By SALMAN MASOOD and CARLOTTA GALL
Published: May 6, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As the president of Pakistan prepared for talks in Washington on Wednesday, the security forces here, under American pressure to show greater resolve in combating militants, claimed to have killed at least 35 Taliban fighters in hotly contested areas of the country’s northwest.
Some of the reported clashes, which could not be independently confirmed because the area is closed to journalists, centered on parts of the Swat Valley, north of Islamabad, where black-turbaned Taliban fighters seized control of Mingora, the area’s largest city, on Sunday, renewing American concerns that militancy was spreading unchecked towards the capital.
The advances added to a sense of regional crisis. As American and NATO troops confront militants in Afghanistan, insurgents are displaying increasing self-confidence in neighboring — and nuclear-armed — Pakistan, undermining its role as a key American ally against the Taliban.
On Tuesday, residents flooded out of the Swat Valley by the thousands as the government signaled a new military campaign against the Taliban and as a much-criticized peace accord with the insurgents fell apart.
People crammed into cars and buses and headed south after the local government told residents to leave Swat before a government military offensive. Taliban and government forces have accused each other of scuttling the peace accord, and they traded gun and mortar fire. The Taliban had dug in and laid mines in the streets, girding for battle, residents said.
President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is scheduled to meet on Wednesday with President Obama in Washington, where American officials have sharply criticized the Swat peace accord and urged the government to fight the Taliban. President Obama also planned to meet Wednesday with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
The Pakistan military said in a statement on Wednesday that security forces killed 35 militants near emerald mines in the Swat Valley when government forces returned fire from insurgents. In a separate clash, 27 militants were killed in the adjoining Buner district, news services reported. The military said insurgents had fired on government checkpoints in several places.
CNN said fighting on Wednesday in Mingora had swirled around a four-story orphanage near the local military headquarters, leaving 80 boys and 20 staff members caught between the lines. News reports also spoke of civilian casualties in the Mingora region, with up to 35 non-combatants killed.
The Pakistan military said on Wednesday that, in different parts of Swat, two soldiers died in a roadside bomb explosion and two others were shot to death by militants. In Mingora, the military said, Taliban fighters, swooping down from mountain hideouts, looted three banks and occupied the offices of the police chief and the ranking civilian administrator. The military did not, however, depict the skirmishes as part of the full-scale offensive the government has signaled.
Two weeks ago, the Taliban used the territory all but ceded to them under the peace accord to push into Buner, just 60 miles from Islamabad, the capital, prompting American calls for tougher action.
A new operation in Swat may signal the harder stance American officials have been looking for. But the question remains whether the Pakistani military has the will and ability to sustain its operations against the insurgents, the vast majority of whom are Pakistani.
The American special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, said Tuesday that the situation in Pakistan was fragile, but he welcomed the turn toward wider military action.
“Until yesterday, the momentum did not appear to be in the right hands,” he told Congress. “The army has now begun a major offensive. We’ll have to wait and see how it goes.”
The Pakistani military has battled the militants reluctantly in the past, and five days ago began to engage in heavy fighting with the Taliban in Buner and Dir, another district that borders Swat in the North-West Frontier Province.
Those campaigns are daunting enough. But the task in Swat remains hugely difficult, not least because the military had already failed to drive out the Taliban in two years of fighting before it finally conceded to the February truce and agreed to allow Islamic law to be imposed in the valley.
But public opinion in Pakistan has undergone an important shift against the Taliban since the deal, and it has now apparently given the military more confidence to move with full force.
A recent video showing the Taliban in Swat flogging a young woman as the militants enforced their version of Islamic law shocked the nation. The government has taken great pains to show its efforts to make the Swat peace deal work, going as far as agreeing to appoint judges trained in Islamic law, or Shariah.
Finally, the Taliban incursion into Buner solidified a growing consensus that the Taliban had gone too far and that the military needed to stop them.
The media, politicians and even religious leaders are now speaking out against Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the main negotiator of the Swat deal, and Mullah Fazlullah, his son-in-law, who has links to the Qaeda-backed Taliban movement based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Leaders of the Awami National Party, which governs the North-West Frontier Province, continue to stand by the deal, which they say is critical in winning people away from the militants.
The deal was popular among the people of Swat, who were desperate for peace. An estimated half million people have been displaced by the fighting in the tribal areas and in the North-West Frontier Province over the past two years. Those fleeing Buner and Swat, many of whom will now stay in camps or with relatives in cities like Mardan or Peshawar, have criticized the military operations as heavy handed.
But the Taliban have revealed in the past three months that they have no intention of ending their insurgency inside Pakistan proper. It has also become apparent, the politicians say, that Maulana Muhammad is not able to control the militants.
“Now we have the upper hand,” said Saqib Chamkani, a member of the provincial assembly for the Awami National Party. “We have exposed that this fight does not have anything to do with courts and Shariah.” Yet the military remains divided in its resolve, the United States remains deeply unpopular and some religious parties still sympathize with the Taliban.
Anees Jillani, a lawyer who works at the Supreme Court and who visited Swat recently, said some in the military had sympathy for the Islamists and were not willing to fight.
“When you ask them why are you not defeating them, they ask: ‘Why should we?’ And you ask about Sufi Muhammad, they say: ‘What’s wrong with him?’ “ he said.
Maulana Yousuf Shah, general secretary of the Jamiat-u-Ulama-i-Islam-S, a political party that is close to the Taliban, blamed the government for failing to keep its side of the February truce. Maulana Muhammad was therefore unable to convince the younger Taliban fighters to keep the peace, he said.
“For 20 years these people have been struggling peacefully for Shariah, but it was no use,” he said. “It is a natural thing when democratic avenues are not working to take up arms.”
At the same time, though, there has been a significant change in the military and paramilitary forces facing against the Taliban.
Under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, an energetic and determined commander, the Frontier Corps, a local Pashtun paramilitary force, has become better armed and equipped, with the help of the United States.
Supported by army units, the Frontier Corps has proven itself better able to push back the Taliban, first in the tribal areas in Bajaur last year, and now in Buner, though at a considerable cost to civilians caught up in the operations.
In Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, antiterrorist police units have killed 88 people suspected of being militants in the past four months, cracking down on kidnapping and general lawlessness, a senior police official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work.
“It is a manageable problem,” he said, when asked whether Pakistan can contain the militant threat.
American support has been important, he said, and the police are hoping for the same help, he said. “If Uncle Sam shows the same generosity to our force, I don’t see why we cannot be a good supporting force,” he said.
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad and Carlotta Gall from Peshawar. Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Comments