Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Musharraf is out … and the roaches are running from the big guns. But will they run across the Paki/A-stan border … and into OUR guns??? … Given the [obvious] estimation numbers of those fleeing, this must be a huge offensive.

by Bruce Loudon - (The Australian)

ISLAMABAD: A human tide of more than 300,000 civilians has fled the al-Qa’ida badlands, amid indications that the fighting there has reached unprecedented levels, with the Pakistani army using massive firepower to attack jihadi militant strongholds.

Helicopter gunships, fixed-wing strike aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery have been used in the onslaught that followed the visit last month by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Washington, where he was berated for Pakistan’s failure to wipe out the militants.

The offensive runs counter to perceptions that Pakistan’s new civilian Government is “soft” on Islamic extremism.

This will reassure Washington, whose ally in the war in terror for the past nine years, President Pervez Musharraf, was given by the Coalition Government until midnight last night (4am today AEST) to resign or face impeachment proceedings beginning tonight in the National Assembly.

Pakistani television showed thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire streaming out of the Bajaur, Mohmand and Kurrum agencies during the fighting estimated to have killed more than 500 militants. Tens of thousands of people are camping on the perimeter of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, and some have reached Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad.

New security tsar Rehman Malik, the architect of the get-tough policy against the militants who have over-run the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said at least 220,000 civilians had been displaced. But welfare agencies said the figure was probably well in excess of 300,000.

An NWFP government official appealing for federal assistance said yesterday: “There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for help and we don’t have the wherewithal to deal with the situation.”

In a speech to the National Assembly on Saturday, Mr Gilani declared the Government was determined to re-establish control in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. “We will establish the writ of the Government at all costs (as) a parallel government cannot be tolerated,” he said.

The offensive, launched without fanfare to avoid conveying the notion it was done at the insistence of Washington, is targeting primarily Bajaur, slated as the most likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden. Fierce fighting is also under way in areas of the NWFP where many of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are believed to be based.

Dr Malik, who accompanied Mr Gilani to Washington, estimated yesterday that a force of more than 3000 well-armed and highly trained al-Qa’ida militants were operating in Bajaur.

“We will wipe them out,” Dr Malik said. “We will not surrender before them.”

Fighting in the NWFP’s strategic Swat Valley, 250km north of Islamabad, is at unprecedented levels.

Resurgent militant extremists have in the past 10 days reduced 28 girls’ schools to rubble as they work to destroy an education system that was once the pride of Pakistan.

A total of 87 girls’ schools have been destroyed and another 62 closed by frightened teachers.

The chief of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah, calling female education “a source of obscenity” ordered girls to go home and wear the burka.

The Government has indefinitely closed all its offices in the Swat Valley.

Analysts said the fighting in Bajaur, Mohmand and Kurram suggested that for the first time in many months the army was on the offensive against militants.

It was unclear whether the offensive represented the tougher stance on militants demanded by Washington.

Relations between Washington and the new administration in Islamabad had been tense, particularly over the case of accused terrorist Aafia Siddiqui.

The Pakistani neuroscientist appeared in a New York court this month after disappearing with her three children in Karachi five years ago. US officials say Ms Siddiqui, 36, is a significant al-Qa’ida figure. Human rights workers argue she was abducted in a joint Pakistani-US operation under the Musharraf regime.

The Pakistani parliament’s foreign affairs committee vowed on Saturday to visit Ms Siddiqui in her New York cell, as well as Pakistanis held at Guantanamo Bay.

Talks between Mr Musharraf’s aides and the coalition Government, which set today’s deadline, aimed at securing him indemnity from prosecution have been hampered by the opposition of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister deposed by Mr Musharraf in a coup. Saudi Arabia, the US and UK have sent envoys to resolve the crisis.

(h/t Mudville Gazette)