ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Veteran ethnic Pashtun politician Mohammad Afzal Khan refuses to leave home in northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley even though the Taliban have tried to kill him, and says the people should stand up to the militants.
Swat was until recently one of Pakistan's top tourist destinations but Pakistani Taliban have all but taken over the scenic mountain valley, imposing their severe interpretation of Islamic law and slaughtering opponents with impunity.
Many families have fled, while residents say many policemen have either deserted or simply refuse to act against the militants, who have shot, blown up or beheaded numerous officers.
But Khan, an 82-year-old former cabinet minister known as Afzal Lala, or Afzal the Elder, has chosen to stay on to try to rally resistance to the militants.
"I'm from this soil. It's my home. My tribe is here," Khan told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"I want to live among my people. I won't run away."
The Islamists' grip on the valley, just 130 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad and away from the lawless Afghan border, highlights Pakistan's deteriorating security.
My review is based on OSINT relative the the Army's HT effort.
What I have been able to glean indicates the HT effort is based on the Company level. Which should be minimal staffing.
But could be organized on a wiki to include Battlion level all the way up to Theater level, and provide a coordinated effort linked to all levels and a past history of paradigms, groups and people.
The work product should include applied anthropology. and metrics. And demographics on the enemy.
With this Wiki a new HT troops can check what was done in the past and with whom. Reporting from multiple levels and a consildated effort would be a great force multiplier.
And linked into the Military Blogging efforts and the State departments new efforts in the Info war.
For every heart and mind won, its one less enemy that has to be killed, A noble endeavor for any anthropologist.
Genius Mil blogger, very high credibility, perfect opsec, Great American mouth piece, excellent morale booster, AND GIVES THE ENEMY A PEAK OF WHAT KIND OF TROOPS THEY ARE UP AGAINST.
The blog its self is a great TRUTHFUL propaganda platform, it shows the insurgents: the military, and mental superiority of troops that are killing them.
The Army needs 20,000 "LT G's" blogging, it would go a long way to turning the 'Infomation War" in Americas favor. The Army has the Paradigm, the Troops, and the technical ability to engage and fight the "Information WAR" for the hearts and minds but has so far declined to engage the enemy. If you win the hearts and minds you don't have to Kill them.
There should be a pay grade increase for blogging and an MOS.
The Army is stepping on its own big D***.
The Army has not identified the WWW a it's war domain YET.
It is not going to be easy, but the Army has never refused to engage before because it is "too hard".
Kuwaiti Columnist Denounces Anti-West Discourse in Middle East
In an article in the Kuwaiti English-language daily Arab Times, columnist Dr. Khaled Al-Janfawi denounced the anti-West discourse prevailing in the Middle East. He argued that this discourse, which promotes a distorted and biased image of the West, leads to hostility and extremism and is one of the roots of the culture of violence in the Middle East. He added that in order to promote tolerance and democracy in the Arab world, there was a need for school curricula that do not demonize the other but instead stress the importance of diversity and pluralism.
While Western science is desired even coveted in the Middle East, the Western culture is Demonized.
The demonization is an attempt to hold their cultural wall against change.
There are several natural forces working against their cultural wall.
You will note the small Green "arabic flag" at the top of all my posts. It allows translation to Arabic of my posts, just click on it.
Google is an Engine of social change, their translation services offer communication breaking the language barrier, of course its a Googalization of the message, but I think the concepts get thru.
Person to person communication.
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New research out this week from Gartner tells us that the amount of PCs being used around the world has now passed the 1 billion mark, and that number is set to double in the next 6 years.
( World population is around 7 billion )
http://www.lavasoft.com/company/blog/?p=406
http://snipurl.com/2o73z
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USA has over 100,000 troops in Theater, TRAIN THEM TO BLOG: Potential 25,000 troop blogs, huge untrained asset, NOT DEPLOYED. Military needs to view the WWW not as something to fear, but as a Information weapon in the GWOT. Terroist have 6,000+ blogs, forums, Military could overwhelm them with trained Bloggers, ( Rule sets, guidelines, oversight ) and stop fearing the Internet. The risk in not using a Troop Bloggers, is far exceeded by allowing as-Sahab al qaeda's media arm to win the information WAR, recruiting, propaganda, suicide bombers, funding, sourcing independent cells.
"It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a speech in November."As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, 'How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world's greatest communication society?' "
The air Force has the key Paradigm for WWW offensive capabilities, and seem to be uncertain if they are up to the MISSION, ( Air Force takes 2 steps BACK ) while the Army has the force, capability to DOMINATE THE WWW INFORMATION WAR, and have rejected the mission, instituting repressive rules and regs. effectively blocking troops from blogging. currently Army bloggers need approval and article review of 3 or 4 line officers to publish each post.
Paradigm problem: Military has problems recognizing new domains, and fears engaging the enemy on these new fields of battle, while al Qaeda only continues to exist; because they embrace and exploit the new domain. While the Western military fears the new domains. And civilization is at risk, while al Qaeda dominates these domains, WWW and Info war. ( 6 months to a NUKE ) ( We never fought there before, not our job, too risky, don't know how, nobody told us to fight there, ETC. )
.................................................. Back to the Point Middle Eastern demonization of USA.
While the Middle East fear change, American Culture is a force of its own, greater then the forces of the Military in many ways. American culture has very little "selling pressure", and a lot of "buying Pressure". NO one likes to be sold but everyone likes to buy. "Buying pressure" is internally generated by the buyer. Cultures have minimal impact on this type of buying pressure. Their cultural wall is doomed to crumble. And the West will be un-demonized in time.
American style, movies, music transend most cultural barriers, and threaten change. Look at Cokc cola.
The West is NOT Satan. ( Read the Troop Blogs, ooppps they haven't been deployed )
In the long term American culture will un-demonize the West, but that takes time. And in this time of non-state actors in the GWOT we may not have that time.
State actors with a religious bent towards state suicide are problematic. WHY Iran will push the button
I just realized there is not a force anywhere in the world that the US Military is afraid of, EXCEPT THE INTERNET, that knocks their little knees together.
Armed Pakistani militants loyal to pro-Taliban cleric Mullah Fazlullah have seized control of much of Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley and are now battling security forces for the rest. (STR/ AFP/ Getty Images)
For the second day in a row, Pakistani troops abandoned an army base in South Waziristan, a region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that is a stronghold for militants. And this time, the militants didn't even attack.
One hundred frontier troops in the Chagmalai Fort received threats from militants and apparently decided it was a better idea to flee than to stay and defend themselves, an intelligence source and local residents told ABC News. The fort was filled with heavy weaponry, including artillery guns and rocket propelled grenades.
Paki Army just announced they were in control of Swat yesterday after a 3 mo. operation. ``Troops have pushed out the miscreants from the Swat Valley to an adjoining isolated area'' in the mountains, Major General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director-general of military operations, said at a briefing yesterday, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
Thirty-six soldiers and nine civilians were killed during the offensives, the general said, without saying how many militants died. More than 615 people were arrested, 100 of whom are still being detained, he added.
( Guess he shouldn't have let the 515 people go. Most disappointing. )
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The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets. (When does the Army target them? g )
Last week, rockets were fired at an army barracks in Warsak on the city's perimeter, a warning of the power of the militants to strike from Mohmand, a district in the tribal areas adjacent to Peshawar, an area that a few months ago was considered free of the Taliban.
The army headquarters in the center of the city were struck last month by a bomber who was hiding explosives under her burqa that were set off by remote control. The assassination a year ago of the police chief, Mr. Saad, who was killed while on duty trying to control a religious procession in one of the bazaars, shook the city.
"It's asymmetrical warfare against an established state," said Muhammad Sulaman Khan, chief of operations for the Peshawar police and a close friend of Mr. Saad. "The terrorists only don't have to lose it, we need to win it."
Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's army said it took control of the Swat Valley near Afghanistan after a three-month operation against pro-Taliban Islamic fighters.
``Troops have pushed out the miscreants from the Swat Valley to an adjoining isolated area'' in the mountains, Major General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director-general of military operations, said at a briefing yesterday, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
Thirty-six soldiers and nine civilians were killed during the offensives, the general said, without saying how many militants died. More than 615 people were arrested, 100 of whom are still being detained, he added. SOURCE:MORE.
A lone Army Ranger got separated from his unit during a night time ambush.
He was out of ammo, grenades and spotted by the Taliban.
His Radio had caught some flack and wasn't working and he was low on water and had a flesh wound.
The Taliban decided to attack him before search and rescue could be called in.
The Taliban leader, Mullah MansourDadullah is looking for a hostage to Torture. Mansour responded, "we have been walking on his footsteps, and following his methods. We are still following his strategy and working to finish him off."
