BARA, Pakistan: Black flags with a sword emblazoned across them were flying above many of the mud-walled homes in the Pakistani town of Bara yesterday in a show of support for a militant who government forces are out to get.
The flags were those of the Lashkar-i-Islami, or Army of Islam in northwest Pakistan’s Khyber region, 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 a commander called Mangal Bagh, from the approaches of Peshawar after Bagh’s men began making forages into the city to impose their Taliban-style ways.
Though he and his men are feared by many in Peshawar, in Bara town, a Bagh stronghold about 15km southwest of Peshawar, the thin commander with a bushy beard is well regarded.
“He’s nice man. He’s being painted as a bad man because he talks about Islam,” said resident Fazal-e-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 which have never come under the full control of any government.
In the 19th century, British colonial troops battled Pashtun warriors up and down the Khyber Pass for years.
The British later saw the independent-minded Pashtuns as a convenient buffer, fending off Russian advances towards the northwest frontier of British India.
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 war lords 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 yesterday 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 gun shots or explosions in Bara or along the lightly guarded road from Peshawar. Among those out on the streets was Bagh’s older brother, the grey-bearded 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 main Pakistani Taliban group and they have not been known to head off to Afghanistan to fight Western troops there.  - Reuters