July 3 -- U.S. troops pushed deeper into a Taliban stranglehold in southern Afghanistan in a bid to root out insurgent and stabilize the region, after one Marine was kill on the operation’s first day.
Forces superior into three district centers and are chatting with local leaders to find out what they “want and need,” Captain Bill Pelletier said by telephone today from Camp Leatherneck, a Marine base in Helmand province. Again today, troops face only “light skirmishes” with gunmen who then fled, he added.
The Helmand disagreeable began before dawn yesterday when about 4,000 U.S. personnel and 650 Afghan soldiers poured into the Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored vehicles. The process is the first test of President Barack Obama’s new strategy to defeat the insurgency and involves holding Taliban- under enemy control areas to let Afghan forces and official restore the authority of the Afghan government.
U.S. troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan will be allowable to fly over Russian territory, providing a significant new corridor, the New York Times reported today; cite unidentified Russian and U.S. officials. The accord will be announced when Obama visits Moscow next week, the Times said.
Opium Crop
The assault also threatens a financial pillar of the Taliban group. By today, Marines, Afghan and allied British forces held positions along a 120-mile (193-kilometer) stretch of the Helmand River, whose water irrigates farms that last year grew two-thirds of Afghanistan’s opium crop.
Opium, the uncooked form of heroin, has earned the Taliban and other drug smugglers as much as $470 million a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The Marines advanced as far as Khanishin, a town on the Helmand River from where grime roads used by Taliban and smugglers stretch 80 miles south across the desert to the Pakistani border. Pakistan’s army is “reorganizing” its forces near Helmand to ensure that “Taliban fleeing the U.S. process cannot cross the border,” armed spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said by telephone from the capital, Islamabad, yesterday.
One Marine died and more than a few others were upset yesterday, Pelletier said. Two U.K. troops were killed in a blast during a parallel process by their units near Lashkar Gah on July 1. They were identified late yesterday by the Ministry of Defence as trooper Joshua Hammond and Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe. Thorneloe was commanding official of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards and the highest ranking Army officer to be killed in action since the 1982 Falklands war.
Man Shot
An Afghan man was shot and injured yesterday when he walk toward a group of Marines at a “rapid pace” and didn’t stop after a caution shot was fired, Pelletier said in an e-mail today. The man was taken to a Lashkar Gar hospital, where he is in stable state, Pelletier said.
The government of President Hamid Karzai controls only eight of Helmand’s 13 districts, provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmedi said by telephone from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The U.S. forces are in the main inhabitants centers in the districts of Nawa, Garmsir and Khanishin and will soon be following by civilian officials from non-governmental organizations.
Missing Soldier
In the country’s east, forces are “very tiring all available resources” to recover a U.S. soldier missing since June 30, the armed said in a statement, addition that officials believe he was “captured by militant forces.”
The Helmand unpleasant is the first major operation since the Obama administration shifted emphasis from the war in Iraq to combating Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
Before the operation, international forces in the districts were incomplete to a few British bases. Insurgents have slowly regain control since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001, forcing out local Afghan government and police official.
Read more...
Showing posts with label Who is He Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Who is He Taliban. Show all posts
Friday, July 3, 2009
Baitullah Mehsud: Who is He?
Baitullah Mehsud, the man who claimed accountability for the harass on a police preparation academy in Manawan (on the outskirts of Lahore) on March 30, is a veteran of the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ of the 1980s, and has emerge to become the top Taliban leader in Pakistan. He claims to enjoy a ‘good relationship’ with the Afghan Taliban’s top most chief Mullah Omar. In adding together to in a straight line controlling sizeable militias who have wage overt war with Pakistani security forces in Waziristan, Baitullah has also been responsible for a number of radical attacks in the rest of the country, including the assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto. However, despite all of his exploits, he remains elusive and masked in mystery. According to Jane’s cleverness Guide, Baitullah Mehsud was born for a moment during the 1970’s in the village of Landi Dhok in NWFP’s Bannu region. Though Bannu is far from the customary Mehsud stranglehold of southern Waziristan, it remains ferociously independent, and its residents carry on to display the uniqueness which helped the tribe remain one of the few that might never be conquered by the British during their colonization of the subcontinent.
Despite deteriorating to register on any major cleverness agency’s radar screen until recently, his standing for bravery made for a stable rise through the Taliban’s ranks. Paradoxically, Baitullah was among the selected few Pakistanis who complete it to the Time’s 2009 list of the world’s most powerful people. However, his so called ‘mystery’ has been improved by his refusal to let himself be photographed in current years, citing spiritual beliefs, even though he has had no issues with his press conferences being photographed as long as his face remains hidden.
Baitullah Mehsud play a leading role in a vicious movement against the military operation in Waziristan throughout 2004, during which he working many of the strategy evolved during his time in Afghanistan, counting beheading local policemen, guerrilla warfare and using the rugged terrain to hide troops and supplies.
At that time, Baitullah was operational in close association with Tahir Yuldashev, cofounder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo prisoner who is also said to be Baitullah’s brother but it remains unconfirmed. Another report by Dawn claimed that one of Abdullah’s brothers was a serving major in the Pakistan army, throughout the Waziristan operation which failed in rounding up this top rank of militants. Abdullah Mehsud committed suicide in 2007 after security forces raided his hideout in Balochistan.
