Death in the Valley

God?
If you're listening..

By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Published: May 19, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — As the Pakistani Army squeezed the main city in Swat on Tuesday, fleeing residents described roads mined by the Taliban, indiscriminate firing by the military, and a small group of besieged government officials hanging on with dwindling food and fuel.

Residents of Mingora who remain lack water and power.
The city, Mingora, has been emptied of many of its 200,000 people, but a sizable population remains hemmed in there and has lived without electricity or much water for more than a week, the fleeing residents said. The people who remain are now in danger of being caught up in the looming fight for the city.

In some sections of Mingora, decomposed bodies lay untended. One man said that when he walked out of the city several days ago, dogs were chewing at four bodies that he believed were those of Taliban insurgents.

Pakistani analysts and politicians said the fight for Mingora presented a decisive test of the military’s ability to defeat the Taliban in Swat, a once popular scenic resort 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

Unaccustomed to urban guerrilla warfare, the military has so far concentrated on battling the militants in the rural and mountainous areas of Swat. Inside Mingora, the militants command the rooftops and the main buildings, according to residents and government officials.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the army said it had started clearing houses in Kanju, a village on the outskirts of Mingora, and residents who had left Kanju described a mounting civilian death toll.

“They will leave Mingora until last,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister, whose political base is adjacent to the Swat area. “You have to clear each and every house, and the Taliban are going to give their own pitched battle.”

The Pakistani Army has closed Swat to outsiders and essentially ordered residents to leave. The authorities have also mostly barred journalists from entering the area, making it difficult to verify what is happening.

Government officials have said that there were only 10,000 residents left in Mingora, a city of narrow streets and close living quarters, and that those remaining were probably Taliban sympathizers. But Mr. Sherpao disputed that characterization.

At a security meeting of government officials on Tuesday, Mr. Sherpao said, he appealed to the government to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the city so that it could distribute medicine. The military rebuffed the group when it tried to deliver supplies at the end of last week, according to Red Cross officials.

The United Nations said Monday that more than one million people had fled the conflict in Swat in one of the biggest exoduses of internally displaced people in recent years.

This week, the United Nations is expected to begin asking governments to donate up to several hundred million dollars to help feed, clothe and shelter the displaced, many of whom are depending on the good will of Pakistani families who have opened their homes to them.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Tuesday that the United States would contribute $110 million in aid.

Virtually the only information on events in Swat comes from the accounts of those who have fled on foot or on trucks and buses.

In Kanju, the village adjacent to the airport, Arshad Khan Kanju, 28, a university graduate, was shot by soldiers on May 11, said his brother Mujeeb.

“There was firing outside, and he thought the Taliban had come and he went out on the veranda,” said Mujeeb Khan Kanju. That is when the military opened fire. “Arshad’s body was riddled with bullets,” his brother said.

Soldiers shot Mr. Khan Kanju even though he was clean-shaven and could not be mistaken for one of the Taliban, who favor long hair and beards, his brother said.

When a family member retrieved the body from the military, a major conceded that the soldiers had made a mistake, the brother said. “I told them if you continue killing such innocent people you’ll turn everyone into a Taliban,” he said.

Another man from Kanju, Noor ul-Wahid, said people were too afraid to collect the dead. “Dogs were eating four dead bodies” as he left Mingora last Friday, Mr. Wahid said.

Several people who had left the conflict zone said they had seen the Taliban laying land mines in the roads to stop the army from entering the city.

“They put them in the middle of the road,” said Zahoor Khan, a businessman from Mangalwar, who said he walked out of Swat three days ago. “They are not remote controlled.”

There were plenty of Taliban in the areas as he walked south past Mingora, he said, but the militants were not stopping people from leaving.

A senior government official and a contingent of police officers were holding out in a complex of buildings in Saidu Sharif, the administrative capital of Swat, adjacent to Mingora, said Javed Iqbal, the chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province.

In the past few days, however, there were concerns for the safety of Khushal Khan, the district coordinating officer for Swat.

Efforts to reach Mr. Khan, who is in his early 30s and earned a graduate degree from Sydney University in Australia, by phone had failed in the last three to five days, said two government officials.

One government official who said he spoke to Mr. Khan five days ago said the district officer was worried about dwindling rations of food and fuel.

Elsewhere in Swat, in Peochar, the mountain stronghold where the military dropped commandos by helicopter last week, the Taliban had stashed large quantities of weapons in labyrinthine tunnels dug 80 feet deep, according to a Pakistani television reporter with the Geo channel who accompanied troops there.

The army said Tuesday that its troops were still consolidating their gains in Peochar, where the militants were putting up extremely tough resistance, officials said.

The FM radio stations that the militants have used to terrorize people with broadcasts of Taliban edicts in the past 18 months still appeared to be operating, said Afzal Khan Lala, a senior member of the Awami National Party that controls the North-West Frontier Province.

None of the half-dozen senior leaders of the Taliban in Swat had been captured, he said, expressing disappointment. “Where are they?” he said. “Swat is a very limited valley.”

Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Peshawar.