Beheading of Polish engineer.......A SAD NEWS !!!!

This video is from youtube.com,I am not sure if its reaaly him,but its very sad and I offer my condolences to his family in Poland,Readers comments are welcome on this story.This is regarding recent beheading of a Polish engineer! This is so shocking and disappointing for Pakistan and Pakistanis. I on behalf of my country want to console the grieved family of Polish engineer. I want to appeal to the government of Pakistan to catch hold of these terrorists who not only involve in henious crimes but also defaming Pakistan and Islam. I am, sometimes, amazed that some of our people say that negotiations may be done with such people. How come negotiations can be done with such criminals. The government should first establish its writ over areas under control of Taliban who have approximately captured 12,000 sq km. These terrorists are to be handled with iron hand and to crush like Sri Lankan forces crushed Tamil Tigers. By doing this the terrorists are defaming Pakistan. Polish company has already left Pakistan and again no Polish company will visit this country as they have such terrible experience. No foreign country will like to invest in Pakistan again as what we do to our guests. Similarly what our people did it with UNHCR representative who was here to help earthquake affected people of Balochistan. Will ever UN send his representative to Pakistan again! I am sure if people of Pakistan do not take a united stand against Taliban we are heading for self destruction.ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani authorities have not confirmed that a kidnapped Polish engineer is the man that was beheaded on a Taliban video, despite assertions from Polish officials that they are certain the man is Piotr Stanczak.
"We want to be absolutely sure," said Abdual Basit, a spokesman for Pakistan's foreign office."Hopefully we would be able to confirm it shortly, but unless we are 100 percent sure, it would be premature for us to react."He noted that the Pakistani government is waiting to be informed by "concerned authorities."News of Stanczak's death came on Friday. Polish officials have said they were kept in the dark during negotiations for his release, but Basit denied that.Stanczak was kidnapped September 28 from the city of Attock in the Punjab province. He had been based there for a Polish survey company searching for natural gas.Polish embassy spokesman Peter Adams said there had been no demands for ransom. The Taliban had demanded the release of Taliban prisoners being held by the government and a pullout of government security forces from the tribal areas.Adams said all efforts had been made by Polish authorities to pressure the Pakistani government to do whatever it could to secure Stanczak's release."From the Polish side we did whatever we could, pressuring the Pakistani government on the presidential and prime minister level," Adams said. "Problem was, this was solely Pakistan's responsibility. Demands were only towards (the) Pakistan government."While there were assurances that the Pakistani government was doing everything it could and that Stanczak would be freed soon, Adams said it was never clear what the government was actually doing to secure his release."We are waiting for confirmation and waiting for any answer (about) how this happened and why did this happen," Adams said.Kidnappings and attacks against foreigners have risen sharply in recent months throughout the country. Most recently, an American working for the United Nations was kidnapped in Quetta, and Peshawar has also been the scene of various attacks against foreign diplomats and journalists.

