Pakistani army shows off captured Taliban posts

[maddezmom]

Source: WaPo

Pakistani army shows off captured Taliban posts
'FOUNTAINHEAD OF TERRORISM'
Arsenal, signs of mini-state found

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

SARAROGHA, PAKISTAN -- A toy car booby-trapped with explosives, chemistry textbooks and handwritten case files from a Taliban court were among the debris left behind by fleeing Islamist militants in this remote village in the conflicted tribal region of South Waziristan.

The now-deserted village, which was retaken by Pakistani army forces two weeks ago and visited by Western journalists on Tuesday for the first time since, had been a stronghold of Taliban forces for nearly five years. Army officials described its capture as a military and psychological milestone in their month-old operation to flush militants out of the region.

"This place was a fountainhead of terrorism. All government authority was expelled, and the Taliban leaders even had press conferences here," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, standing on the roof of a mosque that overlooked the rubble of a market, school and military fort that were destroyed in five days of heavy fighting.

~snip~

Public resentment against the United States has grown with persistent reports in the Pakistani media that Xe Services, the U.S. contractor formally known as Blackwater, is operating in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban blamed Xe on Monday for a series of bombings against civilians, including a car bombing that killed more than 100 civilians in a Peshawar market late last month. In an English-language statement posted on its Web site, the Taliban said that Pakistani and U.S. government charges that insurgents were responsible for the blast were part of a plot "to create hatred among the common people" against the Taliban.

Xe is thought to have two Defense Department contracts in Pakistan -- one to construct U.S. training centers for the Frontier Corps, the Pakistani government security force that operates in the border regions, and another to assist in operations at a Pakistani air base in Baluchistan from where the CIA has launched missile attacks from unmanned aircraft against insurgent targets.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/17/AR2009111701647.html

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Taliban Blame ‘Blackwater’ for Pakistan Bombings
By ROBERT MACKEY

On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban said the group accepted responsibility for only some of the recent suicide bombings in Pakistan, laying the blame for others, including a deadly attack on a market last month that killed more than 100 civilians, on the American security firm formerly known as Blackwater. The spokesman claimed that the firm, now called Xe, was involved in an attempt to discredit the militants by staging deadly attacks.

This video report from Al Jazeera includes shots of of Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the broad alliance of Pakistani militant groups known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban, saying, “I want to tell the people in Pakistan and the Muslim nation that the Tehrik-i-Taliban are not responsible for the bombings, but Blackwater and Pakistan’s spy agency are behind them.”

more:http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/taliban-blames-blackwater-for-pakistan-bombings/

[sattahipdeep]

1. Inhumane acts.

Senior officer escapes assassination bid in Pakistan.
This won't be on CNN, FOX, ABC,CBS or MSNBC.