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Seven Pakistani soldiers beheaded by Afghan Taliban - Fazlullah's boys strike again
Beautiful Downtown Peshawar - Pakistain said on Monday that seven soldiers had their heads chopped off by Islamist cut-throats who infiltrated from Afghanistan, lashing out at Kabul over cross-border attacks.

The protests come with Pakistain under growing US pressure to act against al-Qaeda-linked safe havens on its own soil and the anti-terror Islamabad-Washington alliance at its lowest ebb since the 9/11 attacks.

Pakistain already reported that six soldiers were killed in shootouts with cut-throats on Sunday who crossed from Afghanistan into the north-western district of Upper Dir, a key border transit route that neighbours the Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
valley where Pakistain defeated a local Taliban insurgency in 2009.

Intelligence officials blamed the attack on loyalists of Pak holy man Maulana Fazlullah, who fled to Afghanistan after losing control of Swat to the army.

But on Monday, the military said 11 soldiers had also gone missing, "out of whom seven soldiers have been reportedly killed and then beheaded".

Attacked

The bodies have not been found, but intelligence intercepts indicated that they had been killed, a senior military official said.

The army said more than 100 cut-throats "from a safe haven across the border" attacked troops on patrol. It claimed to have killed 14 bad boys.

Pakistain said two rockets and sniper fire were also fired into Lower Dir on Monday.

The army "has strongly protested with their counterparts across the border for not taking action against myrmidons present in safe haven in Afghanistan", a military official said.

Pakistain's new prime minister on Monday also condemned the attacks and said he would discuss the matter with President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
"Pakistain has strongly protested with Afghanistan on the cross-border attacks and I will also take up this issue with Karzai," Raja Pervez Ashraf told news hounds in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
His office, however, did not elaborate on when such a conversation might take place.

Pak troops have been bogged down for years fighting local Taliban but have resisted US pressure to carry out a sweeping offensive against Afghan Taliban fighters in its North Wazoo tribal area.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
warned Islamabad earlier this month that Washington was running out of patience over terror safe havens.

Double game

Islamabad imposed a blockade, now in its seventh month, on overland NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
supplies into Afghanistan since US air strikes killed 24 Pak soldiers along the Afghan border on 26 November.

Pakistain was the Taliban's chief backer when the militia was in power, and is accused by both Kabul and Washington of continuing to play a double game in supporting the insurgency despite its official US alliance.

Paks have sought to deflect some of pressure, by saying the country has suffered more than any other from terrorism, and accuse Kabul and Washington of trying to find a scapegoat for the 10-year war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Pakistain have long blamed each other for Taliban violence plaguing both sides of their porous, mountainous border.

Pakistain says rebels have regrouped in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan and US officials want Pakistain to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked havens used to launch attacks in Afghanistan.
Posted by: trailing wife 2012-06-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=347227