Mansour decide to flank the Ranger, he sent in a squad of heavily armed Arabs from the East and from the West Pashtoons, while he held the middle ground as the Anvil, surrounding him.
Most of the fighting was in the back of a small Mountain, in Waziristan with Dullaholding the front.
The fighting went on for 3 hours.
One of Dullas scouts returned with his field report, he was wounded, a gasping chest wound and had lost a lot of blood, His report was given in Pashtoon, it was:... "look out its a trap... the Ranger has a Knife. "
UPDATE: All services to the Rashadeen Army have been discontinued. Websites down. All of them. No webhosts. No third party content hosting. No DNS. Nothing.
How bad has the al Rashadeen Army completely and utterly owned? To get just how bad these guys have been tooled, you'll have to read this post in super slow motion. Blood and guts flying everywhere. The al Reshedeen Army in a daze as their propaganda empire is completely destroyed around them.
I imagine it was something like this for the al Rashadeen Army. Only, we're the terrorists and they're the Care Bears. MORE:
The fight against Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups is primarily an information war, leading counterinsurgency and counterterror officers believe -- one in which the U.S. is still lagging far, far behind. But after years of ignoring the problem, the Army may be starting to take this battle of images seriously; the service is working on a new "information operations" field manual, Inside the Army reports.
While it might be tempting to write this off as bureaucratic paper-shuffling, keep in mind: it wasn't until a similar counterinsurgency playbook was finalized that armed services began waging in earnest at a full-blown guerrilla-fighting campaign in Iraq.
The first step will be to revise the Army's main operations manual, FM 3-0, to address the "important business of influencing and informing populations -- both our own and in the area in which we operate," Training and Doctrine Command chief Gen William Wallace tells Inside the Army.
[That] in turn, would be used to craft a separate information operations field manual over the course of the next year.
... In fighting an insurgency, U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq have recognized that, in addition to traditional intelligence, “information about the socio-cultural mosaic in their area of operation” is essential to military success, according to Paul Tiberi, director of the Army’s Information Operations Proponent.
Determining how the disparate groups interact and how various media “influence the perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and . . . behaviors of these peoples” could make or break the U.S. counterinsurgency effort, he added.
That shift in attitude can't come quick enough, one influential counterinsurgency officer tells DANGER ROOM.
"We still don't see or accept information as an element of power," he writes. "For the enemy, it is THE driving element."
Why? Because for modern, highly developed democracies the beliefs and opinions of their well-informed populations is their center of gravity. If you cannot simply overpower your opponent physically, then it is the will of the opponent that has to become the target. 100% available modern media is the avenue of approach that your "information bombs and missiles" travel along. [L]iving rooms of registered voters are the impact areas...
This newly emerged information element of power has the potential to do to highly developed modern democracies what conventional and nuclear weapons could not: compel them to quit. Which is exactly what is happening now.
Army of Islam Issues Statement Questioning Why Hamas Has Decided to Start a War Over BBC Reporter Alan Johnston
The Army of Islam Issues Statement Questioning Why Hamas Has Decided to Start a War Over Captive BBC Reporter Alan Johnston June 26, 2007
The Army of Islam [Jaish al-Islam], a jihadist group operating in Gaza Strip which kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston, issued a statement through the Global Islamic Media Front to jihadist forums today, Tuesday, June 26, 2007, questioning Hamas and its military wing, the Martyr Izz al-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, over initiating a war with the group over Johnston's capture. Hamas has demanded the release of Johnston, going as far as threatening a military response against the Army of Islam. The group claims that the Martyr Izz al-Deen al-Qassam Brigades has "dared" to kidnap two of its members, a field commander and a Mujahid, when they were returning from dawn prayer, and believes this action and their siding with Britain is tantamount to abandonment of Islam and denial of Shari'a. They announce to Hamas: "you were not the first to be deceived by the mirage. Do not follow he who sold his religion cheaply to get the satisfaction of Britain. In the Name of Allah, Britain will not be pleased with you unless you follow its religion. So are you going to follow it?!"
Rather than focusing on the release from captivity of Sheikh Abu Qatada al-Filistini for the release of Johnston, the Army of Islam uses Sajida al-Rishawi, a female sentenced to death in Jordan for alleged part in suicide bombings which struck hotels in Amman in November 2005, in their argument to Hamas. The group portrays itself as acting in her defense, and asks of Hamas why it chooses to be responsible for her death, and kill or be killed because of an "infidel [Johnston] whose kidnappers want to meet a Muslim woman sentenced to death in the jails of the dictators." Longing for the past when Hamas and the Army of Islam were in accord, one year ago in the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the group wishes that Hamas recognizes its error and cease its escalation. The Army of Islam also threatens those scholars who issue "misleading fatwas", and reminds of its denial of negotiations for the release of those they captured, stating: "No haggling and no discussion, even if they remain in captivity for a thousand years or are slaughtered like sheep."
