Fall of Bara

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

Bara was one time associated with hustling bustling shops selling Russian and east european smuggled goods in the times of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. I remember people used to travel in flocks to buy cheap air conditioners, refrigerators and other electrical goods for their households.

There are 2 stories making news from Bara currently, both are disturbing…

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\06\30\story_30-6-2008_pg7_32

Lashkar-e-Islam flags fly over Bara

BARA: Blacks flags emblazoned with swords could be seen flying over many of the mud-houses in the town of Bara on Sunday, in a show of support for a militant who government forces are trying to capture.The flags were those of the Lashkar-e-Islami (LI) in Khyber Agency, a wedge of tan-coloured mountains speckled with small trees sandwiched between the city of Peshawar and the Afghan border. Security forces launched an offensive on Saturday to push members of the militant group, led by commander Mangal Bagh, from the approaches of Peshawar after Bagh’s men began making sojourns into Peshawar to impose their Taliban-style teachings.

Unfair accusations: Though many in Peshawar fear the LI, the commander is well regarded in Bara town. “He’s a nice man. He’s being painted as a bad man because he talks about Islam,” said resident Fazale Mehboob, standing by the debris of Bagh’s house that security forces blew up on Saturday.Khyber is one of seven ethnic Pashtun-majority regions in northwest Pakistan that have never come under the full control of any government. A former bus driver with little education, Bagh, who is in his mid-40s, appears to have won support the same way the Afghan Taliban did when they emerged in the early 1990s and sorted out warlords and criminals preying on the people.

“He brought peace and got rid of the criminals in our area. He’s good for us,” Mehboob said.Bara was peaceful on Sunday with a surprisingly light security presence. Despite a curfew, some people were out in its main market although most stalls were shut.There was no evidence of any militants and no one was seen carrying a gun in a region where most men own a rifle.

Some soldiers drove around in double-cabin pick-up trucks and a few armoured personnel carriers patrolled the dusty streets but security forces made no effort to stop curious residents going out to see the ruins of Bagh’s office and a four-room mud house, both near the market, that soldiers blew up on Saturday.A senior government official said there had been no violence in the area since Saturday evening and a Reuters reporter heard no gunshots or explosions in Bara or along the lightly guarded road from Peshawar.

Angry sibling: Among those out on the streets was Bagh’s older brother, Soocha Gul, who is in his early 50s. “It’s a shame, barbaric,” an angry Gul said of the destruction of his brother’s buildings. “They came suddenly, asked us to vacate the house immediately and then blew it up. What crime did our women and children commit?” he asked.Bagh’s militants are not allied with the local Taliban and they have not been known to head off to Afghanistan to fight Western troops there. reuters

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Khyber Agency: 7 killed in missile attack](The News International: Latest News Breaking, World, Entertainment, Royal News)

PESHAWAR: Unknown culprits launched a missile attack on the office of a religious group at Tehsil Bara in Khyber Agency here on Monday which caused seven people to die while two others were injure The attack has demolished the infrastructure of the building.

However, the chief of the group and other commanders escaped unharmed of the attack meanwhile, the locals and the volunteers have been engaged to dig out people from debris.

The attack triggered violence in the region while the political administration has started probing into the matter.

2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giEwxrg3T1g&eurl=http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=Lashkar-e-Islam+&btnG=Search

3

[quote=Saad_UAE;5909757

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I wonder what do they achieve by destruction of empty houses?

Husbands and their food....
4

Success of Pakistani offensive in doubt

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - When government troops pushed their way into a local warlord’s stronghold just outside one of Pakistan’s major cities over the weekend, what they found followed a familiar pattern.

With plenty of warning from officials that troops were coming, Islamic insurgents in the mountainous Bara district outside Peshawar, the provincial capital, melted away, disappearing into a remote valley to the north.

Pakistani authorities declared yesterday that the district had been restored to their control. But residents said they expected the militants to return whenever it suited them.

Moreover, almost no one in Bara’s dusty, deprived main town had anything bad to say about the vanished warlord, Menghal Bagh, an illiterate bus driver-turned-cleric. Bagh maintained law and order, people said, and the shadow government he set up in recent months was more effective than the state-sanctioned one.

Even after he and his men had decamped, the black flags of his group, Lashkar-i-Islami, or Army of Islam, still fluttered from homes, schools, and government buildings.

The military operation to retake Bara and the rest of the Khyber tribal agency - home to the Khyber Pass, a key supply route for Western forces across the border in Afghanistan - was deemed a success by Pakistani authorities, who said yesterday that mop-up efforts might continue for some days.

At the same time, the assault showed fundamental ambiguities in the government’s stance toward Taliban-linked militants who have made the tribal areas their sanctuary. Pakistan’s ruling coalition, in office for three months, until now has sought to strike deals with local Taliban commanders rather than confronting them militarily.

However, senior officials said that the Khyber offensive did not necessarily break with the notion of choosing negotiations over force when possible. Although the operation involved hundreds of paramilitary Frontier Corps troops backed by tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles, representatives of the central government shied away from referring to it as a military offensive.

“This is a purely civilian law-enforcement action,” said Rehman Malik, the senior official in the Interior Ministry. The Frontier Corps, a fighting force with career soldiers in command, technically reports to Malik’s ministry, a civilian body.

Pakistan’s tribal northwest is predominantly Pashtun, the same ethnic stock as most of the local Taliban-linked groups. In this part of the country, the war against the militants, which began in 2001 when President Pervez Musharraf sided with the United States against the Taliban in Afghanistan, has never been popular.

On the militants’ side, a head-on fight with government troops, even the relatively weak and disorganized Frontier Corps, was clearly not on the agenda. The government move was telegraphed well in advance, with the army’s chief spokesman helpfully announcing on the eve of the offensive that it was about to begin.

“When they heard that, they just got in their vehicles and drove away,” Khan Mohammed, a watchman in Bara, said of Bagh’s followers.

The warlord himself went on his pirate radio station, later destroyed in the offensive, and instructed his followers to leave rather than oppose the troops.
Even as the government touted its success, the statement only underscored previous failures. Officials announced with fanfare yesterday that tribal paramilitary soldiers were back at their posts in the Khyber agency, without referring directly to these same troops having fled without a fight when Bagh’s men moved into the area a few months ago.

The operation was triggered when vigilantes loyal to Bagh moved closer to Peshawar itself.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2008/06/30/success_of_pakistani_offensive_in_doubt/

5

Yes, the news is that they had already flown away and government is showing the pictures of "destroyed houses" of Mangal Bagh as a proof of success.