Al-Qaeda one step closer to nukes

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February 16, 2009

Sharia imposed on northwest Pakistan in deal with Taleban

The Pakistan Government has agreed to impose Islamic law across much of northwest Pakistan in an attempt to pacify a spreading Taleban insurgency.

The decision was announced after talks with a banned pro-Taleban group from the Swat Valley, a former tourist haven in the northwest where extremists have gained sway through beheadings and burning girls' schools.

Government officials said that laws that do not comply with Islamic texts have been suspended in Malakand region, which includes Swat, effective from today.

“This was the peoples’ demand. There was a [legal] vacuum,” said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the region's chief minister.

He said that the change would not violate the constitution, which stipulates a secular legal system, nor damage human rights in the region.

Regaining the Swat Valley from militants is a major test for the Pakistani Government. The former tourist haven is supposed to be under full government control and lies less than 100 miles (160km) from Islamabad.

Troops have been deployed to Swat, but residents and local officials say that they seem powerless against the extremists, while many police no longer show up for work.

It is against this backdrop that the Government today concluded talks in Peshawar, the provincial capital, with a 30-strong delegation from the banned Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi or the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, a pro-Taleban group with a long history of agitating for the imposition of Sharia or Islamic law in staunchly conservative Swat.

President Asif Ali Zardari has been indirectly involved in the dialogue after growing concern about civilian casualties in Swat. Mr Zardari has spoken of the need to forcefully combat extremists in Swat and elsewhere in the northwest.

Key to the success of the Government's policy is Sufi Muhammad, the group's leader, who was freed from prison last year after agreeing to renounce violence.

Muhammad is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, leader of the Taleban in Swat, and has pledged to visit Swat and persuade his son-in-law to stop the violence there.

The move to Sharia is likely to make the region's already conservative culture even more repressive.

Many extremists in northwest Pakistan favour the exceptionally strict brand of Sharia the Taleban imposed in Afghanistan before the US invasion in 2001, where female education and music were banned. The Swat Taleban have declared a ban on girls’ education.

Many civilians in the region support an Islamic justice system, and some of the regulations under discussion have been on the books but never implemented.

Implementing the deal may prove troublesome. Muslim Khan, a Swat Taleban spokesman, said yesterday that the militants would lay down their arms if Islamic law is actually imposed. He also announced a 10-day cease-fire as a positive gesture.

Arshad Abdullah, the provincial law minister, said however that the deal would require the militants to first give up violence. “They have to succumb to law,” Abdullah said. “They have to put down their arms.”

Overall security is deteriorating in Pakistan, and several foreigners have been attacked or abducted in recent months. A spokesman for kidnappers holding a United Nations official captive today extended the deadline to fulfil their demands by a few days. On Friday, the captors had said that they would kill John Solecki, an American who was kidnapped in Quetta on February 2, within 72 hours if their demands were not met.

The little-known Baluch United Liberation Front is demanding the release of 141 women allegedly held by Pakistani authorities, but Pakistan has denied that it is holding the women. The UN has been trying to establish contact with the kidnappers, officials said.

Also today, a US drone fired three missiles at a house used by a local Taleban commander in the Kurram tribal region of the northwest. Witnesses reported seeing 30 bodies dug up.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle5745194.ece