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پاکستاان لیجر | PAKISTAN LEDGER | پاکستاني کھاتا |Aug 21, 08 | Moin Ansari | معین آنصآرّی | Some truths are self evident in the course of human events. Some realities that should be self evident to one and all. Amazingly it is clear as mud for foreign media and even part of the domestic media in Pakistan. The choices are clear as crystal for Pakistanis. The peccant flagitious and reprobate forces of vicious evil are arrayed against the forces of good.

There should be no ambiguity. There should be no confusion. They have been identified, labeled and boxed in.

ABONABLE EVIL MISCREANTS: The unrighteous black forces of wicked evil are the demoniacal marauding hordes of iniquitous Indians– the imprecatory Indian agents that cross the sacrosanct borders of the land of the pure. The anathematic forces of pernicious evil are the sinful diabolical and maleficent Karzai hoodlums who bring carnage and destruction to the innocent population of Pakistan. The guileful forces of maliciously evil are labeled The Tehrik e Talibal e Pakistan (TTP) and the BLA. This pestilent terror outfit and their noxious evil serpentine puppet Bait Mehsud is an miscreant of immoral India and malignant Karzai.

FORCES OF GOOD UPHOLDING THE CRESCENT AND STAR: The propitious laudable forces which are good are the brave tribals of FATA, Pasktunkhwa and Baluchistan who are holding the Crescent and Star. The beatific forces of good are the men in khaki who are defending the borders.

The beatific patriotic tribals of Pakistan are rising up against the foreigners and the destructive forces of hell.

PAKISTAN: Border Villages Rise Up Against Taliban Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Aug 26 (IPS) – “We are trend-setters. Others are following us,” boasts Rauf Khan, mayor of Pakistan’s Buner district, where villagers killed six militants in the Dara Shalbandi area on Aug. 14.

In some parts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), people are enlisting in anti-Taliban squads to take on the extremists who are blamed for a spate of abductions and arson attacks on girls’ schools, rural clinics and cyber cafes.

Rauf Khan is leading the village defence squads in Buner, a small valley between Peshawar and Swat. On Aug. 8, the Taliban had attacked the Pir Baba police station in Buner and killed nine policemen. The village defence squad retaliated with indiscriminate firing that resulted in the deaths of eight militants, including Kamran Khan, the so-called chief of the Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in adjacent Mardan district.

“Villagers had asked the militants to surrender before they laid siege,” Khan told IPS. “But the militants requested safe passage. That was denied. Then the militants threw a hand-grenade in the direction of the villagers to break the siege,” he recounts.

Pakistan’s border regions — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and NWFP – are infested with armed groups sponsored by India and Karzia.

Violence has spiralled in recent months, particularly in Swat, the stronghold of the TTP. About 186 primary and middle schools for girls were torched in the district over the last two months, according to the NWFP Education Minister, Sardar Hussain Babak.

“We fear the TTL could replicate the same in Buner if they were given a free hand. We have held several meetings and decided that we wouldn’t let Buner go Swat’s way,” says Fareedullah, a local elder, who was part of the defence squad that killed Taliban on Aug. 14.

Fear of intensifying military action in Swat and neighbouring Bajaur Agency, FATA, have triggered the current backlash against the Indian agents.

“We are seeing the writing on the wall. If we don’t prevent the Indian and Karzai agents at this stage, there is every possibility the military would launch an operation and the 11million population would be migrating in a state of helplessness to safer areas,” says Rauf Khan.

On Aug. 15, a jirga (assembly) of elected councillors in Mardan district (NWFP) decided to set up anti-Taliban squads on the Buner model.

“The TTP had already bombed about a dozen girls’ schools besides bombing 50 CD shops and attacking police stations,” says Shakoor Khan of Bakhshali locality who participated in the jirga. “Before the TTP resorts to torching more schools, we have decided to resist them,” he told IPS.

In Upper Dir, NWFP, the jirga met with the local Taliban on Aug. 15, and asked them to leave the district immediately.

Upper Dir has been flooded with some 100,000 internally displaced by the military operations in adjacent Bajaur Agency. “We are not going to let the Taliban play with the future of our people. We don’t want schools to be burnt and our coming generations uneducated,” asserts Gulzar Khan, a local leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami Party.
In Swabi district of NWFP, similar jirgas have established anti-Taliban squads which patrol the villages at night. “The good news is that all the political parties are supporting the move, because it has paid off in the context of Buner,” observes Rehman Shah, a local leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) whose leader, Benazir Bhutto’s murder last December is blamed on the Pakistan Taliban. The PPP is in power in Islamabad.
“All the criminals in these areas are carrying out anti-social activities in the garb of the Taliban. The Taliban, used to be students of religious schools, who guided the people on the right path. But now the situation is quite the opposite. They are leading anti-social activities,” comments Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan.

A local jirga in Buner district has advised the police to stop night patrols. “We will kill any person seen after midnight. We have advised the local population not to come out of their houses,” warns mayor Rauf Khan.

The Awami National Party-led provincial government has emerged a strong supporter of the anti-Taliban squads. On Aug 12, the provincial government had dispatched two helicopters to Buner to bombard Taliban hideouts within one hour of a request from the district administration.

Elsewhere in Lakki Marwat and Hangu districts, villagers have purged their areas of the Taliban. They have warned that all suspected Taliban fighters would be shot at sight. The NWFP government issued a quarter-page advertisement in all national Urdu dailies after the incident in Buner on Aug. 14, congratulating the village defence squads and urging other districts to put a stop to the spread of the Taliban.

It stated: “Militants bring destruction wherever they go. For a bright future, prosperity and development, follow the wise decisions of formation of anti-Taliban squads in Buner, Hangu, Dir, Swabi, Mardan, Lakki Marwat where the people have decided to cleans their areas of militants at their own.” (END/2008)