Nasiruddin Haqqani: Who shot the militant at the bakery?

By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad

The crime scene was quickly washed down and the body taken away by police

At first it appeared as if two men had been injured in a gun attack at a bread shop in the eastern suburbs of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad - just a routine shooting, a senseless crime in a large city.

But eyewitnesses noticed a number of aberrations. Some told local press that the police who arrived at the crime scene collected bullet casings and other evidence and then washed the area down to clean away the blood stains.

One of the injured was taken to a nearby house, witnesses said. Later, the injured man - or was he dead by then? - was put in a vehicle and driven away in the presence of senior police officers.

Local police registered a report saying unknown assailants on a motorbike injured a naan-bread maker at a suburban market. When confronted by the reporters, they denied there had been a second injured man.

The capital's main hospitals also reported only one casualty from the scene - one Mohammad Farooq, the naan maker.

Haqqani family members had been living in the Islamabad area for several years

But by mid-afternoon on Monday rumours were swirling that the second mystery man hit in the attack was in fact Nasiruddin Haqqani, a key leader of the so-called Haqqani network, considered one of the deadliest Afghan Taliban groups fighting Western forces in Afghanistan.

Confirming the rumours, a relative of Mr Haqqani told BBC his body had been spirited from Islamabad to the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan - roughly six hours drive across two provinces and one federal tribal territory, all dotted with heavily-manned military and police checkpoints.
Militant's Islamabad residence
There are obvious reasons for this cover-up.

For years, Pakistan has been accused by the West of backing the Haqqani network to counter the influence of arch-rival India in Afghanistan, a charge it denies.

So the idea that some of the group's key leaders were freely moving around in Islamabad - and even had a permanent home in the city, as has become apparent following the attack - could cause the country some embarrassment, a reminder of what it faced in 2011 when al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed by the Americans in a Pakistani city.

Nasiruddin's father, Jalaluddin, set up the Haqqani group to fight US troops

Nasiruddin was the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s who then set up the Haqqani network to fight the Americans in the post-9/11 era.

He was also the elder brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads the Haqqani network these days.

The Haqqanis belong to the Jadran tribe which is a native of eastern Afghanistan's Loya, or greater, Paktia region, and pledge allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

But they have their main sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal territory of Waziristan and maintain operational independence from the Afghan Taliban.

The group is known for launching spectacular attacks against Western and Indian targets in Afghanistan.

And it is known to have played a prominent role in seeking to bring the anti-Pakistan militant groups in the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) alliance to the dialogue table with Islamabad.

Nasiruddin Haqqani apparently used the Islamabad house as a base for fundraising for the group

Nasiruddin Haqqani was not central to the group's military operations, but had a vital role as a fundraiser and emissary who frequently travelled to the sheikhdoms of the Middle East to raise cash, and also, according to some reports, to look after his family business there.

He also played a part in last year's efforts to set up a Taliban office in Doha for peace talks with the United States, although the Haqqani network was not a direct interlocutor in those talks.

In addition, he was understood to be the group's main contact person for pro-Taliban elements in Pakistan, and was frequently seen moving around in Islamabad.

According to local residents, some family members of Nasiruddin Haqqani had been living in the Shahpur area on Islamabad's eastern outskirts for well over four years.

He was apparently using this base to organise financial and logistic;al support for his group and the Afghan Taliban.

So there were a number of groups who could have wanted to see him dead.
Fundraiser
Analysts believe his assassination has dealt a blow to the group's fundraising activities, because they think Nasiruddin was the only Haqqani free to exploit his father's vast Middle Eastern contacts. The others are either dead, or engaged in operational matters.

Some quarters also suggest he was Islamabad's main link to the TTP leadership in its recent peace overtures to that group.

A boy points to bullet holes in the wall of the bakery where Haqqani was shot

For these circles, the obvious suspects behind his killing would be either the Americans or the Afghans.

But others point to growing unease within the wider Taliban community in the North Waziristan sanctuary as the time for Nato's drawdown in Afghanistan gets nearer.

