10 injured in toy bomb explosion in Hasilpur

[These monsters are just like the Russians were.]

10 injured in toy bomb explosion in Hasilpur

LAHORE: At least 10 people were injured when a toy bomb exploded in a house in the Christian colony of Hasilpur on Friday, a private TV channel reported. According to the channel, four women and two children were among the injured. The channel quoted sources as saying that the children found a parcel wrapped in a cloth outside their home, which exploded with a huge blast when brought inside. The injured were shifted to a local hospital where some of them were said to be in critical condition. daily times monitor

Aftermath: mourning and fear

Prominent anti-Taliban cleric Sarfraz Naeemi was among at least six people killed in twin suicide bombings at Pakistani mosques on June 12 in a day of bloodshed that claimed nearly 80 lives. The bombings during Friday prayers confirmed fears that Taliban militants were avenging an offensive against them in the northwest, where the military said Friday 39 insurgents and 10 soldiers had been killed in fresh fighting.A look at the images of the strike and the protest in response to the attacks on June 13.—AFP & AP Photos.

Pakistani paramilitary soldiers keep positions at a checkpoint in Hyderabad.

Pakistani policemen stand guard in front of the Jamia Naeemia madrassa -

Pakistani soldiers secure the area beside a destroyed mosque following a suicide

Pakistani policemen remove burning tyres which were torched by religious

A woman with her children walks in a market which closed due to a strike in

Pakistani religious students march during a protest in Lahore.

A Pakistani paramilitary soldier searches a car at a checkpoint in Karachi.

Men protest the death of Muslim cleric Sarfraz Naeemi through the streets of

Deserted look of a market in Lahore.—APP Photo.

The Lahore blast and Taliban ideology

Posted by Huma in Pakistan, Politics on 06 12th, 2009 | 43 responses

The fight against the Taliban on ideological battlegrounds poses a grave challenge, writes Dawn.com’s Huma Yusuf.

Scan newspapers and blogs in recent months and you’ll see that the fight against the Taliban in north-west Pakistan has been framed as a ‘war against terror’ or an ‘information war’ over the ‘hearts and minds’ of residents of the Frontier province. Op-eds have argued that the Pakistan Army is fighting the Taliban to restore territorial integrity, safeguard human rights, ensure good governance and establish the writ of the Pakistani state. Books and articles point out that Taliban foot soldiers are young men, lured to militancy by hefty cash dole-outs in the absence of other job opportunities. Indeed, one aspect of the fight against the Taliban has almost been forgotten in recent months – its ideological underpinnings.

The suicide bombing at the Jamia Naeemia mosque in Lahore on Friday, in which the head cleric Dr Sarfraz Naeemi lost his life, is an urgent reminder that the fight against the Taliban is nothing less than a battle for the future of Islam and how the religion is to be practiced and interpreted in Pakistan.

Events in recent months – such as the fiasco of the passage of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation and increased focus on the Taliban’s funding sources – have made many Pakistanis cynical about their motives. In some quarters, the militants are viewed as money- and power-hungry warlords, hell-bent on claiming territory and control (and revelling in the wealth that Swat’s emerald mines have to offer). But Friday’s blast confirms that Pakistan’s militants are primarily on a broad ideological mission to impose, consolidate and spread their preferred interpretation of Islam.

Dr. Naeemi was not targeted by suicide bombers because he could offer them cash, territory, new recruits, communications technology or weapons. He was targeted because he opposed the Taliban ideology, consistently and brazenly. Earlier this month, he led a rally in Lahore condemning the Taliban. Members of two dozen parties comprising a Sunni alliance known as Tahaffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz gathered behind Dr. Naeemi as he criticised the Taliban, demanded the eradication of militancy and expressed vociferous support for the military operation in Swat.

For opposing the Taliban ideology – and having the clerical clout that makes his opposition significant – Dr. Naeemi was killed by a suicide bomber in his own office on the premises of the Jamia Naeemi mosque.

He isn’t the first cleric who shuns extremist Islamic views to be assassinated, and he won’t be the last. In fact, the practice of targeting influential clerics with contradicting ideas has been flourishing among Afghan Taliban for several years now. Clerics of the Ulema Shura, a body comprising two thousand religious leaders that opposed the Taliban ‘jihad’, were regularly killed by militants in Afghanistan. Their support for Hamid Karzai’s government and a softer interpretation of Islam ‘displeased’ Taliban commanders who would ‘kill them’ to ‘obtain silence’.

For good or for bad, it’s time Pakistanis realised that once the dust settles in the wake of the Rah-e-Rast operation, the war against the Taliban will continue on ideological battlegrounds. And Friday’s blast reaffirms that these are not metaphorical battlegrounds, confined to the column inches of scholarly journals or the lecture halls of universities. These battlegrounds will take the form of mosques and madrassahs. They have already taken the form of Sufi shrines.

