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December 22, 2005

Pakistan: Muslim Seminary Students in Clashes With Bandits

On Tuesday, the Pakistan Daily Times reported that on December 6th, thousands of armed seminary students took to the streets near the town of Miranshah, North Waziristan, after bandits had attacked and killed three of their number.

On Monday, the body of a gang member was found decapitated, and suspended from an electricity pylon, two kilometers west of Miranshah. The BBC states that his head was impaled on a bamboo pole. Another bandit/gang member was also strung up, but with his head still attached.

Now, the fighting between madrassa students and bandits/gang members has intensified. The BBC says today that at least seven people have been killed in a clash in the village of Shawal in North Waziristan, which lies along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Two of the dead are students, and five are bandits.

The BBC states that at least 15 people have been killed in similar confrontations earlier this month. The China Post says that 23 people were killed previously in December. The fighting, which went on for several days, is said by the China Post to have erupted after students refused to pay extortion "taxes" at a roadblock.

The current clash took place late on Wednesday evening in Shawal. In South Waziristan, in a separate incident, five gunmen at about the same time entered a barbershop in Wana, the regional centre, and shot the owner and two others.

Reuters AlertNet states that more than 30 people have died this month in clashes between the "students" and those they describe as "bandits". The students call themselves "Taliban" which means "students" but is also the title of the Afghan islamists, many of whom still operate in the rugged border terrain of the region, along with al-Qaeda cadres.

There are currently 70,000 troops from Pakistan in the region, who have been stationed in number for the past two years, and hundreds have been killed on both sides. The BBC states that more than 250 government soldiers have been killed since 2003.

Reuters Alertnet states that two bullet-ridden bodies were found in a stream on the perimeter of Miranshah today, though they were probably killed on Wednesday night.

We reported on Thursday December 1 of an explosion which took place that morning at the village of Haisori, outside Miranshah, and had killed five people. It was discovered via DNA analysis later that one of those killed had been Abu Hamza Rabia, the third in command of al-Qaeda.

There have been two contradictory accounts of that explosion. One report which derived from Haisori villagers claimed that a US Predator drone had created the blast, and the version given by the Pakistan government was that the individuals had accidentally blown themselves up.

Reuters AlertNet states that a Miranshah journalist, Hayatullah Khan, who had reported the villagers' account and photographed remains of shrapnel, was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on December 5, and has not been heard from since.

As we noted on December 1, students at that time were angry at the death of a 17 year old who had died in the explosion which killed Rabia. Pravda reported:

About 500 students from a college rallied in Mir Ali, a market town near Isori, to protest the death of the teenager in the village and what an organizer called an "attack on innocent people."

"This is an illegal attack against us, against innocent people," said Munawar Shah, a student leader addressing the rally. "They want us to take up guns," he said to the chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Pakistan."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 22, 2005 4:54 PM

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