This unease is partly due to a fluid situation in Pakistan, where the political and military establishments are putting up a half-hearted battle against some right-wing politicians who appear bent on exploiting the anti-American feelings in the country to push it into international isolation.

Tribal sources say there is a clear split within the TTP, with some ethnic Mehsud commanders accusing the Haqqanis of toeing the Pakistani line.

The Haqqanis have also faced opposition from some Punjabi Taliban groups that were initially hosted and feted by them but have now sunk their own roots in the area and consider the Haqqanis to be as foreign to Waziristan as they are themselves.

Analysts feel 10 years after it was created, the Waziristan sanctuary is readying for change, with dozens of groups realigning amid shifts in relations and tactical priorities concerning Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

For a while, there may be no clear friends or enemies in the area, they say.

Top Afghanistan female police officer shot dies

Top Afghanistan female police officer dies

 

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul: "A heroine by any account... when there was a suspect suicide bomber, she'd thrown her arms around him in a bear hug"

The most senior woman police officer in Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province has died in hospital, a day after being shot by unidentified gunmen.

Lieutenant Negar was shot in the neck near police headquarters in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

She is the third senior policewoman to be killed in recent months. Her predecessor in Helmand, Islam Bibi, was killed on her way to work in July.

Police in Helmand face the twin threats of Taliban insurgents and drug traders.

No group has said it carried out the latest attack. A spokesman for the governor of Helmand described Lt Negar's assailants as "enemies of Afghanistan".

Relatives and police grieve over Lt Negar's body

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says Afghan troops and police are increasingly bearing the load as British and American troops draw down their forces.

Women make up just under 1% of Afghanistan's police, with nearly 1,600 policewomen serving and about 200 more in training.

Lt Negar, known only by her surname, was walking near police headquarters when she was shot by a gunman on a motorbike, officials say.

Helmand Provincial governor's spokesman Omar Zawak told the Associated Press news agency that the 38-year-old suffered a bullet wound to the neck.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Lt Negar said she loved her job, and felt it was important that women came forward to work for the police.

After her two female colleagues were killed in July, she said her role was to give courage to the 30 or so other women police officers in Helmand and boost their morale.

Lt Negar served as a sub-inspector in the police criminal investigation department in Helmand.

She took over when 37-year-old Islam Bibi was shot dead in July. Lt Bibi had been hailed as a role model for other women in the conservative province.

Several prominent Afghan women have been attacked or kidnapped in recent months.

Earlier this month the Taliban released a female member of parliament who they had held hostage for a month.

In August, insurgents ambushed the convoy of a female Afghan senator, seriously wounding her and killing her nine-year-old daughter.

In 2008 gunmen in Kandahar killed Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, the country's most prominent policewoman and head of Kandahar's department of crimes against women.

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission says general violence against women has increased sharply over the last two years, and donor nations have expressed fears that advances in women's rights could be at risk when Nato-led troops withdraw next year.

Nadia Sediqqi shot dead on her way to work

Senior female Afghan official shot dead

Waseem Nikzad / AFP - Getty Images

Men prepare to pray during the funeral Monday of Nadia Sediqqi in Mihtarlam, Afghanistan.

 

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- Unknown gunmen shot dead a senior female government worker on Monday, officials in eastern Afghanistan said, five months after her predecessor was killed in a bomb attack.

Violence against women appears to be on the rise in Afghanistan, which activists and some lawmakers blame on what they say is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government, claims he denies.

 

Nadia Sediqqi, acting head of the women's affairs department in Laghman province, was killed as she headed to work in the capital Mehtar Lam, said the provincial governor's spokesman Sarhadi Zwak.

"They shot her as she was getting into a rickshaw," Zwak said of the attack about 93 miles east of Kabul, adding that she worked without bodyguards -- a common situation for female government workers.

 

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul condemned the attack.
“This attack, especially on Human Rights Day, shows that those who killed Ms. Siddiqi have no respect for human rights or the safety of the Afghan people,” it said in a statement.
Violence against women
Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and employment since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, but fears are mounting that such freedoms could be traded away as Kabul seeks peace talks with the group.
In a recent interview with NBC News, Afghan President Hamid Karzai denied that violence against women had been on the rise. Instead, he said, incidents of violence were being reported more today than in years past.

