500,000 flee Taliban control of Swat Valley

Telegraph:

The authorities urged people to leave the area as troops gathered following the collapse of an agreement for militants to lay down their arms in return for the establishment of Sharia law.

Thousands took to the roads as Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), said camps would be set up for half a million refugees.

Bedraggled men, women in burkas and children piled on to pickup trucks, and led animals through streets in their haste to flee.

Clashes between security forces and militants in the north-west of Pakistan's have already created hundreds of thousands of refugees who have sought sanctuary in badly-supplied camps.

Fighting between the army and Taliban has continued with 20 civilians reported to have been killed in Swat as a result of mortar and artillery fire from security forces at the centre of Mingora, the district's capital.

The army said militants had attacked checkpoints and bases in four different locations in Swat, and that armed militants were now openly patrolling Mingora's streets.

Locals said the fighters had recruited young men, broadcast anti-government propaganda via FM radio stations and established trenches and laid mines throughout Mingora.

Khushal Khan, district co-ordination officer in Swat, said residents had been told to evacuate because there was a fear the Taliban could attack security forces with heavy weapons. The order was later rescinded when the attacks no longer seemed likely, causing more confusion.

"I'm taking my family to Peshawar because if there's any fighting, no one can protect us," said Mohammad Karim, as he searched for a bus heading out of the valley to Peshawar, the capital of NWFP.

Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, said: "The end of the ceasefire has not been announced but it is imminent. The way the Taliban has gone on the offensive locally, there is no other way out."

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The Arab News gave this description of the fighting in the district capitol.

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A witness in the town of Mingora said yesterday militants patrolled most streets, while government security forces were barricaded in their bases. Taleban spokesman Muslim Khan said the militants are now in control of “90 percent” of the valley.

Fighting between Taleban militants and troops in a northwestern valley triggered an exodus the government said yesterday could see 500,000 people flee and signaled the end of a peace deal in the area widely criticized as a surrender to the extremists.

Hundreds have already fled the Swat Valley, adding to the hundreds of thousands of existing refugees driven from other regions in the northwest over the last year by fighting between soldiers and insurgents, witnesses said.

Panicked residents streamed out of the Swat district where gunfire rocked the main town yesterday and a botched army evacuation order sparked fears that a peace deal could collapse.

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A Taliban spokesman told the Guardian:

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Khan accused the government of acting on US orders. A solution was impossible, he said, "because President Zardari has gone to America to get some money".

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I think Khan is jealous. The real reason for the breakdown was the bad faith of the Taliban in honoring the generous terms they were given for a cease fire. That bad faith has triggered a fight that will only get worse for the Taliban. With the noncombatants fleeing they will have fewer human shields to protect them.