Closing the Taliban escape routes

Christian Science Monitor:

As the Pakistani military cracks down on Taliban forces in the Swat Valley, hundreds of villagers in the country's troubled northwest region are themselves taking up arms against the insurgents. They have formed a militia and are fighting back the Taliban to avenge the bombing at a mosque on Friday that killed at least 40 people.

Some view the uprising as part of an ongoing local conflict, but others hail the move as a turning of the tide in public sentiment against the Taliban – driven in part by the military's recent successes.

"Once the Army moves in like it has, at some point in time you'll see people gathering courage and standing up against these people," says security analyst Mahmood Shah, a former governor of Pakistan's tribal areas. "I think the nation has decided that these militants must be driven out of the territory of Pakistan and they must be punished."

It may be precisely because the military is driving the Taliban out of the Swat Valley that locals are running them down in the nearby Dir Valley, a crossing point between Swat and Afghanistan.

"Some of the [fleeing] Taliban have strayed over into the frontier, and what's happened is the local people don't want that area to become a scene of conflict. So the local people have banded together and taken care of the situation themselves," says Ikram Sehgal, publisher of the Defence Journal. "I think it's significant that one of the escape routes has been blocked off for them and that helps the Army focus on the eastern [escape routes]."

An estimated 1,500 locals in dozens of villages, some shouting "Pakistan has awakened" and toting rifles and machine guns, are fighting against 250 militants, according to local news sources. The locals have asked the military to intervene by attacking Taliban strongholds with helicopter gunships.

Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the military, welcomed the move as a "positive step," adding: "The people have risen; they have all the right to rise and turn these people out from the area in the wake of tragedy."

Ahmed Rashid, a leading journalist and author of "Descent into Chaos", says that anti-Taliban militias in the past have initially fared well before ultimately failing because of a lack of support by the government. "The real question is will the military defend the population and take advantage of this upsurge in public anger? So far, unfortunately, the military has failed to defend the people. What you need is a strategy to encourage local resistance to Taliban and then to back it."

...

This report adds some details to my earlier post on the uprising against the Taliban following the human bomb attack on a mosque. The Taliban appear to be making the same mistake al Qaeda made in Anbar alienating the locals. Whether the Pakistan army will be wise enough to take advantage of this awakening movement is the question that only time will answer.