Posted on 06/28/2008 4:45:35 AM PDT by Racehorse
The Pakistani military has launched an offensive against militants near the main north-western city of Peshawar, security officials said.
Militants have become more active in and around Peshawar in recent months, say correspondents.
A contingent of troops has blocked the road towards Afghanistan, imposed a curfew and ordered shops to shut.
Pakistani militant leader Baitullah Mehsud said he was suspending peace talks with the government.
Pakistani forces have fired mortar rounds at suspected militant hide-outs in the mountains of the Khyber region, west of Peshawar.
"There has been no resistance, so far. No casualties, so far," Malik Naveed Khan, police chief of North West Frontier Province, told Reuters news agency.
The Khyber Pass is one of the principal routes into Afghanistan from Pakistan and has long been a haven for smugglers and bandits.
After the attack began, Baitullah Mehsud told Reuters that "the talks will remain suspended until the government stops talking about operations and attacks against us".
The offensive is the first major military action the recently-elected government has taken against militants in the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.
When it took power two months ago, the government said it would negotiate with the tribes of the north-west to curb cross-border raids into Afghanistan and end the domestic militancy that caused havoc in Pakistan last year.
But now the government has authorised the army to back the talks with a credible threat of force.
The Afghan government and the coalition forces in Afghanistan have complained that Taleban militants are finding safe haven in Pakistan.
Increasing activity from militants around Peshawar lately has prompted the military to act, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Karachi.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
This seems better than signing peace treaties with the barbarians....
Much better!
Taliban Imperil Pakistani City, a Major Hub
*************************EXCERPT*****************
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of three million people, one of Pakistan’s biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for high ransoms.
The militants move unchallenged out of the lawless tribal region, just 10 miles away, in convoys of heavily armed, long haired and bearded men. They have turned up at courthouses in nearby towns, ordering judges to stay away. On Thursday they stormed a women’s voting station on the city outskirts, and they are now regularly kidnapping people from the city’s bazaars and homes. There is a feeling that the city gates could crumble at any moment.
The threat to Peshawar is a sign of the Taliban’s deepening penetration of Pakistan and of the expanding danger that the militants present to the entire region, including nearby supply lines for NATO and American forces in Afghanistan.
For the United States, the major supply route for weapons for NATO troops runs from the port of Karachi to the outskirts of Peshawar and through the Khyber Pass to the battlefields of Afghanistan. Maintaining that route would be extremely difficult if the city were significantly infiltrated by the very militants who want to defeat the NATO war effort across the border.
The Pakistani government is sure being tested.
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