Militants kidnap 25 Pakistani boys in Afghanistan

[Ahmad]

no infighting between haqqani group n ttp. they are the same..

any updates? any demands? r the kids back?

no, they are demanding the release of taliban prisoners.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

no way in hell that's going to happen

they are cowards hiding behind school children. They will be hunted down, and arrested or killed, one by one.

And we should make it clear to them that we will not be a party to cheapest extortion tactics.

 

[Chogy]

This situation is the perfect example of the horror of terrorist demands.

You are President. 25 innocent children are being held hostage. They demand the release of their fellows from prison. What do you do?

If you do the exchange, you have just told terrorists that "This tactic works. Taking hostages and making demands is effective."

If you DON'T cooperate, 25 children die in horrific ways.

There's no easy answer. My gut feeling is that you cannot give in to their demands. Better to launch a rescue operation, even if it results in innocent casualties.

 

[Ahmad]

This situation is the perfect example of the horror of terrorist demands.

You are President. 25 innocent children are being held hostage. They demand the release of their fellows from prison. What do you do?

If you do the exchange, you have just told terrorists that "This tactic works. Taking hostages and making demands is effective."

If you DON'T cooperate, 25 children die in horrific ways.

There's no easy answer. My gut feeling is that you cannot give in to their demands. Better to launch a rescue operation, even if it results in innocent casualties.

Unfortunately they will behead those innocent kids, they have done this before in afghanistan.

 

[President Camacho]

It so appears to be a repetition of June 2009 incident, when the TTP under Baitullah Mehsud had held around 400 students hostage.

They did that to the people that were anti TTP and pro Haqqani. Same is going on here as well.

At that time, the Army launched a fierce offensive and rescued them all. This time, they seem to be immune to the Pakistani Army, since no one knows which side of the border they are on.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Chogy Sir,

it's a quagmire. If government doesnt get involved and try to secure their release, it will look like they have abandoned the anti-taleban tribal militias (which are actually killing and capturing talebs voluntarily despite modest stockpile of arms, limited supplies, and casualties)

government cooperating with talebans most preposterous demands is also a NO-NO in my opinion. Pakistan's policy should be that even if 500 scud missiles and mortars were pointed at Islamabad -- we will never negotiate with terrorists (especially those that stoop so low and kidnap innocent children), regardless of position of weakness or strength.


i think we may have to come up with an "out of the box" solution.....if i was in command, i'd do a few low fly-bys at mach 1 over their villages just across the border; to wake up those people and let them know our might. Then I would hold Afghan police accountable (it's a hostile force anyways) and give them a 3 day ultimatum to find those children before we go in ourselves and find them.


may sound wild, but honestly -- that would be my approach. These people are cowards for hiding behind children. They are no mujahideen, they have no shame or morals whatsoever.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Pakistan asks Kabul to help release children

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s cabinet on Thursday asked Kabul to secure the release of more than 30 children who were kidnapped after mistakenly crossing the border into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the abduction and said that “these people belong to the areas where tribesmen rose militias” against it.

The cabinet “condemned the abduction of innocent children from Bajaur and asked the Kabul government to get them freed soon,” an official statement said.

The incident took place last week when more than 30 boys inadvertently crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s lawless northwest while going on a picnic on the second day of the Islamic festival of Eid.

Local officials put the kidnapped boys’ ages at between 12 and 18 but the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed they were 20 to 30 years old.

Pakistani officials blamed the abduction on a militant group allied with Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, who led insurgents in Bajaur but is believed to have fled to Afghanistan in 2010.

Afghanistan shares a disputed and unmarked 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) border with Pakistan, and Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked militants have carved out strongholds on either side in their fight against security forces from both governments.

The Pakistani military has repeatedly claimed to have eliminated the militant threat in Bajaur, one of seven districts in the semi-autonomous tribal belt that the United States sees as the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda.

Afghanistan and Pakistan blame each other for several recent cross-border attacks that have killed dozens and displaced hundreds of families.

Islamabad’s military has accused Faqir Muhammad of being behind a recent attack on a Pakistani paramilitary checkpost in the northwestern town of Chitral, which killed 25 troops.

