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Does this look like a surrender?

Al Qaeda supporters embraced by Pak Army

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

Five tribesmen accused of sheltering Al Qaeda terrorists ‘surrendered’ to the Pakistani army. They were warmly embraced by the army commanders, garlanded and duly given amnesty. Update: The leader of the five tribesmen, Nek Mohammad says he will continue with the jehad.

The ceremony took place at a madrassa in Shakai, 20 kilometres north of Wana. Witnesses said the five tribesmen came to the assembly unarmed and one of them offered a pistol as a gift to the corps commander while the others offered prayer mats and copies of the Quran.

“We give amnesty to these people in return for their pledge of brotherhood and loyalty,” said Peshawar Corps Commander Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, who arrived at the jirga to chants of Allah-o-Akbar.[Daily Times]

“It is a retreat although the military will not acknowledge it,” (Rahimullah Yusufzai, veteran reporter) said.[Khaleej Times]

A Daily Times editorial reveals

…local abettors like Nek Muhammad are actually a part of the Taliban-Al Qaeda network. As disclosed by PTV, Nek Muhammad was commandant of a guerrilla training camp in Afghanistan before he decided to take his trainees, most of them from Chechnya and Uzbekistan, to South Waziristan, to use as a launching pad for attacks inside Afghanistan. Talking to a newspaper reporter after the ‘pardon’, Nek Muhammad still swore allegiance to ‘Amirul Momineen’ Mullah Umar rather than Pakistan — because the Taliban leader was ‘the caliph of all Muslims’.[Daily Times]