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The Washington Post reports Refugees fleeing Swat Valley tell of Taliban crimes and abuses. “As the refugees begin streaming out of Swat and the neighboring Buner district in northwest Pakistan, they carry with them memories of the indignities and horrors inflicted by occupying Taliban forces — locking women inside their homes, setting donkeys on fire — as they tried to force residents to accept a radical version of Islam.”
Refugees from Bruner, recently captured by the Taliban, say they are “especially vulnerable to Taliban attacks… The district is famous for its Sufi shrines, where people practice a mystical form of Islam that is anathema to the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. In addition, residents formed militias to resist the Taliban last year”.
DAWN Media reports “A mass exodus continued from Buner district on Thursday amid intense artillery shelling by the security forces targeting militant positions on the tenth consecutive day.”
The NY Times reports the Red Cross warns of crisis in Pakistan.
In a statement on Thursday, the Red Cross said that, “although figures remain unverifiable at this stage, reports indicated that up to 500,000 Pakistanis have been recently displaced by conflict in Dir, Buner and Swat.”
The statement said a humanitarian crisis “is intensifying.”
Benno Kocher, a Red Cross official in Peshawar, was quoted as saying: “We can no longer reach the areas most affected by the fighting on account of the volatile situation.”
DAWN Media reports the Foreign Ministry says concern about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is ‘invalid’. “Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit Pakistan has refuted US media reports that it has shared information about its nukes with US authorities saying that information about its nukes is sacrosanct and can not be shared with any country. ‘Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is safe and secure and concerns about their security are invalid,’ said Basit.”
Meanwhile,
DefenseWar Secretary Robert Gates praises Pakistan response to Taliban push, reports Reuters. Gates believes the “Taliban militants had ‘overreached’ by attacking the Buner district of Pakistan, coming within dozens of kilometres of the capital Islamabad.“I think it has served as an alarm for the Pakistani government that these violent extremists in the western part of Pakistan are a significant danger to the government of Pakistan,” he said.
“I personally have been very satisfied with the strong response that the Pakistani government and army have taken in response to this.”
Gates also said he thought there was “very little chance” of the Taliban being able to seize control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
MSNBC reports Gates promising U.S. troops won’t be sent to Pakistan. “Speaking to about 300 Marines at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, Gates assured them that they wouldn’t be fighting in the neighboring sovereign nation. During a 12-minute question-and-answer session in sweltering heat, Gates told a sergeant he didn’t have to ‘worry about going to Pakistan.'”
On top of Gates’ remarks, McClatchy reports Obama pledges ‘commitment’ to Afghan, Pakistan leaders.
President Barack Obama Wednesday pledged a “lasting commitment” by the U.S. to the democratic governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan after an unusual three-way meeting that ended with promises but no concrete agreements.
Flanked by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama told reporters that both men “fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat we face” from Islamic extremists. He didn’t invite either visitor to speak, however, and both appeared ill at ease.
Zardari told Spiegel that ‘Nuclear Weapons Are Not Kalashnikovs’ and doubts the Taliban could use them if they captured the weapons. “The technology is complicated, so it is not as if one little Taliban could come down and press a button. There is no little button. I want to assure the world that the nuclear capability of Pakistan is in safe hands,” he said.
Reuters reports Pakistan hopes the United States will halt drone attacks. Pakistan “says the drones violate its sovereignty and undermine efforts to deal with militancy by inflaming public anger and bolstering militant support.”
For its part, Afghans protest civilian deaths as U.S. officials raise doubts, according to the LA Times.
Angry anti-American protests erupted today in a provincial capital close to a string of desert villages where dozens of Afghan civilians were killed this week during clashes between insurgents and U.S.-led troops.
U.S. military officials, meanwhile, expressed growing doubts that the deaths in the Bala Baluk district of western Farah province were the result of airstrikes called in by American special forces. Instead, they said preliminary findings suggested that the villagers sheltering in residential compounds were slain by Taliban fighters wielding grenades. Local officials contested that theory.
The NY Times adds Afghan police fire on protesters. “Chanting ‘Death to America’ and hurling rocks, hundreds gathered Thursday in western Afghanistan to protest American airstrikes… In the main city of Farah province, protesters gathered at a police station and the local governor’s office, chanting slogans against the American and Afghan governments, witnesses reported… Outside the governor’s office, police opened fire on stone-throwing protesters and wounded three of them.”
Four at Four continues with Guantanamo documents set to be destroyed, an update from Iraq, stress tests and America’s big lie, and China ready for climate change deal while centrist Democrats in the U.S. House are not.
Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News is a daily cavalcade of crazy and yesterday was no exception. Beck’s guest was Scott Levenson, the national spokesman for ACORN. As ACORN is a perennial target of Fox News paranoiacs like Beck, there was bound to be a major train wreck looming. And 
