Pakistan Reaches Truce With Terrorist Faction
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities announced yesterday that they had struck a truce with a militant faction that moved last year to impose Taliban-style rule in a once-popular tourist area.
The deal between government officials and Islamic militants in the scenic Swat valley could presage broader accords with militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
The 15-point pact was signed despite explicit expressions of concern from America about such truces — the latest warning delivered only a day earlier by the deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte, in Washington.
Pakistan's new coalition government, which took office seven weeks ago after winning parliamentary elections in February, has said it is willing to talk with extremists who are prepared to renounce violence. But the Bush administration and NATO say they believe that Islamic militants will use respites to strengthen and rearm themselves and resume attacks when it suits them. They also say militants' cross-border strikes aimed at Western troops in Afghanistan have edged up since negotiations began.
The militancy that erupted in the Swat valley nearly a year ago was something of an anomaly, because the area does not lie within the semi-autonomous tribal belt that abuts the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It is in a part of the North-West Frontier Province that is at least in theory under the control of the central government.
Fighters led by a charismatic cleric, Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, seized control in half a dozen localities in Swat, running off police and proclaiming Islamic rule. A subsequent Pakistani military offensive drove the militants into the mountains but Fazlullah was not captured and attacks against government troops continued.
