Children of Taliban or Generation of Taliban

Dan Edge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy investigates how the war on terror is creating a generation of child terrorists in her homeland – children prepared to kill both inside and outside Pakistan.

With the recent attack in Lahore on the Sri Lankan cricket team, last year’s massive suicide bombing in Islamabad and assault on Mumbai, Pakistan’s radical Islamists are bringing violence to the major cities of Pakistan and beyond.

Sharmeen travels across Pakistan to investigate how the far the Taliban has infiltrated her country. In the north she finds the Pakistan army, backed by the Americans, locked in the deadliest conflict, killing thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands.


At a nearby refugee camp, Sharmeen interviews two teenage boys who are best friends. Their local madrassa was hit by bombardments from the Pakistani army and American hellfire missiles – whilst children were studying inside. One boy describes burying his cousin’s legs – the only body parts they could recover. One of the boys Sharmeen meets was in that crowd – he now wants to join the Taliban. But his best friend blames al-Qaeda for the attacks – he wants to join the army. Driven into enemy camps, both boys pledge to kill the other if they face each other on the battlefield...
And Sharmeen meets a 14 year-old boy already recruited by the Taliban who describes life in one of its extremist madrassas that provide religious justification for terrorist attacks. Hazrat describes how he graduated from training in small arms to rocket launchers and how to execute a suicide attack in a car.

She visits a valley in the north west of Pakistan called Swat which was, until 18 months ago, a peaceful tourist attraction. She goes to one of 200 schools that have been destroyed by the Taliban. Amongst the ruins, she meets two former pupils, young girls who are angry that they are now forbidden to have an education and resentful that they will soon have to wear burqas. One tells Sharmeen: “Education is a ray of light and I want that light.” As they’re filming, a Taliban mortar lands in the neighbourhood and they have to flee to the relative safety of one of girls’ home.
In Peshawar, the main city in the north of two million people, Sharmeen meets some of the child victims of the violence at a specialist paraplegic hospital.
When US will leave the Afghanistan and Peace come there?

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Iran Warships To Sail Through Suez, Israel Warns

Two Iranian warships planned to sail through the Suez canal en route to Syria on Wednesday, Israel's foreign minister said, calling the move the latest "provocation" by Tehran and hinting at an Israeli response.

Israel sees a major threat in Iran's nuclear programme and calls for its elimination, but the countries' geographical distance has kept them from open confrontation. Syria is one of Israel's neighbouring foes and an ally of Tehran.

"Tonight, two Iranian warships are meant to pass through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea and reach Syria, something that has not happened in many years," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a Jerusalem speech distributed by his office.

"To my regret, the international community is not showing readiness to deal with the recurring Iranian provocations. The international community must understand that Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations."
(Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/suez-canal-iran-israel-syria_n_824037.html

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UK Terrorist Attack MI5 Head Warns

UK Terrorist Attack  MI5 Head Warns

Jonathan Evans raised concerns over the number of soon-to-be-freed inmates who are "committed extremists and likely to return to terrorist activities". He also said Somalia and Yemen were important concerns for MI5, as a source of serious plots against the UK.

And, he said, the security service had not expected dissident republicanism to grow as it had in Northern Ireland. Mr Evans, who made the rare public remarks to the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals in London, said dealing with international terrorism remained the main focus of MI5's efforts. 'Diversifying threat'

"Counter-terrorist capabilities have improved in recent years but there remains a serious risk of a lethal attack taking place. I see no reason to believe that the position will significantly improve in the immediate future," he said.

The UK faces a continuing serious risk of a lethal terrorist attack taking place, the head of MI5 has warned.

He said hundreds of officers were involved in an "intense struggle", largely out of sight of the public.

Every month, hundreds of new leads come into MI5 headquarters at Thames House from various sources, with only sufficient resources to investigate those that appeared to be high priority, Mr Evans said.

"At any one time we have a handful of investigations that we believe involve the real possibility of a terrorist attack being planned against the UK," he said.

One concern is that a number of individuals, convicted of offences in the years after the 9/11 attacks, are now coming out of prison having served their terms.

"We know that some of these prisoners are still committed extremists who are likely to return to their terrorist activities," Mr Evans said, adding that they would be added to the cases that needed to be monitored.

He said another change in recent years was the source of the most serious plots.

In previous years, officials have said that 75% of priority plots had links to Pakistan. That figure has now dropped to 50%.

This was partly because of pressure on al-Qaeda leadership operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, but it was also a sign of a diversifying threat, he said.

Mr Evans said in Somalia there were a "significant number of UK residents training in Al Shabaab camps" to fight in the country.

