Taliban and AQ Taking A Beating In Pakistan

It looks like President Bush's visit to Pakistan may have paid off, as Musharraf appears to have re-energized his campaign in Waziristan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban remnants that have taken refuge there. In a protracted battle near the Afghanistan border, Pakistani forces have killed scores of the Islamist terrorists:

Pakistani security forces battled pro-Taliban rebels holding out in a town near the Afghan border on Monday, killing 19 of them as the toll from three days of clashes rose to more than 120, the military said.

The rebels launched attacks on government positions in Miran Shah on Saturday as President Bush met Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in the capital. The fighting has raged since. ...

Militants launched attacks and seized government buildings Saturday in Miran Shah in revenge for a government attack Wednesday that killed 45 fighters.

The toll from the first day of fighting rose from 46 to more than 100 militants as more detailed reports arrived, Sultan said. Two militants were killed Sunday.

Five troops were killed and two wounded over the three days, he said.

That ratio shows that the Taliban and AQ cannot defeat anyone militarily; no army could suffer losses at a ratio of 100-5, and Pakistan has a lot more resources than the Islamists do. All they needed was the proper motivation. The rebels helped supply that by staging a rather stupid offensive during Bush's visit to Musharraf, giving Bush all the context he needed to press Musharraf for more decisive action against the holdouts in the border area.

The Afghanis also prodded Musharraf into action, a move they continue to defend today:

A rift between Afghanistan and Pakistan deepened Tuesday as Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said intelligence about Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives allegedly hiding in Pakistan was "very strong and accurate." ...

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan — key allies of Washington in its war on terror — have deteriorated sharply since Karzai gave Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month a list of Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives he said were hiding in Pakistan.

Afghan and Pakistani officials told The Associated Press the list included Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and top associates, and that Afghanistan also shared the locations of alleged terrorist training camps. ..

Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of leaking the list to the media because Kabul did not trust Islamabad to act on it. "The bad-mouthing against Pakistan is a deliberate, articulated conspiracy," Musharraf was quoted as saying Monday by the state-run news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan.

Pakistan has had an uneven approach to fighting the militants in its border regions over the past few years. It presses in engagements such as the active battle we see now, but then relaxes for a while and tries to use the tribes as proxies to flush out the terrorists. That demonstrates the tense relationship that Islamabad has with these tribal leaders. Pakistan has long relied on them to act as a trip-wire defense against threats foreign threats in order to keep its military mobile in the less daunting landscape farther inside its borders. With a number of the tribes at least somewhat sympathetic to the Islamists, the Pakistanis have to tread carefully in order to maintain their traditional security barriers.

However, as Musharraf has seen this past week, as bad as angering and alienating the tribes might be, it's far worse to allow the Islamists to gather in the north and slowly gather into a substantial threat. As soon as they feel strong enough, they will attack Musharraf and the military and exploit the tribes either for support or to act as shields. Their attacks are not limited towards Islamabad either, but at least equally include Afghanistan and its new government. The US made it clear earlier that it would not forever resist the impulse to strike back on its own against the Taliban/AQ remnants using Pakistan as a terror base, and Afghanistan made sure that the world knew it had given Musharraf enough information to act on his own.

Musharraf needs a push now and then to recommit to the war. Bush and Karzai provided it this week, as did the terrorists themselves, and the results have been excellent thus far.

Arab-American Psychologist Tongue Lashes Al-Jazeera

One of the hottest downloads of the past week has been the stunning video of Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan, who administered quite a tongue-lashing to an Islamist host on Al-Jazeera TV.

Video of Interview

Read More »Transcript excerpt below:


Wafa Sultan: "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete."

[...]

Host: "I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?"

Wafa Sultan: "Yes, that is what I mean."

[...]

Host: "Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind..."

Wafa Sultan: "The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: 'I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger.' When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

"My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma; another time he calls them the 'People of the Book'; and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians 'those who incur Allah's wrath.' Who told you that they are 'People of the Book?' They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them 'those who incur Allah's wrath,' or 'those who have gone astray,' and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?"

[…]

"I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it."

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: "Are you a heretic?"

Wafa Sultan: "You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural..."

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: "If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran..."

Wafa Sultan: "These are personal matters that do not concern you."

[...]

"Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs."

[...]

"The Jews have come from the tragedy [of the Holocaust], and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. Fifteen million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind