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May 18 – The Pakistani military has begun an offensive in the Swat Valley, occupied for the past few weeks by Taliban extremists, as the government starts to crack down on the apparent “State within a State” policy the Taliban appear to have been fostering.
This concludes the short-lived agreement between the Taliban and the Pakistani government in which it was agreed the Taliban would police the area in return for giving up arms. In reality, Taliban leaders, who had previously agreed that carrying arms was “un-Islamic,” changed their minds, declared that bearing was permitted under the Koran, installed strict Sharia law, demolished schools, hospitals and beat and shot civilians who were accused of being out of compliance with Sharia.
The Taliban had also refused to recognize Pakistani courts as the highest level of authority, and had begun an offensive to move on towards Islamabad. The incident raised alarm bells in Washington, and the U.S. government recommitted billions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan to prop up its faltering elected government and wavering military.
The Pakistani military is searching for Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah, and has now deployed over 15,000 troops to combat some 5,000 Taliban fighters presumed to be in the area. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled as the fighting intensifies, and refugee camps have been set up.
The redeployment of troops to the area comes as Pakistan has acknowledged that its main threat comes from internal insurgents, such as the Taliban, and not from its traditional foe, India. This, coupled with assurances both by the Indian government and the United States concerning Indian intentions, have permitted Pakistan to redeploy troops away from the heavily militarized eastern border with India, to the north, where the main threat of Taliban expansion is based.
However, Taliban extremists have now been turning up in the port city of Karachi, from where the attacks on Mumbai were launched last November. Karachi is Pakistan’s largest port, and its economic hub, and fears are that the militants may attempt to destabilize the city to spread further confusion within the government as to where best to launch prolonged offensives against them.
