ISLAMABAD, Pakistan | Refugees are returning in large numbers to Pakistan’s Swat Valley, but economic activity remains at a minimum and a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew belies government assertions that an army offensive has restored normalcy to the region.
That will not happen, many residents say, until the government produces evidence of the arrests or deaths of the Taliban leaders who, until this spring’s assault, imposed their harsh will on the one-time tourist paradise.
More than 2.5 million people fled the area after the army started its campaign against the Taliban in May. Among them were numerous militants, including the most important Taliban leaders, who remain at large and are widely thought to be plotting their return.
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More than 1 million residents have returned in the past three weeks, but few businessmen and factory owners are among them. The 18 flour mills that make up the backbone of the economy in the town of Saidu Sharif are still closed, and most are used by security forces for lodging.
Authorities have banned the movement of about 8,000 rickshaws, the main means of transportation in Swat, restricting movement and keeping thousands unemployed.
Scattered incidents of fighting are still taking place as the army combs the area for Taliban militants.
Although a U.S. drone strike last week reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, authorities have failed to kill or capture the main Swat Taliban leaders and instead have rearrested Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of militant leader Maulana Fazlullah.
“All of the Taliban leadership in Swat are alive and are in hiding with a strategy,” said Muslim Khan, a Swat Taliban spokesman quoted by Agence France-Presse. “We will continue our jihad until the enforcement of Shariah [Islamic law]. Taliban chief Fazlullah is alive, healthy and has never been wounded.”
Pakistani authorities said last month that they had credible information that Fazlullah was hurt during the offensive, but they have not provided any evidence.
Fayyaz Zafar, a journalist in Swat, said the situation in the former resort valley has improved but that confidence among inhabitants can be restored only if authorities show them the dead bodies of the main Taliban leaders.
“Due to this lack of confidence, particularly the local business community and political figures have refused to return to Swat,” he told The Washington Times.
Sufi Mohammad heads the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM), or Movement for Enforcement of Shariah, which has sought the imposition of Islamic law in the region.
He was jailed from 2002 to April 2008 after leading a campaign by about 10,000 TNSM activists in support of the Afghan Taliban against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities lodged no formal charges against him, and some observers viewed his long incarceration as protective custody to shield him from the wrath of relatives of members of his campaign who were killed or captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban Afghan militia allied with the U.S.
In February, authorities in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, made a deal with Sufi Mohammad intended to restore peace to the region. The agreement called for the imposition of Islamic law in return for Sufi Mohammad’s influence to help persuade Swat Taliban to disarm.
Islamic courts were established, but the Taliban refused to renounce militancy and instead expanded its area of influence to Buner, 60 miles from Islamabad. The advance jolted the Pakistani government into a serious military response.
Authorities arrested Sufi Mohammad after a private television station videotaped him chairing a meeting of the TNSM in Peshawar.
Although Sufi Mohammad and his organization deny links with the Taliban, connections between the two organizations are apparent.
Sufi Mohammad is the father-in-law of the Swat Taliban chief, and several of his sons have been part of the Swat Taliban organization. One son, Kifayatullah, reportedly died fighting Pakistani security forces.
The son of TNSM deputy chief Maulana Alam was also a Taliban commander, Pakistani authorities said.
Mian Iftikhar, information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said the people of Swat are satisfied by Sufi Mohammad’s arrest.
But analysts point to the meeting in Peshawar, the capital of the province and one of the largest cities in Pakistan, as evidence of the TNSM leader’s apparent feelings of self-confidence and impunity, and they suggest that the arrest was aimed largely at silencing critics of Pakistan’s strategy in dealing with Islamic militancy.
“Now it is a big question mark whether Sufis arrest would finally lead to the arrest or killing of Taliban leaders in Swat,” said Shaukat Khan, a terrorism researcher at the University of Peshawar.
“Another quite pertinent question is whether Sufi is going to be prosecuted in a court of law and punished for his crimes.”
Early last week, Pakistani authorities filed criminal charges against the cleric that include “aiding terrorism” but not outright involvement in terrorism.
Mr. Khan noted that Sufi Mohammad started the fundamentalist movement in the Swat region in 1989 and continued it through the 1990s. If the government does prosecute him, “it could be the beginning of the end of the militancy” in the area, he said.
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