Taliban kill tribal elder, wife and son in Pakistan

[Robb]

Source: AFP

KHAR, Pakistan — Taliban armed with rockets and grenades stormed the home of a pro-government Pakistani tribal elder on Thursday, killing him, his wife and son before blowing up the house, officials said.

(snip)

The group of Taliban attacked in Asghar village, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Khar, the main town in Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan.

"Malik tur Mulla, his wife and a son died in the attack while one woman was wounded," Irshad Khan, a local administrative official, told AFP by telephone. The son was 22 years old, Khan said.

Mulla, 52, raised an anti-Taliban militia in the Chaharmang valley and returned home last year after the army claimed the area was secure following prolonged fighting aimed at crushing Islamist militant sanctuaries.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ge98KGZQCLgDc4vFiuilEJP1kusw

---

...Perhaps if Pakistan leaves Pakistan, the Taliban will stop killing people? Pakistan out of Pakistan, now!

[Soylent Brice]

1. hi Robb.

i understand the point you're making with your comment, but that would be like me saying,

"get Americans out of America now!"

we kill each other over here just as often, and in ways just as horrible. it doesn't justify anything either way, but my point is violence is everywhere.

does our presence in that region inflame the situation? yes.
would us leaving immediately cause all violence to cease instantly? no. will violence continue over there once we leave? yes. violence, murder, thses things are everywhere and always have been. my point is there can be a better, more peaceful way of accomplishing our goals over there.

us leaving would be a big first step, i think.

BTW, good morning.


edit to add: regarding this story, yet another tragic loss of life centered around a senseless conflict. sad.

[Robb]

2. We do NOT kill each other here "just as often, and in ways just as horrible."

That paints an overly rosy picture of the situation.

In this part of Pakistan, children die from bombs set by religious extremists at the rate of 40-50 per month. Search on my LBN posts, Pakistan, the math is not difficult. That does not happen "everywhere," and it has been happening in Peshawar for more than a decade.

We are not "inflaming" the situation with our presence in the hemisphere. When people resist, they are attacked. When we provide them additional tools to resist, they resist more and are attacked more. Would you prefer they not resist?

[Soylent Brice]

3. stats for 2008:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/oct/05/us-homicide-rates#table1

Circumstances | Total | murder victims | Male | Female | Unknown
Total | 14180 | 11059 | 3078 | 43

Total being 14,180
divided by 365
brings us to 38.8 murders a day in this country for 2008.

in terms of horrible, here's a recent example:

14-year-old Camden girl pleads guilty to torture killing

i would prefer that everyone calmed down and tried talking to each other. call me naive.

[Robb]

4. Just murder rate? We still lose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Now look up church bombings. How many times have you dodged shrapnel this week?

[Soylent Brice]

5. from you, a few times. lol

that source states Intentional homicide rates per 100,000 population.

How many cities in Pakistan have a population of 100,000?
edit to add: how many people even live in Pakistan?

population difference is obviously a factor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

[Robb]

6. Go smaller. Maybe 3 million people in Peshawar region.

...which is what I'm talking about.

The situation there is, and has been, awful. It has not improved, or worsened. When was the last time a bomb killed 100 people here? There were 80-odd suicide bombings in 2009, killed more than 1300 people.

No comparison.

[Soylent Brice]

7. was Ft. Hood a fluke?

or VA Tech?

Are We Numb To Mass Murder?

No other prosperous country not torn by civil conflict has anything like our volume of mass killings

in your opinion is war really the answer?
i like to think that it isn't.

[Robb]

8. Yes, they were.

You want to add in shooting deaths? Peshwar experiences a "VA tech" several times a month.

I'm not telling you the answer, because "we" still haven't faced up to the problem.

[Soylent Brice]

9. what, in your opinion, is the real problem?

i'm genuinely curious of your POV.

[Robb]

10. LOL which one?

In this case, it's Pakistan's "strategic depth" policy on the Taliban. Random peace deals and blind eyes to create an Islamic buffer, that's about as relevant to Islam as Jim Bakker ultimately was to Christianity.

