Monday, April 2, 2012

Pakistani Taliban turns moral police in Afghanistan

Hundreds of lives, ten years, billions of dollars and we're right back where we were in 2002. The West is pulling out and the Taliban is getting re-energized for a comeback.

FROM IBNLIVE.IN.COM:

Pakistani Taliban turns moral police in Afghanistan

Press Trust of India

Islamabad: The Pakistani Taliban have introduced "moral policing" in parts of northeastern Afghanistan in a bid to enforce their puritanical version of Islam, Afghan police officials have said. Key leaders of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan including its chieftains Maulana Fazlullah from Swat, Maulvi Faqir of Bajaur Agency and Abdul Wali of Mohmand Agency and dozens of their fighters fled military operations in Pakistan and sought sanctuary in the Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar.

They mounted sporadic cross-border attacks on Pakistani troops in Chitral and Dir districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Now, they have introduced "moral policing" on the pattern of the Taliban-era "Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" in Kamdesh district of Nuristan.

Armed vigilantes of the Pakistani Taliban roam the streets to stop what they believe are "un-Islamic" activities. "Turbaned and bearded Pakistani Taliban fighters, clad in black clothes, punish local people for shaving or trimming beards, using mobile phones and even eating naswar," Afghan provincial police chief Ghulamullah Nuristani said over phone.
Several Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leaders have fled to Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar.

The vigilantes, according to Nuristani, are affiliated with a Pakistani Taliban faction led by Maulana Fazlullah, the infamous cleric who fled his stronghold in the Swat valley following a military operation in 2009.

Article continues HERE.