Pakistan asks Kabul to help release children | Pakistan | DAWN.COM

 

[xTra]

I think both Negotiations and Search operation should go on Parallel, till they are rescued.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

negotiations would only entail them demanding release of TTP prisoners.....that will be a defeat

Islamabad should apply some pressure on Kabul until each and every one of those tribesmen's children are released and not even a scratch is found on them

 

[muse]

When we first suggested that there is something fishy about this abduction that that the collusion of one or more sets of parents or chaperons, our respected member Jana suggested that we don't know what we are talking about and that we must be DRUNK, her Talib sympathizer mentality did not allow her to think - now we all know that indeed this is has been a set up, it may even be possible that this is only superficially a Talib action, but that it has the support of many tribesmen, as they still have a brigand ethic:

Taliban set conditions for release of Bajaur boys

* TTP commander seeks release of prisoners in Peshawar jails and compensation for houses destroyed in military operations

KUNAR: The Pakistani Taliban who are holding more than 20 young tribesmen hostage in an area straddling the border with Afghanistan have demanded the release of scores of prisoners and an end to tribal elders’ support of offensives against them.

The teenage tribesmen from Pakistan’s northwestern Bajaur tribal region were abducted by the militants last week while they were on an outing in Afghanistan’s border province of Kunar on Eidul Fitr.

“If the Pakistan government and the tribal elders don’t respond to our demands, we will not free the boys,” Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander in Bajaur, told a group of reporters who were taken to a border hideout on Tuesday.

Four of the 23 prisoners who were between the age of 15 to 21 were shown to reporters during the visit to the area between Marah Warah district in Kunar province and the Bajaur tribal region.

More then 30 militants armed with heavy and light guns accompanied the Taliban commander and the young prisoners who were crying.

Dadullah demanded the release of prisoners, including women and children, detained in jails in Peshawar, the main city in the Pakistani northwest and Bajaur region.

He also demanded that the government provide compensation for the houses destroyed in Pakistani military operations in Bajaur.

He said Taliban’s shura will decide the fate of the prisoners if there was no response from the authorities or the tribal elders.

Under centuries-old tribal customs, tribesmen living along the frontier can freely move across the border.

A Pakistani military spokesman said last week that 40 young tribesmen were abducted. He said 10 of the boys were released while 30 were still in custody.

They belonged to the ethnic Pashtun Mamoun tribe, which is opposed to al Qaeda and the Taliban and has raised militias to fight them.

Bajaur has long been an infiltration route for militants entering Afghanistan to fight US-led forces there.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on Wednesday, asked the head of the Kunar provincial council and the elders of the area to help secure the release of the boys. reuters

 

[unicorn]

negotiations would only entail them demanding release of TTP prisoners.....that will be a defeat

Islamabad should apply some pressure on Kabul until each and every one of those tribesmen's children are released and not even a scratch is found on them

Masala TTP prisoners ki release ka nahi hai.

Baat ye hai ke Tribal elders ki Army ko support buhat sare logoun/institutions ki ankh main katakhti hai...

 

[muse]

In another thread - "Defending Militancy" we said Pakistanis lack confidence in their being Muslims and this reflects itself i the way in whcih Pakistanis perceive the Islamist insurgency, after so many years, Pakistanis cannot bring themselves to assert, even to themselves, that they and they Islamist insurgent are not the same, while one has confidence that they are Muslsms, the other is more concerned about being some sort arab:

Seeking legitimacy
Gulmina Bilal Ahmad



Our holidays are the same but our styles of celebration are perhaps slightly different. We share the same rituals but our beliefs are different. While we celebrate Eid by visiting friends, they do so by taking hostages.

Depending on your source of information, 15 to 25 young boys have been taken hostage by the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP). Some news reports state that the younger children have been set free while the teenagers are still being held captive. They are being used as pawns to negotiate with the government, which, according to the militants, is holding the “women and children belonging to the TTP members and mistreating them”. I am encouraged by the faith the TTP puts in the government to believe that they would be concerned about the captive young citizens — concerned enough to think about negotiations. After all, if the son of the slain governor of the most powerful province in the country can be kidnapped from the Lahori equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue, what hope can there be for these young hostages? However, let me not let my scepticism cast a shadow on the efforts of our agencies, which definitely must be running all over the tribal belt in hot pursuit, just as they are running all over Balochistan looking for the kidnapped aid workers of the American Refugee Committee. If it is not a gora (foreigner) hostage, we are not concerned, thank you very much.

In addition to the demand of freeing the women and children of the TTP members, the TTP has also demanded that the “government stop facilitating the organisations of the peace lashkars (private militias) and disband the ones that are operating”. This is an interesting demand. On the face of it, this demand can be taken as proof of the efficacy of the lashkars, for, if they were not effective, they would not be seen as a threat by the TTP.

The lashkars claim to be formed indigenously by locals to combat terrorism and the TTP, and declare that they are striving to “fight for peace”. In other words, they are armed. It is an open secret that these groups have the blessings of the local administration and some have actually been armed by the government or the local tribal elder or malik. Even if the weapons belonging to the lashkar members are private (all houses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have at least one weapon), there is a definite legitimacy awarded to them by the local administration. Cursory scanning of the newspaper will reveal at least one or two reports about a local peace committee/lashkar meeting a local official during which “both sides vow to combat terrorism”.

Proof that they are effective, as I stated before, is the TTP’s demand for their disbandment. However, in the long run, what are the effects of arming citizens and encouraging them to ‘protect peace’? Is there not a danger of creating new Mullah Fazalullahs and parallel systems potentially challenging the state’s writ? What are the chances of these people posing the same threat tomorrow as the Lal Masjid brothers who were also supported by the government of the day? Challenging the ‘writ of the state’ has long been a declared problem of the government. Over the years, several voluntary de-weaponisation programmes have also been launched by successive governments but with no fruitful results. To use private citizens to carry out security duties and that too by arming them does not reflect far-sightedness. Peace through violence is never sustainable, as the Americans have learnt in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have learnt this lesson in Kashmir, Swat and Karachi too. Peace that goes beyond the absence of violence can only be established through effective and accountable governance, not by arming civilians.

Speaking of far-sightedness and vision, consider the Eid messages issued by various quarters. Let me start with the illusive Mullah Omar who declared, among the many victories over ‘the enemy’, the need for “neighbours refraining from participating in the western plot against Afghanistan”. His Eid message also declared that there can be room for negotiation with and through the ****** governments, provided both rid themselves of foreign domination. The Taliban and Mullah Omar, both in their respective Eid messages declared that the presence of foreign forces and military bases in Afghanistan was “unacceptable”. Reading their Eid messages, I was struck by the similarities they contained with other Eid messages. One could easily replace the word Mullah Omar with Imran Khan or Maulana Fazlur Rehman and not know the difference. While I would not like to ponder over the political wisdom of Maulana Diesel, I am concerned when the leader of the justice party and Mullah Omar’s Eid messages can be so easily confused. Or is it that the justice that is being promised is inspired by Mullah Omar’s vision?

Whether Imran Khan or the government, any kind of bashing was not the intention. However, an expression of concern at the lack of well-thought, cautious and sustainable action was the intended focus of my article today. I also remain concerned about measures that have short-term impact but long-term loss. Negotiating with the Taliban is as dangerous as encouraging citizens to take up arms to protect themselves, for both grant legitimacy to illegitimate groups and processes.

The writer is an Islamabad-based consultant. She can be reached at contact@individualland.com

 

[Spring Onion]

When we first suggested that there is something fishy about this abduction that that the collusion of one or more sets of parents or chaperons, our respected member Jana suggested that we don't know what we are talking about and that we must be DRUNK, her Talib sympathizer mentality did not allow her to think - now we all know that indeed this is has been a set up, it may even be possible that this is only superficially a Talib action, but that it has the support of many tribesmen, as they still have a brigand ethic:

1. Your ignorant idiotic claim was that parents of these kidnapped boys were groupie of Taliban. But your ignorant claim was and is wrong and all a conspiracy theory which had been proven wrong Because

A. Most of these boys belong to families who's elders form anti-Taliban Lashkars and are fighting these terrorists.

B. many of these kidnapped boys belong to military personnel's families who are fighting the terrorists.

C. Indeed you are ignorant about the area thats why you suggested that entire Pakistan was open for picnic why they did picnic in their own area. one wonders if you even know the passages if suitable for traveling to other parts of Pakistan from FATA.


last but not the least when you copy past news do past the link of the source.

 

[Always Neutral]

Chogy Sir,


i think we may have to come up with an "out of the box" solution.....if i was in command, i'd do a few low fly-bys at mach 1 over their villages just across the border; to wake up those people and let them know our might. Then I would hold Afghan police accountable (it's a hostile force anyways) and give them a 3 day ultimatum to find those children before we go in ourselves and find them.


may sound wild, but honestly -- that would be my approach. These people are cowards for hiding behind children. They are no mujahideen, they have no shame or morals whatsoever.

How about some low fly bys over Mr. Haqquani too?

 

[Luftwaffe]

How about some low fly bys over Mr. Haqquani too?

That was a cheap shot, Read what Abu Zolfiqar said, that area belongs to afghanistan and afghan police/army have to find those boys and eliminate targets first if they can, if afghanistan is unable to do anything, US/NATO help be asked for.