The militants released a Chinese engineer held hostage for nearly six months ahead of the cease-fire announcement.
By Liam Stack

posted February 16, 2009 at 10:35 am EST

Months of fighting in Pakistan's Swat Valley region appear to be near an end as the Pakistani government agreed Monday to accept Islamic law and suspend its military campaign against Taliban-linked militants in the region.

The move came after the militants announced a 10-day cease-fire Sunday in anticipation of a peace deal. The Associated Press reports that it includes the enforcement of sharia, or Islamic law, in the region, which was once a tourist haven and home to Pakistan's only ski resort. Critics say the deal is a concession to the militants and a dangerous precedent for Pakistan's civilian government to set. Others call it a fait accompli in a region already controlled by the Taliban and long weighed down by an inefficient colonial-era court system.

Pakistan's daily newspaper Dawn reports that in addition to the cease-fire, militants released Long Xiaowe, a Chinese engineer held for nearly six months, as a "goodwill gesture." Other sources told the paper he was released after "payment of a huge amount of money as ransom," which was denied by the Taliban.

Negotiations have involved the government of Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari and two militant groups connected by both ideology and genealogy, reports Outlook India.

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INTERVIEW: Pakistani cleric who signed peace deal hates democracy
South Asia News

By Nadeem Sarwar, Aqeel Yousafzai Feb 16, 2009, 15:33 GMT

Islamabad - Hard-line Muslim cleric Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who signed a controversial peace deal with the provincial government in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Monday, said he hated democracy and wanted supremacy of Islam over the entire world.

'From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview held in his Swat stronghold a few days before the government accepted his demand of enforcing Islamic sharia in the region in exchange for peace.

'Pakistan's religious parties have failed in the enforcement of Islam because they tried it through the politics of democracy and parliament.'

Mohammad, chief of the outlawed Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammedan Law (TNSM), has struggled for Islamic sharia in Swat since mid-1990, when his thousands of followers seized government buildings and the only airport in the district.

The deaths of dozens of people forced the government of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to announce the establishment of Islamic courts, setting aside her liberal tendencies. The move dampened tensions, but was not fully implemented.

The movement re-emerged under Mohammad's son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah in 2007, when Mohammad was in government detention for dispatching around 10,000 fighters to aid the Taliban against the US- led invasion of Afghanistan.

But this time it took on a very gruesome form.

'The main reason for the resistance in Swat is the ruler's un- Islamic policies and attitudes. Every person and organization who talks about Islam, sharia and justice faces the wrath of the state, which is secular in form and content,' said Mohammad as he greeted visitors at his protest camp in the Timergara area of Swat.

'Had the government accepted our demands in 1994, we would have not seen the violence we are seeing today,' he added.

Fazlullah's rebellion prompted former president Pervez Musharraf to launch a security operation that left hundreds of civilians, troops and militants dead over the last 14 months. However, this yielded little success.

According to some estimates, Fazlullah controls more than 80 per cent of Swat district. The public is forced to obey his orders, which are issued through a pirated radio frequency.

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Sharia Law, My Ass! What's up with those cock-obsessed Islamic men? Are they afraid of women? What a bunch of retarded and depraved assholes they are.

Sharia law is the price of peace in Pakistan

Critics say it is a capitulation that endangers the rule of law and women's rights. "We condemn it," said Iqbal Haider, chairman of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission and a former law minister. "It is an illegal, unconstitutional, and discriminatory act to further promote religious fanaticism in Pakistan. The constitution does not allow a parallel legal system. And there is no guarantee of peace: the militants are not party to it."

Muslim Khan, Mr Fazlullah's spokesman, told a Pakistani news channel on Sunday that it remains his group's ambition to impose sharia law across the world. Do me a favor Mr Fazlullah - go fuck yourself of the planet! (Geez,Tina, I hope you don't mind I speak in Don's language lol)

New York Times, By Kirk Semple, February 16

Last June, Bakht Bilind Khan, who was living in the Bronx and working at a fast-food restaurant, returned to his village in the volatile Swat Valley of northern Pakistan to visit his wife and seven children for the first time in three years.

But at a dinner celebration with his family, his homecoming suddenly turned dark: several heavily armed Taliban fighters wearing masks appeared at the door of their house, accused Mr. Khan of being an American spy and kidnapped him.

During two weeks of captivity in a nearby mountain range, Mr. Khan says, he was interrogated repeatedly about his wealth, property and “mission” in the United States. He was released in exchange for an $8,000 ransom. His family, threatened with death if they did not leave the region, is now hiding elsewhere in Pakistan.

“Our Swat, our paradise, is burning now,” said Mr. Khan, 55, who returned to the United States and is working at a fast-food restaurant in Albany, trying to reimburse the friends and relatives who paid his ransom.

February 17, 2009

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents.

The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools.

The accord came less than a week before the first official visit to Washington of the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to meet Obama administration officials and discuss how Pakistan could improve its tactics against what the American military is now calling an industrial-strength insurgency there of Al Qaeda and the Taliban militants.

