Free Republic

The high-profile arrest of a group of Pakistani militants in mid-April in the restive Afghan province of Helmand by the Afghan army and their subsequent handover to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for grilling exposed a jihadi network running to the heart of urban Pakistan. In the course of interrogation, the militants confessed to being recruited, trained and then launched into Helmand after spending some time in places such as the southern port city of Karachi and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. They also gave details of their Pakistani leaders and their activities, including how these leaders could...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the covert U.S. war in Pakistan far beyond the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Two high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to reach the Taliban and other insurgent groups to a major sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta, the newspaper said on its website, citing senior administration officials. Missile strikes by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the recent incident of burying alive three teenage girls and two women in his province, saying it was part of “our tribal custom.” Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah of the PML-Q raised the issue citing a newspaper report that the girls, three of them aged between 16 and 18 years, had been buried alive a month ago for wishing to marry of their own will. The barbaric incident took place in a remote village of Jafarabad district and a PPP minister and some...

Beyond Balochistan By Michael Ledeen Among the many peoples who compose Iran, the Baloch are perhaps under the greatest threat, for their “homeland” occupies territory in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they have long since mastered the arts of both political maneuver and asymmetric warfare against more powerful enemies. The Balochistan People’s Front of Iran, which has claimed credit for several recent attacks on the regime’s security forces in the area, has issued a fascinating and potentially important assessment of these activities. It’s a well written and well argued “lessons learned” from the point of view of an armed resistance...

Unlike Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, which has been receiving extensive media coverage as a result of its uprising against the central government in recent years, Iran’s vast but sparsely populated southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan has long been out of media glare. This, however, seems to be changing now with an escalating insurgency led by an obscure Baloch militant organization called Jundollah (Soldiers of God). Given the absence of accurate demographic data on Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities, it is hard to know the precise number of Iranian Balochis. According to an estimate, there are some 10-15 million Balochis residing...

The killing of Baloch Nationalist leader Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti along with two dozen of his followers on August 26 by the Pakistani army has raised a storm in Balochistan. Many see a close parallel between the happenings there and in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971, ?when it seceded and became Bangladesh. There was the infamous massacre of the intellectuals/leadership at Dacca University. Ironically, Akbar Khan and his Bugti tribe were considered closer to the ruling establishment of Pakistan as opposed to the Mengal or Marri tribe that was allied with the National Awami Party founded by 'Frontier Gandhi' Khan...

Balochistan after Bugti The recent reports that nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed by Pakistani troops in a fierce operation that resulted in the death of 37 Baloch nationalists and 21 elite commandos of Pakistani security forces in Kohlu District of Balochistan in the early hours of August 27 does not augur well for the restive province. The reaction to his killing has been strong and violent. Over five hundred people are reported to have been arrested. An indefinite curfew has been clamped on Quetta, and Karachi is reported to be tense. There is no doubt that the...

India must stand by the Balochs The Pakistan Air Force and Army, using aircraft, helicopters and communication sets given by the US and missiles given by the Chinese, claims to have killed Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, one of the founding fathers of the Baloch independence struggle. Thirty six other freedom-fighters belonging to the Bugti and Marri tribes were killed in a three-day operation which began August 24 in the Bhambore Hills, an area between the towns of Kohlu and Dera Bugti. According to Pakistani media reports, Balach Marri, who was believed to be the chief of the Balochistan Liberation Army...

July 1 Two security force (SF) personnel were injured in a landmine blast on June 30, official sources said. However, a spokesperson for the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Azad Baloch, while accepting responsibility for the incident, claimed that the two had died.Meanwhile, violence intensified in Balochistan with SFs and insurgents claiming to have inflicted heavy damage on each other. SFs claimed killing three insurgents and injuring two in a clash at Nal in Kohlu district. However, Azad Baloch rejected Government claims and said that they had killed nine SF personnel. Unconfirmed reports said that 180-armed men had been injured...

NEW DELHI: Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has always stolen a march from the Indian dispensation on the big occasions in the world arena. Whatever may be Indian political firmament's opinions on Musharraf, he has always charmed even his fiercest critics with his demeanour, wit, oratory and his natty dressing sense through televised interviews which has most often irritated South Block. Some even say he exudes more warmth and hospitality than most Indian politicians alongside demonstrating his leadership skills. In what seems to be music for India's ears, Musharraf rallied his speech defending Pakistan's natural gas pipeline project with Iran that...

