Taliban Writ Expands in Pakistan

[Puppycow]

From Pakistan, Taliban Threats Reach New York

Last June, Bakht Bilind Khan, who was living in the Bronx and working at a fast-food restaurant, returned to his village in the volatile Swat Valley of northern Pakistan to visit his wife and seven children for the first time in three years.

But at a dinner celebration with his family, his homecoming suddenly turned dark: several heavily armed Taliban fighters wearing masks appeared at the door of their house, accused Mr. Khan of being an American spy and kidnapped him.

During two weeks of captivity in a nearby mountain range, Mr. Khan says, he was interrogated repeatedly about his wealth, property and “mission” in the United States. He was released in exchange for an $8,000 ransom. His family, threatened with death if they did not leave the region, is now hiding elsewhere in Pakistan.

“Our Swat, our paradise, is burning now,” said Mr. Khan, 55, who returned to the United States and is working at a fast-food restaurant in Albany, trying to reimburse the friends and relatives who paid his ransom.

Pakistani immigrants from the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have been battling Pakistani security forces since 2007, say some of their families are being singled out for threats, kidnapping and even murder by Taliban forces, who view them as potential American collaborators and lucrative sources of ransom. Some immigrants also say they, too, have been threatened in the United States by the Taliban or its sympathizers, and some immigrants say they have been attacked or kidnapped when they have returned home.

The threats have brought an added dimension of suffering for the immigrants, who say fresh reports of hardship arrive here every day, sometimes several times a day, and spread quickly among the several thousand Swati immigrants in the New York region: families driven from their villages, houses being destroyed, relatives disappearing. The fate of the valley dominates conversation among the exiles.

“It’s 24/7,” said Zakrya Khan, 30, the owner of two gyro restaurants in New York whose staff of 15 is almost entirely Swati. “This is their only concern now.”

 

[gumboot]

It worked better for the british empire than the alturnatives.

Um, no. The British routinely attempted to crush the Islamic Radicals in India and Afghanistan (no Pakistan at the time). After the Sepoy Mutiny the British actually went as far as killing all Muslims on site in Delhi, rapidly turning that city from a centre for Indian Muslim thought into a city almost devoid of Muslims.

These guys have a 200 year history of gradually spreading until the ruling authority gets sick of them, attempts to crush them, thinks it has succeeded, and leaves them alone again. Each time they spread wider and deeper than they did the time before. Each time it takes more effort to cut them back.

The last few times have broken the trend by being dismal failures that didn't trim them back at all, but only encouraged more rapid spread. Now they're linking up from Afghanistan to Pakistan to India. Not a good thing.

The Russians failed. NATO are failing. The Pakistanis will fail. If we're lucky the Indians will stop the tide, but even that I'm not sure of.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Why do you think there are no protests in Europe over this? Or San Francisco? Or LA?

The Taliban have killed more Muslims than Israel has this year.

Are you planning to organise a protest outside the Pakastani embassy in response to this article? If not, why not?

 

[geni]

Um, no. The British routinely attempted to crush the Islamic Radicals in India and Afghanistan (no Pakistan at the time). After the Sepoy Mutiny the British actually went as far as killing all Muslims on site in Delhi, rapidly turning that city from a centre for Indian Muslim thought into a city almost devoid of Muslims.

Sure but the North-West Frontier Province was where the empire eventualy gave up on that aproach and went with makeing deals with the local tribal leaders which worked rather better.

 

[gumboot]

Sure but the North-West Frontier Province was where the empire eventualy gave up on that aproach and went with makeing deals with the local tribal leaders which worked rather better.

Um... no? Britain gave up on India full stop before a move to divide India became serious. The British effectively washed their hands of the whole issue and told the Indians to sort it out themselves. The Hindus were basically told if they didn't give Muslims their own country there would be civil war, so they had no choice but to allow the creation of Pakistan. And as it turned out they did get a war anyway - four of them in fact.

 

[Beerina]

Schools for Muslims being bombed? Civilians being killed? Wow, there must be riots in the streets of Europe and San Francisco over this... oh, wait, there's no Jews involved.

nvm

QFT




You'll see these riots in the streets of Europe and San Francisco as soon as they start rioting about Jordan bulldozing entire Palestinian villages within its borders.




I would like one honest and introspective Israel-is-always-wrong hater to study their own mental knee-jerk evasions as they assuage their egos with some argument as to why that's wrong. Even if you believe your argument, please report the mental process here. It should be fascinating.

 

[WildCat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6997702.stm




Go dig through the news archives.



I imagain the Iran-Contra affair resulted in at least some street level appearences.

Wow, must have been 50 people at that protest! I was looking for mass protests, not a dozen families. Your link proves my point - few give a damn.

 

[WildCat]

Are you planning to organise a protest outside the Pakastani embassy in response to this article? If not, why not?

What does what I do have to do with anything? Was the question too hard or something?

Why is it that an Israeli action in response to attacks results in demonstrations and riots involving thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people while much worse attacks by others result in a great big yawn?

Russians kill tens of thousands of Muslims in Chechnya, yawn.

Syria kills tens of thousands of Muslims in an indiscriminate shelling of an entire town, yawn.

Taliban run wild in the Swat valley, hundreds of thousdands of Muslims displaced and who knows how many killed, yawn.

Bosnia, yawn until Clinton dragged NATO in kicking and screaming.

Clearly, it's not who is being killed. Could it be who is doing the killing?

 

[gnome]

Pakistan is engaging in a policy of appeasement that is certain to fail.

I can only hope they have the sense to destroy their nukes before the extremists take control of the rest of the country.

If it comes to that I surely hope so too.

I can't express how sad and angry I am at seeing a relatively modernized area forced by thugs back into barbarism. Any chance of Pakistan's government supporting local resistance? Obviously there are plenty that don't agree with the changes.

 

[Ranb]

Russians kill tens of thousands of Muslims in Chechnya, yawn.
Syria kills tens of thousands of Muslims in an indiscriminate shelling of an entire town, yawn.
Taliban run wild in the Swat valley, hundreds of thousdands of Muslims displaced and who knows how many killed, yawn.

If you are going to yawn about it, then why care if everyone else is? Lead from the front.

Ranb

 

[geni]

Wow, must have been 50 people at that protest! I was looking for mass protests, not a dozen families. Your link proves my point - few give a damn.

Far more than 50 there. Those protest lines go back further than you think.

Mass protests? So far this decade the only real mass protests have been the ones about the iraq war and the Countryside Alliance.

 

[WildCat]

If you are going to yawn about it, then why care if everyone else is? Lead from the front.

Ranb

I'm not the one howling in protest (allegedly) because innocent civilians are being killed in a "disproportionate" military response to an attack on a nation.

If that's what the protests are really about why nothing remotely comparable to those others?

What makes Israel such a special case?

 

[WildCat]

Oh yeah, this peace agreement is working out really well:

A top official in Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley was kidnapped Sunday -- a day after a cease-fire between the government and Taliban militants was supposed to go into effect.

Kushal Khan was on his way to take up his new post as the District Coordination Officer when unknown gunmen kidnapped him and six members of his security guards near Mingora, the valley's main city, officials said.

Khan was nabbed a day after the provincial government declared a permanent cease-fire agreement with Taliban militants in the valley.
Yet, hours after the announcement, Maulana Fazlullah -- the Taliban commander in the area -- was playing down the agreement with aggressive rhetoric in a radio broadcast. Fazlullah said militants will continue their fight to impose Islamic law, or sharia, in the region.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/22/pakistan.kidnap/index.html

Maybe if they just give the Taliban Islamabad they won't demand Karachi.