Recently, analysts have criticised the fact that politicians and political parties defer to religious councils to support their secular stance against the Taliban. For example, the MQM, despite its secular credentials, convened an ulema convention to speak out against Taliban infiltration. Similarly, the Pakistan government recently created a seven-member Sufi Advisory Council aimed at combating Talibanisation by spreading Sufi teachings instead. These efforts have been maligned because they “add yet another layer of religious governance to a country wracked by religious conflict” and further entangle religion and the state.

No doubt, having the Pakistan government champion and concretise one interpretation of Islam as the ‘correct’ one in an effort to stamp out extremist interpretations is a dangerous idea. But those who genuinely want to see the eradication of the Pakistani Taliban – liberals, moderates, and those who advocate for the separation of the church and state included – cannot now shy away from an ideological battle.

It is increasingly apparent that the struggle for a Pakistan free of militancy is conflated with a struggle over the soul of Islam. For that reason, in addition to military operations that target Taliban methodology (bombings, attacks, killings), the government – and the people of Pakistan – will have to jointly engage in ijtehad to devise a way to quash Taliban ideology.

Anti-Islam Attacks Expose So-called “Islamists” as Frauds Who Target Real Muslims

Extremists have no religion, says Taseer

LAHORE

PUNJAB Governor Salman Taseer has said that the inhumane killing of a peace loving religious personality like Sarfraz Naeemi, who was respected among all sects shows that militants do not belong to any religion or sect.

According to a press statement issued on Friday, the governor expressed grief at the loss of the eminent religious scholar, Sarfraz Naeemi.

He said that the new wave of attacks on mosques and religiously significant places was targeting the Ulema and religious leaders.

He said that Sarfraz Naeemi Shaheed was a learned Muslim scholar, who was known for his moderate and peaceful approach and his love for humanity.

Salman Taseer said that he was respected among other sects and factions in addition to the Barelvi School of thought.

The governor said that despite threats and opposition, Sarfraz Naeemi stood fast for his stance that suicide attacks were Harram and cannot be termed Islamic.

He said that Sarfraz Naeemi Shaheed laid it out clearly that suicide attackers not only died a Harram death but also defile the image of the peace-loving and tolerant image of Islam.

Salman Taseer commended the invaluable services rendered by the late religious scholar and said that he spent his life struggling for the pronunciation of the true principles and image of Islam.

He said that the people of Pakistan had identified the true face of these so-called Islamist militants and by the Grace of God, they now do not have any place to hide.

The governor prayed for the deceased and his family and said that not only he and the government but also the whole nation was with them in this sad and difficult moment.

Security Measures Tightened at Peshawar Airport

Threat to commercial flights being taken seriously

By: Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: The Defence Ministry has asked the Interior Ministry to secure approach areas for take offs and landings of commercial flights at the country’s airports amid rising terrorist threats to aircraft, it was learnt.

The post-Peshawar Pearl Continental terrorist attack decision of the PIA management to stop the airlines operation to and from Peshawar was said to be the consequence of the same threats but it was reportedly the government’s immediate intervention that forced the airlines to reverse its decision. The PIA management, however, denied this.

Documents available with The News reveal the Defence Ministry issued a “confidential” office memorandum on June 3 to the interior secretary, who was asked to take security measures around the approach areas of the country’s airports from possible ground fire during landings and take offs of commercial airlines.

In Peshawar where the runway ends, the villages of Bara begin where any civilian aircraft is a few hundred feet away and could become a sitting duck to a rocket attack. Referring to a news report that a banned militant/terrorist outfit has given a deadline of June 14, 2009 that they would target commercial jets if the government does not stop the military operation in Swat, the Defence Ministry said the Pakistan Airlines Pilot Association (Palpa) had also conveyed its concern regarding the threat to commercial aircraft.

“It is important to mention here that aircraft are most vulnerable to ground fire during landings and take offs. More attention for foolproof security may be given to funnel areas and areas adjacent to airports,” the ministry’s OM reads.

It asked the Interior Ministry to direct quarters concerned to ensure security of these areas with focus on the following: a) Proper record of personnel living in these areas including maintenance of their antecedents; b) Deployment of intelligence staff to keep an eye over new entrants into these areas; c) Round-the-clock monitoring of activities in these areas; d) Frequent combing be carried out as a deterrent; e) Effective patrolling to ensure extra vigil; f) Special care may be taken at those airports which fall within the populated towns/cities and/or located in troubled areas.

