India-Pakistan: Taliban Turns on Al Qaeda

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March 27, 2007: In Pakistan, the government got several more tribes to agree to help fight Islamic terrorists. This deal has not worked out so well in nearby Waziristan, but is the best the government can do. The deal calls for the tribes to "refrain" from supporting the Taliban or Islamic terrorists in general. In return, the government stays out of tribal affairs, unless invited in.

March 26, 2007: In northwest Pakistan, police caught a group of Taliban trying to convince high school students at at religious school, to quit and join the Taliban. The Taliban reacted to the police showing up by opening fire. No one was injured, but the Taliban got away.

March 25, 2007: In central India, four Maoists surrendered to the government. They said they were ill and tired of fighting. The Maoists are demanding that the government halt its program of recruiting people to inform against the Maoists. This has hurt the Maoists, who are normally pretty paranoid and trigger-happy over real or imagined "government agents."

March 21, 2007: The fighting in Pakistan, between pro-Taliban tribesmen and foreign Islamic militants, has left over a hundred people dead. Most of the victims are Uzbeks and Chechens, who had fled Afghanistan in 2001, after the Taliban were overthrown. Unable to go home, where they are wanted for terrorism, the Islamic militants have not behaved themselves in Pakistan either. The tribesmen don't like foreigners in general, and that, in the end, is what did the al Qaeda men in. Another group of foreigners is supposed to be guarding Osama bin Laden somewhere in the Afghan border region. Some of the al Qaeda foreigners, have better relations with the locals. But over time, foreigners have more and more trouble sustaining themselves among the xenophobic tribesmen.

March 20, 2007: South Waziristan, a region of Pakistan along the Afghan border, fighting between tribesmen and Uzbek members of al Qaeda, left nearly sixty dead, most of them Uzbek. Out of respect for their Islamic conservative attitudes, and connection to Osama Bin Laden, the Uzbeks had been allowed to settle in the are in 2002. Several hundred Uzbeks, and Islamic militants from other parts of the world, congregated in the area, married local women, and drifted away from the terrorism business. Unfortunately, they drifted towards crime and banditry. This brought them into growing conflict with nearby tribes, and now all-out war. The Uzbeks, and their allies, are good fighters, but vastly outnumbered.