'Airlines terror plot' disrupted

You're still posting inaccurate facts, even from your own links!

Also the link says "The Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, where the largest concentration of al Qaeda remains. No more than a few hundred al Qaeda are there, but they have proved able to mount lethal attacks against Pakistani and US special operations troops."

This is of course referring to a small part of Pakistan known as Waziristan, and the whole of Afghanistan. Pakistani forces are taking action against them, the US troops in Afghanistan, neither has been able to remove them entirely as yet (and it doesn't look as though the US troops are going to do so in the near future). You obviously have missed the numerous arrests of foreign Al Qaeda in Pakistan by Pakistani forces. Afghanistan is just a mess with warlordism ruling, that is what needs your "cheerleading".

A) You don't seem to have thought about where Al Qaeda originated, what was their purpose, and who were they. In short, it was Afghanistan in the 80s, to remove the Soviets from Afghanistan by siding with the Mujahideen, and they were a bunch of foreigners who should have gone back when the Soviets left. The Taliban might have sheltered Al Qaeda, this is also something that GoP is having to fight, and is in fact doing more than the soldiers across the border (Pakistan has 80000 troops on the border according to Burton, the coalition has around 10000 from time to time.)

The point referring to A) is that the Taliban are a disbanded force (partly thanks to Pakistan), Al Qaeda was created by Bin Laden. Neither has anything to do with Pakistan or the GofP.

B) Madrasahs operate in all countries, not just in Pakistan. Most of the students that enrolled in the Pakistani ones were not Pakistani till last year when one of the suicide attacks occurred. All the foreign students have been removed, and the teachings of these Madrasahs has been changed to bring them in line with other schools - that is they teach Physics and other non religious subjects in addition to religious ones. The reforms, and the throwing out of foreigners should have been done a while back, these people can now move onto other countries.

The last part of that statement that Pakistan is at the forefront of the fight against terror is most definitely what the GoP has been trying to tell you for the last 5 years, but the first part of what you say - that the attempt is not a serious one is just as dopey as your initial statement in this thread, since it was Pakistan that helped foil the latest attack, in fact was pivotal in it. There are also a string of Al Qaeda figures that have been captured in Pakistan by Pakistani forces. You have posted one link to say 1 suicide bomber visited a Madrassah in Pakistan above, but Pakistan has nothing to do with bombers who visit from other countries and are radicalized by individuals from those countries or abroad.

If you want to cheerlead part of the coalition forces aside Pakistan, you should do so American troops in Iraq hunting Al Qaeda or Saudi troops in Saudi. Pakistan doesnt need your cheerleading, and if you do still want to do it, then at least opine a bit further and say what you just said that there have been many occasions when Pakistan has arrested key Al Qaeda figures, which although it would be better that you didnt cheerlead, would be a bit more accurate.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan!! if the Taliban were so popular with the Northern part of Pakistan as you say, they would be ruling the Northern part or at least they would be causing a civil war - neither is happening. They were associated with the Deoband way, that affiliated with the JUI, which has never been popular within Pakistan, and it's been stated on numerous occasions that this is ideologically not the attitude within Pakistan - Islamic parties win at most 6 or 7 seats average during elections (with the exception of the last), because there is no ideological support for such groups. It is left to you to "comprendo" this.

The people of Pakistan had nothing to do with Afghanistan rule, the Mujahideen did. During Soviet times, the Afghanis used to train in Pakistan, they even trained in Scotland, and the US. The Taliban in other words, was irrelevant in Pakistan from a people perspective, and in my opinion from the formation perspective, GoP had a role but a small one as did many other countries. The majority of the Taliban during the Taliban era of 1994-2001, were educated in Madrassahs in Afghanistan, it was many of the Taliban leaders, who were Mujahideen fighters in Soviet times, that received their education from Pakistani Madrassahs in the 80s. These Madrassahs were financed from the outside, not by Pakistan, and with cooperation of the anti Soviet coalition. The JUI affiliation with the madrassahs in Pakistan was in no way popular with the people, as mentioned above noone voted for them. What was popular was the ideology of an independent Afghanistan.