US, India hatching conspiracy in Balochistan: Aslam Baig Wednesday January 04, 2006 (2343 PST) ISLAMABAD: Former Chief of the Army staff General (Retd) Mirza Aslam Baig has said United States in connivance with India has hatched a conspiracy for the creation of an independent state out of Balochistan and that a major center espionage in the Panj Sher valley of Afghanistan is actively engaged on this conspiracy. In an interview with a private TV channel, he said the American policy makers are very much active in Balochistan since year 2001 while India too has gained considerable influence in the province...

Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? Let's face it. He shouldn't be hard to find, especially from a Predator, an aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can read the minute hand of a wristwatch from an altitude of 26,000 feet. Bin Laden is very tall – slightly over 6'6" – and incredibly thin, less than 150 pounds. He wears shalwart kameez – the loose-fitting tunics and baggy pants of al-Qaida and Taliban soldiers – and, when the weather is cold, he dons a camouflage jacket. Although he was born in 1957 and far from retirement age, the al-Qaida chieftain appears...

Pakistan tribal chief stands firm Hundreds of tribesmen have gathered at Dera Bugti A leading tribal chief in Pakistan's Balochistan Province says it is up to the government to resolve a tense standoff between troops and tribesmen.More than 300 paramilitary troops are encircled by hundreds of armed tribal fighters in the remote town of Dera Bugti, following clashes last Thursday. More than 23 people were killed in the day-long violence between troops and tribesmen demanding autonomy. Tribal chief Akbar Bugti told visiting legislators he had no compromise offer. 'It's my land' Mr Bugti is at the forefront of a...

NEW DELHI: Pakistan will be a "failed" state by 2015 as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons, premier US intelligence agencies have said in an assessment report. Forecasting a "Yugoslavia-like fate" for Pakistan, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a jointly prepared Global Futures Assessment Report have said "by year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation". v "Pakistan will not recover easily...

Six blasts rock Baluchistan, soldier hurt: QUETTA, Feb 03:Baluchistan was rocked by six bomb and landmine blasts targeting key transport, communications and power facilities, causing widespread damage and blowing off a soldier's foot.Five of the explosions were in Baluchistan, which is in the throes of an intensifying rebellion by tribesmen demanding a bigger share of the region's natural resources.Two railway lines were ripped up in the attacks, including the main line between Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, and Zahidan in neighbouring Iran. The track was blown up at Mustung, a small town some 56 kilometers (34 miles) southeast of Quetta,...

WISCONSIN, January 22: Pakistan's military dictator General Pervez Musharraf has thought up the “Final Solution” to the problem of Pakistan’s ethnic minorities: Nuke them. On January 4, he took to the national airwaves and delivered an apocalyptic threat to Baloch nationalists: “Don’t push us. It is not the 1970s. This time you won’t even know what hit you.” Pakistani media dismissed his menace as “intemperate” rhetoric. Even observers of the country’s strategic affairs failed to underscore its destructive undertones that re-echoed the military establishment’s enduring obsession with nuclear weapons to seek Pakistan’s security. Military leaders have long assumed that if...

For both energy hungry India and its swiftly growing neighbor, Pakistan, the need for natural gas is more pressing than ever. Pakistan has one of the world’s fastest growing populations and its demand for gas will expand significantly over the next two decades. India’s gas demand will almost double by 2015 and due to the decline of its reserves it will be forced to import increasing amounts of gas. As the world’s second largest gas reserve, Iran is the most geographically convenient supplier of gas to both countries. ...Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is "a...

KARACHI: The sensitive agencies in Karachi reportedly detained two terror suspects of Arab origin from Karachi's Shah Faisal Colony area, according to sources. The men picked from a house of Shah Faisal Colony are said to be Shaikh Fahd and Khalid Abdullah, sources in Intelligence agencies said. The raiding party seized a laptop, CDs and a a pistol, sources said. The accused, sources said, had arrived Karachi from South Waziristan to avoid their arrests in the ongoing military operation against al-Qaeda suspects. The top officials at the provincial police said they had no participation or information, whatsoever, in the arrests.

YEARNING FOR FREEDOMIran forces quellmassive uprising Protesters gunned down as people resist Revolutionary Guard assault Posted: December 5, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Iranian Supreme Revolutionary Guard forces under the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly killed a 10-year-old boy in the country's minority Baloch region yesterday, touching off a massive uprising against the Islamic regime countered by a deadly crackdown and imposition of martial law, according to sources on the scene. Amid burning banks, stores and government offices, at least 30 Baloch protesters are dead and 80 injured in the southeastern city of Saravan near the Pakistani border, said Malek Meerdora, who...

NEWS REPORT: PALTALK RADIO BBCNNi 11:00AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME N.Y AND D.C TIME. On the 4rth of December 2003 around 9:00AM Iranian standard time the ayatollah's supreme revolutionary guards stopped a young Baloch boy aged 10 years old...