PAKISTAN: Pakistan Recruits Police After 90% of Swat Cleared of Militants
Posted by warvictims on July 9, 2009
By Paul Tighe and Khalid Qayum
July 8 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan said it is recruiting former soldiers to the police force in the Swat Valley to improve security now the army has cleared 90 percent of the northwestern region of Taliban militants.
Retired and trained army personnel are needed to help fill 2,500 positions, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said in the capital, Islamabad, yesterday, according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Kaira said power and water services have been restored in the region where the army is completing an offensive started in April after the Taliban violated an accord that allowed Islamic law to be introduced in Swat.
More than 2 million people fled the fighting in Swat, creating the worst exodus in Pakistan since the country’s founding in 1947. The U.S. must continue to provide non-military aid to preserve the gains made against the Taliban and prevent their return to Swat once the army withdraws, Paul Jones, the U.S. deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Washington yesterday.
Pakistan will recruit more personnel for its special Rangers and Frontier Corps units in Swat, Kaira said at the National Press Club, according to APP. More than 1,600 militants were killed in the offensive that began when the Taliban advanced to within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Islamabad, according to the military.
Return of Civilians
The government said last week it wants civilians to start returning this month to towns and villages now that electricity, gas and telephone services have been restored.
“It is vital that we help address the economic and social conditions that extremists exploit in western Pakistan with more economic aid,” Jones told a Senate panel yesterday.
The army offensives “have successfully rolled back Taliban gains, but they underscored that there are no quick fixes when combating a ruthless insurgency,” he said.
The U.S. is providing more than $164 million to refugees in Pakistan and helping raise more than $300 million from other countries, Jones said.
President Barack Obama has said a non-military aid package to Pakistan worth $1.5 billion a year is conditional on the government cracking down on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in regions bordering Afghanistan.
Soldiers killed four terrorists in the Swat Valley during in the past 24 hours, the military said yesterday. A commander, Muhammad Rasol, was among those killed, it said.
Troops arrested 34 militants in the Swat and Bannu areas, the military said in its statement.
South Waziristan
The military has now turned its attention to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan and is targeting forces of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan.
Mehsud formed his Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan movement from an alliance of about five pro-Taliban groups in December 2007, according to the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles at a camp allegedly run by Mehsud’s forces in the Chenakai area of South Waziristan yesterday, the Dawn newspaper reported, citing unidentified local officials. At least 16 militants were killed, it said.
Pakistan says such attacks harm its battle to defeat terrorists because they cause civilian casualties.
There has been a reasonable reduction in the raids, APP cited Kaira as saying, adding that drone attacks are no solution to the terrorism problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aNKGonyWpQ5s
