Pakistan: Taliban take over buildings in Waziristan

Miramshah, 3 March (AKI/DAWN) - The Taliban have taken control of government buildings in Miramshah, the regional headquarters of the North Waziristan agency, the tribal area that lies on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Taliban militants have also occupied the area’s telephone exchange and are patrolling the streets of Miramshah.

Eyewitnesses and government officials said that after Wednesday’s heavy gunbattle between Pakistani security forces and Taliban fighters, a large number of families started moving to other places in the troubled area. The Pakistani army said that at least 45 militants were killed in the raid, and that most of them were forigners.

Sources said that the Taliban fighters have also taken over the telephone exchange in Miramshah. The exchange had already been shut down by the military to disrupt communication between militants.

The Taliban also took over the irrigation department building, snatched government vehicles and occupied the rooftops of buildings near the main market.

The authorities have pulled out paramilitary troops from the main bazaar as the Taliban took positions at key points in the town. Paramilitary forces restricted their movement to bases and government buildings.

The atmosphere in Mirali and other parts of the tribal region, were also tense, although calm, the sources said.

Frightened shopkeepers in Miramshah pulled their shutters down as hundreds of militants entered the town on trucks fitted with machine-guns, shouting “God is Great” and “Death to America and its friends”. The offices remained closed and traffic was very thin in the area.

"There is chaos. The administration has left the area at the mercy of the Taliban," said a security official.

he governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province Khalilur Rehman told the Pakistani daily Dawn that his administration in Miramshah had been able to bring the situation under control by getting a local jirga [assembly of leaders] involved.

"The jirga went to those people and asked them to come down. They have since abandoned their positions and have walked away. This was the right approach. For the first time a political process was used to defuse the situation and it worked,” the governor said.

But a government official said that a few of the Taliban continued to guard the telephone exchange while others were waiting it out at the Gulshan-i-Uloom madrassa or Muslim seminary in Miramshah which is just across the road from the telephone exchange .

When asked who was in control of Miramshah, the official said: “No-one really. The Taliban have (apparently) left, yet they are still there, and the government is there but is not in total control.”

Last month, Adnkronos International (AKI) reported that the Taliban had released a video claiming that the had established an Islamic state in North Waziristan and that they had the support of the people in the tribal agency.

A for Wednesday's raid on a militant hideout in North Waziristan, independent sources have contradicted government’s claims that most of the dead were foreigners and said that residential compounds had been targeted by helicopter gunships.

A doctor said that more than 15 wounded, a number of women among them, were treated for multiple injuries in the main hospital in Miramshah and all of them were locals.

"We did not treat a single foreigner," said the doctor.