Posts Tagged ‘South Waziristan’

Stay away from politics, Nawaz tells generals

LAHORE – PML-N President Mian Muhammad Ex Prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharifhas opposed another possible extension in service tenure of ISI Director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Talking to mediamen after condoling with family of Col Sheraz, who embraced Shahadat in South Waziristan, Ex Prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharifon Monday announced to name the busy Model Town Link Road after the Shaheed’s name.
To a question, Sharif lauded …

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Restive frontiers: Five NGO workers abducted from Tank

The five men were travelling to the Frontier Region Tank, close to the tribal area of South Waziristan, when gunmen intercepted their vehicle in the Maghzai village. The men, who were working in the area under the governors development programme, were on a visit to the site, revealed an official. The district coordination officer confirmed the incident.

Agency Development Officer Badshah Hazrat, Site Engineer Zeb Nawaz, Assistant Field Officer Noor Muhammad, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer Javed Iqbal and their driver Akbar Zaman were amongst those that went missing.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility or demand for ransom from any group. However, officials speculated that militant factions present in the area could be behind the abductions.

Blast in Bara

At least two women were killed and five injured in a roadside blast in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency.

Three of the injured in the roadside blast were said to be children. Official sources said the blast took place in the Qambar Abad area and targeted a pick-up vehicle, carrying locals returning from a funeral in a nearby village.

One of the dead was identified as Farhada, while the injured were identified as Bilal, Irfan and Hina. The injured were immediately shifted to the Hayatabad Medical Complex.

Separately, six members of a family were injured when a stray mortar shell landed on a house in the Sturi Khel area of Bara.

School blast in Charsadda

Meanwhile, a state-run primary school in the Shabqadar area of Charsadda district was blown up by militants in the early hours of Wednesday.

The school was located in Dallazak village, some five kilometres from the tehsil headquarters.

The school building was razed to the ground when the bomb planted near the outer wall exploded at around 2:00 am, SHO Gulshed Khan told The Express Tribune. No casualties were reported and the police have registered a case.

Shabqadar, which borders Mohmand Agency, has seen a surge in attacks on state-run schools in recent months. Ten schools have been destroyed in the area so far, with the majority of them in 2012.

Meanwhile, security forces managed to defuse three Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) in Dawezai, Mohmand Agency that were planted on a roadside to target vehicles.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2012.

4 soldiers, 10 militants killed

SEPLATOI – Four soldiers and 10 militants were killed in a skirmish between forces and a group of militants in the Seplatoi area of the South Waziristan tribal region late on Monday, security officials said on Tuesday.
The Taliban have strongholds in South Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border, where several military offensives have failed to eliminate the group.

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Four soldiers killed in SWA

SARAROGHA  – Four soldiers were killed in a bomb blast and a grenade attack in South Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border on Sunday.
A homemade bomb exploded next to a military patrol in the Sararogha area of the South Waziristan tribal region, killing two soldiers and wounding another, security officials said.
Separately, militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a military …

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Battle of survival: Watching the tongues slip into extinction

While lawmakers table ‘ethno-linguistic’ basis for the creation of new provinces; in hindsight, the debate renders itself preposterous given the fact that 28 of the languages across the country are dying out.

Preservation seems to be one item missing from the to-do lists of lawmakers.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and other northern areas of the country are host to about half of languages spoken in Pakistan — a significant majority of which have been listed as ‘endangered’.

The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Atlas of the World Languages in Danger documents around 28 Pakistani languages as endangered in various categories. The UNESCO Atlas lists six of these languages as ‘severely endangered’, 15 as ‘definitely endangered’ and seven as ‘vulnerable’.

Dying out

According to the UNESCO report, among the languages Pakistan could potentially lose are: Khowar spoken in Chitral and parts of Gilgit with an estimated number of 220,000 speakers left; Burushaski spoken in Nagar Hunza which has 87,000 speakers left; Maiya in Indus Kohistan with 220,000 speakers left; Purik is mainly spoken in Kashmir; however, data regarding the exact number of speakers is not available.

