Pakistan on Sunday said it was halting air strikes against Taliban militants in response to a month-long ceasefire announced by the insurgents a day earlier, paving the way for the resumption of peace talks.

The government entered into peace talks with the Taliban last month aimed at ending the militants' seven-year insurgency, but the dialogue broke down after militants killed 23 kidnapped soldiers.

The military responded with a series of air strikes in the volatile northwestern tribal areas that left more than 100 insurgents dead, and on Saturday the Taliban announced a month-long ceasefire aimed at resuming the stalled talks.

“After the positive announcement yesterday by the Taliban, the government has decided to suspend the air strikes which were continuing for the past few days,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said in a statement Sunday.

The statement added that “the government and armed forces of Pakistan, however, reserve the right for a befitting response to any act of violence (by the Taliban).”

The Taliban's ceasefire announcement on Saturday was met with scepticism by analysts who said it may have been a tactic to allow the militants to regroup after they had taken heavy losses in air strikes.

But Khan said the “government considers the announcement of stopping of violent activities by Taliban a positive development.”

He added that since the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took charge in June last year, Islamabad had not taken “any unjustified action” against the militants, choosing only to react to violence rather than initiating any new military operations.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a member of the government's negotiation team, told AFP: “I think that the possibility of resumption of peace talks has now increased. A ceasefire was the demand of the government and the negotiations committee.

“But the ceasefire should be effective. If attacks continue then the conducive environment we are searching for won't materialise.”

Balancing act

Reacting to the minister's announcement, political analyst Raza Rumi told AFP that the government was attempting to play a balancing act and had to match the Taliban's ceasefire “to ensure right wing public opinion does not turn against them.”

“I think one issue is the government wants to appear as a peace loving political entity. But deep down there is a desire by both parties to buy more time given the way the situation is unfolding in Afghanistan.”

“They want to wait for what happens,” he said, referring to the withdrawal of Nato troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and its regional impact.

Security analyst Talat Masood, a retired general, said the ceasefire had come about because the military's air strikes had forced the Taliban back to the negotiation table, and that the government should be careful not to lose its advantage.

“One of the inherent dangers of a ceasefire is that it allows militants to regroup or reorganise. We will have to increase our intelligence to closely monitor if militants are regrouping or escaping during the ceasefire,” he said.

He added that militant groups which are not in favour of talks may try to disrupt the ceasefire.

Eleven paramilitary soldiers and one child died while 11 other people were wounded when three roadside bombs targeting a polio vaccination team in the lawless Khyber district exploded Saturday, in an attack carried out by the little-known Abdullah Izam Brigade, according to an official.

The Pakistani military earlier on Sunday deployed a helicopter gunship to kill five militants it blamed for the attack, a senior security official told AFP.

DAWN

(Left) This satellite image provided by TerraServer.com and DigitalGlobe shows an image of Guantanamo Bay captured on Sept. 2, 2010 with “Penny Lane” marked in red. (Right) Abdullah Mehsud in Pakistan (comic)

On November 25, The Associated Pressreleased a news report which strengthens the beliefs held by many security analyts, that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or ‘TTP’ for short, a terrorist organization which repeatedly claims ties to the Afghan Taliban, is a fake group bred by the American intelligence community.

According to the report, the CIA had a secret facility (until 2006) near the main Guantanamo Bay prison, dubbed “Penny Lane“, where captured jihadists and fighters from Afghanistan were turned into double agents. This fundamentally required that those who agreed in being American spies would guarantee full cooperation in “killing terrorists” (or, in other words, targeting elements who are eyesore for the US).

Captives who signed up to be double agents were offered millions of dollars from the CIA’s (read American taxpayers’ money) secret account (Codename ‘Pledge’), along with safety for their families.

But that’s not all. According to a report in the Voice of Russia compiled from various established sources, a few of these prospective double agents who were apparently lured by opportunities to be filthy rich and yet retain their iconic ‘warlord’ status, would sometimes request for porn material. It is said that Penny Lane was quite comfortable, in comparison to Guantanamo Bay prison, as it had beds, private kitchens and also a small patio.

The militants who decided once and for all to end fighting American forces signed formal agreements to work for the CIA. One prisoner though, was reportedly forced into agreeing because the CIA threatened of harming his children.

The CIA + Abdullah Mehsud = TTP is born

Abdullah Mehsud can be described as one of the key founders of the TTP, an organization whose country-wide attacks in Pakistan have resulted in 15,681 armed forces casualties. Similarly, approximately 5,152 civilians have been killed and 5,678 injured in bomb blasts and suicide attacks since 2008. These statistics werepresented by legal counsels for Pakistan’s intelligence agencies at the Supreme Court on 26 March 2013.

Abdullah Mehsud had lost a leg in a landmine explosion in 1996 and was captured sometime later by Uzbek-origin Afghan commander Abdul Rashid Dostum while fighting the Northern Alliance. He was imprisoned at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay for two years and later, to much surprise and shock, released in March 2004. What’s even more astounding is that he was also gifted a prosthetic limb by his captors, according to a statement by Brigadier General Jay Hood who was then running the camp.

A document titled JTF-GTMO Information on Detainees mentions that Abdullah Mehsud was released because he “claimed to be an office clerk and driver for the Taliban from 1996 to 1998 or 1999. He consistently denied having any affiliation with al Qaida. He also claimed to have received no weapons or military training due to his handicap (an amputation resulting from when he stepped on a land mine 10 years ago). He claimed that after September 11, 2001 he was forcibly conscripted by the Taliban military“.

This same Abdullah was later named as the commander of Al Qaeda-affiliated militants who ordered his band of subordinate fighters to kidnap two Chinese engineers (one was killed during a rescue attempt gone bad).

The Afghan Taliban were displeased with the incident and reportedly booted Abdullah Mehsud out. They were also suspicious of his activities since he was mysteriously released by the US military “crusaders” from Guantanamo.

While in Afghanistan, Abdullah Mehsud had created his own parallel “Taliban” militia and proudly claimed while giving media interviews in Afghanistan, that he was behind a series of attacks on Pakistani security forces (unlike the Afghan Taliban who were focused on fighting ISAF-NATO). Upon his return through Zhob in Balochistan province of Pakistan, security forces were aware of his presence and raided the house of Sheikh Ayub Mandokhel to capture him on 24 July 2007. Sheikh Mandokhel was a leader affiliated with the Islamist JUI-F of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. However, before he could be arrested, Abdullah blew himself up.

It is worth noting that before Abdullah Mehsud was released from Guantanamo and dropped in Afghanistan, there were no attacks taking place against Pakistani security forces. This is where a large information vacuum exists and which must be explored further. Had Abdullah Mehsud created a new “Taliban” that would be America’s own brand of Islamists?

In an article for The New Tork Times dated 22 October 2009, journalist Scott Shane quoted an unnamed Afghan Taliban official as saying that for the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), “there will not be any support from us”. He added the Afghan Taliban “don’t have interest in fighting against other countries”.

Furthermore, the Afghan Taliban commander said their mission is to get occupation forces out (of Afghanistan) and “not get into a fight with a Muslim army”.

Many journalists and security officials in Western states have been alleging since long that the Afghan Taliban are aided by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. Had that been the case, their so-called assets would have prevented Colonel (retd) Sultan Amir Tarar alias “Colonel Imam”, their former teacher from the Afghan war era, from being killed at the hands of Hakeemullah Mehsud, the recently-killed TTP chief.

There are also many other incidents such as this which suggest that had the Afghan Taliban indeed been proxies of the Pakistani agencies, as is routinely alleged, they would have instructed the TTP to stop attacks on Pakistani forces. But this never happened. Instead, as reported earlier, more than 15,000 soldiers and high-ranking armed forces personnel from Pakistan lost their lives.

But then, the question arises, who are these Pakistani Taliban fighting a Muslim army (of Pakistan) which the Afghan Taliban do not wish to fight? Are they a band of militants who were recruited by Abdullah Mehsud and later on joined hands with Baitullah Mehsud?

