Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists

[BanglaBhoot]

The Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban: Two Heads of the Same Monster

Jonathan Chait

This morning’s New York Times piece about the alleged Times Square bomber who may have connections to the Taliban in Pakistan included this tidbit:

The Pakistani Taliban is a different organization from the Taliban groups that the United States is battling in Afghanistan.

However, at TNR we’ve run several pieces that argue differently. Back in February, David Rohde, the NYT reporter that was held in captivity for seven months by the Taliban, explained first-hand his experience with the “Afghan Taliban” and “Pakistani Taliban,” while also reviewing two books that affirm his view:

Over the next several days, it became clear to me that our Afghan Taliban abductors had not sold us to the Pakistani Taliban. Instead the two groups were working seamlessly together. When we departed from the area six weeks later for unknown reasons, the coordination between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban was equally flawless. Throughout our captivity, Afghan and Pakistani militants spoke in one voice of their desire to topple the American-backed governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and halt what they saw as the oppression of Muslims worldwide.

…

While American troops are on their way to Afghanistan, however, Pakistani military officials are refusing to confront the Afghan Taliban inside their borders. For years, Pakistani officials have differentiated between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups, insisting that Afghan militants pose no threat to the Pakistani state. They also say that they hope to use the Afghan Taliban as proxies to prevent attempts by India to gain influence in Afghanistan after the Obama administration begins withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 2011. As long as they persist in this view, it appears that the Afghan Taliban will continue to enjoy a sanctuary in Pakistan. In January, Pakistani officials rebuffed a request from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Pakistan launch a military offensive in North Waziristan. The area, which is dominated by an Afghan Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network, is one of the last major Taliban strongholds in the tribal area.

These books suggest--as does as my own experience in captivity--that the Pakistani differentiation between the two Talibans is false. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban work closely together, strengthening and supporting each other in various ways. For this reason, the American surge in Afghanistan appears unlikely to achieve a military victory until the Pakistanis themselves move more aggressively against the Afghan Taliban. From its Pakistani base, the Haqqani network has carried out a series of high-profile attacks in Kabul, including a recent attack on the Central Bank that paralyzed the city. As long as the Haqqanis remain unchallenged in Pakistan, American and Afghan security forces will have a very hard time containing them--let alone defeating them.

And last October Peter Bergen pointed out that the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban are "quite a bit more interwoven than is commonly thought," reflecting the way the security of each country depends on the other:

These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest. But those who make this case could not be more mistaken. Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism--and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban And The Afghan Taliban: Two Heads Of The Same Monster | The New Republic

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists

Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

Updated: May 6, 2010

Introduction

As an increasing number of suicide attacks rock Pakistan's major cities, concerns for the country's security are rising. In recent years, many new terrorist groups have emerged, several existing groups have reconstituted themselves, and a new crop of militants has emerged, more violent and less conducive to political solutions than their predecessors. Links between many of these new and existing groups have strengthened, say experts, giving rise to fresh concerns for stability. A failed bombing attempt in New York's Times Square in May 2010 with links to Pakistan also exposes the growing ambitions of many of these groups that had previously focused only on the region.

Pakistani authorities have long had ties to militant groups based on their soil that largely focused their efforts in Afghanistan and India. But with Pakistan joining the United States as an ally in its "war on terrorism" since 9/11, experts say Islamabad has seen harsh blowback on its policy of backing militants operating abroad. Leadership elements of al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, along with other terrorist groups, have made Pakistan's tribal areas (the semi-autonomous region along the Afghan border) their home and now work closely with a wide variety of Pakistani militant groups. Security concerns are reverberating beyond Pakistan. In April 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan "poses a mortal threat" to the United States and the world.
Terrorist Groups

Many experts say it is difficult to determine how many terrorist groups are operating out of Pakistan. Most of these groups have tended to fall into one of the five distinct categories laid out by Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in January 2008 testimony (PDF) before a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

* Sectarian: Groups such as the Sunni Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Shia Tehrik-e-Jafria, which are engaged in violence within Pakistan;
* Anti-Indian: Terrorist groups that operate with the alleged support of the Pakistani military and the intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), and the Harakat ul-Mujahadeen (HuM). This Backgrounder profiles these organizations which have been active in Kashmir;
* Afghan Taliban: The original Taliban movement and especially its Kandahari leadership centered around Mullah Mohammad Omar, believed to be now living in Quetta;
* Al-Qaeda and its affiliates: The organization led by Osama bin Laden and other non-South Asian terrorists believed to be ensconced in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Rohan Gunaratna of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore says other foreign militant groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad group, the Libyan Islamic Fighters Group and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement are also located in FATA;
* The Pakistani Taliban: Groups consisting of extremist outfits in the FATA, led by individuals such as Hakimullah Mehsud, of the Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan, Maulana Faqir Muhammad of Bajaur, and Maulana Qazi Fazlullah of the Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).

There are some other militant groups that do not fit into any of the above categories. For instance, secessionist groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army in the southwest province of Balochistan. BLA was declared a terrorist organization by Pakistan in 2006. Also, a new militant network, often labeled the Punjabi Taliban, has gained prominence after the major 2008 and 2009 attacks in the Punjabi cities of Lahore, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi.

Hassan Abbas, a fellow at the Asia Society, writes the Punjabi Taliban network is a loose conglomeration of members of banned militant groups of Punjabi origin-sectarian as well as those focused on Kashmir-that have developed strong connections with the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, and other militant groups based in FATA and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The Punjabi Taliban provide logistical support for attacks on cities in Punjab province and include individuals or factions of groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and their various splinter groups, along with small cells unaffiliated with any large group. Abbas writes that many of these militants "directly benefited from state patronage in the 1990s and were professionally trained in asymmetrical warfare, guerrilla tactics, and sabotage." The Punjabi Taliban are distinct from the traditional Pashtun Taliban, experts say. They are usually more educated and more technologically savvy.

Since there is also greater coordination between all these groups, say experts, lines have blurred regarding which category a militant group fits in. For instance, the Pakistani Taliban, which were committed to fighting against the Pakistani state, are now increasingly joining insurgents fighting U.S. and international troops across the border in Afghanistan. U.S. Central Command Chief General David H. Petraeus, in a CFR interview, says the groups have long shared a symbiotic relationship. "Some are allies at times, occasionally are competitors, but generally all are in the same mix and are aiding and abetting, as required, the ambitions of each other," making it difficult to distinguish between them.
The Pakistani Taliban

Supporters of the Afghan Taliban in the tribal areas transitioned into a mainstream Taliban force of their own as a reaction to the Pakistani army's incursion into the tribal areas, which began in 2002, to hunt down the militants. In December 2007, about thirteen disparate militant groups coalesced under the umbrella of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, with militant commander Baitullah Mehsud from South Waziristan as the leader. After Mehsud was killed in August 2009 in a U.S. missile strike, his cousin and deputy Hakimullah Mehsud took over as leader of the TTP. Experts say most adult men in Pakistan's tribal areas grew up carrying arms but it is only in the last few years that they have begun to organize themselves around a Taliban-style Islamic ideology pursuing an agenda much similar to that of the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan. Abbas writes (PDF) in a January 2008 paper that the Pakistani Taliban killed approximately two hundred tribal leaders and effectively established themselves as an alternative.

TTP not only has representation from all of FATA's seven agencies (please refer to this interactive map of the area) but also from several settled districts of the NWFP. According to some estimates, the Pakistani Taliban collectively have around 30,000 to 35,000 members. Among their other objectives, the TTP has announced a defensive jihad against the Pakistani army, enforcement of sharia, and a plan to unite against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani authorities accused the group's former leader, Baitullah Mehsud, of assassinating former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Some experts have questioned the ability of the different groups working under the Pakistani Taliban umbrella to stay united given the rivalries between the various tribes. However, the group has proved since its inception, through a string of suicide attacks, that it poses a serious threat to the country's stability. TTP also expressed transnational ambitions when it claimed responsibility for a failed bomb attack in New York in May 2010.
Changing Face of Terrorism

Violence in Pakistan has been on the rise as more militant groups target the state. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a terrorism database, 2,155 civilians were killed in terrorist violence in 2008 and nearly 1800 civilians have been killed in the first ten months of 2009 as compared to around 1600 civilian deaths from 2003 to 2006. This new generation of terrorists is also more willing to engage in suicide attacks; journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, in a new documentary (CBC), reports that the Taliban are recruiting younger and younger children to carry out suicide attacks. According to SATP, there were nearly sixty suicide attacks in Pakistan in 2009 as compared to only two in 2002. Gunaratna attributes this to the influence of al-Qaeda. He says bin Laden's group is training most of the terrorist groups in FATA. "Al-Qaeda considers itself as the vanguard of the Islamic movement," Gunaratna says, and has introduced its practice of suicide bombings to both the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban.

Besides providing militant groups in Pakistan with technical expertise and capabilities, al-Qaeda is also promoting cooperation among a variety of them, say some experts. Don Rassler, an associate at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research institution based at the U.S. military academy at West Point, writes al-Qaeda "has assumed a role as mediator and coalition builder among various Pakistani militant group factions by promoting the unification of entities that have opposed one another or had conflicting ideas about whether to target the Pakistani state." Al-Qaeda's greatest strength today, says counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman, is its "ability to infiltrate and co-opt other militant groups that have existing operational capability." In Pakistan, he says, "There's this whole milieu of militant groups, and individuals within those groups, that have come together ideologically and decided that they want to embark on this mission that al-Qaeda has set forth for them."

Carnegie's Tellis says the coordination between these different militant groups is ad-hoc and is driven by necessity. "The important point is that such coordination takes place through the entire spectrum of jihadi groups," he says. "They are much more flexible in their cooperation now than they ever were historically."

Bruce Riedel, the original coordinator of President Obama's policy on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, in a recent interview to CFR also stressed al-Qaeda's growing cooperation with groups like the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and others. "The notion that you can somehow selectively resolve the al-Qaeda problem while ignoring the larger jihadist sea in which [al-Qaeda] swims has failed in the past and will fail in the future," he said.

However, some experts believe that Pakistani Taliban's attacks against the government and the security establishment may have strained their relations with the Afghan Taliban who enjoy close relationship with the army and the ISI, the country's premier intelligence agency. Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations told the New York Times in October 2009 that the Afghan Taliban "don't like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there."

Experts say militants have also expanded their control over other parts of Pakistan such as in South Punjab, some settled areas of NWFP, and as far south as Karachi. Military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa writes "South Punjab has become the hub of jihadism (Newsline)." She argues South Punjabi jihadists have been connected with the Afghan jihad since the 1980s and the majority is still engaged in fighting in Afghanistan. According to some estimates, she says about 5,000 to 9,000 youth from South Punjab are fighting in Afghanistan and Waziristan. According to some experts, the Karachi wing of TTP provides logistics support and recruits new members.
Counterterrorism Challenges

Pakistan's security forces are struggling to confront these domestic militants. As this Backgrounder points out, efforts are underway to reform the forces but challenges remain both in terms of willingness to fight some of these militant groups as well as capabilities. Security forces, especially the army and the police , have increasingly become the target for the militant groups. In October 2009, militants attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and held around forty people hostage for over 20 hours much to the army's embarrassment.

These attacks have heralded a new period in army and ISI relations with many of these militant groups, say analysts. Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, says since the bloody encounter between Pakistan's security forces and militant Islamic students in Islamabad's Red Mosque in 2007, there has been a pattern of some of these groups previously under state patronage, breaking away from the state. He says Pakistan's security establishment is now trying to figure out how to control them.

Most analysts believe that even though the Pakistani army and the ISI are now more willing to go after militant groups, they continue some form of alliance with groups they want to use as a strategic hedge against India and Afghanistan. But Pakistan's security establishment denies these charges. In October 2009, ISI Chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha said: "The ISI is a professional agency and does not have links (Daily Times) with any militant outfit including the Taliban."

In particular, U.S. officials would like Pakistan to crackdown on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban believed to be based in Quetta and two major factions of the Afghan insurgency led by veteran Afghan warlords, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. These, U.S. officials believe, are actively engaged in supplying fighters in Afghanistan. Analysts believe these groups do not engage in direct attacks against the Pakistani state in lieu of political cover inside Pakistan. Pakistan denies these charges. However, Coll says, there is some shift in Pakistan's strategy of supporting groups against India and to project influence in Afghanistan. "There is more debate and more ambivalence," he says. "Overall, the Pakistani establishment is moving in the right direction but it will take a very long time to undo the pattern that has been established so far."

Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists - Council on Foreign Relations

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Pakistani Taliban Are Said to Expand Alliances​

By CARLOTTA GALL and SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistan Taliban, which American investigators suspect were behind the attempt to bomb Times Square, have in recent years combined forces with Al Qaeda and other groups, threatening to extend their reach and ambitions, Western diplomats, intelligence officials and experts say.

Since the group’s formation in 2007, the main mission of the Pakistani Taliban has been to maintain their hold on territory in Pakistan’s tribal areas to train fighters for jihad against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan and, increasingly, to strike at the Pakistani state as the military pushes into these havens.

Pakistan’s military offensives and intensifying American drone strikes have degraded their capabilities. But the Pakistan Taliban have sustained themselves through alliances with any number of other militant groups, splinter cells, foot soldiers and guns-for-hire in the areas under their control.

Those groups have “morphed,” a Western diplomat said in a recent interview. Their common agenda, training and resource sharing have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish one from another. The alliances have also added to their skills and tactics and list of shared targets.

“They trade bomb makers and people around,” a senior United States intelligence official said Thursday in an interview. “It’s becoming this witches’ brew.”

The senior intelligence official said that in recent years the overall ability and lethality of these groups had dropped, but that the threat to countries like the United States had increased somewhat because the groups cooperated against a range of targets.

Not least among the groups is Al Qaeda, which is exerting growing influence over the others. The Pakistani Taliban increasingly serve as its fig leaf, some experts said.

“The Taliban is the local partner of Al Qaeda in Pakistan,” said Amir Rana, the director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, who has tracked militant networks for years. “It has no capacity for an international agenda on its own.”

Al Qaeda was one of a number of groups, including the Afghan Taliban, that relocated across the border to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The Pakistan Taliban have tried to instill unity among the tribal and criminal militant groups that sprang up in the border regions. That has met with limited success. But they facilitate all the groups in that they hold territory where they run training camps and provide sanctuary.

The various tribes and clans within the Pakistani Taliban tend to be tied to their local areas and do not have the broad reach to recruit and run operatives beyond their territory.

“Even Tehreek-e-Taliban is divided into many factions, or every faction has at some level collaboration and coordination,” Mr. Rana said. The Pakistani Taliban are formally known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Still, leaders within the Taliban run training camps in many places along Pakistan’s western border area, and it is possible that the bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, received instruction there with any one of the groups, analysts said.

“There are training camps all over North and South Waziristan,” the Western diplomat said.

The ties between the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda stretch back to the Pakistani Taliban’s earliest leaders, said Brig. Mahmood Shah, who served as the senior security official in the tribal areas until 2005.

One of the first, Nek Muhammad, who was killed in an American airstrike in 2004, was known to be a Qaeda facilitator, providing logistics and lodging for Arabs in Waziristan.

In 2008, Brigadier Shah said, the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and Al Qaeda’s No. 2, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, met in Makeen, South Waziristan.

That meeting represented an important shift for the Pakistani Taliban, which had until then answered to the Afghan Taliban and militant commanders loyal to Pakistan.

“Pakistan told the U.S. that Baitullah Mehsud came directly under Al Qaeda,” Brigadier Shah said. “The Pakistani government was very sure that he was Al Qaeda.”

The Afghan Taliban leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who controls a large fiefdom in North Waziristan, also recently indicated support for Al Qaeda’s agenda when answering questions in an open forum on a jihadist Web site, praising jihadi fighters in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Adding to the mix, these groups have been fortified by a growing number of militants who have moved to the tribal areas from Pakistan’s largest province, Punjab. The Punjabi groups were originally founded and sponsored by the Pakistani military to support the fight with India over the control of Kashmir. But many have turned against the Pakistani state since the army’s siege against militants at the Red Mosque in the heart of the capital, Islamabad, in 2007.

