Target Centermass

Category: Central Asia

  • Violence Flares in Uzbekistan

    Protests and prisoners. Bloodshed and hostages. Uzbekistan teeters on the edge of a precipice and, of course, radical Islamists are involved.

    Police opened fire on thousands of protesters in the central Asian state of Uzbekistan yesterday, after an armed mob stormed a jail to free 23 men accused of Islamist extremism.

    At least 12 people were killed and dozens injured in the fighting in the eastern town of Andijan. Fifteen police officers were held hostage by rioters.

    Demonstrators in the central square demanded the resignation of the authoritarian president, Islam Karimov. Some protesters had taken over the local administration building and were flanked by men armed with machine guns.

    Yesterday afternoon, witnesses reported that a truck of soldiers drove into the crowd three times, firing into it or into the air. “I was lying down, but the guy next to me was dead,” said one witness. He said he had seen five people injured in the shooting.

    The government claimed that protesters had opened fire on troops. It insisted it was in control of the town and had retaken the administration building in bitter fighting with armed protesters.

    A government source told Reuters last night: “The square has been cleared. Protesters have left. The building has been freed from those who seized it. The search for weapons is under way.”

    The witness said he and other protesters were fleeing the town. “It’s too dangerous here,” he said. The last gunfire had been at 7pm local time on a main road near the centre.

    Protesters reportedly used a police hostage as a “human shield” when engaging troops. The authorities said in a televised statement: “The militants are sheltering behind women, children and hostages. They will not compromise with the authorities.”

    Some reports said that 50 people had died in clashes with the police. Mr Karimov’s press service said he had rushed to the scene to negotiate. Officials said he had later returned to the capital, Tashkent.

    The unrest threatened to spark wider popular revolt in Uzbekistan, an impoverished state of 26 million people. It borders Kyrgyzstan, where violent protests in March ousted the country’s authoritarian government. Uzbekistan, the most brutal dictatorship in the former Soviet Union, has cracked down on dissent since three protest-led regime changes swept through the region in the last 19 months.

    Yes, this is one former Soviet republic that has played a very important role in the war against Islamist terror, particularly in the Afghanistan theater.

    Uzbekistan has been a US ally in the war on terror since 2001, and hosts a vital airbase in the south. Critics say this has caused Washington to turn a blind eye to its torture record. The US last night called on the government and protesters to show restraint.

    “We are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organisation that were freed from prison,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

    Much more information and analysis can be found at Captain’s Quarters, Publius Pundit and especially Registan, a blog I was previously unfamiliar with that is all over the story with several posts and updates, starting here.

  • Is Osama’s Location Known?

    Chad at In the Bullpen shows that the chief of the general staff of the Israeli Defense Forces thinks so. Me, I’m not exactly sold. Fine, I’ll believe in a narrowing down to a small region, but that doesn’t mean it is a militarily or politically actionable deal … yet.

    Waziristan is fairly large and is home to several different tribes and warlords. It is believed many of these tribes are friendly to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. This is the area of the map where it is known that Osama Bin Laden, rumored that he rode out on horseback, fled during the Tora Bora operation under a cease-fire. It was believed he did not go too far, yet no one has known. How Ya’alon knows is beyond me, however Israel’s intelligence service is one of the best in the world.

    Assuming Ya’alon and U.S. Intelligence are correct and Osama Bin Laden is hiding out in Waziristan, allow me to discuss just a bit on what would need to happen in order to get him.

    Good start. Go read.

    Personally, I don’t care too terribly much about catching bin Laden. Yeah, I’d love it and I would hope that he would suffer horribly and painfully at our hands. And I ain’t talking panties-on-the-head or naked-human-pyramid-Twister suffering. I mean pain.

    That said, bin Laden is really but a pawn in this war. We’re dealing with a conflict of the centuries — the fifteenth versus the twenty-first. The objective is to provide an alternative, a shining city on the Arab hill, to the atmosphere that allowed bin Laden and his murderous followers to be given a sizable say in popular belief in the region. This war is not against one man but one belief — one radical, backward and violent thread of Islam. Chad agrees.

    I contend that even if Bin Laden was either killed or captured it would do little to nothing to win the war on terror. We must attack radical Islam at the root cause and not just the people calling the shots.

    Iraq plays a role in this. They may, if we stay resolute, be the start of the alternative hope of which I speak.

    Yes, I want bin Laden caught … and skinned. However, only at a time when his capture will help and not harm our process, as a bold thrust by Americans into Pakistan currently would do.

  • Man Chops Off Hands of Protester in India

    Just in case you believed violent backwardness was limited to the radical Islamists, there’s this tale of butchery over what is essentially the practice of dealing off minors.