The ominous release of Abdullah Mehsud, when reviewed today in context of the new disclosures published by the Associated Press, lay bare historical facts and confirm the fact that he (Abdullah) had been set free because he must have agreed on becoming a double agent for the CIA, hence the safe haven in Afghanistan and US forces not capturing him there again. This also explains why his ideological descendants who later on coalesced to form the TTP are hell-bent on destroying Pakistan.

This also explains why both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have been working on different lines, although appearing the same on the outset (basically we have the identical nomenclature to blame for mass confusion).

Felix Kuehn, renowned researcher on terrorism and author of “An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/al-Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan 1970-2010″, said at an event organized by the Afghanistan Study Group and the Center for International Policy, that although the (Afghan) Taliban and Al Qaeda have some ties, “they are separate and distinct groups with different constituencies and different goals”. Kuehn had studied the Taliban and Al Qaeda closely while staying at Kandahar despite extreme risks to his life.

From a report by Bob Dreyfuss in The Nation:

For at least three years, Kuehn and Alex Strick van Linschoten have lived and worked in Kandahar, where they’ve studied the two organizations, lived with Kandahar citizens, and met people of all political persuasions there, including Taliban commanders.

Kuehn points out that the Taliban and Al Qaeda adhere to different strains of Islamic thought, the Taliban associated with Saudi-influenced, Wahhabi-style Hanafi beliefs, and Al Qaeda associated with the more radical, more rigid Hanbali school. The Taliban, of course, are Afghans, and Al Qaeda mostly Arab and almost entirely non-Afghan. Generationally, they are different, too, with most Al Qaeda leaders older than the young commanders of the Taliban, and whereas many Al Qaeda people are professionals and well educated, the Taliban are rural, unschooled, and grew up in places like Kandahar where newspapers were nonexistent and even radios were in the hands of only a privileged few.

When Al Qaeda arrived in Afghanistan from Sudan around 1996, says Kuehn, its membership was not more than 30. Al Qaeda fighters, and the growing number of recruits who came to Afghanistan from elsewhere, kept apart from Taliban fighters, who resented Al Qaeda, and there was a great deal of animosity between the two. Osama bin Laden insisted that international actions against the United States and other countries was crucial to his strategy, while Mullah Omar opposed such actions, says Kuehn.

“Osama bin Laden’s death will have zero impact on the Afghan Taliban,” says Kuehn. In part, that’s because they “didn’t have much a relationship to begin with.” Still, he says, it’s foolish to expect the Taliban to denounce Al Qaeda or to formally break with the organization, in part because bin Laden and Al Qaeda were Mullah Omar’s bridge to the Arab world. Yet when bin Laden was killed, the Taliban’s reaction was muted, and its statement—released via the Taliban’s semi-official web site—was mild and restrained. (If you haven’t spent time reading the Taliban in its own words, its web site is the place to start.)

Yet, we saw that Hakeemullah Mehsud and his groups under the umbrella of the TTP were openly supportive of, and aligned with, the global Al Qaeda. The attack on a CIA base by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal Al-Balawi, who was seen in a video statement released by the Umar Media of TTP to be sitting next to Hakeemullah Mehsud, was most possibly a false attack which the CIA itself ordered as a stunt to prove it has no ties with the TTP.

Later, we saw Baitullah Mehsud, then Hakeemullah Mehsud (who lived in a luxurious $120,000 mansion), continue the legacy of this fake brand of Taliban. Or putting it more precisely, the CIA brand of Taliban. A group which has caused more damage to Pakistan than any other through brainwashed suicide-attack blasts, IED explosions, urban warfare, destruction of strategic defence equipment in use by the Pakistan Army, Air Force and Navy, bombing of ISI offices, murder of thousands of innocent civilians, beheading of hundreds of Pakistan Army troops, and what not.

It is most likely that the birth of these murderers’ ideology took place at the once-secret Penny Lane facility.

And when the controllers of these cheap hirelings and ignorant “holy warriors” of the Pakistani Taliban, who liaise between Langley and FATA/Afghanistan are no longer needed, they are simply disposed by being “droned” to death, just like Baitullah and Hakeemullah were. That is the destiny awaiting every worthless CIA asset.