"I am concerned that it is only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside Al Shabaab," he warned.

 He said Yemen was the other main country of concern.

He said the involvement of the radical preacher Anwar Al Awlaqi in a succession of plots - and the influence of his message in the UK - had raised concerns that his adherents, possibly lone individuals, would respond by mounting attacks. There had been a surge in Yemen-related casework this year, he said.

It is widely believed that the raising of the UK terror threat level to "severe" at the start of 2010 was largely related to intelligence surrounding Yemen.

Mr Evans admitted that when MI5 assumed the lead responsibility for intelligence in Northern Ireland in October 2007, its "working assumption" was that the residual threat from terrorism was low, and likely to go down. Instead the opposite has happened. Mr Evans described a "persistent rise in terrorist activity and ambition", with signs of increasing co-ordination and co-operation between disparate groups in recent months.

This year there had been more than 30 attacks or attempted attacks by dissident republicans on security targets, compared with just over 20 for the whole of last year, he said.

Mr Evans also warned that while the campaign by dissident republicans was currently focused on Northern Ireland, MI5 "cannot exclude the possibility" that it might spread to the mainland. Mr Evans also warned against a "zero tolerance" attitude to the terrorist risk, which he said was spreading.

"In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure.

"This is a nonsensical way to consider terrorist risk and only plays into the hands of the terrorists themselves. Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot realistically be abolished and if we delude ourselves that it can we are setting ourselves up for a nasty disappointment," he said.

Head of MI5 Jonathan Evans "In recent years we appear increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100% preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure”

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Seven US soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Seven US soldiers have been killed in two bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says.

Five troops were killed by a roadside bomb in one incident while two others died in a separate bomb attack, Isaf said in a statement. Witnesses in Kandahar said a US Army vehicle hit a bomb in the early afternoon, the Associated Press said.

Fourteen US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in the last three days.

Meanwhile, the governor of the Lalpor District in Nangarhar Province was killed by a car bomb in the city of Jalalabad on Monday, according to police spokesman Ghafor Khan.

 The bomb, which had been planted on the vehicle, exploded while it was driving into a government compound, said Mr Khan.

Governor Syad Mohammad Palawan was reportedly travelling to a meeting of provincial security and political leaders when he was killed.

The US has sent an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan since December 2009 in an effort to defeat the Taliban. US troops now comprise roughly 100,000 of the 120,000 foreign military soldiers in Afghanistan, most in the south and east where the Taliban is most deeply entrenched.

Foreign troops fighting the Taliban operate under US and Nato command and are supporting Kabul's Western-backed government against a Taliban-led insurgency that has gained strength in recent years.News of the most recent attacks comes a week after a senior US general in Afghanistan said President Barack Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin pulling troops out of the country was encouraging the Taliban.

The White House is expected to review the Afghan war in December.

More than 1,200 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001.

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Attack on Bases in east Afghanistan

Insurgents launched pre-dawn attacks Saturday on a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan and a nearby camp where seven CIA employees were killed last year in a suicide bombing. NATO said there were no coalition casualties and the attacks were repelled.

It said 13 insurgents were killed — four of whom were wearing suicide vests — and five captured.

The assaults on the sprawling Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost province and nearby Camp Chapman came around 3 a.m., just as area residents were rising for early morning prayers.

The area, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Kabul near the border with Pakistan, is a hotbed of activity by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, including the December attack on Chapman that killed four CIA officers and three contracted security guards.

Afghan police said about 50 insurgents attacked using rifles, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons, but had been repelled.

Khost provincial police Chief Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai said they found the bodies of 14 militants outside Salerno and five others had been captured alive. He said police believed the bodies of more insurgents would be found.

After being driven away from the bases, the insurgents approached the nearby offices of the governor and provincial police headquarters but were driven off, Ishaqzai said."Given the size of the enemy's force, this could have been a major catastrophe for Khost. Luckily we prevented it," he said.

Small arms fire could still be heard in the area at midmorning, while NATO helicopters patrolled overhead.

Police captured a pickup truck laden with ammunition along with a light truck packed with explosives that had become stuck in deep mud, according to Maj. Wazir Pacha of the provincial police headquarters. Bomb specialists were preparing to defuse explosives aboard the truck, which had been booby-trapped, he said.

NATO said the dead insurgents were members of the Haqqani Network, a group with deep ties to al-Qaida accused of launching frequent raids across the border from neighboring Pakistan.

Three of the insurgents were killed in an airstrike on a truck in which they were fleeing the attack on Salerno, including Mudasir, a senior Haqqani explosives expert suspected of arranging suicide bomb attacks, NATO said.

