Pakistan News and Discussion-8

[Naresh]

[center]<b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Did Musharraf “cave in” to Taliban?:</span></b> <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo--> [/center]

[center]<b><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Waziristan deal with Mulla Omar</span></b>[/center]

<b>LAHORE : The fugitive Taliban commander Mulla Omar has emerged as the key player behind the movement’s controversial peace deal with Pakistan, British newspaper The Telegraph reported on Sunday.

The Taliban’s one-eyed spiritual leader, who has a $10 million price on his head for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks, <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>signed a letter explicitly endorsing the truce announced this month. The deal between the Pakistani authorities and pro-Taliban militants in the tribal provinces bordering Afghanistan was designed to end five years of bloodshed in the area.</span></b>

In return for an end to the US-backed government campaign in Waziristan, the tribal leaders agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani troops, more than 500 of whom have been killed. The deal has been widely criticised as over-generous, with no way to enforce the Taliban’s promise not to enter Afghanistan to attack coalition troops.

According to The Telegraph, <b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>the disclosure that Mulla Omar personally backed the deal will come as a fresh embarrassment to President Pervez Musharraf.</span></b> While officially a US ally in the war on terror, Pakistan has been repeatedly accused by Afghanistan of not doing enough to clear Taliban militants out of its border regions, allegations it denies. <b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>However, Mulla Omar clearly felt that the deal benefited the Taliban, adding force to criticisms that it was in effect a cave-in.</span></b> Tribal elders in south Waziristan said that Mulla Omar had sent one of his most trusted and feared commanders, Mulla Dadullah, to ask local militants to sign the truce. Dadullah, a one-legged fighter known for his fondness for beheading his enemies, is believed to be the man leading the campaign in southern Afghanistan in which 18 British troops have been killed. <b>“Had they been not asked by Mulla Omar, none of them were willing to sign an agreement,” said Lateef Afridi, a tribal elder and former national assembly member. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>“This is no peace agreement, it is accepting Taliban rule in Pakistan’s territory.”</span></b>

In return for a reduction in the army’s 80,000-strong presence and the release of about 165 hardcore militants arrested for attacks on the armed forces, local Taliban agreed to stop supporting the foreign militants in their midst, and promised not to set up their own fundamentalist administrations. The government also agreed to compensate tribal leaders for the loss of life and property, and to return all weapons and vehicles seized during army operations. Critics say the deal is a dangerous climb-down by Gen Musharraf, who is under huge pressure from religious conservatives in his own country to curb his US-backed fight against militant Islam.

[center]<b>LONG LIVE THE ISLAMIC EMIRATE OF WAZIRISTAN</b>[/center]