Pakistan signs new peace deal with pro-Taliban militants

PAKISTAN: Pakistani authorities, tribal elders and pro-Taliban militants Monday signed the latest in a series of peace deals in a troubled frontier area, officials and witnesses said.

The deal was signed in Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven federally administered tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped an airstrike in January 2006.

The tribesmen and militants agreed not to give foreign militants safe haven in the area or allow "subversive" activities, while the authorities pledged not to make arrests without consulting the elders, they said.

Pakistan signed peace pacts with pro-Taliban rebels in the South Waziristan area in 2005 and in North Waziristan in 2006, although unlike the Bajaur deal those agreements involved the withdrawal of thousands of troops.

US and NATO officials in Afghanistan criticised the previous deals, saying they led to an increase in attacks on foreign troops. Pakistan says they are the best solution to militancy in the lawless area.

"The local Taliban organisation has authorised me to sign this agreement and they have assured that they will not take part in any subversive activity," said Malik Abdul Aziz, a representative of the militants, after the signing.

The deal was signed during a tribal council, or grand jirga, attended by some 700 tribesmen, elders, clerics, MPs and local officials in Khar, the main town of Bajaur.

"The administration will not raid our places without any solid proof and withdraw warrants of arrests issued against our people on the basis of suspicion," Aziz said.

Local administration chief Shakil Qadir urged the elders to help "maintain peace and unity and keep an eye on the movement of suspicious people at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, so that enemies of our country fail in their designs to disrupt our peace."

Anyone who violates the agreement will have their house torched and demolished and will be expelled from the region, in line with tribal customs, officials said.

A Pakistani interior ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the deal.

"Under the agreement tribal elders have pledged not to allow anyone in the area to harbour foreign militants and to expel them from the area," the official added. "And the administration has assured them it will respect their customs."

Pakistan poured thousands of troops into parts of the tribal belt to combat militants who fled the 2001 fall of Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Operations in the area have left 700 soldiers and 1,000 militants dead.

The official said it was "not like Waziristan because there the army withdrew in return for tribal pledges," whereas in Bajaur there are almost no government soldiers, only tribal paramilitary forces.

But Bajaur has seen several violent incidents too. Pro-Taliban militants recently torched video shops and banned barbers from shaving beards in Khar.

An airstrike on a madrassa in Bajaur in October killed 80 people and postponed the signing of the peace pact. Officials said it was an Al-Qaeda training camp but locals said the victims were students.

An alleged CIA missile strike in Bajaur killed 18 people in January 2006. Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's Egyptian deputy leader, was said to have escaped the attack.

The agreement came the same day as militants clashed with police at a high school after trying to recruit students to fight in Afghanistan, leaving one policeman and one rebel dead, according to officials.

Shortly after the gunbattle in the northwestern town of Tank, which adjoins the lawless South Waziristan tribal region, an extremist hurled a grenade at a police vehicle in the area, wounding nine people, they said.

The violence erupted when police stopped a group of militants from entering the privately run Oxford Public School in Tank, local administration chief Syed Mohsin Shah told AFP by telephone.

Islamabad, Tuesday, AFP