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Three US soldiers among 9 killed in Dir blast

This would clear a few doubts:

Troop Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. Presence in Pakistan - NYTimes.com

Troop Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. Presence in Pakistan
Ali Shah/Reuters
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Security officials walked past the crater of a bombing in front of a destroyed school in Timergara, the main town in the Lower Dir district in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, on Wednesday.

By JANE PERLEZ
Published: February 3, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack Wednesday lifted the veil on United States military assistance to Pakistan that the authorities here would like to keep quiet and the Americans, as the donors, chafe at not receiving credit for.

The soldiers were among 60 to 100 members of a Special Forces Operation team that trains Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency techniques, including intelligence gathering and development assistance. The American soldiers serve under the overall command of Admiral Eric T. Olson, the head of the Special Operations Command.

The Special Forces training, under way for the last 18 months, has been acknowledged gingerly by both the Americans and the Pakistanis but has been deliberately kept low key so as not to trespass onto Pakistani sensitivities about sovereignty, and not to further inflame high anti-American sentiment.


Even though Pakistan is termed an ally by the United States, Pakistan has not allowed American combat forces to operate here, unlike in Afghanistan or Iraq, a point that is stressed by the Pentagon and the Pakistani army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan.

Instead the Central Intelligence Agency operates what has become the main American weapon in Pakistan, the pilotless drones armed with missiles that have struck with increasing intensity against Taliban and Qaeda militants in the lawless tribal areas.

The American soldiers were probably targeted as a result of the drone strikes, said Syed Rifaat Hussain, Professor of International Relations at Islamabad University. “The attack seems a payback for the mounting frequency of the drone attacks,” Mr. Hussain said.

If the American soldiers were specifically targeted, it raised the question of whether the Taliban had received intelligence or cooperation from within the Frontier Corps.

The three soldiers were killed Wednesday, and two others wounded, in the region of Lower Dir, which is close to but outside the tribal areas. According to police officials in the region, the armored vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a suicide bomber driving a car. Earlier reports from Pakistani security officials said the soldiers were killed by a roadside explosive device.

To disguise themselves in a way that is common for Western men in Pakistan, the American soldiers were dressed in traditional Pakistani garb of baggy trousers and long tunics, known as shalwar kameez, according to a Frontier Corps officer.

They were wore local caps that helped cover their hair, he said.

Their armored vehicle was equipped with electronic jammers sufficient to detect remote-controlled devices and mines, the officer said. Vehicles driven by the Frontier Corps were placed in front and back of the Americans as protection, he said.

Still, the Taliban bomber was able to penetrate their cordon. In all 131 people were wounded, most of them young girl students at a high school adjacent to where the suicide bomber struck, the Lower Dir police said.

The soldiers were en route to the opening of a girls school that had been rebuilt with American funds, the American Embassy said in a statement. The school had been destroyed by the Taliban last year as they swept through Lower Dir, and the nearby Swat Valley, where a months-long battle raged between the Pakistani army and the Taliban.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban called reporters hours after the attack against the Americans and claimed his group was responsible.

The Pakistani army currently occupies Swat, and in an effort to strengthen the civilian institutions there and in Dir, some of the American soldiers on the Special Forces Operation team have been quietly working on development projects, an American official said.

The presence of the American soldiers in an area known to be threaded with Taliban militants would also raise questions, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North West Frontier Province, where Swat and Dir are located.

It was odd, Mr. Aziz said, that American soldiers should go to such a volatile area where Taliban militants were known to be prevalent even though the Pakistani security forces insisted that they had been flushed out.

The usual practice for development work in Dir and Swat called for Pakistani aid workers or paramilitary soldiers to visit the sites, he said.

That the Americans were involved in training Frontier Corps recruits in development assistance was little known until Wednesday’s attack.

“People are going to be very suspicious,” said Mr. Aziz, who is now involved in the American assistance projects elsewhere. “There is going to be big blowback in the media.”

An American development official said that encouraging the Frontier Corps to become expert in humanitarian aid was an important part of the trainers’ counter insurgency curriculum.

Last summer, for example, the American military trainers helped distribute food and water in camps for the more than one million people displaced from the Swat Valley by the fighting, the official said. But that American assistance, too, was kept quiet.

The 500,000 strong army headed by Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the standard bearer of Pakistan’s strong sense of nationalism, is resistant to the appearance of overt military assistance, least of all from the unpopular Americans, that would make the army look less than self-reliant on the battlefield.

