Fighting in Swat adds to Musharraf pressures

Peshawar: Waziristan, Islamabad's Red Mosque, now Swat, a beauty spot known as Pakistan's Switzerland - militant uprisings are challenging President Pervez Musharraf across the northwest.

Provoked by a suicide bombing and public beheadings, security forces responded with helicopter gunships and artillery against fighters led by a 32-year-old cleric who's been spouting jihad on the radio and has a reputation for riding around on a white horse gathering donations for his cause.

The result - about 180 people have been killed in the conflict over the past week and thousands of families have fled a valley that in years past had been a tourist destination.

The fighting in Swat adds to pressures on Musharraf, and fuelled rumours that the politically embattled US ally might declare emergency powers and call off elections meant to turn Pakistan into a civilian-led democracy.

Zero tolerance

In the four months since his troops stormed the Red Mosque to crush a Taliban-style movement and a ceasefire with Waziristan's militants broke down, close to 800 people have been killed in militant-related violence.

"Uprisings are always crushed. There should be zero tolerance for them," said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief of Pakistani tribal areas. "The government should isolate the hardcore militants and box them in. It's the only solution. There is no need to appease them."

There have been at least 23 suicide attacks, including one last month that killed 139 people at a rally to mark former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's return from eight years of self-imposed exile. Another killed seven people less than half a kilometre from Musharraf's own army residence in Rawalpindi on Tuesday.

Musharraf sent the army into Swat, but it is the paramilitary Frontier Corps which has led the fight against Maulana Fazlullah's armed movement, which wants to impose Islamist law in the region.