In a larger sense, it's the fundamental misunderstanding in the West of what it means to live under terror. Not "terra terra terra," but the real deal. Whether it's Shabaab of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the issue is the same: you can't live a normal life if every component of your normal life is in daily peril. I have some very real and personal experience with this. It is absolutely crazy-making.

VA tech or Hasan are so strange they make headlines around the world. But it's the day-to-day in Yemen or the Sarhad that is different. If your livelihood is growing fruit, and at any time the local thugs can come burn down the orchard, you're not living a normal life. There is no peace, and won't be without first establishing security -- and that means getting rid of the thugs, and not by diplomatic means. Same as any gang structure: arrest them or shoot them, but get them out of the neighborhood if you want things to improve.

Sanction a Somali warlord and they shrug. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front could care less. What could you offer a Taliban commander he doesn't already have? Diplomacy has never been an effective tool against thuggery, especially when fueled by radical religious theology, because its roots are in poverty, and it knows it can rise from it again and again to gain power with intimidation.

Couple that with the "sexiness" of jihad, and you've got a growing problem, right here in River City. I mean, look at Shahzad, kid of means with no direction roped into the romance of fighting the infidels. El-Hanafi, plenty of money, no real problems but wanted to shoot an AK-47. Taken individually it's nothing that can't be absorbed by the global nuthatcherry, but no one pays attention until it winds up in Times Square. And even then, it's pooh-poohed. It's like this country can't see past the water's edge sometimes.

The reality is that there is an ideological war taking place, but it is not a war on "terror." It is a war on a separatist radical Islamic ideology that itself is merely a mask for thuggery, and refusing for nearly a decade to acknowledge there are connections between activity in places like Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and the Philippines is going to haunt us for a generation.

This administration, right now, doesn't seem to be making the same mistake. Both feet are in the fire, where they have to be. Because it's not a matter of whether we should butt out. We're in it by just existing, because it is the existence of the West that fuels the recruiting rolls. Until those kids see a better game, they're going to keep joining up and dying for the fake mullahs.

[Soylent Brice]

11. i've been thinking about this and i keep coming back to my initial reaction.

that reaction being this all sounds a lot like "stay the course".
i don't believe that the only way to get rid of the "bullies" is to punch the bully in the nose.

educating the people would be far more effective. the people need to see how things could be. the people are going to need to stand up in unison against the fake mullahs.

why was it okay for us to stay out of the way when Iran was close to revolution during the recent elections, but with AfPak the only solution is somehow pummeling the bad guys in hopes they'll go away?

information, education, and peace will free these people. not bombs and bullets.

[Robb]

13. I don't begrudge you your position

...but right now, metaphorically and otherwise, there's a guy with a rifle shooting anyone bringing information and blowing up anyplace that offers education. Peace isn't going to break out unless the people knuckle under again, and then it's not really going to be peace.

Honestly, someone has to remove the guy with the rifle and bombs. It's the same way you clean up a rough part of town: arrest people and keep the cops tooling through there for a decade. I've seen neighborhoods out here come through terrible history to become places I'd take my daughter. But the thing that started it was a lot of police work. Security first.

(On Iran, I''m no expert. But if I had to guess, we kept out of Iran's hair, and will probably stay out of it, because they have a real army, and a real air force, and IIRC could mobilize 10 million decently-trained reservists in a pinch. It's not a shooting war we want at all, because while we might win, the casualty figures would dwarf Vietnam before the first weekend.)

[Soylent Brice]

14. i don't begrudge your position either.

you're not a warmonger, and honestly see it as a necessary evil.
i completely understand your point of view.

in US vs John Lennon there's a reporter asking him if he thought peace would ever really work, or how did he know it would work (or something along those lines). John replies, (paraphrasing)

"How will we know if we never really try it."

that's kind of where i sit.

it's been another great discussion, Robb.
i'm outta here for the holiday. you and yours stay safe out there and enjoy the weekend.
:)

[Old Troop]

15. I heard almost that several years ago. Commander of Otis AFB

went to a town meeting to explain the reason for the noise his aircraft made as they launched. He explained that the number of Russian Bear and other aircraft flying up the east coast had increased and his planes had to launch to check them out. A man in the crowd said, "if you weren't here, they wouldn't feel threatened"!

[slackmaster]

12. The Religion Of Peace must kill people in order to save them

:nuke: