the Afghans to call for American cooperation in joint commando raids into North Waziristan to do more damage to the Haqqani Network, destroying their bases and killing or capturing senior leaders. So far, the U.S. has ruled out these raids.
June 21, 2012: The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of the ruling party's candidate to replace the prime minister the court recently dismissed. A military run anti-drug agency provided evidence that the candidate has been involved in a drug transaction.  The current government is unpopular because, as usual, it promised to curb corruption and inept government and did neither. The corruption continues and the government has become less effective. This is most obvious in the growing electricity blackouts. Corrupt officials have, over many decades, prevented construction of more power plants. Much necessary infrastructure has not been built or maintained because politicians were too busy stealing the money available for such projects. The current corruption crisis was made worse by revelations that major media outlets had been bribed to attack selected politicians. All this is more than just feuding among corrupt political and military leaders. There are growing demonstrations, including mobs attacking the homes of corrupt politicians. People are mad because they are exposed daily to the lack of power, clean drinking water, and roads. Popular anger is growing and the corrupt ruling families in Pakistan fear that the age of plunder and corruption may be over. At the very least, it's becoming more difficult to keep the population under control while the widespread plundering continues.
June 20, 2012: Pakistan revealed that it had recently arrested an al Qaeda (Naamen Maziche) in the southwest (Baluchistan) after he had entered from Iran.  Maziche was captured with information obtained from another al Qaeda leader, Younis al Mauritani, who was also hiding out in Iran and was arrested near the Iranian border last September. Maziche, who is in charge of planning attacks in the West, was apparently on his way to Africa. Iran has provided sanctuary for al Qaeda leaders but has not allowed them to operate from Iran.
June 19, 2012: The head of the Supreme Court removed the prime minister from his post for refusing to revive a corruption investigation against president Asif Ali Zardari. The deposed prime minister insisted that the constitution gives the president immunity from prosecution while in office. The head of the Supreme Court has been fighting corrupt politicians for some time, and has now allied with the army to take down some senior people who are both corrupt and hostile to the corrupt leadership of the military.
Pakistani troops on the Line of Control (which separates Indian and Pakistani held Kashmir) violated the ceasefire five times in the last nine days. Two Indian soldiers have been killed and four wounded in these incidents. Pakistan has long violated the ceasefire in this way, but the current ceasefire was supposed to be taken more seriously. Apparently not, and the Pakistani military has refused to discuss these violations. When pressed one Pakistani commander insisted that the Indians fired on Pakistan first.
June 17, 2012: In Quetta, Baluchistan (southwest Pakistan) a bomb was set off in a bus carrying Hazara students, killing four of them. This was seen as a Taliban attack, as the Taliban see the Hazara, who are Shia, as heretics.
June 16, 2012: In Pakistan's tribal territories (Khyber and Kohat) two bombs went off killing 26 and wounding over fifty.
June 15, 2012: The U.S. officially admitted that it had been using missile armed UAVs to attack Islamic terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. The Pakistani military is under tremendous pressure from the Islamic terror groups it subsidizes and protects, to halt these American attacks. The UAV operations have done tremendous damage to the leadership of these terror groups.
In eastern India (Chhattisgarh) tips from locals led to the discovery and destruction of a Maoist camp. Some of the Maoists were wounded as they tried to defend the camp. Police in the area have also been arresting people who have been smuggling weapons and ammunition to the Maoists. In response to successful police operations in an area, the Maoists will increasingly move to another location in an adjacent state. The police have noted this and now go on alert for such moves when a Maoist group in an adjacent state suffers major losses (especially the destruction of camps).
June 14, 2012:  The Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan has ordered a halt to efforts to inoculate 162,000 children against polio and eliminate the disease forever. The Islamic terrorists believe the inoculation effort is a cover for American espionage. Such Islamic radical paranoia about Western medicine has caused thousands of deaths, most of them children, in the tribal territories in the last decade.
June 13, 2012: Despite Pakistani calls for demilitarizing the border area on the Siachen glacier, the subsequent peace talks failed. The offer had been greeted with skepticism in India. That's because the Pakistani Army has used lies and deceptions for decades in a futile effort to gain an edge over India. This has led to the current situation, where thousands of Islamic terrorists, openly supported by Pakistani troops, continue to plan and carry out attacks on India. It happens every day in places like Kashmir. But Pakistan officially denies it all. Until the denials stop and taking responsibility begins, there will be no real peace with India.  The collapse of the talks about withdrawing troops from the Siachen glacier is seen as another example of this.
An American UAV used missiles to kill four Islamic terrorists in North Waziristan.
In Pakistani tribal territories Islamic terrorists made attacks, two days in a row, unsuccessfully trying to kill the head of an anti-Taliban tribal militia. The two suicide bomb attacks killed two bodyguards and a young mother.

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