Pat Dollard

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Nope. No Taliban hiding in Pakistan. None, zip, zilch, zero.

July 27, 2008
International Tribune France

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the U.S.-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the Cold War.

Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.

The Taliban, which have solidified control across the Pakistani tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds for attacking U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 30-kilogram, or 65-pound, bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistani government’s lack of control over this sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land.

Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls.

In June, a Pakistani government relief convoy loaded with food and medicines that had been sent to break the siege was attacked by Taliban at the village of Pir Qayyum. Many of the 22 vehicles were burned and 12 drivers were killed by the Taliban, according to government officials here and Shiites.

And little seems to be hindering the Taliban since the army, six months ago, agreed to a peace deal with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and has remained in its barracks.

Groups of Taliban affiliated with Mehsud, who according to the Bush administration is supported by Al Qaeda, now control wide swaths of the tribal areas, from Waziristan in the south to Bajur in the north.

From some parts of the tribal areas, like Waziristan and Mohmand, the Bush administration said, the Taliban have stepped up their operations into Afghanistan against NATO and U.S. soldiers, cross-border attacks that have resulted in rising casualties for coalition forces over the past two months.

In Kurram, the general area where Parachinar is located, the Taliban are a relatively new phenomenon, exploiting the generations-old sectarian conflict as a way of keeping the government out of the strategically important piece of territory, said the senior government official in Kurram, Azam Khan, who serves as the political agent and who organized the June convoy.

But Shiites say the Taliban are doing more than just keeping the government at bay. The Shiites say that because they are stopping the militants from entering Afghanistan, the Taliban are attacking them.

The situation has attracted the attention of the leading Shiite figure of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has encouraged all Shiites in Pakistan to do what they can to help their brethren in Parachinar, said Sheik Mohammed Shifah Alnajafi, the deputy representative of Sistani in Pakistan, and the vice principal of a Shiite seminary in Islamabad.

About 80 percent of Pakistan’s overwhelmingly Muslim population is Sunni, and about 20 percent Shiite. In Kurram as a whole, the two sects are almost evenly divided, with Parachinar almost entirely Shiite, according to figures from the secretariat of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the body that loosely oversees the tribal region.

The origins of the siege reach back to April 2007, when sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis flared over provocative remarks made by a Sunni of Wahhabi beliefs against historical Shiite figures, said Muhammad Amin Shaheedi, the director of the Islamic Research Council in Islamabad, and a leader of the Shiite community in Pakistan.

But unlike previous bouts of sectarian violence that were settled by mediation after a few days, the tensions mounted, exacerbated by the Taliban, who sided with some of the Sunni, he said.

Then, on Nov. 16, the tensions exploded in a day of extraordinary violence in Parachinar and surrounding villages, including mortar fire between Sunni mosques and Shiite mosques, said M.B. Bangash, a Shiite businessman from Parachinar who has taken refuge in Peshawar. In contrast to other parts of the tribal areas, the Pakistani army has had a garrison in Parachinar for decades, but it failed to stop the violence, Bangash said. “The government is indifferent,” he said.

Some of the moderate Sunni families in Parachinar, who had often helped Shiites in conflicts, were attacked in the November fighting by extremist Shiites and were forced to flee, according to Khan, a well-regarded political agent who was appointed in June to the area in an effort by the government to reduce tensions. This left the general Shiite population feeling more vulnerable to the Taliban, he said.

But the ambush of the convoy in June proved the power of the Taliban, the displaced Shiites in Peshawar said.

A driver of one of the trucks who survived, Asif Hussain, described being captured at Pir Qayyum, taken to a Taliban training camp in the village of Shasho, interrogated and then released after convincing his captors that he was not Shiite, but Sunni.

“At the camp, the Taliban killed eight other drivers because they were Shia,” said Hussain, 33, in a telephone interview from Parachinar.

An official of the Pakistan People’s Party from Parachinar, Mirza Jihadi, confirmed the existence of the Shasho camp, which, he said, is at a place where Afghan refugees used to live and is now controlled by loyalists of Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban.

The displaced in Peshawar told stories of growing hardship at home, and they complained bitterly of the failure of the government to help.

“I want to go home but the government does not provide any transportation,” said Mohib Ali, 45, at a hotel here, as he nursed a bandaged right arm that was wounded, he said, in fighting.

He had spent the previous day at the Peshawar Airport hoping to board a military helicopter that he had been told would take civilians back to Parachinar. But instead, he said, it filled up with soldiers returning after leave, and a few favored others with good contacts.

The army garrison in the town had done little to help, and had failed to organize major food supplies, said Haji Gulab Hussain, a retired government official who leads a Shiite tribal council.

“The lower-ranking soldiers are ready for any action,” he said. “But the army is supporting the Taliban. There are no orders.” During the November violence, he said, “The army did nothing.”

The one hospital in Parachinar was left with only a few nurses. Basic medicines, including anesthesia equipment and oxygen, were depleted, according to a medic reached by telephone.

Killings have demoralized the population. In the village of Bilyamin, 35 kilometers, or 22 miles, south of Parachinar, two students walking to their matriculation exams were shot dead by the Taliban, Bangash said.

In Islamabad, Jihadi said the Interior Ministry had promised Wednesday to resume flights by the government airline, Pakistan International Airways, to the airstrip in Parachinar, which had been abandoned long ago.

To try to quash the Taliban, the ministry would try to urge the local tribes to form small armies, known as lashkar, he said. The ministry was also offering financial rewards, he said, to local people if they killed a Taliban leader.

But whether the army would take a role in the efforts to find a solution appeared to remain an open question.