"The Army of Islam also threatens those scholars who issue "misleading fatwas". Now they are threatening the Imans, al Qaeda is now threating the religious leaders...
How long will Islam allow al Qaeda to spit on Allah?
Gerald
In a statement emailed to AFP Tuesday, June 26, the Palestinian radicals demand that Jordan release the Iraqi woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, who was sentenced to death over triple hotel attacks in Amman that killed 60 people in 2005; Abu Mohammed al-Maqdissi, also held in Jordan since then; and the radical Palestinian-born cleric Abu Qatada, reputed former al Qaeda spiritual leader in Europe, who is held in Britain.
DEBKAfile reports the threat was prompted by Hamas Executive Force’s abduction earlier Tuesday of Musab Durmush, a kinsman of Mumtaz Durmush, chief of the al-Qaeda linked Army of Islam, and his bodyguard Mahmoud al-Katib. The message the group realized – “There will be no compromise, he will either stay in captivity for 1,000 years or be slaughtered like a lamb" means that Johnston’s life will be forfeit unless Hamas frees the Durmush captive.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources add: Six days ago, Hamas threatened to free the BBC reporter by force. Durmush rose to the challenge by promising to meet force with force. This made his al-Qaeda-linked militia the only Palestinian force willing take on Hamas, which further builds up al Qaeda’s clout in the Gaza Strip.
Two days ago, Alan Johnston, 45, was shown on video wearing a bomb belt and saying his Gaza captors would detonate it if any attempt was made to rescue him. The British journalist was snatched at gunpoint in Gaza City on March 12.
Shalit’s obviously dictated call on the Israeli government to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners was rejected by prime minister Ehud Olmert at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference Monday, June 25.
“You must meet the demands of the moujeheddin to get me out of prison," said the kidnapped soldier in the first sign of life in his year of captivity. "Just as I have parents who miss me, so too do the thousands of Palestinian prisoners and they deserve to have them home.”
“It has been a whole year and my health is continuing to deteriorate and I need lengthy hospital treatment. I was on a military mission under orders and not a dope peddler.”
The same day, al Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman Zuwahiri released a new audio video supporting Hamas and its seizure of the Gaza Strip in a dramatic swing round from its earlier criticism.
Sunday, Hamas aired footage produced by al Qaeda’s Army of Islam showing BBC correspondent Alan Johnston wearing an explosive belt and warning that it would be detonated in any attempt to free him.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources: The release of the Shalit, Johnston and Zawihiri tapes within a few hours – the first two by Hamas – strongly indicates the timing was coordinated between Hamas and al Qaeda. Although the Army Islam holds the two hostages, its al Qaeda masters appear to be willing to let Hamas use the Israeli soldier to secure the release of a large number of its prisoners from Israeli jails. The kudos for this feat would gain the Hamas government prestige and popularity and create fertile soil for Osama bin Laden’s fundamentalists to further spread their wings in and from Gaza.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report that an earlier audiotape, which has not been released, was handed to Hamas by the henchmen of the chief of the Army of Islam aka al Qaeda Palestine, Mumtaz Durmush, who are holding both Shalit and Johnston. The two kidnapped men ask for their captors’ demands to be met. The two tapes were clearly made by the same hand.
The efforts made by both the Israeli and British authorities to keep al Qaeda connection dark and the two cases separate has worsened their situation. Time is only making Durmush – he now calls himself Abu Muhammad al Ansari – more implacable and more respected for his toughness in the circles of al Qaeda’s Middle East commanders.
Hamas pulled back from storming the Durmush compound in the Sabra district of Gaza City so as not to clash directly with al Qaeda’s Gaza network. Ayman Zuwairi’s support for its takeover of Gaza “despite the mistakes of their leadership” was its reward. Only last week, al Qaeda released a tape reprimanding Hamas for “daring to monopolize the Israeli Gilead Shalit and seeking a deal with Israel.” A victory for Hamas is a victory for Palestine,” said bin Laden’s deputy.
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While it might be tempting to write this off as bureaucratic paper-shuffling, keep in mind: it wasn't until a similar 
