Pakistani security forces have arrested the spokesman for the Taliban in Swat valley, the military said, the first major arrest in the region since the army went on the offensive more than four months ago.
The arrest of the spokesman, Muslim Khan, is the latest blow for the Pakistani Taliban whose leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in the South Waziristan region last month.
Taliban advances early this year and a string of attacks in cities raised fears for nuclear-armed Pakistan’s future and alarmed its ally, the US, which even suggested the civilian government was “abdicating” to the militants.
But the Swat offensive, launched in late April, and attacks on the Taliban in their Afghan border strongholds, including South Waziristan, have done much to reassure Washington of Muslim Pakistan’s commitment to the fight Islamist militancy.
Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said Khan and four other Taliban leaders from Swat were arrested there “in a successful operation.” He gave no details.
Confirming Khan’s arrest, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said militants had no option but surrender.
“They will either be killed or arrested,” Malik told reporters in the capital, Islamabad.
The military officials say more than 2,000 insurgents and more than 300 soldiers have been killed in the Swat offensive. There has been no independent verification of militant casualties.
Security forces have cleared much of the former tourist valley but there are still pockets of resistance.
Despite their success, the military had failed to kill or capture any top Taliban leaders from Swat until Khan’s arrest.
A middle-aged man with long gray hair flowing from under a turban and a full grey beard, Khan was the public face of the Taliban in Swat.
The top Taliban leader in Swat, a self-styled cleric called Fazlullah, avoided the television cameras and telephone interviews.
The army said in July that Fazlullah was believed to have been wounded, but Khan had denied it.
While the Taliban’s Swat bastion has been smashed, the army has also carried out attacks against militants in the Khyber region, where militants have been attacking trucks carrying supplies to Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.
The army says nearly 130 militants have been killed in the fighting in Khyber, most of them in the Bara district.
Khyber’s top government administrator, Tariq Hayat, said yesterday that Bara had been almost cleared of militants.
However, he also said nearly 600 policemen recruited from ethnic Pashtun tribes in the region had quit after an Islamist commander, Mangal Bagh, had warned them over his illegal FM radio to give up their jobs.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘CHINA HAWKS’: Rubio and Michael Waltz, who is said to be next national security adviser, view Beijing as a threat and challenge to US economic and military might US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced new members of his incoming administration and was expected to pick US Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Rubio and US Representative Michael Waltz, who has been lined up for the powerful US national security adviser role, have notably hawkish views on China, which they see as a threat and challenge to US economic and military might. The two appointees, both from Florida, would be key architects of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, with the incoming president having promised to end the wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, and avoid any more
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
RSS