Pakistan insurgents move into town

NY Times:

For centuries, fighting and lawlessness have been part of the fabric of this frontier city (Peshawar). But in the past year, Pakistan’s war with Islamic militants has spilled right into its alleys and bazaars, its forts and armories, killing policemen and soldiers and scaring its famously tough citizens.

There is a sense of siege here, as the Islamic insurgency pours out of the adjacent tribal region into this city, one of Pakistan’s largest, and its surrounding districts.

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.

Though few here believe that the Taliban will rule anytime soon, the police and residents say that by the standards of counterinsurgency warfare the extremists are doing well. They have undermined public faith in the government, sown distrust and made the police fearful for their lives. “People feel the insecurity is so high, no one can fix it,” said Humair Bilour, the sister-in-law of Malik Saad, a popular Peshawar police chief who was killed in a suicide bomb attack last year. “How can the government do anything when the government itself is involved in it?”

She said she and her friends were now afraid to go out. “People go to the bazaar and make jokes: ‘Is this going to be my last trip?’ ” she said.

The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets.

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“Pakistani soldiers never used to be targets,” Mr. Khan said. “Now we have the radicals antagonized by Musharraf and his politics of cozying up to the United States. The actions taken by the army in Waziristan and Bajaur and Swat are causing the problems here.” Swat is an area 100 miles north of Peshawar, where the Pakistani Army is currently battling a Pakistani Taliban insurgent group with mixed results.

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This is defeatist talk. Fight back and we will really get upset. What Pakistan needs to do is go in and protect those women who are worried about going to the market because of the religious bigots and thugs. If Pakistan cannot protect these people it will lose the opportunity to get information on the bad guys.

Even with the assaults on the frontier fortresses, Pakistan appears to be doing little to respond to these attacks. With the enemy forming up in large units, they should be much easier to detect and attack with standoff weapons. The Frontier militia is clearly inadequate for their current responsibility. Another fort was overrun today when its "defenders" ran away in the face of an enemy attack. This lack of discipline and support is appalling for a military unit. Pakistan has air assets and artillery it could bring to bare in support of these forces and someone is not taking responsibility for doing it.