Friday, January 18, 2008

They are at the gates

The barbarians are at the gates, or perhaps they have already entered. Peshawar is now intimidated by militant threats (the usual -- wear burqas, don't watch Bollywood movies, etc.).
Today's New York Times has an article by Jane Perlez, Frontier Insurgency Spills Into a Pakistani City.
The Taliban and their militant sympathizers now hold strategic pockets on the city’s outskirts, the police say, from where they strike at the military and the police, order schoolgirls to wear the burqa and blow up stores selling DVDs, among other acts of violence.
Suicide bombings, bomb explosions and missile attacks occurred an average of once a week here in 2007, according to a tally by the city’s police department. In 2006, while there were occasional grenade attacks and explosions, the authorities did not record a single suicide bombing or rocket attack inside the city.
The proximity of Peshawar to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have regrouped in the past two years makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan’s quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf.

The tribal areas are practically ruled by the jihadis already. On Wednesday, they attacked a fort in South Waziristan, killed 27 members of the Frontier Corps paramilitary units, and occupied it.
But this is a "settled area", like the Swat valley, which the Pakistan Army thinks it controls. As we say in the subcontinent, are they wearing bangles? And there is disturbing news about junior officers and other ranks refusing to fight, instead surrendering to the jihadis.

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