The Punjabi groups have surpassed many of their peers in the technical ability and the viciousness of their attacks. But members can often move among the groups or be members of groups simultaneously, Mr. Rana said. They cross-fertilize each other.

Indeed, it is possible that the Times Square bombing suspect, Mr. Shahzad, began his journey to the tribal areas for training by making contact first, possibly in the southern port of Karachi, with militants from one of these groups, Jaish-e-Muhammad.

On Thursday a Pakistani security official said that four Jaish militants, whom he did not name, had been picked up and were being interrogated by American and Pakistani officials in Islamabad. Yet Mr. Shahzad could easily have been recruited — or sought out — by any one of the Punjabi groups, which use the education system, mosques and religious parties to recruit for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“The kind of knowledge that he demonstrated in his bomb making is very simple knowledge, so how did he come by that? He could have interacted with some militant; it does not need long training,” said Hasan Askar Rizvi, a military analyst.

“He may have gone to Waziristan for inspiration or motivation, but did not necessarily get the training there,” he added.

The Pakistani military has said for months that it has broken the back of the Pakistani Taliban since it began operations in the Swat Valley, Bajaur and South Waziristan, among other places.

On Thursday, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, the military spokesman, said he did not believe that the Pakistani Taliban were capable of the Times Square bomb, and that their claim on videos posted on the Web was “bravado.”

The Pakistani Taliban have since disavowed responsibility.

“The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has had no links with Faisal Shahzad whatsoever,” a spokesman, Azam Tariq, said in a phone call to reporters in Peshawar from an undisclosed location. “We never imparted training to him, nor had he ever come to us.”

But he did reiterate the claim of the Pakistani Taliban leader that the group had suicide bombers in the United States, who, he said, would carry out their mission at an opportune time.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

Pakistani Taliban Are Said to Expand Alliances - NYTimes.com

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Interview of General David H. Petraeus

- Shared Goals for Pakistan's Militants

 

[Awesome]

Nothing mentioned here is new. I think the fight has been well contained with fewer and fewer incidents recurring in 2010.

The problem is now how well we devise a long term solution. Bring out a culture of moderation, increase education, change legislation, transform Pakistan into a secular state and encourage freedom of speech and expression.

These things would ultimately transform people into being more tolerant and mixed with an improved economy that would resolve our terrorism problem.

The answer is not to start rolling in tanks into the provinces but to start improving the governance in the provinces and improving the living conditions of the worst hit areas of the provinces.

 

[Pakistani Man]

There would be no terrorists if R.A.W. would stop funding them.

 

[Solomon2]

The answer is not to start rolling in tanks into the provinces but to start improving the governance in the provinces and improving the living conditions of the worst hit areas of the provinces.

And how do you propose to do that?

 

[letsbefriends]

There would be no terrorists if R.A.W. would stop funding them.

any proof that raw is funding them???

 

[Bill Longley]

any proof that raw is funding them???

what kind of proof you will belive

 

[Stumper]

Bill , LetsBeFriends ,

Kindly don't derail a decent thread. Kindly take up your enmity some place else.

Regards .

 

[gurjot]

what kind of proof you will belive

atleast one, i do expect

 

[gubbi]

In Pakistan, a jumbled scaffolding of militancy

By Karin Brulliard and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2010; 4:00 PM

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Terror suspect Faisal Shahzad's alleged path to Times Square reflects what experts say is a militant support network that spans Pakistan and is eager to shepherd aspiring terrorists from around the globe.

In this teeming southern metropolis, authorities are focusing on a domestic militant outfit that might have escorted Shahzad to distant northern peaks where U.S. investigators allege he received training with the al-Qaeda affiliated Pakistani Taliban. In Pakistan's heartland, extremist organizations freely build compounds and campaign with politicians, while their foot soldiers fight alongside the Taliban in the borderlands, intelligence officials say.

The overall picture is one of a jumbled scaffolding of militancy that supports al-Qaeda and the Taliban with money and safe houses, and can provide entrance tickets to mountain training camps for aspiring terrorists like Shahzad, one U.S. counterterrorism official said.

While the planners of most serious terror plots against the West in recent years have received direction or training from groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the reach of extremist organizations across the nation underscores the limits of Pakistani military offensives or American done campaigns that target the Taliban and al-Qaeda only along the frontier.

