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Taliban radio spreads terror in Swat

* Residents say soldiers stay inside camps
* Army says it lacks means to block radio transmissions

Daily Times Monitor

PESHAWAR: Taliban – who control “virtually all of” Swat – continue to use radio transmitters to terrorise residents and even reveal the names of people they kill or plan to kill, according to a New York Times report published on Sunday.

Policemen are either beheaded or renounce their jobs, the civilian government is ineffective or unresponsive, and the local residents say the military has “willingly allowed the militants to spread terror”, it says.

The Pakistani government failed to protect its ally Pir Samiullah – who led 500 followers to fight the Taliban. They killed him in a gunfight last month, but beheaded his followers until they disclosed the location of his gravesite. “They dug him up and hanged his body in the square,” a villager said.

In Mingora, “residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city’s most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square”, says the report on the New York Times website. “They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square.”

There are 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban in the Swat Valley, senior officials told the newspaper, and the military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men.

“But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence,” Swat residents said.

The military also has not raided a village that locals say is the Taliban’s headquarters.

But military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas rejected the allegations. He said the military did not have the means to block the Taliban radio transmissions.

“Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything,” he told the NY Times.

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