Pakistan pushed to war against Taliban

ISLAMABAD: Days before Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari was to fly to Washington, the army on Tuesday launched a massive offensive against the Taliban, using fighter jets and helicopter gunships to pound their positions in North Western Frontier Province's Buner district, about 100 km from Islamabad. The army claimed soldiers had pushed Taliban fighters out of Lower Dir, an area the militia had captured over the weekend.(Watch)
Military spokesperson Major General Athar Abbas said army and paramilitary Frontier Corps launched the operation and killed more than 70 terrorists. ``Ten soldiers were also killed in the fighting,'' he said.
The army had killed 46 militants including Qari Shahid, a top Taliban commander, in Dir and Lal Qila areas of the province on Sunday and Monday.
Islamabad's much-awaited action came as concerns peaked in Washington about the steady trot at which Taliban was capturing territory and the fate of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. And of course, the disbursement of a billion dollar US aid package was being increasingly made contingent on action by Zardari's government, paralysed by internal dissent and an ambivalence showcased by the peace deal with the Taliban in Swat. Even as tanks reportedly rolled towards Buner and Taliban positions were bombed, critics said the offensive could be a ploy to demonstrate Islamabad's commitment to the war on terror.
Major General Abbas said the army was compelled to launch the operation, as Taliban were challenging government's writ and harassing the locals by preventing them from listening to music, preventing girls from going to schools, attacking sufi shrines, ripping out cassette players from cars and storming wedding to stop festivities.
``The militants are acquiring weapons and money from unknown sources and have established bunkers on mountain tops,'' Abbas said. ``The militants are forcing local youth to join their ranks.''
He said the mission was to flush out militants from the area. ``More than 300 Taliban fighter had entered Buner and their withdrawal from the area on Saturday was a drama,'' he said.
Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the militia was waiting for radical cleric Maulana Sufi Muhammad to take a call on the peace deal with the government. But the cleric remains elusive with both Taliban and the army denying knowledge of his whereabouts. ``We're concerned about Sufi Mohammed's whereabouts as we haven't been able to contact him for sometime,'' Khan said. The cleric is said to have been home in Dir when army launched the operation there.
Despite the setback, Khan remained defiant saying Taliban would resume its struggle to impose Sharia. ``The Taliban movement can't be confined to Swat. We're free to move inside Pakistan and spread our ideology.''
Taliban had entered Buner and Dir in breach of the peace agreement with the government, officials said. The deal was signed earlier this year and allowed Sharia law in NWFP's Malakand region in return of Taliban's disarmament pledge. The offensive strains the shaky deal in the region to which Buner, about 100 km from Islamabad, belongs.
The aerial strikes in Buner came as tens of thousands of people fled the region. ``People are shifting to safer places like Chakdara, Batkhela and Mardan,'' a local journalist told TOI. The military spokesperson said the government had set up a temporary camp for internally displaced people at a college in Dir.