To digree from the topic … it is not so unthinkable … in Cuba a force of 200-300 fighters was able to overthrow the regime which had an army of 30-40,000. A few victories in battle and there would be a “piece” deal … la Swat … and then before you know, in the larger interest of nation and to save innocent civilains … you have a Taliban regime in Islamabad … hey they might even ask Zardari to be the Calipha 
… after all Talibans have an aversion to democracy … so the army will have a major role to play, so it will be more of changing sides for some generals, time to come out of closet …
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
It's not a numbers game, this is an ideological battle where the taliban ideology appeals to many people in pakistan. So, yes a very small number of people who use brutal tactics CAN influence and subjugate a large population. Happened in Buner.
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
The college should take precautionary measures, Kababilli, but the issue is - what should those measures be....
If in your mind, the correct measures are to bend to the will of the Taliban so they do not atttack you, how does it not translate in your mind that you are essentially supporting the Taliban and sending them the message that they are being good becuase whatever they want you are accepting and doing...
Seriously. The level of thinking of some pple.
funny, I always was under the impression that Allah gave us Islam and not Saudis.
This is probably the biggest problem our uneducated lot of an Ummah is having issues with these days, and from this misconception comes all our problems!
KC lahore imposes....
They took over Police Training Academy. They attacked SL cricket team... a college cannot even take precautionary measures?
You nailed it. The College administration is smart, they are taking precautionary measures because these talibob nut jobs can only make suicide attacks or disturb peace or assassinate people but certain
I read this article in the Asia Times, and PCG should really read this. 10,000 soldiers taking over a 170 milllion strong country :hehe:
**THE ROVING EYE
The myth of Talibanistan**
By Pepe Escobar
Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media - from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.
But unlike in late 1978, Islamabad won't fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.
Pakistan is not an ungovernable. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan's 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There's no evidence they are about to embrace
http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE&n=a53e495a
Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi'ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis - faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari's centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People's Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces - amounting to 85% of Pakistan's population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class - are an infinitesimal minority.
The Pakistan-based Taliban - subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles - are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab.
To believe this rag-tag band could rout the well-equipped, very professional 550,000-strong Pakistani army, the sixth-largest military in the world, which has already met the Indian colossus in battle, is a ludicrous proposition.
Moreover, there's no evidence the Taliban, in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, have any capability to hit a target outside of "Af-Pak"(Afghanistan and Pakistan). That's mythical al-Qaeda's privileged territory. As for the nuclear hysteria of the Taliban being able to crack the Pakistani army codes for the country's nuclear arsenal (most of the Taliban, by the way, are semi-literate), even Obama, at his 100-day news conference, stressed the nuclear arsenal was safe.
Of course, there's a smatter of junior Pashtun army officers who sympathize with the Taliban - as well as significant sections of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But the military institution itself is backed by none other than the American army - with which it has been closely intertwined since the 1970s. Zardari would be a fool to unleash a mass killing of Pakistani Pashtuns; on the contrary, Pashtuns can be very useful for Islamabad's own designs.
Zardari's government this week had to send in troops and the air force to deal with the Buner problem, in the Malakand district of NWFP, which shares a border with Kunar province in Afghanistan and thus is relatively close to US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. They are fighting less than 500 members of the Tehrik-e Taliban-e Pakistan (TTP). But for the Pakistani army, the possibility of the area joining Talibanistan is a great asset - because this skyrockets Pakistani control of Pashtun southern Afghanistan, ever in accordance to the eternal "strategic depth" doctrine prevailing in Islamabad.
**Bring me the head of Baitullah Mehsud**
So if Islamabad is not burning tomorrow, why the hysteria? There are several reasons. To start with, what Washington](http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE01Df01.html#) - now under Obama's "Af-Pak" strategy - simply cannot stomach is real democracy and a true civilian government in Islamabad; these would be much more than a threat to "US interests" than the Taliban, whom the Bill Clinton administration was happily wining and dining in the late 1990s.
What Washington may certainly relish is yet another military coup - and sources tell Asia](http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE01Df01.html#) Times Online that former dictator General Pervez Musharraf (Busharraf as he was derisively referred to) is active behind the hysteria scene.
It's crucial to remember that every military coup in Pakistan has been conducted by the army chief of staff. So the man of the hour - and the next few hours, days and months - is discreet General Ashfaq Kiani, Benazir's former army secretary. He is very cozy with US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, and definitely not a Taliban-hugger.
Moreover, there are canyons of the Pakistani military/security bureaucracy who would love nothing better than to extract even more US dollars from Washington to fight the Pashtun neo-Taliban that they are simultaneously arming to fight the Americans and NATO. It works. Washington is now under a counter-insurgency craze, with the Pentagon eager to teach such tactics to every Pakistani officer in sight.