“You hear more of violence because there is more awareness of it today because there's more reporting of it today because there is more enforcement of the law against violence today ... not that violence has increased,” he told NBC’s Atia Abawi.
Still, a 2011 poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation judged that Afghanistan was the most dangerous country in the world for women, beating on Congo and Pakistan.

Watch Atia Abawi's full, exclusive interview with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in which he discusses the "growing perception" that insecurity in the region is caused by the United States and some of its allies who "promoted lawlessness" and "corruption" in Afghanistan.

Predecessor also slain
Sediqqi had replaced Hanifa Safi, who was killed in July by a car bomb that her family blamed on the Taliban.
Women who pursue careers in ultra-conservative Afghanistan often face opposition in a society where often they are ostracized, or worse, for mixing with men other than husbands or relatives.
Safi's son later told Reuters that authorities had ignored repeated requests for protection, echoing greater concerns that the safety of female government workers is not taken seriously by Kabul, despite commitments to better the rights of women 11 years into the NATO-led war.

Malala Yousafzai in 2009, documentary.

*Warning: Graphic Images*  This is a video made in February of 2009 just before the Taliban banned girls from going to school in a region of Pakistan called the Swat Valley.

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Later in 2009 the Taliban were driven out of the Swat Valley by the Pakistani Military.  Malala, the girl in the video was able to go back to school sometime after 2009, and two days ago some Taliban men shot her in the head.  It is hard to imagine shooting a 14 year old girl in the head.  Such a cowardly and shameful act that shows how truly evil this group is. 

Malala Yousafzai shot by Taliban - two articles

 

 

 

Malala Yousafzai: Pakistan activist, 14, shot in Swat

Malala Yousafzai was hit in the head, but is reportedly out of danger

Gunmen have wounded a 14-year-old rights activist who has campaigned for girls' education in the Swat Valley in north-west Pakistan.

Malala Yousafzai was attacked on her way home from school in Mingora, the region's main town.
She came to public attention in 2009 by writing a diary for BBC Urdu about life under Taliban militants who had taken control of the valley.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman told the BBC they carried out the attack.
Ehsanullah Ehsan told BBC Urdu that they attacked her because she was anti-Taliban and secular, adding that she would not be spared.

The chilling attack on the young peace campaigner has been leading TV news bulletins here. Malala Yousafzai is one of the best-known schoolgirls in the country. Young as she is, she has dared to do what many others do not - publicly criticise the Taliban.
Malala's confident, articulate campaign for girls' education has won her admirers - and recognition - at home and abroad. She has appeared on national and international television, and spoken of her dream of a future Pakistan where education would prevail.
Even by the standards of blood-soaked Pakistan, there has been shock at the shooting. It has been condemned by Pakistan's Prime Minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf, who sent a helicopter to transfer Malala to hospital in Peshawar.
The head of Pakistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, Zohra Yusuf, said "this tragic attack on this courageous child" sends a very disturbing message to all those working for women and girls.

Malala Yousafzai was travelling with at least one other girl when she was shot, but there are differing accounts of how events unfolded.

One report, citing local sources, says a bearded gunman stopped a car full of schoolgirls, and asked for Malala Yousafzai by name, before opening fire.
But a police official also told BBC Urdu that unidentified gunmen opened fire on the schoolgirls as they were about to board a van or bus.
She was hit in the head and, some reports say, in the neck area by a second bullet, but is now in hospital and is reportedly out of danger. Another girl who was with her at the time was also injured.
'Courage' Malala Yousafzai was just 11 when she was writing her diary, two years after the Taliban took over the Swat Valley, and ordered girls' schools to close.
In the diary, which she kept for the BBC's Urdu service under a pen name, she exposed the suffering caused by the militants as they ruled.
She used the pen-name Gul Makai when writing the diary. Her identity only emerged after the Taliban were driven out of Swat and she later won a national award for bravery and was also nominated for an international children's peace award.
Correspondents say she earned the admiration of many across Pakistan for her courage in speaking out about life under the brutal rule of Taliban militants.
One poignant entry reflects on the Taliban decree banning girls' education: "Since today was the last day of our school, we decided to play in the playground a bit longer. I am of the view that the school will one day reopen but while leaving I looked at the building as if I would not come here again."

