The Story of Sofiane Berhoumi: Freed from Guantanamo

The Story of Sofiane Berhoumi: Freed from Guantanamo

By Karin Friedemann

newtrendmag.org

Sofiane Berhoumi, now 53, was released from Guantanamo just 4 years ago after 20 years in captivity. His father, who was a private lawyer, died in 2004 while he was imprisoned. Sofiane graced me with his polite and positive presence for nearly an hour on the phone on 9/23/25 and for another hour on 6/7/26. He spoke about how people often fear him, but those who take the time to get to know him realize that he is gentle and kind. "You can't judge people from the cover." He said that communicating with understanding people makes life beautiful. Some strangers have become more than family to him. Recently he was invited to personally attend a human rights conference at Graz University in Austria with all expenses paid, but he was unfortunately denied a visitor's visa. I was very curious to hear his life story.

He is the eldest of five brothers and there is one older sister. As a student, he was a good swimmer and a soccer player and dreamed of playing for a team. Sofiane left Algeria for Europe in search of work opportunities. He looked for work in Spain and France and England at age 22. He also visited his sister in Paris. He left Spain by stowing away on a ship. He was working loading the ship with truckloads of coffee beans and other merchandise. Eventually he got asylum in 1996 in Britain due to the Algerian civil war. However, by 1998, after gaining safety in Britain, he learned about the war in Chechnya from charity presentations in the London mosque, in which videos and slides of suffering Muslims were shown and funds collected. Like many other Muslim men who were inspired to leave their homes and fight for the sake of Allah, Sofiane felt that his soul was longing to go to Chechnya to defend the Muslim cause.

He knew that in order to get sent to Chechnya to fight, he first had to go to Afghanistan for military training. From there, he would need assistance from an organized Islamic group to facilitate his transport and connect him with the Muslim fighters in Chechnya. This was standard practice in those days. There were many Islamic military training camps in Afghanistan who welcomed foreigners in search of adventure.

So, with the contacts he received through a Pakistani friend, and with his advice, Sofiane left London for Karachi, and then on to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he stayed at a Lashkar Taiba guesthouse until he was assigned to be sent to Khaldan Camp in Khost, Afghanistan. During his training, an accident with an explosive permanently destroyed the use of his left hand. Despite this severe handicap, he tried multiple times to go to Chechnya, but icy weather conditions prevented him. Therefore he was basically stranded in Afghanistan. Biding his time for six years, he learned a bit of Persian and Pashtun. Everything was okay, until al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Then his life changed forever.

Sofiane was hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora when the United States bombarded Afghanistan in November and December 2001. It was a terrifying experience. He saw many of his brothers killed by rockets fired from an Apache helicopter. Sofiane fled to Pakistan; first Peshawar then Islamabad. He ended up in Faysal Abad, a suburb of Lahore. In May 2002, the property where he was sheltering with Abu Zubaydah was raided by special Pakistani forces working for the CIA and he was sent to Guantanamo under suspicion of being al-Qaeda and dangerous. He was not with al-Qaeda. Neither was Abu Zubaydah. They were free, unaffiliated fighters. Abu Zubaydah had connections with al-Qaeda but was not part of their group. Abu Zubaydah was a Palestinian subjected to severe and prolonged torture, during which the US realized and admitted he was not with al-Qaeda. He continues to be held in Guantanamo.

Sofiane was charged with conspiracy and material support for a terrorist organization in 2005. In 2008 and again in 2012, the charges against him were dropped. In 2016 he went in front of a review board that included the US Justice Department, the CIA, and the National Security Agency. The decision went through six agencies until finally in 2016 he was cleared for release under the Obama administration. But when Trump became president, all transfers out of Guantanamo were frozen. Years later after many actual high profile al-Qaeda members were released from Guantanamo, Sofiane remained imprisoned, because nobody knew who he was. He was essentially a "nobody." He had never even served in one battle.

It was not until the Biden administration that Sofiane was scheduled for release. He was put on a plane on March 13, 2022 headed home to Algeria but two hours into the flight, the Algerian government announced bad weather conditions, so the plane turned around and took him back to Guantanamo! Sofiane found this very upsetting, worried they were playing a trick on him. On April 1, 2022 he boarded a second plane, which finally returned him back to his family.

