Taliban influence growing on the border

Karachi: Tank Pakistan's military operations on the frontline of the US-led war on terror have led to a further "Talibanisation'' of the border tribal regions that is now spreading to areas traditionally under government control.

In 2003 an 80,000-strong Pakistan force was deployed to flush out forces loyal to the Taliban and Al Qaida.

But three years after Pakistani soldiers first entered the tribal area of South Waziristan, many politicians from the tribal area, media commentators and retired officers are united in the view that the operation has produced few positive results.

Instead, there is a steadily encroaching Taliban-style influence. Shopkeepers have been told not to sell music or films, barbers are instructed not to shave beards, and women have been told not to go to the market.

More than 100 pro-government elders and politicians have been killed in the past nine months.

"They create an environment of fear, pretend they are in charge. We can't let those Taliban impose what they want,'' said Sikander Qayyum, the Peshawar-based security chief for the tribal zones.

Since last year, when a shaky agreement was signed between the army and militants in South Waziristan, an uneasy peace has prevailed.

The local administration has to negotiate the daily running of the area with an alliance of mainly anti-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics. The effect is a clear rise in Taliban influence.

Negotiations with tribesmen over handing over foreign Al Qaida fugitives have not borne much fruit, other than stoking anti-government and anti-US sentiment.

The fallout of the campaign is now being felt further afield. Similar Taliban-style edicts to those issued in Waziristan are now beginning to be heard in Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.

In these neighbouring "settled areas" of the North-West Frontier Province, police have issued a statement warning local officials that militants who had been driven out of Waziristan by military operations were possibly taking refuge among locals.

Last week a remote-controlled bomb ripped through a police vehicle in Dera Ismail Khan killing seven people. Television sets and cassettes have been burned and internet cafes destroyed.

The province is governed by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which came to power on an anti-US platform in the October 2002 general elections and has promoted Taliban-style policy.

"It is seepage from the war on terror,'' said one Dera Ismail Khan official. "The army action has undermined local political influence. So now there is chaos.''

Suspected Islamist militants killed a cleric in Sararogha, South Waziristan, over suspicion that he was a spy for the US and Britain, officials said Sunday.

The bullet-riddled body of Maulana Zahir Shah, who ran an Islamic school, was found three days after five armed men abducted him. He helped authorities run a radio station that aired programmes critical of the militants from his school, an intelligence official said.