Coup in Pakistan – Moon of Alabama

March 11, 2009

Coup in Pakistan

No, not (yet) a military coup against the government, but a government coup against the opposition:

Dozens of political activists and lawyers were arrested in Islamabad and across the Punjab Wednesday in a bid to thwart a planned protest march on the capital, police said.

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Those rounded up include members of Pakistan's most popular opposition party, which is headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was last month disqualified from contesting elections.

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In Lahore police confirmed further arrests after authorities banned protests and ordered paramilitary troops to be on alert in a bid to prevent this week's planned ‘long march’ demanding legal reforms.

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A government official told AFP he expected ‘hundreds of people’ to be rounded up before the long march and that lists of ‘miscreants’ were being prepared in districts across Punjab province.

Zardari, the current president, broke his election promises, especially on the reinstatement of the supreme court judges Musharraf had fired and replaced with his tools. Last week the supreme court judged against the Sharif brothers and disqualified them from all political positions. Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of the Muslim League's leader, Nawaz Sharif, was the chief minister of Punjab, the most populated state of Pakistan. Instead of allowing the Punjab parliament to vote for a new chief minister, the president selected one of his friends as governor to rule over Punjab. The Sharifs, together with the lawyer movement that supports the fired supreme court judges, called for a long march to Islamabad to protest the president's actions.

Now Zardari, using dubious legal powers, is actively suppressing any opposition.

This might very well lead to a bloody struggle against the Zardari regime. The question then is not if but when the military will again take over to bring some calm into the situation.

Yesterday Juan Cole published a good backgrounder on the troubles. He judges that this conflict will dwarf the trouble with the Taliban problem and the Deobandi fight against Sufism.

One wonders what position the Obama administration will take on this:

Support Zardari?
Support Sharif and the lawyer movement?
Urge for a military coup?

Zardari gives the U.S. practically a free hand to fight the Taliban on Pakistani ground. But keeping him is certain to create a bigger mess in Pakistan with unforeseeable consequences.

While Sharif would probably bring more peace to Pakistan, he is unlikely to play along with the U.S. So I doubt that the U.S. will ever support him even if that would help to calm things down.

Which lets me assume that the U.S. will eventually support another military coup against the civil government of Pakistan. Chief of Army Staff General Kayani has worked well together with the U.S. so far. But up to now Kayani has rejected any kind of interference in the political process. That he is capable to become some accepted leader of an interim government is dubious.

Most likely the U.S. will follow Churchill's dictum "the United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative" and first support alternative 1. When the trouble gets bigger it will support alternative 3 and finally it will have to accept alternative 2. Meanwhile the people in Pakistan will have to sustain a unruly and bloody time.

Posted by b on March 11, 2009 at 11:24 UTC | Permalink

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Government bans protests, alerts troops in Punjab, Sindh

LAHORE: Effective from Wednesday, Section 144 was imposed in the Punjab and Sindh provinces for three and 15 days respectively, news reports said.
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Lawyers and opposition parties are organising a march from March 12-16 to demand the reinstatement of supreme court chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and other judges sacked by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Under the Section 144, no protest march or gathering of people at one place would be allowed, DCO police said.
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Opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif vowed to defy the law and asked his supporters to go ahead with the protest despite the ban.
‘The government can do whatever it can, but we will all reach Islamabad , come what may,’ Sharif told reporters here.
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The Pakistani government Monday threatened Shahbaz’s brother, the main opposition leader and ex-premier Nawaz Sharif, with charges of sedition for inciting people to rebellion after a court barred him from public office.

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2009 14:30 utc | 1

Interesting to see the difference in reporting between the NYT and WaPo in this case. No “party line” to synchronize them has yet been given by the U.S. government.
The WaPo had supported Bhutto and her husband Zardari to the hilt.
It now opens well down the webpage:

Political turmoil deepened Wednesday and Pakistanis braced for violence as opponents of President Asif Ali Zardari prepared to lead a massive protest march toward the capital this week, while police arrested hundreds of opposition activists and the government banned public assemblies in major cities.
Many Pakistanis said they feared the conflict could bring the year-old civilian government to the brink of collapse, and some said it could revive the specter of army intervention in the nuclear-armed nation of 160 million, which recently emerged from military rule and faces a growing threat from violent Islamic extremists.

It goes on to essentially blames Sharif of taking over the lawyer movement.

The protest march, long planned by Pakistani lawyers as a peaceful action to demand the reinstatement of the deposed Supreme Court chief justice, has been overtaken by a personal and partisan brawl between Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, and top leaders of the rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

The NYT has its piece on the top of its homepage. While its opener is quite similar to WaPo’s, a graph further down the difference is quite stark:

The political turmoil pits the Zardari government, which is backed by the United States but domestically unpopular, against Mr. Sharif, whose domestic support appears stronger but whom Washington sees as insufficiently committed to quelling the Qaeda and Taliban insurgency consuming Pakistan.
Signs of widespread disgruntlement at the crackdown, including within Mr. Zardari’s own Pakistan Peoples Party, were immediately apparent.
Some supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-N said they received calls from police officers warning them to lie low, and to leave their offices and their homes in order to avoid arrest.

You would not learn anything about popularity and U.S. support from reading the WaPo piece.
It will be interesting how those pieces will look tomorrow after the editors had their briefing from the White House and then rewrite those reporter desk pieces.

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2009 19:36 utc | 2

One wonders what position the Obama administration will take on this
whatever benefits the joos in isreal most likely.
i mean, really.
jeebus

Posted by: Simple Answer | Mar 11 2009 20:12 utc | 3

The factor that seems to me important in the US reaction to events in Pakistan is that Obama is not anti-Islamic in the way that Bush (or Blair) was. I have not yet seen in Obama’s behaviour a feeling that he has to do down Muslims. The idea of a jihad against Islam was very true of Bush and Blair, even when they denied it.
This is particularly important as Pakistan is defined by its religion. We should remember that Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy of India, when given the job of dividing India and Pakistan, did so in a fashion highly anti-Islamic, in giving the maximum of territory to non-Muslim India, and an unfair minimum to Pakistan. Pakistan has suffered from this problem ever since.
I would expect Obaman policy to be neutral on Pakistan, whatever maintains the peace, and enables the war in Afghanistan.
But even the war in Afghanistan is in question. For the US, it is important to “win”, but anything else doesn’t matter very much. So like in Iraq, where the war is said to have been “won”, if the Taliban were ready to switch their policy, and were to pretend that that the US had won, the war would be over in short order. However the Taliban are not that clever. I expect they will reach that understanding one day.

Posted by: Alex | Mar 11 2009 23:18 utc | 4

Alex, I have yet to see anyone fully (accurately) define what it means to ‘win’ in Iraq OR Afghanistan. Well, anyone from a US mainstream POV. *G*
USA so called ‘alternative media’, blogs and such, have had a full definition of it since 911.
And I, like SOME of the ‘alt media’ believe that BOTH wars are all about energy resources and distribution routes in both countries (sure, among the blogosphere you’ll find conflicting opinions about ‘The Definition Of Win’, but by and large it all boils down to energy and distribution).
I always fall back on the fact that in ’98 The Ruling Taliban of Afghanistan (Reagan’s Freedom Fighters and our allies just a few years before that) told Cheney, then the CEO of Halliburton, to go Cheney themselves in regards to a key oil/gas pipeline deal across Afghanistan. A deal the French, Russians, Germans and even Chinese were all in and trying to work with the Taliban.
Only Cheney and Halliburton wanted exclusives and earnings rights that were off the hook for the times and climes (Petro Service Agreements) and would take the major profits from it all leaving little left behind in Afghanistan, or for the ruling Taliban.
And then, we invaded Afghanistan post 911 in search of . . . Bin Laden? Who Escaped?
We bombed the shit out of Taliban enclaves so Cheney could teach them a lesson. And then we fucked up the mission to find Bin Laden (hell, he was likely an accomplice with US interests to forment a 911 like crises so BushCo could assert the Executive Presidency, which they did, to wage war, reap from war profiteering and all THAT brings for paid elected officials . . . but I digress . . . I could go on for days . . . about the collective corruption of our government and the War Machine, etc.
Factor in some geopolitical control that COMES with dominating those energy resources and distribution routes and you have a big picture look at what and why.
Now, question is, what will the NEW Administration really do, what CAN it do if it WANTS to change things . . . will it be allowed to change things?
All I see are failed expenditures from useless overseas mllitary interventions to be a part of development and distribution of energy sources. Failures we could have actually SUCCEDED in, with a non military intervention, co-operation with our foes be they Taliban, Russia or China.
Win/Win scenerios are at hand, then and now. And yet, the USA continues to deal The War Machine Card . . . cuz there’s profiteering in war, the likes can’t be siphoned with peace.
In direct response to your last paragraph, I’m not really sure what yer sayin? A ‘WIN’ thing I understand, it’s not defined but it involves USA ‘honor’ (which is NOT the win we is lookin for).
But the part about the Taliban letting us win, and not being smart . . . that part I dont’ get.
I do of course, agree with most of the rest of your premises as stated . . . . Obama will be neutral to some extent WRT Pakistan . . . after all, we are JUST at the stage where Russia and China are going to HAVE to be involved, and that will take a lot of the cost off USA to have to be there . . . so I hope to see lots of withdrawals in the coming year from both Iraq AND Afghanistan . . . . we can rattle sabres at Russia and China once again, without boots on the ground which has broken us . . . as it breaks anyone who enters Afghanistan, as history has told us. *G*
Nice chatting with ya . . . . a neutral Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan is better than what we had . . . from there, we (us libs/progressives) hope to DARE to build further peace, perhaps . . . . 😉

Posted by: larue | Mar 12 2009 3:54 utc | 5

Crackdown on Protests Continues in Pakistan

Pakistani police arrested dozens more political demonstrators Thursday after the civilian government banned a national protest march, evoking for many Pakistanis the sweeping security restrictions of the military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The arrests of 60 people at an anti-government rally in Karachi on Thursday marked the second straight day in which the police rounded up protesters.
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The first protesters in the nationwide march are expected to leave the city of Quetta on Thursday and converge with others from around the country on the capital, Islamabad, on Monday.
The political turmoil comes as Washington is conducting a major policy review on Pakistan and Afghanistan. The review is expected to extend more aid to the Zardari government to help it counter the insurgency that is increasingly destabilizing the nuclear-armed nation.
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Outside the party, the disgruntlement was also evident, with police officers warning supporters of Mr. Sharif’s to lie low and stay away from their offices to avoid arrest. The superintendent of police in Gujranwala, in Punjab Province, refused to arrest Pakistan Muslim League workers who attended a large, emotional rally held by Shahbaz Sharif.
Four police chiefs in local stations in Lahore were dismissed Wednesday for alerting Muslim League workers to hide, said Ashtar Ali, a lawyer for the Sharif brothers. Across Punjab, 22 police chiefs considered loyal to the Sharifs had been replaced by officers loyal to the Pakistan Peoples Party, Mr. Ali said.

Posted by: b | Mar 12 2009 6:55 utc | 6

larue@5
I was thinking about Iraq. The US hasn’t won anything at all in Iraq, not in any long term way. Yet they think they have “won”, with the results of the surge. Maliki has figured out that these days, with all the US firepower, which you can’t fight against, it’s better to let the US think they’ve “won”, then get them out. Which is what is happening. It’s working quite well.

Posted by: Alex | Mar 12 2009 9:05 utc | 7

Tony Karon: Bet on a Pakistan Coup

As the country disintegrates in the face of multiple insurgencies and an economy on life support from the IMF, the generals’ patience for the shenanigans of civilian politicians is at an end. And, it seems, Kiyani has Washington’s blessing for cracking the whip.
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No doubt, Kiyani looks an infinitely preferable option in terms of getting Washington’s business done in the region. So did Musharraf. Indeed, Kiyani being a rather reluctant politician may even call on Musharraf to front the operation again once the military has taken power.
But it’s the military, particularly the ISI (of which Kiyani used to be the head) that’s been at the center of the very policies that most irk Washington. That, somehow, is unlikely to change.

Posted by: b | Mar 12 2009 9:52 utc | 8

Long march begins from Karachi, Quetta despite arrests

KARACHI: Lawyers and activists of political parties began long march for the restoration of judiciary as arrests continued unabated across the country on Thursday.
Police baton-charged activists and manhandled dozens into vans in Karachi, as thousands defied the government in a mass protest. The Jamaat-e-Islami leaders Prof. Ghafoor Ahmad, Asadullah Bhutto and Mohammad Hussain Mehenti, president Karachi Bar Muhammad Ali Abbasi, general secretary Naeem Qureshi and many other political workers have been arrested from Karachi.
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Lawyers in black suits and opposition party activists carrying flags and punching their fists in the air marched in Karachi and Lahore, demanding that President Asif Ali Zardari reinstate sacked judges.
Around 2,000 lawyers, political workers and civil activists rallied in Lahore. The lawyers’ leader, Aitzaz Ahsan, said people were determined to flout the government’s invoking of a 19th century British law banning rallies.
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Posted by: b | Mar 12 2009 12:16 utc | 9

Some interesting inside bits:

Mian Raza Rabbani, the leader of the House in the senate and a top member of the lead party in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), this week resigned. He was apparently miffed after a close friend and a new entry in the PPP, Farooq Naek, was nominated as the party’s candidate for the position of chairman of the senate.
This has been interpreted as the first major sign of dissent against the leadership of Zardari, who has already developed a series of differences with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, another senior leader of the PPP.
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General Headquarters in Rawalpindi has activated its forces and informed the authorities in Islamabad that it will directly supervise security in Islamabad. This is the first time security has been taken from the Ministry of Interior.
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American officials are now talking to opposition leader Sharif, Aitazaz Ehsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement, as well as Chaudhry, with a view to the possible ouster of Zardari, who only took office last September.
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The US still wants a government comprising secular and liberal political parties to support the “war on terror” and the military surge against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With first pick Zardari looking more and more like a loser, a change of horses in mid-stream beckons, but such maneuvers in volatile Pakistan are never easy.

Posted by: b | Mar 12 2009 13:36 utc | 10

President Zardari shut down Geonews. This without involving the cabinet. The Information Minister, Sherri Rehman, resigned. The lawyer march seems to continue despite government suppression.

LAHORE/PESHAWAR, March 13: The countrywide crackdown on lawyers and leaders and activists of opposition parties continued on Friday, with over 200 people detained across Punjab and 160 in the NWFP.
Section 144 earlier imposed on virtually all cities and towns of Punjab and Sindh was clamped also on large parts of the NWFP.
Police sealed the Sindh-Punjab border near Sadiqabad and closed Sutlej bridge near Bahawalpur, Chenab bridge linking Multan with Muzaffargarh and Ghazi Ghat bridge over the Indus near Dera Ghazi Khan to prevent lawyers and political and rights activists from coming to Lahore or Islamabad.
The closure of bridges on busy highways affected transport and a large number of vehicles were stranded on both sides of the Sindh-Punjab border at Kot Sabzal.
Most of the detained political activists belonged to the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Jamaat-i-Islami and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf.
About 100 people were arrested in Lahore, sixty in Sargodha, 22 in Sialkot, 15 in Multan, 36 in Faisalabad, 50 in Vehari, 20 in Sheikhupura, eight in Toba Tek Singh and six in Bahawalpur.
Punjab Bar Council vice-chairman Asif Ali Malik condemned the crackdown and said that lawyers would reach Islamabad on March 16 at any cost.

The U.S. are said to have asked Prime Minister Gilani to talk sense to Zardari. It is unlikely that Zardari will listen to him. Then what?

Posted by: b | Mar 14 2009 11:21 utc | 11

B Raman (former Indian spy boss) ASIF ALI ZARDARI: WHAT A MESS!

