Taliban imperil Pakistani city

Militants execute 2 Afghan captives

Pakistani Taliban were ready yesterday to execute two Afghans for their alleged spying for US forces and helping orchestrate a suspected US missile strike that killed 14 people last month. (Anwarullah Associated Press)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of 3 million people, one of Pakistan's biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for ransom.

The militants move unchallenged out of the lawless tribal region, just 10 miles away, in convoys of heavily armed, long-haired and bearded men. They have turned up at courthouses in nearby towns, ordering judges to stay away.

On Thursday, they stormed a women's voting station on the city outskirts, and they are regularly kidnapping people from the city's bazaars and homes. There is a feeling that the city gates could crumble at any moment.

The threat to Peshawar is a sign of the Taliban's deepening penetration of Pakistan and of the expanding danger the militants present to the entire region, including nearby supply lines for NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.

For the United States, the major supply route for weapons for NATO troops runs from the port of Karachi to the outskirts of Peshawar and through Khyber Pass to the battlefields of Afghanistan. Maintaining that route would be difficult if the city was significantly infiltrated by the very militants who want to defeat the NATO war effort across the border.

In another sign of the power of local Taliban forces in the border tribal areas, Pakistani militants yesterday executed two Afghan prisoners in front of thousands of cheering supporters near Khar, beheading one man and shooting the other after accusing them of aiding a US missile strike.

NATO and US commanders have complained for months that the government's policy of negotiating with militants has led to more cross-border attacks in Afghanistan by Taliban based in the tribal areas.

But the brazen campaign of intimidation in Peshawar, just 90 minutes by highway from the capital, Islamabad, shows that the Taliban threat now cuts deeply on both sides of the border, not just with suicide bombings but also with the persistent presence of militants among the population.

In this hard-boiled provincial capital, the fear is palpable. Many of the rich have fled their mansions and left for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

"If this trend continues, there will be complete peace because the city is under the Taliban, or civil war because of the fighting," said Samullah Shinwari, 31, the father of four children, who is selling his lucrative shopping mall and two ancestral family homes, and moving to Islamabad, the capital.