1170 Inmates freed from Kandahar Prison

[Colpy]

Colpy

You once suggested that I and several other people here at CC are naive when it comes to how the world works.... and in particualar the United States of Unlimited Greed.....

You're a nice fellow I'm willing to bet, but you're backing the wrong horse and have backed the wrong horse for years. These people lie to you and everyone else. Always have and always will.

Of course they lie.

What gov't doesn't?

I don't like it, but I feel that we have to judge them in relative terms......unfortunately.

And the west is far ahead of whomever is in second place.

 

[Praxius]

Well, DL, it seems I owe you a bit of an apology.....the pipeline is on. The allies have just agreed on a route through Afghanistan...........the route backed by the USA.

Construction to begin in 2010. That is nine years after the invasion.

In my own defense I have to point out that Taliban activity is NOT affecting the plans for construction , as the line will be built straight through territory now awash in Taliban activity, i.e. Khandahar Province.

Whoa whoa.... WHOOAAAAAA CAMEL!!! *Stops suddenly and falls off*

You crazy Igit *Whacks Camel with cave man shaped club*

Khandahar Province is not free from Taliban... that jailbreak that just occured would have been the first clue of this fact.... the battles in the last day or so between Afghan and Canadian troops would be another....

I am far, far from convinced this war was fought for this pipeline.......
In fact, I'm on the other side of the planet from convinced......

BTW, construction will do wonders for the Afghan economy, it will be very good for the Afghan people......

Well it was the main reason for stating the war there, and Afghanistan will have a good economy with it, so long as the majority of the resources goto the hungry US..... sorta like Iraq.... but that too is still not going so well when it comes to securing those resources for the Great US.

 

[Colpy]

Hey Praxius!

I didn't say there was no Taliban activity. The construction is to go on despite Taliban activity........

The gas is not going to the USA, but to Pakistan and India.

UNOCAL is a US company, but they had a deal to put through the pipeline with the TALIBAN gov't...........that deal only fell through after the US launched missile attacks on terrorist bases in 1999.

Security trumped business.

From the BBC:

The construction of the 850-kilometre pipeline had been previously discussed between Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, US oil company Unocal and Bridas of Argentina. The project was abandoned after the US launched missile attacks on Afghanistan in 1999.

 

[dancing-loon]

Back to the prison break!

I read that the prison break was done in retaliation for the killing of 12 Pakistani soldiers by "friendly" fire. It was Pakistan's ISI who organized and executed that feat, of course with the help of their spies inside Afghanistan.

Here is the link to that forum. It is interesting!!

http://www.afghanistanonlineforums.c...num=1213395953
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To me this makes perfect sense!
I feel so brainwashed and removed from the real reality in Afghanistan!

 

[earth_as_one]

related:

Asia Times

Islamabad blinks at Taliban threat
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - With grudging surprise, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has acknowledged the strength of the Taliban, illustrated by its repeated calls for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, notably for the two important provinces of Kandahar and Khost...

...The Kandahar jailbreak this month, a meticulously planned Taliban operation combining heavily armed fighters and suicide bombers, was the first operation since the switch from Helmand to Kandahar. More than 2,500 prisoners (contrary to claims of 1,100 mentioned in the media) were freed.

More terror was generated through the killings of pro-government tribal elders in Kandahar. As a result, tribal loyalties changed in favor of the powerful - the Taliban.

Now the Taliban stand face-to-face with NATO in several districts, including Panjwai and Zair and around the provincial capital Kandahar, much as the two sides had faced off in Helmand province.

While these events were unfolding, the Taliban made another significant move in Khost. More than 2,500 "precious assets" was mobilized from the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan to Khost, where, with the assistance of the local population, they established bases.

Significantly, the Taliban no longer need to retreat to the sanctuary of Pakistan's tribal areas when attacked by NATO - they now have secure bases deep in Khost.

This is the first time the Taliban have acquired such a tactical edge. The anti-Soviet mujahideen were in a similar position in 1988, a year before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, which it had invaded in 1979...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JF28Df01.html

Also Related:

New York Times

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of three million people, one of Pakistan’s biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for high ransoms....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/world/asia/28pstan.html?em&ex=1214798400&en=848ef5383b36b99f&ei=5087%0A

Opinion:

Pakistan and the battle for Peshawar

Peshawar is such an important city for Pakistan that it can be hard to write about it without sounding shrill. It is significant strategically since it lies near the entrance to the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. But it is also important emotionally – not only is it a Moghul city and an ancient Silk Route trading hub, but it is also a Pashtun town on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line , the ill-demarcated border between Pakistan and Afghanistan imposed by British colonial rulers that splits the Pashtun people of the region in two. For Pakistan, fighting for control of Peshawar is probably comparable to what France and Germany felt about Alsace Lorraine before World War Two.

So when the New York Times publishes an article about Peshawar being at risk of falling into Taliban hands we must pay attention. “In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of three million people, one of Pakistan’s biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for high ransoms,” it says. “The threat to Peshawar is a sign of the Taliban’s deepening penetration of Pakistan and of the expanding danger that the militants present to the entire region, including nearby supply lines for NATO and American forces in Afghanistan.”