Sources said following these concerns, the PIA management took a surprising decision to suspend its Peshawar operation a day after the city’s top hotel was targeted by terrorists, killing several innocent people. According to documents, the PIA’s Situation Room, Flight Operations Head Office, Karachi, sent an e-mail message to all concerned on June 10 at 03:40 pm, which reads: “SUB-I AS PER DFO (DIRECTOR FLIGHT OPERATIONS INTRUCTIONS PEW (PESHAWAR) AIRPORT IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR ANY TAKE OFF AND LANDING FOR PIA FLIGHT WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT AND TILL FURTHER NOTICE STP (STOP) SUB-II ALL PEW-BOUND FLIGHTS WILL OPTE (OPERATE) VIA ISB (ISLAMABAD) CMA (COMA) PAX (PASSENGERS) TO/FROM PEW WILL BE TRANSPORTED BY SURFACE. SUB-III DETAILED ITY (ITINERARY) OF EFFECTED FLIGHTS WILL BE ADVISED. SUB-IV ALL TO NOTE AND ACTION ACCDLY (ACCORDINGLY).”

However, at 04:41 pm, the Situation Room issued another e-mail where the PIA management brought in the pilot union, which was not reflected in the first suspension order, which was clear and unambiguous. In the second message, the management conveyed that the pilot union had refused to operate flights in and out of Peshawar for which alternate arrangements were being finalised. It also said in the meantime negotiations were also being made with the pilot union to resume normal Peshawar operations.

At 05-10 pm the same day, a new message was issued conveying that since the pilot union had agreed to operate flights bound for Peshawar, hence all previous e-mails stood cancelled. It further said now all flights would operate on normal route via Peshawar.

According to Palpa sources, it was a case of PIA’s mismanagement. In order to shift the responsibility to Palpa, these sources said, the management dragged Palpa into the controversy. These sources said after the issuance of the suspension order, the government immediately intervened and asked the PIA management if it wanted to embarrass Pakistan in the world community by telling the news-hungry international media that the PIA had suspended its Peshawar operations.

PIA Managing-Director Ejaz Haroon, however, denied this and insisted the airlines message concerning suspension of its Peshawar operation on June 10 was a mistake. He said the operation was never suspended but the “wrongly drafted message” was sent to all and sundry mistakenly. He guessed perhaps Director Flight Operations did not read the e-mail that he had dictated but that carried a wrong message. Haroon said as soon as he got to know about the erroneous message, he immediately asked the person concerned to correct it.

He said actually the pilot association (Palpa) was reluctant to fly to and from Peshawar. He categorically denied that at any stage the government had intervened to get the PIA flight suspension order reversed.

Palpa President Captain Imran Usman, when contacted, said Palpa had nothing to do with the PIA decision of suspending its Peshawar operation. He said the PIA management’s original e-mail speaks for itself as to who was at fault and as to who did take the order for the suspension of PIA operation in Peshawar.

He said neither Palpa had asked the management to suspend the PIA operation in Peshawar it could do it on its own. He said it was the PIA that itself decided to suspend the PIA operation at Peshawar and later reversed it too but unfairly shifting the responsibility to Palpa. A source said the Peshawar-bound PK-609, which was to depart from Lahore on the same day, was cancelled.

No Let Up in Insurgent Attacks in the North Caucasus

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 113

June 12, 2009 05:23 PM Age: 13 hrs

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Home Page, North Caucasus Weekly, Military/Security, North Caucasus

By: The Jamestown Foundation

The crime scene that followed the shooting of Dagestan’s Interior Minister, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov

The armed underground Islamist movement in Dagestan, the Sharia Jamaat, has claimed responsibility for the June 5 assassination of the republic’s Interior Minister, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov. The Sharia Jamaat posted a relatively short initial claim on its website on June 9, in which it said that a “special operations group” had killed the Dagestani Interior Minister, who it called “an evil enemy of Allah,” a kafir (unbeliever), a murtad (apostate) and an enemy of Islam “guilty of murdering hundreds of Muslims and of torture and kidnappings” (www.jamaatshariat.com, June 9).

The Sharia Jamaat posted a longer claim of responsibility for the Magomedtagirov assassination on its website on June 11. This claim of responsibility was signed by Ibragim Gadzhidadaev, who described himself as the “emir of the Gimry Jamaat” in the “vilayat of Dagestan (Sharia Jamaat).” His statement was also posted on June 11 on the Kavkaz-Center website, which serves as the mouthpiece of the Caucasus Emirate, as the radical Islamist wing of the resistance in the North Caucasus now calls itself.

After the obligatory quotations from the Koran, Gadzhidadaev declares in his statement that on June 5, “for the purpose of trying to please the Almighty Allah and so that this would later become a gift to all Muslims, on that Friday holiday, we carried out a special operation to destroy the evil enemy of Allah, one of the ringleaders of infidelity in Dagestan, Adilgerei Magomedtagirov.”