    A man with a sword cut off the hands of a government social worker in central India for trying to stop child marriages, officials said Wednesday. The attack on the woman highlighted the difficulty of ending the centuries-old practice in the region.

    Yeah. Hands chopped off with a sword highlighted difficulty. That, folks, is one heck of a freakin’ understatement.

    Shakuntala Verma, a supervisor with the Department of Women and Child Development in Madhya Pradesh state, was attacked Tuesday night in Bhangarh village, Superintendent of Police H. L. Borana was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India.

    Wednesday marked a Hindu festival in which hundreds of minors are married off.

    No arrests have been made in the attack in Bhangargh, 170 [sic, 170 what?] west of the state capital, Bhopal.

    Child marriage is illegal in India, but the ancient practice is still prevalent in some rural pockets of Madhya Pradesh. However, the number of marriages was down this year as a result of tough measures taken by police, the New Delhi Television News channel reported.

    Verma had been protesting child marriages in the area, officials said.

    In New Delhi, Chief Minister Babulal Gaur, the state’s administrator, said it was not possible to end the practice with legal measures.

    “The (law) to prevent child marriage is so ancient. But even after so many decades of the law coming into being, child marriages continue to take place. We cannot stop it forcefully. What is required is awareness,” he said.

    Awareness of swords in the vicinity would also be of assistance to social workers, or so it would seem.

  • Paks, Afghans Outraged Over Alleged Koran Desecration

    I have little interest personally in this story of alleged insulting treatment of the Koran at Guantanamo other than to say, if true, well, that’s pretty freakin’ stupid and needs to be corrected. Fast.

    Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the story has some in a state of near-apoplexy.

    Pakistan, a key Muslim ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, has voiced deep concern to Washington over a magazine report that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran.

    Newsweek magazine, in its latest edition, quoted sources as saying that investigators probing abuses at the military prison had found that interrogators “had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

    The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Pakistan conveyed its deep concern to Washington over the reported desecration of the Muslim holy book, which sparked a student protest in Afghanistan and outraged Pakistani lawmakers.

    “U.S. officials have stated that the alleged perpetrators of the reported desecration would be held accountable after the matter had been appropriately investigated and responsibility is established,” the statement said.

    There has been growing public outrage in Pakistan over the report. The National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, on Monday passed a resolution denouncing the reported desecration and Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer turned politician, last week demanded an apology from the United States.

    In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, about 2,000 students chanting “Death to America” protested over the reported desecration, some of them holding up an effigy of President Bush and shouting “Death to Bush.”

    […]

    State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the United States took the allegations seriously.

    “Obviously, the destruction of any kind of holy book, whether it’s a Bible or a Koran or any other document like that, is something that’s reprehensible and not in keeping with U.S. policies and practices,” he said.

    Quite counter-productive to our overall efforts. Such tales certainly endanger some of our successes to date if not dealt with properly. Oh yeah, did I already say stupid?

    On the bright side, there is this, the wrath of a particular Pak pol.

    Cricket hero-turned politician Imran Khan joined Pakistan’s parliament in denouncing the alleged desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Koran, by US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay.

    Khan also condemned a US newspaper for publishing what politicians say is a humiliating cartoon about Pakistan’s hunt for Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

    “If the United States does not apologise on these incidents, then they must be asked to wrap up and vacate our bases under their use,” Khan was quoted as saying.

    Khan!!!

    Man, I love any excuse to use that link.

  • Domino Theory, Terrorist Style

    Tip a big domino.

    Watch the result.

    More al-Qaida suspects seized in terror raids across Pakistan

    Pakistani soldiers swooped on two dozen suspected al-Qaida fighters after interrogating the man believed to be the terror network’s third in command, officials said yesterday.

    Abu Faraj al-Libbi, captured this week, is thought to be al-Qaida’s operations chief, and security forces in Pakistan said he could also provide leads to the whereabouts of the network’s leader, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Both are believed to slip frequently between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Yesterday, raids in Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, and the Bajaur tribal area, resulted in the arrest of more than 20 other al-Qaida suspects, as well as the seizure of guns and grenades.

    Analysts said the success of the operations justified Pakistan’s assertion that it was winning the war against terrorism. “From the arrests it looks as if Pakistan has been quite successful in containing al-Qaida activity on its own soil,” said Khalid Mahmud of the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad.

    Bin Laden aide had ten-strong British network

    Al-Qaeda’S third-in-command, being interrogated after his capture in Pakistan, was in close contact with ten militants working for him in Britain, according to investigators.

    So far Abu Farj al-Libbi has refused to reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his key accomplices.

