RSS Feed     Twitter     Facebook
Blog > Archive by tag 'Quetta'

Posts Tagged ‘Quetta’

US diplomats insist Mullah Omar in Quetta

October 1st, 2009 | No Comments


ISLAMABAD – The United States Mission in Islamabad, following ambassador PattersonÂ’s lead, has begun a campaign claiming Mullah Omar and his Taliban are in Quetta and move around the border with Afghanistan. This almost portends a drone attack on that city by the US. Pakistan has termed it a baseless speculation.
“Although we believe that the top leadership of the terrorist nexus has lost their centralized command and control, but it is our strong conviction that they are using Quetta or off-Quetta areas as their bases,” said Deputy Chief of the Mission, US Embassy, Gerald Feierstein.
During a media interaction at his residence, he also claimed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who according to the US was alive, has also taken refuge in Pakistan. “Osama is present in Pakistan. The command system of Taliban is based in Quetta and they are launching their activities from the suburbs of the city,” Feierstein said.
To a question, he said the US has asked Pakistan to move against the suspected hideouts of the terrorists. Asked whether the US information was based on some intelligence, he diplomatically responded by saying ‘well this is what we believe, that they are in Balochistan.”
Asked whether the US would carry out drone attacks, in case Pakistan does not move according to the American desires, he said, “this is our policy that we don’t discuss drone.”
When his attention was drawn to the repeated denials about their conviction, he said, “it is an ongoing discussion.”
Answering another question, the status of intelligence sharing between the US and Pakistan, he said, efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda have met significant successes during the last seven years. To another question about elements in the intelligence agencies having sympathies for Taliban, he said, there were individuals as was already reported in the media but there was no institution having such tendencies.
He told the media persons that the Director General ISI General Shuja Pasha has just completed his US visit wherein he met chief of CIS, US National Security Advisor, and other relevant functionaries.
Denying presence of Blackwater, Feierstein said the private US security firm was not needed in Pakistan. “We brought the Blackwater in Iraq when there was no government existent.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan has brushed aside Feierstein’s statements terming them as ‘baseless speculation’. Talking to TheNation Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the US should share evidence with Islamabad regarding Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan.

Read More »

U.S. envoy: Bin Laden, Taliban leaders operating in Pakistan

October 1st, 2009 | No Comments

A senior U.S. diplomat says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is alive and in Pakistan. He adds that fugitive Afghan Taliban leader Mohammad Omar is possibly hiding in the southwestern city of Quetta.

Read More »

Quetta Shura tops US agenda

September 29th, 2009 | No Comments


WASHINGTON – As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban, the militant groupÂ’s leadership council, known here as Quetta Shura, is now high on the Obama administrationÂ’s agenda, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson has said, amid reports that Washington may start drone attacks on BalochistanÂ’s capital.
“In the past, we focused on Al-Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had no troops in the region,” Ambassador Patterson was quoted as saying in the course of a dispatch in The Washington Post, which says that Taliban insurgents have a haven in Pakistan.
“Now our troops are there on the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington’s list,” she said.
Patterson also acknowledged that the US is far less familiar with the vast desert region than with the northwestern tribal areas, where it has been cooperating closely with Pakistan for several years in the hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and where it periodically kills militants with missiles fired from remotely-piloted aircraft.
As Patterson put it: “Our intelligence on Quetta is vastly less. We have no people there, no cross-border operations, no Predators.”
The Post dispatch from Islamabad said US officials are expressing new concerns about the role of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his council of lieutenants, claiming that they launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around Quetta.
“From our judgment, there are no Taliban in Balochistan,” Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, Pakistan’s military spokesman, was quoted as saying.
Asked about the names of Quetta Shura leaders provided by Afghan and US officials, he said: “Six to 10 of them have been killed, two are in Afghanistan, and two are insignificant. When people call Mullah Omar the mayor of Quetta, that is incorrect.”
Gen Abbas noted that the recent Pakistani Army operation in the Swat Valley had successfully driven Taliban forces out of the area, and he said he hoped the Swat campaign had overcome any concerns Washington might have about PakistanÂ’s willingness to take on the insurgents.
If the US has information about Taliban leaders in Balochistan, “tell us who and where they are,” he said. “We will not allow your forces inside.”
Patterson said Pakistani officials had “made it crystal clear that they have different priorities from ours,” being far more concerned about Taliban attacks inside Pakistan than across the border. She noted that Pakistan had once trained fighters to operate against India and elsewhere and that the same groups have now turned against the state.
“You cannot tolerate vipers in your bosom without getting bitten,” Patterson said. “Our concern is whether Pakistan really controls its territory. There are people who do not threaten Pakistan, but who are extremely important to us.”
According to the Post dispatch, Pakistani officials have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the Army has been heavily focused on curbing violent extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away.
As a result, Pakistani and foreign analysts here told the Post that Quetta has suddenly emerged as an urgent but elusive new target as Washington grapples with the TalibanÂ’s rapidly spreading arc of influence and terror across Afghanistan.
“Quetta is absolutely crucial to the Taliban today,” Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the Taliban told the Post. “From there they get recruits, fuel and fertilizer for explosives, weapons and food. Suicide bombers are trained on that side. They have support from the mosques and madrassas.”
Michael Semple, a former UN official in Afghanistan now based in Islamabad, described the Quetta region’s refugee camps as ‘a great reserve army’ for the Taliban. He said Pashtun tribes in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s ethnic and spiritual base, have strong ties with those on the Pakistan side.
“They are intermarried, they have Pakistani ID cards, and you can’t tell the difference,” Semple said. On the other hand, he said, reports of Taliban leaders living openly in Quetta, even attending weddings, are nonsense. “They are deeply suspicious of the Pakistanis, and they have their own agenda,” he said.

