Pakistan's Swat province on the verge of all out war and a humanitarian crisis

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are fleeing the Swat valley as fighting intensifies between Pakistani government troops and the Taliban. On Friday, the UN Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned of a humanitarian crisis as large numbers of people arrive in already overcrowded areas of temporary accommodation. The UN agency said about half a million people have been displaced in the last few days bringing the total amount of Swat refugees arriving in safer areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to a million since August 2008. "The new arrivals are going to place huge additional pressure on resources,” said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder said many of these people now fleeing Swat are stranded along the jammed highway between Swat’s largest city Mingora and Mardan. Many had to leave suddenly after a government warning on Thursday the fighting was about to intensify. “Many people who are stuck inside Swat are asking the government why there was no plan [and] why they were not given adequate warning to get out,” he said.

The longstanding curfew in the entire Malakand division had added to the misery of the displaced and a large number of people were trapped in their homes in Mingora and other areas of Swat. Today, the Swat administration announced a temporary relaxation of the curfew around Swat from 6am to 1pm to enable civilians to flee the anti-Taliban offensive. Both Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari promised to minimise civilian casualties and look after those displaced by the conflict. Zardari stated from New York that a billion rupee fund would be announced for the rehabilitation of refugees.

The news came as Pakistan's army launched an offensive on Friday after a government order to eliminate militants from the Islamist stronghold. They attacked Taliban positions with warplanes and helicopter gunships. The helicopters targeted militant hideouts in the district's biggest city of Mingora and killed 15 fighters. Meanwhile mortar fire in the city also resulted in an unknown number of civilian casualties. Militants used houses as bunkers to fight back. Troops also engaged militants in a number of other locations in Swat, including Rama Kandhao ridge in Matta, and destroyed an insurgent headquarters in Loenamal. There have been several hundred casualties to date.

Until recently, the government in Islamabad was virtually oblivious to what was going on in Swat, which is just 130km from the capital Islamabad. The former tourist area has become a no-go area after the Taliban took over defacto control of the province. According to the army, Taliban groups have blown up 165 schools for girls, 80 video shops, 22 barber shops and destroyed 20 bridges. One million local children have missed out on Pakistan’s anti-polio vaccinations after the government deemed it too dangerous to implement the immunisation drive there. Haji Adeel, a senator and senior leader of the NWFP’s ruling Awami National Party, concedes the central government has lost control. “Swat is a part of Pakistan but no governor, chief minister or the prime minister can venture to go there," he said.

Swat’s current problems date back to 2007. While then Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf was locked in a struggle to keep the presidency, popular Taliban leader and cleric Maulana Fazalullah (pictured) took advantage to launch a “holy war” to take control of the province with his 10,000 strong private army. Fazalullah collects one-tenth of agricultural income in taxes, uses FM radio to pass on his decrees to the local population, and has his own judiciary to hear cases and hands down verdicts.

Although Islamabad sent in 20,000 troops to oppose the Fazalullah, the capital Mingora was under effective Taliban control by January 2009. The Taliban set a deadline of 15 January to close all schools, especially those of girls. When some schools defied the ban, they were blown up. But with a central government and attendant media still occupied with India and the aftermath of the Mumbai bombing, it seemed that Swat would be left to its own devices.

Desperate to save face, the Islamabad government signed a peace accord with the Taliban in February which agreed to the imposition of Sharia Law in the province. While locals were mostly happy the accord would bring peace, US defence officials and NATO were not impressed by what they saw as a surrender to extremists fanning out from the Afghan border. NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain defended the settlement as necessary to achieve peace. "The need of the hour is to put water on fire, not to fuel it,” he said.

But the ceasefire did not last as mistrust grew on both sides. The agreement began to unravel in April when the Taliban entered the Lower Dir and Buner districts, barely 100 kilometres from Islamabad. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it an “existentialist threat” to Pakistan’s government. And after President Zardari met Obama in Washington this week there was a swift about turn in the government’s position. His position was suddenly unequivocal. He said there were 3,000 “terrorists” in the Swat and his government was going to eliminate them all. When the White House press corps asked him to clarify what "eliminate" means, Zardari said "eliminate means exactly what it means." When asked does it mean: "killing them all", Zardari replied: "That's what it means."

“Bhutto is alive”: Asif Ali Zardari sworn in as new Pakistan president

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn in as the new president of Pakistan at a ceremony at President House in the capital Islamabad today. Zardari recited the oath of office "I will bear true faith and allegiance to Pakistan” in front of supporters who chanted "Long live Bhutto" and "Bhutto is alive". The ceremony marks the completion of a stunning rise to power for the 53 year old Zardari who was thrust into the spotlight after his wife was assassinated at an election rally in December last year.

But while Zardari is still considered a political novice by some, he did show great nous in the last month as he removed the final obstacles to his ascension to the top job. He firstly oversaw a deal in which former president Pervez Musharraf resigned to avoid impeachment. Then Zardari neatly sidestepped his reluctant coalition partner Nawaz Sharif to convincingly win the presidential vote of the electoral college consisting of two houses of the parliament and four provincial assemblies on the weekend. Zardari’s swearing in now formally completes Pakistan's return to civilian rule nearly nine years after General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup.

Zardari’s two daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa, and his son, Bilawal were also in attendance at the inauguration ceremony. It was the Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who was anointed his mother’s chosen successor as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the emotional aftermath of Bhutto’s assassination. But because of Bilawal’s youth (he turns 20 in a fortnight), he remains a figurehead only and his father was appointed co-chairman of the party. This was a strategic move as Zardari carried a lot of baggage having spent 11 years in prison on various charges including blackmail and corruption, for which he earned the nickname "Mr 10 per cent”.

But none of his chequered history was mentioned today as he feted by the country’s luminaries. Zardari was presented a guard of honour by a contingent of the armed forces and then visited by the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, as well as members of the federal cabinet, Senate chairman, Chief Justice of Pakistan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and chiefs of the three services. Zardari was anxious, however, to appear humble in his new role and ordered government departments not to issue advertisements congratulating him on his election. “We are a poor country and cannot afford such extravagance at the expense of taxpayers’ money,” he said. “The world is watching us and the government is facing many internal and external challenges.”

Chief among those challenges will be his ability to cobble together an effective ruling coalition now that Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) party pulled out of government on 25 August. On Monday, Sharif rebuffed the president-elect’s offer to rejoin the coalition but pledged to play a constructive role in opposition. Sharif had been threatening to pull out of the coalition since May claiming the PPP had not kept its promises to restore judges sacked by Musharraf. Sharif did not contest the presidential election himself, but Zardari outpolled PML-N's candidate, former chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, by a margin of three to one.

Another of Zardari’s challenges will be to present a moderate front to the extremism that racks Pakistan’s lawless fringes. While he was being sworn in, news emerged of a US missile attack a day earlier on Pakistani soil. The attack targeted a Taliban stronghold in the tribal province of North Waziristan. The attack backfired as it killed 23 people (mostly women and children) but failed to claim its target, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom the US accused of organising raids across the border in Afghanistan.

Haqqani senior had previously had the backing of Pakistani’s powerful spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence so the attack potentially signals a change of policy. Zardari has also been talking up the fight against the Taliban having raised eyebrows last month when he said Pakistan was losing the war. “The issue, which is not just a bad-case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further,” he said. “The whole world is going to be affected by it." The world will now be watching Zardari to see what he does about it in his new role.