The militants have also made deep gains in neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is sending more troops.

Pakistani government officials insisted the truce with the Taliban and the switch to the Shariah, the Islamic legal code, were consistent with the Constitution and presented no threat to the integrity of the nation.

But the truce offered by the Taliban, and accepted by the authorities, rebuffed American demands for the Pakistani civilian and military authorities to stick with the fight against the militants, not make deals with them.

Under the terms of the accord, the chief minister of the province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, said that Pakistani troops would now go on “reactive mode” and fight only in retaliation for an attack.

Announced by the government of the North-West Frontier Province after consultation with President Asif Ali Zardari, the pact echoed previous government accords with the militants across Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas in North and South Waziristan.

Those regions have since become a mini-state for Qaeda and Taliban militants, who are now the focus of missile strikes by remotely piloted American aircraft. On Monday, what was thought to be a drone strike in Kurram, a separate area close to the Afghan border, killed 31 people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Analysts are now suggesting that the drone strikes may be pushing the Taliban, and even some Qaeda elements, out of the tribal belt and into Swat, making the valley more important to the Taliban.

Speaking in India on the last leg of his trip to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, the Obama administration’s special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, did not address the truce directly but said the turmoil in Swat served as a reminder that the United States, Pakistan and India faced an “enemy which poses direct threats to our leadership, our capitals, and our people.”

Pakistani legal experts and other analysts warned that the decision by the authorities would embolden militants in other parts of the country.

“This means you have surrendered to a handful of extremists,” said Athar Minallah, a leader of a lawyers’ movement that has campaigned for an independent judiciary. “The state is under attack; instead of dealing with them as aggressors, the government has abdicated.”

Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords,” a book on the Pakistani military, said that with the accord, “the government is ceding a great deal of space” to the militants.

But some Pakistani officials have recently argued that a truce was necessary in Swat because the army was unable to fight a guerrilla insurgency and civilians were suffering in the conflict.

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will not last.

because we know how well it worked out in other parts of Pakistan, they lost Swat already

FP

Tue, 02/17/2009 - 2:38pm
I know it looks like a setback but I suspect this might be a smart move. Give the people of Swat sharia law, and see how they like it. Meanwhile, bolster your security forces in the area so they can pick up the ball when the Taliban has sufficiently alienated the populace. Risky? Sure. But better than losing Swat altogether.

I wonder did Pakistan give up Swat so that NATO and US troops can commence bombing? ~ tina

Feb 19, 2009

The Taliban get their first wish
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan - which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).

The geographical borders of Bilad-i-Sham-Khorasan extend from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to the small Malakand division in the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that includes the militant-dominated Swat Valley.

On Monday, at a time when United States Central Command chief General David Petraeus was trying to set up a supply route for troops in Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, in this extreme corner of the promised land of Khorasan - Malakand division - militants had every reason to celebrate.

Asif Ali Zardari, the strongly American-backed Pakistani president, and the provincial government of NWFP gave in to the demands of militants and announced a ceasefire, lifted a two-year-old curfew and announced the implementation of Islamic sharia law.

"All un-Islamic laws in the Malakand division of Swat, which is geographically one third of the whole [NWFP] province, have been abolished," the chief minister of NWFP, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, told the media after reaching an agreement with the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi, which is headed by Sufi Mohammad, the symbol of the sharia movement in Malakand division. The Islamic judicial system will be enforced by Islamic judges - qazi.

The accord is a significant victory for the Pakistan Taliban and could end two years of strife in the region which has seen militants pitted against Pakistani security forces.

The peace agreement will be complemented by a compensation package for the families of those killed and injured in the military operations. "[Families] of those who were killed will get 300,000 rupees [US$3,760] and those who were wounded will get 100,000 rupees," Hoti said. "The entire deal, Islamic laws and other packages related to the deal were completely approved by the president of Pakistan," he said.

"We have established a task force which will monitor the implementation of Islamic law, but enforcement will be bound by peace and the writ of the state," said Hoti. "The security forces now [after the signing of the agreement] will be in reactive rather than proactive mode. They will only retaliate if somebody tries to challenge the writ of the state," Hoti said.

The army's Inter-Services Public Relations confirmed that the curfew has been lifted, after two years, in Swat Valley. Militants have also announced a ceasefire for 10 days which is likely to extend for an indefinite period.

The developments in Malakand division coincide with the arrival in Afghanistan of close to 3,000 American soldiers as part of an extra 30,000 to boost the already 30,000 US troops in the country. The new contingent will be deployed in Logar province to secure violent provinces near the capital Kabul. Petraeus must now be thinking of how many more troops he will need to confront the additional Taliban fighters that will come from Malakand.

Taliban's victory: A curtain raiser to the spring battle

A key factor in the Taliban's revival after being driven from power by US-led forces in 2001 was that from 2004 they established a strong network in Pakistan that was coordinated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A focal point of this was the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, which was stormed in July 2007 by Pakistani security forces to clear it of militants. The network extended into the Swat Valley, streamed into Bajaur Agency and Mohmand Agency from where militants fed the Afghan insurgency in Kunar and Nooristan provinces.

