Pakistan: tribal truce called off amid resurgent terror

Bill Weinberg

With more than 70 killed in bombings over the weekend, Pakistan appears to be lurching towards civil war in the aftermath of the Red Mosque attack. A suicide bomber killed at least 26, including six police, and wounded over 50 others July 15 at a police recruitment center at DeraIsmail Khan in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) near the Afghan border. That same day, militants in North Waziristan, one of the NWFP’s autonomous Tribal Areas, announced they are ending a 10-month-old cease-fire accord with the government. Follwing the Red Mosque raid last week, al-Qaeda’s number-two man Ayman al-Zawahri called for jihad against the Pakistan government, which has sent thousands of troops into remote areas to try to keep a lid on rirsing popular anger. (Xinhua, LAT, July 16)

See our last posts on Pakistan and al-Qaeda.

  1. Pakistan: accused US spy decapitated in Tribal Areas
    From Iran’s Press TV, July 19:

    Suspected Islamic militants in a chaotic Pakistani tribal town have decapitated a man accused of spying for US forces on Wednesday.

    The militants dumped the body of the unidentified victim in his 20’s in an isolated area near the northwestern town of Khar in the Bajaur tribal district, said the local official who was informed by the villagers.

    The official also added that they found a note, left by the militants, near the body in which those who spy for the US forces were warned of the same fate.

    It was the second killing of the kind in the area this week, after militants slit the throat of a 40-year-old Afghan refugee from the neighboring Afghan province of Kunar on Tuesday.