| Skiing isn't in their holy book. You could look it up. |
‘Half of the hotel has been burned down,’ said Swat's police chief, Waqif Khan, referring to the only hotel at the Malam Jabba ski resort. The hotel is owned by the state tourism authority.
Khan said authorities had not been able to get to the resort to tackle the blaze or inspect the damage. ‘The area is not under our control, it's under the militants' control and no one can go there,’ he said.
The hotel shut down last August as tension in the valley increased. It later dismissed its staff as visitors stopped coming.
But a militant spokesman denied setting the hotel on fire. ‘Our target is the security forces, we have nothing to do with the hotel,’ said the spokesman, Muslim Khan. Khan said villagers in the area had appealed to his men to help them stop businessmen he referred to as ‘timber mafia’ cutting trees on the mountain slopes. ‘There's a third element which does not want the peace accord to succeed, they don't want peace in the area,’ he said, apparently referring to the log poachers.