PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistan on Thursday deployed paramilitary troops to northwestern districts infiltrated by Taliban militants, as global concern mounted over Islamabad’s ability to rein in the Islamists.
The extremists patrolled the streets of Buner district, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) outside the capital, warning residents not to engage in “un-Islamic” activity and barring women from public places, officials and witnesses said.
“Local police are helpless and seem to have lost control,” said resident Shams Buneri. “Taliban are moving freely everywhere in the town.”
The extremists moved into the district from the Swat valley, where Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari recently signed a deal allowing the implementation of strict Islamic law in a bid to end a two-year campaign of deadly violence.
That accord has caused alarm in Washington, where Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Pakistani leaders must take the necessary actions to stop the threat posed by Taliban militants.
“It is important they not only recognise it (the threat) but take the appropriate actions to deal with it,” Gates told reporters Thursday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier said the Taliban advances posed an “existential threat” to the survival of Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda.
In a bid to bring the deteriorating security situation in Buner under control, authorities sent in hundreds of paramilitary soldiers.
“We have decided to deploy eight platoons,” Frontier Constabulary commandant Zafarullah Khan told AFP. There are roughly 40-45 soldiers per platoon.
Buner police official Rasheed Khan confirmed to AFP that Taliban fighters were patrolling the streets unchecked, but added that district government officials were in negotiations to put an end to the militant occupation.
Highlighting the instability in the area, one policeman was killed and another wounded when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their vehicle, which was being escorted by paramilitary forces, police official Syed Azhar told AFP.
Several Taliban militants also occupied a police post in Buner and vacated it after sometime taking a police inspector with them, Khan said.
Fighters loyal to the fundamentalist Taliban, who were in power in Afghanistan from 1996 until they were ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001, have also moved into adjacent Shangla district, local lawmaker Fazal Ullah told AFP.
Meanwhile the military said troops had killed 11 militants and destroyed 11 hideouts in the northwestern tribal district of Orakzai where Taliban militants are active.
In a separate incident, dozens of militants attacked a depot for NATO fuel tankers in Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, and fled after destroying six of the vehicles, police said.
Top US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen was in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials as concerns mounted over the government’s ability to check the Taliban’s advances toward the capital, officials said.
The government in Islamabad lost control in Swat, a former ski resort and jewel in the crown of Pakistani tourism, after a violent two-year militant campaign to enforce strict sharia law.
It agreed to allow sharia courts in Malakand, a district of some three million people in North West Frontier Province that includes the Swat valley and Buner and Shangla districts, in order to halt the violence.
More than 1,800 people have been killed in a wave of extremist attacks across Pakistan since July 2007, when the military stormed the Islamist-occupied Red Mosque in Islamabad.