Sofiane mentioned that a couple of the guards at Guantanamo really warmed up to him. He said 90% of the guards were mean and awful, but 10% were decent people who just happened to be in the US Army. So, generally speaking, he didn't like them and they didn't like him. They had been told that he was a dangerous terrorist, so how could they know? It was not until he started joking with them that they started to wonder, "How can you be cheerful when your life is so miserable?" He always tried to make the guards feel comfortable and laugh. Because keeping a positive attitude helped him keep up his morale despite his suffering.

Some of the younger guards started to confide in him instead of to their colleagues, because he sympathized with their lives. One female guard in her early twenties began to cry during her shift because she had no friends. Her mother had deserted her as a child due to mental illness, so she had to raise her younger brother alone. Sofiane encouraged her to give her mother a call. She took his advice, and experienced forgiveness with her mother. When Sofiane was released, she followed him all the way to the van that took him to the airport. "Please don't change," she said. "Stay like that." There was another young female guard who started crying when he was released. They cried together. There were some other guards, one was a Mexican-American man, who visited him and gave him a piece of food from time to time.

Sofiane's English interpreter for his legal proceedings was scared of him at first, but it wasn't long before the interpreter relaxed. Soon he was cooking special meals for Sofiane during their meetings with the lawyers, and watching movies with him.

Now, Sofiane is back in Algeria living with his mother. Long ago, when Sofiane was one year old, his mother was watching him sleep. She had a vision of a two-year-old with blue eyes wearing a US Army uniform. He was on top of her son, pinning him down. Several times the bully looked straight into her eyes in a way that was extremely frightening. This vision foretold his destiny with the Americans. Now his dear mother is old and sick. She is having trouble breathing, can't walk, and coughs a lot. Even so, she cooks for him and takes care of him. The local people are scared of him, and because he can't use his left hand, he has been unable to find work. She is patient and understands his situation, why he can't take care of her financially. Right now he is excitedly watching the World Championship games with his brothers at home.

It is very hard to scratch out a living in Algeria. Any medical care you need, you have to pay for it. Sofiane is in need of clothes. He asks anyone who has used or broken iPhone or laptops or anything he can sell to send them to him so that he can repair and resell them. Some supporters have started a collection to buy him a car so that he would be able to start a taxi service.

To donate: GoFundMe.com/f/a-taxi-and-a-new-beginning-for-sufiyan

Britain secures release of Guantanamo prisoner Shaker Aamer

After more than 13 years detained without charge or trial in Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer, 46, has finally been released! His plane touched down at Biggin Hill airfield Friday afternoon, October 30. He told supporters, "The very first thing I want is a cup of coffee, then for a doctor to look me over."

His wife, a British citizen, was pregnant with their fourth child when Aamer, originally from Saudi Arabia and a British resident, went to Afghanistan in 2002 to do charity work. He was captured by anti-Taliban Northern Alliance bounty hunters, who sold him to US troops. He was imprisoned in Afghanistan before being moved to Guantanamo, where he engaged in hunger strikes to protest his confinement. He was violently force fed through a tube up his nose. He was cleared for release in 2007 but the US continued to detain him.

His haunting voice could be heard on 60 Minutes in November of 2013, as he yelled, "Please, we are tired. Are you just going to leave us here to die? Tell the world the truth. Open up the place!" through the wall of his cell, knowing that newsmedia were there. The reporter (Barbara Walters?) seemed genuinely shocked that the detainee spoke perfect English, and at the level of his despair. [ YouTube.com/watch?v=HVDgz4v8WZY ]

As an English speaking inmate of Guantanamo, he served a valuable role in organizing prisoners and negotiating with the US government to end hunger strikes before people died. However, after gaining false promises from officials, Aamer was put into solitary confinement. His sudden release came as a blessed surprise.

His family eagerly awaits his arrival. His daughter, said to be an A level student, whom he has not seen since she was 4, turned 18 just days before his release. He has never before met his youngest child, a son who is now 13.

