Thread: Swat Pakistan, a report from the front line Army vs Taliban

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=177904


Swat – a report from the frontline
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Farhat Taj

Recently an AIRRA (Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy – an Islamabad-based research organisation) investigation team went to some parts of Swat that had been under army attacks. The team observed whether the attacks were targeted at the Taliban and their installations. It observed two villages -- Ladikas and Watkai in Mingora -- and Khwazakhela, a tehsil in Swat. The team with its access to the people of the area could manage to take Besham route from Islamabad to reach Mingora via Khwazakhela. Though continuous curfew and alternate threats from the military posts and the Taliban posts badly hampered the journey of the team but somehow some of the members could manage to reach Mingora via Khwazakhela and Charbagh with the exodus of the people from different parts of Swat valley. The team was able to access and interview several dozens of those families who were still stuck up in the valley.

The team observed that the security forces have successfully destroyed the installations of the Taliban and have disrupted their chain of command in that area. They have killed many Taliban there with very little collateral damage, albeit with the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The best example is the Taliban headquarter in Khwazakhela. The headquarters was located on a mountain. It housed the Taliban operational command led by commander Yamin, the intelligence department led by commander Rashid and the department of logistics and supplies. The aerial bombardment of the Pakistan army reduced all that to rubble. The entire side of the mountain housing the headquarters has been exploded and razed.

The Taliban terrorists had established the headquarters with great efforts. They had cleansed a huge portion of the forest on the mountain to make free space for the building. They recruited the youth on a large scale, strengthened their command and control structure, established their hierarchical structure, planted mines on the main roads, dug bunkers and occupied the strategic passes in only two and a half months. And they did all this after the peace deal agreed with the NWFP government in February of this year.

The team interacted with the people in the area. Most of those killed were confirmed Taliban. There had been almost no serious collateral damage. Nearby buildings collapsed due to the force of explosions. Some people got injuries when hit by the collapsing debris.

Moreover, the army has cordoned off several narrow alleys of Mingora to prevent the Taliban from escaping. The military has cordoned off Swat from the northeast (the Shangla side), the southeast (the Buner side) and the southwest (the Dir side). In Mingora city itself, the Taliban are reported to be lying dead in the streets and local people confirm that some of them are well-known Taliban leaders.

There are still stranded people in Swat. The people are facing enormous difficulties due to power failure and water reservoirs in their homes which have dried up. Food commodities have become scarce and fuel stations have more or less stopped functioning. Soldiers of the Pakistan army and the FC are sharing their limited food rations with the stranded people. This goodwill gesture has earned respect of the stranded people for the security forces.

It is suggested to the army to issue the photos or video clips of the killed Taliban to the media and of the destroyed Taliban installations. Local people and the IDPs often know the Taliban and location of their installations. They would confirm that the dead were indeed the Taliban and the installations shown as destroyed indeed belonged to the Taliban. This is important because it will ensure transparency and reassure people of the success being achieved in the war.

It is highly commendable that the security forces are conducting targeted operations that have considerably damaged the Taliban in Swat. I would once again request the army high command to destroy the Taliban networks, installations, headquarters everywhere in Pakistan, including FATA and south Punjab. Taliban leaders in each and every city or town of Pakistan have to be neutralised. There is a strong connection between the Taliban in Waziristan, Orakzai, Swat, South Punjab, Khost and Kunar in terms of supply of manpower, weapons and chain of command. This connection is the Al Qaeda-linked Jalaluddin Haqqani and his terror secretariat in North Waziristan. This connection has to be broken, which means that Haqqani's 'secretariat' must be destroyed. Other than the military front, the war against militancy also needs to be fought on the ideological battleground -- Talibanisation needs to be denied ideological space in the country's security and state apparatus and this can be done by targeting elements in state structures and institutions deemed as being sympathetic to the militants.

The army must carry the war against the Taliban to its logical end. The army owes it to the Pakhtun and by extension to Pakistan, because the Pakhtun are citizens of the country and hence deserve the same protection by the state as accorded to those in the other provinces. The Pakhtun have always taken pride in giving their best sons to the army. It is now the turn of the army to reciprocate in such a manner that truly honours the Pakhtun martyrs of the army. This means complete elimination of the Taliban so that the Pakhtun live their lives free of the jihadi fear and intimidation. If done successfully, this will bind the Pakhtun even more closely with the state and the army. In that context, the army must convert this war into an opportunity that will substantially contribute towards making Pakistan a successfully functioning multi-ethnic state.

While the army is rising itself to the occasion, the performance of the politicians is dismal. The soldiers are giving their blood to save us from the Taliban. They are sharing their limited food ration with the stranded people. The army has given a share of their salary to support the relief work for the IDPs. Where are political leaders? What is President Zardari doing abroad? He should be visiting the IDPs rather than foreign lands. What is Asfandyar Wali doing in London? Why is Afrasiab Khattak in Dubai? The IDPs constantly complain that the ministers, MPAs and MNAs only come when the media is there and leave soon afterwards, without tending to their (the IDPs) problems.

All MNAs and MPAs, especially those elected by the people of Swat, Dir and Buner, should stay with the IDPs of their respective constituencies as long as possible because these are after all the people who voted them into public office.



