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November 14, 2007

Pakistan: Taliban Islamists Take Control Of Town

News from Dawn and Pakistan's Daily Times.

Malakand district adjoins Swat, a region where Islamist unrest was one of the causes that supposedly triggered President Musharraf to impose a state of martial law throughout Pakistan. Both Malakand and Swat are in North-West Frontier Province, adjoining Pakistan. Swat has been called the "Switzerland" of Pakistan, as its mountainous scenery draws tourists from the rest of Pakistan. Since January, a firebrand cleric called Maulana Fazlullah has been in a state of war with the authorities. He has taken over 59 villages as part of his "independent" rulership. Fazlullah commands paramilitary units, which have kidnapped numerous Pakistani soldiers, and is linked to the Pakistan Taliban.

Malakand was where Winston Churchill was posted in the 1890s with the Fourth Hussars where he became a war correspondent. His book on those experiences (his first) was entitled Story of the Malakand Field Force, published in 1898.

Yesterday, immediately after sunset, 500 Taliban took over the town of Alpuri in Shangla district in Malakand Division. Shangla is the yellow area on the map. It used to be part of Swat district. The offices of the district police officer, district coordination officer, district courts and police lines were taken over in the operation by militants.

Militants in Swat had already openly vowed to take over Shangla, and Alpuri is the district's administrative center. Apparently there was no resistance to the takeover. A member of the Musharraf cabinet resides in Alpuri - federal Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam.

As a precautionary measure, a curfew was enacted in adjacent Malakand district. A curfew has also been imposed in Mingora, the administrative capital of Swat, which has not yet succumbed to the militants. Currently, six out of Swat's eight sub-districts have fallen under control of Islamist militants.

The Taliban leader behind the takeover of Alpuri is Maulana Muhammad Alam. He told residents of Alpuri: "We only struggle for the enforcement of Shariah," and promised that no-one would be hurt.

A senior Pakistan army source, Lt-Gen Muhammad Masood Aslam, has claimed that hundreds of foreign militants have been intensifying their operations in Swat. Earlier in the year, there was fighting between local Islamists in Swat and Islamists who came from outside Pakistan, particularly from Uzbekistan.

Aslam said: "Force is not the solution to anything. We want minimal application of force and not an indiscriminate military operation. We will use force in a selective and a very precise manner that is based on good intelligence and is most targeted."

The army has been attacking occupied centers in Swat since Sunday, using artillery shelling and helicopter gunships. Local people have claimed that six civilians were injured in yesterday's shelling, including a woman and a child.

The Pakistan army has claimed that four Islamist bunkers were blown up, along with an ammunition dump, in an attack on Sambat. The army claims that four Islamists were killed in the raid. Five militants were said to have been injured when a militant checkpoint was destroyed. In another raid, four local militants and one Afghan were captured.

The Islamists have set up checkpoints, where vehicles are stopped and "taxed" by militants.

Lt-Gen. Masood Aslam has said that the MMA (Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal or "United Front"), the combined Islamist opposition parties that ran NWFP's Regional Assembly, had prevented the army from using force when it was first deployed to Swat in July.

I will be compiling a larger report for FamilySecurityMatters.org on the situation in Pakistan since the state of martial law was imposed. This report will be published simultaneously on Western Resistance.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 14, 2007 5:57 AM

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