Thousands join exodus from Pakistan’s Swat Valley

Once peopled by tourists, the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan, where Alpine peaks mingle with statues of the Buddha, now swarms with refugees. After the collapse of a tentative three-month peace accord between the Taliban and the Pakistani government, reports today described crowds of Pakistanis packing up and leaving Mingora (above), the valley's biggest town, hauling the few belongings they were able to bring on their heads and backs and clambering onto the roofs of overcrowded buses.
 
Afzal Khan, a 65-year-old trying to leave with his wife and nine children, was desperate. "I do not have any destination. I only have an aim - to escape from here," he told the Associated Press. "It is like doomsday here. It is like hell."

Mian Iftikar Hussain, the provincial information minister, has warned that 500,000 more people could be forced to leave their homes in order to escape the conflict, taking the number of refugees in the area to over a million and creating a potential humanitarian calamity. The authorities are hurrying to build six new camps to house the homeless.

‘People are just waiting for the day they can take revenge on the Taliban’

The refugee crisis, and the Taliban's increasing strength, are on the agenda for today's talks at the White House between President Obama and the two regional presidents, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
 
The ceasefire in the area, which was agreed on February 16 this year after a long and unsuccessful counter-insurgency operation by the Pakistan army, proved an uneasy trade-off. In return for putting down their weapons, the Taliban were allowed to impose sharia law.
 
This meant that women were banned from shopping in public areas, and their daughters banned from attending school. (The Taliban have firebombed hundreds of schools over the last two years.)  In Malakand, an area near to Swat, the local Sikh community was forced to pay a tithe of over £100,000, or face losing their properties. Listening to music has also been outlawed.

Nor did the ceasefire, which was greeted with mistrust by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, guarantee safety. Whilst it held, black-turbaned Taliban militants, AK-47s slung over their shoulders, set up unauthorised road-blocks and did what they could to intimidate Swat valley residents.

The Taliban now claim that they control 90 per cent of the valley

As one teacher from Mingora told the Globe and Mail: "The Taliban have tasted power. They will not give that back. They have committed so many atrocities that they can't give up power, they would not be safe. People are just waiting for the day they can take revenge [on the Taliban]."
 
Another drawback of President Zardari's strategy of appeasement was that it allowed the militants the opportunity to regroup. Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman, now claims that they control 90 per cent of the valley.

Even more worrying is that the Taliban have spread into the neighbouring Buner region. It was this - and the prospect that they could one day seize the Tarbela dam, a strategically vital reservoir which supplies water and electricity to much of the country - which provoked the government into fighting once more.
 
In Mingora, where the Taliban regained control on Monday, they have since scoped out rooftop positions, put mines under bridges and disabled security installations, in readiness for an expected large-scale offensive by the Pakistani security forces. Today, the Pakistani military fired artillery and rockets from helicopter gunships at an emerald mine controlled by the Taliban. These are expected to be the opening salvos of a tricky, costly conflict. ·