Malala Yousafzai began her blog at the age of 11

She has since said that she wants to study law and enter politics when she grows up. "I dreamt of a country where education would prevail," she said.
Taliban driven out The BBC's Orla Guerin in Islamabad says that Malala Yousafzai was a public figure who didn't shy away from risks and had strong support from her parents for her activism. Indeed, her father, who is a school teacher, expressed his pride in her campaigning.
In a statement about the attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said: "We have to fight the mindset that is involved in this. We have to condemn it... Malala is like my daughter, and yours too. If that mindset prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?"

The Taliban, under the notorious militant cleric Maulana Fazlullah, took hold of the Swat Valley in late 2007 and remained in de facto control until they were driven out by Pakistani military forces during an offensive in 2009.

While in power they closed girls' schools, promulgated Sharia law and introduced measures such as banning the playing of music in cars.
Since they were ejected, there have been isolated militant attacks in Swat but the region has largely remained stable and many of the thousands of people who fled during the Taliban years have returned.

Peace-prize winning Pakistani girl on Taliban hit list fights for life after shooting

AFP

Soldiers take Malala Yousafzai, 14, to an army hospital after a gunman attacked her and two other girls in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday.

By Amna Nawaz and Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News

Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani activist who won international acclaim for her work promoting peace, and two other young girls were shot and seriously injured Tuesday, police and hospital officials said.
Local police and hospital officials told NBC News that Malala was shot in the neck and head shortly after leaving her school in the Swat region. Doctors said they were working in an attempt to save the lives of all three girls.
Malala was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011 for a blog she wrote under a pseudonym for the BBC. She also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan, was honored with a school named after her, and quickly became an outspoken critic of the Taliban in Pakistan and public advocate for peace.

In the blog, she chronicled life in the Swat Valley under the brutal and oppressive rule of the local faction of the Pakistani Taliban, who carried out public floggings, hung dead bodies in the streets, and banned education for girls.

Obama her 'ideal' leader
In early 2011, the militants had added Malala to their hit list.
"We wanted to kill her as she was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and more important she was calling President Obama as her ideal. She was young but was promoting a Western culture in the Pakhtun populated areas," Ihsanullah Ihsan, the spokesman of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP said Tuesday.

Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file

Malala Yousafzai, pictured here at the age of 12 in March 2009, was undergoing surgery after she was shot twice Tuesday.

The Taliban had made a plan for killing her a year ago but were waiting for an opportunity, he told NBC News.
Yousafzai was initially treated at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital, in Mingora, the main city of Swat, but was later airlifted to a hospital in the larger city of Peshawar.
A police official, quoting other students who witnessed the shooting, said some people came in a car and stopped in front of the school and then asked them to identify Malala.
"Since the students already knew about threats to Malala Yousufzai's life, therefore they said they didn't know her," the police officer said.
But he said when Malala came out of the school and sat in a school van she was shot.
The young girl's stark depictions of daily life in Swat -- as Pakistan’s army carried out a massive military operation against the Taliban in the area -- led her to become the first Pakistani girl nominated for the children's peace prize.
She began writing the diary for the BBC when she was just 11.
In one posting on her BBC blog, she wrote, "My younger brother does not like going to school. He cries while going to school and is jubilant coming back home ... He said that whenever he saw someone he got scared that he might be kidnapped. My brother often prays 'O God bring peace to Swat and if not then bring either the US or China here.'"

Afghan man shot after being accused of adultery!

.......... yeah, right!  That headline will never happen. 

When an Afghan woman gets accused of adultery she gets shot.  What about the man she supposedly committed adultery with?  Isn't he equally guilty as well?  Shouldn't he be shot in the same manner? 

What do you think?