Aim was to kidnap Chinese-American scientist Honglu (Alan) Chen and trade him for a high-level Taliban detainee. Could be the same terrorist President Obama recently sent home to Qatar in Bergdahl prisoner deal. Honglu Chen, a martial arts expert, defended himself and was shot dead foiling the Taliban plan. All other mountaineers were subsequently executed one by one at a base camp. News of the Taliban involvement can be read in a new serie of articles.
Chinese-American was target of Nanga Parbat massacre
GILGIT, Pakistan (Dawn News) – The massacre of 10 foreign climbers on Pakistan’s “Killer Mountain” a year ago came after a failed attempt to capture a Chinese-American to use him as a high-value bargaining chip, officials and militant sources have said.
The June 22 attack at the base camp for the 8,126-metre Nanga Parbat, Pakistan’s second-highest mountain — nicknamed for its treacherous terrain — was the deadliest assault on foreigners in the country for a decade.
Through interviews with multiple officials, militants and negotiators assigned to bring the culprits out of hiding, AFP has been able to piece together a picture of the events surrounding the slaughter and its aftermath.
Mystery Commanders
The story begins in early June 2013, when a local jihadist contacted other fighters to tell them two mysterious commanders had arrived from out of town and wanted to meet. The northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, high in the Himalayas, has been relatively immune to the militant insurgency plaguing the country in recent years.
The men met at a house in the town of Chilas, where the two strangers, wearing all-enveloping burqas, were introduced as important Taliban cadres from Afghanistan. The local fighters were briefed on the planned Nanga Parbat operation.
“They were told that the mission was about kidnapping a foreigner in order to later bargain for the release of an important Taliban commander,” an investigator assigned to the case said.
Militant sources told AFP the Chinese-American was the specific target, with the plan being to trade him for Taliban in Afghanistan.
The men then met a local sectarian group in a forest, recruiting two more fighters — against the sectarian group leader’s wishes — to bring their number to 10. They left for the Nanga Parbat base camp in the early evening, wearing the uniforms of the Gilgit Scouts, a paramilitary police unit.
Oops, this seems to be an update of my breaking news diary in June 2013 …
○ Pakistan: Terror Group Kills 10 Tourists in Scenic North
Chilling Accounts of Nanga Parbat Massacre
Various accounts of the June 22-23 massacres of 11 climbers and support staff at the Diamir base camp of Nanga Parbat are emerging. Zhang Jingchuan, the sole surviving climber in base camp that night, has returned to China and gave a few details of his experience to Chinese reporters in this account.
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Nanga parbat means naked mountain in UrduAmerican climber Jesse Huey, who returned from Pakistan this week after deciding not to continue on his planned expedition to the Karakoram, received an email recounting the experience of Polish climbers on Nanga Parbat during and after the massacre. This account by Polish Alpine Club member Boguslaw Magrel is reproduced below.
[For another perspective, Steve Swenson, a veteran of 11 climbing expeditions to Pakistan, has written about the historical and political background to the Nanga Parbat killings, options for climbing in northern Pakistan, and the impact of this incident on the local people of Gilgit-Baltistan at his blog. Click here to read this extremely informative piece.]
The Polish Nanga Parbat story originally appeared in Polish on the expedition website. Here is the rough translation using Bing and Google services:
CCTV: Sole Chinese survivor from Pakistan killer mountain arrives back home
More below the fold …
An excellent informative piece about the local situation in Gilgit Baltistan
Steve Swenson: Attack on Climbers in Pakistan
I’ve been on eleven climbing expeditions to Pakistan. Although the Country has been destabilized by the war in neighboring Afghanistan, sectarian violence, and a growing insurgency, I have always told my family and friends that the areas where we go climbing are safe. The Karakoram and Himalayan mountains in northeastern Pakistan are stunningly beautiful, and contain a significant number of the world’s greatest mountains including K2, the world’s second highest. They attract mountaineers and trekkers from all over the world, and.were a safe haven from the terrorist violence that has afflicted other parts of Pakistan. All that changed on June 22nd, when Pakistani militants killed ten mountain climbers at the Nanga Parbat base camp.
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Tensions in the region have been heightened recently as the US and NATO are about to pull most of their forces from Afghanistan. This pending power vacuum incites the various militant groups to gain control of as much territory as they can, thinking it will give them an advantage in any subsequent power grab.The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have inflamed sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia across the entire region. The Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns who are Sunni Muslims. Although the majority of the people in Pakistan are Sunni, the people in Gilgit Baltistan are Shia. Some think that the Taliban group which claimed responsibility for the attack on the Nanga Parbat climbers is the same as the one responsible for murdering about 30 Shias who were pulled off a bus going over the Babusar pass to Gilgit last year. As far as I know, no actions have been taken against this group as a result of the bus attack.
The PML-N Party won the recent Parliamentary elections returning Nawaz Sharif to a third term as Prime Minister. It remains to be seen if the new Sharif administration is both willing and able to depart from the policies of the past. Any significant police or military action against the Taliban would require the cooperation and full support of the Army that continues to retain control of national security and foreign policy. The last time Sharif’ was Prime Minister in 1999, he was kicked out in an Army coup.
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Protest Rally Against the Killing of IDPs by Police in Hunza, Gilgit-BaltistanThe economic impact on Gilgit Baltistan [map] of these attacks on the climbers will be severe. Already extremely poor, the local people in the mountains are subsistence farmers who have come to rely on income from work as porters, cooks, and guides for their only cash. Security concerns have already badly hurt the tourism industry and this attack will likely cause it to collapse. This happened right after 9/11 and these people who could least afford this loss of income suffered terribly. Unfortunately this is likely to happen again.
Night On Bald Mountain: The Nanga Parbat Massacre
The valleys to the west are the region of Kohistan. Its a Sunni majority region that abuts the significant Shia and Ismaili population of Gilgit-Baltistan. In the 1980s General Zia, perhaps not fully confident of the Jihad bonafides of the Shias, had the Kohistanis massacre some local Shias and started a sectarian feud that is still ongoing.
