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Fear and defiance brewing at Pakistan's ground zero
The Australian - May 4, 2009
Amanda Hodge, North West Frontier – The talk is of quiet resistance among the girls at Baris Public School and College in Haripur.
The dusty city, 65km from Islamabad on the eastern edge of Pakistan's Taliban-infested North West Frontier Province, is the last remaining bulwark between the militants and the capital.
This is the battleground where, within the next fortnight, the survival of the Pakistan Government will be decided, according to General David Petraeus, commander of US Central Command.
"I am not afraid of the Taliban," Tayyaba Sultan, a bright 16-year-old who plans to go to medical college, tells The Australian. "I'm a well-educated person. With education we can fight them."
Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, girls were forbidden to attend school. Tayyaba's teacher smiles as her students discuss the events of the past fortnight in which hundreds of heavily armed Islamic extremists poured out of the Swat Valley to seize villages within 30km of their district.
The girls are confident Pakistan's Government would not allow the Taliban to enforce their brutal brand of sharia law on the district, as they have done in the neighbouring Malakand area.
In the privacy of the women's staffroom, there is no such bravado; just a broiling resentment at the threat to their economic and social freedom.
"What's happening in the neighbourhood will definitely affect us," says Farah Naz, a pretty 22-year-old with heavily kohled eyes.
"Especially economically, because we would lose our jobs," adds Irum Shaheen, who teaches Urdu literature to Baris's final year girls. "Pakistan is already in crisis (and) the Taliban are a major problem. We're worried about the future."
So is the US administration. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday the US was willing to do "whatever we can", including providing military training and equipment, to help combat the growing threat.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is expected to face intense pressure to accept that help at an emergency summit with his US and Afghan counterparts in Washington on Wednesday.
In Haripur's main bazaar, men crowd around a CD shop to debate the Taliban's creep; views range from apprehension to fatalistic apathy.
A tuktuk splutters by. A sign on the rear says "No Tension" – a message that belies the mood in this 100,000-strong town strategically placed at the southern end of the Karakoram Highway, the main trade route to China.
The Taliban's violent expansion through the northwest last month brought them to within 100km of the capital and into urban centres across NWFP. As the black-turbaned jihadists paraded through the streets of Mardan, then Buner and Lower Dir, local officials in Haripur held emergency late-night meetings to discuss defence strategies should the invaders reach their borders.
A major military operation launched 11 days ago has since forced the Taliban out of Lower Dir at the western edge of NWFP, near Afghanistan's border. The Government claims also to be forcing them out of Buner and back into their Swat Valley stronghold. But there's no telling how long they will stay there.
Up to 8000 Talibani fighters are now said to be based in the terrorist training camps around Swat.
The former tourist haven was essentially ceded by the Government to the militants in February under a controversial deal that exchanged peace for the imposition of Sharia law after a bloody 18-month campaign of beheadings and bombings.
Hundreds of schools were destroyed, girls forbidden from attending classes, barber shops and CD stalls closed. Summary justice, Taliban-style, is now doled out in the public square of Swat's main town, Mingora.
The federal and provincial governments say the agreement has the support of Malakand residents, who prefer Islamic law to an ineffectual local judicial system.
But wider support for the
militants, who recruit the poor and disaffected with promises of land distribution,
is said to be on the wane. The Taliban's refusal to honour the peace deal
by laying down their arms, and their subsequent march into the interior,
has horrified the country's mostly moderate Muslim population.
Neither Haripur's district mayor, nor its police chief, is relaxing, however. They have requested an additional 500 Frontier Corps troops be deployed to their district's mountainous northern tip, where Haripur shares a border with Buner.
An extra wing of Pakistani rangers has been sent to defend Tarbela Dam – the lifeblood of this rich agricultural region and the source of more than a third of north and central Pakistan's electricity.
There are also plans to build a new north-south road that diverts traffic away from the arterial highway skirting the dam – an admission that the militants knocking on Haripur's door could be here to stay.
"Are we worried? Yes. But then every district Pakistan administration is worried," says Yousuf Ayub Khan, Haripur's mayor and the grandson of former Pakistani prime minister Muhammad Ayub Khan.
"You go to Lahore. They're discussing the same things we are. Before the military operation there was a lot of concern here because (Taliban) were running around over there like a free-for-all but I think things are now under control.
"The people are hoping (the Swat peace deal) will be a permanent solution. If not then the military operation goes on."
Haripur district police chief Mohammad Hussain is resigned to a long campaign and says a security strategy is being devised in co-operation with neighbouring districts.
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