August 6, 2012:
The U.S. is trying to persuade Pakistan to go after all Islamic terrorists, not just those who have declared war on Pakistan (like the Pakistani Taliban) but also the Haqqani Network. Currently, major terrorist groups, like the Haqqani Network, are immune from Pakistani military attacks as long as they stay in North Waziristan and only make attacks on Afghans and foreigners in Afghanistan or India. The Pakistani military is upset that the Pakistani Taliban they defeated along the border, and who took refuge just across the border in Afghanistan, keep raiding into Pakistan. The Pakistanis want NATO to hunt down and kill the Pakistani Taliban based in Afghanistan. NATO proposed a deal where they could drive the Pakistani Taliban out of Afghanistan if Pakistan destroyed the Haqqani Network operations in North Waziristan and elsewhere in Pakistan. Pakistani generals refuse to turn on the Haqqani Network, who are doing God's work in making attacks on the enemies of Pakistan (NATO and the NATO supported government in Afghanistan). Haqqani has also become a large, and lucrative, criminal organizations in the last two decades, and Pakistani generals and politicians have been paid a share of the profits.
Inside Pakistan civilians in the tribal territories are also fed up with the government's double-dealing regarding the Pakistani Taliban. The government will not attack the Taliban in North Waziristan, which is an undeclared terrorist sanctuary. To the east, in the Khyber and Bajaur areas there are still 500-1,000 Pakistani Taliban. These terrorists continue resisting government control. There are over 5,000 troops on the ground seeking out and fighting the Taliban whenever they can catch them (which is not often). Local civilians are caught in the deadly crossfire of this charade and find the government ignores their complaints.
Worldwide terrorist attacks were down 12 percent last year, although they were up slightly in Pakistan. Terrorist deaths were down 15 percent in Pakistan last year, to 6,303.
August 5, 2012: In Kashmir Pakistani border troops opened fire on their Indian counterparts for about an hour. This was in violation of the ceasefire and is usually to distract the Indians so that Islamic terrorists can get into Indian Kashmir.
August 4, 2012: The
Afghanistan parliament exercised its power to dismiss government ministers by firing the Defense and Interior ministers for doing nothing about Pakistan firing rockets and artillery shells into eastern Afghanistan (Kunar province). Pakistan has been doing this in an effort to hit Pakistani Taliban bases in Afghanistan. This sort of thing has been going on for over two years and has become more intense lately, leaving hundreds of Afghan civilians dead or wounded in the last year. The rockets and shells disrupt economic activity, especially farming. Pakistan denies the attacks, even though the Afghans have plenty of evidence (in the form of fragments of Pakistani made rockets and shells). This year the Afghan parliament has been demanding that the government do something about this, and the calls have been more intense in the last few months. As long as Pakistan denies they are making the attacks, there's not much Afghanistan can do, other than cross the border and start a war. Pakistan would win that one, unless NATO offered to help out. The dismissed Afghan officials said that the Pakistanis were often firing their artillery to provide cover for Pakistan based terrorists to get into Afghanistan without being detected by Afghan security forces.
Pakistan again opened their border to trucks carrying NATO supplies. The route had been closed on July 24th because of attacks on trucks and the death of a driver. The route had been reopened on July 2nd, after having been closed since last November.
Pakistani police revealed that they had recently arrested five Taliban who were preparing terror attacks in central Pakistan (Punjab province).
In eastern India (Jharkhand) police found 120 Maoist land mines planted along a road leading to a dam. The mines were removed.
August 3, 2012: The UN warned the Pakistani government that unless there were security guarantees for its medical personnel, the polio vaccination program in Karachi would not be resumed. Some 22,000 children would not be vaccinated because Islamic militants have been attacking the medical personnel this year, killing two of them. In several countries (especially Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) Islamic radicals believe polio vaccinations are part of a secret Western plan to harm Moslem children and attack the vaccination teams.
