Taliban 'to take war to Islamabad'
Updated on 08 April 2009
Pakistani Taliban have said they will take their war to Islamabad after moving into a new region in the north of the country.
Officials said scores of militants had been clashing with villagers and police in Buner district, 60 miles northwest of Islamabad, from the Swat valley where authorities struck a peace pact in February aimed at ending violence.
A Pakistani Taliban commander said the country's military and the US were colluding in drone aircraft attacks and the militants would take their war to the capital in response.
Surging militant violence across Pakistan has caused concern in the West about the stability of its nuclear-armed ally. Pakistan is crucial to coalition efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, are in Pakistan for talks on security strategy this week.
"About 20 vehicles carrying Taliban entered Buner on Monday and started moving around the bazaar and streets," said senior police officer Israr Bacha.
Villagers formed a militia, known as a lashkar, to confront the Taliban and eight of the insurgents were killed in a clash on Tuesday, police said. Two villagers and three policemen were also killed.
"People don't like the Taliban," deputy chief of Buner Ghulam Mustafa said.
Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman in Swat, was defiant: "What law stops us going there? Our people will go there and stay there as long as they want."
Authorities agreed in February to let Islamists impose Islamic law in Swat to end more than a year of fighting.
But critics said appeasement would only strengthen the militants and enable them to take over other areas of Pakistan.
Pakistan's Western allies fear such pacts create safe havens for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
Alarmed by the deteriorating security in Afghanistan, the US has stepped up drone strikes in Pakistan.
Pakistan objects to the strikes, calling them a violation of its sovereignty that complicates its effort to fight militancy.
Other Taliban commanders said recent violence in Pakistan has been in retaliation for the drone attacks and threatened more.
Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Nazeer Ahmed said militant factions have united and will take their war to the capital: "The day is not far when Islamabad will be in the hands of the mujahideen."
Ahmed also blamed the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency for sowing divisions between factions, saying the ISI was the Taliban's main enemy.
Meanwhile, Pakistani police have arrested five men belonging to an al-Qaeda-linked militant group who were planning to attack government offices and the security forces in the city of Karachi.
The militants, belonging to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, were arrested during a raid and police recovered weapons and ammunition.
© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.
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