Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah exposed

[HAIDER]

ISLAMABAD: Security forces launched a major operation in Buner on Tuesday after intelligence agencies intercepted a telephone conversation of Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah with his ‘commanders’ which revealed their plan to take over the area after faking a withdrawal.

The operation led by the inspector general of Frontier Corps (FC) was being backed by army troops and air force jets, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said at a press briefing.

He said the operation in Lower Dir had been completed, around 70 militants had been killed and others flushed out of the area. He said there were some pockets of resistance which would be cleared soon.

He said the militants who had entered Buner early this month were involved in kidnapping and killing policemen and forcibly recruiting youths for training in Swat. They started building bunkers in the mountains and terrorising and intimidating local people without any justification.

He said the government had exercised restraint and demonstrated patience and warned the militants to leave the area and launched a full-scale operation as the last option.

Maj-Gen Abbas expressed the hope that the operation, launched at about 4pm on Tuesday, would be completed in one week.

The announcement came an hour after Interior Minister Rehman Malik said around 450 militants had been spotted in Buner and warned them to leave the area.

‘I warn Baitullah Mehsud that enough is enough,’ he said while talking to reporters. The minister ruled out any possibility of Taliban reaching the Margalla hills.

The ISPR chief said the objective of the operation was to eliminate and expel militants from Buner and ensure that the people of the area lived in peace without being subjected to oppression.

The recording of the conversation of Maulana Fazlullah, which was played at the briefing, indicated that the militants had no plan to move out of Buner and that they were gearing up for a showdown with security forces using mines, rockets and other weapons.

Answering a question, Maj-Gen Abbas said the terrorists posed no threat to the federal capital. ‘Distance is not the only component to measure the level of threat. Counter-capacity has to be kept in mind.’

He termed the statements expressing concern over a threat of Taliban marching on Islamabad as alarmist and said the security forces were fully capable of eliminating the terrorists.

He said there was no evidence about any foreign link of Sufi Mohammad, but heavy weapons, communication equipment and finances were reaching him.

He said security personnel were moving from various positions, adding that combat helicopters were facilitating their movement.

He declined to divulge the number of personnel taking part in the operation, saying that operational details might benefit the other side.

Maj-Gen Abbas confirmed reports about the spread of Talibanisation in southern Punjab and said the situation was being closely monitored.

He said the nuclear weapons of the country were in safe hands and there was no possibility of extremists laying their hands on them.

Meanwhile, Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called on President Asif Ali Zardari. It is believed that they discussed the operation in Buner, situation in Swat and adjoining areas and other issues concerning national security. According to sources, the forthcoming US visit of President Zardari also came under discussion.
DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Operation triggered by Taliban plan to take over Buner

 

[fatman17]

Security forces launched a major operation in Buner on Tuesday after intelligence agencies intercepted a telephone conversation of Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah with his ‘commanders’ which revealed their plan to take over the area after faking a withdrawal

these guys are thugs, they just cannot be trusted at all !!!

 

[Bill Longley]

even deobandi tableghi jamaat have condemned them

it was reported when TNSM thugs captured tablighi Markaz in Swat they presented tablighi jamaat members BUQAS and said you people are our sisters and we will protect you....when one molvi saab protested the talib comannder replied because you dont take arms for islam thats why we call you ladies when you will pick up arms you will become our brothers

today ary reported talibs have kiddnapped 5 tablighi jamatias

yesterday tablighi jammat amir mollana abdul wahab condemned talibs and said sharia can never be forced with gun and others condemned terror and militancy in name of ISLAm

I think Deobandi Ulema should come out and brain wash Deoband followers who are under talib influence

 

[ajpirzada]

great.. this is one clever thing gov had done. by playin audios of fazlullah in public. fazlullah and his followers should be exposed in public.

 

[Peaceheretic37]

Forgive me guys, I can't help quoting my silly song;

"Your men stabbed him dead because his shalwar was too long,
if that's 'following your Prophet' - you've just proved him wrong.
Maulana Fazal'ullah and your so-called 'Taliban',
bringing rigid armed ignorance, where it don't belong."

And please know that I take no satisfaction from the fact that things have got worse since then.

I know that the family of Amjad Islam have not been the only ones who have suffered from the various 'Talibans', but for the sake of them and all Pakistanis, be professional, guys, be safe and G_d be with you.

Oh, and thanks for the heads-up.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

We should have been doing this all along.

Lets see if the media actually runs with this story of Fazlullah's perfidy - Kudos to Dawn for not hiding behind a different headline, though I would have preferred Haider's.

