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Reuters: Taliban assault on Pakistani school ends, 130 dead, mostly children


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Savages. Just made me sick this morning 
 
 
 
Taliban assault on Pakistani school ends, 130 dead, mostly children
 
(Reuters) - At least 130 people, most of them children, were killed on Tuesday after Taliban gunmen broke into a school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and opened fire, witnesses said, in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen for years.

More than eight hours after militants entered the school compound, the military declared the operation to flush them out over, and said that all nine insurgents had been killed.

The attack at a military-run high school attended by at least 500 students, many of them children of army personnel, struck at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment, an assault certain to enrage the country's powerful army.

The Taliban, waging war against Pakistan in order to topple the government and set up an Islamic state, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females," said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. "We want them to feel the pain."

 

 

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The gunmen, who several students said communicated with each other in a foreign language, managed to slip past the school's tight security because they were wearing Pakistani military uniforms, local media reported.
Another student told Pakistan's Dunya Television: "The attackers had long beards, wore shalwar kameez (traditional baggy clothes) and spoke Arabic."
"Teachers and the principal were also there. The men who burst in were speaking and shouting in an incomprehensible language. Sounded like Arabic or Farsi."

 

 

This of course was an inside job. Army school, foreign Taliban

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I heard about this early this morning.  Pretty sad stuff. 

 

I don't want to derail the thread, but stuff like this is exactly why I think we are pulling out of Afghanistan too early.

 

This is a war Pakistan has to fight on its own soil for its own survival

 

There are too many elements in the Army and ISI that are sympathetic to the Taliban in Pakistan. Those elements need to be eliminated immediatley and a full scale war launched by the Pakistani Army, even more so then the stepped up operations that have taken place recently 

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This is a war Pakistan has to fight on its own soil for its own survival

 

There are too many elements in the Army and ISI that are sympathetic to the Taliban in Pakistan. Those elements need to be eliminated immediatley and a full scale war launched by the Pakistani Army, even more so then the stepped up operations that have taken place recently 

I don't know if a war on an embattled population will really have the effects that anyone would want (other than maybe the Taliban). I think there needs to be structural improvements for a big part of the population before we will see any progress. The Taliban has the strength they do because they work within an alienated part of society that has no voice, no prospects, and the messy situation in Pakistani politics just drives people to extremist elements.

A war launched by the Pakistani Army in my opinion would be counterproductive as it alienates more of the population in those affected regions and plays right into the hands of the Taliban who can point to the unimaginable innocent lives lost in the crossfire as a recruiting tool and as a way to shore up their positions as supposed protectors of that part of society. 

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This is an appalling tragedy. These are innocent children that were massacred. Who can support a group that would carry out such a heinous act against children?

 

I think the Taliban really screwed the pooch on this one. I believe Pakistan has been sheltering them as well as Osama bin Laden in at least a limited fashion since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Now they attack the children of the very people that have been protecting them? Hopefully this brings about the end and complete eradication of the Taliban. 

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This is an appalling tragedy. These are innocent children that were massacred. Who can support a group that would carry out such a heinous act against children?

 

I think the Taliban really screwed the pooch on this one. I believe Pakistan has been sheltering them as well as Osama bin Laden in at least a limited fashion since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Now they attack the children of the very people that have been protecting them? Hopefully this brings about the end and complete eradication of the Taliban. 

The military (or certain elements of the military) have been battling the Taliban and other groups throughout the region for a while now, this attack is a response to the heavy handed approach they have taken in fighting them. So it will be interesting to see how things change but I fear an all out war (which probably won't be effective) will just bring more people into the Talibans fold as they are viewed as protectors of that population (when you see the outside military coming in and engaging in total war its tough not to see anyone opposing the outsiders as protectors of the population).

I don't think this is a good move by the Taliban from a recruiting or PR standpoint.

Killing westerners is one thing. Kids? Pakistani kids? Who the hell is getting on board with that?

Anti-military people in Pakistan, this school was targeted specifically because it was a military run school. There are plenty of people unhappy with the military and a lot of them reside in a sphere that the Taliban would probably love recruiting from. 

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Slaughtering 100 kids can't just be ignored for fear that doing something would help the Taliban. Doing nothing would probably help the Taliban too. Showing weakness never makes the wolves go away. It sounds nice but in practice the kind of monsters that would intentionally target and slaughter children will only be emboldened by attempts to appeal to their nonexistent humanity.

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Slaughtering 100 kids can't just be ignored for fear that doing something would help the Taliban. Doing nothing would probably help the Taliban too. Showing weakness never makes the wolves go away. It sounds nice but in practice the kind of monsters that would intentionally target and slaughter children will only be emboldened by attempts to appeal to their nonexistent humanity.

It can't be ignored but if you ignore the context (the attack as a response to the Pakistani military killing women and children) then you are going to get nowhere but more violence. A total war or a goal of "eradication" won't succeed and will just cause more disaffected people to flock to the Taliban and play into the problem. 