    His British cell is said to include a radical cleric and a terror suspect awaiting trial but the eight other men are still at large.

    Their role was allegedly to carry cash around the world for the network using a number of aliases. Counter-terror officials are not certain of the identity of the eight suspects, who are said to be of Pakistani and North African origin. British officials hope that they will eventually be allowed to question al-Libbi.

    Let’s hope the dominoes keep falling.

  • Afghanistan: the Bad, the Good

    Afghan Rebels Step Up Attacks, Killing 9 Near Pakistani Border

    Nine Afghan soldiers were killed and three were wounded in an ambush Thursday in southern Afghanistan, in the most deadly single attack by rebels against the newly trained Afghan National Army, a military spokesman said.

    US forces kill 64 Taliban militants

    In the bloodiest fighting in Afghanistan in nine months, the US and government forces killed 64 Taliban-led militants, the US military said on Thursday; nine Afghan troops and a policeman were also killed.

    Seven US soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which began on Tuesday. American warplanes and helicopters pounded bands of militants in clashes in Zabul and Kandahar.

    That cannot be considered a Taliban success.

  • Key al-Queda Figure Nabbed

    An extremely high-ranking al-Queda member, possibly its number three man, has been captured in Pakistan. With the news, USA Today borders on focusing in the popular-but-wrong direction.

    When President Bush said after the 9/11 attacks that he wanted al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” few would have thought he would still be at large nearly four years later.

    Wednesday brought new hope that for all bin Laden’s elusiveness, he is not entirely safe: Pakistan announced the capture of al-Qaeda’s suspected No. 3 man, Abu Farraj al-Libbi.

    Al-Libbi (“the Libyan”) has a string of jaw-dropping allegations against him, including two attempts on the life of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and one last year on the country’s prime minister. But the key part of his résumé is that he reportedly stepped into al-Qaeda’s No. 3 role after 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, also in Pakistan, in March 2003.

    The arrest is a reminder of the grinding nature of the war on terror and how progress is incremental and painstaking. It also spotlights the importance of allies — none more so than Pakistan.

    After 9/11, Pakistan made the difficult decision to work with the U.S., setting Islamic militants, who hold sway in much of the country, firmly against Musharraf. The relationship is delicate for the U.S., too, since Musharraf is resisting the democracy and freedom the U.S. is also pushing, and because Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

    The precise impact of removing known al-Qaeda leaders is uncertain. When one is cut down, back-ups quickly step in. Al-Qaeda cells operate independently. Still, any organization that loses about half of its top 25, as al-Qaeda has since 9/11, loses potency.

    Al-Libbi was seized in Pakistan’s wild northwest region, where many believe bin Laden is hiding. Will the trail lead next to bin Laden and his deputy, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri? Al-Libbi’s capture at least revives that possibility. For now, though, removing al-Qaeda’s purported No. 3 inflicts a less-than-mortal wound. Capturing or killing No. 1 and No. 2 would do far more: removing the men whose symbiotic alliance produced the horrors of 9/11.

    Look, no one wants bin Laden dead more than me. That said, I see it as a marginal issue in the war against Islamist terror. This is not a campaign against one evil man but rather a campaign against those like him and the culture that allowed him to thrive and would spew forth others of his like to replace him. The USA Today piece does do a good job of reflecting the necessarily grinding nature of this campaign, however, and of realizing the obviously diminished capabilities of the terrorists’ having to plug in understudies into a large chunk of their leadership.

    What the USA Today and America need to realize is simply this: the war is not about bin Laden but presenting an alternative society to the one that spawned the beast. And that is where Iraq comes into play — the possibility of a shining Arab city on the hill.

  • General Predicts Taliban’s Demise

    The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has predicted that the Taliban would cease to even resemble a cohesive military threat shortly. Surprisingly, the Taliban agrees.

    The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan predicted Saturday that the Taliban militia would collapse as a viable fighting force over the next several months as rank-and-file members accept a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government.

    Lt. Gen. David W. Barno warned, however, that remaining Taliban extremists financed and trained by al Qaeda allies may attempt to compensate by staging a high-profile attack in Afghanistan within the next six to nine months.

    “As these terrorists’ capabilities grow more and more limited, the hard-core fanatics will grow more and more desperate to try and do something to change the course of events in Afghanistan,” Barno said at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. “I expect they will be looking … to garner media publicity and to try and score some type of propaganda victory.”

    Yes, matters are progressing, but they are not safe. Things are not secure by a long shot when the enemy knows that there are headlines yet to be grabbed. But now, on to the interesting part of the story.

