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Taliban's 'Radio Mullah' sent hit squad after Pakistani schoolgirl
[Times of India] One of the Taliban's most feared commanders, Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullahs Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... , carefully briefed two killers from his special hit squad on their next target. The gunnies weren't going after any army officer, politician or western diplomat. Their target was a 14-year-old Pak schoolgirl who had angered the Taliban by speaking out for "western-style" girls' education. Tuesday's shooting of Malala Yousufzai was the culmination of years of campaigning that had pitted the fearless, smiling young girl against one of Pakistain's most ruthless Taliban capos. Their story began in 2009, when Fazlullah, known as Radio Mullah for his fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... radio broadcasts, took over 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, and ordered the closure of girls' schools, including Yousufzai's. Outraged, the then-11-year-old kept a blog for the BBC under a pen name and later launched a campaign for girls' education. It won her Pakistain's highest civilian honour and death threats from the Taliban. Yousufzai was not blind to the dangers. In her hometown of Mingora, Fazlullah's Taliban fighters dumped bodies near where her family lived. "I heard my father talking about another three bodies lying at Green Chowk," she wrote in her diary, referring to a nearby roundabout. A military offensive pushed Fazlullah out of Swat in 2009, but his men simply melted away across the border to Afghanistan. Earlier this year, they kidnapped and beheaded 17 Pak soldiers in one of several cross border raids. Yousufzai continued speaking out despite the danger. As her fame grew, Fazlullah tried everything he could to silence her. The Taliban published death threats in the newspapers and slipped them under her door. But she ignored them. The Taliban say that's why they sent assassins, despite a tribal code forbidding the killing of women.
... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country..... He said the Taliban held a meeting a few months ago at which they unanimously agreed to kill her. The task was then given to military commanders to carry out. The militia has a force of around 100 men specialized in assassination, fighters said. They chose two men, aged between 20-30, who were locals from Swat Valley.
Posted by: Fred 2012-10-13 |
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