Many sectors of the Pakistani society were well-aware of these facts but these mainstream revelations (still not complete though) are ample proof that the US has played a major role in destabilizing Pakistan, as it wants to avenge its own strategic blunders which it committed by unnecessarily invading Afghanistan.

The US needs it’s own Taliban to keep Pakistan engaged in internal house-cleaning and meanwhile give free space to India to attain what is has always desired: a large strategic stake in Afghanistan.

by Zaki Khalid

Veterans Today

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Islamic hardliner blamed for an attack on India’s parliament that brought the nuclear rivals to the brink of war has resurfaced after years in seclusion, setting off alarm bells in New Delhi.
Twice since the end of December, Indian authorities have issued an airport security alert, warning of an attempt by members of a Pakistan-based militant group called Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of Muhammad, to hijack a plane, with smaller airfields most at risk. Indian officials have said the alerts followed reports of increased activity by Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the outlawed militant group.
Azhar was named by an Indian court as the prime suspect in a 2001 attack on India’s parliament aimed at taking top political leaders hostage. Fifteen people were killed, most of them security guards as well as the five men who stormed the complex.
Tensions between the old enemies spiralled after the attack and up to a million troops were mobilised on both sides of the volatile border. Pakistan refused to hand over Azhar to India.
The portly and bearded cleric has remained mostly confined to a compound in his home city of Bhawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province for years, but three weeks ago, he addressed supporters and said the time had come to resume jihad, or holy war, against India.
“There are 313 fidayeen (fighters who are ready to die) in this gathering and if a call is given the number will go up to 3,000,” he told the rally held in the city of Muzaffarabad by telephone. A Reuters journalist who was present said a telephone was held next to a microphone which broadcast his comments to loudspeakers.
Flags of Jaish, inscribed with the words “jihad”, fluttered in and around the venue of the gathering. Azhar spoke from an undisclosed location.
Indian intelligence analysts have described Azhar’s resurgence as part of a change in tactics in Pakistan as US forces withdraw from Afghanistan this year, and as Islamabad tries to clamp down on Islamic insurgents who oppose the Pakistani government.
The Indians say Pakistan’s military establishment is bringing militants like Azhar out of cold storage, with the promise of helping them fight India, while trying to stamp out the radicals they can’t control.
Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army general, said: “It is very dangerous that the Pakistani establishment is giving space to him. They are playing with fire and the fire will engulf them.”
A former fighter for Jaish, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Azhar remained in command of the group, operating from his Bhawalpur base.
“His speech via telephone should not be a surprise for people involved in jihad, he has been controlling the organisation very actively,” the man said.
The security alerts in India occurred just days before Azhar spoke. They were not publicised but two officials, one from the domestic Intelligence Bureau and the other from the Central Industrial Security Force, said authorities had increased checks on airport staffers to ensure nobody with forged passes gained access. Security had also been increased in Delhi’s suburban rail system, where commuters go through metal detectors, are patted down and have their bags checked in x-ray machines.
Staff of the Central Industrial Security Force now work 10-hour shifts in the metro system, so there were more guards at any point.
Azhar was arrested in Indian Kashmir in 1994 while travelling on a forged Portuguese passport. India freed him and two other jailed Pakistani militants in 1999 in return for 155 passengers held hostage in an Indian Airlines aircraft that was hijacked to southern Afghanistan.
One of the other freed militants was British-born Omar Sheikh, a close associate of Azhar who was later convicted in the 2002 abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
After his release, Azhar set up the Jaish to fight Indian forces in Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both countries and the trigger for two of their three wars. 
“Jaish has an obsession with India that transcends Kashmir. They had so many plans. Any reactivation of Masood Azhar is cause for deep concern,” said AK Doval, a former head of India’s Intelligence Bureau and one of the foremost experts on militant groups in South Asia.
Other officials in India said the rally in Muzaffarabad and Azhar’s address wouldn’t have been possible without state clearance, a charge Pakistan strongly denies.
“He addressed a rally, but steps will be taken to ensure he doesn’t do it again,” said Tasnim Aslam, spokeswoman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
“It is not possible we would allow his group to cause terrorism elsewhere when it is banned for causing terrorism in Pakistan.”
She said independent investigations had often shown that attacks in India were blamed on Pakistan but sometimes caused by domestic politics or rogue members of the Indian security services.
“There’s a tendency in India to hyperventilate without finding out all the facts,” she said.