Furthermore, Bashkarik is majorly spoken in Swat and Dir by around 40,000 people, Bateri on the east bank of Indus Kohistan with 29,000 speakers, Bhadarvi along the Line of Control in Kashmir with 66,198 speakers, Gawar Bati in Chitral with 9,500 speakers, Kati in Nuristan and Chitral by 18,700 people, Kundal Shahi in Neelum Valley with just 500 speakers, Orumuri in South Waziristan with a 1,000 speakers, Palula in Chitral with 8,600 speakers, Savi in Chitral and Afghanistan with 3,000 speakers and Torwali in Swat is spoken by around 60,000 people.

Similarly, Chilasso is spoken in Indus Kohistan with around 2,000 speakers left, Dameli in Chitral with 5,000, Domaki in Gilgit with 500, Gowro in Indus Kohistan with around 200, Kalasha in Chitral with 5,000, Kalkoti in Dir Kohistan with around 4,000, Ushuju in Swat with 2,000, Wakhi along Wakhan corridor with 75,000, Yidgah in Chitral with 5,500 and Zangskari whose exact number of speakers are not available.

No preservation

However, Forum for Language Initiative (FLI) Programme Manager Mohammad Zaman Sagar has questioned the authenticity of the figures. Zaman told The Express Tribune that there is a Badeshi dialect in Swat, which is on the verge of extinction, has only two speakers left.

He added that the number of speakers of the Gowro language are stated to be around 40,000, while the total population of Kalam stands at around 70,000.

“Some of these figures are as old as 1970s,” he said.

Zaman believes lack of documentation to be a major hurdle in the preservation of these languages. According to him, only Khowar, Palula and Kalasha have been documented for in Chitral out of more than a dozen languages spoken in the region; only Gowro and Torwali have been documented for in Indus Kohistan and Swat out of around six languages; and only Indus Kohistani and Sheena have been documented for in Indus Kohistan out of as many as six languages.

The FLI programme manger said that even on the national level, proper documentation has only been conducted of around 20 languages.

He said that Yidgha in Lotkuh was under threat of extinction with hardly 1000 speakers left, while Badeshi and Ushuju in Swat, Gowro and Bateri in Indus Kohistan, Domaki in Gilgit and Kundal Shahi in Kashmir were also endangered.

Zaman lamented government apathy towards these languages and said: “We will only be able to express our sorrow, after a language dies down.”

Restive frontiers

Lack of an official body monitoring preservation is not the only obstacle. Militancy in the tribal belt has also created significant stumbling blocks for the preservation of these languages — with Ormuri in South Waziristan as a classic victim.

Unofficial figures state that Ormuri is spoken by around 10,000 peoplein the the Kaniguram area of the South Waziristan — a remote village in Mehsud tribe’s heartland.

“The number of Orumuri speakers is about 10,000,” said Zaman, adding that a majority of locals who used this language have been displaced due to militancy — scattering them across the country.

“Within a community, a language is automatically preserved when you speak it, but when a group is displaced, the chances of that language being abandoned or dying out are much higher,” Zaman said.

Lack of govt support

Fakhruddin Akhundzada, a language activist belonging to Chitral and associated with the FLI, was of the view that the lack of government support was the basic hurdle in preservation of these languages.

“Unlike Urdu, which is language to only six percent of the population, no other language gets any attention from the government,” he said.

He pointed out that there was no law at the federal or provincial level to encourage and preserve these languages except a recent effort by the K-P government to set up a language authority.

However, Akhundzada believes that the advent of social media and the telecommunication revolution maybe be serving as a blessing in disguise for these dying languages.

“Most of these languages do not have any script; however, use of Romanised versions by many people in short messaging service (SMS), chatting and Facebook, have recently risen,” he said.