No other leader of Pakistan has ever created such a huge political mess in such a short time as President Asif Ali Zardari has. What the lateZulfiquar Ali Bhutto took six years to destroy, Zardari has destroyed in six months as the President—– namely, the credibility of Pakistan asa State, its institutions and its unity as a country and as a people.
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Posted by: b | Mar 14 2009 13:24 utc | 12

Pakistan Opposition Leader Is Held Before Protest

LAHORE, Pakistan — Police detained the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, at his house in Lahore early Sunday morning hours before his address to a planned demonstration here, and arrested supporters protesting outside his home.
Mr. Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz, was also detained in Rawilpindi, the city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad, according to Pakistani television. The detentions of the two brothers occurred at dawn, as security forces stepped up a crackdown to prevent a national protest by the lawyers’ movement and the Sharif brothers’ supporters that is aimed at converging on the capital by Monday.
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But as Mr. Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, stood firm, senior members of his party began to desert him. The minister of information, Sherry Rehman, resigned late Friday night after a prominent television news channel, Geo, was banned by the government in some parts of the country. Another senior official, Raza Rabbani, who was the party leader in the Senate, resigned from the cabinet after Mr. Zardari bypassed Mr. Rabbani and chose a more junior lawmaker, Farooq Naek, for the most senior post in the Senate chamber.

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2009 4:39 utc | 13

Crack down on lawyers, political workers continues

LAHORE: The Punjab government in its efforts to prevent the long march from proceeding to Islamabad continued to detain lawyers and leaders and workers of opposition political parties besides blockading highways in the province.
Inter-city transport came to a halt as the administration stopped buses from operating till further orders, causing inconvenience to thousands of people. Truck drivers also suspended their operation, affecting business and trade.
The highway police were instructed to search private cars and vehicles and detain people ‘thought to be’ leaving for Islamabad.
Apart from highways, the police also blocked small arteries linking small cities and villages by placing containers and tractor trolleys that they had commandeered.
Pakistan Motor Transport Federation vice-president Naseer Butt told Dawn that 5,000 buses, coaches and wagons, operating from Badami Bagh General Bus Stand and Bakkar Mandi Bund Road Bus Stand, were parked following the police directives.
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One wonders how U.S. logistics to Afganistan are doing as Karachi is under blockade too …

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2009 4:43 utc | 14

Cracks appear in Zardari-led PPP

LAHORE: Cracks have become obvious in the Asif Ali Zardari-led PPP with the resignation of two key figures and the trust deficit in the leadership is on the rise due to several controversial decisions.
The series of controversial decisions, including the imposition of governor’s rule, appointments of ‘blue-eyed’ figures on key slots, cornering of close aides of slain party chairperson Benazir Bhutto, use of force against political workers and media curb have added much to the prevailing uncertainty among the party members, who seem perturbed over the declining popularity of the party under the stewardship of the co-chairman.
The PPP sources said distrust among majority of party members in the incumbent leadership — apparently surrounded by a group of sycophants and favourites — is mounting and resignation of two key figures in the Gilani cabinet, including Raza Rabbani and Sherry Rehman, has raised eyebrows.
Raza Rabbani, who had been associated with the PPP for decades and was a close aide to slain Benazir Bhutto, resigned from the slot of leader of the House in the Senate and then from the ministry in protest against the nomination of Farooq H Naek for the slot of Senate chairman. Raza Rabbani, known as a comrade in the party, is not the first example of neglect by the PPP, which is no more led by Benazir Bhutto.
Prior to this, the people close to slain Benazir Bhutto, including Naheed Khan, Dr Safdar Abbasi and Aitzaz Ahsan, were also cornered.
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Falling apart …

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2009 4:53 utc | 15

Getting more brutal and an answer to my question in 14: Pakistan police battle protesters as crisis grows

Hundreds of police surrounded the former prime minister’s residence in the eastern city of Lahore before dawn on Sunday and detained him along with scores of his supporters, a party spokesman said.
Officers showed party officials an order placing Sharif and his politician brother Shahbaz under house arrest for three days, spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed said.
But Sharif later denounced the order as illegal and left the house in a convoy of vehicles packed with chanting, flag-waving supporters, headed for a downtown rally that had already turned violent.
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Protesters pelted some of the hundreds of riot police ringing the area with rocks, triggering running clashes. An Associated Press reporter saw one officer led away with a head wound.
Police repeatedly fired tear gas, scattering the crowd, and beat several stragglers with batons, only for the demonstrators to return with fresh supplies or sticks and stones.
Mobs accompanying Sharif’s swelling convoy smashed the windows of buses parked along the route. Others set fire to tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the blue sky over a usually bustling boulevard littered with stones and empty tear gas shells.
Shahbaz Sharif and a host of other protest leaders went underground to dodge detention orders. Iftikhar said they included the head of Pakistan’s main Islamist party and cricketer star-turned-politician Imran Khan.
Television images showed police commandos wearing flak jackets and armed with assault rifles apparently searching for Shahbaz in Rawalpindi, just south of the capital.
Shahbaz, speaking to Geo television by phone, appealed to ordinary Pakistanis to come out onto the streets.
“(President Asif Ali) Zardari has put the nation into this deep crisis by breaking his promises,” he said. “These fascist tactics cannot stop the masses who want justice.”
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Suspected militants attacked a transport terminal in northwestern Pakistan used to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan before dawn on Sunday and torched dozens of containers and military vehicles, police said.

