Taliban's darkness descends on Swat Valley

Article from: The Australian
"GUL Makai" finished the Seventh Grade at her private school in Pakistan's Swat Valley last December. But the holidays brought little joy for the young Afghan, her friends or family.In a diary that she writes under a pen name for the BBC's Urdu service she documents the miseries of life in the former tourist mecca, whose mountains have become a stronghold of militant Islamists."Our parents are very scared," she writes in one entry. "They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the Taliban themselves announce on the FM channel that girls can go to school."Just 160km from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, the picturesque valley - once famed for its cosmopolitan ski resort and liberal, artistic community - has become a symbol of the Pakistani Government's inability to crack down on a jihadist movement that is threatening to destabilise the country.Almost daily, residents in Mingora, the only major town in Swat, find four to five headless bodies on the streets, victims of the Taliban.Responsible for the reign of terror is radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, a Talibani leader known as Radio Mullah for his fiery sermons broadcast nightly via a pirate FM radio frequency.Fazlullah stepped up his campaign in Swat after November's Mumbai attacks when Pakistan redeployed troops to the border with India. In just a few months he is said to have increased his area of control from less than a third to more than 80 per cent of the 9000sqkm area.In December, he announced all education for girls would cease by January 15 - when private schools were due to reopen - prompting Pakistani newspaper The News to editorialise: "The beautiful valley now enters a time of darkness."The number of schools blown up or torched stands at 181, and militants have blown up power grids, bridges, gas lines and hotels.Last week, Fazlullah demanded 40 provincial ministers and local government officials appear before a Taliban court to answer charges of causing unrest in the area, or face death.Kamran Bokhari, senior South Asia analyst with US-based global intelligence company Stratfor, says Swat now represents a "red line" for the Pakistani Government.Bokhari says the Taliban and al-Qa'ida have long had strongholds in the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a special autonomous zone along the Afghan border, but Swat is in the heart of the North Western Frontier Province and "very much part of Pakistan"."Swat is extremely important because if it does completely fall to the militants, or the army is unable to re-establish the writ of the state, then that would be the first district in Pakistan proper to fall," he told The Australian.The US views Swat as the most dangerous of the militant strongholds because its terror camps feed into the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan - the Western coalition's main front in the war on terror.Pakistani Interior Affairs Minister Rehman Malik told the Senate last week that the organisations behind the trouble in the valley included al-Qa'ida, Tehrik-i-Taliban, Tanzeem-i-Islami, Tora Bora and Qari Mushtaq.Swat is likely to be at the top of Richard Holbrooke's agenda this week when he meets Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on his first visit as the US's special envoy to South Asia.While the Government has been fighting Fazlullah's insurgency since 2007, many believe the strife in the region might have been averted far earlier had former president Pervez Musharraf shut down the cleric's broadcasts, which tapped into local frustration with corruption and the judicial system."Absolutely everyone listens to the daily radio broadcasts, because they don't know if a rival has made an accusation that puts them on the list," a Mingora resident widowed by the Taliban told local media."It gives them an opportunity to present their side of the case to the Taliban, and be acquitted in the following day's broadcast."The military has made little headway and has alienated many residents who suspect government troops of tipping off militants before attacks and accuse them of killing more civilians than militants.Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed last week that his Government would swiftly crush the insurgency. But he added that military action was not the only solution, suggesting negotiations with Fazlullah might still be an option."You can't imagine how bad it is," Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal politician whose home in Swat was bombed in December, said of the security situation. "It's worse day by day."Haji Adeel, a senator and senior ANP leader, told Dawn television that security was so dire that "no governor, chief minister or the Prime Minister can venture to go there".Those with the means have already relocated to Islamabad or Peshawar. Up to a third of the Swat's 1.5 million population are said to have fled - and the region's poorest residents began flooding out last week after the Government opened two relief camps around Mingora.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs projected last week that the situation in Swat and FATA tribal areas could significantly worsen over the next 12 months, displacing a further 625,000 people.