Imran Khan threatened by Taliban over planned march against US drones

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

A planned protest march against US drone strikes in Pakistan, due to go through one the world's most dangerous hotbeds of Islamic militancy, has hit a major snag after the Pakistani Taliban announced they would try to kill the leader of the procession, the former cricket star turned politician Imran Khan.

"If he comes, our suicide bombers will target him," the Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told the Associated Press during an interview in a remote compound in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a mountainous and lawless region on the Afghan border.

During the interview, which concluded with a volley of automatic gunfire from his bodyguards, Ahsan said Khan was fair game because he was a "liberal" and anyone who participated in forthcoming national elections would be considered "infidels" and attacked.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/09/imran-khan-taliban-march-drones

[Archae]

1. Has there ever been anyone stupid enough in this country to support the Taliban?

Oh yeah.

(California Congressman Dana) Rohrabacher voiced support for the Taliban when they seized power in the 1990s, visiting Afghanistan when it came under their control, saying that the Taliban would provide "stability", and eliminate threats to the United States. He also claimed the Taliban "intend to establish a disciplined, moral society". He said he believed complete Taliban control over Afghanistan would be a "positive development", that they were "devout traditionalists, not terrorists or revolutionaries", and that "sensationalist" media coverage of the Taliban's introduction of Sharia law was "nonsense".[48] Later, during the Clinton administration, he was critical of the Taliban for harboring Osama Bin Laden.[49]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Rohrabacher

[Alamuti Lotus]

3. different organizations..

one movement draws a certain amount of inspiration from the other, but Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan tends to take a far more aggressive, intractable and irrational approach towards the Pakistani government. Their hostility to the government is fairly well founded, actually, but it lacks the more effective, cynical pragmatism that their Afghan counterparts have developed in their dealings with international authority.

[msongs]

2. taliban uses Obama's drone killings as recruiting tools. they want attacks to continue nt