 

[Imran Khan]

we have to fight until last taliban guy in on planet

 

[Cheetah786]

telephone conversation

Is he on monthly or pay as u go plan

My point is simple if he has a cell they should be able to pin point his location as all cell phones can be traced.

 

[HAIDER]

According to ISPR lots of money,weapon and communication has been smuggled from cross border to these militants. Let see where this game ends. Soon someone will pay the price of arming these extremist elements.

 

[ajpirzada]

Is he on monthly or pay as u go plan

My point is simple if he has a cell they should be able to pin point his location as all cell phones can be traced.

thats exactly wat came to my mind except for the monthy and pay as u go stuff.. lol

y cant be locate him and then bomb that place or send SSGs to finish him??? anyone close army please tell us wat do u think??

 

[TexasJohn]

thats exactly wat came to my mind except for the monthy and pay as u go stuff.. lol

y cant be locate him and then bomb that place or send SSGs to finish him??? anyone close army please tell us wat do u think??

My thoughts exactly.Unless I am missing something jamming his FM stations should not be that hard at all.

Here is a link - myths about FM radio jamming. Long read but worth the knowledge.

Grand Trunk Road :: Myths about radio jamming

The Taliban are thought to be operating weak mobile transmitters. A mobile transmitter that can be carried on a bicycle or motorcycle will have to be very weak. It will need to run off of batteries and also have a low antenna (low antennas limit transmission range since the signal is more likely to be blocked by obstacles such as trees, hills, houses, and buildings). So realistically, the Taliban’s mobile transmitters will be limited to below 1kW almost definitely and most likely below 500W (especially for the bicycle version). It simply cannot compete with a large, stationary transmitter with a dedicated diesel generator acting as a power supply. A small radio station can easily output 100kW of effective power (a term for the combination of the true transmitter power and the gain from the antenna), and its very tall antenna will make sure that signal reaches just about every receiver in the area without being blocked. Army equipment, which is not artificially limited by government regulations, can easily surpass this.

Some common claims about the “impossibility” of jamming the Swati Taliban’s radio station and why they are incorrect

1. The Taliban are using mobile transmitters so they can’t be tracked, let alone jammed effectively.
This is a basic misunderstanding of how jamming works. When you jam a signal, you do not do anything to the transmitter itself. There is no high power beam that you shine on the transmitter that somehow makes it stop. Instead, radio jamming works by sending a competing signal to the receivers you are interested in (in this case, home radios). The stronger signal will win and the other signal will be silenced. FM radio, in particular, is very easy to jam due to something called the capture effect. FM radio receivers used in homes and cars are designed to eliminate noise and interference by locking onto the strongest signal available and suppressing weaker signals. This allows a clear, static free broadcast even when neighboring radio stations accidentally overlap on the same frequency (or nearby frequencies). An AM radio, on the other hand, does not distinguish noise and interference from the true signal, so you end up with static or even several voices talking over each other.

As a consequence, jamming an AM source requires lots of power and the resulting reception will be unintelligible because you have to completely drown out the competing signal with a uniformly loud tone (otherwise you could hear the original signal during the quiet moments). However, jamming an FM signal requires only marginally more power than what your opponent is delivering and you can deliver a coherent signal such as an alternative broadcast or even silence.

2. The radios can’t be jammed because they constantly switch frequencies.

Frequency switching is a defense against jamming only when the receivers are also programmed to switch frequencies. By switching between dozens of frequencies every second, it becomes very difficult to jam because you have to send a strong jamming signal for each of those frequencies. This multiplies your cost (in terms of equipment and power) by as many frequencies as your opponent is using. However, home and car radios are not programmed to switch frequencies in conjunction with other devices. If the Taliban transmitted on 50 different frequencies the broadcast would be unintelligible to a home listener because they would only receive 1/50 of the data. FM works by transmitting on one primary frequency called the carrier and a very small neighborhood of frequencies around it, which contains the actual sound information. When you tune your radio to 88.1, that is actually locking the receiver into the 88.1MHz frequency range plus or minus 100kHz for the sound data. If the Taliban switched from 88.1MHz to 96.3MHz, your radio would go silent until you also switched.

The Taliban may be using advanced frequency hopping for their own strategic communications — there are commercially available walkie-talkies that do this — but they could not possibly be using that technology to broadcast their programs to the public because regular FM radios do not support it.

3. The military can’t jam the FM radio without also jamming their own radio communications, in effect harming more than helping.

