Imagine his surprise when, after expending the only life he'll ever have before it was even properly begun, rather than finding himself cavorting with 72 virgins he ended up with nothing but a view of the clouds through six feet of hard-packed earth.
The Taliban grabbed credit, saying it had wanted to kill the local chief and deputy of a tribal police force recruited by the government to help defeat the Islamist insurgency in the northwest. Both died in the attack in Khar, the main town of Bajaur Agency, aka Turban Central,
...Smallest of the agencies in FATA. The Agency administration is located in Khar. Bajaur is inhabited almost exclusively by Tarkani Pashtuns, which are divided into multiple bickering subtribes. Its 52 km border border with Afghanistan's Kunar Province makes it of strategic importance to Pakistain's strategic depth...after a bomber who intelligence officials said was aged 14 to 16 detonated explosives strapped to his chest.
Bajaur has been one of the toughest battlegrounds in Pakistain's fight against a northwestern Taliban insurgency. The Mighty Pak Army conducted major offensives there in 2008 and 2009 and has repeatedly declared it secure.
That's worked well, hasn't it?
Yesterday's blast was the deadliest bombing in Pakistain since February 17,
| ...that distant day less than 3 months ago... |
...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
"The corpse count has risen to 24," said Islam Zeb, the administrative head of Bajaur tribal district. He had earlier said 20 people were killed.
... but then four more ceased kicking...
Raids were later carried out in the surrounding areas of Khar and two boys aged 17 and 18 were incarceratedDrop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
and suicide jackets found, he said.
At least five coppers, including the local tribal police chief and his deputy, were among the dead and 46 people were maimed. Shops and a restaurant were destroyed.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, front man for the Pak Taliban, grabbed credit, saying that anyone involved in "activity" against the Taliban "will be treated with iron hands".
| Someone please send a spare drone to follow him home -- show him what iron hands really look like. |
| it seems to me Osama bin Laden voiced opinions on this kind of behaviour... |
The violence highlights the insurgency in Pakistain at a time when Islamabad is under renewed US pressure crack down on cut-throats based on its soil, such as the Haqqani network, blamed for a spectacular assault on Kabul last month.
Pressure that they're resolutely ignoring...
According to an AFP tally, around 5000 people have been killed in attacks blamed on the Taliban and its allies since July 2007, when Pak troops raided an bad boy mosque in Islamabad, sparking a bloody insurgency.
That'd be Lal Masjid, which they're currently rebuilding so the turbans won't be inconvenienced...
| ...also known as the Red Mosque, for those whose brains run in a different direction. |
... who is currently taking a long nap in the dirt... urm... water...
had been unhappy with the Pak Taliban for killing civilians. Al-Qaeda leaders wrote to its chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, urging him to change his ways, the papers showed.
...which he didn't...
Pakistain has also lost more than 3000 soldiers in the fight against homegrown beturbanned goons but has resisted US pressure to do more to eliminate havens used by those fighting the Americans in Afghanistan.
They got lotsa people -- human life is cheap, so they can continue trying to differentiate between "good" bad guyz and "bad" bad guyz...
The United States conducts a secretive drone war
What's so secret about it? People notice when carloads of turbans turn into craters...
against Taliban and al-Qaeda cut-throats on Pak soil, despite increasingly vocal public denunciations from the government, which initially gave its tacit approval to the strikes.
Relations between Pakistain and the US have lapsed into stalemate since the covert American raid that killed bin Laden last May and US air strikes that inadvertently killed 24 Pak soldiers in November.
| In other words, they're furious, and we don't care. The investment in a pheasant-hunting Christmas holiday for young Barry Obama hasn't paid off, it seems. |
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
supply lines into Afghanistan and last month parliament approved new guidelines on relations with the United States, which included a call for an end to drone strikes. It remains unclear whether the impasse with Washington can be solved before this month's NATO summit on Afghanistan in Chicago, to which Islamabad has been invited.