ISLAMABAD: A two-month offensive by Pakistani forces has driven militants from a stronghold through which Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters had poured into neighboring Afghanistan to attack US troops, the army said yesterday.
But the operation has cost the lives of at least 95 civilians as well as 73 troops and left a trail of devastation in a region where poverty already drives young Muslims into the arms of extremists. A total of 1,500 suspected Pakistani and foreign militants have also died in the operation.
The military said its forces captured Loi Sam in the Bajaur tribal region on Friday after a long and bloody struggle.
The town sits on a vital intersection of roads leading to the border as well as to three neighboring Pakistan regions. “Now we have complete control in this area from where miscreants used to go to Afghanistan, Mohmand, Dir and Swat,” army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told reporters brought to the intersection yesterday.
Pakistan’s Army launched an offensive in Bajaur in early August, saying the region had become a “mega-sanctuary” for militants who had set up a virtual mini-state with Taleban-style courts.
The army says it faced stiff resistance near Loi Sam from local Taleban militants reinforced by foreign fighters, including some from Afghanistan. More areas remain to be cleared, and Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, who commands a paramilitary force involved in the fighting, said it could take six months to a year to gain complete control of Bajaur. The generals spoke to reporters flown into Bajaur on a military helicopter. Poor security and government restrictions have made it virtually impossible to verify accounts of the fighting.
What reporters driven from Khar, the region’s main town, to Loi Sam yesterday saw made plain that many of them have nothing but despair to return to. In one village along the road, devastated residential compounds, some of them connected by militant tunnels, lined both sides of the road. Bloodstained pillows and twisted aluminum cooking pots lay in one pile of rubble in an area strewn with thousands of spent shell cases.
In Loi Sam itself, hardly a building had escaped. Houses, shops and gas stations were badly damaged or destroyed.
— With input from agencies
