By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers, May 14, 2009
MARDAN, Pakistan — The Pakistani army denies knowing that its war against Islamic militants has caused civilian casualties, but patients and family members at a local hospital told McClatchy Thursday that multiple relatives were killed when the military shelled or bombed their homes.
So far, there appear to be just a handful of civilian casualties from the fighting in Swat, a valley 100 miles from Islamabad. More of them, however, along with damage to homes and businesses and the plight of the hundreds of thousands who’ve been displaced by the fighting, could undermine hard-won public support for fighting the Taliban.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani recognized the danger, telling parliament Thursday: “Militarily we will win the war, but it will be unfortunate if we lose it publicly.”
On a visit Thursday to the District Headquarters (DHQ) hospital in Mardan, the first major town reached by those fleeing the war zone, a McClatchy reporter found doctors and nurses struggling to cope with civilian casualties
Fareedon, a 36-year-old who goes by one name, was lying in a bed at the simply equipped and poorly maintained DHQ hospital. He said that he lost three of his children, a 12-year-old boy and girls aged 8 and 5, when a mortar hit their house in Landkhai village in the southwest corner of Swat. He said that 10 to 12 houses and a school in the village were shelled on May 11. He was injured in the foot and the thigh.
“It (mortars) is falling on our houses,” said Fareedon. “Ordinary people die. Not one Taliban has been killed.”
At Aboha village, also in southwest Swat, a shell killed six people, said Sajjad Khan, 18, who’d brought his injured 13-year-old brother, Sohail, to the hospital. They said they lost a sister and a cousin, and another wounded cousin lay on a nearby hospital bed.
“What is this child guilty of?” said Sajjad, pointing to his brother. “What is the guilt of those that died?”
He said they tried calling an ambulance but none would come because of a curfew.
In another bed was 8-year-old Aktar Mina, with a broken leg. In a two-hour attack, missiles or bombs from fighter planes hit several homes on Sunday in her village in Gut Peochar, a remote part of Swat that reputedly is a Taliban stronghold, according to relatives crowded around her bed.
Her mother carried her for four days until they could find transportation, said the girl’s cousin, 30-year-old Saeed Afzal. Eight people were killed, including the girl’s aunt and seven of the neighbors’ children who were taking shelter in the house, he said.
“When the fighting began, the Taliban all vanished. It is ordinary people being bombed,” said Afzal.
There was no way to verify the stories independently, and according to doctors at the hospital, there are only a few patients with injuries from the fighting in Swat, with four admitted on Wednesday, for instance.
“We were expecting much more than this. There’s no rush of the injured. It is a mystery,” said Dr. Wajid Ahmed, of the casualty department.
It’s possible that the badly injured haven’t been able to make it out of the war zone, said doctors, who’re also coping with an outbreak of disease among the “internally displaced people” who’re living in giant camps on the city outskirts.
The hospital’s main concern now is a flood of people with diseases caused by poor hygiene and overcrowded conditions. Out of the 582 patients seen at the hospital Wednesday, 283 were refugees from the fighting in Swat and the surrounding districts, and most fell ill in the camps.
There were three or four babies and young children on most of the mattresses in the children’s ward, where 28 exhausted little patients occupied the 10 beds. All the children were suffering from dangerous acute diarrhea.
“Let’s hope this (war) ends soon. Otherwise, as the weather gets hotter, it will be a disaster,” said Ahmed.
The Pakistani army has either declined to answer questions about civilian casualties or said it has no record of any. However, the army has produced precise claims for the number of Taliban it’s killed. Earlier this week, the army said 751 militants had been killed, and Thursday officials added 54 more.
Past Pakistani military operations against Islamic militants in Swat and in the tribal belt along the Afghan border have caused significant civilian casualties and collateral damage to houses, businesses and other buildings.
Human Rights Watch warned earlier this week that the army must avoid civilian casualties, and the army repeated its pledge to take care of civilians.
“The security forces are making all efforts to minimize collateral damage, and therefore we have changed some of our plans to ensure that we do not cause collateral damage,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman, at a news briefing Thursday. “We have taken all measures to avoid fighting in populated areas so far.”
Thousands of residents remain trapped in Mingora, Swat’s biggest town, which has no electricity, no running water and dwindling food supplies. Many Taliban militants are believed to be holed up there, and Abbas said that the army wants as many people as possible to be leave Mingora before the anticipated “street-to-street” fighting begins in the town.
On May 8, the Pakistani army launched its “full-scale” operations to wrest back control of Swat valley from Taliban extremists. Some 15,000 troops are involved.
Since the fighting began, the army said that some 750,000 people have fled Swat and the surrounding districts, increasing Pakistan’s population of “internally displaced people” to 1.3 million. Hundreds of thousands already had been made homeless by anti-Taliban operations elsewhere in the northwest part of the country.
