Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Armed militants threaten strategic city in Pakistan

The government has moved to protect Peshawar, which sits on a supply route used by troops in Afghanistan.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Heavily armed Islamic militants have massed on the outskirts of Peshawar, the strategic provincial capital in northwest Pakistan, and the Pakistani government has dramatically stepped up security around the city amid fears that it could fall.

Taliban fighters and other warlords now threaten Peshawar from three sides.

Should they take over Peshawar, the rest of the North West Frontier province could follow, leaving Islamic extremists in control of a region that borders Afghanistan and sits astride one of the main supply routes to U.S. and coalition troops there.

Residents of Peshawar, a city of three million, have become alarmed at recent developments. Militants have begun entering Peshawar to threaten record shops and other businesses of which they disapprove.

Last week, a band of warriors loyal to warlord Mangal Bagh arrived in Peshawar in pickup trucks and kidnapped a group of Christians, whom they released 12 hours later.

The government has deployed a paramilitary force to guard the city's boundaries, sent in police from other provinces, and put the army on standby.

Malik Naveed Khan, the provincial police chief, acknowledged in an interview that "no-go" areas for police had sprung up around some major cities, but he said the situation had been brought "under control" this week.

Khan said security arrangement for Peshawar includes 27 platoons of a paramilitary force called the Frontier Constabulary - about 800 men drafted from other provinces - new vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

Rehman Malik, who runs Pakistan's Interior Ministry, has held two emergency meetings with provincial officials and Pakistan's top political and military leaders.

On Wednesday, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief, was authorized to direct any military operation, including police and paramilitary forces, in the Frontier Province or the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

"The civilians [government] will give the go-ahead. Whenever an operation starts, the army chief will be overall in charge," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for Pakistan's army.

The situation in Peshawar, a two-hour drive from the national capital of Islamabad, is challenging the new Pakistani government's controversial policy of pulling back the army and seeking peace deals with the militants.

"[The central] government has not got to grips with the problem," said one provincial government official who decline to be quoted because he wasn't authorized to speak to the news media.

"Things have moved fast and unpredictably. Last month we drew up a plan for the defense of Peshawar. We have a vast area to defend, and our forces are thinly spread. They [the militants] have mobility and guerrilla tactics," he said.

The provincial government is now considering arming local citizen groups to act as the first line of defense against extremists, one official said.

Baitullah Mehsud, based in South Waziristan in the tribal areas, heads Pakistan's version of Afghanistan's Taliban, with a following of warlords across the tribal belt and in Swat, but some Islamist militants such as Mangal Bagh are independent operators.

Mangal Bagh and his Lashkar-e-Islam movement, which appears to have thousands of militia members, most immediately threatens Peshawar from the Khyber area to the West, while the Taliban-heavy districts of Mohmand and Darra Adam Khel lie to the city's north and south.