Taliban Stir Rising Anger of Pakistanis

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

14 Jun 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Taliban Stir Rising Anger of Pakistanis

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A year ago, the Pakistani public was deeply divided over what to do about its spreading insurgency. Some saw the Taliban militants as fellow Muslims and native sons who simply wanted Islamic law, and many opposed direct military action against them. But history moves quickly in Pakistan, and after months of televised Taliban cruelties, broken promises and suicide attacks, there is a spreading sense — apparent in the news media, among politicians and the public — that many Pakistanis are finally turning against the Taliban. -- Sabrina Tavernise Attacked, Pakistani Villagers Take On Taliban PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Villagers are rising up against the Taliban in a remote corner of northern Pakistan, a grass-roots rebellion that underscores the shift in the public mood against the militants and a growing confidence to confront them…. The uprising is not the first time that Pakistanis have formed their own militias to stand up to the Taliban, and previous efforts have often collapsed largely because the government and military did not come to their aid. -- Sabrina Tavernise and Irfan Ashraf URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1467 --------------------------------------- Taliban Stir Rising Anger of Pakistanis By Sabrina Tavernise June 4, 2009, New York Times  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A year ago, the Pakistani public was deeply divided over what to do about its spreading insurgency. Some saw the Taliban militants as fellow Muslims and native sons who simply wanted Islamic law, and many opposed direct military action against them. But history moves quickly in Pakistan, and after months of televised Taliban cruelties, broken promises and suicide attacks, there is a spreading sense — apparent in the news media, among politicians and the public — that many Pakistanis are finally turning against the Taliban.  The shift is still tentative and difficult to quantify. But it seems especially profound among the millions of Pakistanis directly threatened by the Taliban advance from the tribal areas into more settled parts of Pakistan, like the Swat Valley. Their anger at the Taliban now outweighs even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.  "It's the Taliban that's responsible for our misery," said Fakir Muhammed, a refugee from Swat, who, like many who had experienced Taliban rule firsthand, welcomed the military campaign to push the insurgents out.  The growing support for the fight against the Taliban could be an important turning point for Pakistan, whose divisions about its Islamic militancy seemed at times to imperil the state itself.  But it is an opportunity that could just as quickly vanish, analysts and politicians warn, if Pakistan's political leaders fail to kill or capture senior Taliban leaders, to help an estimated three million who have been displaced, or to create a functioning government in areas long ignored by the state. "This is a profound moment in our history," said Javed Iqbal, the top bureaucrat in the North-West Frontier Province, the area of fighting. "My greatest fear is whether there is sufficient realization of this among people who make decisions."  On Wednesday, in an audiotape, Osama bin Laden specifically cited the fighting in Swat and Pakistan's tribal areas, blaming the Obama administration for the campaign and for sowing "new seeds to increase hatred and revenge on America."  American officials are keenly aware of the potential of the refugee crisis to spawn militancy. Less than a quarter of the $543 million the United Nations has requested for refugees has arrived, according to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.  On Thursday, Richard C. Holbrooke, the American special envoy, visited refugee tents as part of a three-day trip to spread the message that the United States was trying to help. The Obama administration had requested an additional $200 million, he said, noting that it was providing more aid than all other countries combined.  Even so, anti-American feelings still run high in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis blame the United States and the war in Afghanistan for their current troubles.  Pakistanis have long supported the Taliban as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan. Unlike Afghans, they have never lived under Taliban rule, and have been slow to absorb its dangers.  But that is changing, as the experience of those Pakistanis who have now lived under the Taliban has left many disillusioned.  Over more than a year of fighting, the militants moved into Swat, by killing or driving out the wealthy and promising to improve the lives of the poor. Finally, the military agreed to a truce in February that all but ceded Swat to the Taliban and allowed the insurgents to impose Islamic law, or Shariah.  The prospect of Shariah was alluring, said Iftikhar Ehmad, who owns a cellphone shop in Mingora, the most populous city in Swat, because the court system in Swat was so corrupt and ineffective. But the Taliban's Shariah was not the benign change people had hoped for. Once the Taliban took power, the insurgents seemed interested only in amassing more, and in April they pushed into Buner, a neighboring district 60 miles from Islamabad.  "It was not Shariah, it was something else," Mr. Ehmad said, jabbing angrily at the air with his finger in the scorching tent camp in the town of Swabi. "It was scoundrel behavior."  Daily life became degrading. A woman was lashed in public, and a video of her writhing in pain and begging for mercy stirred wide outrage. Taliban bosses ordered people to donate money. Cosmetics shops and girls' schools were burned.  By the time the military entered Swat last month, local people began leading soldiers to tunnels with weapons and Taliban hiding places in hotels, the military said. "These people, six months back, weren't willing to share anything," said a military official who was involved in planning the campaign. "Gradually they've been coming out more and more into the open."  There has also been a change in other parts of Pakistan, like Punjab, the most populous province, where people used to see the problem of militancy as remote, said Rasul Baksh Rais, a professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Now the province has become a target of suicide attacks, most recently last week in Lahore. Mr. Rais cited changes in news coverage of the military campaign and a strong stand by the political parties, even some of the religious ones, as evidence of the shift. "The tables are turned against the Taliban now," he said. "They are marginalized."  But the underlying causes that have allowed the Taliban to spread — poverty, barely functioning government, lack of upward mobility in society — remain. Mr. Iqbal is now working frantically to fill those gaps. New judges have recently been identified for Swat, he said, and about 3,000 new police officers will be selected this week.  