American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan's tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme.
A former Nato officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government.
...The secretive nature of the raids underscores the suspicious nature of the relationship between the two allies as they argue about Washington's latest demands.read more @ guardian
2. Peshawar journalist club hit by blast
ESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Militants struck Peshawar, Pakistan, Tuesday with an explosion outside a journalists' club, killing and wounding nearly two dozen people, police said.
Geo News reported at least three persons died and 18 others were wounded in the attack in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the Press Club Building in the Saddar area of the city where a series of attacks in recent months have killed hundreds of people.
CNN, quoting officials at the Lady Reading Hospital, reported four people died in the blast. The attacker blew himself up when stopped and searched by a policeman outside the gated club, the report said quoting police head Saleem Amanullah. The policemen died in the blast.
It was not known if any journalist died in the attack but there were four of them among those injured, Dawn newspaper reported. It was the first such attack against journalists in the city, who have been threatened lately, the report said.
Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province near the border with Afghanistan, has taken the brunt of the deadly militant violence plaguing Pakistan's major cities. Authorities say they are retaliation for the military's counter-insurgency campaign, which has been under way since Oct. 17 against the Taliban and other terror groups in the South Waziristan tribal region.
© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
3. will Pakistani journalists be diverted from the truth?
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least three died and 17 others received serious injuries when a suicide bomber blew up himself before the Peshawar Press Club here last Thursday.
Information Minister of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province(NWFP) Mian Iftihar Hussain visited the site and said that terrorists "can't weak our well power".
"It is the agenda of militants to horrify us but we would stand on our motto until we finished them, because they are not friend of human being," he said. "All the people should cooperate with the administration and security agencies."
The minister said that journalists have been targeted as they are writing truth at the time when the terrorists are targeting mosques, houses, markets and public places.
He expressed sympathy with the journalist community and hoped that journalists will continue their mission to expose militants despite such attacks.
Hussain said that the government will continue campaign against militants and such attacks will not deter the government from its resolve to eliminate terrorists.
4. what is the truth? Obama declares war on Pakistan.
- WASHINGTON, DC -- Obama's West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious brutal escalation in Afghanistan -- it is nothing less than a declaration of all-out war by the United States against Pakistan . This is a brand-new war, a much wider war now targeting Pakistan , a country of 160 million people armed with nuclear weapons. In the process, Afghanistan is scheduled to be broken up. This is no longer the Bush Cheney Afghan war we have known in the past. This is something immensely bigger: the attempt to destroy the Pakistani central government in Islamabad and to sink that country into a chaos of civil war, Balkanization, subdivision and general mayhem. The chosen strategy is to massively export the Afghan civil war into Pakistan and beyond, fracturing Pakistan along ethnic lines. It is an oblique war using fourth-generation or guerrilla warfare techniques to assail a country which the United States and its associates in aggression are far too weak to attack directly. In this war, the Taliban are employed as US proxies. This aggression against Pakistan is Obama's attempt to wage the Great Game against the hub of Central Asia and Eurasia or more generally.
- US DETERRED FROM OPEN WAR BY PAKISTAN 'S NUKES
- The ongoing civil war in Afghanistan is merely a pretext, a cover story designed to provide the United States with a springboard for a geopolitical destabilization campaign in the entire region which cannot be publicly avowed. In the blunt cynical world of imperialist aggression à la Bush and Cheney, a pretext might have been manufactured to attack Pakistan directly. But Pakistan is far too large and the United States is far too weak and too bankrupt for such an undertaking. In addition, Pakistan is a nuclear power, possessing atomic bombs and medium range missiles needed to deliver them. What we are seeing is a novel case of nuclear deterrence in action. The US cannot send an invasion fleet or set up airbases nearby because Pakistani nuclear weapons might destroy them. To this extent, the efforts of Ali Bhutto and A.Q. Khan to provide Pakistan a deterrent capability have been vindicated. But the US answer is to find ways to attack Pakistan below the nuclear threshold, and even below the conventional threshold. This is where the tactic of exporting the Afghan civil war to Pakistan comes in.
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