Taliban Challenges Pakistan Army on Home Turf as Battle Widens
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By James Rupert
May 5 (Bloomberg) -- For Pakistan’s army, Mardan is a launching point for its offensive against Taliban guerrillas. For the Taliban, the city is a center of its campaign to spread fear.
Taliban bombings in the city of 340,000, headquarters to an army regiment, have forced shops selling Bollywood movies and love songs on CDs and cassettes to close. Internet cafes, which Taliban say promote obscenity, are in hiding. Workers are doubling the height of the brick wall around the Government Girls’ School, where a rocket exploded last month.
The Taliban’s move into an area permeated with military facilities -- the Pakistan Air Force Academy, the Risalpur air base, the School of Armor and Mechanized Warfare and the School of Artillery are all nearby -- represents a test of the army’s determination and ability to protect its home turf.
“The critical question is how decisive and determined this offensive will be,” said Muhammad Farooq Khan, a Mardan psychiatrist and democracy activist. “In the past, the army has launched half-hearted operations and declared a victory without truly defeating the Taliban, who then soon return.”
President Asif Ali Zardari’s struggles to contain the Taliban will be part of the agenda tomorrow when he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai meet with President Barack Obama in Washington.
Yesterday, thousands of refugees fled the Swat Valley, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Mardan, as militants who imposed Islamic law there prepared to defend themselves against government troops seeking to halt the Taliban’s move south from mountain strongholds toward the capital of Islamabad.
Not Nuclear
The valley’s military bases aren’t among those cited as nuclear weapons facilities by monitoring groups such as Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
Even with this strong military presence, Taliban influence is heavy in Mardan, which is located 115 kilometers northwest of Islamabad.
For five years, Pakistan-based Taliban guerrillas have been taking control of mountainous areas in their Pashtun homeland. On April 14, Zardari approved a truce with Taliban who had moved into the country’s interior, seizing the Swat Valley. In that deal, the government agreed to establish Islamic courts in Swat and six other mountain districts of northwestern Pakistan.
Buner Battle
The truce notwithstanding, guerrillas advanced again last month into Buner, about 100 kilometers from the capital, where the military says it has killed 80 Taliban in the past week of fighting.
“The Taliban have become confident and emboldened with their recent advances,” said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired brigadier general from Mardan. On April 29, guerrillas ambushed a police cruiser on the superhighway between Islamabad and Peshawar, injuring an officer.
The same day, Obama called the new offensive a sign of “some recognition” by Pakistani authorities that “their biggest threat right now comes internally.”
Shah cited senior officers as saying the Taliban’s latest advance has hardened the army against the guerrillas. The military for years has supported Taliban and allied militant fighters as proxies that Pakistan can use for leverage in neighboring Afghanistan and India, according to observers such as Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
British Rule
Mardan became a military center under British rule as home to Queen Victoria’s Own Corps of Guides. For more than 150 years, Britain and then Pakistan built roads, schools and irrigation systems around Mardan and Peshawar, bringing outside influences to the region’s conservative Pashtun ethnic group.
Mardan and its valley are now a front in the struggle for Pakistan largely because neither Britain nor Pakistan established full state control over the mountains to the north, Khan said. The main battlefields of the past year, the districts of Bajaur and Swat, plus the new combat zones of Dir and Buner, all belonged to independent principalities, or khanates, that weren’t incorporated into Pakistan until 1969.
Three years of increasing Taliban attacks from Swat into the towns on the plains have created “a lot of fear in the hearts of people,” said Shams ul-Haq Yousufzai, a government information officer in Mardan. Last May, a suicide bomber killed 11 people, including at least four soldiers, at a gate of the Punjab Regimental Center, Mardan’s army base. Two other bases near Mardan have been bombed in the past 30 months.
Girls’ School
While Mardan has many schools for girls, the Taliban enforce strict traditions that often prevent women from leaving their homes, even for school or health care. In March, suspected Taliban militants rocketed Mardan’s main girls’ school a day after another one outside town was bombed.
Taliban claimed responsibility for bombing a nearby village office of the National Rural Support Program and killing a woman on the agency’s staff. Taliban have criticized such non- government organizations as promoters of obscenity because they encourage a more public role for women.
Fear has depressed land prices in Sheikh Maltoon Town, an elite Mardan suburb, by 25 percent since last year, said Zubair, a property dealer who uses a single name. “No one will invest in Mardan now, because of worries that the Taliban are coming,” he said in an interview.
An unmarked doorway off a narrow alley in the city was piled last week with 17 pairs of dusty plastic sandals, slipped off by the young men who filled every terminal at the Internet center inside.
“Our business is good because everyone wants the Internet,” said the attendant, amid strains of Hindi film music and explosions from computer games. “But you must not write my name or address, or the Taliban may come to attack us.”
Khan, the democracy activist, says that while the army offensive is welcome, “it may have come too late to save Mardan and Pakistan.”
