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Monday, December 28, 2009

Karachi burns on Ashura











Set ablaze by people reacting to the attack



More than a dozen vehicles and a four-storey building were also set ablaze by people reacting to the attack. Fazal Qureshi, chief editor of the Pakistan Press International news agency, told "These processions cover long distances, they were marching through the central road when suddenly the bomber blew himself up. "It is impossible to stop someone who is prepared to die. There is an atmosphere of fear throughout the city." "The Shia community would certainly have been the specific target of this attack, but there have been no claims of responsibility so far." "The Shia are in the minority but make up a significant number of Pakistanis. "They are woven into the fabric of Pakistan. However, they are under attack for their beliefs." Rehman Malik, the interior minister, has called for people to show restraint and asked that Shia processions over the next two days be cancelled following the attack. Talat Hussain, the director of news at the local TV, told  "Any number of groups come to mind who may have carried out the attack ... The game clearly is to disrupt Pakistan." Concerning the violent reaction to the strike, Hussain said: "People have been saying that the government has been apathetic to the listening to the warnings of potential attacks and people's fears." Pakistan had tightened security to protect mass processions ahead of Ashoura, deploying tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces.

Suicide attack on Ashura procession kills 33 in Karachi



At least 33 people have been killed after a bomb blast struck a procession of Shia Muslims in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, according to police sources. The explosion struck on Monday as Shia worshippers marked Ashoura, the holiest event on the Shia Muslim calendar. Police sources told  that at least 50 people were injured in the blast, with many of those in a critical condition. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear. "We are trying to ascertain whether it was a time bomb or a suicide attack, but it is a terrorist attack," Abdul Wahid Khan, a senior police official, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying. The Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary force, has taken over responsibility for restive areas of Karachi, officials said. Television footage showed crowds around the blast area, smoke rising over the scene and ambulances going back and forth. Some people in the crowd, apparently angered at the attack, fired shots into the air, witnesses said.

Taliban have expanded influence across Afghanistan: NATO



The Afghan Taliban have expanded their influence across Afghanistan and are now running a 'full-fledged insurgency’ with their own 'governors’ in all but one of the country’s provinces, a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) intelligence official said. "Time is running out. We’ve got about a year to prove that our strategy can actually work. The Taliban has shadow governors in 33 out of the 34 provinces," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a small group of reporters. "So he (the Taliban) has got a government-in-waiting. He has got ministers," he added. Violence in Afghanistan has reached some of its highest levels in the eight-year war and the United States President Barack Obama is sending in 30,000 extra troops as part of his new war strategy, to try to turn the tide. Other NATO countries are sending some 7,000 more. But Washington’s plan also calls for US troop levels to be scaled down from 2011 and the White House has said the United States will not be in Afghanistan in eight or nine years’ time. The Taliban are willing to wait. "The insurgency is confident and are looking towards a post-ISAF Afghanistan," he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. "If we are going to be successful, this has to be perceived as an international effort, almost a struggle, and it is a struggle, to stop or deter this notion of Islamic extremism." There are already around 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan but despite the numbers, they are locked in a stalemate with the Taliban, unable to stem the rising tide of suicide and roadside bomb attacks. With the improvised explosive device (IED) or roadside bomb, the Taliban have found their weapon of choice against the foreign troops, the official said, adding 'kinetic’ events had risen by 300 percent since 2007. The official said in 2003, foreign forces dealt with 81 IEDs, that figure rose to over 7,200 for 2009. This figure includes IEDs that had exploded and those that were found and cleared. "This is not meant to be a joke, but whoever is their logistics chief, you know, we ought to be taking lessons from them. Because that’s pretty good for an enemy insurgent force to generate that kind of capability," the official said. Foreign troop casualties are at their highest since the war began and public support is waning. More than 1,500 soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the war started in late 2001 and twice as many Americans have died so far this year compared to 2008.

