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India-Pakistan
Pashtuns Protest Al-Qaida Hunt
2002-09-06
Thousands of yokels tribesmen, chanting slogans against Pakistan's President and the United States, protested Thursday in support of villagers refusing to surrender suspected al-Qaida fighters to the authorities. The protest in the city of Bannu came a day after Pakistani army troops stopped putting up with nonsense shelled the remote village of Jani Khel and arrested several card sharks gold brick salesmen clerics for sheltering the eight al-Qaida suspects.
"You can't arrest us! We're holy men! We can do anything we want!"
The area is about 120 miles southwest of Peshawar in the rugged tribal district of the North West Frontier Province, where the authority of Pakistan's federal government has never been widely accepted because the population is so deeply inbred. The eight men were stopped at a military checkpoint on Sunday, but were freed in an ambush by armed tribesmen when they were being transferred to a prison. After negotiations for their surrender broke down Wednesday, troops shelled the house of prominent cleric Maulana Shams ul-Haq and arrested his two brothers. On Thursday, Pakistani officials resumed efforts to persuade the denizens of the Pakistani Ozarks tribesmen to hand over the suspects.
"Don't make us shell you again...!"
In Bannu about 15 miles from the village, the hillbillies tribesmen burned an effigy of President Bush and denounced Pakistan's pro-U.S. president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, residents said. ``I warn Musharraf to immediately release our religious leaders and stop operations against us,'' cleric Maulana Naseeb Shah told the crowd. ``We are not hiding al-Qaida men,'' he said.
"I'm warning you, Perv! Don't make me come down there and turn you into a pillar of salt!"
The villagers say the eight men were members of the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan, not foreign fighters for the al-Qaida terrorist network. ``We will not tolerate any kind of attack on our houses and we know how to defend ourselves,'' Shah said.
Personally, I'm in favor of an independent Pashtunistan, as long as there's a 120-foot high wall around it with no doors. These are people whom it would be much better to keep separated from their more civilized betters — which in their case includes people who wear bones through their noses or eat raw blubber...
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#1  Separate Pashtunistan? Yes, and break up the rest of that alleged country called Afghanistan. Respect for territorial integrality is a joke, in their case.
Posted by: Allah the Dog Faced God   2002-09-06 19:15:35  

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