Pakistanis strike back against Taliban

PESHAWAR, Pakistan| Suicide attacks and bombings have driven some neighborhoods to take up arms in the city best known as the gateway to terrorist hide-outs in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Budabar is one example of a Peshawar neighborhood with its own squad of “Guardian Angels.” But unlike the U.S. vigilante group known for its red berets and armed only with martial-arts skills, the Pakistanis make their rounds with Kalashnikov rifles.

When the Taliban blew up one of the government’s girls schools, a member of Peshawar’s provincial assembly called a meeting of more than 200 elders.

“The school bombing made us realize how close to home the Taliban had come,” said Daud Sadiq Khan, 26, who picks up its rifle to go on patrol each night. “That’s when we realized that we had to fight back.”

Operating from hide-outs in the rugged tribal areas on the outskirts of Peshawar, the Taliban and al Qaeda have unleashed a nightmare of bombings, beheadings and girls-school burnings throughout Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

But the Aug. 25 attack in the neighborhood of about 1,000 families marked the first time terrorists had targeted a school inside Peshawar itself.

Explosives were planted in the school building, which housed almost 1,200 students and was the only girls school in the area. All 26 rooms, along with office records and 16 computers, were destroyed when the explosives were detonated.

“We began patrolling the area at night,” said Khushdil Khan, a deputy speaker in the regional parliament. “Every evening from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., almost a hundred men from our area can be seen on the streets.”

Such citizen efforts have become a matter of routine in neighborhoods in and near Peshawar.

Peshawar-based journalist Shafiq Khan said the Taliban have come closer than ever before. “They have become strong in almost all areas surrounding Peshawar, such as Orakzai agency, Mohmand agency and Khyber agency,” he said, referring to three of Pakistan’s seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

“Even within Peshawar, some areas have become no-go areas. Certain reports state that they’ve relocated a commander from Orakzai, Hakimullah Mehsud, to Peshawar, and he is leading the operation from around the city,” Shafiq Khan said.

Retired Brig. Gen. Mehmood Shah confirmed that even within Peshawar, certain places have become no-go areas.

“I live here and have been living in Peshawar all my life, but there are some areas I will not go to,” he said. “One example is Ring Road.”

Ring Road is one of Peshawar’s main highways, which houses multiple markets and transport companies. It was at a transport terminal there that insurgents torched 160 vehicles on Dec. 7, including dozens of Humvees destined for allied forces in Afghanistan. It was one of the boldest attacks so far on supply lines for NATO forces.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of Central Command, told a regional security conference in Bahrain on Sunday that recent attacks on convoys of U.S. supplies bound for Afghanistan from Pakistan were forcing the United States and its allies to consider other routes.

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