Pakistan hails success against militants

McClatchy Newspapers

BARA, Pakistan — Pakistan’s new government claimed success Sunday in its first military operation against Islamic extremists, moving against warlords who were threatening to overrun the major city of Peshawar.

A paramilitary force took on militants based in the wild Khyber tribal area, just west of Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North West Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan.

The offensive, which began Saturday, was at odds with the government’s declared policy of seeking peace deals with Taliban and other extremist groups massed in the country’s northwest fringe. But the move won plaudits from Washington and Kabul, which have complained bitterly about attacks against Afghan and NATO forces launched from Pakistan’s tribal area.

Troops blew up the home and other bases of warlord Mangal Bagh around the town of Bara, in the Khyber agency, and uncovered a jail and torture chamber, according to officials. They shut down an illegal FM radio station he used to spread his message in daily broadcasts. They also fired artillery shells at targets on nearby hilltops. For the first time in months, the paramilitary Frontier Corps moved out of its forts in Khyber to patrol the streets, in armored personnel carriers and jeeps.

Claiming success, the top official at the federal Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, said: “I want to tell the people of Peshawar, sleep easy tonight. We are awake.”

However, the government action came only after repeated pleas from provincial officials and police for a response to the militants’ increasingly brazen incursions into Peshawar and other major cities in North West Frontier Province. Peshawar, which has a population of 3 million, is now surrounded from three sides by Taliban and other Islamist groups.

Habibullah Khan, the top bureaucrat in charge of the tribal belt, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said: “They [the militants] had come to think that, no matter what they do, the state will not challenge us. ... There were public floggings and private jails within a stone’s throw of Peshawar.”