Pakistan puppet regime/Butchery

he attack that killed 80 people mourning an earlier barrage on a militant training camp, intelligence officials said Wednesday.

A top Taliban aide denied Baitullah Mehsud was anywhere near the missile strike — among the deadliest in an ongoing campaign — and said all but five of the dead were civilians.

3,000 Sikhs from across the war-stricken province.

It is a luxurious refuge compared with the conditions endured by most of the region's 2 million displaced, some of whom started to trickle home in military-protected convoys today.

Instead of a dust-strewn camp the Sikhs live in quarters normally reserved for pilgrims. Thanks to official and private donations they enjoy a well-stocked clinic, a 24-hour kitchen and a temporary school that bustles with laughing children.

LAHORE: The leader of the attack on the General Headquarters (GHQ) is one of several former military personnel to have joined terrorist groups, The Times reported on Monday. Security officials have identified him as Muhammad Aqeel alias Dr Usman and said that he was in the medical corps before joining terrorists based in North Waziristan. Earlier this year police arrested Major Haroon Rashid who, they said, worked for Al Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and was involved in the murder of a retired general who led the country’s special forces against the terrorists, the newspaper reported. The major quit the army in 2001 after Pakistan supported the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and went to Waziristan to train terrorists, security sources said. His younger brother, a captain, went to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban after leaving the army in 2002. He was killed in Helmand in 2002. They have been involved in planning strategies and tactics that have made the terrorists more effective in recent years. The terrorists also have sympathisers among serving officers, the Times quoted intelligence sources. daily times monitor

EDITORIAL: ‘Dr Usman’: last desperate act

Aqeel alias Dr Usman has been caught in a seriously wounded state after the terrorist attack on the GHQ by his Amjad Farooqi Group. A “mastermind” of several past terrorist attacks, he decided to become a part of the team that was sure to die in its attempt to enter the GHQ. Why did he do that?

From his dossier of activities, Dr Usman was not an ordinary terrorist led by the nose by his handlers. He was himself the handler. He knew that the attack on the GHQ would not get very far. It was to serve as a symbolic Al Qaeda assertion of power at a time when the world thought it was weakened by the reversals suffered by the Taliban. He knew it was going to be his last act. He did try to blow himself up with an anti-personnel mine but survived the explosion and was captured in a seriously wounded condition.

Aqeel alias Dr Usman was from a locality near Kahuta and has been missing from his home for a long time. One reason he never returned home was that he was a deserter from Army’s Medical Corps and knew that the army would catch him and punish him. He was taken to the Tribal Areas by Ilyas Kashmiri, Al Qaeda’s operations commander and became a warlord in North Waziristan. Kashmiri had also used another retired army officer Major Ashiq to kill a retired commando officer in Islamabad who had taken part in the assault on Lal Masjid in 2007.

Dr Usman had also killed the Surgeon General of Pakistan army, Lt-General Mushtaq Baig, in February 2008, standing aside from the operation. He similarly stood by as his boys attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. He had also masterminded the missile attack on the plane of General Musharraf, but he never directly became a part of the suicide-squad. It is also difficult to believe that his bosses wanted the “mastermind” to become a “suicide-bomber”.

The only credible explanation is that he had come to the end of his tether, realising that the Taliban were under siege and were about to be attacked in South Waziristan and thought he should end his role of a mastermind with a supreme “act of martyrdom”. Now that he is in custody — one hopes fervently that he survives his wounds — the interrogators will surely get to the bottom of the mystery, and may even learn from him important strategic secrets on the eve of the military operation in South Waziristan. (Daily Times)

In a letter dropped from a plane over the tribe's territory, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, described the Mehsuds as courageous, loyal Pakistanis and urged them to "rise collectively" against the militants.

"The ongoing operation by the Pakistani army is not aimed at the patriotic Mehsud tribes," he wrote. "Instead, the target is for the good riddance of the Mehsud tribes from the cruel clutches of terrorist elements who have ruined the law and order and peace of this area."

However, the Taliban have cemented their hold on South Waziristan by killing hundreds of traditional tribal leaders, and the tribal chiefs told Ghani that "in the current hazardous situation, it is not possible for us to support you," an official who was present told McClatchy Newspapers.

Facing the prospect of more American deaths in Afghanistan as the war escalates, lawmakers lashed out at neighboring Pakistan on Thursday as an unreliable ally that could spare the U.S. its bruising fight with al-Qaida if it wanted.

"They don't seem to want a strategic relationship," New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez said of the government in Islamabad. "They want the money. They want the equipment. But at the end of the day, they don't want a relationship that costs them too much."