Taliban Imperil Pakistani City, a Major Hub

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The militants move unchallenged out of the lawless tribal region,just 10 miles away, in convoys of heavily armed, long haired andbearded men. They have turned up at courthouses in nearby towns,ordering judges to stay away. On Thursday they stormed awomen’s voting station on the city outskirts, and they arenow regularly kidnapping people from the city’s bazaars andhomes. There is a feeling that the city gates could crumble at anymoment.
The threat to Peshawar is a sign of the Taliban’s deepeningpenetration of Pakistan and of the expanding danger that themilitants present to the entire region, including nearby supplylines for NATO and American forces in Afghanistan.
For the United States, the major supply route for weapons for NATOtroops runs from the port of Karachi to the outskirts of Peshawarand through the Khyber Pass to the battlefields of Afghanistan.Maintaining that route would be extremely difficult if the citywere significantly infiltrated by the very militants who want todefeat the NATO war effort across the border.
NATO and American commanders have complained for months that thegovernment’s policy of negotiating with the militants has ledto more cross-border attacks in Afghanistan by Taliban fightersbased in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
But the brazen campaign of intimidation in Peshawar, just 90minutes by highway from Islamabad, the capital, shows that theTaliban threat now cuts deeply on both sides of the border, notjust with suicide bombings but also with the persistent presence ofmilitants among the population.
In this hard-boiled provincial capital, the linchpin of theNorth-West Frontier Province, the fear is palpable. Many of therich have fled their mansions and left for Dubai. Middle-classfamilies are packing for other places in Pakistan, and the poor arevulnerable to the militants’ entreaties.
“If this trend continues, there will be complete peacebecause the city is under the Taliban, or civil war because of thefighting,” said Samullah Shinwari, 31, the father of fourchildren, who is selling his lucrative shopping mall and twoancestral family homes and moving to Islamabad.
With the militants crowding in, the national government called aspecial meeting in Islamabad on Wednesday to address the rapidlydeteriorating security situation.
The day before, a sympathizer of the Taliban, Maulana FazlurRehman, shocked the National Assembly when he said that the entireNorth-West Frontier Province, including Peshawar, was on the brinkof being engulfed by extremism.
The government’s control, he warned, was “almostnonexistent” in the province, an integral part of Pakistanand one of just four in the country. The specter of the fall ofPeshawar threatens the fabric of the country.
The government issued a statement after its meeting announcing thatit was turning over security of the province directly to the army.In the tribal areas, the police and the paramilitary Frontier Corpswould remain the first line of defense, and the policy of peacedeals with the militants would continue, the statement said. Themilitary would be a force of last resort.
On Friday extra police officers were patrolling the main roads ofPeshawar and its entry points from the tribal region.
There were reports that the Frontier Corps planned an operation inthe coming days in the Khyber agency, adjacent to the city, toclean out Islamic militants under the sway of Mangal Bagh, a formerbus driver who has grown into one of the most feared extremistleaders, commanding thousands of men.
But whether there was sufficient resolve to push back the startlinggains by the militants was a point of debate.
“The government is helpless,” said Arbab Hidayat Ullah,a former senior police officer here. “It has lost its wits.The police have lost so many men at the hands of the Taliban theyare scared.” Mr. Ullah said that the police of Peshawar had aconsiderable budget, but that the money had little impact and thatthe void allowed the brute force of the Taliban to flourish.
Despite its proximity to the capital, Peshawar has always been aworld unto itself, and the province and the tribal areas have beenlargely forgotten by successive Pakistani governments. They havereaped slim allocations from the federal budget and received minimal governance.