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Karzai tells US general , War on terror not in Afghanistan

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai reiterated calls on Washington Thursday to shift its military focus to "terror" hideouts outside his troubled country, saying there had been "no progress" in the war.

In comments made to General James Mattis, head of US Central Command visiting his fortified palace in Kabul, Karzai said the US-led war "will not be
won unless terrorists' havens are eliminated," his office said in a statement.

Karzai was referring to neighbouring Pakistan, where Afghan officials and Western commanders allege the Taliban, Al-Qaeda backers and other insurgents have strongholds from which they launch attacks on Afghanistan.

The US-backed Karzai said reducing the number of civilian casualties during military operations would also help "to win" the war.

Karzai was quoted as telling Mattis that strengthening Afghan security forces was vital if they are to take over eventually from tens of thousands of Western troops.

Full Story at http://www.geo.tv

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Taliban kill eight Afghan policemen

Taliban militants have killed eight Afghan police officers in the northern province of Kunduz, police have said.

More than 10 insurgents raided a checkpoint outside Kunduz city just before dawn, a police officer said.

The militants wanted to steal the officer's weapons but were beaten back before they could do so, he said. One policeman was wounded and one escaped.

Kunduz is a stronghold for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants where the central government has little control.

The Taliban and other insurgent groups began systematically taking over Kunduz in early 2009.

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Taliban expanding in Afghan

KABUL, Afghanistan – Eight Afghan police gunned down at a checkpoint. Campaign workers kidnapped. Spanish trainers shot dead on their base.

A spurt of violence this week in provinces far from the Taliban's main southern strongholds suggests the insurgency is spreading, even as the top U.S. commander insists the coalition has reversed the militants' momentum in key areas of the ethnic Pashtun south where the Islamist movement was born.

Attacks in the north and west of the country though not militarily significant demonstrate that the Taliban are becoming a threat across wide areas of Afghanistan even as the United States and its partners mount a major effort to turn the tide of the nearly 9-year-old war in the south.

The latest example occurred Thursday when about a dozen gunmen stormed a police checkpoint at the entrance to the city of Kunduz, about 150 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Eight policemen were killed, provincial police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqoubi said.

Also Thursday, a candidate in next month's parliamentary elections said 10 of her campaign workers were kidnapped while traveling in the northwestern province of Herat, 450 miles (725 kilometers) west of the capital.

The candidate, Fawzya Galani, said villagers told her armed men had stopped the group Wednesday and drove them off in their two vehicles.

Those incidents followed Wednesday's fatal shooting of three Spaniards two police trainers and an interpreter — at a training base in Badghis province about 230 miles (370 kilometers) northwest of Kabul.
Read More Fears Taliban expanding in Afghan north, west

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India's criticised nuclear law

New legislation aimed at throwing open India's lucrative 150-billion-dollar civilian atomic energy market could deter private suppliers because of tough provisions, business groups said Thursday.

The nuclear liability bill, key to implementing a 2008 flagship atomic energy pact with the United States that granted India access to foreign civilian technology, was passed by lawmakers late Wednesday after the government conceded to opposition demands to toughen the law.

But business groups say the bill, intended to give private firms such as US-based General Electric access to India, could throw new hurdles in the way of the energy-hungry country's nascent nuclear power sector.

They have zeroed in on a clause in the bill that would allow nuclear power plant operators to pursue suppliers of equipment, raw materials and services for 80 year after the construction of any plant in the event of an accident.

The legislation threatens to hamper India's "nuclear renaissance and completely undo the government?s efforts to accelerate nuclear power generation in our country," said the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in a statement.

"This will surely affect our generation capacity," FICCI economic advisor Anjan Roy told AFP. "The bill has put very extended obligations on suppliers."

On Wednesday, Premier Manmohan Singh said the measure would end a decades-old "nuclear apartheid" that had prevented India from buying reactors and nuclear fuel abroad, after it conducted nuclear tests in the early 1970s.

Read More at India's new nuclear law criticised by business groups

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People killed bombings across Iraq

The deadliest killed 19 people in the southern city of Kut. Several blasts hit Baghdad, including a suicide bombing in which 15 died.
There were also attacks in other major cities. Officials blame al-Qaeda.
Correspondents say the violence highlights fears about the stability of Iraq ahead of the formal end of US combat operations next week.

Almost all of Wednesday's attacks targeted security forces.
In Baghdad, the suicide car bomb hit a police station in the Qahira district in the north-east of the city killing 15 people, most of them police.
Police and hospital officials said 58 people were wounded in the explosion, which left a crater 3m (10ft) wide and caused houses to collapse, trapping people inside.

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