What is never mentioned by US corporate media is the tremendous social problems Pakistan has to deal with because of the mess in the tribal areas. Islamabad believes that between the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and NWFP, at least 1 million people are now displaced (not to mention badly in need of food aid). FATA's population is around 3.5 million - overwhelmingly poor Pashtun peasants. And obviously war in FATA translates into insecurity and paranoia in the fabled capital of NWFP, Peshawar.
The myth of Talibanistan anyway is just a diversion, a cog in the slow-moving regional big wheel - which in itself is part of the new great game in Eurasia.
During a first stage - let's call it the b*****ng of evil - Washington think-tanks and corporate media hammered non-stop on the "threat of al-Qaeda" to Pakistan and the US. FATA was branded as terrorist central - the most dangerous place in the world where "the terrorists" and an army of suicide bombers were trained and unleashed into Afghanistan to kill the "liberators" of US/NATO.
In the second stage, the new Obama administration accelerated the Predator "hell from above" drone war over Pashtun peasants. Now comes the stage where the soon over 100,000-strong US/NATO troops are depicted as the true liberators of the poor in Af-Pak (and not the "evil" Taliban) - an essential ploy in the new narrative to legitimize Obama's Af-Pak surge.
For all pieces to fall into place, a new uber-bogeyman is needed. And he is TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud, who, curiously, had never been hit by even a fake US drone until, in early March, he made official his allegiance to historic Taliban leader Mullah Omar, "The Shadow" himself, who is said to live undisturbed somewhere around Quetta, in Pakistani Balochistan.
Now there's a US$5 million price on Baitullah's head. The Predators have duly hit the Mehsud family's South Waziristan bases. But - curioser and curioser - not once but twice, the ISI forwarded a detailed dossier of Baitullah's location directly to its cousin, the Central Intelligence Agency. But there was no drone hit.
And maybe there won't be - especially now that a bewildered Zardari government is starting to consider that the previous uber-bogeyman, a certain Osama bin Laden, is no more than a ghost. Drones can incinerate any single Pashtun wedding in sight. But international bogeymen of mystery - Osama, Baitullah, Mullah Omar - star players in the new OCO (overseas contingency operations), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror"), of course deserve star treatment.
***Pepe Escobar** is the author of* [Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim) (Nimble Books, 2007) and [Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge](http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898). His new book, just out, is [Obama does Globalistan](http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1) (Nimble Books, 2009).
*He may be reached at* [EMAIL="[email protected]"][email protected].
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
Will the next precaution be to behead those who don’t comply with the rule in order appease taliban?
Anyway, more taliban action, this time near attock. It’s getting closer and closer. Nutjobs like “pepe escobar” will be still calling talibanization a myth when south punjab goes taliban.
DAWN.COM | Front Page | Police party ambushed on motorway
Police party ambushed on motorway
^ provide armed guards to students whenever they go out?
When was the last time you visited a Pakistani college/school? C'mon man, they took over a POLICE TRAINING ACADEMY.
i've spent 16 years in the pakistani school system (including college).
and ofcourse, beefing up security does not mean assigning a security guard to every student but atleast they can hire more security/cameras/metal detectors within the college perimeter? KC is a resourceful college and they can certainly afford to secure the college area atleast.
I understand their reaction but then where does it stop? do we stop offering fashion courses, do we tell women not to laugh too loud in public?, not to wear makeup, not to enroll in music classes? they thrive on fear and there should be no giving in to them...you dont negotiate with terrorists... (im so ashamed in quoting george bush here :/ )
^ Well, my sister used to study in KC a few years ago. She used to wear jeans when she wanted and no body had any issues. This was the same when PML had the notorious 2/3 majority government.
If they think that it is good to take precaution, why not? They are not forcing them to wear burqa or something. Would you rather have students potentially assaulted?
If I think I am a potential target and the police/forces won't protect me, i'd grow a beard.
The point is, that "if" in fact it is something that was done because of the Taliban, or any other religious nut job, this is not what they ultimately want. Eventually they want all the colleges closed, GC, FC, PU, LCAS, UCL....
going with your analogy, if you grow a beard that is not enough, they will want you to pay chanda, join them for the 3day, and 40 day programs, eventually they will want you to carry a gun. You cant go along with it forever.
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
Ofcourse... things would go on as long as the police force and military are not willing/able to help us.
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
the ideal response would be to ban jeans until the people who issued the threats were hunted down by law enforcement. sadly the latter wont happen, and the former will only encourage similar behaviour.
Funny 
What a load of crap…
Indians and Pakistanis work for Saudis and Sudanese becuase they have oil money and saudis and sudanese are too stupid and uneducated to perform taks to run their economy thats why they rely on outside labor.
As for Khartoum’s Subway? Are you insane?
So all the roads,buildings, etc…were all build by the Saudis? What have you , been smoking?
Saudis didnt give crap to the world.