Other flows of militants into South Waziristan and North Waziristan, Kurram Agency and Khyber Agency respectively fed the Afghan insurgency in the provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Nangarhar provinces.

By this time, Western intelligence had realized that these developments in Pakistan were a major factor behind the "fireworks" in Afghanistan, and Islamabad was told as much. The Pakistanis were also warned that the militants could also launch a revolution in Pakistan. This was a major turning point in the "war on terror" in the South Asian theater.

For the first time, Islamabad felt a chill up its spine and viewed the situation from a different perspective - not as an American war in which its participation was drawn out of compulsion, but as a war necessary to maintain the status quo of its own system. This system was a blend of the country's deep relationship with the US and the perpetuation of the military oligarchy, combined with a particular brand of Islam that could co-exist with this setup.

The attack on the Lal Masjid was the first shot fired in this battle, and its reverberations soon spread to the Swat Valley, South Waziristan and then Bajaur Agency, in effect turning the whole of NWFP into a war theater. A series of military operations in the tribal areas drove the militants from stand-alone sanctuaries into population centers.

In Malakand, which includes the Swat area, the militants are a part of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban and the vanguard of the Taliban's cause in the region against Western occupation forces in Afghanistan and their ally - Pakistan. They have established their own writ with a parallel system that includes courts, police and even a electric power-distribution network and road construction, and all this is now official in the eyes of Islamabad.

All intelligence indicated that further concentration on military operations in Swat could lead to an expansion of the war theater into Pakistan's non-Pashtun cities, such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The security forces were already stretched and even faced rebellions.

These combined factors culminated in Monday's peace agreement, which is a major defeat for Washington as well as Pakistan, and it could also lead to a major setback for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan come spring when hordes of better-trained fighters from Swat pour into Afghanistan.

The Taliban defeat American interests
To tame the militancy, Washington and London devised a plan in 2007, one aspect of which was for the military to take on the militants. At the same time, Pakistan was to move from a military dictatorship under president general Pervez Musharraf to a political government.

This happened in the beginning of last year with the formation of a democratically elected coalition government of secular and liberal parties involving among others the Pakistan People's Party, the Muttehida Quami Movement, the Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP), the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam and the Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-i-Azam. It was envisaged that these parties would fully back the US's "war on terror".

Earlier, Washington had brokered a deal between former premier Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf, who was also chief of army staff, under which a National Reconciliation Ordinance was enacted to have all corruption cases against Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari dropped. Under this arrangement, later, NWFP was handed over to the ANP, recognized as the most genuine secular political party.

The militants were onto the game. The first shot was the assassination of Bhutto by al-Qaeda in December 2007, which practically turned the whole American plan on its head and created a situation in which Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, an anti-Musharraf party, secured an unprecedented number of seats in parliament, leaving no option but for Musharraf, the most important American ally, to resign. But in time, the secular and liberal political parties in the capital became hostage to the militants.

Another setback for the pro-American forces was the brazen militant attack late last year on Asfandyar Wali, the leader of the ANP, at his home about 20 kilometers from the NWFP capital, Peshawar. He then fled first to Islamabad and later to Europe. Asfandyar had been groomed by the US through many visits to the US.

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NYT - A provincial government official in the disputed area of Swat announced details of what he called a “permanent cease-fire” with the Taliban on Saturday.

But hours later, the most powerful Taliban leader in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, said over his FM radio station that he had only agreed to a 10-day truce and would consider an extension at the end of that period.

The different positions suggested that the truce agreed to five days ago by the national government, under which the army would stop hostilities in exchange for being allowed to put in place a system of Islamic law, remained in flux.

That deal was widely criticized by Western governments and moderate Pakistanis who described it as a government surrender to ruthless militants. Now it appears that Mr. Fazlullah, whose forces have swept through the territory in the past six months, has not signed on to it.
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_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

a little late in the day don't ya think lol

Daily Times ~ Tuesday, December 30, 2008 OOPS

* President urges people to fight terrorism in accordance with the principles of Islam

ISLAMABAD: The government cannot give space to the extremists to compel others to follow their views, President Asif Ali Zardari conveyed in a message on Monday.

“We have to fight terrorism, sectarianism and other social evils, both individually and collectively, in accordance with the golden principles of Islam so that the anti-state elements cannot deter us from pursuing the path towards success, prosperity and development,” he said.

Zardari urged the people to pledge to lead their lives by following the true teachings of Islam and to fight extremism and terrorism in the new Islamic year.

The president conveyed his felicitations on the start of the new Islamic year, 1430 Hijra.

He said, “Let us pledge in this new Hijra year that we will lead our lives by following the true and great teachings of Islam.”

Zardari said Islam did not allow any person or group to force their beliefs and ideologies on other people.

In a separate message, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani congratulated the people on the arrival of the new Islamic year, stating that all Muslims were brothers and each had religious, social and individual obligations towards the other. He urged the Muslim ummah to live in peace, harmony and unity in the new year. app