Amnesty International, which was supportive of Aamer's release, asks: "Why was he detained at all, and why was his release delayed when he was twice cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo, in 2007 and in 2009? And what role did the UK play in his detention and treatment? Shaker Aamer says he was repeatedly abused in both Afghanistan and in Guantánamo. His claims of interrogation and abuse in Afghanistan in the presence of MI5 officers highlight once again the need for an independent judge-led inquiry into allegations of UK involvement in torture and rendition."

On October 11, 2015 after the Mail on Sunday reported that Shaker Aamer had stated in a phone call to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that he was hunger striking to protest his constant and ongoing abuse, and his fears that, due to his weakened state, he wouldn't live to see his family again, We Stand With Shaker's directors, Joanne MacInnes and Andy Worthington, author of "The Guantanamo Files," set up a new campaign, Fast For Shaker, in which celebrities, MPs and members of the public were encouraged to show solidarity with Shaker by pledging to undertake a hunger strike of their own for a minimum of 24 hours, on a day of their choosing.

It could be that the UK really did not want to touch this issue of their involvement in the US torture rendition program, but this coalition of activists generated enough public attention to force their government to act decisively to return Aamer back home. Somehow, between October 11 and October 30, something magical happened. People suddenly passionately threw themselves into caring about this man, who has been simmering on the back burner for over a decade.

It may seem completely bizarre but the gimmick that proved so effective was a 20 foot tall blow up dummy with Aamer's smiling face, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His shirt bore the words: "FREE SHAKER AAMER. CLEARED FOR RELEASE. STILL IN GUANTANAMO. WHY?" Many many celebrities and political officials posed with it for photographs holding signs saying, "I STAND WITH SHAKER" and "I FAST WITH SHAKER." [See photos at westandwithshaker.org] Maybe because this street theater tactic was so bizarre and comical, it made publicly talking about illegal rendition possible and gave the detainee a friendly funny human image.

Upon his release, Aamer made this public statement: "The reason I have been strong is because of the support of people so strongly devoted to the truth. If I was the fire to be lit to tell the truth, it was the people who protected the fire from the wind. My thanks go to Allah first, second to my wife, my family, to my kids and then to my lawyers who did everything they could to carry the word to the world. I feel obliged to every individual who fought for justice not just for me but to bring an end to Guantánamo. Without knowing of their fight I might have given up more than once; I am overwhelmed by what people have done by their actions, their thoughts and their prayers and without their devotion to justice I would not be here in Britain now. The reality may be that we cannot establish peace but we can establish justice. If there is anything that will bring this world to peace it is to remove injustice."

"We also recall the 112 other men still held at Guantánamo, and note that 52 of them have also, like Shaker, been approved for release by high-level US government review processes. We call for them also to be released as soon as possible," stated Andy Worthington.

http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1626.htm

Aafia Siddique’s Appeal Mysteriously Withdrawn

TMO 

On October 9, 2014, Dr. Aafia Siddique’s family announced that US District Judge Richard Berman had without any warning ordered the case closed for the appeal of her conviction. The openly hostile, Zionist activist judge, the same judge who sentenced Aafia in early 2010, denies this. The Nation, Pakistan reported that Berman stated he had “allowed” Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to withdraw what could be the last appeal of her conviction on charges of attempted murder. Berman claimed that Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence at Carswell prison medical centre in Texas, had ‘clearly and unequivocally’ stated her intent to end the appeal. Berman added that even if the appeal had continued, he likely would have ruled against her.  

Salman Khan of the Free Aafia Movement said the organization had made vehement attempts to protest the racist judge’s inclusion in the appeals process, but they were unable to have him removed from proceedings due to lack of legal funds.

“Just to reopen the trial costs $150,000, and then to remove him it would have cost us a further $100,000,” he said.

Reuters reports that Aafia wrote a statement, “I refuse to participate in this system of total injustice that has punished and tortured me repeatedly, and continues to do so, without my having committed a crime.” She wrote that she wanted to be sent home to Pakistan through diplomacy, not through the legal system.

However, Aafia’s sister, Dr. Fowzia Siddique said mystery shrouds the circumstances. She is convinced that Aafia’s statement was coerced. In their last communication, Aafia said she was “determined to fight her case.”

“This is not Aafia’s decision. I know because my last conversation with her was that she was visited [in her dreams] by our prophet Muhammad, saw, and he was pleased with my efforts and the appeal. She said it is for this reason I consent, and if we don’t connect again DO NOT believe any statement to the contrary on my behalf.”

