ISLAMABAD: Pakistani forces battled Taleban fighters yesterday as the militants denounced the army and government as US stooges and said a peace pact would end unless the government halted its offensive.
Northwest Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Husain, who helped negotiate the peace pact and had been one of its strongest defenders, pledged to fight the militants.
“We set up Islamic courts, we gave them Islamic judges, yet they do not accept this. They have some other agenda,” said Husain. “We will fight them and, God willing, these handful of miscreants will be defeated and the nation will prevail.”
“We are now convinced that the agenda of Sufi Muhammad of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Muhammdi was not peace but its hidden objective was to provide respite to militants,” Husain told reporters in Peshawar yesterday.
In Mingora, Muhammad told several private TV channels, “We do not accept the constitution of Pakistan. It is un-Islamic. Girls’ education is not acceptable and we believe in what he termed complete Shariah-based Islamic system.”
The February pact and spreading Taleban influence have raised alarm in the United States about the ability of nuclear-armed Pakistan — important in efforts to stabilize Afghanistan — to stand up to the militants. Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Islamabad of abdicating to the Taleban while President Barack Obama expressed grave concern the government was “very fragile” and unable to deliver basic services.
Obama will present his strategy for defeating Al-Qaeda to Pakistan and Afghanistan leaders tomorrow amid growing US concern it is losing the Afghan war.
In the Buner valley, 100 km northwest of the Pakistani capital, security forces backed by helicopter gunships and artillery attacked militants in three hamlets yesterday, residents and security officials said.
“There’s been heavy firing going on since morning. It’s very scary. Troops are using heavy artillery and gunships,” resident Nasir Khan told Reuters by telephone.
A military spokesman said seven militants, including a commander, were killed. One soldier was killed and three wounded. The militants were also using about 2,000 villagers as human shields, the military said.
Pakistani stocks ended at a more than one-month closing low yesterday on fears of escalating ethnic violence in the country’s commercial capital Karachi and of insecurity in the northwest, dealers said.
Buner is to the southeast of the Swat Valley, where in February authorities gave in to a Taleban demand for Islamic Shariah law as part of a deal to end nearly two years of violence in the former tourist destination.
A Taleban spokesman in Swat said elements in the military and the government were trying to sabotage the peace process to please the United States. “They have no respect for any pact,” the spokesman, Muslim Khan, said by telephone.
“They keep violating every agreement and if this goes on, definitely there will be no deal, no cease-fire. This is not our army, this is not our government. They’re worse enemies of Muslims than the Americans. They’re US stooges and now it’s clear that either we’ll be martyred (killed) or we’ll march forward.”
— With input from agencies