The Pakistan Army, decrepit by a long campaign against militants in the region, to finish offered a cease-fire concord to him in February 2005. The agreement cede manage of vast tracts of land to Baitullah Mehsud and saw the army approving to man obtainable forts in the region only with paramilitary Frontier Corpsmen in go back for a vow to end sanctuary for foreign fighters and ending resistance to development projects.
However, according to the New York Times, Baitullah took this as a chance to re-arm his men and merge his grip on power in the region. This seems to be borne out by the fact that when the peace treaty collapsed in August 2007, Baitullah’s tribal armies were even stronger than before. After claiming that the army had dishonored the terms of the ceasefire, his forces launched attacks which seized more than 200 soldiers on August 30, 2007, who were later exchange for 25 militants in November the same year.
On December 14, 2007, he was chosen to lead the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), an sun umbrella group aimed at uniting the largest militant factions operating in the tribal agencies and NWFP. He was also answerable for exacerbating the violence during the Red Mosque operation, which saw army officers attack a seminary in the heart of Islamabad.
In February 2008, Baitullah supposedly announced another ceasefire union with the Pakistani government; however, the Pakistani military officially claims operations against him have not stopped. At the time, Carlotta Gall of the New York Times and Ismail Khan of Dawn report that high-level officials in the Pakistani government confirmed the deal with him.
In July 2008, Baitullah threatened to take action next to the NWFP government if its official did not step down within five days. The warning was met with absolute scorn on the government's part. Only a month later, rumours of his death from kidney failure spread, but were later clarified by his doctor. He continues to live.
Days before the Manawan attack near Lahore, on March 26, the United States government offered a $5 million reward for in sequence on Baitullah Mehsud, telling him as a key al-Qaeda facilitator intending to attack the United States. In the light of recent developments, analyst are debating whether or not the Pakistan army is truly committed to root out Baitullah and his ilk, or whether they fancy to use these militants as an supplementary line of defence against a likely Indian invasion and for acquiring a ‘strategic depth’ of sorts in the region. However, it remains to be seen if the newest attack in Manawan will spark a change in attitudes towards the TTP and their brethren.
Despite deteriorating to register on any major cleverness agency’s radar screen until recently, his standing for bravery made for a stable rise through the Taliban’s ranks. Paradoxically, Baitullah was among the selected few Pakistanis who complete it to the Time’s 2009 list of the world’s most powerful people. However, his so called ‘mystery’ has been improved by his refusal to let himself be photographed in current years, citing spiritual beliefs, even though he has had no issues with his press conferences being photographed as long as his face remains hidden.
Baitullah Mehsud play a leading role in a vicious movement against the military operation in Waziristan throughout 2004, during which he working many of the strategy evolved during his time in Afghanistan, counting beheading local policemen, guerrilla warfare and using the rugged terrain to hide troops and supplies.
At that time, Baitullah was operational in close association with Tahir Yuldashev, cofounder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo prisoner who is also said to be Baitullah’s brother but it remains unconfirmed. Another report by Dawn claimed that one of Abdullah’s brothers was a serving major in the Pakistan army, throughout the Waziristan operation which failed in rounding up this top rank of militants. Abdullah Mehsud committed suicide in 2007 after security forces raided his hideout in Balochistan.
The Pakistan Army, decrepit by a long campaign against militants in the region, to finish offered a cease-fire concord to him in February 2005. The agreement cede manage of vast tracts of land to Baitullah Mehsud and saw the army approving to man obtainable forts in the region only with paramilitary Frontier Corpsmen in go back for a vow to end sanctuary for foreign fighters and ending resistance to development projects.
However, according to the New York Times, Baitullah took this as a chance to re-arm his men and merge his grip on power in the region. This seems to be borne out by the fact that when the peace treaty collapsed in August 2007, Baitullah’s tribal armies were even stronger than before. After claiming that the army had dishonored the terms of the ceasefire, his forces launched attacks which seized more than 200 soldiers on August 30, 2007, who were later exchange for 25 militants in November the same year.
On December 14, 2007, he was chosen to lead the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), an sun umbrella group aimed at uniting the largest militant factions operating in the tribal agencies and NWFP. He was also answerable for exacerbating the violence during the Red Mosque operation, which saw army officers attack a seminary in the heart of Islamabad.
In February 2008, Baitullah supposedly announced another ceasefire union with the Pakistani government; however, the Pakistani military officially claims operations against him have not stopped. At the time, Carlotta Gall of the New York Times and Ismail Khan of Dawn report that high-level officials in the Pakistani government confirmed the deal with him.
In July 2008, Baitullah threatened to take action next to the NWFP government if its official did not step down within five days. The warning was met with absolute scorn on the government's part. Only a month later, rumours of his death from kidney failure spread, but were later clarified by his doctor. He continues to live.
Days before the Manawan attack near Lahore, on March 26, the United States government offered a $5 million reward for in sequence on Baitullah Mehsud, telling him as a key al-Qaeda facilitator intending to attack the United States. In the light of recent developments, analyst are debating whether or not the Pakistan army is truly committed to root out Baitullah and his ilk, or whether they fancy to use these militants as an supplementary line of defence against a likely Indian invasion and for acquiring a ‘strategic depth’ of sorts in the region. However, it remains to be seen if the newest attack in Manawan will spark a change in attitudes towards the TTP and their brethren.
Read more...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