Uncontrollable terrorist and criminal violence continues in Karachi, whith four bomb attacks last month and at least 188 dead. Over a thousand people have died from political and religious violence in Karachi so far this year. Additional police and soldiers have slowed the violence but have not been able to stop it.
In eastern India (West Bengal, next to Bangladesh) two Maoist leaders were arrested. While most Maoist members are out in the bush, the leaders spend a lot of time in urban areas, taking care of business (fund raising, arranging for supplies, and handling diplomacy). This makes these leaders vulnerable to attack and in the last year more of them have been caught.
August 1, 2012: In eastern India (the Jharkhand-Chhatisgarh border) a three day anti-Maoist operation found and destroyed two Maoist camps. Five Maoists were captured, along with weapons and documents.
July 31, 2012: The U.S. and Pakistan signed a new agreement on movement of NATO supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan. The new deal prohibits the shipment of weapons and munitions, except for the Afghan security forces. This suits NATO, which has long been flying that stuff in or moving it through Central Asia (the NDN or Northern Distribution Network). While the new agreement runs through 2015, the Pakistanis are disappointed that NATO has permanently moved most supply activity to the NDN. The main use of the Pakistani route will be to move out equipment belonging to foreign military units leaving Afghanistan in the next two years. While the new deal led to the release of $1.8 billion of American aid to Pakistan (frozen in retaliation for the border closing last November), the new deal also held Pakistan responsible for theft or destruction of NATO supplies being moved through Pakistani territory and implied that U.S. aid would be withheld and cut if Pakistan failed to meet the terms of the agreement. The U.S. is already cutting aid to Pakistan, mainly because American politicians are fed up with Pakistani lies and double dealing when it comes to Pakistani support of Islamic terrorism.
July 30, 2012: The largest electrical grid failure in history took place in India, where three major power grids failed, leaving 680 million Indians without electricity for at least a few hours (and some were out most of the day). The failure repeated itself on the 31st. The cause was unusually high heat and local opposition to building new power plants. Politicians find it convenient to back local opposition to the construction of new power plants, rather than trying to convince voters that the plants have to go somewhere and over a decade of this opposition have left India with a growing power shortage. Finally, some of the 28 states that lost power had been cheating and taking more power than they said they would. This is another form of corruption and was the major cause of the outage happening again the day after.
India police concluded that Iranian sponsored terrorists were behind attacks on Israelis in India last February. Iran is a major trading partner with India and India has tried to avoid accusing Iran of backing this attack. But the evidence was overwhelming (despite Iranian denials) and it was apparently thought best to go public with it, rather than suffer from leaks of the truth running into official Indian denials. India was not happy with Iran carrying out terrorist operations in India and the public release of the investigation results apparently was meant to send a message to Iran.
July 29, 2012: NATO denied a Pakistani claim that Pakistan had notified NATO in 52 incidents where terrorists were crossing the border. Earlier, NATO had openly condemned Pakistan for months of artillery and rocket attacks into
eastern Afghanistan (Kunar province). Pakistan denies these attacks, despite the abundant evidence (fragments from artillery shells and rockets that Islamic terrorist groups are not known to have).
In Pakistan (North Waziristan) a U.S. UAV missile attack killed four Islamic terrorists. Pakistan continues to demand that the U.S. cease these attacks, which are doing great damage to pro-Pakistan Islamic terror groups (as well as terrorists who are attacking Pakistan). Pakistani public opinion supports Islamic terrorists who make attacks outside Pakistan (especially in India) but is against Islamic terrorists who attack inside Pakistan. Pakistani politicians know they can safely call for the U.S. to halt UAV attacks because America will not stop and Pakistan is not willing to shoot down the UAVs and start a war with the United States.
July 28, 2012: In Kashmir a tunnel near the border was discovered after parts of it collapsed because of heavy rains. Pakistan denies that the tunnel, which was at a depth of eight meters (25 feet) went into Pakistan. But excavations so far have it headed straight for the border fence.