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2009 12:38 utc | 16

Zardari will have to shoot several thousand people to prevent the march going through:
Nawaz spearheads long march to Islamabad

LAHORE: The long march is on its way to Islamabad led by Pakistan Muslim League-N Quaid Mian Nawaz Sharif.
The long march comprises of lawyers, political workers and members of civil society.
Police tried to block the way of caravan at different locations. The PML-N Quaid managed to come out of his Model Town residence despite an order of detention which was served to him. However, the police retreated after a little while giving way to the caravan.
At GPO Road, clash broke out between enraged protesters and police which used heavy shelling to disperse the protestors. The Nawaz-led caravan comprising party workers and people kept marching on, breaking all the hurdles erected on their way while scuffles between police and protesters continued.
The caravan crossed the Kalma Chowk where heavy contingents of police were deployed to stop the march. However, the police disappeared after a while.
The number of people participating in the long march kept building up steadily and the caravan of hundreds turned into thousands. The police seemed to have changed its strategy and decided to retreat upon seeing the ocean of people approaching.

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2009 19:54 utc | 17

It seems for now the lawyers have won: Pakistan Leader Backs Down and Reinstates Top Judge

The Pakistani government agreed early on Monday to reinstate the independent-minded former chief justice of the Supreme Court, a stunning concession to the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who had been heading toward the capital in a convoy threatening to stage a mass protest over the issue after he broke free from house arrest at his residence near here.
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In reaction to Mr. Zardari’s concession, Mr. Sharif said he would call off his protest and the planned sit-in in the capital. He said the restoration of the chief justice was a victory for Pakistan and a due but belated move by the president. After making his remarks in Gujranawala, he returned to his home in Raiwind, outside of Lahore.

I expect some dirty tricks by Zardari to get around this ‘concession’ he had to make. Maybe some ‘terrorists’ will attempt to kill the chief justice?

Posted by: b | Mar 16 2009 6:26 utc | 18

Dear b, you dont need to worry too much about this. It is just the Pakistani establishment making sure that Zardari puppet company shuts down in March before the April offensive starts in Afghanistan 🙂
I have having to use a proxy these days, as my ISP is not letting me access typead these days.

Posted by: a | Mar 16 2009 19:03 utc | 19

Thanks a for your insight.
If you want to post more but are blocked from typepad you can send email to me at MoonofA_at_aol.com. I can either post what you want manually it or give you a private proxy access to do so yourself.

Posted by: b | Mar 16 2009 21:56 utc | 20

Militants torch 30 more Nato vehicles

PESHAWAR: Militants in Pakistan set ablaze vehicles bound for Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan on Monday in the second such attack in two days, police said.
Militants stepped up attacks on the road through northwest Pakistan into land-locked Afghanistan last year, exposing the vulnerability of Western supply links just as the United States was planning a surge of troops to tackle the Taliban.But attacks had tailed off early this year after security forces intensified their efforts against the militants.
In the latest assault, militants barged into a supply depot on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar at around 1:00 am on Monday, overpowered guards and set fire to vehicles, police said.
‘About 50 gunmen attacked us … They first disarmed us and then began setting fire to bulldozers and humvees,’ one of he depot’s guards, Raza Khan, told Reuters.
‘A police team arrived after about an hour and an exchange of fire took place for an hour,” he said.
Sixteen bulldozers and humvee patrol vehicles were destroyed, Khan said. Police were assessing the damage, said officer Abdul Rahim.

Posted by: b | Mar 17 2009 8:48 utc | 21

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