The Pakistani military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss future operations, said troops would have to remain in Swat for at least six months. Support for the Taliban has not evaporated entirely.  Early this week, on a searing hot street in Mardan, a town south of Swat that has absorbed many of the people churned up in the fighting, a tall man with a long beard, Muhammed Tahir Ansari, grew angry when asked whether the refugees approved of the military operation. "It is illogical to think that people would be happy about this tense situation," he said curtly.  He was from a charity run by Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the principal religious parties that tacitly support the Taliban, and was directing a frenzied effort to distribute water and hand-held fans.  The government, meanwhile, was nowhere in sight.  Irfan Ashraf contributed reporting from Swabi, Pakistan, and Mardan, Pakistan. ----------------------- Attacked, Pakistani Villagers Take On Taliban By Sabrina Tavernise and Irfan Ashraf June 10, 2009, New York Times PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Villagers are rising up against the Taliban in a remote corner of northern Pakistan, a grass-roots rebellion that underscores the shift in the public mood against the militants and a growing confidence to confront them. More than a thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since Friday, when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload during prayer time at a mosque, killing at least 30 villagers. Enraged by the bombing, men from surrounding villages began looking for Taliban militants and their supporters, burning houses and killing at least 11 men they identified as Taliban fighters, according to accounts from seven local residents, including one who took part in the fighting. The uprising is not the first time that Pakistanis have formed their own militias to stand up to the Taliban, and previous efforts have often collapsed largely because the government and military did not come to their aid. But the latest attempt is significant, revealing the determination of the people of Dir to keep out both the Taliban and the military and to prevent their area from turning into another war zone, like the nearby Swat Valley, where millions have fled fighting. The rebellion, locals said, gives the government a chance to demonstrate to the Pakistani people that it is serious in supporting them this time. Local government officials asked for help from the military, which came in the form of helicopter gunships Tuesday morning. Most missed their marks, said local people, many of them wary of inviting a larger military operation, fearing the blunt tactics the military has used elsewhere. Two villagers interviewed by telephone said people had begun to flee. "If they are going to use indiscriminate fire, then we'll have to leave the area, and that will give the militants safe passage," said an elder from the village of Siah Kater. If it can be sustained, the Dir uprising could prove strategically important as the insurgents come under increasing pressure from the Pakistani military in places like Swat and seek to preserve their havens. Close to the border with Afghanistan, the area is used by the Taliban as a passageway to fight American forces in southern Afghanistan, local people said. The Pakistani district, like Swat and Buner, is yet another in North-West Frontier Province where the Taliban have infiltrated in recent months from the lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, moving to within 60 miles of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. The militants had quietly been building up their strength in northwest Dir, locals said, living among what Pakistani officials and local people described as a group of Afghans who had been in the area for years. Their commander, an Afghan named Khitab, is believed by Pakistani officials to be linked to Al Qaeda. The Taliban group, estimated to comprise 200 to 400 people, did not enjoy broad support, local people said in telephone interviews. Just 4 of the 25 villages in the area, a valley called Dog Darra, sheltered them. Village elders tried for months to persuade them to leave, under pressure from government authorities. That is why, local people believe, the Taliban set off the bomb at the mosque on Friday. "They wanted to tame these people and attack them," said Abdul Kalam, a supporter of the militia fighters. "Instead of leaving the area, they retaliated in the form of this attack." The bomb changed everything, and even some of those who had supported the Taliban joined the hunt, local people said. "This bomb blast proved the last straw," said Jamil Roghani, a man from the area who is providing medicine to the wounded. "This made the people violent." By Tuesday, the ranks of the local people who had joined the militia to fight the Taliban had swelled to many more than 1,000 from 700 last week, according to a local police official. They had pushed the Taliban to the highest northwestern edge of the valley, into an area called Ghazigeh, and had encircled them there with trenches. Mr. Roghani said three Taliban commanders had been killed. He identified them as Chamtu, Sultan Rehman and Musa. Four villagers have been wounded. He said local fighters saw bunkers and tunnels that had been dug deep into the earth. "We are not quitting the area until we destroy them," Mr. Roghani said. "We know this is not Islam. These are criminals." The accounts were impossible to verify because the fighting took place in a remote area to which journalists had no access. A Pakistani military official said that the weather had stopped the helicopters from identifying their targets, but that the army would send a paramilitary unit on Wednesday, a prospect likely to worry villagers. Many of those interviewed want the government's involvement to remain limited to air power against the Taliban's mountain hide-out. But others, infuriated by the brutality of the Taliban attack, favor a stronger government response. "Now the people have the spirit, and they will support the government in all its moves to flush these people out," Mr. Roghani said. Fayaz Ahmad Khan Toru, an official with the government of North-West Frontier Province, said that officials knew that the government response was being closely watched, and that they were working with local people. "Failure is not an option," he said. Syed Muhammad, 30, a civil servant from the village of Mian Dog in the valley, said that without the military's help, the uprising would fail. The militants were dug in too deep for the local militia to dislodge them on its own with just guns. But he expressed cautious optimism that the local people would not be ignored, as they had been in most other operations, and that the military, now pressing ahead with its campaign against the Taliban, might be learning. "I think that the military has now realized that the locals should be involved in these operations," he said. "Without the support of the local people they cannot wipe out the militants." Ismail Khan contributed reporting. URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1467