The report "As If Hell Fell on Me" says more than
1,300 civilians were killed in fighting between Pakistani troops and Taleban in
2009 while more than one million displaced people are still in various towns.
"Over the last few years, Taleban have been able to
assert their rule, their ideology through combination of violence and
fear," Saman Zia-Zarifi, director Asia-Pacific, told reporters in
Islamabad.
"They have killed anybody who can challenge them. They
have killed hundreds of maliks (tribal elders), religious leaders, civil
society workers, teachers."
He said militants also used the civilian population as human
shield against military assaults and often placed themselves in residential
areas.
Pakistan went on an offensive last year to crush Al-Qaeda-linked
Pakistani militants who wanted to impose Taleban-style strict Islamic rule in
their strongholds in northwestern Swat and the tribal areas.
In their violent campaign, militants killed thousands of
people in the country.
The military say the tribal lands have largely been cleared
of militants in these operations.
Zarifi accused government forces of not trying to protect
civilian population in the conflict-zones and using indiscriminate artillery
and air power against them.
"The government acted as if its role is simply to kill
the enemy as if it was not there to protect the citizens of Pakistan," he
said.
"The Pakistani military is not designed to fight
counter-insurgency. It's not designed to provide the rule of law. It's really
designed to fight a mechanized war probably against India but that's not the
situation in FATA and neighboring areas."
The international human rights watchdog's report says some
2,500 people are said to have been detained by Pakistani authorities without
framing any charge against them. It fears the figures of enforced disappearance
could be much higher.
"It does no good for justice to simply detain these
people in secret places and have them show up dead in encounter killings,"
Zarifi said asking the government to try them in the courts.
The report also criticizes the role of "unaccountable
and untrained" tribal militia raised with the backing of authorities
against Taleban.
"In some they seem to say they target Taleban but other
cases they're simply carrying old vendetta or taking advantage of the situation
to settle scores," the Amnesty official said.
"It's the opposite of enforcing the rule of the law.
This is moving toward chaos."
