[ADN Kronos] By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Orakzai tribal area in northwest Pakistan, the scene of a suspected CIA drone attack on Wednesday and a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, plays a dual role in the regional battle with militants. Orakzai is situated close to the Afghan border and helps the Taliban keep their sanctuary in the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, via the Nawa Pass.
But Orakzai also provides a conduit for Taliban fighters in the neighbouring Khyber tribal area to mount attacks there against convoys carrying NATO supplies for international forces in Afghanistan.
Wednesday's suspected drone attack followed signals from the Pakistani Taliban that it intends to break recent peace deals in the tribal areas and in North West Frontier Province's Swat valley.
At least 14 people were reported to have been killed in Wednesday's attack on a house in Orakzai but their identities were not immediately confirmed.
Officials said the targets were Taliban and Al-Qaeda members who have found safe havens in tribal areas near the Afghan border. The US - frustrated by a resurgent Taliban which it believes is drawing support from northwest Pakistan - has launched more than 35 similar attacks there since August 2008.
"The peace deals in North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas besides in the Swat valley will soon be broken," an unnamed source in the militants' circle told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Two recent events in Swat suggest the Taliban intends to re-start its insurgency against the Pakistani military in the troubled district and divert security forces from guarding the country's border with Afghanistan.
The first was the occupation by Taliban militants of former federal minister and Pakistan Muslim League MP Ameer Maqam's residence in the town of Behrain while he was in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
"Seventy to eighty Taliban broke inside my house and forcibly pulled out my two servants.
They occupied the residence and then destroyed it with explosives," Maqam told AKI.
"Who says that there is peace in the Swat valley when the militants are roaming freely and occupying other people's property?" he said.
In another incident, armed men calling themselves Taliban fighters late last month captured an emerald mine in Shangla, a neigbouring district of Swat. The district mayor confirmed the emerald mine's capture.
The NWFP government in February struck a peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat valley and allowed them to establish Islamic law there.
The accord ended two years of fierce conflict in which at least 1,700 government soldiers and hundreds of civilians were killed and 600,000 people were displaced.
A local militant leader last month complained that Islamic law was not being implemented fast enough in Swat, however, and threatened to quash the peace deal.