To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in Islamabad at jrupert3@ bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 4, 2009 17:55 EDT
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By James Rupert
May 5 (Bloomberg) -- For Pakistan’s army, Mardan is a launching point for its offensive against Taliban guerrillas. For the Taliban, the city is a center of its campaign to spread fear.
Taliban bombings in the city of 340,000, headquarters to an army regiment, have forced shops selling Bollywood movies and love songs on CDs and cassettes to close. Internet cafes, which Taliban say promote obscenity, are in hiding. Workers are doubling the height of the brick wall around the Government Girls’ School, where a rocket exploded last month.
The Taliban’s move into an area permeated with military facilities -- the Pakistan Air Force Academy, the Risalpur air base, the School of Armor and Mechanized Warfare and the School of Artillery are all nearby -- represents a test of the army’s determination and ability to protect its home turf.
“The critical question is how decisive and determined this offensive will be,” said Muhammad Farooq Khan, a Mardan psychiatrist and democracy activist. “In the past, the army has launched half-hearted operations and declared a victory without truly defeating the Taliban, who then soon return.”
President Asif Ali Zardari’s struggles to contain the Taliban will be part of the agenda tomorrow when he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai meet with President Barack Obama in Washington.
Yesterday, thousands of refugees fled the Swat Valley, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Mardan, as militants who imposed Islamic law there prepared to defend themselves against government troops seeking to halt the Taliban’s move south from mountain strongholds toward the capital of Islamabad.
Not Nuclear
The valley’s military bases aren’t among those cited as nuclear weapons facilities by monitoring groups such as Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
Even with this strong military presence, Taliban influence is heavy in Mardan, which is located 115 kilometers northwest of Islamabad.
For five years, Pakistan-based Taliban guerrillas have been taking control of mountainous areas in their Pashtun homeland. On April 14, Zardari approved a truce with Taliban who had moved into the country’s interior, seizing the Swat Valley. In that deal, the government agreed to establish Islamic courts in Swat and six other mountain districts of northwestern Pakistan.
Buner Battle
The truce notwithstanding, guerrillas advanced again last month into Buner, about 100 kilometers from the capital, where the military says it has killed 80 Taliban in the past week of fighting.
“The Taliban have become confident and emboldened with their recent advances,” said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst and retired brigadier general from Mardan. On April 29, guerrillas ambushed a police cruiser on the superhighway between Islamabad and Peshawar, injuring an officer.
The same day, Obama called the new offensive a sign of “some recognition” by Pakistani authorities that “their biggest threat right now comes internally.”
Shah cited senior officers as saying the Taliban’s latest advance has hardened the army against the guerrillas. The military for years has supported Taliban and allied militant fighters as proxies that Pakistan can use for leverage in neighboring Afghanistan and India, according to observers such as Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
British Rule
Mardan became a military center under British rule as home to Queen Victoria’s Own Corps of Guides. For more than 150 years, Britain and then Pakistan built roads, schools and irrigation systems around Mardan and Peshawar, bringing outside influences to the region’s conservative Pashtun ethnic group.
Mardan and its valley are now a front in the struggle for Pakistan largely because neither Britain nor Pakistan established full state control over the mountains to the north, Khan said. The main battlefields of the past year, the districts of Bajaur and Swat, plus the new combat zones of Dir and Buner, all belonged to independent principalities, or khanates, that weren’t incorporated into Pakistan until 1969.
Three years of increasing Taliban attacks from Swat into the towns on the plains have created “a lot of fear in the hearts of people,” said Shams ul-Haq Yousufzai, a government information officer in Mardan. Last May, a suicide bomber killed 11 people, including at least four soldiers, at a gate of the Punjab Regimental Center, Mardan’s army base. Two other bases near Mardan have been bombed in the past 30 months.
Girls’ School
While Mardan has many schools for girls, the Taliban enforce strict traditions that often prevent women from leaving their homes, even for school or health care. In March, suspected Taliban militants rocketed Mardan’s main girls’ school a day after another one outside town was bombed.
Taliban claimed responsibility for bombing a nearby village office of the National Rural Support Program and killing a woman on the agency’s staff. Taliban have criticized such non- government organizations as promoters of obscenity because they encourage a more public role for women.
Fear has depressed land prices in Sheikh Maltoon Town, an elite Mardan suburb, by 25 percent since last year, said Zubair, a property dealer who uses a single name. “No one will invest in Mardan now, because of worries that the Taliban are coming,” he said in an interview.
An unmarked doorway off a narrow alley in the city was piled last week with 17 pairs of dusty plastic sandals, slipped off by the young men who filled every terminal at the Internet center inside.
“Our business is good because everyone wants the Internet,” said the attendant, amid strains of Hindi film music and explosions from computer games. “But you must not write my name or address, or the Taliban may come to attack us.”
Khan, the democracy activist, says that while the army offensive is welcome, “it may have come too late to save Mardan and Pakistan.”
To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in Islamabad at jrupert3@ bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 4, 2009 17:55 EDT