“Since then we have had absolutely no contact with her. I know she did not withdraw of her own free will. She has been coerced. God knows how much torture [she’s been forced to endure], complete solitary and manipulations…. It horrifies me to even think about what she has been forced to go through.”

Aafia, who is being held in solitary confinement, has not been allowed phone calls to her family in Pakistan since initiating her appeal.

“We have not been allowed [in-person contact] with her at any time. There is a prison rule that she gets to speak to family for 300 minutes per month – as long as the family pays for the call. We did get that order, and the only time that was implemented was when there were worldwide demonstrations – at those times there were calls. But since filing the appeal they have kept Aafia completely incommunicado,” stated her sister.

Mauri Saalakhan of the Peace and Justice Foundation comments, “While Malala Yousafzai is being celebrated for her accomplishments and yet unfulfilled future potential, Aafia Siddique is wasting away in a maximum security prison cell on a military base in the land of ‘liberty and justice for all!’”

Aafia received her university training in America, graduating with honors from MIT and the Jewish university Brandeis, where she was active in Muslim student groups. She was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying that if Americans would know more about the beauty of Islam, they would all want to become Muslims. This innocent statement of youthful idealism caught the attention of the local Zionist organizations.

Soon later, in 2003, Aafia was wanted by the FBI for questioning for possible ties to al Qaeda because she made a debit card purchase at a US army surplus store. She and her children were kidnapped by Pakistani authorities while awaiting a train.  Aafia was placed into one black car and the crying children into another. They were handed over to US agents and held incommunicado in Afghanistan for five years. Aafia’s baby was never seen again. The two older children were rescued from Bagram prison some years later as a result of intervention from the UK and are now living with relatives.
Instead of receiving an apology, this tiny woman, who never did anything more radical than collecting boots to donate to Bosnia, has been named as one of the FBI’s most wanted “terrorists.” Her isolation covers up some dark secrets, the government hopes.

Siddiqui was never even charged with links to terrorism. The FBI agents, US soldiers and interpreters said that as they were about to interrogate her at an Afghan police compound in Ghazni, Afghanistan, she supposedly grabbed a rifle and began shooting at them. None of them were wounded, but she was shot in the abdomen when they “returned fire.” At her trial, Aafia’s lawyer argued that there was no evidence the rifle had been fired.

Aafia approached the US soldiers because she thought they were there to save her from her Afghani captors! Aafia was being raped and tortured at the US military’s Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Instead of helping her, the US government committed her to life at Carswell, where she has reportedly been forced to walk on the Quran in addition to other humiliations.

What has been done to this innocent Pakistani woman and her children in the name of the US War on Terror is so sick and so awful that it would turn the stomaches of every citizen of the United States if they knew about it. Popular opinion would instantly turn dead against this criminal use of the American government.

“Had Aafia’s appeal reached its logical end, many hidden facts would have come to light, and many important people unmasked. This just proves Aafia is a victim of international power politics and her captives have a lot to hide and will revert to any length to keep her behind bars,” Fowzia told reporters.

Feds to Revoke Charity Head’s Citizenship

 TMO 

On the night of July 23, 2014 Enaam Arnaout, 51, CEO of the former Islamic charity, Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), learned from the TV news that the US government had filed legal documents to strip him of his citizenship.

Arnaout told TMO that the next day, July 24, a SWAT team driving dark SUVs showed up where he works and behaved in an intimidating manner as US Marshalls served Arnaout his “Complaint to Revoke Citizenship” papers.

Naturally, his employers were not too happy.

One of the Marshalls spoke to Arnaout smiling as if he knew him. “When did you get out?” he asked.

Arnaout answered him, “I got out four years ago and finished my probation.”

“OK, this is something new,” the US Marshall replied.

This draconian tactic of denaturalization has generally only been applied against accused war criminals, usually World War II era Nazis, although in 2007, Rasmi Khader Almallah was stripped of his US citizenship due to his connection with another persecuted Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation. He currently resides in Jordan.

In 2013, a Rwandan was sentenced to ten years in prison for naturalization fraud in addition to losing his citizenship based on war crimes allegations.