Read More »

US to attack Quetta?

September 27th, 2009 | No Comments


The United States is threatening to launch airstrikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, according to a The Sunday Times report.
The threat comes amid growing divisions in Washington about whether to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan by sending more troops or by reducing them and targeting the terrorists. This weekend the US military was expected to send a request to Defence Secretary Robert Gates for more troops, as urged by Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan.
In a leaked strategic assessment of the war, Gen McChrystal warned that he needed extra reinforcements within a year to avert the risk of failure. Although no figure was given, he is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 troops to add to the 68,000 who will be in Afghanistan by the end of this year.
US Vice-President Joe Biden has suggested reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and focusing on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Last week Gen McChrystal denied any rift with the administration, saying, “a policy debate is warranted.”
So sensitive is the subject that when US President Barack Obama addressed the UN summit in New York, he barely mentioned Afghanistan.
The Times reports the unspoken problem is that if the priority is to destroy Al-Qaeda and reduce the global terrorist threat, western troops might be fighting on the wrong side of the border.
The Biden camp argues that attacks by unmanned drones on PakistanÂ’s tribal areas, where Al-QaedaÂ’s leaders are hiding, have been successful. Sending more troops to Afghanistan has only inflamed tensions.
“Pakistan is the nuclear elephant in the room,” said a western diplomat.
It is a view echoed by Richard Barrett, head of the UN Commission on Monitoring Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who believes the presence of foreign troops has increased militant activity and made it easier for the Taliban to recruit.
“If Obama sends more troops, it would better be clear what they are to do,” he said.
“A few thousand more boots on the ground may not make much difference except push the fight into areas which are currently quiet because no one is there to challenge the Taliban. I cannot see any number of troops eliminating the Taliban. Obama has a really difficult decision to make.”
In the meantime, Afghanistan is in limbo and the Taliban is taking advantage, opening up new fronts in the north and west. Al-Qaeda is also trying to capitalise on the uncertainty. The Afghan election has strengthened the position of those in Washington who advocate eliminating Taliban leaders in Pakistan.
Senior Pakistani officials in New York revealed that the US had asked to extend the drone attacks into Quetta and Balochistan.
“It wasn’t so much a threat as an understanding that if you don’t do anything, we’ll take matters into our own hands,” said one.
The problem is that while the government of President Asif Zardari is committed to wiping out terrorism, PakistanÂ’s military does not entirely share this view, according to The Times.
Earlier this year there was optimism that Pakistan had turned a corner after it confronted a Taliban group that had taken over the Swat valley and moved to within 70 miles of Islamabad.
There has been tacit co-operation over the use of drones. Some are even stationed inside Pakistan, although publicly the government denounces their use.
According to the Paper, suspicions remain among US officials that parts of Pakistan Army intelligence agency, the ISI, are supporting the Taliban and protecting Mullah Omar and other leaders in Quetta.
It was to shore up ZardariÂ’s domestic standing that Obama attended a Friends of Pakistan summit in New York on Thursday. On the same day, the US Senate tripled non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year.
The Obama administration hopes such moves will reduce anti-American feeling in Pakistan. A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre found that almost two-thirds regarded the US as an enemy.
According to the Paper, drone attacks on Quetta would intensify this sentiment, causing some British officials to argue that such missions would be “unthinkable”.
The Pakistani government is reluctant to take its own action, however. “We need real-time intelligence,” said Interior Minister Rehman Malik. “The Americans have never told us any location.”
Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to the volatile city of Karachi, where it would be impossible to strike. US officials have even discussed sending commandos to Quetta to capture or kill the Taliban chiefs before they are moved, according to The Sunday Times.

