Area Rebuilds After Taliban Defeat
In Buner, a district adjoining the northern Swat valley where the Taliban militants marched in to take charge of government offices in April, government officials are hoping to restore electricity within a week-a major impediment to the return of those who fled the area.
In sizzling tropical temperatures of more than 36 degrees Celsius (roughly 97 degrees Fahrenheit), a small group of journalists from western news organizations, including CBS News were taken to Buner under military escort for a first-hand account of a region once at the center of a Taliban promise to be turned in to an Islamic state where harsh punishments would be routinely enforced.
"The Taliban hoped to turn the town of Ambela in to a graveyard for the security forces. We ended up making Ambela a graveyard for the Taliban," said Colonel Naseer Janjua, the acting commander of Buner, pointing toward one of the entry points to the region. Burnt cars, trucks and buses are still visible on the roadside — a sign of a tough battle that raged within 2 kilometers of the entry from Ambela.
Speaking to visiting Western journalists in Daggar, a town where the military's Frontier Corps has established its main office for Buner, Colonel Janjua said, at least 23 cars laden with explosives were used by the Taliban only to take control of Ambela and block all incoming traffic.
Along the road leading in to Buner, town after town now sports at least a few homes which were destroyed in the fighting, mainly when the Taliban occupied them and eventually prompted the military to engage in a frontal attack.
Yahya Akhunzada, the district coordination officer of DCO of Buner — the top government administrator in the area, warned that rehabilitation of those who fled the area may be a long term process. The government may to provide temporary mud structures for a year or two "till they can rebuild their houses," said Akhunzada, speaking about the prospects for those who return home and find their homes destroyed in the fighting.
Just outside Daggar, Sher Mohammad, a farmer who returned earlier on Friday, lamented the loss of two of his four cows which were killed in the battle. It is the kind of loss for a poor farmer which is similar to the losses for many others. Thousands of farmers from the area were never able to harvest their wheat crop after they were forced to flee just when the harvest season began. "Right now, I am desperate. I don't know how I will ever be able to return to the same kind of farming as I left behind here," Mohammad told CBS News.
Western diplomats have warned that the failure of the international community, including the U.S., to help Pakistan deal with the reconstruction costs of Swat and its surrounding areas such as Buner, will ultimately be a factor in deciding popular opinion toward Washington's already unpopular policies in the war on terror across much of the Muslim world. Pakistanis widely believe that their government was finally forced to fight the Taliban in Swat and its surrounding region after it came under fast growing pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama's administration.
"There is a military victory in place, but what happens next to the lives of people who fled this area may well be an important trendsetter for the long term," one Western diplomat in Islamabad told CBS News, speaking on the condition of anonymity after Friday's visit to Buner.
The Pakistani government now estimates that it may need up to US$2.5 billion for providing immediate emergency assistance and post conflict reconstruction as well as rehabilitation in Swat and its surrounding region.