Arnaout received US citizenship in 1994 through marriage to his former wife, Nancy Catherine Noyes, a Florida nurse whom he met traveling in Pakistan.

“Denaturalization is required when an alien has concealed material facts or made willful misrepresentations which aided in the receipt of naturalization… Accordingly, Defendant’s naturalization must be revoked,” the government is now demanding.

Arnaout is accused of naturalization fraud on two issues: First, he claimed not to have worked for any organization other than BIF, designated by the US Department of Treasury as financiers of terrorism in 2002, and a telemarketing company.

“Defendant provided mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan with supplies and logistical support. By providing the mujahedeen with support and or money, Defendant knowingly affiliated himself with various organizations and associations that claimed to repel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan,” reads the complaint, which makes sweeping claims about connections and links to numerous terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda, no doubt supplied by the “intelligence” fraud Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project.

Secondly, the complaint states that in his naturalization application, Arnaout claimed not to have committed any crime for which he had not been arrested. In 2003, believing that he would not be able to get a fair trial in post-9/11 America, the charity head accepted a plea bargain. Government prosecutors are saying that he pled guilty, therefore he committed a crime and thus lied in his citizenship application.

Arnaout entered into the plea agreement in 2003, in which he pled guilty to a single count of racketeering. In that agreement, the prosecution acknowledged that neither Arnaout nor BIF had acted contrary to the interests of the United States, or had any ties to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. Arnaout’s statement of guilt acknowledges subverting on the order of $300,000 to $400,000 of charitable funds (out of a total of about $20,000,000) to buy boots, uniforms, tents, and an ambulance for Bosnian fighters, without the knowledge of the charitable donors. Arnaout also acknowledged that he used BIF funds to provide, in the fall of 1995, hunting boots to civilians and fighters in Chechnya who faced a winter of war against the Russian army, which had invaded Chechnya in 1994. Subsequently, Mr. Arnaout provided uniforms to the justice department of the Chechen government which was being formed in 1997.

Judge Conlon sentenced Arnaout to 136 months in prison. Upon appeal in February 2006, Conlon resentenced Arnaout to 120 months (10 years) in prison.

During the sentencing hearing in August 2003, US District Judge Suzanne Conlon told prosecutors they had “failed to connect the dots” and said there was no evidence that Arnaout “identified with or supported” terrorism. Arnaout will go in front of a different judge regarding his US citizenship.

How ironic, that this deeply religious man, who dedicated his life to providing emergency relief to war torn areas, who funded refugee camps, orphanages, hospitals, and schools for the poor and oppressed from Bosnia to China, is now being accused by the US government of “moral turpitude!”

“There’s an administrative, bureaucratic evil that is going on with respect to this War on Terror that is just unconscionable, it’s just stupid. There doesn’t seem to be any way for whoever’s running this country, primarily the intelligence agencies, to distinguish between people who are real threats and people who aren’t,” Arnaout’s attorney, Thomas A. Durkin told WGNtv.com.

“I am very disappointed that my government would be taking such a draconian position under all the circumstances of this case – particularly after all the tremendous hardships this criminal conviction has already visited upon Mr. Arnaout and his entire family,” wrote Durkin to US attorney Christopher Dempsey.

“Mr. Arnaout did not unlawfully engage in a RICO conspiracy during the naturalization period; nor did he provide false testimony or willfully misrepresent or conceal a material fact during his naturalization proceedings… Any attempt to strip Mr. Arnaout of his citizenship based upon the plea agreement he entered before Judge Conlon in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on February 10, 2003, would violate that agreement which was directly and personally negotiated by US Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Proceeding in such a fashion as you describe at this late date would, I submit, also violate a number of other constitutional rights of Mr. Arnaout and two of his children who have obtained naturalization through his citizenship status.”

The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) has taken on the task of fundraising for Arnaout’s legal expenses.

