Pakistan fights back -- military launches massive attack on insurgents

News from Pakistan that government forces had captured the South Waziristan village of Kotkai from insurgents linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida was a welcome change from the usual depressing news coming from the nuclear-armed country and its troubled next-door neighbor, Afghanistan. At least four soldiers were killed in Pakistan's massive attack against militants operating in the country's south, along its long border with Afghanistan, according to Cable News Network (CNN). The attack comes as suicide attacks by terrorists against Pakistani government and security installations have been soaring, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee. On Friday, a car bomb killed 13 people, mostly civilians, at a police station in Peshawar, a northern city near Islamabad, the nation's capital. Officials said there are as many as 15,000 insurgents in South Waziristan, the result of years of neglect, and the government has committed nearly 30,000 troops to battle them, CNN said. Pakistan's democratically elected government has been slow to fully engage the militants, observers say, but now appears committed to the fight. The wave of bombings has increased international pressure on the government in Islamabad, headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, the widow of Benazir Bhutto, because of fears over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal. Bhutto, the daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People's Party, became the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation in 1988. She was a leader in exile of the battle against former President Pervez Musharraf, the military commander who seized power in a 1999 coup and held it for eight years. Bhutto returned from exile in 2007 but was assassinated during the campaign for the 2008 election. Zardari took over party leadership after her death and outpolled Musharraf, who voluntarily gave up power. In Washington, a spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama said the wave of attacks was evidence that Pakistani militants "threaten both Pakistan and the United States," CNN said. Obama recently approved an additional $7.5 billion in assistance to Pakistan over the next five years.

Pakistan changes course, attacks Taliban militants

What a difference a visit to the White House makes! From Pakistan comes word that the government under seige from Taliban militants in the Swat Valley has launched a full-scale counterattack against Taliban militants aimed at returning the area to Islamabad's control. An army spokesman in the garrison city of Rawalpindi said Friday that scores of Taliban fighters had been killed in the initial attack by up to 15,000 soldiers and security forces, the Washington Post reported. The new attack comes just one week after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai met with U.S. President Barak Obama to discuss the ongoing fighting in Afghanistan and, until then, Pakistan's apparent unwillingness to take on the Taliban. We know the Taliban from its fundamentalist Islamic rule in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, when it was ousted by a Western coalition composed primarily of U.S. troops. Under Taliban rule, women were forced to cover their heads in public and were not permitted to attend school. But Pakistan and its new civilian government, headed by Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and current Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, have conceded control of the once-prosperous Swat Valley to Taliban forces, which promptly began moving into nearby Bunder and Dir in an apparent effort to expand their territory. But the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, told a news conference that Pakistani forces were determined to defeat the "miscreants" and "anti-state elements." Abbas' talk followed up Gillani's speech to the nation Thursday in which the start of the offensive was announced. Both Abbas and Gillani said there was no reluctance on the part of the army to fight the Taliban, but officials wanted to give the peace agreement negotiated in January a chance to work. But Western nations had criticized the agreement as appeasement, particularly after the Taliban imposed Islamic law in Swat. Reuters said the army's stepped-up military posture appeared to have wide popular support, even though it was criticized in some circles as capitulating to the United States.

Not talking with Taliban in Pakistan speaks louder than the alternative

Let's face the simple facts, however counterintuitive they may be. There will be no settlement with the resurgent Taliban militant group, which is now trying to take over nuclear-armed Pakistan. We know from what they did in Afghanistan -- indoctrinating men, subjugating women, trying to wipe out a proud nation's long history. So news Monday that a radical cleric in the Swat valley was breaking off his services as a Taliban representative in negotiations with Pakistan's civilian government cannot be a bad thing. According to the Reuters international news service, Sufi Mohammad broke off negotiations with the government after Islamabad launched a military offensive against the Taliban in the lawless northwest region of Lower Dir. Swat and Lower Dir are part of the Malakand division, where Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former leader Benazir Bhutto, agreed in talks with Mohammad to appease the Taliban by allowing them to impose Islamic law. But violence has surged since then, prompting increased concern by Western nations fearing for the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weaponry. The West has been trying to convince Zardari to commit his army to fight the Taliban and stop their power grab. Zardari is scheduled to meet in Washington next month with U.S. President Barack Obama and Aghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Zardari tried to reassure Western nations on Monday that Pakistan's arsenal was not in danger of falling to the Taliban. "I want to assure the world that the nuclear capability of Pakistan is under safe hands," he told the international media, Reuters said. Mohammad caused an uproar last week by denouncing Pakistan's parliament, democracy and Supreme Court as un-Islamic, Reuters said.