There needs to be structural changes in the way the government and the military interact with the people and limited operations against whoever planned this but ignoring the underlying reasons for the attack (hint: its not just because they are irrational monsters) will solve nothing.

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There is nothing to understand. Children have always been off limits. To specifically target  children is appalling. the Taliban just keep giving reasons that they need to be eradicated.

So why exactly do you think they attacked this specific school? 

Also does that specifically targeting children extend to drone strikes on say Anwar al-Awlaki's son? What about suspected Al-Qaeda members that are under 18? 

This attack is horrific but to actively try to not understand why it occurred is counter-productive and will just lead to more violence.

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Mudassar Abbas, a physics laboratory assistant at the school, said some students were celebrating at a party when the attack began.

“I saw six or seven people walking class-to-class and opening fire on children,” he said.

A student who survived the attack said soldiers came to rescue students during a lull in the firing.

“When we were coming out of the class we saw dead bodies of our friends lying in the corridors. They were bleeding. Some were shot three times, some four times,” the student said.

“The men entered the rooms one by one and started indiscriminate firing at the staff and students.”

http://tribune.com.pk/story/807619/they-asked-us-to-read-the-kalma/#comment-2437099

 

I have no words. This speaks for itself.

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There needs to be structural changes in the way the government and the military interact with the people and limited operations against whoever planned this but ignoring the underlying reasons for the attack (hint: its not just because they are irrational monsters) will solve nothing.

 

There certainly needs to be.

 

Waking up and seeing my facebook flooded with angry condemnation by family over in Karachi/Islamabad has demonstrated to me that the "educated" part of the population is ready for an all out war

 

The reaction really is very 9/11-9/12 like over there

This attack is horrific but to actively try to not understand why it occurred is counter-productive and will just lead to more violence.

 

There has been some debate about so called "good" Taliban and bad "Taliban" over there

 

Again, I just have a small sample size of the reaction (mostly my family) but if they are even close to representative of the overall population, the Pakistani people are ready for an all out war with the Taliban 

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There certainly needs to be.

 

Waking up and seeing my facebook flooded with angry condemnation by family over in Karachi/Islamabad has demonstrated to me that the "educated" part of the population is ready for an all out war

 

The reaction really is very 9/11-9/12 like over there

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, but unfortunately that is probably too much to ask. The Pakistani government is such a mess and there really isn't a good solution to disentangling all the strings that go into it from so many different directions (ISI, military, political leaders, different factions, extremist elements) it is just a cluster**** and a half that doesn't seem to be improving.

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There certainly needs to be.

 

Waking up and seeing my facebook flooded with angry condemnation by family over in Karachi/Islamabad has demonstrated to me that the "educated" part of the population is ready for an all out war

 

The reaction really is very 9/11-9/12 like over there

 

I imagine so. This whole thing doesn't surprise me - the Taliban going after children - but something about this really messing with my head. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I really wish I didn't read this article because I think its altered my mod for the rest of the day.

 

I can only imagine how the folks over in Pakistan must be feeling. I'd be ready to suit up, too.

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The ISI helped create this monster.  Maybe the Pakistani people will finally realize how allowing the ISI a free hand is killing their country. 

Judging by some peoples reactions what the Pakistani people should do is pour more money inti ISI to "eradicate" the threat..... 

Its a similar issue to the Kony2012 thing, people wanted to solve the problem and didn't understand the dozens of underlying factors which create more problems.

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This is a war Pakistan has to fight on its own soil for its own survival

There are too many elements in the Army and ISI that are sympathetic to the Taliban in Pakistan. Those elements need to be eliminated immediatley and a full scale war launched by the Pakistani Army, even more so then the stepped up operations that have taken place recently

The Taliban was created by the Pakistani government and couldn't exist without it

So a good place to start would be to cut off aid and support especially to the schools in western Pakistan that churn out Taliban fighters like factories

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The Taliban was created by the Pakistani government and couldn't exist without it

So a good place to start would be to cut off aid and support especially to the schools in western Pakistan that churn out Taliban fighters like factories

 

The name is misleading: the Pakistani Taliban isn't the same as the Afgani Taliban, although they are both primarily Pushtun.   Pakistan supports the Taliban in Afganistan, but the group within Pakistan itself is a split off that exists to oppose the Pakistani government.  

 

They both hate the US, but around there, who doesn't?

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So why exactly do you think they attacked this specific school? 

Also does that specifically targeting children extend to drone strikes on say Anwar al-Awlaki's son? What about suspected Al-Qaeda members that are under 18? 

This attack is horrific but to actively try to not understand why it occurred is counter-productive and will just lead to more violence.

There are many reasons they attacked the school. One which  you failed to mention is that Malala Yousefzai won the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Did we target his son or his son's school? Or did we target another bad dude who was with his son at the time? Big difference.

 

What don't  you get, they want more violence, any peace gesture to them is a sign of weakness that they will use to consolidate strength before their next attack. They won't stop until we surrender.

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