Poland condemns killing of citizen in Pakistan

WORLD COMMUNITY MUST TAKE ACTION ON THESE SHAMEFUL CRIMES BY IGNORANT RELIGIOUS FANATICS,TALIBAN.
Pakistan — Poland condemned as "bestial" the apparent beheading of one its citizens by Pakistani militants, a killing that underscored the challenges facing a new U.S. envoy who arrived in the region Monday to try to stem the terror threat.
Pakistan has witnessed several attacks on foreigners in recent months as its overall security has deteriorated amid a growing al-Qaida and Taliban-led insurgency that is also destabilizing neighboring Afghanistan. In early February, an American U.N. worker was abducted in the southwestern city of Quetta, purportedly by separatists.
The Polish hostage, Piotr Stanczak, was abducted close to the Afghan border on Sept. 28 by armed men.On Sunday, the Taliban released to local and foreign media organizations a seven-minute video of him apparently being beheaded. A man on the film says Stanczak was killed because the Pakistan government refused to exchange him for Taliban prisoners.If confirmed, Stanczak's death would apparently be the first killing of a Western hostage in Pakistan since U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002.Polish security services minister Jacek Cichocki said Monday in Poland that in his opinion "that is the Pole and the film is authentic," adding final confirmation would have to wait until diplomatic and consular services receive the body.Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said the video showed a "bestial execution" and that he would try to ensure the killers were punished.Stanczak was surveying oil and gas fields for Geofizyka Krakow, a Polish geophysics institute."We believed the whole time, even up to the last minute, that the kidnapping affair would end well. Now, we know that's not the case," Leopold Sulkowski, president of the institute, told reporters in Krakow, Poland."At this sad and tragic moment, we can't find clear or strong enough words to condemn the monstrous and criminal act."The video was given to an Associated Press reporter Sunday in northwestern Pakistan on a flash drive by an intermediary who said he obtained it from the Taliban. The AP has elected not to distribute the images. Other international media also reported receiving or viewing footage of the killing.Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig said Sunday the government was investigating the existence of the video. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.Violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan has soared since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Many militants fled across the border to Pakistan, establishing bases and continuing to attack U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.President Barack Obama has made resolving the Afghan war a key focus of his foreign policy, appointing diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan.Holbrooke, who was the White House envoy to the Balkans in the Kosovo conflict, arrived in Pakistan late Monday on a trip that is also scheduled to take him to Afghanistan and India."The United States looks forward to reviewing our policies and renewing our commitment and friendship with the people of Pakistan," he said in a statement. He is scheduled to stay in the country until Thursday, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.The State Department has described the visit as a listening tour to help form the basis of future American policy decisions in the region.
At a security conference in Germany over the weekend, Holbrooke described the Afghan campaign as "one theater of war straddling an ill-defined border.""We have to think of it that way and not distinguish between the two," he said.Also Monday, at least 14 people died and six others were wounded when mortar shells hit a house twice in the Darra Adam Khel area, a local government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.It was unclear who fired the shells, but the second landed as people gathered to help those struck by the first.
Darra Adam Khel lies just outside the semiautonomous tribal regions, where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have long had strongholds.

Taliban's darkness descends on Swat Valley

Article from: The Australian
"GUL Makai" finished the Seventh Grade at her private school in Pakistan's Swat Valley last December. But the holidays brought little joy for the young Afghan, her friends or family.In a diary that she writes under a pen name for the BBC's Urdu service she documents the miseries of life in the former tourist mecca, whose mountains have become a stronghold of militant Islamists."Our parents are very scared," she writes in one entry. "They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the Taliban themselves announce on the FM channel that girls can go to school."Just 160km from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, the picturesque valley - once famed for its cosmopolitan ski resort and liberal, artistic community - has become a symbol of the Pakistani Government's inability to crack down on a jihadist movement that is threatening to destabilise the country.Almost daily, residents in Mingora, the only major town in Swat, find four to five headless bodies on the streets, victims of the Taliban.Responsible for the reign of terror is radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, a Talibani leader known as Radio Mullah for his fiery sermons broadcast nightly via a pirate FM radio frequency.Fazlullah stepped up his campaign in Swat after November's Mumbai attacks when Pakistan redeployed troops to the border with India. In just a few months he is said to have increased his area of control from less than a third to more than 80 per cent of the 9000sqkm area.In December, he announced all education for girls would cease by January 15 - when private schools were due to reopen - prompting Pakistani newspaper The News to editorialise: "The beautiful valley now enters a time of darkness."The number of schools blown up or torched stands at 181, and militants have blown up power grids, bridges, gas lines and hotels.Last week, Fazlullah demanded 40 provincial ministers and local government officials appear before a Taliban court to answer charges of causing unrest in the area, or face death.Kamran Bokhari, senior South Asia analyst with US-based global intelligence company Stratfor, says Swat now represents a "red line" for the Pakistani Government.Bokhari says the Taliban and al-Qa'ida have long had strongholds in the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a special autonomous zone along the Afghan border, but Swat is in the heart of the North Western Frontier Province and "very much part of Pakistan"."Swat is extremely important because if it does completely fall to the militants, or the army is unable to re-establish the writ of the state, then that would be the first district in Pakistan proper to fall," he told The Australian.The US views Swat as the most dangerous of the militant strongholds because its terror camps feed into the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan - the Western coalition's main front in the war on terror.Pakistani Interior Affairs Minister Rehman Malik told the Senate last week that the organisations behind the trouble in the valley included al-Qa'ida, Tehrik-i-Taliban, Tanzeem-i-Islami, Tora Bora and Qari Mushtaq.Swat is likely to be at the top of Richard Holbrooke's agenda this week when he meets Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on his first visit as the US's special envoy to South Asia.While the Government has been fighting Fazlullah's insurgency since 2007, many believe the strife in the region might have been averted far earlier had former president Pervez Musharraf shut down the cleric's broadcasts, which tapped into local frustration with corruption and the judicial system."Absolutely everyone listens to the daily radio broadcasts, because they don't know if a rival has made an accusation that puts them on the list," a Mingora resident widowed by the Taliban told local media."It gives them an opportunity to present their side of the case to the Taliban, and be acquitted in the following day's broadcast."The military has made little headway and has alienated many residents who suspect government troops of tipping off militants before attacks and accuse them of killing more civilians than militants.Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed last week that his Government would swiftly crush the insurgency. But he added that military action was not the only solution, suggesting negotiations with Fazlullah might still be an option."You can't imagine how bad it is," Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal politician whose home in Swat was bombed in December, said of the security situation. "It's worse day by day."Haji Adeel, a senator and senior ANP leader, told Dawn television that security was so dire that "no governor, chief minister or the Prime Minister can venture to go there".Those with the means have already relocated to Islamabad or Peshawar. Up to a third of the Swat's 1.5 million population are said to have fled - and the region's poorest residents began flooding out last week after the Government opened two relief camps around Mingora.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs projected last week that the situation in Swat and FATA tribal areas could significantly worsen over the next 12 months, displacing a further 625,000 people.

Taliban's darkness descends on Swat Valley

Article from: The Australian
"GUL Makai" finished the Seventh Grade at her private school in Pakistan's Swat Valley last December. But the holidays brought little joy for the young Afghan, her friends or family.In a diary that she writes under a pen name for the BBC's Urdu service she documents the miseries of life in the former tourist mecca, whose mountains have become a stronghold of militant Islamists."Our parents are very scared," she writes in one entry. "They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the Taliban themselves announce on the FM channel that girls can go to school."Just 160km from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, the picturesque valley - once famed for its cosmopolitan ski resort and liberal, artistic community - has become a symbol of the Pakistani Government's inability to crack down on a jihadist movement that is threatening to destabilise the country.Almost daily, residents in Mingora, the only major town in Swat, find four to five headless bodies on the streets, victims of the Taliban.Responsible for the reign of terror is radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, a Talibani leader known as Radio Mullah for his fiery sermons broadcast nightly via a pirate FM radio frequency.Fazlullah stepped up his campaign in Swat after November's Mumbai attacks when Pakistan redeployed troops to the border with India. In just a few months he is said to have increased his area of control from less than a third to more than 80 per cent of the 9000sqkm area.In December, he announced all education for girls would cease by January 15 - when private schools were due to reopen - prompting Pakistani newspaper The News to editorialise: "The beautiful valley now enters a time of darkness."The number of schools blown up or torched stands at 181, and militants have blown up power grids, bridges, gas lines and hotels.Last week, Fazlullah demanded 40 provincial ministers and local government officials appear before a Taliban court to answer charges of causing unrest in the area, or face death.Kamran Bokhari, senior South Asia analyst with US-based global intelligence company Stratfor, says Swat now represents a "red line" for the Pakistani Government.Bokhari says the Taliban and al-Qa'ida have long had strongholds in the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a special autonomous zone along the Afghan border, but Swat is in the heart of the North Western Frontier Province and "very much part of Pakistan"."Swat is extremely important because if it does completely fall to the militants, or the army is unable to re-establish the writ of the state, then that would be the first district in Pakistan proper to fall," he told The Australian.The US views Swat as the most dangerous of the militant strongholds because its terror camps feed into the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan - the Western coalition's main front in the war on terror.Pakistani Interior Affairs Minister Rehman Malik told the Senate last week that the organisations behind the trouble in the valley included al-Qa'ida, Tehrik-i-Taliban, Tanzeem-i-Islami, Tora Bora and Qari Mushtaq.Swat is likely to be at the top of Richard Holbrooke's agenda this week when he meets Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on his first visit as the US's special envoy to South Asia.While the Government has been fighting Fazlullah's insurgency since 2007, many believe the strife in the region might have been averted far earlier had former president Pervez Musharraf shut down the cleric's broadcasts, which tapped into local frustration with corruption and the judicial system."Absolutely everyone listens to the daily radio broadcasts, because they don't know if a rival has made an accusation that puts them on the list," a Mingora resident widowed by the Taliban told local media."It gives them an opportunity to present their side of the case to the Taliban, and be acquitted in the following day's broadcast."The military has made little headway and has alienated many residents who suspect government troops of tipping off militants before attacks and accuse them of killing more civilians than militants.Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed last week that his Government would swiftly crush the insurgency. But he added that military action was not the only solution, suggesting negotiations with Fazlullah might still be an option."You can't imagine how bad it is," Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal politician whose home in Swat was bombed in December, said of the security situation. "It's worse day by day."Haji Adeel, a senator and senior ANP leader, told Dawn television that security was so dire that "no governor, chief minister or the Prime Minister can venture to go there".Those with the means have already relocated to Islamabad or Peshawar. Up to a third of the Swat's 1.5 million population are said to have fled - and the region's poorest residents began flooding out last week after the Government opened two relief camps around Mingora.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs projected last week that the situation in Swat and FATA tribal areas could significantly worsen over the next 12 months, displacing a further 625,000 people.

Barack Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke warns of 'a new Iraq' as he heads to Pakistan

President Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan hit out at previous US policy in the region yesterday as he embarked on his first tour of South Asia in his new job.“I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited,” Richard Holbrooke said at a security conference in Munich that was also attended by top Afghan, Pakistani and Indian officials. “It is like no other problem we have confronted, and in my view it’s going to be much tougher than Iraq,” he added.
The 67-year-old former ambassador to the UN arrives in Pakistan this morning, and will head for Afghanistan on Thursday and India next Monday on a mission to overhaul US policy in the region. Mr Holbrooke has a reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator, best known for brokering the Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.However, he has little experience of South Asia’s political minefields, few personal contacts in the region and no guarantee that his interlocutors will even be in power for much longer. President Zardari of Pakistan is chronically weak, with only nominal control of the army. President Karzai of Afghanistan looks increasingly unpopular at home and abroad ahead of presidential elections in August. India also faces national elections by May and Manmohan Singh, its 76-year-old Prime Minister, is recuperating at home after a heart bypass.Relations between all three countries are especially fraught because India blames Pakistani spies for the attacks on Mumbai in November as well as the bombing of its embassy in Kabul in July. Mr Holbrooke’s visit to Afghanistan will be overshadowed by recent criticism of President Karzai in Washington and rumours that President Obama is looking for a replacement. Mr Karzai will try to deflect US criticism by accusing Pakistan of allowing al-Qaeda and the Taleban to shelter in its northern tribal areas.“We know today what we seemed to neglect for several years – that terrorism did not emanate from Afghanistan’s villages and people; that there were sanctuaries outside our borders where terrorism might be defeated,” Mr Karzai told the conference.

EU condemns execution of Polish engineer in Pakistan

BRUSSELS-- The European Union (EU) on Monday condemned the execution of a Polish engineer, who was kidnapped in Pakistan by Taliban militants in September 2008. Both EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana and EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said they were shocked by the death of Piotr Stanczak, who worked as an engineer geologist. "Solana condemns this heinous crime, which highlights the extremely dangerous and unstable situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and wishes to express his solidarity with Mr. Stanczak's relatives and the Polish government," Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach said. Ferrero-Waldner said: "The perpetrators of this appalling terrorist crime must be pursued and brought to justice. I condemn in the strongest possible terms this despicable act of violence which cannot be justified under any circumstances." She said the EU remains steadfast in its support for strengthening the institutions of the Pakistani state, and is ready to support all efforts to reinforce stability in the country.A video distributed to news organizations showed Stanczak was apparently beheaded by his kidnappers.