The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@yahoo.com

Taliban is a generic term like guerilla and there are five different major Taliban groups in Pakistan. It seems Haqqani an outsider with Al Qaeda is brokering deals between them.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/200 ... my-valley/

How Green Was My Valley
May 26, 2009
by Azhar Masood
Special to Foreign Policy Journal

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani shakes hands with a soldier in Swat (Inter Services Public Relations)

ISLAMABAD - The state of Swat, economically self-sustained with rice paddy fields at the town of Thana and wheat and corn producing fields en route to Matta, Kabal, Mingora, Madian, Bahrain, and ending at Walnut Heights of Kalam where trout is the most available all-season food, is home to the peaceful and docile Pashtuns.

The majority of these Pashtuns came into Swat from Dir and Bajour, others from Kailash and Chitral. Their ancestry, some historians claim, is Greek. To an extent Kailash-Chitral, neighboring Swat, gives credence to this claim.

Kailash is a rock-locked valley where one of the generals of Alexander the Great once lost his garrison. One can trace the semblance of Greek within the Kalasha language. Some scholars reject the claim of Greek ancestry, but when the present head of Kailash, Luxun Bibi, took up an invitation by the government of Greece, the meeting state officials discovered that there are many common words between Greek and Kalasha.


Pakistani soldiers in an emerald mine (Inter Services Public Relations)
Swat always remained a self-sustained economy also for its valuable emeralds, extracted from Swat and from the Panjsheer Valley of Afghanistan. Even during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, gemstone dealers from the Indian town of Jaipur would regularly camp at the Pearl Continental Hotel of Peshawar to buy emeralds that were cut and polished in Hong Kong or Belgium.

The majority of Swati people are proudly self-proclaimed “Blue Blood Pashtunsâ€

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... wD98FO7OG0

Pakistan's Wali of Swat blames Taliban, government
By NAHAL TOOSI – 13 hours ago

ISLAMABAD (AP) — His family once ruled the Swat Valley. Now he can only watch as his beautiful ancestral homeland is torn apart by clashes between the Taliban and the Pakistani military — with millions of civilians forced to flee.

"It's disgusting," says Miangul Aurangzeb, the 81-year-old Wali of Swat, who blames the military, the government, the Taliban and just about everyone else for the mess.

"I wish there was no corruption in my country. I wish there was quick justice in my country. I wish the people had the sense to elect good people."

Aurangzeb was the heir apparent in Swat when it was one of the many princely states dotting South Asia. In 1969, more than two decades after Pakistan was carved out of India and both countries gained independence from Britain, Swat fully merged into greater Pakistan.

Aurangzeb never got to rule Swat as the "wali," but says that under an agreement with the government in the 1990s, he was permitted to keep the honorific, although it comes with no power.

While he used to split his time between Swat and Islamabad, the bald, bespectacled Aurangzeb is now staying in the Pakistani capital, where he keeps close tabs on the news and writes letters to editors about subjects that arouse his passions.

His two-story house is modest and worn — not at all palatial — and it quietly blends in to a moderately upscale neighborhood. Pictures of notables he's met, including the late John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, are prominently displayed inside.

Aurangzeb is fortunate. Of the estimated 2.4 million people who have fled Swat and surrounding districts over the past month, hundreds of thousands are living in sweltering tent camps while many others are staying with struggling relatives and friends.

It's a stunning turn of events for a region that was a crown jewel in Pakistani tourism — and whose traditions were largely shaped by Hindus, Buddhists and Sufi Muslims, not the extremist Taliban fighters who have waged a violent campaign there over the past two years.

The reign of Aurangzeb's father was considered a relatively progressive time in Swat, with many saying the elder Miangul Jahanzeb was a benevolent autocrat. Son and father saw merger as inevitable, however, and didn't put up a fight.

"I knew that big fish eat small fish," Aurangzeb told The Associated Press Tuesday.

Despite being pressed, Aurangzeb doesn't want to talk about personal memories of growing up a royal in the "Switzerland of Pakistan." He was last in Swat in April, before the latest round of fighting began in earnest.

He focuses instead on the failings of a country he loves — its corrupt politicians, its habit of changing laws to suit powerful interests, its cronyism and nepotism. The list goes on.

It's the judicial system, however, that earns special ire.

Swat used to be governed by a blend of local customs, Islamic law and "common sense" as rendered by the ruler, Aurangzeb says. Cases would be decided in one or two hearings, not stretched on for months or years the way they have since the Pakistani judicial system was adopted.

Islamists, including the Taliban, have over the years exploited the grievance of delayed justice to gain followers in Swat.

Aurangzeb, a moderate Muslim who wears Western dress, speaks perfect English and loves his e-mail, can't bring himself to condemn the Taliban without criticizing the government, too.

"The curse of democracy is that justice is very, very slow," he says.

He points to a newspaper account of a case in Pakistan's Punjab province, in which an influential landlord allegedly married off a 13-year-old girl to his 50-something brother, supposedly to avenge his daughter's elopement with a tenant's nephew.

"The Taliban would not have let this happen. My father would not have let this happen," he says. "I ask the government of Pakistan, what are you doing about this?"

Aurangzeb has harsh words for Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's former military ruler under whose watch Swat's situation began deteriorating. He claims Musharraf let the Taliban run roughshod in Swat because it would help win more U.S. aid.

The military has no choice but to fight the Taliban now, he says, but the problem should have been taken care of years ago, before it metastasized.

Asked what would have happened if Swat had retained its sovereignty, he says the region and the people would have been better off. But Pakistan would have loomed all around, and its leaders would never have left him alone, he says.

"Thank God I am not the ruler of Swat," he says.

But if he were, would Swat have come to this?

The Wali doesn't wish to dwell.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.