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The army has now narrowed down its search instead of going after the Taliban,they are hunting for The Man Baitullah Mehsud....
The army has now narrowed down its search instead of going after the Taliban,they are hunting for The Man Baitullah Mehsud,who has led and fed the extremists on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line. On June 17,The News quoted army spokesman Ather Abbas as he announced launching a special operation to nail Mehsud: The government has,in principle,decided to launch Rah-e-Nijat operation against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan. This was followed by another welcome announcement in Daily Times on June 19: The military offensive in Swat is nearly over and the government has achieved its targets,said defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar… Internally displaced persons (IDPs) would be able to return home by June 20. He said the next decisive battle would be against Baitullah Mehsud. Dawn added to the discourse on Mehsud quoting Mukhtar: He said after clearing Swat,the military would go after militants in South Waziristan. Mehsud wanted to create chaos in the country… We have a huge network of informers who are after him and the moment his whereabouts are known the forces are going to hit him,he added. These IDPs in question have celebrity sympathisers in Beverly Hills too. Daily Times reported on June 19: Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated $1 million to the UN refugee agency to help IDPs from Swat… Jolie has worked as UNHCR goodwill ambassador for eight years and visited Pakistan thrice in that period.
Howzzat?
The words cricket and Pakistan, had for some time ceased to be used in the same sentence. The cricket-crazy country had become the pariah of world cricket after their hopeless security arrangements were shown up in recent months. But the performance of Team Pakistan at Trent Bridge on Thursday where they defeated tournament favourites South Africa,was compensation enough for their fans. Dawn,on June 19 quoted an upbeat captain Younis Khan: We are one match away and will do our best to win… We want to make people back home happy. Winning the title will mean a lot to them and that will inspire us in the final. One more game and the World Cup will be ours. Daily Times paid a gleeful tribute to the hero of the game,Shahid Afridi in its front page story: Shahid Boom Boom Afridi shone with bat and ball as Pakistan beat South Africa by seven runs to storm into the World Twenty20 final.
A new dialogue
Manmohan Singhs public and outright utterance of his mandate when meeting Asif Zardari in Russia has not gone down well with some sections in Pakistan. It is being perceived as a well-staged slight that Zardari received from Singh. Mariana Babar in The News on June 19 claimed that when the spokesman at the foreign office was asked whether his government was feeling vindictive over the issue,he said,This is not a matter of feeling vindictive. It is an issue of two neighbours at peace with each other. Our hopes are that the process of dialogue,which has been started between the two countries,is sustained to make progress over the coming months and years.
Daily Times struck this optimistic note in its June 17 editorial as it proposed fresh dialogue between India and Pakistan. What is needed is a new dialogue,the old one having run its course and brought no change. It should be predicated on the absolute interdiction of war between the two nuclear states… The new dialogue should be about sorting out the consequences of past hostility,of policies that did not succeed but were insisted upon as a kind of national emblem of pride. It is only through a new dialogue that India and Pakistan can take care of the allegation they level at each other of interference… The old dialogue is not there to resume. New conditions dictate a new dialogue. Once assurances of non-interference are exchanged and mutual fear of military attack is removed,the non-core issues will be ready to resolve… The core issue,as Pakistans policy on Kashmir spells out,can be resolved only through peaceful means.
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