Over the last several years, as the Qaeda-backed insurgency increased its hold on Pakistan’s tribal areas, and used their base to attack American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the American military asked for permission for Special Forces combat soldiers to operate in the tribal zone, according to American officials. Pakistan rebuffed the requests, they said.

Whether American soldiers are based in Pakistan is often raised by Pakistani politicians, students and ordinary people, many of whom are suspicious of American motives.

The question of the presence of American soldiers in Pakistan is also prompted by the fact that the American military provides important equipment to the Pakistani army, including F 16 fighter jets, Cobra attack helicopters and howitzers.

In July last year, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, denied any American soldiers were in Pakistan. Asked at a meeting with Pakistani aid workers and school officials in Islamabad about, Mr. Holbrooke said: “People think that the U.S. has troops in Pakistan, well, we don’t.”

Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Pir Zubair Shah from Islamabad.
 
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Television footage showed distressed villagers scrambling to pull wounded girls from the rubble of collapsed buildings amid scattered books and bags.

"What was the fault of these students?" said Muhammad Dawood, a rescuer quoted by the Associated Press.

The wounded were rushed to the main district hospital at Timergara where doctors from Medécins sans Frontières said they had treated more than 100 people, most of them schoolgirls.

"Most of them are have splinter injuries all over the body — in the face, abdomen and feet," said Dr Ashraf Alam, chief medical officer at the hospital, speaking by phone.

Sixteen of the wounded were seriously injured and three had died, he said.

The americans were in local dress and i assume that no advance notice would be given of their movments for saftey reasons. IDE or car bomb ( there seems to be some confusion) would require advanced planning, unless there was a monumental breach of security the ttp would not have even known the americans would be there when they planned the bombing. Thier target was little girls like the one trapped above who dared to want an education.

US soldiers and teenage girls among seven killed in bomb attack near Pakistan school | World news | guardian.co.uk
 
Sad :( May the people who died rest in peace, including american soldiers ofcourse.

As far as american soliders presence is concerned in Pakistan, i am absolutely against it. Americans soldiers should not be in Pakistan, hands down. Quite frankly, we don't need their training. If our forces really need training to fight terrorism then i suggest they request other countries to provide us training, such as turkey. Americans soliders should train their own country fellows in Afghanistan who are loosing war against talibans.

Let's face it, our SSGs can train our FC's and if further training is required then we should seek Turkey's help, a country which has very good experience against terrorism. There are, ofcourse, other countries too who can help us out.

I don't blame the soldiers. They & their families have my sympathy, they were merely following orders given to them by seniors & US government. If anyone, i blame my own coutry's government, who has sold Pakistan and have allowed forces, such as Blackwater to operate in our country. Believe it or not, Musharraf & our current government have sold over 35% of Pakistan and the remaining 65% will be also be sold in due course if no action is taken against this beghairat government.:angry:

Our government is well aware of the fact that People of Pakistan don't like US presence in Pakistan, don't want American Forces on Pakistan's soil etc. Then why the hell is our government is allowing them to operate in our soil and have given them the licence to roam around in Pakistan?
 
Sad :( May the people who died rest in peace, including american soldiers ofcourse.

As far as american soliders presence is concerned in Pakistan, i am absolutely against it. Americans soldiers should not be in Pakistan, hands down. Quite frankly, we don't need their training. If our forces really need training to fight terrorism then i suggest they request other countries to provide us training, such as turkey. Americans soliders should train their own country fellows in Afghanistan who are loosing war against talibans.

Let's face it, our SSGs can train our FC's and if further training is required then we should seek Turkey's help, a country which has very good experience against terrorism. There are, ofcourse, other countries too who can help us out.

I don't blame the soldiers. They & their families have my sympathy, they were merely following orders given to them by seniors & US government. If anyone, i blame my own coutry's government, who has sold Pakistan and have allowed forces, such as Blackwater to operate in our country. Believe it or not, Musharraf & our current government have sold over 35% of Pakistan and the remaining 65% will be also be sold in due course if no action is taken against this beghairat government.:angry:

Our government is well aware of the fact that People of Pakistan don't like US presence in Pakistan, don't want American Forces on Pakistan's soil etc. Then why the hell is our government is allowing them to operate in our soil and have given them the licence to roam around in Pakistan?

American Soldiers have been in Pakistan since 1954.

They trained our SSG who were based on the American Green Berets.

