To Rule them with their Guns

By Yaroslav Trofimov, "Taliban's Reign of Fear Spreads in Pakistani City " The Wall Street Journal - Asia News/USA-Pakistan
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Peshawar: A few days ago, Peshawar police advised Manzur Khan to shut down his video store. The reason: information that the Taliban, who consider movies un-Islamic, were planning to blow it up.

Mr. Khan is complying, liquidating his stock of Bollywood dramas and pirated American blockbusters. "Customers are not coming anymore because of the fear," he says. "Our business has totally collapsed."

The fear is well justified. A few hundred yards from Mr. Khan's store, a car bomb that targeted an Internet café -- which offered another activity prohibited by the Taliban -- killed 13 people on Saturday. Other recent explosions ripped through women's clothing stalls, Sufi religious shrines and girls' schools as Islamist insurgents tightened their noose over this strategic city of three million people.

"The Taliban often come into the city from surrounding areas to terrorize, to spread panic and fear," Peshawar mayor Mohammed Umar Khan says. "We in Peshawar are paying the price, losing our people, our economy and our businesses."

The Pakistani military is now engaged in an offensive to drive the Islamist militants from the nearby Swat Valley. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday the U.S. was sending $110 million in emergency humanitarian aid to Pakistan, including food, water and tents for refugees from the fighting, which began after the Taliban tried to expand the territory under their control.

The Taliban are unlikely to seize Peshawar, the capital of the troubled North West Frontier province and headquarters of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force.

But, through a campaign of bombings, kidnappings and murders, the militants are increasingly imposing on Peshawar the rigid religious restrictions that are already enforced in Swat, Waziristan, and other northwestern areas that have succumbed to Taliban control.

Such "Talibanization" is a grim setback for a storied city that braced itself for revival when a secular Pashtun nationalist movement, the Awami National Party, won provincial elections last year, ousting a coalition of religious parties. At the time, the ANP promised to reverse many Islamist-imposed restrictions, such as a ban on Pashtun traditional music performances in Peshawar's main concert venue, Nishtar Hall.

Instead, the ban stayed in place, in a city that's becoming increasingly more conservative because of the Taliban threat -- and that many secular residents abandon for Islamabad or Karachi. Mr. Umar Khan, the mayor, says the new administration held award ceremonies for Pashtun musicians in Nishtar Hall, but couldn't risk letting award winners showcase their talents. "We fear that if we allow the music, the show will be bombed," he says.

In addition to going after businesses they deem un-Islamic, the Taliban often strike Peshawar warehouses and convoys that supply U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan -- choking the coalition's main supply route.

They have attacked Sufi shrines, seeking to eradicate an Islamic tradition that's widespread across Pakistan.

Even doctors at Peshawar's main hospital have been ordered by the Taliban to stop wearing Western clothes, and to adopt the loose-fitting national dress known as shalwar kameez.

With Taliban spies roaming the streets, the fear is palpable in Peshawar's bazaars, where many are reluctant to be seen talking to a foreigner, and glance around with visible discomfort during a conversation.

"Everyone's scared here," says Qassem Ali, the owner of a shop that sells colorful, silver-laced women's garments in Peshawar's Ladies Market, where another bomb went off Saturday. "The Taliban want every woman to be burka-clad. Women fear that anyone who comes here will be targeted, and are staying at home. We sit idle from morning till evening."

Nobody took responsibility for the latest attacks, but Mayor Umar Khan blamed Mangal Bagh Afridi, a former bus driver who has become an Islamist warlord in the Khyber tribal agency adjoining Peshawar. The militant belongs to a loosely coordinated network of Taliban groups that includes militants led by fiery radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, who is currently fighting the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley, and the Waziristan militias commanded by Baitullah Mehsud, whom the Pakistani government blamed for assassinating former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007.

Omar Mullah's original Taliban militia that once ruled Afghanistan is believed to be based in Baluchistan province, which neighbors North West Frontier.

Spreading outside the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, Taliban groups have shut down video stores and Internet cafés in much of the North West Frontier province. In the Swat Valley, in particular, they focused on eradicating girls' education, blowing up some 200 schools and branding female teachers "prostitutes."

The school-bombing drive is reaching Peshawar, where a girls' school was blown up last week.

"They don't want Pashtun children to be educated -- this way they can rule them with their guns," says Sardar Hussain Babak, the provincial minister of education.

Picture: Girls attended classes inside a tent at the camp. Photo: Ali Imam/Reuters