A suicide bomber has attacked the funeral service of Bakhat Khan who was a Pakistani tribal leader opposed to the Taliban and killed 20 people in the process. The blast took place in the Lower Dir region close to the Afghan border, and is the second such attack in days. there were about 299 mourners there and many ot them were injured.
Bakhat, who died of natural causes on Wednesday, was a member of a local “lashkar” or militia opposed to Taliban rule in the region. I guess this is supposed to be a tactic to incide fear in the hearts of the population and I guess that it might work to a certain degree, but it makes the people who fear you hate your guts at the same time.
Tribesmen in the north west have formed a number of militias for which they receive limited government funding. They have had some success in stopping militant infiltration but are routinely hit by revenge attacks. On Monday Taliban gunmen killed four children as they returned from school close to the main north-western city of Peshawar. Islamist insurgents said the attack was aimed at stopping locals supporting a tribal militia. To that I want to say come on man, why in the world do you need to target children? Thats just friggin mean. Look at the mindset of the enemy that our military ring customers have to fight, and answer this question. Should we try and be sensitive to terrorist prisoners when we catch them of should we do whatever we need to do to extract information from them. I really think that being nice about it will do any good at all.
