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War in paradise is Pakistan's line in the sand
After the failure of appeasement, much is at stake in confronting the Taliban. Matt Wade reports from North-West Frontier Province.At the dusty Jalala refugee camp in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, men queue for hours for rations of wheat and cooking oil in 40-degree heat. There is little respite inside the tents that house about 15,000. It's a far cry from the Swat Valley, the temperate Himalayan district 80 kilometres to the north, where most of the refugees fled fighting between Taliban insurgents and government troops. Once known as the Switzerland of the East, a summer retreat for elite Pakistanis, honeymooners and hippies, the valley was an ancient cradle of Buddhism before the Mogul invader Babur introduced Islam. In the 1920s the British recognised Swat as a princely state; it did not join Pakistan until 1969. "It was a pocket of development, peace and beauty," says Samina Yasmeen, the Pakistani-born director of the centre for Muslim states and societies at the University of Western Australia. Posted by: tu3031 2009-05-15 |
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