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NWFP Government-tribals pact to end violence

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Government late on Monday reached an agreement with tribals of Swat district to end the violence in the area that has claimed the lives of several security forces personnel in the last two weeks.

Chief Minister Akram Durrani, who heads the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal Government in the province, said the Government agreed to confine troops to “isolated places where they would have no contact with the local people” in the district and reassured the tribals that the military was not about to start an operation in the area.

In return, tribal leaders promised to curb militant activities within the “shortest possible time,” Mr. Durrani was quoted as saying by the official Associated Press of Pakistan.

The NWFP and the outlying tribal areas have been in grip of serious unrest since July 3 after security forces laid a week-long siege to the Capital’s Lal Masjid ending it with a commando strike inside the mosque.

Swat, which is home to a pro-Taliban group called the Tehreek Nifaz-I-Shariat-I-Mohammed, was particularly affected, and troops were redeployed in the Malakand area of the district last Friday, leading to speculation that the military was planning an operation there.

The speculation increased after President Pervez Musharraf said the militants, who were holed up in the mosque, had links in the NWFP and the tribal areas, and pledged to root out militancy from “every corner” of the country.

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