Taliban using Swat emerald money to fund terrorism

September 22nd, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistani security forces have nabbed a top commander of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Shura Nasim alias Abu Faraj from the Charbagh region in Swat. Sources said Faraj masterminded several suicide attacks which have rocked Pakistan in the recent past.

September 20th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistani Taliban commander Sher Mohammad Qasab, who carried a Rs.10 million bounty and was arrested from the Swat Valley, has died, authorities said Sunday. Qasab was critically injured during the Swat operation and he succumbed to his injuries, Geo TV reported.

August 9th, 2009 SWAT - The Swat education department has said that the Taliban has destroyed 238 out of 1,576 schools affecting more than 56,250 students in the province. The department has demanded a grant of 2,203 million rupees from the provincial government, for the reconstruction of more than 238 school destroyed by the Taliban, The Dawn reports.

July 28th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Arrested radical cleric Sufi Muhammad, who had brokered a controversial peace deal between the Taliban and the government in Pakistan's restive northwest, is being probed for the extent of his links with the militants, the provincial chief minister said Tuesday. Interrogators are probing into the depth of the cleric's contacts with the militants and his role in terror acts, North West Frontier Province Chief Minister Amir Khan Hoti told Voice of America.

July 26th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad, who brokered a peace deal between the militants and the provincial government about six months ago in Swat Valley, was arrested by Pakistan authorities Sunday from northwestern city of Peshawar, a news report here said. The influential cleric and his two sons, Ziaullah and Rizwanullah, were held following a raid in an area in the capital city of the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), Geo TV reported citing official sources.

July 11th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - The Swat Taliban chief, Mullah Fazlullah has been grievously injured in the ongoing military offensive, and is on his 'death bed', a BBC report has claimed. According to the report, BBC reporters gathered information about Fazlullah's condition through the several residents of the Swat Valley, whom they had interviewed recently.

July 7th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Prime Minister's advisor on Interior Affairs, Rehman Malik has said that the major Taliban leadership has been wiped out from Swat. Talking to media persons here, Malik claimed that the military offensive being carried out in the North West Frontier Province's (NWFP) Swat and Malakand Divisions have been successful with top commanders of the Taliban killed.

June 5th, 2009 RAWALPINDI - Pakistan's Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani has said that the military had "decisively turned the tide" against the Taliban in Swat and adjoining districts. "The tide in Swat has decisively turned and major population centres and roads leading to the valley have been largely cleared of organised resistance by the Taliban," said General Kayani while addressing the 119th Corps Commanders' Conference at General Headquarters.

June 3rd, 2009 LAHORE - The Pakistan Government might be busy claiming that it is all set to clear Mingora of terrorism, but have the Taliban been decisively defeated, a Time magazine article questions. The report refers to a statement of military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas, saying, "Once the army closed in on Mingora, the Taliban forces there "decided not to give a pitched battle" and mostly slipped away.

May 29th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - The Swat Taliban has engaged a band of private armed terrorists and is paying them handsome amounts to target security officials in Mingora and other adjacent areas. A suspected Afghan terrorist, Ghaniur Rehman, arrested by police from Mingora's Malukabad area told media persons that he was being paid 20,000 rupees to kill a policeman.

May 24th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - The Taliban has threatened Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and other top Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP) leaders, saying they would face dire consequences if the military offensive is not discontinued immediately. In a letter to the PPP Information Secretary Fouzia Wahab, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) warned that the country's leadership would be targeted if the operation against them is not stopped.

May 6th, 2009 PESHAWAR - Pakistan security forces killed sixty-four militants on Wednesday in northwest Buner and Swat districts. The army said 37 militants were killed in two clashes in the Swat Valley and 27 militants were killed in Buner district.

April 28th, 2009 LAHORE - A campaign is already afoot to boycott the purchase of Swat's famous emeralds, because the money could be used to buy mortars, roadside bombs and suicide belts for the Taliban. The "blood emeralds" have joined the Afghan opium as a source of Taliban lucre.

April 25th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistani Taliban stopped a convoy of security forces from entering their stronghold in Swat Valley on Saturday. A News Network International (NNI) news agency report said seven army trucks were stopped by armed Taliban at Qamabr, a small town of Mingora, the main city in the Swat Valley of North West Frontier Province.

April 17th, 2009 PESHAWAR - The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here. According to a New York Times report, the strategy has cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government has allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week.