The Daily Times says it more dramatically, with a Kiplingesque notion of what the fall of Peshawar to Taliban control would mean for Pakistan: “The Taliban are no longer at the gates of Peshawar, they’re inside, making their presence felt in the largest city in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province),” it says.

Pakistan has just launched an offensive against Taliban fighters near Peshawar in an attempt to re-impose government control. As I said at the beginning, it’s hard not to sound shrill about a place that few outsiders understand. But history is in the making here, and the battle for Peshawar is one we all should watch...

http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2008/06/28/pakistan-and-the-battle-for-peshawar/

 

[earth_as_one]

Some insight into the dynamics of the growing fighting along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

Editorial/Opinion
Daily Times
Pakistan

Editorial: Our wars in our Tribal Areas

The war in Khyber Agency now parallels the war in Kurram Agency. The first is three years old and the second is two years old in its latest phase. The Khyber war has unfolded right under the nose of the administration in Peshawar; and the Kurram war has proved too much for Islamabad as it spreads to adjacent Aurakzai and Mohmand agencies, coming down to the settled districts of the NWFP like Hangu and Kohat. There is also the greater war between the Taliban and the state of Pakistan over “lost territory”, and then there is the war with Afghanistan where the Tribal Areas of Pakistan provide up to 40 percent of the “cross-border” warriors. Finally, there is the war within the warriors of which the latest example is the sectarian bloodshed in the Khyber Agency.

Two factions that came on the scene in Khyber around 2005 on the basis of their propaganda on their FM radios are now killing each other freely. So far more than 200 warriors from both sides have been done to death with automatic fire and mortars and rockets. The latest battle has killed nearly 30 in one day’s battle, if the figures claimed by both sides are to be accepted. After Bara, the killings spread to Jamrud, where the murders of innocent people are now going to be avenged. The battle has also spread to the most inaccessible but picturesque Tirah and, going by the images being shown on TV, both sides are squared off with equal strength of weaponry and manpower.

The war in Kurram Agency forms a parallel. It is also close-by because one can reach Kurram from Tirah after a few hours’ journey. While the war in Khyber is between two versions of Sunni Islam — Deobandi versus Barelvi — the war in Kurram is between the Shia and the Sunni, the two major sects of Islam. The Kurram war, mostly centred on the headquarters of the agency Parachinar with a majority Shia population, is of longer gestation. In history it was known as the Turi-Mangal tribal war as both tribes embrace different sects. But after the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, it became an indirectly state-supported mayhem because jihad was Deobandi-dominated.

Hundreds have been claimed in these two internal wars. As in other areas affected by retaliatory attacks from the NATO-ISAF forces, uninvolved populations are moving out of the affected areas and then wandering from pillar to post in search of shelter. Everywhere they go, the Taliban tighten the noose around their necks by enforcing a brand of Islam that the people have not known before. Meanwhile, the state of Pakistan is nowhere to be seen. The people of Parachinar have made heart-rending appeals to the state to come and save their lives but to no effect. The state is clearly in retreat in the face of all this.

When the Barelvi-Deobandi war started in the Khyber Agency in 2005, its repercussions went as far south as Multan and Karachi where the Deobandi madrassas organised wall-chalkings about a war that no one could figure out. Mufti Munir Shakir was fulminating against his Barelvi rival Pir Saifur Rehman. Both were exiled from Khyber but both left behind their followers. The Deobandi Mufti Shakir has now been replaced by warlord Mangal Bagh who is given to raiding Peshawar to fill his coffers and is clearly putting himself up for adoption by Al Qaeda without whose imprimatur no one can enter the business of terrorism in the Tribal Areas. On the other hand, Pir Saifur Rehman has been succeeded by other leaders, including Maulana Mustamin, who have vowed to fight to the end.

The federal government listened to the distant thunder of war on the FM radios and kept quiet, and there are many interpretations placed on this benign neglect, including the involvement of the intelligence agencies in secretly prosecuting the war against Afghanistan’s Karzai government. The MMA government in Peshawar kept out of the mess on two grounds. The first was overt and it was based on the argument that the Tribal Areas were in the charge of the federal government. That indirectly meant that the governor and the corps commander in Peshawar were effectively responsible for control and management in Khyber. The other less overt reason for the Deobandi-dominated MMA’s indifference was the natural Deobandi ascendancy of Lashkar-e Islam of Mangal Bagh, further empowered by the “alliance” between Deobandi Islam and Arab-dominated Al Qaeda.

Those who are busy counting the errors of President Pervez Musharraf these days should include the chaos of the Tribal Areas and its two epochal wars in Khyber and Kurram in their list. But the danger is that these are precisely the issues that will be ignored by his critics. And that will be the source of further trouble for the country. *

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\06\24\story_24-6-2008_pg3_1


google map of area:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=33.532237,71.147461&spn=3.772685,5.20752&z=7