This suggestion is just silly. While FM can be broadcast on any frequency, consumer radios are only designed to receive FM transmissions in a certain range of frequencies — typically from around 85MHz to 110MHz (though in most regions the range is smaller). The military uses frequencies outside this band to avoid interference to and from civilian FM transmissions. The entire FM radio range could be jammed with absolutely no effect on military communications — or indeed, cell phones, television reception, wireless networks, or anything else. Frequencies are distinct and broadcasting or jamming one range of frequencies doesn’t impact other ranges.

Conclusion:
As you can see, jamming a weak transmitter is almost trivial, whether it’s mobile or not, and no matter where it’s located in your target region. You will never be able to jam it 100% since it will always dominate a small area around it, but you can quite limit that area of dominance to a tiny area that makes it insignificant and prevents your opponent from achieving their information goals.

Another technique that could be used by the army which would be more direct is simply using a direction finder and then physically finding and shutting down the transmitters. An FM broadcast is a notoriously easy signal to track because it makes absolutely no effort to hide itself (such as by employing frequency hopping as noted above), unlike military communications. Free plans for building an FM signal locator can be found with a quick google search. The army even has a special type of missile called an anti-radiation missile that has such direction finding hardware built in. From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile:

“An anti-radiation missile (ARM) is a missile which is designed to detect and home in on an enemy radio emission source. Typically these are designed for use against an enemy radar, although jammers and even radios used for communication can also be targeted in this manner.”

ARM missiles are expensive so this would not be an effective use of resources. However, in principle, the army could use basic direction finding equipment to track the signal from a helicopter, fly near the location, visually spot the transmitter, and disable it with a machine gun.

A brief overview of radio broadcasting
A transmitter converts an electrical signal into a radio signal using an antenna and a power source. A large power source can broadcast farther than a small power source. A directional antenna can focus that power to broadcast farther than an omnidirectional antenna, but the signal can only be received where the antenna is aimed. This is useful for a point-to-point link but for a radio station, you want more than one person to be able to hear you so you typically broadcast equally in all directions (except up towards the sky and down towards the ground). The farther away from the antenna you are, the weaker the signal, until at some point the signal will not register at all and your radio will be silent (or play static).

Like many physical phenomena, the strength of the signal varies with the square of the receiver’s distance from the source. If you want your signal to reach 10 times as far, you need to supply 100 times the power. For this reason, even a weak transmitter can dominate a small area around it as long as it is relatively isolated from more powerful transmitters. A 1 watt signal will overpower a 100,000 watt signal if the weak transmitter is 1 meter away and the powerful one is 1km away. In fact, the distant transmitter would need to be 1,000,000 watts to equal the power of the nearer transmitter!

However, this is a double edged sword. As you move away from the weak transmitter, its signal falls off more quickly than the signal from the distant transmitter. For instance, moving from 1 meter to 10 meters, the power falls by a factor of 100. However, the power from the distant transmitter is almost unchanged. This is because 1.99km or 1.01km is hardly any different from 1km. In fact, moving from 1km to 1.01km (10 meters difference) reduces the power by less than 2%, whereas moving 10 meters away from the weak transmitter reduces power by 99%. You can see that the sphere of dominance of the weak transmitter is very small indeed.

A larger transmitter of, say, 500 watts, sounds a lot more powerful than a 1 watt transmitter. However, being 500 times more powerful only increases your range by a factor of 22.3 (the square root of 500) — instead of dominating an area a few meters in radius, you can dominate an area a few dozen meters in radius. Hardly enough to control a population in a city or a rural area.

 

[ajpirzada]

wat this implies is that army has so far not given any serious thought to jammin Fazlullah's broadcasts forget about killin him

 

[Peaceheretic37]

Ajpirzada, yes, even more than implies, after your comment I re-read TexasJohn's. It is explict.

OMG. !!! All these paranoias from the left-of-centre Mr Ali and his histories of Pakistan are coming back to re-awaken my paranoias. Forgive me trying to make a joke out of it, but suddenly Tariq Ali's Left or Right tendencies suddenly seem quite irrelevant. It is just a question of whether or not he really was that informed. I believe he was with all his family media connections.

But never mind who was "informed" then, or then or then - what about now?

Well that's the question that springs to my mind.

If the government has been saying that jamming the Taliban was impossible which part of the government was trying to take the Yanks, Paks and Brits - and worldwide opinion - for fools?

 

[ajpirzada]

i dont know who tariq ali is and wat he was on about. anyways army has said today that they have jammed all the high frequency radio tranmissions while weaker ones will be jammed in comin days. all i care about is that these fazlullah ppl must be crushed

 

[HAIDER]

Is so simple, they live on modern communication to harass people in the name of Islam. If communication is jammed they die or get hit in no time.