Pakistan Bombing Linked to US Pressure

July 10, 2014 by TMO 

A man along with a woman clad in burqa, both fleeing from the military offensive against Pakistani militants in North Waziristan, walk away with a wheelbarrow of relief handouts after receiving from a storage tent of the World Food Programme (WFP) at a distribution point for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Bannu, located in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province July 6, 2014. Picture taken July 6, 2014. REUTERS/Khuram Parvez

On Wednesday, July 2, the Pakistani lawmakers amended Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law, doubling the maximum prison sentence for those convicted of “terror offenses” and allowing security forces to detain suspects for up to 60 days. Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, voiced concern that it could provide legal cover for disappearances. Rights groups accuse the government of holding people in secret and failing to put them on trial. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government forced the evacuation of North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan, then bombed the region, also in the name of rooting out “terrorism.”

The half a million who fled North Waziristan, mostly on foot, are facing severe food shortages. Pakistan’s cruel decision to launch this military offensive during the month of Ramadan has reportedly sharpened anger towards the government. Beginning on June 15, the carpet bombing destroyed even mosques. Civilians who were injured described the bombing as “indiscriminate.” 

Millions of livestock and countless children have died or are dying. 74% of the displaced are women and children. People were given very little time to prepare. Farmers had to leave their animals behind. People have lost everything they could not carry.

Muhammad Aziz, a 31-year-old laborer, reportedly lost four of his nine children on the two-day trek undertaken by thousands who fled his village to a camp in Bannu. 

“It was a dark day for me and my wife would not stop crying for four days,“ said Aziz.

But on the fifth day, his children were found by a relative. His family’s joy increased when his wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy — whom they named Azb Khan, which is also the name of the military offensive.

Of the over half a million people the Pakistani government has displaced, only about 340 have chosen to take the government’s offer to house them at the Bakkakhel camp, the only such camp that has been set up.

Instead, most have gone to the adjacent town of Bannu, where they are either renting at twice or three times the regular rate, or staying with relatives, reports Al Jazeera. The World Food Program is running six food distribution centers but their budget is too small to meet the need. Sanitation and clean drinking water are severely lacking.

Inayatullah, 44, a native of Miranshah fled along with his family of 13 when bombs dropped near his home. “I have been standing in line all day yesterday, and have been in line for six hours again today. They are treating humans worse than animals.”

In the town of Bannu, Niaz Wali Khan, a 55-year-old pharmacy owner, told AFP he had been queuing for four days but was turned away without rations each time. “We are depressed,” said Khan.

“Most of the patients here are suffering from dehydration and acute respiratory infections,” says Dr Faqir Abdullah, 28, who treated many of those who arrived at the Saidgi checkpoint, on the border with North Waziristan.

“Most of them are confused and anxious, because many of them have travelled on foot. These people had left their homes, and we saw they were in a state of shock.”

With most of the population now “cleared,” curfews have been reimposed, and no movement is allowed on the roads leading to and from the tribal district. The BBC reported that when families of IDPs reach the margins of a town, they often have to wait long hours in the intense heat, before they can obtain the security clearance to enter the area.

Most of the families have sought refuge in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. There are also reports of families now arriving in Punjab and Balochistan. Almost all the internally displaced people are being hosted by local communities.

“The U.S. and its allies have urged Pakistan for years to clear out North Waziristan, a sanctuary and training center for Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The terrible way this was done demonstrates total contempt for people living in the tribal area.

On June 30, the military started a ground invasion to “eliminate Taliban fighters.” The Pakistani military claims to have killed hundreds of terrorists but not a single civilian.

Mansur Mahsud, from the FATA research centre said the operation could take three to four months. “Once this area is cleared the militants are forced to shift to Afghanistan or the mountains.”

Jamaat-Islami Information Secretary, Ameerul Azeem, issued a statement after visiting the IDPs camps, appealing to the entire nation to step forward for the help and assistance of the operation affected people. He said the provision of basic necessities including the Sehr and Iftar of the displaced persons should be the foremost concern of all.

The operation, dubbed Zarb-i-Azb, began on June 15 following the breakdown in peace negotiations between the government and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in response to an attack on the Karachi airport by the TTP and Uzbek militants. However, Ismail Khan writes in the NYT that “A military campaign was anticipated before the Karachi attack.”

During the current ground offensive, land forces are “combing through” North Waziristan’s valleys and taking over villages and buildings. Air raids have continued daily.

An operation of this scale is impossible without the involvement of the United States, whose forces in neighboring Afghanistan have “crucial intelligence” on the location of militant bases and training camps around the region, reports Reuters.