Hundreds of Pakistani tribesmen on Tuesday threatened the United States with holy war, lashing out at demands for action against Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani extremists based in Pakistan.
There is growing unease in Pakistan about US pressure to take on the Haqqani network or face the consequences, with the military saying it is too over-stretched fighting local Taliban to open a new front against a US enemy.
Having accused the network of orchestrating recent attacks on its embassy in Kabul and a NATO base in Afghanistan, with Pakistani intelligence involvement, Washington now says it is considering branding the network a terror group.
Any such move could complicate future efforts to negotiate a settlement in Afghanistan and, given US claims about government ties to the network, risk Pakistan being branded a state sponsor of terror, local analysts warned.
On Tuesday, hundreds of tribesmen gathered in Landikotal, a town on Pakistan’s northwestern border with Afghanistan, mobilised by religious party Jamaat-e-Islami to protest against the United States.
Waving party flags and wearing ribbons, dozens of tribesmen joined the throng armed with Kalashnikovs, an AFP reporter said.
“We announce the holy war against America if they attack Pakistan,” Siraj-Ul-Haq, the party’s deputy head, told the gathering.
“The whole nation will wage a jihad against America and will fight against them shoulder to shoulder with Pakistani armed forces,” Haq added.
JI has no seats in the national assembly, but anti-Americanism is rampant in the country of 167 million, fuelled by beliefs that Islamist militancy is a direct result of the US war in Afghanistan.
Although nothing suggests the United States is considering a cross-border incursion, Pakistanis fear action from American ground troops.
The alliance between Pakistan and the United States in the 10-year war in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda hit rock bottom this year in the wake of the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad on May 2.
The Haqqani group was founded by former CIA asset turned Al-Qaeda ally Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was close to Pakistan and the US spy agency during the 1980s anti-Soviet resistance, and its leaders are based in North Waziristan.
Today the United States depends on Pakistan, largely for shipping the bulk of its supplies to the 140,000 US-led foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan, but also to counter the threat from Islamist militants in the border areas.
On Tuesday, militants in Pakistan set ablaze three tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan, wounding a driver, officials said.
dont act like a american puppet
will it be the first time we the omnipotent pakistanis have declared a jihad against the grand shaitan…..pretty wily this standoff shaitan his drones and clones
As against allegations that ISI has contacts with Haqqani Network fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, RAW has contacts with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighting Pakistani state in Swat, South Waziristan and elsewhere in the tribal region. RAW is many steps ahead of ISI in this respect. It is fanning and fuelling insurgency in Balochistan and FATA and is funding and actually equipping TTP and Baloch insurgents. Some target-killers arrested in recent Karachi unrest confessed to have received training from RAW. No wonder, some call Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as Tehreek-e-RAWliban Pakistan. Some pundits argue that Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, has never attacked an official target in Pakistan – further evidence of its collusive relationship with that country's security services. When their struggle is focused on fighting foreign occupation forces and their collaborators including India, why should they insist the network attack Pakistan which has no role in Kabul? By this flawed logic, TTP fighting Pakistan and having killed 35000 civilians and 3000 security personnel provide collusive relationship with RAW and CIA. And mind you, this fight is taking place right inside Pakistan. By all definitions, TTP and Baloch insurgency is proxy war being fought by RAW inside Pakistan. Major objectives of this proxy war are keeping Pakistan away from Afghanistan to give India decisive role in Kabul, keeping China away from Gwadar-China energy corridor and depriving Pakistan from natural resources of Afghanistan. Read more at: http://pksecurity.blogspot.com/2011/09/pakistan-b…
Idiots
lol
WOW swords. That is about the technical you can expect in Pakistan after forgein weapons procurement is cut off.
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