THE NEW YORK TIMES: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With 400 to 500 Taliban fighters newly in control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from here, Pakistani authorities have deployed only a poorly paid and equipped constabulary force — numbering just several hundred — to the area.
The Taliban appeared to be consolidating control in the district, Buner, on Thursday after moving in and establishing checkpoints on Wednesday. Residents said Taliban militants held a meeting, or jirga, with local elders and the local administration on Thursday. The residents said the meeting yielded a truce similar to the one reached with local leaders in the Swat Valley, which resulted in the agreement by the government of President Asif Ali Zardari to allow the imposition of Islamic law there 10 days ago.
“This concession represents a serious development and reflects both the growing strength of the Pakistani Taliban and the inability of the Pakistani army to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who just returned from his fifth visit to Pakistan.
The fall of Buner has raised new international alarm about the ability of the Pakistani government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance from the Swat Valley, where as part of the truce agreement, the Pakistani Army remains in its barracks. The Taliban have moved to within a few hours’ drive of Islamabad, the capital of this country, and the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi.
The Pakistani military does not have a presence in Buner, Pakistani and Western officials said. From the hills of the district, the Taliban have access to the flatlands of the district of Swabi, which lead directly to the four-lane highway that connects Islamabad and Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, where much of the Pakistani Taliban operate. >>> By Jane Perlez and Zubair Shah | Thursday, April 23, 2009
