Spring Break
Pakistan targets militant-held valley
Associated Press
Issue date: 5/7/09 Section: News
TAKHT BAI, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan launched air and ground attacks against up to 7,000 Taliban militants entrenched in a northwestern valley Wednesday, killing dozens holed up at emerald mines and on forested hillsides following urgent U.S. demands to step up the fight against the insurgents.
With militants fighting back and weary refugees lining up at camps, the operation will be a test of whether the army has the will, capability and political support to defeat an enemy that had three months under a now-shattered peace deal to rest and regroup.
"It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere," said Laiq Zada, 33, who fled the Swat Valley and is living in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone. "We have with us the clothes on our bodies and a hope in the house of God. Nothing else."
Washington has said it wants to see a sustained operation in Swat and surrounding districts, mindful of earlier, inconclusive offensives elsewhere in the Afghan border region. Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the area remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters blamed for spiraling violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Uprooting the insurgents from the valley will mean unpopular civilian casualties, property damage and massive disruption to public life. That combination could tear at the resolve of government, which is struggling to convince the nuclear-armed Muslim nation that fighting the militants is in its interests as well as those of the U.S.
But there have been signs recently of a shift in the national mood against the Taliban after it got most of the blame for the collapsed peace process in Swat. A series of bloody terrorist attacks in the country's heartland province, Punjab, and the wide broadcast last month of a video clip showing the insurgents beating a women in Swat, also appear to have hardened the stance of politicians, clerics and ordinary Pakistanis toward extremists.
"Finally, it seems the authorities have realized the intensity of the threat and the mortality of danger," said Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. "That is why we can expect the military to be a little more courageous and resolute this time."
With militants fighting back and weary refugees lining up at camps, the operation will be a test of whether the army has the will, capability and political support to defeat an enemy that had three months under a now-shattered peace deal to rest and regroup.
"It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere," said Laiq Zada, 33, who fled the Swat Valley and is living in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone. "We have with us the clothes on our bodies and a hope in the house of God. Nothing else."
Washington has said it wants to see a sustained operation in Swat and surrounding districts, mindful of earlier, inconclusive offensives elsewhere in the Afghan border region. Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the area remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters blamed for spiraling violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Uprooting the insurgents from the valley will mean unpopular civilian casualties, property damage and massive disruption to public life. That combination could tear at the resolve of government, which is struggling to convince the nuclear-armed Muslim nation that fighting the militants is in its interests as well as those of the U.S.
But there have been signs recently of a shift in the national mood against the Taliban after it got most of the blame for the collapsed peace process in Swat. A series of bloody terrorist attacks in the country's heartland province, Punjab, and the wide broadcast last month of a video clip showing the insurgents beating a women in Swat, also appear to have hardened the stance of politicians, clerics and ordinary Pakistanis toward extremists.
"Finally, it seems the authorities have realized the intensity of the threat and the mortality of danger," said Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. "That is why we can expect the military to be a little more courageous and resolute this time."
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