This is the holy month, Ramadan, for Muslims.
This happened about two hours ago:
"The attackers first lobbed grenades into the mosque and then opened fire with Kalashnikovs on the worshippers," Bahadur Khan, the mayor of the village in Dir district of North West Frontier Province, told Reuters" [1].
As always, "the job" has to do with transforming a military-sized problem into one manageable by paramilitary forces--local, regional, and state investigators and police.
In the Northwest Frontier Province, Swat Valley, and other of the beautiful outbacks of Pakistan, "getting the job done" means starting from scratch: putting soldiers in mountain fields and villages where there have been none; producing safe regions, small or large, where today there plainly are none; arresting murderers who through arms, assassination, intimidation, and the deft manipulation of their own spiritual appeal maintain the strongest grasp on those who have elected to stay or have been trapped by various circumstance within their direct sphere of action.
Even drone-delivered U.S. air strikes avoid identified mosques.
1. Haider, Kamran and Alamgir Bitani. "Fourteen killed in grenade attack in Pakistan mosque." September 10, 2008. Wed Sep 10, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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