All the Taliban wanted was money: Rescued Sikh, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

All the Taliban wanted was money: Rescued Sikh

PESHAWAR: All that the Pakistani Taliban wanted was money and that's all they talked about, says Gurvinder Singh, one of the two Sikhs from Peshawar who were rescued after 40 days of captivity with the Pashtun-speaking terrorists. The Taliban beheaded the third abducted Sikh trader last month because their ransom demand wasn't met.

Gurvinder's story blows the myth the Pakistani Taliban has built around itself as a band of fighters for Islam.

"All the bandits wanted was money. They were not religious men. We did not see any one of them offering prayers even once," he said at his home in Peshawar's Mohallah Jagan Shah. The area near Khyber Pass, from where they were rescued, is under the influence of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan commanders Nazir Afridi, Adnan Afridi and Tariq Afridi.

While Surjeet Singh was rescued on Monday along with Gurvinder and they were reunited with their families in Peshawar, Jaspal Singh was beheaded after the families failed to raise the ransom of 30 million Pakistani rupees within the deadline. Jaspal's decapitated body was found on February 21.

"We were shackled and chained for 40 days, given only rotis and tea and kicked and beaten black and blue," Gurvinder told TOI. The 17-year-old described for the first time the horror that the three faced at the hands of their captors.

Belonging to the 3,000-strong Sikh community of Peshawar, mostly petty traders and business families, the three set out on January 19 to sell merchandise in some small towns nestled in the Tirah Valley near the Khyber Pass, that is the doorway to Central Asia from Pakistan. They had traversed these badlands before and Pashtun terrorists had always let them be. But not this time.

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We can’t afford to quit Afghanistan- India’s ambassador, Jayant Prasad, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

We can’t afford to quit Afghanistan- India’s ambassador, Jayant Prasad

January 24th, 2010

Jayant Prasad, India’s ambassador in Kabul, suggests that if Afghanistan does not stabilise, the resulting chaos can impact India’s security in very many negative ways. In an interview to Anand K. Sahay, on the eve of the London Conference on Afghanistan on January 28, Mr Prasad expands on the policy to remain engaged.

Q. During his recent visit to the United States, the Prime Minister was categorical that India would remain engaged in Afghanistan, and advised America to do the same. The Indian leader did not wait for US President Barack Obama’s announcement that the US would be increasing troop levels. Why were we so emphatic, and off the mark even before the Americans? Why is Afghanistan so important to us?

A. Think back to 1998. When US embassies in East Africa were bombed that year, former US President Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles to hit Osama bin Laden in Khost in eastern Afghanistan where he was thought to be living. The Al Qaeda leader escaped, but many died or were injured in that strike. Western reporters learnt from survivors in Peshawar hospitals (where they’d been brought) that many of the dead and injured were members of terrorist groups who were training for attacks in Kashmir. I remember reading a report by Tim Weiner about this. I think it was called “Blowback from the Afghan Battlefield”.

At present there is danger of fusion and coalescing of terror groups in Pakistan that operate in India and Afghanistan. Perhaps the Pakistan government is itself beginning to realise this. But we are not at all confident that such realisation has gone far enough to create an impact on these terrorist outfits.

If the international community turns away from Afghanistan at the present juncture, if India turns away, Afghanistan may well be destabilised. The destabilisation of Afghanistan will lead first and foremost to the destabilisation of Pakistan, and is likely to have consequences for India.

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As Pakistan's Taliban take control of DARRA ADAM KHEL town, military stays in fort, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

As Pakistan's Taliban take control of DARRA ADAM KHEL town, military stays in fort

Current models of M16 machine guns are for sale in Darra Adam Khel, smuggled from Afghanistan. The asking price is 450,000 rupees (U.S. $7,000).

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers

In theory, Pakistan's security forces are in opposition to the Taliban, who are now firmly entrenched across the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and encroaching on the adjacent region in the North West Frontier Province, known as the "settled" areas. In reality, the government has ceded large swathes of territory to the extremists.

Some blame President Pervez Musharraf, who removed colonial-era local government structures and replaced them with weak elected local officials in the settled areas and the military in the tribal areas, who couldn't maintain law and order.

Late last month, the Frontier Corp, a paramilitary force, launched an operation against Islamist warlords not linked to the Taliban who were based on the outskirts of Peshawar in the Khyber agency, a part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

http://newageislam.com/as-pakistan-s-taliban-take-control-of-darra-adam-khel-town,-military-stays-in-fort/war-on-terror/d/196