Pakistan Says It Is Meeting Terms of Peace Deal

nyt.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani government announced the creation of a new Islamic appeals court over the weekend, saying that it was meeting the terms of a February peace agreement with the Taliban and that the militants should now cease their armed struggle.

But the Taliban said Sunday that they had not agreed to the two judges appointed to the provincial court.

“The government has fulfilled its part of the agreement,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North-West Frontier Province, told reporters on Saturday evening. “Now anyone carrying arms would be treated as a rebel and would be prosecuted in the Qazi courts,” he said. A Qazi is a judge trained in Islamic law.

The peace deal has been strongly criticized in Pakistan and abroad, in particular since militants, rather than disarming, have expanded their presence into neighboring areas in recent weeks. The Pakistani Army mounted an operation against them in the districts of Dir and Buner last week.

Under the February accord, the provincial government of the North-West Frontier Province agreed to impose Shariah law in the Malakand division, a region that covers the valley of Swat where the Taliban have de facto rule, and surrounding districts. In return, the militants agreed to disperse and disarm and hand over their heavy weapons.

The agreement achieved a cease-fire in the Swat valley but little else. Around the main town of Mingora, the Taliban remain armed and in control. The military has ceased operations but has maintained its bases and gun positions all along the east side of the valley, said Anees Jillani, a lawyer who works at the Supreme Court and who visited the Swat valley two weeks ago.

The Taliban continue to demolish schools in the valley because the military has often used them as bases during operations. Meanwhile, fighting has shifted to the adjoining districts of Dir and Buner, which are also covered by the agreement, after Taliban incursions there.

A spokesman for the pro-Taliban negotiator, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, said Sunday that the Taliban had not agreed to the judges appointed to the new court, but that they would talk further with the government about it.

A spokesman for the militants in Swat, Muslim Khan, said the Taliban beheaded two government officials abducted Saturday in revenge for the killing of two Taliban commanders in Buner, Reuters reported. He was also reported by local news media as saying the militants would not disarm, since weapons were the “ornaments of Islam.”

The provincial government, which is led by the Awami National Party, a secular Pashtun party with a strong local following, has persisted with negotiations with the militants to implement the agreement in the interests of peace. Party leaders have insisted that they have to win the people to their side, and that the only way to do that was to show that they were prepared to go the extra mile for peace and that military force, which has caused high civilian casualties, was used only as a last resort.

The Pakistani military also backs the peace deal, and has been reluctant to fight the militants without strong political and public backing.

Both sides have complained that the other has not kept to the deal. The militants and their supporters contend that the government has been slow to organize the Islamic courts. The government says Maulana Muhammad has repeatedly changed the militants’ demands. The provincial government created the Islamic appeals court after Maulana Muhammad refused to recognize Pakistan’s higher courts of appeal.

Meanwhile, the military announced progress in its operations against militants in the district of Buner. The operational commander, Brig. Gen. Fayyez Mehmood, told local journalists that 80 militants had been killed in the weeklong operation. Three Pakistani servicemen had been killed and six wounded, he said.

Pakistani forces have secured the roads into the district from the west and the south and were now moving on the last base of militants in the north part of the district around the shrine of Pir Baba and Asambar, he said.