State of siege in Pakistan as al-Qaeda tightens grip
Pastor Dale Morgan
State of siege in Pakistan as al-Qaeda tightens grip*
By Jane Perlez
in Peshawar
On the front line of the war on terror the people no longer believe
Musharraf's government can protect them
FOR centuries, fighting and lawlessness have been part of the fabric of
the frontier city of Peshawar. But Pakistan's war with Islamic militants
has spilled right into its alleys and bazaars, its forts and armouries,
killing policemen and soldiers and scaring its famously tough citizens.
There is a sense of siege, as the Islamic insurgency pours out of the
adjacent tribal region into the city, one of Pakistan's largest, and its
surrounding districts.
The Taliban and their fighters now hold strategic pockets on the city's
outskirts, from where they strike at the military and the police, order
schoolgirls to wear the burqa and blow up shops selling DVDs.
Suicide bombings and missile attacks occurred on an average of once a
week here in 2007, according to a tally by the city's police department.
In 2006, while there were occasional grenade attacks and explosions, the
authorities did not record a single suicide bombing or rocket attack
inside the city.
The proximity of Peshawar to Pakistan's tribal areas near the Afghan
border where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have regrouped in the past two
years makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan's
quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists
against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf.
Police and residents say the insurgents have undermined public faith in
the government, sown distrust and made the police fearful for their
lives. "People feel the insecurity is so high, no one can fix it," said
Humair Bilour, the sister-in-law of Malik Saad, a popular Peshawar
police chief who was killed in a suicide bomb attack last year. "How can
the government do anything when the government itself is involved in it?"
She said she and her friends were now afraid to go out. "People go to
the bazaar and make jokes: 'Is this going to be my last trip?'" she said.
The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important
pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets.
Earlier this month, rockets were fired from Mohmand, a district in the
tribal areas adjacent to Peshawar, at an army barracks in Warsak on the
city's perimeter, an area that a few months ago was considered free of
the Taliban.
The army headquarters in the centre of the city were struck last month
by a bomber who was hiding explosives under her burqa which were set off
by remote control. The assassination a year ago of the police chief,
Saad, who was killed while on duty trying to control a religious
procession in one of the bazaars, shook the city.
"It's asymmetrical warfare against an established state," said Muhammad
Sulaman Khan, chief of operations for the Peshawar police and a close
friend of Saad's. "The terrorists only don't have to lose it, we need to
win it."
At the core of the troubles, many say, lie demands by the United States
that the Pakistani military, generously financed by Washington, join in
its campaign against terrorism, which means killing fellow Pakistanis in
the tribal areas.
The Bush administration is convinced al-Qaeda and the Taliban have
gained new strength in the past two years, particularly in the tribal
region districts of North and South Waziristan and Bajaur. It has said
it is considering sending American forces to help the Pakistani soldiers
in those areas. Musharraf has scoffed at the idea.
Any direct intervention by American forces would only strengthen the
backlash now under way against soldiers and the police in Peshawar. That
reaction spread this month to Lahore, the capital of Punjab province,
where a suicide bomber killed almost two dozen policemen at a lawyers'
rally.
Farook Adam Khan, a lawyer, said: "Pakistani soldiers never used to be
targets. Now we have the radicals antagonised by Musharraf and his
politics of cosying up to the United States. The actions taken by the
army in Waziristan and Bajaur and Swat are causing the problems here."
Swat is an area 100 miles north of Peshawar, where the Pakistani army is
currently battling a Pakistani Taliban insurgent group with mixed results.
The standing of the Pakistani military is for the first time suffering
significant numbers of defections, mostly among soldiers reluctant to
fight in the tribal areas.
There are rumours of courts-martial, although the information is tightly
held by the army, former officers said. Morale among the police in
Peshawar has plummeted amid a series of police killings.
Terrorist activities around Peshawar began to increase, Khan said, after
a major attack on a madrasa, or religious school, in Bajaur in October
2006, in which 82 people, including 12 teenagers, were killed. The
Pakistani army said intelligence had shown that the madrasa was used as
a training base by al-Qaeda. Locals said the killings were the work of
an American remotely piloted drone, a charge the US denied.
A few months later, government schools for girls around Peshawar began
to receive threats that they would be blown up if the students did not
wear burqas.
At one such school, in Shah Dhand Baba, a town on the northern fringes
of Peshawar, the principal, Gul Bahar Begum, said she received a
handwritten letter last February demanding the students cover up or the
school would be blown up. She said that about 70% of the girls now wore
burqas.
"It is the Islamic way to cover," she said of her instructions to the
girls to cover up. "So the militants were right, but the way they
imposed their decision was not."
Maryam Sultan, 16,
said she made contact with the militants, saying that burqas were too
expensive for some of the girls. The militants replied, saying, "If the
girls can afford makeup, they can afford burqas," according to officials
in the district. Days later, the girls were in burqas.
Himayat Mayar, the local mayor, blamed the government for the threats
against the girls.
He said that during the five years that Musharraf and his allies in a
coalition of Islamic parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, had governed
the North-West Frontier Province, they had allowed madrasas for young
Islamic jihadists to flouri
sh.
"There are so many madrasas run by mullahs that train jihadis and get
funds from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait," Mayar said. If it wanted to, he added,
the government could easily provide teachers and computers to the
madrasas, and register them.
Peshawar's booming business in illicit Western and Indian DVDs has been
another target of the militants. Many of the city's myriad retail
outlets have closed after being bombed, or threatened with violence.
At the Bilal DVD Parlour, the owners, Bilal Javed and Akhtar Ali, said
their sales – ranging from Pride And Prejudice and Die Hard 4.0 to the
latest Bollywood films and old Bruce Lee movies, had fallen by 90%.
They said people had been afraid to shop there since a bomb hidden in a
water cooler exploded at a DVD store across the street last year,
killing five people, including a seven-year-old boy who wanted to buy a
computer mouse.
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Last Updated: 19 January 2008 8:22 PM