The Taliban have become a danger again in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan. Fighting continues with large numbers of Taliban militants killed and foreign fighters being rounded up in Afghanistan:

Afghan and NATO forces clashed with Taliban militants in a dangerous southern region overnight, leaving 33 suspected insurgents dead, the provincial governor said Tuesday.

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Southern Afghanistan has seen fierce fighting in the last several weeks. More than 2,900 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press tally of numbers provided by Western and Afghan officials.

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The 35-year old man, identified as Yousuf Ibrahim, from Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh, was detained after a brief scuffle with police in the capital on Tuesday, said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, the head of criminal investigations for Kabul.

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Ibrahim, speaking in Arabic, said he was not in Afghanistan to fight against the government.

“We are here to fight against the Russians, Americans, Jews and infidels,” he said, while seated on a chair in Paktiawal’s office. “I am a mujahedeen (holy warrior) … and I will fight against them until the end of the earth.”

It seems the Taliban are still very active and trying to get their spring offensive off the ground. So far they have failed miserably and paid a heavy price. Rumors are circulating that the Pakistanis are getting extremely concerned with the Taliban inside their country. And if today’s news regarding the militant Red Mosque in Islamabad is any indication, things are heating up in that country:

Security forces clashed with militants outside a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital, triggering fighting that left one soldier dead, several students and troops injured, and the Ministry of Environment building on fire.

The battle marked a major escalation in a standoff at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, whose clerics have challenged the military-led government by mounting a vigilante anti-vice campaign in Islamabad.

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A man used the mosque’s loudspeakers to order suicide bombers to get into position.

“They have attacked our mosque, the time for sacrifice has come,” the man said.

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The students later set fire to the Ministry of Environment after tearing down a section of the wall around the three-story building near the mosque and pelting it with rocks.

Some of the students carried gas masks and several were seen with gasoline-filled bottles and Molotov cocktails. About a dozen were armed with guns, including AK-47 assault rifles.

Dozens of stone-throwing students shattered windows of the ministry building, chanting, “Taliban, long live Taliban.” They later set the building afire.

The Red Mosque has been a sign of Islamo Fascist defiance for years. But things must have been building up to a head with Musharraf’s government, given the warning (or threat) released recently regarding government action against the radical mosque:

Taleban commander Haji Umar warned the Pakistani government yesterday that it would invite direct retaliation against any “action” against Islamabad’s Red Mosque.

“We are in touch with Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Red Mosque and if the government acted against the mosque’s religious training facility we will hit back,” Umar told reporters by telephone. The leaders of the mosque, constructed in 1965, deny charges that they teach militant ideology and say they are simply trying to implement the Shariah law in Pakistan.

Abdul Aziz, 46, told Arab News yesterday that the mosque’s mission is to fight for “the supremacy of Islam and enforcement of the Shariah.” “In our endeavor to achieve our goals, we do have complete support of the Taleban,” Abdul Aziz admitted.

Why the sudden concern? As I posted yesterday the Taliban are seen as growing too strong in Pakistan and are believed to be preparing to attack the Pakistani government. Some other reporting came out as well confirming some of the news Musharraf is preparing to take on the Taliban:

President Musharraf has held a meeting with top Pakistani officials to discuss a new strategy to curb “Talibanization” along the Afghan border.

The four-hour session came amid increasing concern that extremism is spreading not just in Pakistan’s frontier regions but also to the cities, with a pro-Taliban mosque last week kidnapping several Chinese nationals.

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“The meeting was to review the security situation, especially in the border areas, and to prepare a recommendation for a new security initiative to curb extremism and terrorism,” a senior government official told AFP.

So I would suspect we are going to be seeing reports of more and more crackdowns in Pakistan. And it may be because the Taliban are getting stronger, and it may be because Musharraf needs to take some action before his ally President Bush is replaced with an unreliable Surrendercrat President (democrat). But whatever the reason, we can expect more fighting, and a lot more heinous crimes from the Islamo Fascists. Crimes like using civilians and children as human shields:

Taliban fighters are using civilians as human shields against attacks from government and international troops in Afghanistan, the US ambassador to the United Nations said in Rome.

“US soldiers in Afghanistan are doing their best to avoid hitting civilians, but sometimes the weapons miss their targets. In addition, one must not forget an important fact: that the Taliban and other extremists use civilians as shields,” Zalmay Khalilzad was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency in Italian.

We always get blamed for forcing the terrorists to hide out among civilians as they attack other unarmed civilians. Seems the terrorists are always the sympathetic characters. But in any event, they need to be eradicated if democracies are to remain stable, and nuclear arsenals are to remain in the hands of responsible government hands.