Pat Dollard | Young Americans

MINGORA, Pakistan - The Pakistani army has driven Islamic militants from all the towns in a scenic northern valley and killed 290 of the followers of a pro- Taliban cleric who has called for a holy war against the government, a general said Saturday.

The militants, followers of firebrand preacher Maulana Fazlullah, had taken control of at least eight towns in the Swat valley since July, scattering outgunned police and erecting “Taliban station” signboards outside former police stations.

Officials accuse them of imposing a reign of terror, shuttering schools for girls and beheading locals who opposed them. Their seizure of the region demonstrated the government’s feeble control in Pakistan’s remote areas.

President Pervez Musharraf has also cited the stepped-up militancy in northern regions like Swat to justify imposing a state of emergency on Nov. 3—a move critics say was designed to silence opposition forces weary of his military rule.

During a tour of the area, Maj. Gen. Nasser Janjua told reporters that since launching an offensive last month, his 20,000-strong force had managed to retake all the towns seized by the militants, driving some 400-500 militants into the Piochar side valley.

“We have bottled them upward and we want to take a good toll of them,” Janjua said at an army base in Mingora, the region’s main town.

The rest of Fazlullah’s force, initially estimated to be about 5,000 strong, apparently hid their weapons and melted back into the local population.

In Mingora, a bustling market town that was hit by militant mortar fire during the fighting but was never under militant control, there was no obvious sign of disruption from the fighting.

However, tense-looking guards watched over the army base from sandbagged posts on the roofs of adjacent buildings.

Business at the town’s upscale hotels, recently built to cater for Pakistani and foreign tourists drawn by Swat’s fine mountain scenery, has reportedly dried up and Janjua said it might take a year before travelers begin to return.

Troops at another base set up on a golf course in Kabal, a nearby town which had been in militant hands, appeared relaxed. Several artillery pieces which the army said had been used to pound rebels in the surrounding hills lay silent.

However, the journalists were not taken to forward positions closer to the most recent clashes.

Earlier this week, Janjua said, the army launched a devastating attack that forced thousands of people to flee the area and allowed them to seize Fazlullah’s sprawling Imam Dheri complex, which includes a seminary, hostels and a mosque near Mingora. Security forces also blew up Fazlullah’s home.

Janjua forecast that militants would try to mount at least one counterattack and said it would take another three to four months to stabilize the area.

Janjua said that apart from the slain militants, 140 had been captured since the military began pouring troops, artillery and attack helicopters into the area in November.

He said only five soldiers had been killed, with six civilians dead and 20 wounded. Militants have claimed that far more security forces and bystanders have died and that the army is exaggerating its success.

Fazlullah, the leader of a banned extremist group who sent reinforcements for the Taliban when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in won a considerable following in the valley by using an FM radio station to campaign for the introduction of Islamic law. After months of defiance, he took up arms in July, calling for holy war against the government.

Officials says militants linked to Pakistani sectarian groups as well as the Taliban and al-Qaida rushed to join the battle. Janjua said those killed or captured in recent weeks included some Uzbeks and citizens from “friendly” countries. He refused to elaborate.

Militants can infiltrate the region from the Bajur border zone to the west. Musharraf last month suggested that Bajur and Afghanistan’s neighboring Kunar province were possible hiding places for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, because of their remoteness.

But he said neither Pakistan nor the U.S. had any information on the al-Qaida leaders’ whereabouts.

In an interview partly aired by CNN television on Saturday, Musharraf bristled at assertions that the al-Qaida leaders were in Pakistan.

“It is just their guess. So I don’t want to make such wild guesses,” Musharraf said, challenging anyone to provide him with firm intelligence. “They can be anywhere.”

Musharraf’s imposition of a state of emergency on Nov. 3 has cast a cloud over parliamentary elections that are supposed to bring democracy back to Pakistan after eight years of military rule.

Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are threatening to boycott the Jan. 8 ballot, arguing that the judiciary, which has been purged under the emergency, the caretaker government and local officials will favor pro-Musharraf candidates.

Adding to the sense of crisis, three supporters of Bhutto were killed Saturday when gunmen attacked her party’s office in southwestern Pakistan, police said.

Officers were investigating the early morning incident in Naseerabad, about 150 miles east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, said Wajid Akbar, the district police chief.

Under pressure from the United States, his chief foreign backer, Musharraf stepped down as army chief last month and has relaxed a crackdown on opponents and the media.

However, he has stirred domestic opposition by using the emergency to secure Supreme Court approval for his new five-year presidential term.

(AP)
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