PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Thursday showed off teenagers and hundreds of armed men from a private army who vowed Thursday to kick out the Taliban from the Swat valley, officials and witnesses said.
'We killed three Taliban and captured three others yesterday,' Syed Badshah, head of the private militia, told reporters in Qalagai town in northern Swat, where militants have fought for two years to impose sharia law.
Pakistan's military invited journalists to visit the town and meet the lashkar, a tribal militia raised traditionally on a temporary basis, and show off bodies of purportedly slain militants.
Around 300 people, mostly ethnic Pashtuns sporting grey beards and a clutch of younger men, squatted on open ground with guns slung over their shoulders.
Holding a Kalashnikov rifle with visible ease, one boy told private TV channel Geo he was 12 years old and joined the Lashkar for the sake of peace.
'I want peace in the valley, I want the schools reopened in our area,' said Gul Nawab. 'Yes, I know how to use a Kalashnikov,' he claimed.
Pakistani government forces have been bogged down, fighting for years against Taliban militants spreading out of tribal areas into settled areas, such as the northwest district and one-time tourist region of Swat.
Saddled with a standing army that lacks equipment and counter-insurgency specialists, one of Pakistan's answers has been to arm and support tribesmen to protect local communities.
'This is the first Lashkar that people have formed in Swat on a self-help basis,' said Major Suleman Akbar, army commander in the northern Kabal district of Swat, vowing full cooperation with the private militia.
'We will provide them arms, ammunition, rations and other logistic support' said Akbar as he handed three assault rifles and 3,000 rounds of ammunition.
'The Taliban are creating chaos in the name of Islam, they are terrorists,' Badshah told AFP by telephone.
'We have taken up arms in our defence. The lashkar has been raised because life became miserable in Swat with the daily slaughtering of innocent people.'
Around 5,000 people have joined the lashkar, he claimed, urging the government to arm them quickly. He confirmed that members were aged 12 to 50 years.
'Taliban know only the language of guns, we will also speak to them in their language now,' 19-year-old Salman Ahmed told AFP.
In late April, Pakistan launched a blistering air and ground offensive designed to dislodge Taliban from in and around Swat after rebels flouted a peace deal and advanced into new territory further south towards Islamabad.
The valley had slipped out of the government control after a radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign for tough sharia laws.
Thousands of his supporters led a brutal campaign beheading opponents, burning schools and fighting against government troops since November 2007.
Commanders say more than 1,800 militants and 166 security personnel have died in the military operation but there is no independent confirmation of the death tolls, and skirmishes in and around Swat have continued.
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