dailytimes.com.pk

The Pakistani Taliban has as many as 500 female suicide bombers ready to act, a representative of the group involved in peace negotiations said, underscoring the risk of further violence if talks fail.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan -- known as the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP -- sees no urgency to reach an agreement with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government, Maulana Abdul Aziz, one of three negotiators representing the TTP, said in a Feb. 7 interview at his Islamabad seminary. The two sides started talks last week.

“You should know that at the moment they have at least 400 to 500 female suicide bombers in Waziristan and other tribal areas,” said Aziz, former head cleric of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, referring to the TTP. “The government should realize the situation and their demands.”

Sharif revived peace talks with the group as pressure grows for a military strike after attacks last month killed more than two dozen soldiers, part of violence that caused the deaths of 40,000 Pakistanis since 2001. Failure to reach a deal would threaten Sharif’s efforts to bolster the $225 billion economy as the U.S. reduces troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Imran Khan, whose party runs a province bordering Afghanistan, predicted in an interview last week that terrorist attacks would prompt the talks to fail, and a military operation would start soon afterward. Khan turned down an offer from the TTP to sit on the same committee as Aziz.

‘Exaggerated Figure’

Aziz said the Taliban is most interested in implementing Sharia law in Pakistan. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is “a very small factor” in the fight, he said, disputing statements by Khan and others.

“They are fighting for the implementation of Sharia,” Aziz said at the seminary, where some 1,300 female students are studying. “It’s the law of nature that when people don’t get their rights, they pick up arms.”

The Pakistani Taliban has demanded the withdrawal of troops from tribal areas and the release of prisoners, Dawn newspaper reported today, citing officials it did not identify. The demands stemmed from a meeting of TTP clerics over the weekend, the report said.

The number of female suicide bombers mentioned by Aziz “is a very exaggerated figure,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. “The Taliban are way ahead in the propaganda war, and they have given a tough time to the state,” he said. “Female suicide bombers have been used, but not too many.”

‘No Hurry’

Aziz’s brother died in 2007 along with at least 100 others when former President Pervez Musharraf ordered troops to storm the Red Mosque to end a challenge by pro-Taliban clerics seeking to impose Islamic law in the capital. The move sparked demonstrations and reprisal attacks.

Aziz, who was jailed for two years after the Red Mosque raid, last week temporarily withdrew himself from the talks because the government insisted the negotiations be held under the constitution and avoid including the imposition of Islamic Sharia law, a key TTP demand. He will remain on the TTP’s committee, he said.

“The Taliban are in no hurry,” Aziz said, when asked whether the group wanted a deal soon to avoid a military strike. “They say they are not worried about it. They have been in a state of war for the past 10 years.”

Suicide Bombers

Sharif won an election last year after pledging negotiations with the TTP, a loose group of militants operating along the Afghan border. While Sharif received the backing of all political parties in September to begin talks, the two sides had postponed meeting amid a series of suicide bombings and a U.S. drone strike that killed the TTP’s leader.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who leads the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, has called on Sharif to take a tougher line against the militants. He said in a Jan. 28 Twitter post that Sharif was following a “policy of appeasement.”

In 2009, Taliban militants took control of Swat district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, which forbade girls to attend schools. They beheaded local officials and burned schools in a two-year fight that uprooted 2 million people from their homes before a 10-week army offensive ended their rule.

Suicide bombers have been used frequently in the conflict, including two that killed more than 80 people at a Christian church in Peshawar in September. Aziz justified the use of suicide bombers, saying that they believed in the cause and were willing to sacrifice.

“If the military has weapons and air power, they have suicide bombers,” Aziz said of the Taliban. “You cannot match them. Suicide bombers even destroyed the power of America in Afghanistan.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Augustine Anthony in Islamabad at aanthony9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

 Bloomberg