Waziristan Quotes

The people of Waziristan are so innocent they seem stupid and so straight forward the seem arrogant

The people of Waziristan are so innocent they seem stupid and so straight forward they seem arrogant

The people of Waziristan are so innocent they seem stupid and so straight forward the seem arrogant" Cheegha, The Call

Many people lay the blame at Bush’s feet for beginning weaponized drone warfare, but in reality it was President Clinton who began the U.S. weaponized drone program.1 After an aerial drone spotted bin Laden in October 2000, President Clinton was frustrated that he could not simply push a button to end the life of the man who had sullied his foreign policy and national security records. President Clinton “gave orders to create an armed drone force.”2 That program came to fruition under President Bush when on June 18th 2004, the first weaponized drone struck in Waziristan.

Now, as to the view that this is how anyone who had suffered imperialism or colonialism would behave: no, it’s not. Entire countries such as India, were colonized. There’s a difference between what’s happening in Iraq with the so-called Islamic State’s attempted genocide of the Yazidi community and how Gandhi acted in India. Let’s take Iraq as a case study and think about it: What does killing the Yazidi population on Mount Sinjar have to do with US foreign policy? What does enforcing headscarves (tents, in fact) on women in Waziristan and Afghanistan, and lashing them, forcing men to grow beards under threat of a whip, chopping off hands, and so forth, have to do with US foreign policy?

In my opinion,’ Ms Bhutto said, ‘terrorists have no religion or nationality because those who are killing innocent people can themselves not belong to any creed or nation.

I admit my role in rigging the 1990 general elections and seek a formal apology from the Pakistani nation. And I am ready for any punishment—even a trial.

A case pertaining to the role of the ISI in rigging the 1990 general elections has been pending with the Supreme Court of Pakistan for almost fifteen years now.

I still maintain my faith that time, justice and the forces of history are on the side of democracy.

Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent on things that matter.

Musharraf had the full support of what is known in Pakistan as the ‘Establishment’, the de facto power structure that has, as its permanent core, the military high command and intelligence agencies, in particular, the powerful military-run Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), as well as Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

A two thousand years old culture is being replaced by Arab Bedouin culture in the name of Islam. Cheegha, The Call is a lone voice against the threat to the tribal way of life, the ways of the fathers.

Why is this bird following me?” Nek Muhammad Wazir sat inside a mud building in South Waziristan, surrounded by his followers and talking on his satellite phone to a BBC reporter. Looking out the window, the young commander with long, jet-black hair noticed something hovering above, glinting in the sun. He asked one of his lieutenants about the coruscating metal object in the sky. Nek Muhammad had just humbled Pakistani troops, and the CIA was following him. He had emerged as the undisputed rock star of Pakistan’s tribal areas, a brash member of the Wazir tribe who had raised an army to fight government forces in the spring of 2004 and brought Islamabad to the negotiating table. His rise had taken Pakistan’s leaders by surprise, and now they wanted him dead.

The whole affair left a lot of bad feeling, particularly because on 17 March, the day after Davis was released, a drone attack on a tribal council in North Waziristan killed about forty people. The attack seemed to send the message that the CIA could do as it pleased in our country.

the research? “So many people, I did not know them all. They studied my work. They asked me questions. I told the ISI about it when I got home. A major like you, he was. You can check.” The major did not want to make more work for himself. And it was true, the story as it had been narrated and understood was all in the files. “Why did you go back to America?” he demanded, looking at a sheet of paper. “I was invited to present a paper at a conference that was cosponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It was a great honor for me, and for my university. You can ask them.” He held out his cell phone again, so that Major Nadeem could make a call to verify, but the major shook his head. They spent several more hours like this, going through the major episodes of Dr. Omar’s career. When they came to his most recent work on computer-security algorithms, Dr. Omar apologized that he could not talk about this work in any detail because it had been classified as “top secret” by the Pakistani military. The major found nothing of interest. Dr. Omar was very careful, then and always. The major asked him to sign a paper, and to report any suspicious contacts, and Dr. Omar assured him that he would. The Pakistani authorities never came after him again. That was three years before his world went white.   Omar al-Wazir had multiple binary identities, it could be said. He was a Pakistani but also, in some sense, a man tied to the West. He was a Pashtun from the raw tribal area of South Waziristan, but he was also a modern man. He was a secular scientist and also a Muslim, if not quite a believer. His loyalties might indeed have been confused before the events of nearly two years ago, but not now. Sometimes Dr. Omar grounded himself by recalling the spirit of his father, Haji Mohammed. He remembered the old man shaking his head when Omar took wobbly practice shots with an Enfield rifle, missing the target nearly every time. The look on the father’s face asked: How can this be my oldest son, this boy who cannot shoot? But Haji Mohammed had taught him the code of manhood, just the same. Omar had learned the

Among the historical rivals of the Mehsuds were the Wazirs. They had been influenced by radical ideology as well, but their leaders saw less cause to act in overt hostility to Pakistan, at least for now. Musharraf adapted the British colonial strategy of playing one tribal network against the other. The Pakistani military’s lines of communication to Afghanistan had long run through Wazir territory in North Waziristan. Musharraf and his corps commanders “thought we should play ball with the Wazirs,” as Musharraf put it. When American officials protested, he told them, “Leave the tactical matters to us. We know our people.”9

, kicked, and threw one another to and fro. Temptation, much to Lindsay’s chagrin, lurked at every step. Pavilions here seemed almost to represent not nations of the world but Deadly Sins. Pitchmen in their efforts at persuasion all but seized the ambulant youths by their lapels. “Exotic smoking practices around the world, of great anthropological value!” “Scientific exhibit here boys, latest improvements to the hypodermic syringe and its many uses!” Here were Waziris from Waziristan exhibiting upon one another various techniques for waylaying travelers, which reckoned in that country as a major source of income. . . . Tarahumara Indians from northern Mexico crouched, apparently in total nakedness, inside lath-and-plaster replicas of the caves of their

He observed the awkward position the Pakistan Army had been forced into in Waziristan. Tribal uprisings had taught the British empire to maintain a light footprint there, to maintain control by providing cash subsidies from the relative safety of Peshawar. Independent Pakistan’s generals were mostly ethnic Punjabis—effectively foreigners when they toured Waziristan. They had internalized Britain’s lessons. Through a system of local political agents, and through I.S.I.’s construction of forward operating bases during the anti-Soviet Afghan war, Pakistan had developed its own Islamism-influenced system of light presence and heavy subsidies, with an implied guarantee of autonomy for local tribes.

il Califfo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi vuole consolidare ed espandere il proprio Stato islamico, Al Nusra punta a controllare aree più vaste in Siria, Boko Haram a spazzare via i cristiani dalla Nigeria del Nord e i taleban accarezzano il miraggio di tornare a controllare Kabul. Se a ciò aggiungiamo che Al Qaeda in Yemen sfida le truppe di Sana’a, gli Shaabab somali combattono per Mogadiscio, ciò che resta della vecchia Al Qaeda è arroccata nel Waziristan e la Libia è contesa fra opposte milizie, ne emerge il quadro di un jihad globale intenzionato a controllare territori, città e villaggi eliminando le popolazioni che considera nemiche e soprattutto «infedeli» secondo i criteri più rigidi della «Sharia», la legge islamica.