It seems though, without concerted efforts on the part of the country as a whole, we may very well not hear the sound of these languages again.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2012.

Soldier, 16 militants dead in Fata clashes

PESHAWAR – As many as nine militants were killed while five others were injured when security forces pounded suspected militant hideouts with gunship helicopters and fighter jets in Mamozai area of Orakzai Agency on Thursday. One soldier and another seven militants were killed in a clash in South Waziristan.
Sources revealed that the security forces, backed by gunship helicopters and …

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Tribal area clash kills soldier, seven militants

PESHAWAR: A clash between Pakistani troops and Taliban on Thursday killed a soldier and seven militants in the country’s troubled northwestern tribal area, a security official said. Fighting erupted after Pakistani troops launched a search operation in a bazaar where Taliban militants are frequently seen in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan tribal district [...]

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Via DAWN.com

Wana clash kills soldier, seven militants

A clash between Pakistani troops and Taliban on Thursday killed a soldier and seven militants in the country’s troubled northwestern tribal area, a security official said. Fighting erupted after Pakistani troops launched a search operation in a bazaar where Taliban militants are frequently seen in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan tribal district which borders Afghanistan. “One …

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US drone strike kills 5 in SWaziristan

At least five alleged militants were killed and several others injured in a drone strike in Data Khel area of South Waziristan agency in north western tribal region. Sources said that the US unmanned plane had fired several missiles on a house in the area. The attack was a second during last 48 hours. On Wednesday, an unmanned US aircraft fired missiles into a home in a tribal region of western …

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Taliban claim truce holding in South Waziristan

A commander of the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has said that his organisation has declared a ceasefire to the extent of Mehsud-dominated areas of South Waziristan to build confidence with the government for holding peace talks.

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Via DAWN.com

Govt, TTP in peace talks

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DERA ISMAIL KHAN (Agencies) – Government intermediaries have held talks with the Tehrike Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in recent months exploring ways to jump-start peace negotiations, intelligence officials and a senior militant commander said.
The discussions are focused on the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border and could be expanded…

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US drone strike kills 18 in SWaziristan

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A major salvo of US missiles on Wednesday destroyed a Pakistani Taliban base on the Afghan border, killing up to 18 suspected militants including possible Al-Qaeda fighters, local officials said.
Five US drones fired up to 10 missiles into a sprawling compound in the Baber Ghar area of South Waziristan,…

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At least 15 dead in South Waziristan drone strike

A salvo of missiles fired by US drones destroyed a Pakistani Taliban base on Wednesday, killing at least 15 suspected militants in Pakistan’s tribal badlands on the Afghan border, officials said.

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Via DAWN.com

US drone strike kills 18 in South Waziristan

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US drones on Wednesday fired a salvo of missiles, destroying a house and killing up to 18 suspected militants in South Waziristan, officials said.
Four missiles slammed into the compound in the Baber Ghar area of South Waziristan, killing at least 18 people who were reported to be local Taliban…

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One killed, nine injured as bus falls in ravine in South Waziristan

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At least one woman was killed and nine passengers injured when bus of Mehsud tribe fell into deep ravine here in Mandana, tehsil Laddha in South Waziristan on Monday.
According to political administration South Waziristan, bus-carrying persons of affected Mehsud tribe fell into ravine situated in Mandana killing a woman…

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4 commanders among 5 militants killed in SWA drone attack

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At least five militants, including four commanders of Maulvi Nazir group, were killed and four others wounded in a US drone attack at a vehicle in Azam Warsak area of South Waziristan Agency on Thursday.
According to sources, the US drone fired six missiles at a double cabin van which…

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At least 2 security personnel killed, three injured in South Waziristan bomb blast

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A remote controlled explosion killed at least two security personnel and injured three others in South Waziristan on Thursday, a private TV reported.
According to the report, the blast took place at about 10:20 a. m. local time when a remote controlled blast went off near a convoy of security…

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