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Bajaur sees renewed Taliban activity

* Govt official says fighting restricted to Charmang, area largely under Taliban control

KHAR: Security forces used jets, helicopters and artillery to pound suspected Taliban hideouts in the Bajaur Agency, where the army said it had vanquished the Taliban earlier this year, government officials said on Sunday.

The clashes in Bajaur underscored Pakistan's challenge in holding territory allegedly cleared of the Taliban, a test likely to grow harder as the country considers staging more anti-Taliban offensives along the northwest region bordering Afghanistan.

Taliban control: Zakir Hussain Afridi, the top government official for Bajaur, said the fighting was in the Charmang Valley, a stretch he described as largely under Taliban control. Jamil Khan, his deputy, put the Taliban death toll at 14 since Friday. “There are militants there in Charmang. They are giving resistance to the forces," Khan said. The main focus of military action is currently in Swat and surrounding districts, where the army says its operation dating to late April has killed more than 1,300 Taliban.

Before Swat, however, the main theatre of operations against the Taliban was Bajaur. After some six months of fighting, the army said in February the Taliban there had been defeated. But reports have occasionally surfaced since then of ongoing militant activity there.

Afridi said the military had used airstrikes in the past in Charmang but that there were no ground troops - army or paramilitary - in that section of Bajaur. The government had relied heavily on local tribes in Bajaur to raise their own militias to force out local Taliban, but Afridi said that concept had not taken off well in Charmang.

A flare-up in Bajaur could complicate Pakistani plans to mount an offensive in South Waziristan, or even finish its work in Swat. Fighting on too many fronts could tax Pakistan's military, not to mention government resources. The Swat offensive has already displaced more than 2 million civilians, a huge humanitarian test. More battles along the Afghan border could swell that number. ap

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