    Earlier Saturday, a senior Taliban official said in an audio tape released to the Reuters news agency that militia leaders were planning to shift from guerrilla warfare to terrorist-style attacks.

    Maulvi Abdul Kabir, who is considered second in the Taliban hierarchy, said the group was training suicide bombers to target government officials, foreign forces and aid workers in major cities and to infiltrate various security forces.

    “The change of tactics is an easy way for us to have a longer-term war of attrition and would also not cost many lives for us,” Kabir reportedly said on the tape.

    Please allow me to translate for you:

    Dear Reuters,

    That great spring offensive we’ve been threatening? Forget about it.

    We took a headcount recently and decided it was time to think outside the box. Outside the killzone, actually. First, we repeatedly got our asses handed to us on the battlefield by forces that were generally only assisted and supported by the Americans. After that series of failures swept us from our cruel, despotic rule, we bravely switched to guerrilla tactics. Okay, so our record was dismal in that, as well, and we were unable to dent the growing legitimacy of the new government or severely harm the Americans. Oh yeah, we were also getting shredded. That tends to harm morale, we admit.

    Now, we have bravely decided to become the thugs and terrorists the world already knew us to be. In this, we may be able to kill more innocents while bravely saving some of our own asses.

    Sincerely,
    the Taliban

    And just how good is the Taliban at terrorism? Well, of course they’re a threat, but they’ve still got some things to work on before their reign of terror can really take hold.

    Several incidents have also been reported in Kabul in the past several days, including the discovery of a small amount of TNT on a trash truck attempting to enter the U.S. military headquarters compound Thursday.

    Lt. Cindy Moore, a military spokeswoman, said the explosive material, which was stuffed in the well of a headlight and detected by a bomb-sniffing dog, was very degraded and not attached to a detonating device. Moore said she did not know the driver’s nationality or whether that person had been detained.

    Foreign workers in the capital have been on edge since last Sunday, when armed assailants seized a U.S. citizen and forced him into the trunk of a car. According to U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul, the man used a lug wrench to unlock the trunk from the inside and jumped out of the vehicle while it was speeding away. Afghan investigators have arrested three suspects in the incident.

    Oops! It’s good to see that in terrorism, as in so many other matters, the devil is in the details.

    Now, back to that amnesty program.

    Neither Barno nor Afghan officials would disclose how many Taliban members have accepted President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation offer, which seeks to bring in members hiding in Afghanistan or in other countries. Under the arrangement, Taliban members must recognize the legitimacy of the elected government in exchange for assurances that they will not face arrest by foreign or Afghan forces.

    Human rights groups and some Afghans say they fear the offer will enable many former Taliban members to escape justice for past wrongdoing.

    Members of Karzai’s administration have stressed that the offer does not constitute a permanent amnesty program and does not extend to roughly 100 top Taliban leaders implicated in serious crimes. A commission charged with determining the exact details of the program has progressed slowly, but some Taliban members have already begun negotiating with U.S. military commanders and Afghan officials.

    And here’s the money shot.

    Barno said he believed that large numbers of the Taliban force, which once numbered in the thousands, would eventually accept the offer.

    “More and more Taliban realize they don’t want to be in this fight that goes against the tide of history here in Afghanistan any longer,” he said.

    It’s good to have news of progress for the good guys confirmed by both sides.

  • Iranian Pleads Guilty in Smuggling Attempt

    If you’re going to get caught trying to smuggle weapons, I guess it’s best to make it worth your while. You know, something like an entire F-14.

    One has to admire the ambition. Now throw away the key.

  • Pakistani Accused of Exporting Devices

    Not much I want to comment on this; there’s just a link I’ve been aching to use.

    A Pakistani businessman illegally exported devices from the United States that could be used to test, develop and detonate nuclear weapons, the government alleged on Friday.

    A federal indictment against Humayun A. Khan was unsealed along with a guilty plea by his alleged partner, who admitted routing high-speed electrical switches through South Africa to avoid raising authorities’ suspicions. The switches – which can be used in medical and military devices – were then shipped to Pakistan.

    The United States prohibits the export of the switches, also known as “triggered spark gaps,” to Pakistan and a handful of other countries to prevent potential nuclear proliferation.

    Khan, of Islamabad, is not in custody. He is believed to be in Pakistan, Homeland Security officials said.

    The case raised “serious concerns,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael Garcia, because of the nature of the devices, the fact they were going to Pakistan, and efforts by Kahn to disguise the ultimate destination.

    “The proliferation of nuclear components is not only a homeland security threat, but a global threat,” Garcia said Friday.

    Khan!

    Man, that link kills me. Don’t ask me why.