(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Peace and Justice Post 
Pakistani army flattening villages as it battles Taliban
May 5, 2009By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers, ay 4, 2009
CHINGLAI, Pakistan — The Pakistani army’s assault against Islamic militants in Buner, in northwest Pakistan, is flattening villages, killing civilians and sending thousands of farmers and villagers fleeing from their homes, residents escaping the fighting said Monday.
“We didn’t see any Taliban; they are up in the mountains, yet the army flattens our villages,” Zaroon Mohammad, 45, told McClatchy as he walked with about a dozen scrawny cattle and the male members of his family in the relative safety of Chinglai village in southern Buner. “Our house has been badly damaged. These cows are now our total possessions.”
Mohammad’s and other residents’ accounts of the fighting contradict those from the Pakistani military and suggest that the government of President Asif Ali Zardari is rapidly losing the support of those it had set out to protect.
The heavy-handed tactics are ringing alarm bells in Washington, where the Obama administration is struggling to devise a strategy to halt the militants’ advances. Officials Monday talked about the need to train the Pakistani military, which has long been fixated on fighting armored battles with India, in counterinsurgency warfare, but it may be too late for that.
Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday that the Pakistani army in recent years has undertaken “bursts of fighting and engagement” fighting insurgents, but that its operations were “not sustained” by follow-up measures.
The army is now using force, but it also must hold and rebuild the area it conquers, he said. “There’s a military piece” to the operation, he said, “but there also needs to be a hold and build aspect of it.”
Another U.S. official, who closely tracks Pakistan developments, said the Pakistan army is “just destroying stuff. They have zero ability to deliver (aid) services.”
“They hold villages completely accountable for the actions of a few, and that kind of operation produces a lot of (internally displaced persons) and a lot of angst,” said a senior defense official. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In Buner, the Pakistani military appears to be losing public support in a stridently anti-Taliban district whose residents had raised their own militia to defend themselves against the militants, who last month seized control of the district about 60 miles from Islamabad, the capital.
Mohammad, who’d walked for two days with his cattle to escape the offensive against the Taliban, and other farmers accused the military of using poorly directed artillery and air power to pound civilian areas.
“They shouldn’t use the army in this (indiscriminate) way. They should be targeted at the Taliban,” said Saed Afsar Khan, who was leaving Buner with 18 members of his family and two cows. He estimated that the army had destroyed 80 of the 400 houses in his village of Kawga, near the key battlefield of Ambela.
“I don’t think they’ve killed even one Taliban,” he said. “Only ordinary people.”
As the fighting raged in Buner, a bigger battle appears likely to erupt in neighboring Swat. Late Monday, fierce gun battles broke out between the army and Taliban in the streets of Mingora, the district’s main town, and a controversial three-month-old peace deal between the government and the Taliban in Swat is disintegrating.
The Taliban were reported to have surrounded 46 police officers at the local electrical grid station. Earlier in the day, they ambushed a military convoy in Swat, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
The Pakistani army waited some 25 days after the Taliban stormed into Buner from Swat before launching their response, which television pictures show involves tanks and helicopter gunships.
“Why did they not nip the evil in the bud? This is criminal negligence,” said Sahibzada, a college teacher, who goes by one name, in Palodand village, just south of Buner, where he helps organize relief to those fleeing from the fighting.
“They have caused huge financial losses for those who’ve been forced to flee and caused hatred among those people for their government.”
Locals said that a key grievance was an order given by the government commissioner for the Malakand area, which includes Buner, to disband the anti-Taliban militia soon after the insurgents entered Buner.
The delay in moving the armed forces against the extremists in Buner may have allowed them to entrench themselves and mass sufficient weapons and men to put up stiff resistance. The Taliban have managed to take hostage some 2,000 villagers in the Pir Baba area in the north of Buner, the army confirmed Monday.
The Pakistan army wouldn’t confirm civilian casualties or damage to civilian villages.
“There are no reports I have of any civilian casualties,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman. “Or any collateral damage. We have made maximum efforts to avoid it.”
One reason why civilian casualties are likely is that government officials gave no instructions to ordinary people about how to leave the district, and many were confused about the timing of the curfew, those fleeing said. A cause of further frustration was that little or no preparation was made to accommodate those who’d inevitably be displaced by the fighting.
In southern Buner, in the Khudokhel area, on the road out to the nearest town of Swabi, there was no sign of any government-sponsored relief effort. Residents of villages along the road turned out instead, offering food and drink to weary travelers, and help with transportation onward. Those with spare rooms or buildings offered them to the displaced. Villagers in Chinglai, about an hour’s drive into Buner from Swabi, are housing 20 families.
There are no reliable figures so far for how many people have fled Buner. Evacuees describe the district, which had a population of some 500,000, as having practically been emptied.
According to the al Khidmat Foundation, an Islamic charity, more than 150,000 people have taken the road south to Swabi alone. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the refugee arm of the United Nations, has registered around 18,000 people, but counting is tricky because almost none of the displaced have gone into the camps that are being set up for them outside Buner.
(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent. Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.)
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Tags:civilians, Islamic militants, NWF province, Pakistan, Pakistani army
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