However, most of the leaders of the current Taliban regime in Afghanistan have been influenced by the teachings of Islam in Pakistan, where they had migrated with millions of other Afghans after the Soviet invasion. There, they attended religious seminaries or "madrassas", while many of them also remained active fighting the Soviets in the battlefields. They are the followers of the "Deobandi" school of thought, preached by mullahs (clerics) in Pakistani madrassas. The Deobandi school emerged as a reform movement in British India with the aim of rejuvenating Islamic society in a colonial state. The Pakistani version of the Deobandi schools in Afghan refugee camps were, however, often run by in-experienced and semi-literate mullahs, associated with Pakistan's Jami'at-e 'Ulema-e Islam (JUI) political party. Saudi funds and scholarships, during the Afghan struggle against the Soviets, in combination with a lack of appreciation on the part of the mullahs of the reformist Deobandi agenda, brought the schools and its curricula closer to ultraconservative Wahabism, which claims to teach strict adherence to the practices of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and the Four Rightful Caliphs. (See Foreign Affairs, November 1999, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, by Ahmad Rashid.). But it must be pointed out that the majority of Taliban foot soldiers are the products of Afghani Masjids, may they be inside Afghanistan or within Refugee camps.
http://www.institute-for-afghan-studies.org/AFGHAN%20CONFLICT/TALIBAN/intro_kakar.htm

The majority of Afghanistan's population is Pashtun, about 10 million, at any one time there's been around 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, including Tajiks. What your missing is that the Soviets came, the Mujahideen fled Afghanistan, they trained in Pakistan, they went back to Afghanistan. Some of these men became Taliban leaders, the majority of the younger generation Taliban were educated and trained in Afghanistan. Pakistan could have stopped the flow of Afghanis back to Afghanistan in the early 90s, true, but ..we didn't want all of them, and they were political refugees who had every right to go back..

As for the poll, call Pakistanis conspiracy theorists but only 12% believe Bin Laden carried out the attacks, which would in turn explain why 82% believe he's a "Mujahid", which by definition he is as he fought in the Afghan war vs the Soviets. Polls though, are easily twisted. But if it's popularity you want, there were plenty of reports that even the Taliban were popular with the people of Afghanistan. The following from interviews in 1996 when the Taliban took over Kabul.

From an Afghan website

Just as your poll was probably biased, here's another version of Taliban popularity in Quetta, Pakistan. This even suggests the Taliban were not popular amongst the Pakistani people, but were popular amongst the Afghani people. The presence of US troops in Afghanistan is perhaps what fuels some resentment. You would not like Afghan troops in New Zealand with a detention camp in Malaysia either, I am sure.

"The Taliban's popularity grows as the bombing continues. "My God, it is terrible, the Taliban's support is increasing by the day," said Maudir Bakht, a political scientist at Quetta's university. "Before the bombing they were disliked by a majority of Pakistanis but now there is a level of moral and humanitarian support which may start turning military."

And other one from the BBC.

Then came 1999, UN embargoes, and per your link an acceptance by Pakistan as early as 2000 to comply with the UN embargo of the Taliban, and then complete isolation and complicity in the removal of the Taliban by 2001. The links are endless.

Is it just me, or do you never understand what I'm trying to say? I said "Part of the problem is that some people, perhaps yourself, consider the Kashmiri fight to be one of terrorism. It's even on record by Boucher recently that Kashmir and terrorism are seperate issues." To break this up into simpler parts, the Kashmiri fight has to do with the legitimate fight for freedom from Indian rule of the Kashmiri people, and the holding of a plebiscite. Richard Boucher was not talking about past methods with which to obtain freedom of the Himalayan state. Some Kashmiri Jihadis had indeed trained with the Taliban. This has never been in doubt, and this is why the Pakistan government has banned several outfits, minus those that are acknowledged as "sons of the soil".