Militants have attacked a Pakistani security force fort in the troubled South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing five soldiers.
Militants attacked the Ladha fort and an observation post at 0100 (2000GMT Monday), military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said.

At least seven soldiers have been wounded, he said.

Last Thursday, hundreds of pro-Taleban militants overran the Sararogha fort in the same district.

A day later, Pakistani troops abandoned a fort at Sipla Toi military post (a remote tribal area in South Waziristan) fearing an attack by the militants.

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Less than a month before key elections in Pakistan, embattled President Pervez Musharraf on Monday began an eight-day visit to Europe to shore up international support for his country, wracked by political turmoil and a strengthening Islamic insurgency.

Anti-Musharraf ptotesters staged a rally while the Pakistan president met with European officials.

Following “very frank and sincere” talks with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, in Brussels on Monday, Musharraf said he wants more EU involvement in Pakistan.

“Pakistan understands the significance of the European Union, the significance of its role in the future, especially in the political disputes around the world,” he told reporters.

“And that is why I urged the secretary-general (Solana) to play his role and the EU’s role more actively.”

Musharraf also praised Solana for being “extremely well-informed” about the complicated situation in Pakistan. “It is always a pleasure to come here and meet Mr. Solana … because we have a total unanimity of views,” he said.

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When we retrace our steps in history perhaps we can learn some lessons from the unfortunate situation Pakistan is in today.

After partition Pakistan’s population had 15 percent Hindus and 2 percent Christians. If Pakistan had promoted diversity then, the next generation would have grown up in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society and exercised more tolerance.

General Zia-ul-Haq during his tenure as President systematically erased this multi-cultural heritage replacing it by radical ‘Islamicisation’ of civil society and the army. The rich Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh legacy that was common between Pakistan and India was forgotten. Had they recognised that their ancestors were also part of these traditions, they would have imbibed and kept alive some of those values and that perhaps would have made them more tolerant and less violent. When people dispose of their own heritage it makes them intolerant and fanatical.
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Islamic militants overran a border fort in northwestern Pakistan during a pitched battle Wednesday, killing seven Pakistani troops and leaving more than a dozen unaccounted for, a military spokesman said.

Pakistan has attempted to crack down in the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

1 of 2 The militants breached the walls of the colonial-era outpost along the Afghan border with explosives and seized the fort after a firefight that lasted about 12 hours, said army Lt. Col. Baseer Hadier Malik.

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Nothing else has worked: it is time for Pakistan to try democracy.

Jan 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

THE war against Islamist extremism and the terrorism it spawns is being fought on many fronts. But it may well be in Pakistan that it is won or lost. It is not only that the country’s lawless frontier lands provide a refuge for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and that its jihad academies train suicide-bombers with global reach. Pakistan is also itself the world’s second most populous Muslim nation, with a proud tradition of tolerance and moderation, now under threat from the extremists on its fringes. Until recently, the risk that Pakistan might be prey to Islamic fundamentalism of the sort its Taliban protégés enforced in Afghanistan until 2001 seemed laughable. It is still far-fetched. But after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister, nobody is laughing. This, after all, is a country that now has the bomb Miss Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, craved so passionately as prime minister in the 1970s.

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by WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, NYTimes

WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.

There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.

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