Pakistan told India on Saturday it did not want war and would use force only if attacked — a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions between the neighbors a day after reports indicated thousands of Pakistani troops were headed for their shared border.
Intelligence officials said Friday that the army was redeploying thousands of troops from the country’s fight against militants along the Afghan border to the Indian frontier. Islamabad announced the same day it was canceling all military leave — the latest turn of the screw in the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals following last month’s terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.
India has blamed Pakistani militants for the terrifying three-day siege. Pakistan’s recently elected civilian government has demanded that India back up the claim with better evidence.
“We don’t want to fight, we don’t want to have war, we don’t want to have aggression with our neighbors,” Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in a televised speech.
Yeah, the march to the border was just for a friendly chat.
In case anyone thinks Pakistan is an ally in the war against Islamofascism, this should clear things up:
ISLAMABAD: All main militant groups fighting in Fata, from South Waziristan to Bajaur and from Mohmand to the Khyber Agency, have contacted the government through different sources after the Mumbai bombings and have offered a ceasefire if the Pakistan Army also stops its operations.
And as a positive sign that this ceasefire offer may be accepted, the Pakistan Army has, as a first step, declared before the media some notorious militant commanders, including Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, as “patriotic” Pakistanis.
These two militant commanders are fighting the Army for the last four years and have invariably been accused of terrorism against Pakistan but the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage has suddenly turned terrorists into patriots.
A top security official told a group of senior journalists on Saturday: “We have no big issues with the militants in Fata. We have only some misunderstandings with Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah. These misunderstandings could be removed through dialogue.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk//arc_default.asp
Hat tip to Bill Roggio at The long War Journal: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/taliban_are_patriots.php
The surviving Mumbai terrorist gave credit where it’s due:
Azam Amir, the terrorist who was held by the Mumbai Police, has made some striking revelations regarding the Mumbai terror attacks.
Azam has disclosed that the Pakistan Navy had trained the terrorists in boating and swimming to carry out the attacks in Mumbai. Azam was arrested on Wednesday from Girgaum Chowpatty in an encounter with the police. Ismail Khan, an accomplice of Amir, reportedly died in the gunbattle.
Sources say Azam has also revealed that people from gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s gang helped the terrorists from Karachi in organising the attacks.
Reports suggest that the planning for the terror attacks in Mumbai had begun almost a year ago in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. Azam has reportedly told the police that around 20 Pakistan nationals were trained in PoK to carry out the attacks. The training in PoK went on for almost five-and-half months, during which the terrorist were taught the use of sophisticated arms and ammunition.
At the end of the five months training, all terrorists were given a months leave and were ordered to gather in Karachi after the break for training in boating, rowing and swimming by the Pakistan Navy.
Let’s see. Pakistan trains, funds, deploys, and hails terrorists as ‘heroes’. What pals.