"Our cells are working everywhere," one Pakistani Taliban fighter said in a telephone interview. New foreign recruits, among them Europeans and Americans, undergo days of isolation and "complete observation" by militants outside the tribal areas before gaining access to camps, he said.

Many such aspirants do not make it, the Taliban fighter said, because they are deemed to be spies. That happened to five Northern Virginia men, who were rebuffed by Jaish-i-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Taiba last year despite the reference of an online recruiter, according to Pakistani authorities. But those deemed sincere represent a "one in a million" opportunity for militants to strike in the West, said Masood Sharif Khattak, a former Pakistani Intelligence Bureau chief.

Their first stop is typically not the mountains of Waziristan, where Shahzad told U.S. investigators he trained, but 1,000 miles south in Karachi, the Taliban fighter said.

An Arabian Sea gateway of 18 million people, the city is awash in weapons and dotted with mosques where, police say, jihadist literature is freely distributed and clerics deliver vitriolic anti-American sermons. Among them is the Bath'ha mosque and seminary, an unassuming building known locally as a bastion for the banned Kashmir-focused group Jaish-i-Mohammed. Authorities said they have arrested a man at the mosque who escorted Shahzad to the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Operatives from Pakistan's array of jihadist groups find haven in Karachi's multiethnic sprawl; Afghan Taliban deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested in the city earlier this year.

The groups form a nexus, according to recent local intelligence reports. One report, obtained by The Washington Post, warns of coordinated plans by the Pakistani Taliban -- a group based in the tribal areas that has focused its attacks inside Pakistan -- and the traditionally anti-India militant groups of Punjab Province. The target: NATO supply convoys in Karachi.

Farther north in the expanse of Punjab, experts say the major anti-India militant groups and other radical Sunni organizations need little cover: They are tolerated and even supported by the state. Banned groups such as Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammed have formed organizations with new names that operate freely. Some of their leaders have been arrested for alleged links to terrorist attacks, but then released by the courts.

The groups have in recent years increasingly focused attacks within Punjab, yet provincial officials have tried to placate them, both to capitalize on their popularity and in hopes of moderating their views.

The chief provincial minister, Shahbaz Sharif, was widely criticized in March for calling on the Pakistani Taliban to "spare Punjab," which he suggested had common cause with the militants by rejecting Western dictates. Another provincial minister visited the seminary of a banned group and campaigned for office with the leader of another. Jaish-i-Mohammed recently built a large walled compound in the southern Punjabi city of Bahawalpur.

"These groups have not been touched," said Ahmed Rashid, a leading Pakistani expert on the Taliban and Islamist extremism. "They have been through a metamorphosis and turned their guns inward and linked up with other groups in the northwest, but no one is acknowledging it. The word is out that if you hang with them, you're safe."

The counter-insurgency tactics used in the tribal areas - missiles and military operations -- are widely believed to be unfeasible in Pakistan's populous mainland. But critics say Pakistani police, security agencies and officials could at least start to clamp down on extremist organizations by vocally condemning them, monitoring mosques and madrassas and denying public space and private property to militant-linked groups.

Pakistan says it is still investigating the extent of Shahzad's militant links; some security officials have said that he definitely had ties to Jaish-i-Mohammed. Terrorism analyst Muhammad Amir Rana said that what appears to be a lack of political will to tackle militant organizations in Pakistan's heartland is actually rooted in a problem with far greater implications for the global battle against terror: The groups' reach and presence in cities has made them a beast that cannot easily be dismantled.

"It's very complex," Rana said. "They have infrastructure in all different areas."

Constable reported from Lahore. Staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington and special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this report.

 

[Pakistani Man]

...............

 

[letsbefriends]

Bill , LetsBeFriends ,

Kindly don't derail a decent thread. Kindly take up your enmity some place else.

Regards .

i hv asked a proof for what he was claiming...do u have something to contribute or what???

---------- Post added at 07:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:10 AM ----------

what kind of proof you will belive

ny viable proof comfirmed by neutral source and UN

 

[Kompromat]

what kind of proof you will belive

Pay slips