ISLAMABAD: Pakistan suspended fighting in the volatile northwest yesterday for the holy month of Ramadan, allowing some of the 300,000 people displaced by airstrikes and gunbattles to pack up belongings and return to their shattered homes.
The military warned, however, that any provocations in the Bajaur tribal region, a rumored hide-out of Osama Bin Laden near the border with Afghanistan, would bring immediate retaliation.
While Taleban spokesman Maulvi Umar welcomed the lull in fighting, he said militants would not lay down their arms as demanded, raising concerns they could use the next month to regroup.
Pakistan’s five-month-old government initially held peace talks with Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants living in mountainous border regions — something Pervez Musharraf briefly tried as well before he was forced to resign as president — but those efforts met with little success.
It has since turned to force, pounding suspected hide-outs with helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said three weeks of fighting in Bajaur had killed more than 560 militants and sent more than 300,000 people, mostly women and children, fleeing to government relief camps.
Many, barely scraping by, said they could not afford to make the journey home for Ramadan and would instead remain with their families in sweltering, mosquito-infested tents. Others started gathering up their few belongings yesterday and piling into buses and pickup trucks.
“God knows what will happen once we get there,” said Bakhsh Ali Khan, who was heading with his wife and five children to their home in Pashat, an area of Bajaur.
“But we’re living in shambles here. Our family has been separated, we do not have enough food, proper clothing or beds.”
American officials have pressed Pakistan to crack down on militants in its tribal regions, fearing Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters involved in attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan use those border areas as safe zones.
The US is suspected of launching a series of missile strikes targeting alleged militant compounds along Pakistan’s mountainous frontier, including one Sunday that left four dead.