Read More »

City of dreamers

August 16th, 2009 | No Comments

By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Kandahar, Afghanistan

Fazal Ahmad Anis

Nearly everyone who lives in Kandahar city, the capital of Afghanistan’s southern province by the same name, has acquaintances among the local Taliban militants.

Fazal Ahmad Anis is one of them.

"We are all people from the same area, and Taliban also have good intelligence inside the city, so they know who’s who," he says.

Mr Anis has been hosting music shows for two Kandahar-based television stations for some time, and is now setting up the city’s first audio-visual studios where television plays would be produced.

Taliban consider music and television viewing as un-Islamic, and have often spoken to him by telephone about his plans, without overtly threatening him.

"Their message is clear, though, that I should give up my plans, but producing television dramas has been my dream since I was living in the Pakistani city of Quetta as a refugee," he says.

Wry smile

Kandahar, once a major centre of arts and culture in Afghanistan, has many dreamers like Mr Anis.

Naimatullah Zalmay playing chess

In the soothing, air-conditioned atmosphere of Kandahar Coffee Shop – a trendy café with a small library and a billiards parlour – a group of old and young people sit quietly around a table, watching two of them play a game of chess.

One of the players is Naimatullah Zalmay, the head of Kandahar’s chess players’ association.

He has been playing chess for 35 years, he says, and is among the 14-member national chess team recently selected to play in international competitions.

But like music and TV, chess is also considered un-Islamic by the Taliban and the country’s powerful conservative clerics.

When I ask him if he feels threatened by the Taliban, he gives me a wry smile.

"The Taliban’s position on the issue is well known, but what do you do when a high official close to our democratic president opposes our request for funds on grounds that we are indulging in un-Islamic activities"

He doesn’t name names, but one of his colleagues later tells me he was referring to Fazl Hadi Shinwari, chief justice of Afghanistan until August 2006 and still considered close to President Hamid Karzai.

Dejection and fear

During the seven years of Mr Karzai’s rule, Kandahar city has developed by leaps and bounds.

Multi-storey trade centres have appeared all over the place, roads and streets have been built, and most commercial streets now have wide, tiled pavements.

Isaf patrol in Kandahar

But patrols by the US and Canadian armoured cars frequently force civilian traffic off the road, creating dejection and fear among people.

A bomb-shaped "spy" balloon that hangs high over the city and is said to carry US surveillance cameras is a constant reminder that things outside the city are also not satisfactory.

The governor of Kandahar province, Tooryalai Wesa, admits that his government has not been able to break the Taliban stranglehold in some parts of the province.

In some cases, these "lawless" areas extend to within 5 or 6 km of the city.

The Taliban have comparatively greater freedom to operate in the provinces of Helmand to the west, Uruzgan to the north and Zabul to the northeast of Kandahar.

Together, the four provinces form the lawless south of Afghanistan.

For now, the most immediate target of the Taliban is to prevent people across this region from turning out to vote in presidential elections, due on 20 August.

If they succeed, it will dent the credibility of the election and may spiral into a political crisis for the government, analysts say.

But if they fail, then Kandaharis hope for greater stability in the future.

Awareness show

And many are willing to have close brushes with the Taliban to achieve this.

Abdullah Abdali, a television actor, has been doing government-sponsored stage shows for public awareness in some of the most dangerous corners of the south.

Last year he went to Uruzgan to act in a play on drugs awareness.

"Going there was no problem, but once we had appeared on the stage, we felt exposed and did not feel safe to return to Kandahar by road," he says.

"We waited there three days for a US forces convoy to roll out to Kandahar, and followed it."