As for training our FC. I will leave that to our Generals to make that decision rather than a keyboard warrior such as yourself.

Turkey's special forces were trained by the Americans.

Blackwater's presence has been greatly exaggarated and frankly has become the new Jew, Mossad, Israel to blame all the problems in Pakistan.

Learn to analyze facts and stop using your bias and prejudice to assing blame.
 
Situation in Pakistan now is completely different to what it was in 1954. Just because Americans have trained us since 1954 doesn't mean we should stick to them. There are other countries whom we should look forward to.

And please keep your propoganda to yourself. Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is new jew, mossad, isreal blame game? Please! Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is a well known fact. It's upto you whether you accept it or not, no one really cares.

Blackwater roams around in Pakistan as if they are in US. They don't give a damn about our policies, carry illegal arms, threatns our citizens in our own country etc. Now don't tell all this is BS.

More than 90% of our citizens are aginst US presence in Pakistan, specially Blackwater. Do you also think this is untrue? Read around people's opinion on this forum, speak to Pakistani's living in Pakistan and get a reality check. Truth is, whether you accept it or not, our government has sold our nation. So much that it has to accept most of the demands made by US.

Please don't assume US is here to help us. They are here for their own interests, and as we all know, their interests are not favoring us.
 
Blackwater roams around in Pakistan as if they are in US. They don't give a damn about our policies, carry illegal arms, threatns our citizens in our own country etc. Now don't tell all this is BS.

.

The TTP just put 100 little girls in the hospital and 3 in the morgue that gets one lines notice, yet a few americans driving about and being rude to people gets eight paragraphs?

Even if what you say is true does it not strike you as absurd that you are more worried about the americans than the TTP? :hitwall:
 
The brutal yet carefully planned genocide waged on the scores of innocent girls recently and hundreds of thousands in the past is enough of a ghost to haunt the **** out of Pak land for the rest of history thanks to these bloody apes. Where are these friggin helicopters?
 
Lets have a news in URDU language, thanxs to express e-paper.

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It was odd, Mr. Aziz said, that American soldiers should go to such a volatile area where Taliban militants were known to be prevalent even though the Pakistani security forces insisted that they had been flushed out.

there was a security breach!

sad loss of life of brave soldiers and innocent young girls!:usflag::pakistan:

that is why the taliban/militants must be 'eradicated' with extreme prejudice.
 
News in media are normally a mix of truth and lies. Like when Islamabad Merriot was truck bomed then no American casuality was reported. However, now it is known that at least two American solders were killed there.

Now, news of this Dir blast was initially reported as death of USAID workers which later updated as US trainers.

There is no way to distinguish between trainers and soldiers in action. Is Pakistan Army so deficiant that it cannot train its FC/Police properly? Can these trainings not be conducted in segregated area? What the US trainers doing in civilian area? To inagurate girls school? Who can prevent these trainers from taking part in action against "any body" on Pakistani soil?
 
If you read the name and location of reporter, he will be local in most cases. About media, it is same across globe, they cannot wait for proof and investigation before publishing, I find Pak media no different.
 
Killed Americans were part of 100-strong commando unit

Thursday, February 04, 2010

By Amir Mir

LAHORE: The three US soldiers who lost their lives on Wednesday in a school bombing incident in Dir Lower were members of the Army Special Forces, which has been training the Frontier Corps to improve its intelligence and combat tactics to effectively fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents in the Pak-Afghan tribal belt.

It is for the first time since the American occupation of Afghanistan in October 2001 that any US soldier has been killed in Pakistan, that too in a terrorist act. According to well informed diplomatic circles in Islamabad, the slain US soldiers were part of a 100-member strong special American military training unit which was dispatched to Pakistan in 2008 to raise a 1,000-member strong well-trained paramilitary commando unit which could conduct guerrilla operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban militants active in the Pak-Afghan tribal belt and involved in cross-border ambushes against the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The military training programme was never officially announced by Pakistan to avoid a possible backlash by the opposition parties, which are opposed to the American military presence on the Pakistani territory. The US-funded training course for the largely under-equipped and under-trained Frontier Corps included both classroom and field sessions.

In the beginning, the American military trainers confined themselves to training compounds due to security concerns in Pakistan. However, they had now started accompanying Pakistani troops on special guerrilla operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, eventually leading to the Wednesday incident in Dir Lower which shares a border with Afghanistan and with the restive Swat district, where the Army had to carry out a massive military operation last year. The three slain US soldiers were travelling in a convoy with troops, journalists and officials to the opening of Koto Girls’ High School when the roadside bomb exploded.

