Irshad Salim

NEW YORK: The U.S. is launching a new program to provide 21 days of work to approximately 4,800 households in Swat that will help quickly infuse cash into local economies and repair flood-damaged infrastructure.

Swat was one of the first to be hit by the monsoon floods that devastated almost one fifth of Pakistan and left more than 20 million affected in the country, which outnumbers the combined affected people of the recent four major international disasters i.e. 2004 Tsunami, the South Asian quake of 2005, Katrina and 2010 Haiti quake, according to Prime Minister Gilani.

In each target community in the Swat valley, a tool kit is being distributed by the U.S. that includes wheelbarrows, crow bars, shovels, hoes, hammers and steel pans. With these tools, the teams are working to construct roads and repair bridges in flood-damaged areas.

These short-term jobs will allow workers to purchase much needed food and supplies in local markets, spurring economic regeneration and early recovery, according to US embassy spokesman.

The Swat valley is an integral part of the strategic and significant region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province where three parts of the Asian continent–South Asia, Central Asia and China, meet.

Some analysts believe the U.S. program of cash-for-work will indeed create not only a better economic-cum-social environment for the flood affected in the valley but will also help build better image for the U.S. among the Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans.

The United States has provided more than $150 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to the people of Pakistan and has urged the international community to step up to the plate.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group and accused its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, of involvement in a December suicide bombing that killed seven Americans at a forward CIA post in eastern Afghanistan.

Mehsud was thought to have been killed by a U.S. drone strike in January, but he resurfaced in May in videos in which he vowed to attack U.S. cities.

Mehsud’s group claimed responsibility for the May 1 failed bombing of Times Square in New York.

Mehsud is currently a fugitive believed to be residing in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as the lawless northwestern border region is officially known. Swat was infested with Mehsud supporters until they were killed or pushed out by Pakistan army Ops.

Pakistani Talk Show Dunya Today with Dr. Moeed Pirzada discusses handling and fighting the devastating Pakistan floods which has affected Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh and poses danger to Sukkur Barrage, Guddu Barrage. Guests: Mujeeb-ur-Rehman Shami (Analyst), Syed Sumsam Ali Shah Bukhari (PPP), Ansar Abbasi (Analyst), Engr. Khurram Dastagir (PML-N)..

The Pakistani army has carried out 238 extrajudicial killings of people in the Swat Valley since September last year, says a report from Human Rights Watch.

It documents cases where members of the army allegedly took away Taliban suspects, who were later found dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.

A military spokesman denied the army had engaged in extrajudicial killings, a BBC report said.

Maj Gen Athar Abbas, head of the Pakistani army’s public relations wing, says the army has not carried out any extrajudicial killings in Swat or elsewhere.

“We will have to look at the charges before we come out with a specific response,” he told the BBC. “But we maintain that the army has never been involved in any such act.”

The HRW report says that while police have also been involved in the killings, most of them have been carried out by the army.

It details seven cases where Taliban suspects have been arrested and taken away by the army.

Their bodies have later been found with bullet wounds and marks of torture.

In one case, the report names a specific unit of the army, the 12th Punjab regiment, as being responsible.

According to the report, the regiment detained a resident of the Matta area of Swat, Farman Ali, along with two other men on 28 March this year.

The bodies of the other two men were later produced by the military and presented as Taliban militants who had allegedly been killed in a clash with the army.

Then Mr Ali’s body, with a gunshot wound to the head, turned up in a field on 26 May.

“The Pakistani military has yet to understand that a bullet in the back of the head is simply not the way to win hearts and minds in Swat,” says Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in the report.

“Killing terrorism suspects and their relatives in cold blood is vicious, illegal and constitutes an appallingly bad counter-terrorism practice that just creates more enemies.”

Local citizens have told HRW that the men were arrested by the army and that they were not connected to the Taliban.

Pakistani forces have been carrying out operations against the Taliban in the troubled north-west since May 2008.

Relatives of 23 suspected militants killed by Pakistani forces in the north-west on Tuesday said they were in custody at the time of their death.

Elders in Dir district said most of the suspects were handed over to the armed forces by local village councils.

The military said the men were killed in a shoot-out during a search operation in the Maidan area of Dir.

The killings came a day after four suicide bombers attacked a military camp in Timergara town.

One soldier was killed in the attack.

The Pakistani military has been often accused of carrying out extrajudicial killings of Taliban suspects to avenge militant attacks on military targets.

The military denies this charge.

The army launched an operation in Swat, Dir and some neighbouring areas last summer, forcing more than two million people to flee the region.

Months later, the areas were declared “clear” and the refugees started to return to their homes.

But sporadic attacks by suspected Taliban militants have continued.

‘In detention’

On Tuesday, the military in Dir notified the families of 23 suspects that they needed to collect their bodies from a local hospital.

They said that the men had been killed in a search operation.

“The clashes took place in Kalpani and Upper Maidan areas,” said Brigadier Nadim Mirza, the top commander of operations in Maidan.

But relatives told the BBC that nearly all the slain suspects had been in detention at the main paramilitary base in Timergara.

“Most of them were school boys. Some got inspired by the Taliban and joined their training camps in Swat but were weaned away by their parents before they could get into real fighting,” Saeed Gul, a local elder and former parliamentarian told the BBC.

“Others were either close relatives of known militants, or had given shelter to militants at some time out of fear or favour.”

One of the men who was killed had stopped attending a Taliban training camp in Swat due because of severe epilepsy, according to a Maidan resident who knew the family well.

Another victim was allegedly arrested by the security forces on 9 November last year – and news of it was conveyed by a Dir-based military spokesman to the media on the same day. (BBC Online)