Chaos rages as US mulls Pakistan plan

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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While the army began taking the fight to militants entrenched about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from Islamabad, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, prepared to hear demands from U.S. President Barack Obama for forceful action from a struggling ally. Obama, who wants Islamabad to step up its commitment to fighting Taliban militants, was set to meet with the leaders of Pakistan and also Afghanistan at the White House, as Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review went to press yesterday.

U.S. lawmakers, who are being asked to triple aid to Pakistan to $7.5 billion, have voiced increasing fears that the nuclear-armed country is losing the fight against Islamist extremists. Nevertheless, U.S. special envoy for the region, Richard Holbrooke, insisted that Pakistan is not a "failed state," adding it is facing tremendous challenges that it acknowledges could affect the safety of the country's nuclear arsenal.

The army actions in Swat and Buner will please Washington, which is urging Pakistan to crack down on militants blamed for rising violence at home and in Afghanistan. Since fighting broke out Tuesday, thousands of men, women and children have fled the region's main town of Mingora and surrounding districts, fearing an imminent major military operation. The government said it believes refugees could reach 500,000.

"It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere," said Laiq Zada, a 33-year old who fled the valley late Tuesday and was now in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone. "We have with us the clothes on our bodies and a hope in the house of God. Nothing else," Zada told The Associated Press. The clashes followed the collapse of a truce in Swat that was widely criticized in the West as a surrender to the militants, who had fought the army to a standstill in two years of clashes that saw hundreds of civilian casualties.

A spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan has told Qatar-based Al Jazeera network that the peace pact with the government is over and blamed the breakdown on the Pakistani military. Muslim Khan claimed his fighters controlled "more than 90 percent" of Swat, where government forces have been largely confined to their bases in the past, and blamed the civilian deaths overnight on security forces. "If the government launches an operation against us; we will give them a fitting reply, which it will remember for a long time," Khan told Agence France-Presse. The Swat Taliban are estimated to have up to 7,000 fighters against some 15,000 troops who until recent days had been confined to their barracks under the peace deal.

Dozens of militants killed

The military said yesterday's offensive killed about 35 militants positioned near emerald mines in the Swat Valley and 27 in neighboring Buner, where troops have halted a Taliban push toward the capital Islamabad. The Taliban killed two soldiers with a roadside bomb and two more in an assault on a power plant near Mingora, a military statement said. "Armed militants have come down from their hideouts into the cities and have occupied civil houses and government buildings as well as planting bombs to target both troops and civilians," AP quoted statement as saying.

The militant casualty figures could not be verified independently, and there was no official word on deaths or injuries among civilians. "The situation is very tense there. Taliban are present at the homes of local residents. They are also present at strategic positions. They are using light weapons to ambush troops," said the official on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media.