|
New Taliban chief could push Pakistan to military action
[Al Ahram] The Pak Taliban's appointment of a new hardline leader opposed to peace talks and with a long history of attacks against the military could push the army into launching a fresh offensive, analysts said Friday.The election of 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 less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's 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... , notorious for leading the bully boys' brutal two-year rule in Pakistain's northwestern 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, is like a "red rag to a bull", one analyst said. It could also raise tensions with Kabul at a critical juncture as US-led forces withdraw from Afghanistan after 12 years of war. While Kabul has long accused Islamabad of supporting the Afghan Taliban, Fazlullah has orchestrated cross-border attacks from his hideout in eastern Afghanistan, and Pakistain suspects its neighbour's intelligence services of supporting him. Fazlullah, nicknamed Mullah Radio 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... sermons over the airwaves denouncing polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... vaccination campaigns and female education, is renowned as Pak intelligence believes he is linked to the failed attempt Curses! Foiled again! to kill schoolgirl education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in Swat in October 2012. He was appointed chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) on Thursday, nearly a week after a US drone strike killed his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud. Islamabad reacted angrily to the killing of Mehsud, with the interior minister saying Washington had "sabotaged" peace talks. It is not clear what progress, if any, had been made towards meaningful dialogue -- but the process lies in tatters after Fazlullah's election. On Thursday, the snuffies dismissed the idea of peace talks with the government as a "waste of time", and said they would never negotiate until sharia law was imposed across the country. Defence analyst Talat Masood, a retired general, said the TTP's choice of Fazlullah, whose men have carried out bloody and humiliating attacks against the army, was like a "red rag to a bull". "This leaves no margin for negotiation and they will have to resort to a military operation and will have to be fully prepared to prevent terrorist actions in the country," Masood told AFP. "He is enemy number one of the military." In September, political parties backed the government's proposal for talks to try to end the TTP's six-year insurgency, which has killed thousands. Fazlullah's men responded by killing two senior army officers, including a major general, in a roadside kaboom -- a galling blow to the pride of the military, which remains the most powerful institution in Pakistain. Fazlullah rubbed salt in the wounds by issuing a video message to claim the attack and to reveal the intended target was General Ashfaq Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... , the army's supreme commander. In 2009 a major military operation ended Fazlullah's rule in Swat. Later that year another offensive cleared bully boy hideouts in South Wazoo, one of the seven tribal areas along the Afghan border seen as a haven for Taliban and Al-Qaeda bully boys. Washington has pushed for a similar offensive in North Waziristan, which has borne the brunt of the US drone campaign targeting suspected bully boys, but none has yet taken place. A senior security source told AFP a military operation would "become inevitable" if, as seems likely, dialogue does not proceed, and warned of worsening relations with Kabul. "The government and the military top brass in almost all previous rounds of meetings with their Afghan interlocutors have been pointing out Fazlullah's presence on Afghan soil and his activities against the Pak state," the source said. Kayani is to retire on November 29 and his replacement as army chief has yet to be announced. The security official said Fazlullah's appointment would have a bearing on the decision. "The priority will now be to have a person on this post, who has expertise in counter insurgency and related matters," the official said. Posted by: Fred 2013-11-09 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=379327 |