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Pakistan says it's close to driving Taliban from Swat Valley, as 27 militants killed
Tuesday, June 9th 2009, 10:59 AM
Twenty-seven Taliban militants were killed in northwestern Pakistan as tribesmen secured four villages in the Upper Dir district and the military carried out an operation in the Peochar Valley, the army said.
Some 13 Taliban insurgents died in fighting with the tribesmen. Troops killed another 14 and arrested 22 in the Peochar Valley, where one soldier also was killed, the army said in a statement on its Web site today.
Pakistani security forces say they are close to driving insurgents from the northwest's Swat Valley and neighboring districts. Unlike previous offensives that faltered because of a lack of popular support, the Pakistani public is backing this campaign against the Taliban, Dennis Blair, director of U.S. National Intelligence, said late yesterday.
"For the first time, Pakistani operations in that part of the world have the support of the government and the public," Blair told a Washington audience of about 200 people from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a group of industry and intelligence professionals. He described the turnaround as an "important change."
The Taliban advanced to within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Islamabad in early April, violating an accord to end fighting in exchange for the government placing the North West Frontier Province under Islamic law.
The public support may boost the Pakistani military's momentum in defeating the Taliban, Blair said. The history of U.S. operations has shown that those without such backing can't "maintain that intensity" needed for victory, he said.
The Obama administration says the militants in Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions threaten the stability of the nuclear-armed nation and hamper the war effort by the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in neighboring Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama has said a U.S. aid package to Pakistan worth $1.5 billion a year would be conditional on the government tackling extremists.
Villagers in the Upper Dir district, seeking revenge for a suicide bomb attack on a mosque in the area last week, encircled and killed 14 suspected Taliban fighters including a commander, the military said in a statement yesterday.
Pakistani Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Air Chief Rao Qamar Suleman visited troops in Swat yesterday and were briefed on the six-week offensive against the Taliban. Kayani directed officers to focus on helping refugees return to their homes, the military said. About 2 million people have fled the fighting.
The latest battles in the northwest came as Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani convened a security meeting to discuss the army's offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley and the targeted killings in the financial hub of Karachi.
In Karachi, a southern port city, 31 people have died in political violence this week, the Sindh province government said.
Violence in Karachi threatens the "law and order situation in the country" and won't be tolerated, Gilani said yesterday, according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Seven of the people killed in Karachi were activists from the city's dominant political force, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and the remainder were political workers from a breakaway faction, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, or Haqiqi group, the British Broadcasting Corp. said on its Web site.
The groups have a history of violence dating back to 1992 when the political movement split and officials are concerned violence may escalate, according to the report.
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