Taliban leaving Pakistan district: officials

Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 4:13 AM Posted by Beijing News


Taliban fighters were retreating Friday from a Pakistan district where the government vowed to shore up a deal to enforce sharia law despite US pressure to stem Islamists' widening control.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters moved recently into Buner, 100 kilometres 62 miles from Islamabad, to broaden their net in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation where extremist attacks have killed more than 1,800 people since July 2007.

"The decision has been taken to withdraw from Buner. Taliban have already withdrawn from some areas," Muslim Khan, the main Taliban spokesman in the area told AFP by telephone.

Armed militants in black turbans and traditional white shalwar kameez boarded minibuses and trucks, as witnesses confirmed fighters left some areas.

"Seeing them leave has brought a ray of hope in our life but still people fear that they might come back," said local resident Mohammad Ali, adding that he saw more than 100 Taliban leave Buner in about a dozen vehicles.

The information minister in the North West Frontier Province NWFP, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, announced the withdrawal after regional officials convened crisis talks to decide how to counter the advancing Islamist menace.

He vowed that the regional government would implement fully a controversial deal, ratified less than two weeks ago by President Asif Ali Zardari, to put part of northwest Pakistan under Islamic law.

"The government is sincere on implementation of the justice system and expects others to be equally sincere. There is no reason to pick up guns after implementation of the new system," Hussain said.

Zardari authorised the agreement to enforce sharia law in the Malakand area -- which includes Buner and is home to around three million people -- as part of efforts to end a deadly Taliban insurgency.

Firebrand cleric Maulana Fazlullah launched a campaign nearly two years to enforce sharia law in the Swat valley, also part of Malakand. Officials were beheaded, girls' schools destroyed and tens of thousands forced to flee.

Critics said the Taliban advance into Buner, which is closer to Islamabad than Swat, proved that government "capitulation" strengthened the militants.

Washington said it was "extremely concerned" after hundreds of armed fighters set up checkpoints and occupied mosques in Buner, warning residents not to engage in "un-Islamic" activity and barring women from public places.

US President Barack Obama has put Pakistan at the centre of the fight against Al-Qaeda and urged the government to step up the fight against Islamist militants hunkered down in swathes of the nuclear-armed country's northwest.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Pakistan was "basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists" and US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates called on the country's leaders to take action.

Zardari told Britain's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sherard Cowper Coles, Friday that he would not succumb to any pressure from militants but justified the peace agreement and called for massive Western aid.

"A process of dialogue should be initiated with those who lay down their arms, shun violence and do not challenge the writ of the government," a statement quoted him as saying.

"We need a Marshall plan to help Pakistan overcome its socio-economic problems as a result of damages inflicted on it by the fight against militancy and extremism," it added.

The provincial government dispatched just over 110 Frontier Constabulary police to Buner but security forces lack the manpower to approach mountains and areas infested with militants, local police official Rasheed Khan told AFP.



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