Terror war intrudes in Pakistani valley

CHITRAL, Pakistan -- In April 2005, when Paul Aurdic drove up from Pakistan's dusty plains to the crystalline air of mile-high Chitral, he seemed to be what people here want more than anything: a foreign tourist eager to explore their beautiful valley.

Aurdic, from the US Consulate in Peshawar, registered as a tourist at a Chitral hotel and began moving into what he told hotel staffers was a rented vacation home. But his carloads of equipment, including a satellite dish and exercise machines -- raised suspicions that he was opening a CIA or FBI outpost dedicated to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda members.

When a local legislator voiced the suspicions in Parliament and announced a march to protest the American's presence, Aurdic and a Pakistani colleague left town and the consulate has declined to discuss who they were or what they were doing in Chitral.

For years, Chitral's stunning mountains, trout fishing, polo matches, and festivals made this valley one of the biggest tourist destinations in Pakistan. But since Sept. 11, 2001, Chitral is uncomfortably at the fringe of America's war on terror and the search for bin Laden.

Before and after the mysterious American's visit, reports quoting Afghan and US intelligence officials said Chitral was a suspected hiding place or travel route for bin Laden. Local people say the terrorist leader would find almost no sympathizers to shelter him here. More than a third of Chitralis belong to the Ismaili sect, which is excoriated by militant Muslims as heretical.

People in Chitral "don't want the FBI or CIA here -- or the Taliban or Al Qaeda, because we are lucky to have a peaceful place here and these people will disturb it," said Mahkamuddin, a Chitral newspaper reporter.

Chitral's margin of separation from Afghanistan and its war is painfully thin. For six months each year, mountain snows cut this valley's roads from the rest of Pakistan, leaving Chitral accessible only via Afghanistan.

The southern Chitral village of Arandu is reported by residents to be full of spies working for both sides in the war, and Afghanistan is holding a local resident, Said Akbar, whom it accuses of having escorted bin Laden through Chitral. He denies it.

Last year, US troops opened bases just a few miles beyond the ridgelines separating the Chitral valley from Afghanistan. Pakistan-based Taliban have vowed to step up attacks on Americans, and the valley is a prime guerrilla infiltration route.

Amid the war at its edges, Chitral, like Pakistan, struggles to revive itself as a destination for tourists, not terrorists. President Pervez Musharraf's government has invested in a tourism campaign, but "Destination Pakistan 2007" has been overshadowed by an escalation of Islamic militant violence in the country.

Taliban militants have bombed barber shops, music stores, and girls' schools in the ethnic Pashtun zone.

Still, much of the country is peaceful -- notably this valley. Chitral's people are not Pashtuns, but a mix of small groups forced to accommodate each other because none could dominate, said Inayatullah Faizi, a leading social scientist here.

During Pakistan's half-century of independence, a small but steady tourist trade arose here, catering to backpackers, mountain climbers and hunters.

Now, Jeep drivers, tour guides, hotel workers, and shopkeepers struggle to survive, said Haider Ali Shah, owner of a venerable hotel, the Mountain Inn. A reporter who stayed there in May was the third registered guest this year.

Despite the Afghanistan war and rumors of an Al Qaeda presence in this valley, a few visitors trickle through. In Chitral town's bustling bazaar, a lone Japanese tourist checked e-mail one afternoon recently at a tiny Internet shop called the Aafaq Computer Center and Global Linker.

At the town's ritziest hotel, run by a member of Chitral's former royal family, a Hong Kong-based anesthesiologist, Assad Hussain, marveled at a moonrise over the valley. "It's unbelievable that there's a war going on so close," he said.