Vol. 73/No. 24      June 22, 2009

News accounts suggest civilian casualties are high and millions have been driven from their homes. The impact is class-differentiated, with the worst-off layers threatened with widespread disease and starvation.

The Pakistani military has been at war with Taliban forces based in Pakistan’s Swat Valley on and off over the last two years. Islamabad’s most recent peace deal with the Swat Taliban led by Maulana Fuzlullah broke down after the Islamists began to expand their military operations and control, including an advance into neighboring Buner District, some 60 miles from the capital.

In late April, the Pakistani military launched its latest offensive in Lower Dir and Buner, two districts bordering Swat, advancing into the Swat District May 8.

Some 15,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery, and air power, have pounded neighborhoods and razed homes to the ground over the last month, forcing some 2.8 million people to flee. Some 550,000 had already been forced from their homes by military operations in the region since last August, bringing the total number displaced to well over 3 million.

Some 265,000 internal refugees are staying in 19 crowded camps with scarce resources set up by international aid organizations and the government. The camps are confined to the North West Frontier Province; none are being set up in the more populous and prosperous Punjab Province.

The other 3 million are living wherever they can. Some are staying with families, others are in makeshift shelters, such as school buildings and tents scattered throughout the broader region.

“With the monsoon season fast approaching, concerns are growing about an increase in avoidable sickness and death due to disease outbreaks, such as acute respiratory infection, acute diarrhea, malaria, and meningitis,” Daniel Baker of the United Nations Population Fund told Dawn, a Pakistani daily.

The Pakistani military boasted at the end of May that it had taken control of Buner District and Mingora, Swat’s capital. Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the country’s army chief, said June 4 that the tide had “decisively turned” in favor of the military. At the same time, none of the top local Taliban leadership has yet been captured or killed.

By June 6 the military reported that more than 1,300 Taliban fighters had been killed. It did not release figures on civilian casualties.

One man from Mingora, who did not want to give his name, described to the UN news agency IRIN the conditions under which he left the city. “We had lost count of the days and nights and waited to die. There was no electricity, gas, or even water. Cell phones did not work because the army had jammed communications.” He finally left with his family of nine after witnessing “the annihilation of the village of Teeraman Dehri, with about 150 people… . The entire village came under heavy missile attack by the army, killing the entire population.”

Those fleeing the battlefields are on their own, risking injury and death from government strikes, Taliban fighters, and other dangers. Those without means to escape—some 20 percent of the population in Swat—remain trapped in the battlegrounds.

“I saw a family including some old people, trekking through the hills,” villager Gul Mohammad told Dawn. The family was making the difficult eastward journey from Swat to Shangla. “A pregnant woman of the family died amid a downpour.” Still far from their destination, the family was forced to turn back to the battlegrounds, he said.  
 
24-hour curfews
The entire area of operations has been under 24-hour curfew, with only brief periods of respite to allow some to escape or find food.

In Mingora the curfew was relaxed for six hours May 31 for the first time in 10 days. “Thank God the curfew has been relaxed. We can now leave the area, otherwise all of us will die of starvation,” Mohammad Nisar told Dawn May 31.

Some 20,000 people remain in Mingora, a city of some 375,000. In much of the region, food is scarce; running water, electricity, and gas have been cut off; and there are no working medical facilities or communications. Even in Shangla, where the military has not yet launched operations, there is no power and a 24-hour curfew.

The Pakistani military had threatened tribal chiefs in Shangla that they would launch an assault in the district if tribal militias failed to expel Taliban forces that had retreated into the area.

A tribal militia of at least 400 in Upper Dir attacked Taliban areas, torching homes and killing 14 in response to a June 5 suicide bombing of a mosque, which killed more than 30 people. Letting the Taliban stay would be “inviting a military offensive, which we don’t want,” tribal chief Mohtabar Khan told Pakistan’s Daily Times.

“I am incredibly heartened by the resolve shown by the Pakistani people, government, and military,” U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton said in a June 1 USA Today interview.

Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani asked Washington June 5 to write-off Pakistan’s $1.5 billion debt to offset the economic burden of waging the assault on the country’s crisis-ridden economy.

A June 3 editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled: “A Victory in Pakistan” had nothing but praise for the military offensive. “The success in clearing Buner and Swat, all of which should be in government control in days, shows the military can sustain this sort of campaign… . The even better news is that Pakistanis say the army won’t stop at Swat. Next should come a push into lawless Waziristan.”

While current operations have been confined to areas of the Malakand Division in the North West Frontier Province, the Waziristan agencies are located in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a very underdeveloped region governed under the executive authority of the president though government-appointed agents.

The FATA is where U.S. aerial drone strikes have been concentrated over the last several years, particularly in the tribal agencies of North Wazirizan, South Waziristan, and Bajur.

A peace deal signed three months ago with the Taliban in Bajur, led by Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, remains in effect.  
 
 
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