Early this month, he did a six-day election awareness show in Qalat, the capital of Zabul, and again took safety precautions on the return journey.

"We told our hosts – the district election commission – that we were staying the night and would leave for Kandahar the next day. Then we went out, quietly jumped into our van and left. You never know who will inform the Taliban that we are coming."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Read More »

BHC judges opt for retirement

August 4th, 2009 | No Comments



QUETTA-All the five judges of Balochistan High Court (BHC) have requested for early retirement after the landmark decision of the Supreme Court.
The five judges including Chief Justice BHC Amanullah Khan Yasinzai, Justice Ahmed Khan Lashari, Justice Akhtar Zaman Malghani, Justice Kelash Nath Kohli and Justice Nadir khan were working in the high court against the existing 11 posts of judges.
All of them were affected by the decision of the larger bench of the Supreme Court.
Though all the five judges of BHC were appointed before November 3rd, 2007 but they had taken fresh oath under PCO following imposition of emergency.
Under the decision of Supreme Court references were to be filed against judges of BHC in the Supreme Judicial Council.
‘Only three options were left with the judges of BHC including tendering of resignation, facing references in Supreme Judicial Council and opting for early retirement,’ said Amanullah Baloch, President Balochistan Bar Association while talking to TheNation.
‘Judges of Balochistan High Court opted for premature retirement instead of facing references in the Supreme Judicial Council, because in this way they can enjoy benefits of retirement’, said some legal experts.
They submitted their requests addressed to the President for early retirement in the office of registrar of Balochistan High Court.
Later on Chief Justice and other judges came in the Bar Room of Balochistan High Court and met the lawyers. When judges left for their homes there were no flags on their vehicles.
Balochistan was the only province where no judge had resigned following the sacking of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and over 60 other judges of superior judiciary.
After the decision of the judges to opt for early retirement, no judge has been left in BHC thus creating a judicial crisis in province.
Litigants are facing serious difficulties as no proceedings were being held in Balochistan High Court.
Around 4,000 cases are pending in the high court, said officials of the high court and added prevailing situation would further increase this number.
Some legal experts opined that Justice Amnaullah Khan Yasinzai would remain the Chief Justice till the request for retirement was acceded to.
However, after acceptance of his request one of the two judges in Supreme Court belonging to Balochistan could be made acting Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court. They are Mr. Justice Javed Iqbal and Mr.Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed.
Legal experts said that after the appointment of acting Chief Justice new judges would be appointed in Balochistan High Court.

Read More »

Baloch separatists attack traders

July 27th, 2009 | No Comments

Baloch rebels

One person has been killed in an attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, the latest in a spate of attacks against non-Balochi people in the region.

Police said three others were also injured when a group of rice traders from Punjab province were attacked.

An armed separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF), has claimed responsibility.

Officials say nearly 40 people have been killed by Baloch separatists in the province since the start of 2009.

The killings are part of a campaign by armed groups to drive non-Balochi people out of the province, according to officials.

The traders had come from Punjab province to sell rice at a weekly market in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, police said.

They were shot near the market on Sunday by assailants on two motorbikes.

Six people have been killed since Friday in similar targeted killings, police said.

After Sunday’s attack, police arrested dozens of suspects in overnight raids.

‘Political autonomy’

Balochistan accounts for nearly 40% of the country’s area but it has less than 10% of its population.

The province is rich in natural resources but has almost no representation in the central bureaucracy or the army, the two groups that have for the most part ruled Pakistan, says the BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

As a result, Balochistan remains a province steeped in poverty and with an undeveloped infrastructure, our correspondent says.

map

Since 2001, armed groups have been conducting a violent campaign to prevent the army from setting up garrisons in the province and to discourage major development projects that they believe would benefit businesses and workers in other provinces.

They have been demanding political autonomy and greater provincial control over their natural resources.

Hundreds of Baloch political activists have been detained in "undeclared custody" and activists claim that a number have been tortured and killed.

Officials say the targeted killings are part of a strategy on the part of these groups to drive non-Balochi settlers out of the province and to discourage people of other provinces from taking up jobs or setting up businesses in Balochistan.

Initially, it was mainly Punjabi’s – Pakistan’s biggest ethnic group – who were targeted.

But in recent months armed separatists have also targeted ethnic Sindhis and Pashtuns from the North West Frontier Province, police say. </p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Read More »
Page 3 of 3123