Washington: According to US intelligence sources, six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men, are battling Baloch Liberation Army guerrillas in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas.
This and other figures are quoted in an analysis by Selig S Harrison, published on Wednesday by the Washington Post. The writer also quotes the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan as having reported "indiscriminate bombing and strafing" by 20 US-supplied Cobra helicopter gunships and four squadrons of fighter planes, including US-supplied F-16 fighter jets, resulting in 215 civilian dead and hundreds more wounded, many of them women and children. He maintains that President Gen Pervez Musharraf's "unsatisfactory performance" against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces stems from the presence of "Islamic extremists