Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent | April 28
PAKISTAN civilians began pouring out of the North West Frontier Province yesterday, driven out by fierce fighting between Taliban extremists and military forces sent in to stem the insurgents' march on the rest of the country.
Frontier corps troops and helicopter gunships engaged several hundred militants in the Lower Dir Province, west of the Swat Valley and abutting the Afghanistan border.
The clashes, which began on Sunday after Taliban fighters blocked the path of an army convoy trying to reach the Swat Valley, has brought to the brink of collapse an uneasy peace deal between the two sides.
Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan yesterday said the February peace deal - in which the Government agreed to impose sharia law on the NWFP's Malakand region in exchange for the militants' laying down their arms - was now "worthless" as a result of the military action.
The militants have suspended peace talks with the Government over Swat, a former tourist region within the NWFP now under their control, until the army halts its operation.
They have also threatened to stage attacks across the Malakand - a group of six districts and home to three million people - if peace is not restored.
Troops were finally sent into the NWFP late on Thursday after hundreds of Taliban militants poured out of Swat and seized control of towns and villages less than 100km from the capital, Islamabad.
Taliban fighters quickly established control of several administrative centres within the Buner district, forcing women off the streets, issuing warnings to barbers and music shops and recruiting locals to their cause.
Many eventually retreated on Friday following negotiations with local authorities and government warnings of military action, although reports from the region yesterday suggested the Taliban were still in control of Buner and patrolling the streets.
However, militants had more quietly also seized control of Lower Dir in recent weeks, creating a new corridor for extremists fighting US-led coalition forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
One local official said the military moved into the region following reports that the Taliban had begun kidnapping prominent local residents for ransom. On Saturday, 12 local children were killed after playing with a bomb they mistook for a football.
The latest offensive was ordered under pressure from the US, which has issued increasingly strident statements in recent days demanding action from Pakistan's leaders to halt the advance of the Taliban into the interior of the nuclear-armed nation.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Pakistani Government last week of "abdicating to the Taliban" and at the weekend expressed fears the Taliban could eventually hold the keys to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. More...
Source: The Australian
Posts