Gadzhidadaev goes on to accuse Magomedtagirov of torturing and murdering Muslims in Dagestan, and specifically cites the actions by republican security forces against Gimry, his home village. Gimry, the birthplace of the Imam Shamil, the legendary leader of the anti-Russian resistance in the Caucasian war of the 19th century, reportedly has been a stronghold of Salafist ideology in Dagestan and was the target of a large-scale security operation that began in December 2007 and lasted until August 2008. Gadzhidadaev’s statement accuses the Magomedtagirov of a variety of crimes during the course of the security operation in Gimry (www.jamaatshariat.com, http://www.kavkazcenter.com, June 11).

Meanwhile, the security situation in Dagestan continues to worsen. Dagestani President Mukhu Aliev told journalists in Makhachkala on June 11 that the number of policemen killed in attacks by militants in the republic is significantly higher this year compared with the same period last year. Aliev said that 22 law-enforcement officers had been killed so far this year, compared with eight during the same period last year.

On June 12, the day after Aliev made his comments, two militants and an OMON police commando were killed in a shootout in Makhachkala. The gun battle took place after security forces surrounded the militants’ car in the Dagestani capital. The militants were suspected of involvement in a series attacks on policemen, including the murder of an OMON commando in the village of Tyube on June 9 (EDM, June 10). Another policeman was shot and killed in Makhachkala on June 12. The victim of the attack by unidentified gunmen was a police officer from the Sovietsky district police department in the Dagestani capital (www.newsru.com, June 12).

On June 10, Federal Security Service (FSB) bomb disposal experts defused an explosive device that was discovered on a mountain pass on the Makhachkala-Buinaksk road. The device consisted of a metal box filled with ammonia saltpeter, aluminum powder and pieces of metal and had a remote control device attached to it (Interfax, June 11). On the evening of June 10, an explosion occurred in the city of Khasavyurt as a police canine unit was inspecting a sidewalk. One of the policemen was slightly injured in the blast. On the morning of June 10, members of the police department in Dagestan’s Karamakhinsky district repulsed a rebel attack. No one was hurt in the incident (Kavkazsky Uzel, June 12).

There have also been fresh attacks in other republics of the North Caucasus over the past several days. Militants armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers attacked two cars carrying federal Interior Ministry servicemen from the Russian city of Kemerovo near the Chechen town of Bamut on the evening of June 11, wounding four. On the evening of June 9, militants in Chechnya’s Sunzha district attacked a column of Interior Ministry vehicles, and two servicemen were injured when one of the vehicles went out of control and crashed into a tree (Kavkazsky Uzel, June 12). On June 10, the deputy chairperson of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court, Aza Gazgereyeva, was shot to death in the center of Nazran (EDM, June 10). On June 9, unidentified attackers fired from a grenade launcher on a group of military bomb disposal experts on the Kavkaz federal highway in Ingushetia near the village of Gamurdievo. One serviceman was wounded in the attack (Interfax, June 9).

In what may be a sign of Moscow’s growing alarm over the security situation in the North Caucasus in general and particularly in Dagestan, Anatoly Safonov, the Russian presidential envoy for the issues of international cooperation in the fight against terrorism and transnational organized crime, told reporters in Moscow on June 11 he was concerned terrorists from Iraq could end up coming to the region. Noting that Iraq has become kind of a school for terrorists, Safonov said: “Just imagine how many ‘graduates’ this school may have … We are not immune from their return. Naturally, they will try to come here, to the Caucasus, to Dagestan” (Interfax, June 11).

Manmohan, Zardari to meet in Russia

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: In what is to be the first high-level contact between India and Pakistan since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet President Asif Zardari on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia next week.

“They will be in the same room at the same time and they will shake hands and meet and have a conversation,” Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told reporters here on Friday when asked about the possibility of the two principals meeting in Yekaterinburg on June 16. “But what kind of meeting it will be is hard to predict.” Mr. Menon said separate time had not been kept aside and that the Prime Minister was on a very tight schedule.

Asked whether India was now open to the resumption of the bilateral official dialogue, suspended since last year, the Foreign Secretary said, “There can be nothing more authoritative than what the Prime Minister said on the floor of the House earlier this week.”

On June 9, Dr. Singh had told the Rajya Sabha India can choose its friends but had to live with its neighbours. “When I look at the relations between the United States and Iran, I think, they have gone through difficult periods extending over the last 30 years, but, ultimately, even a mighty power like the U.S. has found it is necessary to come to terms with the reality of the Iranian situation, and, therefore, there is no other alternative but to pursue the path of dialogue.”

Confirming the Prime Minister’s inclination to find a way of engaging Pakistan, senior officials said there would likely be no dramatic breakthrough in Yekaterinburg. The government intends to make haste slowly, they said, giving Islamabad the opportunity to demonstrate its seriousness in investigating and prosecuting the Mumbai case before proposing concrete ways of picking up the threads of the peace process.

Dr. Singh and Mr. Zardari will likely meet again in Sharm-el-Shaikh, Egypt, scheduled for July 11-16.