Militants gain despite decree by Musharraf

In fact, local officials and Western diplomats said, there is little evidence that the 12-day-old emergency decree has increased the Government’s leverage in fighting militants, or that Musharraf has used the decree to take any extraordinary steps to combat them.

Instead, it has proved more of a distraction, they said, forcing Musharraf to concentrate on his own political survival, even as the army starts its first offensive operation since the November 3 decree.

The success of militants in Swat has caused new concern in Washington about the ability and the will of Pakistani forces to fight militants, who are now training their sights directly on Pakistan’s Government, not only on the NATO and US forces across the border in Afghanistan, Western officials said.

After several weeks of heavy clashes, the militants largely control Swat, the mountainous region that is the scenic jewel of Pakistan, and are pushing into Shangla, to the east. All of these sites lie deeper inside Pakistan than the tribal areas, on the Afghan border, where al-Qaeda, the Taliban and assorted foreign and local militants have expanded a stronghold in recent years.

In Alpuri, the administrative headquarters of Shangla, a crowd of militants easily took over the police station, despite the emergency decree, Mayor Ibad Khan said. “They came straight to the police station, it was empty,” he said. The district police officer had run away,” Khan said. Asked why the police station was empty, he said; “I am asking myself the same question.”

The shelling of militant positions in several subdistricts of Swat, and in neighboring Shangla in the last several days, was the first significant action by the Pakistani Army in the area, Western defence officials said.