Algebra was introduced in Syria, Quantum Physics was introduced in Denmark and not in Saudi , Zero was invented in India, and Islam was given by god to people of the world and not to Saudis which did not exist as a country.
And lastly, Canada didn’t invent the airplane, it was the wright brothers from USA who did…
my god…it looks like your post was written by a Saudi
Re: KC Lahore imposes ban on jeans after alleged threats
^ you are laughing at Moinul Atiq’s post? 
The point is, that "if" in fact it is something that was done because of the Taliban, or any other religious nut job, this is not what they ultimately want. Eventually they want all the colleges closed, GC, FC, PU, LCAS, UCL....
going with your analogy, if you grow a beard that is not enough, they will want you to pay chanda, join them for the 3day, and 40 day programs, eventually they will want you to carry a gun. You cant go along with it forever.
oh please, don't mix 3-day, 40-day programs with militants.
oh please, don't mix 3-day, 40-day programs with militants.
Yes they do, or did in the 90s. They have similar 3 day & 7 day and 40 programs for recruits. Not that it has anything to do with the tableegi jamat but that is not the end of the similarities either, but that would be off-topic.
Which is one of the reasons why I had hoped for a more profound rejection by the jamat of these ppl in another thread.
ummm…you pride yourself on the bolded part? 
and then you go on to ask God to end the misery get a hold of yourself man. have you not read the Quran, Alcohol is forbidden for muslims. how can you want the days of free alcohol back while ask God to end the current misery in the same sentence. 
i’m not criticizing your choice, but just how exactly does free alcohol reflect a prosperous Pakistan that is shining example for the rest? weird logic… isn’t it the same thing as “cuz we don’t wear jeans, we can’t progress”…
I support the decision of institution. Those of you who are objecting to it, well guess what? The institution can make its own decisions as suited best for itself and how it sees fit to mold student discipline. When your university forbids wearing hats indoors (and most do) you will find it pretty hard to object to that. Then why this? Same logic…lets not have double standards
Institutions can make their own policies, those students who don’t like it can choose to go elsewhere.
Simple as that.
PS: Alleged threats doesn’t necessarily make it “definite threats”…we don’t know the real reason why the institution chose to take this decision, but it has.
when we will go back to our roots.. what was us.. and what we become.. the golden days of 50s .. 60s... when alcohol was allowed.. music/movies/culture was promoting.. ...when women can go to college/school without any threats...
when ...we were happy ... but then blood sucking.. religious parties came into politics.. and politicsize all the issues... and then..russia came in .. then secertrain violence... and now. .taliban ...
God knows... when our misery will end..
so allowing alcohol will solve our problems and bring us back to the 'golden times'. Then you guys complain and whine as to why everyone supports the Taliban. 50s and 60s were not golden because of free flowing alcohol and music. Infact, the best art came out under suppressed conditions in Zia's dictatorship.
and whats this secertain violence?
so allowing alcohol will solve our problems and bring us back to the 'golden times'. Then you guys complain and whine as to why everyone supports the Taliban. 50s and 60s were not golden because of free flowing alcohol and music. Infact, the best art came out under suppressed conditions in Zia's dictatorship.
and whats this secertain violence?
If you think alcohol ban has brought down it's consumption in Pakistan you must visit Pakistan sometimes....you can find alcohol availability even in the most official gatherings at Governor houses and Presidency...and it has encouraged cheap and dangerous drugs amongst poor segments of the society who cannot afford expensive alcohol in Pakistan like the rich people...
What needs to be controlled is drunk driving, people making trouble after excessive drinking, crimes which go unpunished in Pakistan but you can not imagine getting away with these crimes in western states where alcohol is permitted...
What you need to understand Spock is in today's world state cannot punish or make laws against sins, which amounts to curbing people's liberties. If someone is having a glass of wine with his dinner and is not troubling anyone, nobody has the right to take this personal choice and liberty from him...leave the punishment of sins to Allah...
Crime however is another matter where it is committed against society and other people. If anyone makes trouble after excessive drinking and becomes a danger for the society or individuals it must be severly punished by the state, which is not being done in Pakistan at present...
50s and 60s and 70s were may be not golden times, yet they were much better than present times when people are afraid to go to mosques even...and sending their children to schools in the fear of suicide attacks...not to mention the millions of dispalced families from the crimes committed by non state gangsters like Taliban in Pakistan's nothern areas...
The figure of 10,000 is not one that pepe has pulled out of thin air. This figure is important to the Taliban for some reason, they think that once the momin mujahids crack jobs reach the number of 10,000 and march together they are invincible.
Not that they would have any chance against the Pak army or even any other armed group…
No one thinks that they will take over any major cities immediately. Changes in behavior brought about by threats or by the population volunteering them for perceived security are altering the socio-cultural fabric pushing it further to the right.