Pakistani soldiers Arrests Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan in Swat

Pakistan has arrested two senior Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, northwest of the capital, including the movement’s spokesman, the army said.

The detention of Muslim Khan, who also served as a senior negotiator for the Taliban, and Mahmood Khan is meant to disrupt a militant effort to reorganize in Swat, three months after the army re-captured the valley from Taliban control.

“The army is trying to consolidate its victory in Swat before it would attempt any other offensives,” notably against the main Taliban strongholds along the western border with Afghanistan, said Fazl Rahim Marwat, a political science professor at the University of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan.

Pakistan had offered a reward of 10 million rupees ($120,500) for both men, said Major General Athar Abbas, the Pakistan army spokesman. The top Taliban leader in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, heads the government’s list of wanted guerrillas, with an offer of 50 million rupees for his capture.

Muslim Khan, 55, became the Swat Taliban’s main spokesman last year, leading a delegation that negotiated a truce with provincial authorities. As a fluent English-speaker, his “multilingual skills and his rich experience of working abroad in Western countries makes him a rare talent for the Taliban movement, a group that involves mostly madrasa graduates and illiterate activists,” said a report in February from the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Student Leader

In the 1970s, Khan was a student leader in Swat of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. He told the BBC in an interview last year he worked as a seaman and visited Europe in the 1980s, before returning home and joining Swat’s Islamist movement.

Three other “terrorist leaders” -- Fazle Ghaffar, Abdul Rehman and Sartaj -- were also arrested in an army operation in Swat, the military said. An English-language daily, The News, cited the Taliban as saying the three men are clerics.

The military’s announcement of the arrests came after The News quoted a Taliban spokesman named Salman as saying the five men were detained eight days ago after meeting an officer of military intelligence for peace talks.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik denied that report, telling reporters in Islamabad that “the arrest was a result of action by the security forces and not because of talks.” “Most of the militants have either been killed or arrested, and the remainder have no choice but to surrender,” Malik said.

Mehsud Killing

The government says the Taliban are in disarray after losing control of Swat in June and suffering the death last month of Baitullah Mehsud, the movement’s overall leader in Pakistan. Mehsud was killed in a U.S. missile strike on his home in South Waziristan, the Taliban’s biggest stronghold.

Fazlullah’s Taliban group has fought the government for control of Swat for more than five years. The guerrillas’ advance there marked their deepest penetration into Pakistan from its western border, and the closest approach to the capital.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration signed a peace deal with the guerrillas in February, agreeing to impose Islamic Shariah law in Swat and nearby districts. Despite the truce, Taliban guerrillas advanced from Swat in April taking an adjacent district, Buner, centered only 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Islamabad.

Swat Refugees

The Taliban advance triggered a 10-week army offensive that re-captured the valley in June. The military killed 1,800 Taliban militants and arrested 2,000 in the Swat campaign, Abbas said yesterday on Aaj TV. About 340 soldiers died, Abbas said.

Fighting in Swat and other parts of northwest Pakistan displaced an estimated 2.7 million people and destroyed 548 schools, according to UN figures released yesterday. About two- thirds of those displaced have returned to their villages and towns, the UN said. Many face a struggle to rebuild their homes.

After pushing back the Taliban in Swat in 2007, the army failed to arrest their leaders, said Marwat, author of a book on the Taliban movement in the area. “Fazlullah was able to recover that time and recapture the valley, but this time the army is being tough to stop them from re-grouping,” he said.

The U.S. wants Pakistan to continue its offensives against the Taliban and other militant groups. Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, made appeals when they visited the capital, Islamabad, last month.

(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=am_h2PWEAUkA)By Khalid Qayum and James Rupert)