Pakistan Is Rocked by a Spate of Attacks


A handful of deadly attacks ravaged parts of Pakistan this weekend and highlighted the multiple security challenges confronting the embattled Islamabad government, from violent vendettas by Taliban militants to sectarian violence against minority Shiites. The bloodiest attack happened Sunday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in the north of the country, where a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 80 during a Shiite religious procession. The attack could have been worse, the local authorities said: the bomber had been trying to enter a prayer hall but blew himself up when guards blocked him. Pakistani troops were rushed in to restore order. More than a dozen people were wounded in Karachi the day before by a small bomb. Both attacks appeared directed at Shiites observing Ashura, which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in A.D. 680. The identities of the attackers were not clear, but the country’s Shiites, one-fifth of the population, continue to be the targets of Sunni extremists. Past Shiite holidays have been singled out by sectarian militants, leading Pakistani security forces to deploy tens of thousands to protect Ashura marchers this year. The Kashmir attack followed the assassination on Sunday of a mid-level political administrator named Sarfaraz Khan and his family in the Kurram tribal area near the Afghan border. Taliban militants detonated a bomb at Mr. Khan’s home, killing him, his wife and four of his children, the local authorities said. The attack appeared to be retribution for the Pakistani military’s bombing and helicopter strafing of Taliban hide-outs in Kurram and the neighboring tribal area, Orakzai, a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, whose fighters seized control of Orakzai last year and instituted strict Islamic laws. One of his wives is also from Orakzai. Taliban fighters took positions in Kurram and Orakzai after fleeing a Pakistani offensive in the South Waziristan tribal area this fall, Pakistani intelligence and military officials say. Skirmishes are now routine. In a telephone interview, a Pakistani security official said that Pakistani jets killed six Orakzai militants during a bombing run on Sunday while Taliban guerrillas battled state-sponsored Lashkar tribal militiamen in southern Orakzai. Nine Taliban militants and eight militiamen have died so far in that battle, which was still happening late Sunday, he said. The South Waziristan offensive prompted Taliban commanders to intensify attacks in large cities and in the country’s interior. The military says it is throwing resources into killing militants who attack population centers. But Pakistani officials have refused American demands to drive out militants in North Waziristan, including networks controlled by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who are battling American troops across the border in Afghanistan. Such action is seen as crucial to President Obama’s recent order to send 30,000 additional American troops into Afghanistan. American forces are using drones and powerful missiles to attack those militants. The death toll for the latest drone strike, which occurred Saturday evening, has soared to 13, the Pakistani security official and a Pakistani intelligence officer said in interviews on Sunday. That attack, in Saidgai village in North Waziristan, killed seven foreign militants and six local fighters, the Pakistani security official said. Two missiles struck the compound of a man known as Asmatullah, he said. The intelligence official confirmed the number of dead at 13 but said he did not know their identities.

Following Path of Least Resistance, Terrorists Turn Yemen Into Poor Man's Afghanistan


With a stepped up presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, intelligence and security officials are now looking at other would-be hosts to Al Qaeda and its offshoot terrorist elements. Near the top of that list is Yemen. If terrorism follows the path of least resistance, then Yemen may be the poor man's Afghanistan. With a stepped up presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, intelligence and security officials are now looking at other would-be hosts to Al Qaeda and its offshoot terrorist elements. Near the top of that list is Yemen. "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war. That's the danger we face," said independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, head of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. "Yemen is a hot spot. We need to do everything we can to work with that government," added Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, who appeared with Lieberman on "Fox News Sunday." The arrest of a Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a transatlantic flight to the United States on Christmas Day has now led back to Yemen.  Sources told Fox News on Sunday that suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the son of a wealthy retired Nigerian banker and government minister, had spent time in Yemen in the past year. A government report sent to law enforcement agencies on Sunday also referred to Abdul Mutallab's "extremist ties and possible involvement with Yemen-based extremists." However, federal officials have not determined that Mutallab obtained any explosives in Yemen. Yemen has been a trouble spot for a long time. In 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed. All the defendants connected to the Cole bombing were released by Yemeni authorities or broke out of Yemeni jails by May 2008.  While Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Saleh has been increasing counter-terrorism cooperation, tribes in rural areas have given refuge to Islamic extremists. More than 90,000 Somali refugees also are located in Yemen, which sits across from the Horn of Africa. Nearly half of Yemen's population is under age 15, and fewer than half the people are literate. Yemen was reunified in 1990 after being divided in two since the end of World War II. The southern portion was overrun by Marxists after the British abandoned its protectorate in 1967. The north was run by an Islamic theocracy until 1962. Now, political parties are divided into Islamic reformist groups, socialists and a Ba'athist Party similar to Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, among others. The Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab, Sunni group that wants to spread Islamic law to secular governments, is an influential pressure group.  "The Yemeni government now is facing three confrontations -- one with the south, one with Al Qaeda and one in the north" that is supported by the Iranians as part of its proxy war with the West and U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, said terrorism expert Walid Phares.

China author set to sue Google over web book scan



Chinese author Mian Mian, who shot to fame with lurid tales of sex, drugs and alcohol in the underworld, will sue Internet giant Google this week for copyright infringement, her lawyer said Monday. Sun Jingwei told AFP that the case -- the first civil lawsuit against Google in China over the scanning of books into its controversial web library -- would open at a Beijing court on Tuesday. "Tomorrow afternoon at the Haidian court, representatives from both sides will hand over evidence," Sun said. "After that I will be preparing our case and I figure that the actual trial will take place next year." The 39-year-old Mian Mian -- who won fame in 2000 with her novel "Candy," a story about prostitutes, gangsters and artists in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen -- is seeking 61,000 yuan (8,900 dollars) in damages. She alleges that Google illegally scanned her third novel "Acid Lovers" into its digital library, Sun said.

'Mousavi nephew' among Iran dead



The nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the Iranian opposition leader, has reportedly been killed in violence surrounding street protests in Tehran during the Shia Muslim festival of Ashoura. Seyyed Ali Mousavi is thought to be among at least five people killed during the protests, which comments on social networking websites suggested would continue into Monday. The Parlemannews website said Mousavi's 35-year-old nephew was shot near his heart during clashes at Enghelab square "and was martyred after he was taken to Ebnesina hospital". State television reported that "unknown assailants" had killed Mousavi's nephew, naming him as Ali Habibi Mousavi Khamene. Opposition websites reported police had fired into crowds of demonstrators in central Tehran during Sunday's protests and witnesses said dozens of protesters were wounded in the police crackdowns. The reports could not be independently verified because foreign media are banned from covering protests.