Peshawar - paralyzing a population with fear

i've been following the increasing violence in the northwest frontier province of pakistan and the city of peshawar in particular... in all honesty, the violence in afghanistan and kabul pales in comparison to the horrific atrocities being perpetrated against pakistanis by their own people, not only in number of deaths but also frequency of occurrences and overall destruction... if the intent is to destabilize the government of pakistan and render the population helpless with fear, they're doing a damn good job...

al jazeera on the latest...

Residents of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar are are becoming increasingly fearful as car bomb attacks continue to plague their hometown.

At least 11 people were killed in the latest attack on Saturday, which happened within 24 hours of a similar one.

The attacks appear to be aimed at weakening the government's military operation against Taliban groups.

i know many afghans in kabul who have relatives in peshawar and it pains me greatly to see this happening... when i was first in afghanistan, i knew several individuals who chose to have their immediate families live in peshawar expressly because it was considered safer than kabul... several have since moved those families back to kabul in a remarkable twist of fate...

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More details on how much torture was used and how people were kept alive so they could be tortured some more

as i sit here in kabul, the day after the mess at the un guesthouse across town and the horror just over the border in peshawar, and several days after the terrible carnage in baghdad, it's sickening to read about the atrocities perpetrated by my own people, the very people who were all over the news yesterday, decrying the bloody actions of terrorists...

According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured.

Sifton, who the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture."

"In the military, there was actually a larger number of deaths than with the CIA," Sifton continued. "The CIA engaged in some horrendous abuses, but they appear to have taken precautions to have actually prevented people from dying -- which might sound humanitarian, but in fact was kind of sickening."

"The military wasn't so careful," Sifton added. "The military subjected a lot of people to the same techniques, but without the precautions, and as a result a large number of detainees in military custody died. ... While they didn't use the worst forms of torture, like waterboarding, they often used sleep deprivation, forced standing, stress positions. ... When you combine these techniques ... they cause excruciating pain ... and the military used them on thousands and thousands of detainees."

Sifton commented that what he found most shocking was "the cold, clinical fashion in which they went about designing the program. They didn't want to commit outright physical torture ... so they went to psychologists and lawyers and they tried to design a program which was, in their minds, legal. ... They tried to make it legal and safe, but they just made it even more grotesque."

don't think for one second the afghans i work with aren't tuned in to what's happening in the world... they are just as horrified as you and i about the havoc their very own people are wreaking in their country but they're also very well aware of what we, the american people, are allowing to go on in our names...

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More violence in Peshawar

now that i've got some good friends in this part of the world, i pay much closer attention than usual to news from the area...

one of my good friends is the computer systems administrator for the project where i work... he moved his family from kabul to peshawar, pakistan, some time back for several reasons, not the least of which was their safety and security... he also felt that the schools there were much better for his kids... since then, he's been working tirelessly for weeks at a time (he also handles the regional offices of the project in several other afghan cities), and then takes a week or ten days to drive over the khyber pass to peshawar to spend time with his family...

in recent months, the trip has become increasingly dangerous... bereft of any identification or even a cell phone, he takes a taxi to the border crossing into pakistan and then catches another taxi on the other side for the remainder of the trip... his language, ability to speak the regional dialect, and appearance allow him to blend in and remain inconspicuous, but it's still a frightening, 9 hour ordeal...

he told me a few weeks ago that, come school vacation time, he'll be moving his family back to kabul... with stories like this, i can see why...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A car bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded scores in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, officials said.

The blast occurred near an assembly hall of minority Shi'ite Muslims in a crowded part of the city. One building collapsed in flames and several others were badly damaged and on fire.

"It shook the entire area like an earthquake," said resident Rahim Gul as he tried to remove rubble with his bare hands. "It was a huge and terrible explosion. As we reached here it was all burning. There was rubble all around."

Khizar Hayat, the chief doctor at the city's main government hospital, said at least 20 people had been killed and 50 wounded, 20 of them seriously.

people indiscriminately killing other people... sigh...

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