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| India-Pakistan |
| Despite deal with militants, Pakistan city lives in fear |
| 2008-07-21 |
| Fear still grips the fabled bazaars and choked streets of Peshawar, despite an offensive against militants who threaten the northwestern Pakistani city, residents say. Video shops keep guns under the counter and heavily-armed police man extra check posts across the city of three million people, some two weeks after tanks rolled into the adjoining tribal belt to tackle hardline groups. ""I am still scared. We are worried these men will come back for us,"" said Patras Masih, who was one of 16 Christians kidnapped from central Peshawar in June by gunmen from the radical outfit Lashkar-e-Islam (Army of Islam). The rebels burst into a Christian prayer ceremony and bundled them into SUVs before taking them to a cave 10 kilometers (six miles) away in the Khyber tribal district, the stronghold of the group's commander Mangal Bagh. The rebels freed them a day later with a warning not to drink alcohol or smoke hashish, 33-year-old Masih said, as one of his four children clung to his leg. The Christian abductions were the final straw for Pakistan's new government, already under pressure from Washington over its negotiations with Taleban guerrillas based in the tribal zone along the rugged Afghan frontier. The advance of the militants sparked fresh fears about the growing ""Talebanization"" of this nuclear-armed nation – while Peshawar also lies on the main supply route for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Peshawar had seen months of incursions by Mangal Bagh's self-styled ""moral brigade"" and other militants seeking to impose their version of Sharia law in the style of Afghanistan's 1996-2001 Taleban regime. Long-haired gunmen in pickup trucks were seen for several months patrolling the outskirts of the city, the capital of North West Frontier Province, warning people to grow beards and close ""un-Islamic"" businesses. Police also accused Lashkar-e-Islam of killing several villagers in a dispute over a shrine. The paramilitary Frontier Corps finally launched the week-long operation in Khyber on June 28. Troops demolished buildings belonging to Bagh and two other hardline organizations. Bagh, a former bus driver, signed a peace deal with the government late last week. But many residents question just how safe Peshawar is now. Most militants melted away into the hills after the operation began, while Bagh is not even a member of Pakistan's main organization of Taleban rebels, Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP). ""This operation was just cosmetic. The government is going against the wrong people because it wants to look tough,"" said Zar Ali Khan, 46, whose video shop was hit by a bomb planted in the city's Nishtarabad market last year. One of his employees was killed in the blast. Whipping out an automatic pistol that he keeps under the counter for protection, Khan said his business had now collapsed. ""There is fear in the hearts of the customers,"" he said. Many shops in the market -- overshadowed by the huge fortress headquarters of the Frontier Corps and close to the centuries-old Storytellers' Bazaar -- have removed their posters of Bollywood starlets. Musafar Khan, another video shop owner, said the Taleban had threatened him by SMS. ""We are sitting in the mouth of death. The government can't stop bombings in Islamabad, so what can this operation do?"" he said. A spokesman for Mangal Bagh said Lashkar-e-Islam was not trying to challenge the government's control of Peshawar. ""Our aim is to finish these criminal people here, the same as the government,"" Commander Haji Abdul Karim told AFP by telephone. ""We want peace here and across the country and will accept the rule of the security forces."" Meanwhile Taleban who are loyal to Baitullah Mehsud -- the chief of the TTP and the man accused by authorities of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto -- have gone untouched in other areas around Peshawar. Mehsud's men control a huge weapons bazaar at Dara Adam Khel, 25 kilometers south of Peshawar, and dominate the Mohmand tribal district about the same distance to the north. The police chief of North West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, said the offensive had restored stability to Peshawar. ""We were totally successful,"" Khan told AFP in an interview at his office. He said that, since the operation, ""not a single incidence of incursion or crime by these militant gangs took place in Peshawar."" Khan said claims that Peshawar was about to fall to the militants were ""probably highly exaggerated"" and blamed much of the trouble on criminal gangs claiming to be Taleban in a bid for respectability. But he attributed much of the unrest to insecurity in Afghanistan, saying it had been at the root of Peshawar's problems for decades, most recently in the 1980s when it served as a base for U.S.-backed ""mujahideen"" fighting the Soviets. However defense analyst Talat Masood, a former army general, described the offensive around Peshawar as a ""very limited...psychological operation"". ""It is a very serious business around Peshawar,"" he said. ""The government has to apply itself with greater resolve."" |
| Posted by:tipper |