CNN has a story on the situation in Swat, the Taliban-controlled region in Pakistan’s northwest outside of the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Hina Khan, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl, talks about how the Taliban are in control of the region and are expanding thier influence:
But Major General Athar Abbas, the spokesman for Pakistan’s military, disagrees:
I’ve been closely following the situation in Pakistan’s northwest for five years now. And sadly, I have to take the word of a 14-year-old Pakistani girl over the word of a senior Pakistani military officer. Here’s why: Pakistan’s military leadership has been outright untruthful to the media multiple times in the past on events in the northwest. In two of the more blatant instances, Major General Abbas had to backtrack on his falsehoods. In August 2007, Baitullah Mehsud’s Taliban forces in South Waziristan captured an entire company of about 300 Pakistani regular Army troops as they were patrolling through the tribal agency. Abbas denied this and initially claimed the troops were merely sheltering in a valley due to bad weather after losing communications, but it was later confirmed that a company-sized unit driving in 17 vehicles was captured by Mehsud’s forces. After backtracking, the military claimed about 110 troops were captured. But after the Taliban displayed the soldiers to a BBC television crew, it was confirmed 300 troops were captured. In another incident in January 2008, the Taliban overran the Saklatoi Fort in South Waziristan, but the military emphatically denied the reports. “Absolutely baseless and I reject this report,” Abbas said at the time. “I want to clarify that the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps personnel are still present in the fort.” Two days later, Abbas briefed the media on the military’s successful operation to retake the Saklatoi Fort. Hopefully, senior U.S. and NATO military commanders in Afghanistan and Western diplomats will begin taking what the Pakistanis are saying with a bag of salt.
