The Taliban and their militant sympathisers are now holding strategic pockets on Peshawar’s outskirts, the police say, from where they strike at the military and the police, order schoolgirls to wear the burqa and blow up stores selling DVDs, among other acts of violence, according to a report in the New York Times on Friday.“The proximity of Peshawar to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have regrouped in the past two years makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan’s quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf. Though few here believe that the Taliban will rule anytime soon, the police and residents say that by the standards of the counterinsurgency warfare the extremists are doing well. They have undermined public faith in the government, sown distrust and made the police fearful for their lives,” the report says.
The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets, the New York Times reports. Last week, rockets were fired at an army barracks in Warsak on the cityÂ’s perimeter, a warning of the power of the militants.
The army headquarters in the centre of the city was struck last month by a bomber who was hiding explosives under her burqa that were set off by a remote control.
At the core of the troubles here, many say, are demands by the United States that the Pakistan military join in its campaign against terrorism, which means killing fellow Pakistanis in the tribal areas. Even if those Pakistanis are extremists, the people here say, they do not like a policy of killing fellow tribesmen, and fellow countrymen, particularly on behalf of the United States.
Defections: The standing of the Pakistan military is being further harmed by an increasing awareness here that it is for the first time suffering significant numbers of defections, mostly among soldiers reluctant to fight in the tribal areas. The defections gain only scant mention in the press, but people talk about them, it added.