Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent | April 24
ISLAMIC militants are within striking distance of Tarbela Dam, one of Pakistan's main sources of water and power, an MP warned yesterday as Hillary Clinton accused the Government of "abdicating to the Taliban".
The Taliban are within 100km of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, after seizing control of more towns in the North Western Frontier Province this week, including the provincial administrative headquarters of Buner.
Pakistani paramilitary forces have been deployed to protect government buildings and bridges in Buner, a senior official said.
The leader of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam Islamic party, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, told parliament the Taliban forces could soon be "knocking at the doors of Islamabad".
"After occupying Buner, they have reached Kala Dhaka and may also be taking over the water reservoir of the Tarbela Dam," Mr Rehman said.
The southern tip of Tarbela - the world's largest earth- and rock-filled dam - is just 50km from Islamabad. The dam provides 30 per cent of the country's hydroelectricity and much of the north's irrigation water.
The US has reacted with alarm to the security crisis in its subcontinental ally.
US President Barack Obama has dispatched his joint chiefs of staff chairman Mike Mullen to Islamabad for the second time in a fortnight, and has summoned the Pakistan and Afghan presidents to Washington.
The march of the Taliban prompted harsh criticism yesterday from the US Secretary of State, Ms Clinton, who told a congressional panel the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world".
"The Pakistani Government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," she said. "We cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan."
Ms Clinton called on Pakistanis to speak out "forcefully" against the policies of their Government, which was ceding "more and more territory to the insurgents, to the Taliban, to al-Qa'ida, to the allies that are in this terrorist syndicate".
Pakistan's Government agreed in February to impose sharia law in the country's northwestern Swat Valley and the surrounding Malakand region in exchange for a ceasefire with Taliban forces.
President Asif Ali Zardari ratified the agreement last week following unanimous parliamentary support.
But on Tuesday, hundreds of armed Taliban entered Buner, a district of more than a million people 100km from Islamabad, setting up checkpoints, occupying mosques and ransacking offices of non-government organisations.
Regular courts stopped functioning in Buner yesterday after the Peshawar High Court deemed it too dangerous for officials to function. The move coincided with a deadline set by the militants for the Government to abolish the regular courts.
A Taliban commander said they would set up sharia courts in Buner - as they have done in Swat - to end a "sense of deprivation", but would not interfere with police work.
The Pakistani Government yesterday refused to rule out using force against the Taliban.
Source: The Australian
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