The school was blown up in January 2009 and rebuilt with the help of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Dozens of girls’ school were set ablaze in Lower Dir area in 2008-2009 by the private army of Maulana Fazlullah, the fugitive chief of the Swat chapter of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Though a Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq has claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying the dead Americans belonged to the US security company Blackwater Worldwide - now known as Xe, military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas has said that the American soldiers were in Pakistan to train the Frontier Corps. Informed diplomatic circles in Islamabad say the American soldiers were part of a $100 million Pentagon-funded training programme which is meant to equip the Frontier Corps with new body armour, vehicles, and surveillance equipment, and plans to spend $75 million more during the next year. As per the programme, the Pentagon intended to spend around $400 million more in the next few years to train and equip the Frontier Corps. Sources say, besides dispatching American marines to train the Frontier Corps personnel, the Pentagon had also sent a special team of its Special Forces military advisers, communication experts, technical specialists and combat medics to help establish coordination centres on Pak-Afghan border so that the American and Pakistani officials could share intelligence about al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in and around the tribal areas.

Source: Killed Americans were part of 100-strong commando unit

Ironic isn't it? The Americans first funded, trained, armed and brainwashed the Mujahideen during the Cold War. Now, they're arming, funding and training the FC to fight their own creation. A war which was limited to Afghanistan has now fully spilled over into Pakistan. The Americans are training and equipping their proxy force to accomplish the dirty job. Pakistani people are being taken for a very bumpy ride. To add some more misery, drone strikes are becoming more brutal. That too with the the full consent of the corrupt sold out GoP. Not looking very good for Pakistan.
 
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Presence of US soldiers is a geat concern for Patriotic Pakistanis.

US forces failed to control insurgency in Afghanistan what type of training they want to provide our forces ?

In fact CIA and Xe employees are on special task to get information about our nuke assets and buy few top ranking officers as they did in Iraq.

There is possiblity they transfer secrets to Mosad and RAW .

We should kick out them ASAP.

Pakistan ka Allah Hafiz
 
Presence of US soldiers is a geat concern for Patriotic Pakistanis.

US forces failed to control insurgency in Afghanistan what type of training they want to provide our forces ?

In fact CIA and Xe employees are on special task to get information about our nuke assets and buy few top ranking officers as they did in Iraq.

There is possiblity they transfer secrets to Mosad and RAW .

We should kick out them ASAP.

Pakistan ka Allah Hafiz

This is exactly the point I am making, with regards to combat on the ground, they cannot teach us anything new. There traiing of our troops if any should have been held in low key areas, like Punjab, Sindh or Balochistan.

This act will do nothing but fuel hatred for the US along with the PA whcih I do not wish to see.....no fence....but I couldn't care less about the US but I do care for the PA troops. We have toooo much at stake, the US is sitting 5000 miles away safely, unlike Pakistan.

There is always suspicion of the US role and their collaboration with RAW and Mossad, which we HAVE to take into account, then lay otu our options and decide how much US involvement should be allowed in Pakistan.........the quote............give an inch, take a mile comes to mind.......first airstrikes (albeit sanctioned by GoP), they have already tried to put boots on the ground but were forced back when PA open fire on their helicopters last years, but this will slowly change if we overlook small matters like this
 
This is exactly the point I am making, with regards to combat on the ground, they cannot teach us anything new. There traiing of our troops if any should have been held in low key areas, like Punjab, Sindh or Balochistan.

This act will do nothing but fuel hatred for the US along with the PA whcih I do not wish to see.....no fence....but I couldn't care less about the US but I do care for the PA troops. We have toooo much at stake, the US is sitting 5000 miles away safely, unlike Pakistan.

There is always suspicion of the US role and their collaboration with RAW and Mossad, which we HAVE to take into account, then lay otu our options and decide how much US involvement should be allowed in Pakistan.........the quote............give an inch, take a mile comes to mind.......first airstrikes (albeit sanctioned by GoP), they have already tried to put boots on the ground but were forced back when PA open fire on their helicopters last years, but this will slowly change if we overlook small matters like this

99.9% PA and Pakistanis are against US forces presence but still majority of our generals promoted by Gen Musharaf are in favour of US forces.It will not be easy task to get ride of US influence and interference in our forces .

Basically Musharaf policies are still prevailing in country , which is a dangeruos sign.
 

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